I enjoyed this "Brooklyn Organ Synth Orchestra" clip of "Tubular Bells" so much that I eventually bought the song. Have a look:
As interesting as it is to see all these organs and synths at work, I'm always struck by how RELIEVED I am when the good old straightforward piano comes in at the end, bringing with it a warmth and depth that the rest of the song lacks. It gives me goosebumps! Even compared to the organs, the piano somehow sounds more EXPRESSIVE.
This has started me wondering: is the piano REALLY more expressive than a Hammond organ or an Omnichord? Is it more capable of conveying emotion than any other keyboard instrument?
That really does seem to be the case in THIS song, but that may have something to do with the relative skill of the player (Natasha Bartolf has obviously spent a lot of time with the piano so she may have more of a "connection" to it than -- perhaps -- Natalie Weiss with the Stylophone). Also, some of the instruments in the video ARE notably limited...that's part of their charm.
So I started thinking about synth virtuosos, the men and women who have spent their lives dickering with synthesizers. Manfred Mann has certainly bemoaned the lack of expressiveness in modern keyboards, but it's hard to compare his synth performances with virtuoso piano because he tends to use monophonic instruments. Bernie Worrell's more extravagant keyboard solos sound a bit farty these days. Thomas Dolby's synths are warmer than most, but still revel in a certain "coldness." Richard Tandy relies more on novelty than anything else.
I haven't looked into this enough. Is there something unique about the piano's ability to "express" the music that comes out of it, far beyond a pitch bend and a mod wheel?
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Monday, September 05, 2011
Saturday, August 06, 2011
Greg Allman in Kitchener
I escorted my parents to see Greg Allman at the Kitchener Blues Festival on Thursday. I have almost no recollection of Allman from my youth (other than wondering why there was an enormous spherical blob of jello on the back of his fruit truck) but I'm always intrigued by ace musicianship. Also I figured I could keep my folks from whooping it up too much, which in fact wouldn't happen, so I was making a joke there.
My immediate perception: blues is a little boring in a large venue, especially when performed in a manner that our town paper called "workmanlike." It seemed like every single song followed the same exact formula: a vocal introduction, followed by a piano solo, then either a sax or a guitar solo, and then a refrain of the vocal for the big finish. The musicians were amazing, as expected, but if there is such a thing as "too many piano solos" then I witnessed it several times over.
There was little variation. There was precious little soul. Even Allman's Hammond B3 sounded "workmanlike," having been played with much more verve and style by opening band "Aphrodite's Bodice."
I'm not sure if anybody else felt this way. There was certainly a lot of whooping and cheering going on, though mostly by Kitchener's life-long all-day porch-party brigade. We sat behind the cutest middle-aged German couple you've ever seen: both of them portly and homely, and when Allman sang "Melissa," the woman put her head on her husband's hamhock shoulder and gently held his hand. So that was sweet.
Maybe it's just a "blues thing." I felt that the spectacle would have been much better in a more intimate venue. It was a rush to see such talented guys put on a show, even if I still don't understand why there was a blob of jello on that album cover way-back-when.
My immediate perception: blues is a little boring in a large venue, especially when performed in a manner that our town paper called "workmanlike." It seemed like every single song followed the same exact formula: a vocal introduction, followed by a piano solo, then either a sax or a guitar solo, and then a refrain of the vocal for the big finish. The musicians were amazing, as expected, but if there is such a thing as "too many piano solos" then I witnessed it several times over.
There was little variation. There was precious little soul. Even Allman's Hammond B3 sounded "workmanlike," having been played with much more verve and style by opening band "Aphrodite's Bodice."
I'm not sure if anybody else felt this way. There was certainly a lot of whooping and cheering going on, though mostly by Kitchener's life-long all-day porch-party brigade. We sat behind the cutest middle-aged German couple you've ever seen: both of them portly and homely, and when Allman sang "Melissa," the woman put her head on her husband's hamhock shoulder and gently held his hand. So that was sweet.
Maybe it's just a "blues thing." I felt that the spectacle would have been much better in a more intimate venue. It was a rush to see such talented guys put on a show, even if I still don't understand why there was a blob of jello on that album cover way-back-when.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
"Interfering Waves" for Download!
The EP that Kevin Cogliano and I have been working on (as "Pico and Alvarado") is available for download from Bandcamp! It's $2 for 25 minutes, and if you think you've already heard most of the songs, I've got news for you: they've been thoroughly remixed and remastered. Plus there's an extended remix in the style of the typical '80s twelve-inch dance mix...I think you'll like it!
Oh, and about those figures on the cover...they are -- you guessed it -- Pico and Alvarado themselves. Knit-vixens Annissa and Lydia have spent the last two months destroying their fingers to make those things. I wish we could give you a free pair with every album because they're terrific!
Oh, and about those figures on the cover...they are -- you guessed it -- Pico and Alvarado themselves. Knit-vixens Annissa and Lydia have spent the last two months destroying their fingers to make those things. I wish we could give you a free pair with every album because they're terrific!
Sunday, March 20, 2011
"Sruel Quay" Released!
Many years in the making, "Sruel Quay" is finally here...a last scraping together of UPhold music that's been languishing during the last few years. You can get it as a free download from Bandcamp, including some beautiful cover and back artwork (photographs by Patrick, design by Dave McEwen), or you can just listen to the whole thing online if you're so inclined!
So what's the story? When I first started to use Logic Express 6 in 2003, I went through the usual learning curve of trying out a whole bunch of grand concepts that I couldn't complete at the time. As my knowledge and skill increased I started newer projects, which eventually became the "Damage" and "Roade" albums. Meanwhile, those early songs languished, getting further and further down the date-sorted list of "Multitrack" projects on my hard drive.
Then I bought a new, spiffy iMac, and while I saved money to eventually buy Logic Studio 8 for it, I decided to go back to the old eMac and finish off those songs before the hard drive disintegrated. I spent about a year dredging up 6-year-old songs and reworking them with the new experience and distance I'd acquired: "Bomb," "Devil Woman!", "Foozebox," "Humpback Forty-Four," and "The Swive (Part One)" were the results, and I planned to finish off a few more and release them as "False Memory Syndrome."
The problem was, by the time I'd finished these songs I'd finally started work with Logic 8, and I was no longer satisfied with how those dinosaurs sounded. They all relied on plugins I could no longer acquire (Pluggo and Mode) so I couldn't continue working on them with the new computer...they were frozen in time and technology. To make them even marginally better I'd need to spend more effort on them than I felt they deserved.
In the meantime I'd created some soundtracks to little video experiments ("Phonebox/Lunchbox," "Lightbox," "Boxcar," and "Caboodle"), and contributed to a compilation (a remix of "Icebox" on "Powdered Heaven Dressed in Plastic") and a split release with Infant Cycle ("Folded Memory Syndrome" and "Shut The Fuck Up Delia/Dmitri" on "Our Past Present").
In addition, I'd created a remix ("Roadbird") from the "Roade" album, and a remix of THAT remix with Chad Faragher. I also had a new song ("The Voyage of HMCS Thumpy") that I was spending so much time working on a video for that I simply got sick of it.
These were the bits and pieces I had lying around. What they all had in common was that they either couldn't be further improved due to technological limitations (both "Roadbird (Metal Mix)" and "Voyage of HMCS Thumpy" had ham-fisted mastering attempts so burned into their original tracks that they'd be very difficult to rescue) or had appeared on CDs from other venues (eg. "Shut the Fuck Up Delia/Dmitri," which I think is probably the best thing I've ever done...I wouldn't change a note).
In short: they were good enough to release, but generally fell short of what I'd expect people to PAY for. Like I said, I COULD improve them if I spent a lot of time and effort, but the improvement would be so marginal that it wouldn't justify the work.
With all that in mind, I hope you enjoy these oddities! They're a farewell to "UPhold" and the old ways of doing things. They sum up six years of my life: a time of personal exploration, sudden world experience, half-assed notoriety, and -- most obvious in many of the songs -- a degree of self-destructive too-much-fun behaviour that peaked and then subsided.
I'm surprised at how well "Sruel Quay" holds together as an album, and I look forward to what the first "Lemurian Congress" release will sound like!
So what's the story? When I first started to use Logic Express 6 in 2003, I went through the usual learning curve of trying out a whole bunch of grand concepts that I couldn't complete at the time. As my knowledge and skill increased I started newer projects, which eventually became the "Damage" and "Roade" albums. Meanwhile, those early songs languished, getting further and further down the date-sorted list of "Multitrack" projects on my hard drive.
Then I bought a new, spiffy iMac, and while I saved money to eventually buy Logic Studio 8 for it, I decided to go back to the old eMac and finish off those songs before the hard drive disintegrated. I spent about a year dredging up 6-year-old songs and reworking them with the new experience and distance I'd acquired: "Bomb," "Devil Woman!", "Foozebox," "Humpback Forty-Four," and "The Swive (Part One)" were the results, and I planned to finish off a few more and release them as "False Memory Syndrome."
The problem was, by the time I'd finished these songs I'd finally started work with Logic 8, and I was no longer satisfied with how those dinosaurs sounded. They all relied on plugins I could no longer acquire (Pluggo and Mode) so I couldn't continue working on them with the new computer...they were frozen in time and technology. To make them even marginally better I'd need to spend more effort on them than I felt they deserved.
In the meantime I'd created some soundtracks to little video experiments ("Phonebox/Lunchbox," "Lightbox," "Boxcar," and "Caboodle"), and contributed to a compilation (a remix of "Icebox" on "Powdered Heaven Dressed in Plastic") and a split release with Infant Cycle ("Folded Memory Syndrome" and "Shut The Fuck Up Delia/Dmitri" on "Our Past Present").
In addition, I'd created a remix ("Roadbird") from the "Roade" album, and a remix of THAT remix with Chad Faragher. I also had a new song ("The Voyage of HMCS Thumpy") that I was spending so much time working on a video for that I simply got sick of it.
These were the bits and pieces I had lying around. What they all had in common was that they either couldn't be further improved due to technological limitations (both "Roadbird (Metal Mix)" and "Voyage of HMCS Thumpy" had ham-fisted mastering attempts so burned into their original tracks that they'd be very difficult to rescue) or had appeared on CDs from other venues (eg. "Shut the Fuck Up Delia/Dmitri," which I think is probably the best thing I've ever done...I wouldn't change a note).
In short: they were good enough to release, but generally fell short of what I'd expect people to PAY for. Like I said, I COULD improve them if I spent a lot of time and effort, but the improvement would be so marginal that it wouldn't justify the work.
With all that in mind, I hope you enjoy these oddities! They're a farewell to "UPhold" and the old ways of doing things. They sum up six years of my life: a time of personal exploration, sudden world experience, half-assed notoriety, and -- most obvious in many of the songs -- a degree of self-destructive too-much-fun behaviour that peaked and then subsided.
I'm surprised at how well "Sruel Quay" holds together as an album, and I look forward to what the first "Lemurian Congress" release will sound like!
Monday, March 07, 2011
"Kaffe Katt" by Pico & Alvarado
Several months ago, Kevin Cogliano -- the "Alvarado" in "Pico & Alvarado" -- sent me a demo titled something like "That's What I Call 80s!"
And he was right. It was a perfect distillation of the fun pop songs we'd grown up with, all jangly and bouncy and downright carefree.
My task -- as I saw it -- was to maintain that feeling while simultaneously beefing up the song and over complicating it, adding enough twists and turns to make even the most ADD listener happy. One reason I wanted to do this was because I felt that "Style Kitchen" had never gotten the loving care it had deserved (an opinion -- I realize now -- more to do with overexposure to the song than to any actual defects), but also because I know I shy from experimentation...I don't like throwing in big changes, moving things around a timeline, or trying anything new.
So consider the final result -- "Kaffe Katt" -- as a journey outside my comfort zone. And while I'm still too close to it to give it an honest evaluation, I think it's pretty darn good.
