Boomslang's Three-A-Day Musical Thread

[boomslang]

I got the urge to make a music thread, so I'm gonna put up three songs a day until I get bored and stop. I'll probably start using spoiler tags if the videos start causing too much browser strain, which is a problem I've found with the musical threads on forums in general.

If you've gone musically stagnant and you're looking for new stuff to get into, here's a good start:

CunninLynguists - Brain Cell (from A Piece of Strange)

CunninLynguists are one of my favourite hip-hop groups, but I'm a bit of a 90s hip-hop guy, so the really organic sounding beats really appeal to me. I'm not sure if they use some of their own instrumentation, but the basslines are very crisp. Nice sax parts too. The rapping is pretty high quality, nice and flowy and more oldschool than the more jagged hook style stuff in pop songs or the disjointed styles you sometimes find in underground hip-hop.

Jamie xx - Loud Places (from In Colour)

This has more or less just come out, it's from the solo album of Jamie xx, who normally does the synth/percussion/samples for The xx. This track has the guitarist/vocalist from The xx on it. It's also the most xx sounding track on the album, but it's also a lot more layered sounding than most xx tracks. Really nice tune, the echoey drums in the chorus really bring it to life, as do the damp shimmery guitar fills.

Minus the Bear - Dog Park (from They Make Beer Commercials Like This)

Definitely one of my favourite guitar bands. Their music reminds me of surfing and beach villas on the sunset for some reason. Really airy keyboards and lush sounding guitars all the way through, with a sparse but present bassline. Very nice shimmery guitar at 1:27, probably my favourite part in the song, but it's just a nice tonal variation on verse-chorus songwriting. Listen with good headphones if you can, it's a real treat.

 

[boomslang]

Crystal Castles - Black Panther (from Crystal Castles)

This is the track with the most propulsion and energy on the Crystal Castles debut. They were still pretty liberal with the Nintendo style sound patches on their first album, before their sound developed on their later work. Nice synth bass octaves steadily grooving through the track, giving it a pretty tight form, particularly when the bass drum locks into it. I'm pretty sure it's meant to be listened to really loudly, which I wholeheartedly recommend.

Flume - Space Cadet (from Flume)

Flume is from my own motherland and he seems to have actually managed to find a fanbase outside Australia. The style is referred to as 'wonky', which is basically glitchy dubstep at a glance. The staggered beats on this whole album give it a strange swagger that turns out to be enjoyable if you're not always in the mood for a straight 4/4 feel. Tasty beeps and bloops all throughout. Funnily enough, it does have a space like feel, in a cheesy kind of way. Nice echoey soulful vocals sampled throughout. Would appeal to fans of Burial that want something a bit more mainstream friendly. Put this on at a party if you've got cool friends. There's also a different version of this track on the deluxe version of Flume that features Ghostface Killah. It's in the spoiler button underneath.

BONUS:

Blockhead - Carnivores Unite (from Music by Cavelight)

This one is the most chilled track in the whole post. It's from Blockhead, who's a hip-hop producer and largely does beats for Def Jux rappers like Aesop Rock. This is him doing his own thing, though. Hip-hop percussiveness on all the tracks, sure, but also a lot of fretless bass, nice samples ahoy, guitar leads, and even a trumpet solo of all things. It's probably the best song on the album, but the whole thing is pretty great if you want to listen to something that veers into cafe music territory, but is layered enough with good stuff that it doesn't end up being boring as shit.

 

[boomslang]

Cult of Luna - Dim (from Somewhere on the Highway)

Kicking off today is Cult of Luna, a Sweden based 7-piece (technically an 8-piece on this album) sludgey/post-rocky metal band. This band is insane. They have three guitarists, a keyboardist, two drummers (technically one drummer and one percussionist, but he's got a drum kit too), a vocalist and a bass player. Somehow it works without being a trainwreck.

Dim is one of the top tracks on Somewhere on the Highway, it starts off with plodding rhythm guitar and the layers start to fill in as the other guitars come in with fills and interspersed arpeggiated chords. At the two minute mark, the rest of the band comes in and the track fills in completely and builds and builds throughout with strong ebbs and flows. Very dynamic track in a slow kind of way, very wintery Scandinavian feel to it and melancholic in the best possible way.

