Music

For their 50th anniversary, Dr. Martens put together 10 covers with videos - a bunch of great songs, redone by great artists - The Cinematic Orchestra, Buraka Son Sistema, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club to name a few - with cool videos (and making-of videos). And the MP3 downloads are free. What's not to like (other than that they're not all available yet)?

• Frost & Wagner - Remixes
  • Liked the remix they did of Deeper Waters by Recloose, so I looked them up. Great album of their remixes of others, pushing towards but not always getting to dub. Bright, shiny, and happy feeling touch. Nice.
• Billy Joel - Cold Spring Harbor
• Billy Joel - Turnstiles
  • I've always been a Billy Joel fan, way back to my middle school days. Since I grew up in New York, his frequent references to NY places in his songs of the 70s meant something to me. I don't care too much for his more recent works, although I haven't listened to his classical dabblings. But I found a stack of his albums on the sidewalk, and I'm kicking myself for not taking what would be a nearly complete set of his albums. I only grabbed these two. Oh well, these are gems - especially Turnstiles - and are both in great condition. So spare, so much feeling in the lyrics, offset by an angelic yet NYC edge

• The Kings of Drum + Bass
  • 2-Disc compilation of old-school dnb by 4Hero and DJ Marky. Good stuff. 
• Jónsi - Go
  • Former lead singer of Sigur Rós doing something much happier - or at least with much more range of emotion, and bouncy beats. We're going to see him at Terminal 5 on May 9th.
• The Church - (nearly anything they've produced)
  • We went to see them at City Winery for their 30th anniversary tour, and they were awesome. They played a song from every album in reverse chronological order, roughly. Show was nearly 3 hours with short intermission and 3 encores. Hard to believe they've been playing and releasing albums since 1980 - 18+ albums, various bits and pieces, side projects, etc... And most all of it is good, if not great - or in the case of Starfish and Priest=Aura, absolutely amazing. Steve Kilbey's voice and lyrics are something special, and the layered guitars of Peter Koppes and Marty Wilson-Piper always beautiful. The latest release, Untitled #23, is quite good and grows on me more every day.
• Trama D&B Sessions
  • A few years old, but still a sweet compilation of soulful, jazzy, Brazilian-influenced dnb tracks, put together by Patife and Mad Zoo - most of them are remixes by one of them. I only know one or two words of portugese, but it's still beautiful to listen to it sung. A good followup to The Drum & Bass Fiesta from the year before.

I've been slowly putting my collection of vinyl into the computer, and found the best program to do it so far. I have an ION USB turntable, so the turntable goes straight into the computer, no issues there. Not the best turntable, but certainly good enough. I had been using Audacity, but it seems to really run the CPU even when it's recording. Don't know if it's a PPC issue, or just the program in general. I like the click/pop filter it has, and the MP3 encoding with LAME. I tried doing the recording with Final Vinyl, which works well enough to just record, but is a bit too simplistic.

So I just started using VinylStudio, and it's great. Interface isn't totally Mac, but it makes sense from a process standpoint, and works great - especially since this is the first Mac version (v7) of a longtime Windows program. It's worth the $30 registration for making the process that much easier - the automation of getting and inputting MP3 tags is a huge help and the biggest thing missing in my other methods. Audacity helps a bit with that, by at least remembering the tag info within the same recording, but it still requires manual input, and if you record in different sections you have to type it all in over again (yes, you can save the info and reload it, but it's a cumbersome process).

• Beach House - Teen Dream
  
  • Great dreamy lazy melodic pop - perfect for the Pet Sounds (or Animal Collective) lover in you. The more I listen to this, the more I love it.
• Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
  • More melodic dreamy psychedelic (not my favorite normally, but love it here) pop from the Brooklyn folks. Modern with a good beat, and beautiful layering. (check out a sweet video of theirs Brothersport - how much fun must the filmshoot have been for those kids!)
• Flaming Lips - Dark Side of the Moon
  • Great re-do of a super classic album. WIth White Dwarves, Stardeath. Vocals by Henry Rollins and Peaches!
•  Pajo - Scream With Me
  • The cover art looks like it would be dark and noisy, but the music is lo-fi and folkish, although the lyrics are dark. Sounds good so far. Hadn't heard of him before, but looks like he's been around - Slint, Royal Trux, Billy Corgan/Zwan, Tortoise...