(Photograph "Awning" by Patrick!)
Want to know more? Here's the finished timeline:
You'll notice a LOT of guitar tracks this time. The first track is the ongoing "cha-cha-chung" with a nice flange, and many of the rest are Kevin's experiments with doubling. The final four guitar tracks are more recent versions that he sent along during the course of the project, but I loved the rougher ones in the original batch...the cleaner tracks (including a nice delayed guitar) provide a good gentle conclusion.
My first real bombastic addition was the "G Blast" guitar, which coincides with a hyperactive series of crashes at the end of every verse. Kevin's guitar was already going manic during those segments but I really wanted to bash them out...so "G Blast" gets the "Modern UK Stack" treatment with Guitar Amp Pro, and the "crashes" are just a re-routed track from EZDrummer boosted all the way to heaven.
EZDrummer provides the main beat, while Ultrabeat provides a non-stop 4/4 kick and iDrum adds a snare and -- during the high point -- all those cheap drum effects. Lots and lots of drums in here, but I think it works.
Kevin's original tracks had included a Hammond-ish organ and a synth bassline...I kept the organ (augmented with the EVB plugin) but used his MIDI files with the same Minimoog/Taurus IK Multimedia "SampleMoog" preset I'd created for an earlier song. Also from IK Multimedia is the choir in the third section and the recurring pizzicato violin that I hope is "interesting" instead of "annoying."
This song's big additional experiment: Loomer's brilliant "String" instrument, which emulates 70s string machines WITHOUT eating all your CPU (and all your money). I'm totally in love with Loomer String and I highly recommend it.
The really abrasive portamento synth is Tal-Elek7ro, based off the "LD Club Saw XS" preset. There's also some Ensoniq ESQ in there with the organ stabs and the bells, and some really inconsequential DOD pitch/echo modulation on the plucky violins.
And there you have it!
And he was right. It was a perfect distillation of the fun pop songs we'd grown up with, all jangly and bouncy and downright carefree.
My task -- as I saw it -- was to maintain that feeling while simultaneously beefing up the song and over complicating it, adding enough twists and turns to make even the most ADD listener happy. One reason I wanted to do this was because I felt that "Style Kitchen" had never gotten the loving care it had deserved (an opinion -- I realize now -- more to do with overexposure to the song than to any actual defects), but also because I know I shy from experimentation...I don't like throwing in big changes, moving things around a timeline, or trying anything new.
So consider the final result -- "Kaffe Katt" -- as a journey outside my comfort zone. And while I'm still too close to it to give it an honest evaluation, I think it's pretty darn good.
(Photograph "Awning" by Patrick!)
Want to know more? Here's the finished timeline:
You'll notice a LOT of guitar tracks this time. The first track is the ongoing "cha-cha-chung" with a nice flange, and many of the rest are Kevin's experiments with doubling. The final four guitar tracks are more recent versions that he sent along during the course of the project, but I loved the rougher ones in the original batch...the cleaner tracks (including a nice delayed guitar) provide a good gentle conclusion.
My first real bombastic addition was the "G Blast" guitar, which coincides with a hyperactive series of crashes at the end of every verse. Kevin's guitar was already going manic during those segments but I really wanted to bash them out...so "G Blast" gets the "Modern UK Stack" treatment with Guitar Amp Pro, and the "crashes" are just a re-routed track from EZDrummer boosted all the way to heaven.
EZDrummer provides the main beat, while Ultrabeat provides a non-stop 4/4 kick and iDrum adds a snare and -- during the high point -- all those cheap drum effects. Lots and lots of drums in here, but I think it works.
Kevin's original tracks had included a Hammond-ish organ and a synth bassline...I kept the organ (augmented with the EVB plugin) but used his MIDI files with the same Minimoog/Taurus IK Multimedia "SampleMoog" preset I'd created for an earlier song. Also from IK Multimedia is the choir in the third section and the recurring pizzicato violin that I hope is "interesting" instead of "annoying."
This song's big additional experiment: Loomer's brilliant "String" instrument, which emulates 70s string machines WITHOUT eating all your CPU (and all your money). I'm totally in love with Loomer String and I highly recommend it.
The really abrasive portamento synth is Tal-Elek7ro, based off the "LD Club Saw XS" preset. There's also some Ensoniq ESQ in there with the organ stabs and the bells, and some really inconsequential DOD pitch/echo modulation on the plucky violins.
And there you have it!
Monday, December 27, 2010
"End Credits (To A German Film)" by Pico & Alvarado
When I'm not writing I'm usually working on music, and since I rarely updated the blog this month you know what that means: a new "Pico & Alvarado" song! This one is called "End Credits (To A German Film)" and contains piano and music box contributions by Kathryn Jones:
Photography by Patrick!
Here is the usual track postmortem, for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
As so often happens, Kevin Cogliano sent me tracks containing a number of electric guitar variations and a bass guitar. He'd envisaged a "Krautrock" sort of song, and though I'm not sure if we achieved that in the end (my knowledge of that genre is still limited) I think we came up with something sort of special.
After adding a Moog bassline of my own (the same pedigree as the one that showed up in "Scrubland") and some stoic electric drums courtesy of EZDrummer, I found myself playing with some samples that I'd recorded on my SP-404 SX hardware sampler. I added a sampled Bif Naked acoustic guitar and a looped country-style guitar courtesy of The Weepies (which you can barely hear), but "Sweetkraut" really kicked into high gear when I added the "BASH" track: a guitar, drum, and bass slam culled from the same Bif Naked track and DRENCHED in reverb.
By delaying the "BASH" until the melody had played a few times we already had our first big hook. I added an abrasive ARP-style synth (the TAL U-NO-62 plugin) and some extremely atmospheric Camel Audio Alchemy pads, and Kevin sent additional guitar figures, and we got very excited indeed...excited enough to call in Kathryn to improvise some keyboard accents that were far more deft than I could have accomplished.
I arranged Kathryn's work throughout the song (using the beautiful Steinway EXS24 samples and the EVP88 for the "music box" middle)...
...but I started to worry because it just kept repeating, and I couldn't think of a way to break out of the melody, particularly considering the wonderful structure that had already been built. I couldn't just tear it all down, and I wasn't even sure if that was the right direction...maybe the repetitions were part of the song's strength, and I was only getting paranoid because I'd heard it 1000 times already?
Kevin and I decided on the latter opinion, and I decided that all the song needed was a bit more punch and variety. I played a Roy Orbison sample with the SP-404 -- using the hardware's live pitch adjustment to conform to the melody, and then using Melodyne to correct the wildly off results (hence the final oddness) -- and added some distorted Front 242 drum loops and the angsty German samples because I like a nice burst of speech (you can figure them out for yourself!)
All that was left was to use pan and EQ to resolve a crucial problem: the "slowarpdelay" guitar, the punchy guitar, the piano, and the "Moody Bloody" Chamberlain melody all shared similar frequencies...and they all tend to play at the same time. I couldn't bring myself to cut any of them out so I spent a lot of time tweaking, riding virtual faders, and sobbing. This was the best I could do. I also had a terrible time removing sample clicks from the guitar fadeout and eliminating a high-pitched artifact in the Orbison sample...next on the list of planned purchases is a good spectral editing program.
Harmonic excitement, a bit of compression, a touch of loudness processing, and...we decided to change the name. "Sweetkraut" suddenly seemed rude when a German woman was shouting during the song. Kevin's new title is much better and adds an evocative touch, I think!
Photography by Patrick!
Here is the usual track postmortem, for those who enjoy that sort of thing.
As so often happens, Kevin Cogliano sent me tracks containing a number of electric guitar variations and a bass guitar. He'd envisaged a "Krautrock" sort of song, and though I'm not sure if we achieved that in the end (my knowledge of that genre is still limited) I think we came up with something sort of special.
After adding a Moog bassline of my own (the same pedigree as the one that showed up in "Scrubland") and some stoic electric drums courtesy of EZDrummer, I found myself playing with some samples that I'd recorded on my SP-404 SX hardware sampler. I added a sampled Bif Naked acoustic guitar and a looped country-style guitar courtesy of The Weepies (which you can barely hear), but "Sweetkraut" really kicked into high gear when I added the "BASH" track: a guitar, drum, and bass slam culled from the same Bif Naked track and DRENCHED in reverb.
By delaying the "BASH" until the melody had played a few times we already had our first big hook. I added an abrasive ARP-style synth (the TAL U-NO-62 plugin) and some extremely atmospheric Camel Audio Alchemy pads, and Kevin sent additional guitar figures, and we got very excited indeed...excited enough to call in Kathryn to improvise some keyboard accents that were far more deft than I could have accomplished.
I arranged Kathryn's work throughout the song (using the beautiful Steinway EXS24 samples and the EVP88 for the "music box" middle)...
...but I started to worry because it just kept repeating, and I couldn't think of a way to break out of the melody, particularly considering the wonderful structure that had already been built. I couldn't just tear it all down, and I wasn't even sure if that was the right direction...maybe the repetitions were part of the song's strength, and I was only getting paranoid because I'd heard it 1000 times already?
Kevin and I decided on the latter opinion, and I decided that all the song needed was a bit more punch and variety. I played a Roy Orbison sample with the SP-404 -- using the hardware's live pitch adjustment to conform to the melody, and then using Melodyne to correct the wildly off results (hence the final oddness) -- and added some distorted Front 242 drum loops and the angsty German samples because I like a nice burst of speech (you can figure them out for yourself!)
All that was left was to use pan and EQ to resolve a crucial problem: the "slowarpdelay" guitar, the punchy guitar, the piano, and the "Moody Bloody" Chamberlain melody all shared similar frequencies...and they all tend to play at the same time. I couldn't bring myself to cut any of them out so I spent a lot of time tweaking, riding virtual faders, and sobbing. This was the best I could do. I also had a terrible time removing sample clicks from the guitar fadeout and eliminating a high-pitched artifact in the Orbison sample...next on the list of planned purchases is a good spectral editing program.
Harmonic excitement, a bit of compression, a touch of loudness processing, and...we decided to change the name. "Sweetkraut" suddenly seemed rude when a German woman was shouting during the song. Kevin's new title is much better and adds an evocative touch, I think!
Friday, November 26, 2010
"Style Kitchen" By Pico & Alvarado
Thrilled with the results of our first collaboration, Kevin Cogliano and tackled the next one: "Style Kitchen." Kevin sent the guitar and bass to me and I added drums, keys, mixing, and mastering, without altering his original style much at all. Here it is (with another great picture by Patrick):
Want more demystifying details? Here's the arrange window for the project, slightly more sane and restrained than "Sandbar" was:
The bass has been treated with some amp simulation and CamelPhat's "Acid Movement" preset, which adds a certain bum-shakiness. There's a rhythmic "jangly guitar" in there which was hellish to separate from the lead guitar, which I tried to fatten by panning two separate instances, detuning one slightly, and carving each a separate set of frequencies in the EQ.
I'm not entirely happy with the lead guitar...it can sound flimsy on some speakers, and there's a terrifying lopsidedness around 3k throughout the entire song (even more terrifying when mastered to bring the guitar out further). But they always say "trust your ears, not the meters," so I decided to just go with it, aware that we were deliberately invoking the tinny-guitar sound of '80s pop.
I made the mistake of choosing iZotrope's iDrum for the fundamental drum pattern, because I wanted it to sound like it was programmed on a somewhat limited pattern-based drum machine (which is what iDrum IS). But this program is SO goddamn flaky for me. Every time I wanted to tweak the mix a bit I had to weigh the possibility that iDrum might refuse to give me a workable drum track; about 60% of the time it will miss a beat during a bounce, stuttering a bit, which means you can't even walk away and let the bounce happen, you need to sit and listen to the whole damn thing.