Deafheaven - Dream House (from Sunbather)

This stuff gets called 'blackgaze' on the innernets because it's part black metal and part shoegaze. Sunbather is a pretty great album in general and the music press seems to have taken to them kindly for the most part. It's almost etherial music, conveys a very bright and dreamy mood, and I'm not just saying that because the track is called Dream House and the album is called Sunbather. The lyrics are interesting and pretty atypical for the genre. You might want to look into those too. The track is packed with glistening guitars and the feel of the album is luminescent in general, but exemplified on this track. Another dynamic track, just like Dim. Vocals may not be your cup of tea, but they seem to be enjoyable to the non-metal initiated.

Lantlôs - These Nights Were Ours (from .neon)

Another 'blackgaze' band, this time from Germany. This track is very sublime and kicks off with intensity after a nice jangly arpeggiated guitar intro with the double bass drumming kicking in straight after. The song is appealing for the intensity that it mixes together with its dreaminess and the band uses an almost jazzy bass tone all throughout the album, which adds to the charm. Some similarities to Deafheaven's material, but it still maintains enough of its own identity to be worth having a listen to.

 

[boomslang]

In a bit of a hurry today, so I'll put the tracks up and fill the blurb in when I next get a chance. Videos under the spoiler button from now on.

EDIT: BLURBS ADDED

Amon Tobin - Stoney Street (from Bricolage)

Going with some more downtempo stuff for day 4. This particular track is pretty typical for what you'd find on the label Ninja Tune. It's jazzy hip-hop style music with string samples. The upright bass is particularly tasty on this track. Again with the brass parts, seems like I was a massive fan of this kind of stuff without fully realising. The drums have a nice swagger and jazzy feel, which only adds to the whole thing, I think.

Autolux - Asleep at the Trigger (from Future Perfect)

For some reason, this song feels really Ni to me. The instrumentation, the dreaminess and the lyrics. I actually first heard this song on Skins years ago and had to hunt it down. (That show has surprisingly excellent musical picks all throughout. Some super savvy indie-type person must have been put in charge.) The rhythm guitar has an almost casual laziness about it and structurally, the song is remarkably simple, which lets the emotion of it bleed through a bit more. In the last fifth of the song, the guitars thicken more and the bass gets fuzzy, adding a light touch of dynamics. Very noice.

Burial - Raver (from Untrue)

Very possible that this isn't going to be the last Burial song I post up. The feel of Burial could be best be described as the feeling of being out in the city, drunk but coming down after a night out, somewhere in the region of 5 am, where the streets are a bit less populated with people and some of the shop lighting has started to turn off and there's only the vaguest hint of sunrise coming.

The music is etherial, soulful and extremely dreamy. Constant syncopated Garage style beats go throughout the song and make a very static base, allowing the dynamics of the track to come from samples instead. Keyboards, pitch-shifted vocals and so on come through. This is the closing track on Untrue and wraps the whole album together excellently. Burial has always been able to tap into emotions that most other music can't, and I've always liked his stuff for that, and you probably will too.

 

[boomslang]

Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else (from Somethin' Else)

Somethin' Else sounds like what you'd expect jazz to sound like. Swinging drumming and a healthy brass section. The whole album has something of an all-star band, with Cannonball Adderley on saxophone, Miles Davis on trumpet, Art Blakey on drums, Hank Jones on piano and Sam Jones on bass. All five of them have been prolific band leaders and sidemen in jazz. But this is a pretty common phenomenon. A lot of the most acclaimed jazz albums are a meeting of minds where bands consist entirely of band leaders or band leaders to be. The track opens up with call and response, with Adderley and Miles Davis trading off brass riffs before finding its way into traditional jazz territory. This is a good track to look into if you're interested in jazz but haven't heard particularly much.

Bill Evans Trio - Elsa (from Explorations)

The Bill Evans Trio is a good example of a stripped down bare minimum sized jazz group, with just Bill Evans on piano, Scott LeFaro on bass (highly rated, but didn't have nearly enough output compared to the more prolific jazz musicians, as he died age 25) and Paul Motian on drums. This trio format is pretty typical in jazz and is often enough to get by and make great music. All three musicians were easily virtuoso status as of this recording, but you'll have to listen to the other tracks to hear that, because this track is one of the calmer and more subdued tunes. But that's also why the song is nice to listen to. This strikes me as something of a rainy day track, and one of the hallmarks in a musician's musician isn't just technical ability, but also restraint.