Finally got a chance to watch/listen to the CUNY Graduate Center program 'Bob Dylan: American Poet.' It's always interesting to hear Dylan's music deconstructed, to hear about the details behind the making of and meaning of his songs. Especially the political ones, which while they may have timeless meaning, can have a lot of mentions of events that happened when they were written or before.

The music performed is interesting - I didn't really care too much for the classical-type interpretations of John Corigliano, but that's more because I'm not too much for that style of singing (I was subjected to way too much opera as a child). It is interesting to hear how he interpreted the lyrics poetry of Dylan in the music, not having much reference to the original music.

I like the Howard Fishman stuff. He sings with good understanding of the lyrics, and the arrangements are well matched. I'll have to go back and listen to 'I'm Not There' from The Basement Tapes and see how his interpretation jives with I think it should be.

• Novalima - Coba Coba
  • Based in Lima, Peru, but bringing a cross-south american sound. Good rhythmic stuff. Album was nominated for a Latin Grammy this year - Best Alternative Album. Also have a Coba Coba Remixed album that I'm thinking I'll be picking up quite soon...
• Iron & Wine - The Shepherd's Dog
  • A great rec/gift from Jackie's sister. Catchy, folky, jangly, with some smooth vocal work. 
• Klaxons - Myths of the Near Future
  • Great energy in this music. Interesting label 'new rave' for them. I get feelings of good 80s alt-music, electro, punk-ish. Another good rec from Stephie.
•  Jazzflora Compilation (Dealers of Nordic Music)
  • A great compilation of nujazz from an unfortunately defunct label. Much more on the jazz side than the electronic side

•  Nu:Tone - System feat. Natalie Williams (Matrix & Futurebound Remix)
  
  • Always quality from Nu:Tone - a beaut of a track, great vocals, remix that compliments the original. What more could you ask.
• John Gorka - I Know
  • One from my folk music days a long time ago. I like almost every track, but I have always loved 'Branching Out' - I have a thing for trees - and I wanted something I could sing to my daughter - my wife already claimed 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star'
• Flying Lotus - LA EP 3x3 
  • Really liked the FLying Lotus release Los Angeles, so I got this set of remixes and extras. Quite good, the remixes are a bit more ambient then the originals, but still contain the off-kilter funky vibe.
• Fat Freddy's Drop - Based On A True Story
  • Reggae from New Zealand, from 2005. The first indie album to go gold in NZ. Solid and soulful, with Joe Dukie on vocals. They have a new one out now, but I figured I'd start from the beginning.

• Flying Lotus - Los Angeles
  • Interesting electronica out of LA. Nice varied beat patterns that make some layered funky rhythms.
•  Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert
  • Beautiful solo piano from a master. Hadn't really listened to him much before.
• Q-Tip - The Renaissance
  • Q-Tip finally releases (or gets released) a solid solo album.
• Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend
  • I bought this when it came out, loved it, but must have overplayed it 'cause I sold it a while back. Well, I finally got another copy of it and am not sure how I tired of this awesome album. Pure perfect power pop.

• Foreign Exchange - Leave It All Behind
  •  Another solid neo-soul release from the trans-atlantic paring of Phonte and Nicolay. Not quite the classic that their first album together was, but we're talking a matter of degrees here. Lots of good tracks, lots of good vocalists on this release.
• Dangermouse & Sparklehorse - Dark Night of the Soul
  • (Not yet) released due to issues with his (Dangermouse's) record label, this album was created with a set of photos by David Lynch that supposedly illustrate the story of the songs, probably in an very abstract way. Not that I have a copy, which one could probably obtain very easily on this here interweb, but I've heard it's quite good. I'm going to get the book (which contains the photos and a blank CD-R for one's own use), though.
• Tosca - No Hassle
  • A good release from our Austrian friends. The title fits, very mellow, a bit of ambient, a bit of lounge, a bit of this, etc... Similar to their last album J.A.C. but I like this one better.
• Ray Charles - Genius + Soul = Jazz
  • A gem in my 12" collection that I bought several years ago and never actually listened to that much - and have now re-discovered. Ray on the Hammond B3, with a big band backing, arrangements by Quincy Jones, 1960 session on Impulse! vinyl. Serious!