In conclusion: I am finished with using iDrum as a pattern-based drum machine. It turns any sort of serious work into a nightmare, and all their technical support can say is "Have you tried reinstalling it?" I can still use iDrum as a MIDI-controlled sample-playback plugin, but I won't waste any more time trying to get it to do what it's supposed to do.
Reader, if you're looking for a drum machine, do not buy iDrum.
On a plus side I've discovered the joy of Logic Pro's EXS24 sampler, and their Steinway Piano patch is the piano stuff you're hearing throughout. I can't play the piano to save my life, so it's pretty much just a bunch of chords cut up to sound the way I imagine a semi-proficient (but ham-fisted) piano player sounds.
The pad sounds are also thanks to the EXS24, and they're from a beautiful set of Solina multi-samples courtesy of SampleTekk. People swear by them and I love all the samples I've purchased from them (the Solina, the Prophet, the Baroque Organ, and the "Anvils and Churchbells"), but their download procedure is archaic and they provide no installation instructions, just a bunch of samples in a bunch of cryptic folders.
Anyway, the Solina sounds beautiful. I melt every time I hear it, thanks to the opening minutes of Mike Oldfield's "Hergest Ridge."
The lead synth is a layered series of ARP waveforms from SampleTank's "SonikSynth 2" collection, the tinkly bells are from Logic's EFM1, the wobbly bass is actually a funky electric piano pitched very low, and the squishy rhythmic guitar mutilation is -- surprise -- CamelPhat and CamelSpace.
One other thing: I had a high-minded plan to live up to Kevin's proposed "Style Kitchen" title by actually RECORDING myself making food in my kitchen, along the lines of Pink Floyd's "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast." The song would start and end with eggs cracking, bacon sizzling, and water boiling, and right in the middle there'd be the "DING!" of my toaster oven.
There were two problems with this plan: the only sounds my cooking usually produce are the sounds of my microwave running, and actually recording all that stuff would be a pain far out of proportion to the potential benefits to the song. Instead I just grabbed the "small bell" sample from Logic Pro's library and played with it until it SOUNDED like my toaster oven. Same result, no grease-spattering.
Want more demystifying details? Here's the arrange window for the project, slightly more sane and restrained than "Sandbar" was:
The bass has been treated with some amp simulation and CamelPhat's "Acid Movement" preset, which adds a certain bum-shakiness. There's a rhythmic "jangly guitar" in there which was hellish to separate from the lead guitar, which I tried to fatten by panning two separate instances, detuning one slightly, and carving each a separate set of frequencies in the EQ.
I'm not entirely happy with the lead guitar...it can sound flimsy on some speakers, and there's a terrifying lopsidedness around 3k throughout the entire song (even more terrifying when mastered to bring the guitar out further). But they always say "trust your ears, not the meters," so I decided to just go with it, aware that we were deliberately invoking the tinny-guitar sound of '80s pop.
I made the mistake of choosing iZotrope's iDrum for the fundamental drum pattern, because I wanted it to sound like it was programmed on a somewhat limited pattern-based drum machine (which is what iDrum IS). But this program is SO goddamn flaky for me. Every time I wanted to tweak the mix a bit I had to weigh the possibility that iDrum might refuse to give me a workable drum track; about 60% of the time it will miss a beat during a bounce, stuttering a bit, which means you can't even walk away and let the bounce happen, you need to sit and listen to the whole damn thing.
In conclusion: I am finished with using iDrum as a pattern-based drum machine. It turns any sort of serious work into a nightmare, and all their technical support can say is "Have you tried reinstalling it?" I can still use iDrum as a MIDI-controlled sample-playback plugin, but I won't waste any more time trying to get it to do what it's supposed to do.
Reader, if you're looking for a drum machine, do not buy iDrum.
On a plus side I've discovered the joy of Logic Pro's EXS24 sampler, and their Steinway Piano patch is the piano stuff you're hearing throughout. I can't play the piano to save my life, so it's pretty much just a bunch of chords cut up to sound the way I imagine a semi-proficient (but ham-fisted) piano player sounds.
The pad sounds are also thanks to the EXS24, and they're from a beautiful set of Solina multi-samples courtesy of SampleTekk. People swear by them and I love all the samples I've purchased from them (the Solina, the Prophet, the Baroque Organ, and the "Anvils and Churchbells"), but their download procedure is archaic and they provide no installation instructions, just a bunch of samples in a bunch of cryptic folders.
Anyway, the Solina sounds beautiful. I melt every time I hear it, thanks to the opening minutes of Mike Oldfield's "Hergest Ridge."
The lead synth is a layered series of ARP waveforms from SampleTank's "SonikSynth 2" collection, the tinkly bells are from Logic's EFM1, the wobbly bass is actually a funky electric piano pitched very low, and the squishy rhythmic guitar mutilation is -- surprise -- CamelPhat and CamelSpace.
One other thing: I had a high-minded plan to live up to Kevin's proposed "Style Kitchen" title by actually RECORDING myself making food in my kitchen, along the lines of Pink Floyd's "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast." The song would start and end with eggs cracking, bacon sizzling, and water boiling, and right in the middle there'd be the "DING!" of my toaster oven.
There were two problems with this plan: the only sounds my cooking usually produce are the sounds of my microwave running, and actually recording all that stuff would be a pain far out of proportion to the potential benefits to the song. Instead I just grabbed the "small bell" sample from Logic Pro's library and played with it until it SOUNDED like my toaster oven. Same result, no grease-spattering.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Catl Overdrive, Plus More
Every year I escort my mother to the Kitchener Blues Festival. I love good music but I have a certain impatience with Michael Bolton and his descendants: easy cover songs, slick delivery, the session musicians who have "done it" so many times that they sound like Automated Soundtrack Mannequins Who Have Eaten Too Many Ribs. The Blues Festival can be a bit like that.
This year we had just escaped the off-key moaning of Miss Angel and were making our way down the line: from the "A" stage, to the "B" stage, past the people selling terrible confectionery and beads and patchouli....
...and then I heard the most wonderful noise, coming from a tent that had been placed in the Kitchener Blues Festival equivalent of Dead Man's Valley. An exuberant, distorted, joyous noise. It was...Catl.
(Picture by Patrick!)
My mother stoically endured Catl long enough for me to solidify my fandom: a guitarist, a drummer, and keyboard/percussionist, playing some form of music that I cannot really identify. Blues? Rockabilly? The darkest muck of the Mississippi river from a forgotten island that Huck Finn never visited...hell, Mark Twain could never have conceived the beautiful sound that was Catl, let alone invent a funny accent for it.
I bought the CD, I loved it, I joined their Facebook group, and I had NO EXCUSE for avoiding their surprise show at The Boathouse tonight.
It was an amazing show. Watch this YouTube clip...
...and then imagine yourself sitting there, watching them, a tight-knit trio just SLAMMING that music out, electrifying, sounding like the aural equivalent of knob and tube wiring. A real estate agent would run SCREAMING from a house designed by Catl, but I want to live in one despite the fire hazard. Throaty hollering. Overdriven organ keys. Soulful drums. A virtuoso guitarist who seems to always be on the verge of losing control for sheer passion. A drummer who really DOES wear sunglasses at night. Wow!
Is it obvious? Catl was great, and you should see them at your first opportunity...but the night wasn't over!
Ginger St. James was next, and she was a super-charged belter. I have immense respect for singers whose lungs are made of nitroglycerin and roses, who can produce a beautiful and powerful noise without ever breaking a sweat...perhaps slightly easier tonight because the stage looked pretty cold. She and her guitarist are apparently monthly features at The Boathouse and I look forward to seeing them again; the two of them had a sweetly personal stage presence reminiscent of a rehearsal in your parent's rumpus room, after a game of Spin The Bottle, except she can sing and DAMN can Mr. Slim play his guitar!
Finally: Von Crippon. Words fail me again. Super-tight surf rock with heart, soul, and funk. Two guys driving a non-stop steamroller of music; no pretensions, no illusions. And that was the fantastic thing about all three bands: there were no sly winks or ironic subtext, just a string of songs that they loved and delivered with verve and honesty.
Why can't we hear more of this sort of thing, everyday, in our heads?
PS: End of night, last few songs by Von Crippon, I decide to dance. I am still trying to find a "non-drag" presentation, and it's only when I'm slightly drunk that I can stop worrying about how I'm being perceived and just let loose. So I'm up there enjoying myself, slowly shedding the Muffy-husk and simply enjoying myself...
...when the nice guy walks up to me and asks "Have you ever seen Breakfast on Pluto?"
"No," I say. "Why?"
"It's about a gender-confused person, it's a great movie, you'd love it!" And I'm like, HOLY COW! Is this the legacy of fifteen years of drag? Even when my eyebrows have fully grown out will I still be perceived as "gender-confused?" I feel like a chubby girl who's always being asked when her baby's due, with the added bonus of not being either chubby OR a girl.
Don't get me wrong, the guy was being nice, and I have no illusions that I'm macho or anything. Heck, most guys dance like manic-depressive kangaroos anyway. But it was a bit disheartening that my simple expression -- and perhaps my whole demeanor during the night -- boiled down to a single comment about gender confusion. Like it's a massive punctuation point in my life. A tad alienating to say the least.
Conclusion, after that last little thing: You should see Catl, Ginger St. James, and Von Crippon. And you should dance the way you like. And you should enjoy the wonderful things that are out there for you to enjoy. And try to put some money in their coffers.
This year we had just escaped the off-key moaning of Miss Angel and were making our way down the line: from the "A" stage, to the "B" stage, past the people selling terrible confectionery and beads and patchouli....
...and then I heard the most wonderful noise, coming from a tent that had been placed in the Kitchener Blues Festival equivalent of Dead Man's Valley. An exuberant, distorted, joyous noise. It was...Catl.
(Picture by Patrick!)
My mother stoically endured Catl long enough for me to solidify my fandom: a guitarist, a drummer, and keyboard/percussionist, playing some form of music that I cannot really identify. Blues? Rockabilly? The darkest muck of the Mississippi river from a forgotten island that Huck Finn never visited...hell, Mark Twain could never have conceived the beautiful sound that was Catl, let alone invent a funny accent for it.
I bought the CD, I loved it, I joined their Facebook group, and I had NO EXCUSE for avoiding their surprise show at The Boathouse tonight.
It was an amazing show. Watch this YouTube clip...
...and then imagine yourself sitting there, watching them, a tight-knit trio just SLAMMING that music out, electrifying, sounding like the aural equivalent of knob and tube wiring. A real estate agent would run SCREAMING from a house designed by Catl, but I want to live in one despite the fire hazard. Throaty hollering. Overdriven organ keys. Soulful drums. A virtuoso guitarist who seems to always be on the verge of losing control for sheer passion. A drummer who really DOES wear sunglasses at night. Wow!
Is it obvious? Catl was great, and you should see them at your first opportunity...but the night wasn't over!
Ginger St. James was next, and she was a super-charged belter. I have immense respect for singers whose lungs are made of nitroglycerin and roses, who can produce a beautiful and powerful noise without ever breaking a sweat...perhaps slightly easier tonight because the stage looked pretty cold. She and her guitarist are apparently monthly features at The Boathouse and I look forward to seeing them again; the two of them had a sweetly personal stage presence reminiscent of a rehearsal in your parent's rumpus room, after a game of Spin The Bottle, except she can sing and DAMN can Mr. Slim play his guitar!
Finally: Von Crippon. Words fail me again. Super-tight surf rock with heart, soul, and funk. Two guys driving a non-stop steamroller of music; no pretensions, no illusions. And that was the fantastic thing about all three bands: there were no sly winks or ironic subtext, just a string of songs that they loved and delivered with verve and honesty.
Why can't we hear more of this sort of thing, everyday, in our heads?
PS: End of night, last few songs by Von Crippon, I decide to dance. I am still trying to find a "non-drag" presentation, and it's only when I'm slightly drunk that I can stop worrying about how I'm being perceived and just let loose. So I'm up there enjoying myself, slowly shedding the Muffy-husk and simply enjoying myself...