Charles Mingus - Slop (from Mingus Dynasty)

Mingus Dynasty is a great album to check out when you've gotten out of the Miles Davis/Kind of Blue comfort zone of jazz. You can get a pretty quick insight into Mingus' mind from this track. The song is BUSY. Mingus literally shouts at his band over his bass. I'm still not sure if he's conducting them or just enjoying himself, but the man was one intense musician. This track has big energy and you get the impression of a structure that's more dynamic. The use of dynamics and large amounts of instrumental interweaving are indicative of a style of jazz known as Third Stream, which is known for mixing elements of jazz and classical music together. Mingus himself had a big interest in classical music in his formative years and this probably informed the decision to go in this direction.

Mingus is my favourite jazz musician to date. The man is just nuts. You can see it in his music. You can see it in the fact that he wrote an autobiography in the third person. You can see it in the fact that he can shout at his band while playing the bass and having to interact with his band in real time. You can see it in the fact that he wrote an instructional guide on how to teach cats to piss in human toilets. The man is just nuts.

 

[boomslang]

I missed yesterday, so I'm just going to put both days' worth of picks in one post.

Made Out of Babies - Stranger (from The Ruiner)

Made Out of Babies' music took cues from bands like The Jesus Lizard and Shellac when they were writing, and it ends up being pretty evident in this track. Severe grinding bass thumps through the beginning of the track, locking in with the bass drum and providing pretty satisfying thud. The song essentially swaps between three styles, the aforementioned plodding, the more vulnerable section emphasising single note guitar playing and then Neurosis style sludgey sections that follow that. Lyrically and musically, the song covers some pretty interesting territory. I've considered this song one of the more deeply intimate and fucked up tracks that I've heard for as long as I've known of it. Excellent tune.

Russian Circles - Malko (from Geneva)

Malko is just beautiful from the get-go. It starts straight away with really nice two-handed guitar tapping, which is something not enough bands are doing, in my opinion. The drums maintain a propulsive groove that clicks well with the tapping. The distorted bass comes in and starts to morph the feel of the track, moving it closer to the heavier section that follows, then soaring outwards with dissonant tremolo picked guitar. The track moves around a lot dynamically and the band members all fire on all cylinders, making them sound a lot bigger than a trio. Russian Circles in general is great percussive instrumental rock/metal and this track is a good example of just that.

Converge - Aimless Arrow (from All We Love We Leave Behind)

Now here's a track with bite. Very intense and heavy as fuck. Similar bass and drum synchronising at the start like the Made Out of Babies track, definitely bringing the thud. Official Boomslang seal of approval right from the get-go. The song has a very anxious, desperate feel to it, lots and lots of high-octane energy release all throughout. Very nice two-handed tapping in the verse sections. The lyrics to this song combined with the music give me really strong frisson for some reason. Awesome.

Cerberus Shoal - Omphalos (from Homb)

Late 90s post-rock. This'd fall into the earlier incarnation of post-rock along with material from bands like Tortoise, Bark Psychosis and Talk Talk. It's very rhythmic, with atypical percussion like the kind you'd find on Tool and Meniscus material. Brass to be found amidst the more typical instrumentation. Nice warm and bright guitar all over this track. Almost feels New Age at the end, but it's a good ol' track.

Four Tet - She Moves She (from Rounds)

I've always found Four Tet interesting. One of the first things you'll notice in the song is the loud drums before the layers of the track start to fill in. After an instrumentation layer has fully established itself, the glitchy nature of the song becomes apparent. These are pretty abrasive sounding glitchy cuts. Eventually the instrumentation separates and runs parallel to the glitchiness. The groove of the track seldom gets interrupted by the glitchiness (save one moment where the drums drop out before coming in without losing pulse). Overall, it's a track with a nice variety of timbre and the rhythmicality allows a static flow to continue throughout the song and give it a solid foundation.

Flying Lotus - Do the Astral Plane (from Cosmogramma)

One of the more traditionally structured tracks on this album. Cosmogramma is one of the more eclectic albums I've come across, which extends to tonal variety, rhythm variances and even wild changes in song form from track to track. Do the Astral Plane catches Flying Lotus at his best, providing his mix of hip-hop, dubstep and glitch. The song incrementally builds more and more layers until there's crackly bass synth, keyboard, string patches, horns and percussion going for a strong crescendo.

 

[boomslang]

Cannibal Ox - Pigeon (from The Cold Vein)

This is from another Def Jux album. Nice sparse production by El-P who you may or may not know from other stuff like Run the Jewels, Company Flow and The Weathermen. The track looks at a metaphorical take of struggling above the lower class with a whole slew of avian metaphors. Really nice hip-hop track that does things a little differently to others in a way that works for them, rather than backfiring. Even now, the whole album sounds very ahead of its time.