...when the nice guy walks up to me and asks "Have you ever seen Breakfast on Pluto?"
"No," I say. "Why?"
"It's about a gender-confused person, it's a great movie, you'd love it!" And I'm like, HOLY COW! Is this the legacy of fifteen years of drag? Even when my eyebrows have fully grown out will I still be perceived as "gender-confused?" I feel like a chubby girl who's always being asked when her baby's due, with the added bonus of not being either chubby OR a girl.
Don't get me wrong, the guy was being nice, and I have no illusions that I'm macho or anything. Heck, most guys dance like manic-depressive kangaroos anyway. But it was a bit disheartening that my simple expression -- and perhaps my whole demeanor during the night -- boiled down to a single comment about gender confusion. Like it's a massive punctuation point in my life. A tad alienating to say the least.
Conclusion, after that last little thing: You should see Catl, Ginger St. James, and Von Crippon. And you should dance the way you like. And you should enjoy the wonderful things that are out there for you to enjoy. And try to put some money in their coffers.
Friday, November 19, 2010
Rolling Blackouts
Past releases by "The Go! Team" have left me slightly flat...I love their "drum corps and skipping song" aesthetic, but the intense tinniness of their albums -- possibly an attempt to recreate the nostalgic 70s sounds of listening to music on transistor radios -- quickly leads to ear fatigue.
Their upcoming album ("Rolling Blackouts") sounds like it's going to be GREAT, though! More variety, same good stuff, perhaps a little less treble:
Their upcoming album ("Rolling Blackouts") sounds like it's going to be GREAT, though! More variety, same good stuff, perhaps a little less treble:
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
"Sandbar" by Pico & Alvarado
Feeling like my musical development was stagnating, I asked Kevin Cogliano to let me remix some guitar tracks he was working on. I added keyboards and drums to his bass and guitar, then he sent more guitar tracks my way, and before we knew it we had "Sandbar." Kevin and I kicked around band names before we decided on "Pico & Alvarado." I am Pico, and here is our first song.
This was, by far, the most complicated piece of music I've ever worked on. This partly because of the changes that the song goes through, but also because I overdid the "wall of sound" by a factor of ten; many of the subtleties are not apparent in the final mix, and many of them could have been accomplished without duplicating tracks quite so much. See below for the final project (excluding auxiliary sends and buses without automation).
Care to know more? Well, the bass is reminiscent of New Order partly because that's how Kevin plays it, but also due to the Logic Pro Bass Amp plugin set to Top Class DI Mid, and also due to the "Guitar Dream" setting in CamelPhat.
There are four drum tracks, each with multiple outputs for individual treatment. The electronic-type drums are thanks to Toontrack's "Electronic" EZDrummer plugin, and the acoustic drums are from Toontrack's default settings. Both of those were sent to my DOD delay processor for additional weirdness, and some additional "sub" kicks were added with iZotrope's iDrum when necessary.
The guitars! Kevin sent me a whole bunch of guitar tracks...rhythmic pieces, hooky stuff, accents, etc. The hardest part was making sure they all stood out in the mix, and I thank Roey Izhaki's book "Mixing Audio" for panning, reverb, and EQ guidance. The "crunchy" guitars during the "harsh" section use CamelPhat's "Gtr American" setting for added presence. I love all things Camel Audio. I use their plugins in every single project.
The keyboards! Some of them are patches from my ESQ-1 synth, including the primary marimba sound (which is complimented by a Korg M1 Le patch and one of Logic's EXS24 harps). The "sample and hold" synth from the intro is Logic's ES1, and the choppy keys are from the free TAL U-NO-62 Juno-emulation plugin. The angelic keys that end the song are from Camel Audio's brilliant "Alchemy" sampler/synth, Logic's "Strings" plugin, and a bit of bassiness thanks to Logic's ES M soft synth.
The samples? Besides the recurring "brrrr" sound (which I snagged from EZDrummer), there are some crowd noises and quotations from the "Gimme Shelter" documentary...I initially just wanted Grace Slick saying "Easy...easy" to follow the "harsh" section, but I couldn't isolate her voice without making it sound weird. Instead, the "yahoo!" crowd noises found their way in, as well as a brief snippet of a Hell's Angel about to make a speech. Happy accidents!
Add to it all some guitar pedal "wash" effects provided by Kevin, some mixing advice from Vanilla, some Lexicon reverb, and the removal of a whole bunch of extra sounds that didn't need to be there, and "Sandbar" was born!
Then it needed to be MASTERED...which is a story I'll tell some other day. You'll also get to hear about the "video mix" and maybe even see the video (if I ever get around to finishing it). In the meantime you can just enjoy the photograph, which Patrick took with his Holga camera and kindly allowed us to use.
This was, by far, the most complicated piece of music I've ever worked on. This partly because of the changes that the song goes through, but also because I overdid the "wall of sound" by a factor of ten; many of the subtleties are not apparent in the final mix, and many of them could have been accomplished without duplicating tracks quite so much. See below for the final project (excluding auxiliary sends and buses without automation).
Care to know more? Well, the bass is reminiscent of New Order partly because that's how Kevin plays it, but also due to the Logic Pro Bass Amp plugin set to Top Class DI Mid, and also due to the "Guitar Dream" setting in CamelPhat.
There are four drum tracks, each with multiple outputs for individual treatment. The electronic-type drums are thanks to Toontrack's "Electronic" EZDrummer plugin, and the acoustic drums are from Toontrack's default settings. Both of those were sent to my DOD delay processor for additional weirdness, and some additional "sub" kicks were added with iZotrope's iDrum when necessary.
The guitars! Kevin sent me a whole bunch of guitar tracks...rhythmic pieces, hooky stuff, accents, etc. The hardest part was making sure they all stood out in the mix, and I thank Roey Izhaki's book "Mixing Audio" for panning, reverb, and EQ guidance. The "crunchy" guitars during the "harsh" section use CamelPhat's "Gtr American" setting for added presence. I love all things Camel Audio. I use their plugins in every single project.
The keyboards! Some of them are patches from my ESQ-1 synth, including the primary marimba sound (which is complimented by a Korg M1 Le patch and one of Logic's EXS24 harps). The "sample and hold" synth from the intro is Logic's ES1, and the choppy keys are from the free TAL U-NO-62 Juno-emulation plugin. The angelic keys that end the song are from Camel Audio's brilliant "Alchemy" sampler/synth, Logic's "Strings" plugin, and a bit of bassiness thanks to Logic's ES M soft synth.
The samples? Besides the recurring "brrrr" sound (which I snagged from EZDrummer), there are some crowd noises and quotations from the "Gimme Shelter" documentary...I initially just wanted Grace Slick saying "Easy...easy" to follow the "harsh" section, but I couldn't isolate her voice without making it sound weird. Instead, the "yahoo!" crowd noises found their way in, as well as a brief snippet of a Hell's Angel about to make a speech. Happy accidents!
Add to it all some guitar pedal "wash" effects provided by Kevin, some mixing advice from Vanilla, some Lexicon reverb, and the removal of a whole bunch of extra sounds that didn't need to be there, and "Sandbar" was born!
Then it needed to be MASTERED...which is a story I'll tell some other day. You'll also get to hear about the "video mix" and maybe even see the video (if I ever get around to finishing it). In the meantime you can just enjoy the photograph, which Patrick took with his Holga camera and kindly allowed us to use.
Friday, July 30, 2010
Don't Tell That Guy Anything
Andy Prieboy has put a "musical sketchbook" online entitled "Don't Tell That Guy Anything," consisting of six rejected songs that were lying around on his hard drive. Besides being wonderfully eclectic and giving insight into his own songwriting process, they're great songs (and they're cheap!)
The first one I heard (and the one that still resonates the most for me) was "Thunderbird (V-8 Wonder of the Western World)," with a video created by Edwin Vacek here:
In his writeup about the song, Prieboy reveals interesting things about the music (it was an Apple Loops experiment) and the lyrics. I find the subject of passive destruction and unsolvable hypocrisy to be endlessly fascinating, so it's amazing to see somebody combine those things into a series of beautiful and concise words.
The first one I heard (and the one that still resonates the most for me) was "Thunderbird (V-8 Wonder of the Western World)," with a video created by Edwin Vacek here:
In his writeup about the song, Prieboy reveals interesting things about the music (it was an Apple Loops experiment) and the lyrics. I find the subject of passive destruction and unsolvable hypocrisy to be endlessly fascinating, so it's amazing to see somebody combine those things into a series of beautiful and concise words.
Sunday, July 04, 2010
"Hergest Ridge" Revisited
I've talked at length about my love for Mike Oldfield's classic albums. The fact that those albums are now being re-released in new 2010 deluxe editions is cause for celebration.
I already had the deluxe edition of "Tubular Bells." The demo material was fascinating and Oldfield's remixed versions were an interesting insight into previously-hidden aspects of the master tapes, but the remastering job of the original mix offered nothing new. I didn't expect it to: it's the mix I've been hearing all my life, of course.
Now his other two classics have been released. I'm most excited about "Ommadawn" -- which I haven't yet received -- and I didn't particularly care about "Hergest Ridge" until a fellow Oldfield fan said it was an album that could ONLY sound better if it were tweaked. Like, it was so poor that ANY treatment could improve it.
Many people consider "Hergest Ridge" to be unfocused, weak, and twee. I've always agreed but I bought the deluxe edition anyway...and HOLY FREAKING COW!
"Hergest Ridge" was released during a petrochemical shortage, so the 1974 vinyl was of notoriously bad quality. Also, Oldfield was unhappy with the final result and he mixed a new quadraphonic version in 1976...this is the version (flattened to stereo) that was eventually released on CD.
So all my life I've been listening to two versions of "Hergest Ridge": one that suffered so much from its crappy vinyl that all subtlety was removed, and another that was never properly for CD and was supposed to be quadraphonic to begin with.
I didn't think that mattered; I thought the album was "blah" from conception to execution, so poor reproduction couldn't make it any worse. I was totally wrong.
Right now I'm listening to the ORIGINAL 1974 stereo mix, finally liberated from poor-quality vinyl AND mastered for CD, and it's like hearing an entirely new album. The annoying reverb-heavy trumpet has become clear and clean and perfectly suited to the rest of the instruments. The acoustic guitar positively GLITTERS. The backup vocals are suddenly audible for the first time in places where I didn't even know they existed; that dreary "overdubbed guitar" section at the end of Part Two has been brought to ecstatic life by the grace of Sally Oldfield and Clodagh Simonds, howling away in the background.
There are so many differences to this mix that I have to keep checking to make sure it isn't one of the new "2010" mixes.
I'm thrilled that I can stand on this blog hilltop -- this ramshackle virtual ridge -- and proclaim that "Hergest Ridge" is genius. I've you've dismissed it, now's the time to give it another listen. If you've spent your life listening to the inferior versions then you will be totally amazed by what you hear.
I already had the deluxe edition of "Tubular Bells." The demo material was fascinating and Oldfield's remixed versions were an interesting insight into previously-hidden aspects of the master tapes, but the remastering job of the original mix offered nothing new. I didn't expect it to: it's the mix I've been hearing all my life, of course.
Now his other two classics have been released. I'm most excited about "Ommadawn" -- which I haven't yet received -- and I didn't particularly care about "Hergest Ridge" until a fellow Oldfield fan said it was an album that could ONLY sound better if it were tweaked. Like, it was so poor that ANY treatment could improve it.
Many people consider "Hergest Ridge" to be unfocused, weak, and twee. I've always agreed but I bought the deluxe edition anyway...and HOLY FREAKING COW!
"Hergest Ridge" was released during a petrochemical shortage, so the 1974 vinyl was of notoriously bad quality. Also, Oldfield was unhappy with the final result and he mixed a new quadraphonic version in 1976...this is the version (flattened to stereo) that was eventually released on CD.
So all my life I've been listening to two versions of "Hergest Ridge": one that suffered so much from its crappy vinyl that all subtlety was removed, and another that was never properly for CD and was supposed to be quadraphonic to begin with.
I didn't think that mattered; I thought the album was "blah" from conception to execution, so poor reproduction couldn't make it any worse. I was totally wrong.
Right now I'm listening to the ORIGINAL 1974 stereo mix, finally liberated from poor-quality vinyl AND mastered for CD, and it's like hearing an entirely new album. The annoying reverb-heavy trumpet has become clear and clean and perfectly suited to the rest of the instruments. The acoustic guitar positively GLITTERS. The backup vocals are suddenly audible for the first time in places where I didn't even know they existed; that dreary "overdubbed guitar" section at the end of Part Two has been brought to ecstatic life by the grace of Sally Oldfield and Clodagh Simonds, howling away in the background.
There are so many differences to this mix that I have to keep checking to make sure it isn't one of the new "2010" mixes.
I'm thrilled that I can stand on this blog hilltop -- this ramshackle virtual ridge -- and proclaim that "Hergest Ridge" is genius. I've you've dismissed it, now's the time to give it another listen. If you've spent your life listening to the inferior versions then you will be totally amazed by what you hear.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
"Me and My Imagination" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor
Once a year (approximately) I hear a song that is Pure Ear Ecstasy. It "sends" me. It gradually seeps into my brain and possesses every waking hour. When I listen to it, I get covered in goosebumps. When I'm not listening to it, I'm hearing it in my head.
I can't pin down what these songs have in common, but I DO know that they all have a "soaring" quality -- like they're flying higher than anything else in the world -- but only in certain parts; during other parts of the song they are quite low-key. In short, they employ an emotional rollercoaster in perfect mix.
These songs are also musically complex, but they're still pop songs. And their lyrics are interesting. And the singers themselves have an expressive quality to their voices.
Past songs that spring to mind are "Living in Another World" by Talk Talk, "I Know What I'm Here For" by James, and "Ride a White Horse" by Goldfrapp. The most recent song is...
..."Me and My Imagination" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
I didn't care much for it the first time I heard it but now I can't get enough. It has the minimalistic dance element during the verses, and then the "soaring" chorus that employs a totally unexpected and almost lurching chord progression. The lyrics are fun and interesting. The thin disco-style strings perfectly complement the fat keyboards. And Ellis-Bextor has the most emotive, expressive voice around...contrast her "upbeat dance" delivery during most of the song with her "intimate, slightly broken, almost soulful" approach during the breakdown.
I'm in love with this song. Actually I'm falling in love with Sophie Ellis-Bextor in general, but this song especially.
I can't pin down what these songs have in common, but I DO know that they all have a "soaring" quality -- like they're flying higher than anything else in the world -- but only in certain parts; during other parts of the song they are quite low-key. In short, they employ an emotional rollercoaster in perfect mix.
These songs are also musically complex, but they're still pop songs. And their lyrics are interesting. And the singers themselves have an expressive quality to their voices.
Past songs that spring to mind are "Living in Another World" by Talk Talk, "I Know What I'm Here For" by James, and "Ride a White Horse" by Goldfrapp. The most recent song is...
..."Me and My Imagination" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
I didn't care much for it the first time I heard it but now I can't get enough. It has the minimalistic dance element during the verses, and then the "soaring" chorus that employs a totally unexpected and almost lurching chord progression. The lyrics are fun and interesting. The thin disco-style strings perfectly complement the fat keyboards. And Ellis-Bextor has the most emotive, expressive voice around...contrast her "upbeat dance" delivery during most of the song with her "intimate, slightly broken, almost soulful" approach during the breakdown.
I'm in love with this song. Actually I'm falling in love with Sophie Ellis-Bextor in general, but this song especially.
Jobs: Drama Teacher
After I finished high school, I had an entire summer to figure out what I wanted to do in University. Little did I know that it would take another ten years for me to decide on a career, but at the time I was kicking around lots of ideas, and one of them was "something to do with drama."
I'd taken drama classes throughout high school, but I think the only lessons I ever learned were "How to enunciate strangely" and "How to feel mortified." These classes culminated in an absolute trainwreck of a show that I dare not mention for fear of litigation.
But drama WAS still on my mind in 1991, and when a job came up in New Hamburg -- where I was still living with my parents -- I blindly snatched it up.
I still can't believe I ever did this: I was hired as a sort of "summer workshop drama teacher" for children aged six to twelve. During the interview I confessed that I had absolutely no experience with children that age, and they promised me: "There will only be ten of them, and we're also hiring a person with babysitting experience to help you out."
Guess what. When I showed up at the big gymnasium to greet the children there were TWENTY-FIVE of them. And no babysitter in sight. For the rest of the summer it was just me and them.
I only remember brief snatches of the job itself. Every week we'd meet in my junior high's gymnasium -- and sometimes in the musty back room of the old New Hamburg auditorium, where a little Brownie mushroom always got in the way -- and we'd spend a few hours trying to get our show together.
My employers -- Wilmot Township, like, the ENTIRE township -- had suggested a book of age-appropriate plays, and we decided on one that was a pastiche of fairytales and scary stories: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Frankenstein.
Let me emphasize that I have no natural leadership ability. The children instantly recognized this and they ran amok, but they had a real desire to perform and they seemed to genuinely like me, maybe because I didn't talk down to them or sell them short.
One of my memories is of worrying about the single physically challenged boy in the class, who used a pair of arm braces to get around. There was a role in the play for a lurching "Egor" character, and I was afraid the other children would nominate him for the part. I learned a crucial lesson when he himself said he WANTED to be Egor, and he threw himself completely in the role, apparently relishing a task that allowed him to turn his disability into a performance. That kid stole the show.
Another memory is of playing music during lunch breaks. We had a tape recorder -- the same one we'd used for physical exercises when I went to that school -- and everybody was allowed to bring in tapes of music they wanted to hear during lunch. One day -- either because they asked, or I demanded, I can't remember which -- I played them MY favourite song at the time: "Over the Shoulder" by Ministry. The children declared unanimously that it wasn't music and it sucked.
We finally performed the play at a local nursing home, and all I remember are the children blanking out and forgetting their lines. I stood in the wings thinking "Holy cow, I've totally failed, this is an absolute embarrassment and it's all my fault." At the end, when the audience of parents and grandparents applauded, I seem to remember coming out and pretending to collapse on stage as though to apologize for what had happened, and all the kids ran out and dragged me off.
What I hadn't realized all along was that the play wasn't supposed to be GOOD. The play wasn't important AT ALL. This was really a CAMP where children learned confidence and socialized with other children with the same interests. None of this made sense to me until afterwards, when the parents told me how much their children had enjoyed the summer. I wish I'd understood this at the time.
Anyway, I finished the job and got paid, and though I'd never do it again it was still a fun time and a valuable experience for me (and hopefully some of the others too).
Plus I could put it on my resume.
I'd taken drama classes throughout high school, but I think the only lessons I ever learned were "How to enunciate strangely" and "How to feel mortified." These classes culminated in an absolute trainwreck of a show that I dare not mention for fear of litigation.
But drama WAS still on my mind in 1991, and when a job came up in New Hamburg -- where I was still living with my parents -- I blindly snatched it up.
I still can't believe I ever did this: I was hired as a sort of "summer workshop drama teacher" for children aged six to twelve. During the interview I confessed that I had absolutely no experience with children that age, and they promised me: "There will only be ten of them, and we're also hiring a person with babysitting experience to help you out."
Guess what. When I showed up at the big gymnasium to greet the children there were TWENTY-FIVE of them. And no babysitter in sight. For the rest of the summer it was just me and them.
I only remember brief snatches of the job itself. Every week we'd meet in my junior high's gymnasium -- and sometimes in the musty back room of the old New Hamburg auditorium, where a little Brownie mushroom always got in the way -- and we'd spend a few hours trying to get our show together.
My employers -- Wilmot Township, like, the ENTIRE township -- had suggested a book of age-appropriate plays, and we decided on one that was a pastiche of fairytales and scary stories: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Frankenstein.
Let me emphasize that I have no natural leadership ability. The children instantly recognized this and they ran amok, but they had a real desire to perform and they seemed to genuinely like me, maybe because I didn't talk down to them or sell them short.
One of my memories is of worrying about the single physically challenged boy in the class, who used a pair of arm braces to get around. There was a role in the play for a lurching "Egor" character, and I was afraid the other children would nominate him for the part. I learned a crucial lesson when he himself said he WANTED to be Egor, and he threw himself completely in the role, apparently relishing a task that allowed him to turn his disability into a performance. That kid stole the show.
Another memory is of playing music during lunch breaks. We had a tape recorder -- the same one we'd used for physical exercises when I went to that school -- and everybody was allowed to bring in tapes of music they wanted to hear during lunch. One day -- either because they asked, or I demanded, I can't remember which -- I played them MY favourite song at the time: "Over the Shoulder" by Ministry. The children declared unanimously that it wasn't music and it sucked.
We finally performed the play at a local nursing home, and all I remember are the children blanking out and forgetting their lines. I stood in the wings thinking "Holy cow, I've totally failed, this is an absolute embarrassment and it's all my fault." At the end, when the audience of parents and grandparents applauded, I seem to remember coming out and pretending to collapse on stage as though to apologize for what had happened, and all the kids ran out and dragged me off.
What I hadn't realized all along was that the play wasn't supposed to be GOOD. The play wasn't important AT ALL. This was really a CAMP where children learned confidence and socialized with other children with the same interests. None of this made sense to me until afterwards, when the parents told me how much their children had enjoyed the summer. I wish I'd understood this at the time.
Anyway, I finished the job and got paid, and though I'd never do it again it was still a fun time and a valuable experience for me (and hopefully some of the others too).
Plus I could put it on my resume.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
"Pearl" by Alysha Brillinger
I had a great time on Thursday night, helping to film the video for Alysha Brillinger's song "Pearl."
You'll be hearing a lot more about Alysha soon (if the Universal Music Group has anything to say about it), and hopefully the final version of this song will be one of the things you'll hear. Good luck, Alysha! May all your producers be productive. And may your next video have a budget higher than $0.00.
You'll be hearing a lot more about Alysha soon (if the Universal Music Group has anything to say about it), and hopefully the final version of this song will be one of the things you'll hear. Good luck, Alysha! May all your producers be productive. And may your next video have a budget higher than $0.00.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
I'd Buy Anything By...Talk Talk
It's outrageously hot here in Southern Ontario so excuse me while I try to sweat this one out. It's a shame, because...
...I'd buy absolutely ANYTHING by Talk Talk. I'd buy bootlegs. I'd buy T-shirts. I'd buy baseball hats, which I don't even wear. I'd buy clippings of Lee Harris' back hair, and I'd still cherish those clippings even if I later discovered that they actually came from some other drummer's back.
In short, I adore Talk Talk and no flippant post can adequately convey that.
Why do I love them so much?
The individuality. The uncompromising drive to do whatever the hell they wanted, while somehow having the credibility to do so. A serious and bombastic passion. A beauty.
For me, it all started when I rushed out to buy Thomas Dolby's "Europa and the Pirate Twins." The record store didn't carry the single but they DID have a 45 that featured four different artists. I bought it for Thomas Dolby, but I was amazed to hear the self-titled song by Talk Talk. I loved it but it was a bit too Duran Duran for me.
Fast forward to the title track of their second album -- c'mon, you know it, "Life's What You Make It" -- and I was somewhat hooked, but it wasn't until "Colour of Spring" that I fell completely.
Have you heard "Colour of Spring?" After shaking off their manufactured New Romantic style, and still retaining some of their sublime pop, "Colour of Spring" was an amazing fusion of Top 40 and virtuoso improvisation. Mark Hollis was still singing about the human condition, and Paul Webb's and Lee Harris were still laying down a solid groove, but suddenly all these other musicians were involved: Mark Feltham's overdriven harmonica, Robbie Macintosh and David Rhodes on guitar, Morris pert's percussion, Stevie Winwood's sublime Hammond organ, all of them given equal time and attention and yet somehow sounding great together!