Lamb - Here (from Fear of Fours)

Fear of Fours was an album that looked into rhythmic variation, meaning to be a "fear" of 4/4 common time meter. Ironically, Here is written in 4/4 time, but it does have atypical rhythmic emphasis. Fear of Fours aimed for a trip-hoppy feel but didn't seek to avoid traditional instrumentation, with ethnic percussion and upright bass featuring heavily. Features that very 90s trip-hop vocal styling that you can also find in Portishead's music. As with 90% of the stuff I've posted already, it's very enjoyable rhythmically, but the track is also pretty sexy.

Nas - Halftime (from Illmatic)

If you're hip-hop savvy, there's a huge chance you've dabbled with Illmatic already. It's got everything that made 90s hip-hop great. Great old-school production (in this instance, by Large Professor, a master of the form), and fucking sleigh bells on top. Nas put most of his eggs in the flow department and you can see that majorly on this track, Nas is a human groove machine. I don't really need to say more about it, the track speaks for itself.

 

[boomslang]

Animals as Leaders - Soraya (from Animals as Leaders)

This is an interesting track. Animals as Leaders is a project featuring Tosin Abasi, some fella who used to be in Animosity. In this band he's saddled up with an 8 string guitar and is engaged in all manner of guitar tapping. The music has a loosely jazz fusion palette and production-wise, this is a bit more amateur than the later albums, but there's a nice feeling to this song (and album). If you're into innovative guitar bands, this is great stuff.

Augury - Beatus (from Concealed)

Beatus is the first track on Concealed. Stylewise, it's a mixup of technical death metal and symphonic elements. Male/female vocals, with the former going for more traditional death metal vocals and the latter going for an operatic style. Fun fact: the male vocalist of this band is (or was) an English teacher. I really really like the section starting about 3:10 in where the tone of the song gets kind of astral or something and an unusual guitar solo starts, leading into this creepy as hell pickup scratching screech.

Necrophagist - Only Ash Remains (from Epitaph)

Necrophagist play neoclassical inspired (think Yngwie Malmsteen) technical death metal. In a strange way, it's really nice music. Maybe because it doesn't really come that close to being savage death metal. I think this band might just have some of the prettiest guitar solos in metal. I really can't describe it any other way. Only Ash Remains is no exception. And kind of bizarrely, it ends with a rendition of Prokofiev's Dance of the Knights from his Romeo and Juliet ballet. Skip to 3:38 if you want to hear it.

 

[boomslang]

Peeping Tom - Sucker (feat. Norah Jones) (from Peeping Tom)

This is a Mike Patton one-off project where he made an album of what he thought pop music should sound like. There's collabs on every single track and this one features Norah Jones. Yes, the same Norah Jones that made the smooth jazz rubbish your parents listen to. She's pretty damn sexy on this track, so it's pretty cool to see a huge about-face from a muso like her. Nice hip-hop scratching all throughout. Tasty pop track.

Death From Above 1979 - Sexy Results (from You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine)

DFA1979 is actually a duo, featuring a bass player and a drummer that also plays occasional synth and does the vocals. There's no guitar, so the bass player distorts his bass and typically plays around the 7th fret onward (which would be the notes you'd have on a baritone guitar). The bass and drums line up fantastically and the result is excellent dancey punk zingers. Their lyrics are pretty much exclusively about sex and partying, which is fine by me. I wish more dance music was like this, honestly. One of the coolest damn bands out and they just reunited with a new album after five years, then took another four to pump out the album. The two guys kind of hate each other, but I think they put their differences aside for the music, maaaaan.

The Bloody Beetroots - Have Mercy On Us (feat. Cécile) (from Romborama)

Despite the name, The Bloody Beetroots are a house group from ITALY. I haven't been able to figure out if they just use sequencing or instruments as well. I've seen snaps of them playing with guitars and basses live, so I'm not totally sure. They wear Venom masks all the time, so I think they're going for a kind of Daft Punk thing. This song swaps out the house music four to the floor beat for a rocky boom bap bass-snare style thang. Tasty synth all over the place and video game music-esque haunted castle arpeggios all over the place. I'm not that big on dance music, but this passes the goal line with flying colours. Get in it.

 

[boomslang]

Blonde Redhead - Spring and by Summer Fall (from 23)

Alcest - Sur L'autre Rive Je T’attendra (from Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde)

A Place to Bury Strangers - Straight (from Transfixiation)