And holding it all together was producer and unofficial fourth member Tim Friese-Greene. He helped make it all gel into some of the most unlikely songs to hit the charts.
I hope that the world hasn't forgotten "Life's What You Make It," which was the real baffling single off the album. But did you ever give a listen to "Living in Another World?" Here's a mostly-live performance -- I think only the drums are pre-recorded -- that presents a literal wall of perfectly-meshing sound. This was Talk Talk at their height.
I think we were all confused by what came next: "Spirit of Eden." Continuing their musical trajectory it dove almost completely into experimental rock-jazz, inspired by extended jams and ideas provided by all members of a huge collection of musicians. I won't rehash all the details of its recording, release, and commercial failure (read the Wikipedia article for that), but I'll be the first to admit that I didn't "get it." There were parts that I liked, but I missed the pop.
All that EMI could do was to chop up one of the most friendly songs and make a single and a video. Then they dropped the band.
I was even more at odds with their follow-up and final album, "Laughing Stock," which dispensed entirely with any pretense of commercialism and was a long, languid, meditative journey. What's more, Paul Webb had left and taken his amazing bass playing with him.
Mark Hollis eventually released a solo album that was almost entirely personal and impenetrable. Meanwhile, Harris and Webb had formed "O.Rang," a collection of musicians who performed a more raucous and percussive style of the "Spirit of Eden" phase. I didn't like Hollis' album but I did like most of O.Rang.
It took years for the world to recognize what Talk Talk had done with "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock." They're now considered to be revolutionary must-have albums, and I've happily jumped on that bandwagon: I didn't have the ears or the musical experience to appreciate those difficult albums at the time, but I do now. They're amazing.
I just KNOW that they haven't given up, and I live in hope that Talk Talk -- together or separately -- will release another amazing album.
Essential albums: "Colour of Spring" and "Laughing Stock." Albums to avoid: their first two albums of keyboard-heavy pop sound a bit dated to some, but I think they're fantastic in their own way...they definitely show the band's ripening potential. You really SHOULD avoid "History Revisted," a collection of terrible remixes and a blatant EMI cash grab which the band managed to actually withdraw and destroy with a successful lawsuit. For fans only: "Asides Besides" (a 2-CD set of rarities, demos, and remixes) and perhaps their "Live at Montreux" CD, which seems to suffer from poor production.
...I'd buy absolutely ANYTHING by Talk Talk. I'd buy bootlegs. I'd buy T-shirts. I'd buy baseball hats, which I don't even wear. I'd buy clippings of Lee Harris' back hair, and I'd still cherish those clippings even if I later discovered that they actually came from some other drummer's back.
In short, I adore Talk Talk and no flippant post can adequately convey that.
Why do I love them so much?
The individuality. The uncompromising drive to do whatever the hell they wanted, while somehow having the credibility to do so. A serious and bombastic passion. A beauty.
For me, it all started when I rushed out to buy Thomas Dolby's "Europa and the Pirate Twins." The record store didn't carry the single but they DID have a 45 that featured four different artists. I bought it for Thomas Dolby, but I was amazed to hear the self-titled song by Talk Talk. I loved it but it was a bit too Duran Duran for me.
Fast forward to the title track of their second album -- c'mon, you know it, "Life's What You Make It" -- and I was somewhat hooked, but it wasn't until "Colour of Spring" that I fell completely.
Have you heard "Colour of Spring?" After shaking off their manufactured New Romantic style, and still retaining some of their sublime pop, "Colour of Spring" was an amazing fusion of Top 40 and virtuoso improvisation. Mark Hollis was still singing about the human condition, and Paul Webb's and Lee Harris were still laying down a solid groove, but suddenly all these other musicians were involved: Mark Feltham's overdriven harmonica, Robbie Macintosh and David Rhodes on guitar, Morris pert's percussion, Stevie Winwood's sublime Hammond organ, all of them given equal time and attention and yet somehow sounding great together!
And holding it all together was producer and unofficial fourth member Tim Friese-Greene. He helped make it all gel into some of the most unlikely songs to hit the charts.
I hope that the world hasn't forgotten "Life's What You Make It," which was the real baffling single off the album. But did you ever give a listen to "Living in Another World?" Here's a mostly-live performance -- I think only the drums are pre-recorded -- that presents a literal wall of perfectly-meshing sound. This was Talk Talk at their height.
I think we were all confused by what came next: "Spirit of Eden." Continuing their musical trajectory it dove almost completely into experimental rock-jazz, inspired by extended jams and ideas provided by all members of a huge collection of musicians. I won't rehash all the details of its recording, release, and commercial failure (read the Wikipedia article for that), but I'll be the first to admit that I didn't "get it." There were parts that I liked, but I missed the pop.
All that EMI could do was to chop up one of the most friendly songs and make a single and a video. Then they dropped the band.
I was even more at odds with their follow-up and final album, "Laughing Stock," which dispensed entirely with any pretense of commercialism and was a long, languid, meditative journey. What's more, Paul Webb had left and taken his amazing bass playing with him.
Mark Hollis eventually released a solo album that was almost entirely personal and impenetrable. Meanwhile, Harris and Webb had formed "O.Rang," a collection of musicians who performed a more raucous and percussive style of the "Spirit of Eden" phase. I didn't like Hollis' album but I did like most of O.Rang.
It took years for the world to recognize what Talk Talk had done with "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock." They're now considered to be revolutionary must-have albums, and I've happily jumped on that bandwagon: I didn't have the ears or the musical experience to appreciate those difficult albums at the time, but I do now. They're amazing.
I just KNOW that they haven't given up, and I live in hope that Talk Talk -- together or separately -- will release another amazing album.
Essential albums: "Colour of Spring" and "Laughing Stock." Albums to avoid: their first two albums of keyboard-heavy pop sound a bit dated to some, but I think they're fantastic in their own way...they definitely show the band's ripening potential. You really SHOULD avoid "History Revisted," a collection of terrible remixes and a blatant EMI cash grab which the band managed to actually withdraw and destroy with a successful lawsuit. For fans only: "Asides Besides" (a 2-CD set of rarities, demos, and remixes) and perhaps their "Live at Montreux" CD, which seems to suffer from poor production.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
I'd Buy Anything By...Sky Cries Mary
I first heard Sky Cries Mary when their "Return to the Inner Experience" album appeared at CKMS. Its eye-catching cover, odd song titles, and long list of band members influenced my decision to play it.
And WOW. What an odd mix of elements, all crammed together to make up such beautiful and unconventional songs! Lead singers Anisa and Roderick Romero have perfectly-matched voices -- his gruff, hers soaring -- and they're backed up with a solid prog/psychedelic rock band and hints of trip-hop electronics.
I was less impressed by their follow-up, and also confused by the collection of early self-released tracks (from a time when they made extended and challenging sound collages), but it was all still good enough to keep my attention.
Years later, iTunes has finally allowed me to find and buy the rest of their catalog, including their post-hiatus comeback ("Small Town") which is just as good as anything they've ever done. Now I wish I could see them live!
Here's a prime slice of Sky Cries Mary: the sublime, the very slight twang, the perfectly-balanced instrumentation, and the characteristic Romero harmony.
Albums to buy:"A Return to the Inner Experience" is still my favourite, and "Moonbathing on Sleeping Leaves" has a more relaxed and epic feeling, but all the albums are lovable. Albums to avoid: None. For fans only: "Fresh Fruits for the Liberation," a collection of oddities that will only appeal to those who love both their current material AND their experimental tape manipulation.
And WOW. What an odd mix of elements, all crammed together to make up such beautiful and unconventional songs! Lead singers Anisa and Roderick Romero have perfectly-matched voices -- his gruff, hers soaring -- and they're backed up with a solid prog/psychedelic rock band and hints of trip-hop electronics.
I was less impressed by their follow-up, and also confused by the collection of early self-released tracks (from a time when they made extended and challenging sound collages), but it was all still good enough to keep my attention.
Years later, iTunes has finally allowed me to find and buy the rest of their catalog, including their post-hiatus comeback ("Small Town") which is just as good as anything they've ever done. Now I wish I could see them live!
Here's a prime slice of Sky Cries Mary: the sublime, the very slight twang, the perfectly-balanced instrumentation, and the characteristic Romero harmony.
Albums to buy:"A Return to the Inner Experience" is still my favourite, and "Moonbathing on Sleeping Leaves" has a more relaxed and epic feeling, but all the albums are lovable. Albums to avoid: None. For fans only: "Fresh Fruits for the Liberation," a collection of oddities that will only appeal to those who love both their current material AND their experimental tape manipulation.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Jobs: WATFAC
In the summer of '90 I had an amazing opportunity that I mostly squandered: I spent a few months working at WATFAC, the Waterloo Foundation for the Advancement of Computing.
I got into this because my computer science teacher at the time (Savio Wong) recommended me for their yearly student work program, which required some level of aptitude for computer programming. Not knowing C I was at a bit of a disadvantage, but I WAS a little BASIC wiz and I had some experience with dBase III, which would turn out to be the big asset.
What they wanted us students to do was to learn how to use the new software they were developing: Application Creation Made Easy (ACME). It was -- for the time -- an amazing package that integrated with their WATCOM SQL engine and a specially built "Foundation" library, and was supposed to do exactly what it said: make it easy for companies to create applications, particularly the types that were front ends for data storage.
Basically, you built a database using WATCOM SQL, and then you went into ACME to add a user interface for it. This interface was -- strangely and perhaps fatally -- built in a spreadsheet, where each cel represented a page. It was up to you -- the application developer -- to place fields for displaying and entering data, and buttons that the user could press, and write the behind-the-scenes code that controlled the flow throughout the program.
The first thing *I* did with it was create an interactive adventure that allowed the player to explore the WATFAC building, because it was a very strange place to work. Formerly located on the corner of University and Phillip (where "The Marble Slab Creamery" is now), it was a refurbished bank, complete with a vault in the basement where we ate our lunch. The whole place was a rigged-up nightmare of tiny rooms and running cables.
In addition we were occasionally overseen by Wes Graham, patron saint of Waterloo computing, wonderful and just a tad eccentric. During his bizarre orientation speech he used an "onion" metaphor to describe the way layers of information are peeled back, but then he got frustrated when he realized that onions don't have the cores that his metaphor demanded. This lead to us lowly co-ops -- so often with free time on our hands -- creating a grand mythology: Wes didn't want to "advance computing," that was just a front for his REAL project: the sinister development of a peach/onion hybrid called "The Ponion."
All of the games, drawings, and stories we made were based around the Ponion mythology. This was better than what the co-op University students were doing: playing battlechess across the local area network. WE never got caught (because our fun and games were created with company tools and looked like work) but when THEY got caught there was absolute hell to pay (and a memorable lecture to the whole group about teamwork and work ethic).
My problem was that I'd been placed in the only large room in WATFAC, a conference area that I called "the circus." This room hosted about twenty computers and was where all the nerdiest computer students were...and me. These guys were hardcore, they smelled a bit, they had loud voices and yawking laughs; the archetypal computer nerds. Since I was several years younger and I DID NOT KNOW C, there were frequent attempts to denigrate me, and equally frequent attempts by me to explain to them that they should try to straighten out their hygiene and their social problems, and never any work getting done because they were all yelling about the jokes in the latest Math newsletter.
Anyway, our REAL purpose at the company was twofold: to be beta testers for the ACME software, and to write full-fledged applications using it that could be demonstrated to local companies like Bell Telephone and the Waterloo Public Library. We were each randomly assigned an application that a company had shown interest in, and unfortunately I got the one I was least passionate about: a tracking program for expense accounts, under the watchful eyes of a local insurance company. It also had the worst name of them all; while others got names such as "InfoBook" and "InfoList," mine was "InfoExp." Difficult to say, even more difficult to enjoy doing.
What I remember most about this process was the attention given to the user experience, particularly in relation to hotkeys. There were few standardized hotkeys back then -- F1 for help was the only function key that had any real meaning across programs -- and the management quickly saw the necessity of standardization. So everybody brainstormed and came up with hard-and-fast rules for what each function key would do in every "Info" program, and we stuck to it.
Another thing I remember about the user experience was trying to organize data onscreen in a way that was friendly AND informative. While the other kids in "the circus" were outperforming each other trying to hack the ACME boot program with C in order to add esoteric and impossible-to-maintain features, I introduced my one innovation: ASCII graphics to create boxes around lists and to separate data from instruction. Simple and effective, but nobody had thought of it before. Within days everybody had a sheet of ASCII codes at their desks.
At the end of it all we had to give presentations of our programs to the companies themselves. I think I've blocked my presentation from memory -- not bad, but not great either -- but I DO remember the presentation that Mike gave.
Mike was the most obnoxious co-op there -- every day he'd make an endless string of bad computer jokes, along the lines of "Database engine won't start? Pour some gas in it! Hyuk hyuk hyuk! Right into the floppy drive! Hyuk hyuk!" -- and his application was for book filing and reference. He used to brag about how fantastic his presentation would be, and when he stood up there in front of the Waterloo Public Library board I saw an obnoxious, pushy braggart become a confused and stuttering fool. Plus all the books in his sample database were by Gary Gygax. Fail.
Eventually the job was over. I got a nice paycheck, a nice evaluation, and a nice reference, plus a free copy of ACME that I used as supplementary income (by creating a locker assignment application for our highschool).
What I remember most, however, is something I haven't even touched on: it was the first time I lived away from home. The parents of my friend Jeff -- who was also in the program -- owned student housing in the university ghetto, and they allowed Jeff and I to stay in an empty house while they renovated it. I remember many evenings mowing the lawn and painting the railings.
Looking back, it seems to me that I enjoyed this "moving out" experiment very much. My parents would drop in occasionally, and I spent some time wandering around the city and hanging out with Waterloo friends. This was when some women had been sexually attacked on the university campus, and I remember little groups of calm vigilantes wandering around campus and checking student IDs.
I also remember the first time I learned not to leave a kettle boiling when you leave for work. I remember playing Dragon Spirit obsessively at Flynn's arcade during lunch hour -- just to escape the airless, windowless lunch-vault -- and also that my Kate Bush obsession had reached its peak: my paychecks were going to vinyl bootlegs from Encore Records, and I picked up my first Peter Gabriel album (III) when I learned that Bush had done vocals for it. My mind was blown.
Now WATFAC is gone, and WATCOM is only really remembered for their compiler (though children of The ICON will remember WATCOM BASIC). Looking back, I think that ACME failed because it was released around the same time as Visual BASIC, and while ACME was more powerful it was also much harder to use. I'd love to see the program again someday.
And Wes Graham? When I went to the University of Waterloo many years later I was thrilled to see him as a "special guest" in a FASS show, playing a janitor. Everybody cheered. Now there is a road named after him.
Bless you, Wes, and your elusive Ponion.
I got into this because my computer science teacher at the time (Savio Wong) recommended me for their yearly student work program, which required some level of aptitude for computer programming. Not knowing C I was at a bit of a disadvantage, but I WAS a little BASIC wiz and I had some experience with dBase III, which would turn out to be the big asset.
What they wanted us students to do was to learn how to use the new software they were developing: Application Creation Made Easy (ACME). It was -- for the time -- an amazing package that integrated with their WATCOM SQL engine and a specially built "Foundation" library, and was supposed to do exactly what it said: make it easy for companies to create applications, particularly the types that were front ends for data storage.
Basically, you built a database using WATCOM SQL, and then you went into ACME to add a user interface for it. This interface was -- strangely and perhaps fatally -- built in a spreadsheet, where each cel represented a page. It was up to you -- the application developer -- to place fields for displaying and entering data, and buttons that the user could press, and write the behind-the-scenes code that controlled the flow throughout the program.
The first thing *I* did with it was create an interactive adventure that allowed the player to explore the WATFAC building, because it was a very strange place to work. Formerly located on the corner of University and Phillip (where "The Marble Slab Creamery" is now), it was a refurbished bank, complete with a vault in the basement where we ate our lunch. The whole place was a rigged-up nightmare of tiny rooms and running cables.
In addition we were occasionally overseen by Wes Graham, patron saint of Waterloo computing, wonderful and just a tad eccentric. During his bizarre orientation speech he used an "onion" metaphor to describe the way layers of information are peeled back, but then he got frustrated when he realized that onions don't have the cores that his metaphor demanded. This lead to us lowly co-ops -- so often with free time on our hands -- creating a grand mythology: Wes didn't want to "advance computing," that was just a front for his REAL project: the sinister development of a peach/onion hybrid called "The Ponion."
All of the games, drawings, and stories we made were based around the Ponion mythology. This was better than what the co-op University students were doing: playing battlechess across the local area network. WE never got caught (because our fun and games were created with company tools and looked like work) but when THEY got caught there was absolute hell to pay (and a memorable lecture to the whole group about teamwork and work ethic).
My problem was that I'd been placed in the only large room in WATFAC, a conference area that I called "the circus." This room hosted about twenty computers and was where all the nerdiest computer students were...and me. These guys were hardcore, they smelled a bit, they had loud voices and yawking laughs; the archetypal computer nerds. Since I was several years younger and I DID NOT KNOW C, there were frequent attempts to denigrate me, and equally frequent attempts by me to explain to them that they should try to straighten out their hygiene and their social problems, and never any work getting done because they were all yelling about the jokes in the latest Math newsletter.
Anyway, our REAL purpose at the company was twofold: to be beta testers for the ACME software, and to write full-fledged applications using it that could be demonstrated to local companies like Bell Telephone and the Waterloo Public Library. We were each randomly assigned an application that a company had shown interest in, and unfortunately I got the one I was least passionate about: a tracking program for expense accounts, under the watchful eyes of a local insurance company. It also had the worst name of them all; while others got names such as "InfoBook" and "InfoList," mine was "InfoExp." Difficult to say, even more difficult to enjoy doing.
What I remember most about this process was the attention given to the user experience, particularly in relation to hotkeys. There were few standardized hotkeys back then -- F1 for help was the only function key that had any real meaning across programs -- and the management quickly saw the necessity of standardization. So everybody brainstormed and came up with hard-and-fast rules for what each function key would do in every "Info" program, and we stuck to it.
Another thing I remember about the user experience was trying to organize data onscreen in a way that was friendly AND informative. While the other kids in "the circus" were outperforming each other trying to hack the ACME boot program with C in order to add esoteric and impossible-to-maintain features, I introduced my one innovation: ASCII graphics to create boxes around lists and to separate data from instruction. Simple and effective, but nobody had thought of it before. Within days everybody had a sheet of ASCII codes at their desks.
At the end of it all we had to give presentations of our programs to the companies themselves. I think I've blocked my presentation from memory -- not bad, but not great either -- but I DO remember the presentation that Mike gave.
Mike was the most obnoxious co-op there -- every day he'd make an endless string of bad computer jokes, along the lines of "Database engine won't start? Pour some gas in it! Hyuk hyuk hyuk! Right into the floppy drive! Hyuk hyuk!" -- and his application was for book filing and reference. He used to brag about how fantastic his presentation would be, and when he stood up there in front of the Waterloo Public Library board I saw an obnoxious, pushy braggart become a confused and stuttering fool. Plus all the books in his sample database were by Gary Gygax. Fail.
Eventually the job was over. I got a nice paycheck, a nice evaluation, and a nice reference, plus a free copy of ACME that I used as supplementary income (by creating a locker assignment application for our highschool).
What I remember most, however, is something I haven't even touched on: it was the first time I lived away from home. The parents of my friend Jeff -- who was also in the program -- owned student housing in the university ghetto, and they allowed Jeff and I to stay in an empty house while they renovated it. I remember many evenings mowing the lawn and painting the railings.
Looking back, it seems to me that I enjoyed this "moving out" experiment very much. My parents would drop in occasionally, and I spent some time wandering around the city and hanging out with Waterloo friends. This was when some women had been sexually attacked on the university campus, and I remember little groups of calm vigilantes wandering around campus and checking student IDs.
I also remember the first time I learned not to leave a kettle boiling when you leave for work. I remember playing Dragon Spirit obsessively at Flynn's arcade during lunch hour -- just to escape the airless, windowless lunch-vault -- and also that my Kate Bush obsession had reached its peak: my paychecks were going to vinyl bootlegs from Encore Records, and I picked up my first Peter Gabriel album (III) when I learned that Bush had done vocals for it. My mind was blown.
Now WATFAC is gone, and WATCOM is only really remembered for their compiler (though children of The ICON will remember WATCOM BASIC). Looking back, I think that ACME failed because it was released around the same time as Visual BASIC, and while ACME was more powerful it was also much harder to use. I'd love to see the program again someday.
And Wes Graham? When I went to the University of Waterloo many years later I was thrilled to see him as a "special guest" in a FASS show, playing a janitor. Everybody cheered. Now there is a road named after him.
Bless you, Wes, and your elusive Ponion.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Music I'm Buying and Then Loving
I have a new ritual which keeps me smiling on Monday mornings: when I go to work that day I allow myself to buy ONE album off iTunes. I might buy something old that I'd never managed to find, or something new that I've been dying to get, or I'll simply hop around using the "People Who Bought This Also Bought That" links until I finally find something interesting.
Here's a chronological list of what I've been buying since I started doing this last August, with linked YouTube videos to appropriate songs when available:
Various singles by Rose Elinor Dougall. My favourite Pipette has gone solo with these lush songs, apparently inspired by '80s acoustic-goth music.
"Sign 'O' the Times" by Prince. I've long admired the tour video of the same name, but I've never been able to find the studio album until now. It was a shock to hear the original, stripped-down, somewhat bizarre versions of songs which became epic onstage, but it's grown on me...and "Hot Thing" is SUCH a sexycool song.
"Dali's Car" self-titled EP. Mick Karn from Japan and Peter Murphy from Bauhaus produced a very odd album: exotic, brooding, somewhat Arabic in its sound. It's not GREAT, but it's INTERESTING, and something I fondly remember listening to on vinyl.
"Imaginary Friend" by The Faith Healers. I heard their song "Don't Jones Me" on a compilation at CKMS, and it took me almost twenty years to give them a bigger listen. It's very much rooted in the '90s shoegazer-meets-grunge scene, but with a nice eccentricity and a hypnotic vibe. The twenty-minute "All at Once Forever" is especially fab!
"Here and Now" and "Moon Bathing on Sleeping Leaves" by Sky Cries Mary. Talk about eccentric: funk, prog-rock, DJ beats, and gorgeous vocals. The live album is amazing, but I'm disconcerted by the apparent presence of TWO copies of Anisa Romero singing at once. Overdubs or backing track? Either way, not cool.
Self-titled album by Zaza Fournier. Delirium gal Anissa sent me Zaza's debut video because she said Zaza reminded her of me. I am infinitely flattered, because Zaza's persona is the one I have always subconsciously tried to cultivate: playful, gawky, cute, individualistic. Do you think you wouldn't enjoy an album of accordian-dominated songs sung in French? YOU'RE WRONG!
"The Warning" by Hot Chip. Their song "Over and Over" is perhaps as close to perfection as a song can be, and it's one that DJ Al at Club Abstract plays when he's feeling very happy. "The Warning" is a good album but just a tad uneven and overproduced.
"Couples" by The Long Blondes. A happy random discovery, but again, a sort of uneven album...it's all good, but the hits stand head and shoulders above the rest. Oh, "Guilt!"
"Fixin' to Thrill" by Dragonette. Toronto's very own electro darlings full of attitude, oddness, and buzy-synthiness. Yet another slightly uneven album -- too long, maybe, to sustain its necessary energy -- but you've got to admit they have something original going on.
"Unmixed" by Freemasons. When I heard their cover of "Uninvited," I had to grab the album, and while it covers a huge number of styles -- being basically a collection of non-remix versions of their recent hit singles -- it thumps so beautifully hard, and the singers they choose are ALWAYS AMAZING.
"Replicas" by Gary Numan. I've mentioned here before that I've never picked up a cheap Gary Numan album that I didn't like; I love his gulpy voice and his ominous keyboards, no matter the era. But I found "Replicas" to be a tad overhyped; it's considered such a landmark album -- and it certainly helped shape the burgeoning New Wave sound -- but it's also awfully monotonous and sloppy.
"Damp" by Foetus. I'd buy anything by Foetus, so this was a no-brainer. A collection of demos, remixes, singles, and previously unreleased songs. His collaboration with Rotoskop will have to be an upcoming iTunes purchase, that's for sure...
"Your Bag" by Lida Husik. Back when I heard this album in the early '90s, it seemed so fresh and interesting: an oddball let loose in a recording studio to release a series of equally oddball releases, often with unconventional effects and weird noises and cut up tape montages. These days, however, it seems like more of a "good idea" than a "good album."
Self-titled album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. I'd buy anything by OMD, and I was looking forward to finally hearing all those older albums I'd never been able to find. The subsequent disappearance of most of their catalog off of iTunes has put the kibosh on that plan, but at least I got this one, their first. It's a mix of perfect pop songs and bizarre experiments, best listened to in the early '80s but still a real treat.
"Big Sexy Land" by Revolting Cocks. I'd heard good things about this first album, but it's of the more monotonous type of '80s proto-industrial noodling: the worst parts of both collaborators, Ministry and Front 242. In University I had a friend who said that, to him, all industrial music sounded like a sample going "Bodies everywhere. B-b-b-bodies everywhere." I was less than delighted to find out that he was thinking of a song on this album ("Union Carbide").
"The Golden Age of Wireless" by Thomas Dolby. One of my favourite albums ever, finally remastered and restored to its original track sequence. Worth it just for the album itself, even more worth it for the additional material.
"Lust Lust Lust" by The Raveonettes. Recommended to me by a friend, and an excellent Jesus and Mary Chain brand of lo-fi -- love that spring reverb! -- but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing...the album is longer than it needs to be by far.
"The Frenz Experiment" by The Fall. I'd buy anything by The Fall. Another excellent album from their Brix/Schofield period. "Hit the North" is such a wonderful song!
"Ljubi in Sovraži" and "Arhiv" by Videosex, both incredibly cheap, both wonderful, both with awful sound quality, and both previously mentioned here.
"Horehound" by The Dead Weather. Since I'm probably the last person on earth who isn't 100% sure who Jack Black is, I can approach this supergroup without any preconceived notions or expectations. It's got a fun, gritty, dark-blues sound that gets a little dull after a while...but when it's good, it's GOOD.
"The Hazards of Love" by The Decemberists. I admit it: I've never heard anything else by them. I only stumbled across this album because amazing animator Julia Pott made part of their album-length music video. I watched the video and said "wow," and bought the album and said "WOW!" (Chorus of dead children excluded)
Many albums by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, bought in release order, from their self-titled release to "Solar Fire." Thank you iTunes, I finally get a chance to hear all the albums by a band I'd Buy Anything From.
"Prince Charming" by Adam & the Ants. It's hard not to love the Adam Ant concept: sexy guy dresses up like a "Top of the Pops" version of a highwayman, then sings a bunch of fetishy, over-the-top songs for a public scandalized, annoyed, and in lust. Do all the albums live up to this? Not "Prince Charming," but it's...well, charming.
"On the Threshold of a Dream" by Moody Blues. Another of my favourite albums, finally remastered and released with tons of bonus material. It's still just as scary and lovely as ever and -- in my humble opinion -- the only Moody Blues album you need to own.
"Tale to Tell" by The Mummers. Weird woman with amazing voice teams up with a soundtrack composer and releases and album with lots of potential. Composer commits suicide shortly afterward. We will never know what could (and should) have happened next, but at least we have this difficult album of outrageous orchestral pop.
"The Family Jewels" by Marina and the Diamonds. The only album in recent memory that has kept me literally SWEATING for its release...and yes, it's good, but the singles are far and above the most distinctive songs. Even so, I'd pay double the money just for that handful of songs, and there are some others that are "just good enough that another fabulous artist might have been able to do them."
"All Request Live" by Ween. They're always fabulous. Their new renditions of songs from the past are all wonderful, but check out "Where Did the Cheese Go," an insane presentation of their rejected Pizza Hut jingle. Six minutes long. It's the best.
All the cassettes by Pain Teens. I've already mentioned that I'd buy anything by the Pain Teens, so imagine my joy when I discovered all of their original cassette albums on iTunes! Well, lots of songs have been removed (probably for copyright reasons) and they're generally overpriced, but I love them both for the chance to hear the "demo" versions of songs from later albums, and for a format that they represent and has largely disappeared: the 4-track 90-minute tape recorded in your parent's basement by a person (Scott Ayres in this case, with a bit of input by Bliss Blood) who seems to have no end of creativity and talent. I recommend "Manmade Disasters" and "Cathy" if you like more song-oriented albums, and "Narcolepsy" for experimental oddness that is still listenable.
The self-titled album by Sons of Freedom. The tightest rhythm section ever, made even tighter by the fact that the guitarist usually played rhythm as well. This one just thumps and thumps and thumps along, and while the songs near the end are a bit self-indulgent and weak, the first half of the album is massively great.
The self-titled EP by Lioness. How appropriate that this should follow Sons of Freedom; take their thumpy rhythms and add the best bits of Dragonette -- everybody being Canadian, incidentally -- and you get the catchiest song in ages and a darn good EP too. They Will Be Big.
"Eyelid Movies" by Phantogram, recommended to me by Joshua, king of the OTHER twin cities, doesn't have a lot of variety to it but is excellent background music.
"Too" by Madita. Ahh, this is so good: a pop album that always sounds great, but still manages to pull the in influences and oddities that make it something special. And she has a perfectly capable voice without distraction.
"In the Flat Fields" by Bauhaus. I never used to enjoy this phase of Bauhaus' career, but now I see the joy. It's a weird album of chainsaw rhythm and guitar effects, held together by Peter Murphy's histrionics: exhausting, alienating, and -- apparently -- the beginning of Goth As We Know It.
"Trip the Light Fantastic" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Rarely does an album leave me so thrilled and happy! Perfect production, beautiful melodies, and Sophie's expressive voice; this is anything but a pop-by-numbers album and it baffles me that more people haven't heard it. You want to, right?!?
"Wild Young Hearts" by Noisettes. This is my most recent purchase so I haven't listened enough to give even a capsule review, but I'm liking it so far. Embarrassing fact: Delirium gal Annissa (her again!) told me about the Noisettes several months ago, and I brushed them off as manufactured entities ala VV Brown, then I forgot about them. This week I gushingly asked Annissa if she'd heard of the Noisettes, and she revealed to me my reactionary music snobbishness. Reality check!
Here's a chronological list of what I've been buying since I started doing this last August, with linked YouTube videos to appropriate songs when available:
Various singles by Rose Elinor Dougall. My favourite Pipette has gone solo with these lush songs, apparently inspired by '80s acoustic-goth music.
"Sign 'O' the Times" by Prince. I've long admired the tour video of the same name, but I've never been able to find the studio album until now. It was a shock to hear the original, stripped-down, somewhat bizarre versions of songs which became epic onstage, but it's grown on me...and "Hot Thing" is SUCH a sexycool song.
"Dali's Car" self-titled EP. Mick Karn from Japan and Peter Murphy from Bauhaus produced a very odd album: exotic, brooding, somewhat Arabic in its sound. It's not GREAT, but it's INTERESTING, and something I fondly remember listening to on vinyl.
"Imaginary Friend" by The Faith Healers. I heard their song "Don't Jones Me" on a compilation at CKMS, and it took me almost twenty years to give them a bigger listen. It's very much rooted in the '90s shoegazer-meets-grunge scene, but with a nice eccentricity and a hypnotic vibe. The twenty-minute "All at Once Forever" is especially fab!
"Here and Now" and "Moon Bathing on Sleeping Leaves" by Sky Cries Mary. Talk about eccentric: funk, prog-rock, DJ beats, and gorgeous vocals. The live album is amazing, but I'm disconcerted by the apparent presence of TWO copies of Anisa Romero singing at once. Overdubs or backing track? Either way, not cool.
Self-titled album by Zaza Fournier. Delirium gal Anissa sent me Zaza's debut video because she said Zaza reminded her of me. I am infinitely flattered, because Zaza's persona is the one I have always subconsciously tried to cultivate: playful, gawky, cute, individualistic. Do you think you wouldn't enjoy an album of accordian-dominated songs sung in French? YOU'RE WRONG!
"The Warning" by Hot Chip. Their song "Over and Over" is perhaps as close to perfection as a song can be, and it's one that DJ Al at Club Abstract plays when he's feeling very happy. "The Warning" is a good album but just a tad uneven and overproduced.
"Couples" by The Long Blondes. A happy random discovery, but again, a sort of uneven album...it's all good, but the hits stand head and shoulders above the rest. Oh, "Guilt!"
"Fixin' to Thrill" by Dragonette. Toronto's very own electro darlings full of attitude, oddness, and buzy-synthiness. Yet another slightly uneven album -- too long, maybe, to sustain its necessary energy -- but you've got to admit they have something original going on.
"Unmixed" by Freemasons. When I heard their cover of "Uninvited," I had to grab the album, and while it covers a huge number of styles -- being basically a collection of non-remix versions of their recent hit singles -- it thumps so beautifully hard, and the singers they choose are ALWAYS AMAZING.
"Replicas" by Gary Numan. I've mentioned here before that I've never picked up a cheap Gary Numan album that I didn't like; I love his gulpy voice and his ominous keyboards, no matter the era. But I found "Replicas" to be a tad overhyped; it's considered such a landmark album -- and it certainly helped shape the burgeoning New Wave sound -- but it's also awfully monotonous and sloppy.
"Damp" by Foetus. I'd buy anything by Foetus, so this was a no-brainer. A collection of demos, remixes, singles, and previously unreleased songs. His collaboration with Rotoskop will have to be an upcoming iTunes purchase, that's for sure...
"Your Bag" by Lida Husik. Back when I heard this album in the early '90s, it seemed so fresh and interesting: an oddball let loose in a recording studio to release a series of equally oddball releases, often with unconventional effects and weird noises and cut up tape montages. These days, however, it seems like more of a "good idea" than a "good album."
Self-titled album by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark. I'd buy anything by OMD, and I was looking forward to finally hearing all those older albums I'd never been able to find. The subsequent disappearance of most of their catalog off of iTunes has put the kibosh on that plan, but at least I got this one, their first. It's a mix of perfect pop songs and bizarre experiments, best listened to in the early '80s but still a real treat.
"Big Sexy Land" by Revolting Cocks. I'd heard good things about this first album, but it's of the more monotonous type of '80s proto-industrial noodling: the worst parts of both collaborators, Ministry and Front 242. In University I had a friend who said that, to him, all industrial music sounded like a sample going "Bodies everywhere. B-b-b-bodies everywhere." I was less than delighted to find out that he was thinking of a song on this album ("Union Carbide").
"The Golden Age of Wireless" by Thomas Dolby. One of my favourite albums ever, finally remastered and restored to its original track sequence. Worth it just for the album itself, even more worth it for the additional material.
"Lust Lust Lust" by The Raveonettes. Recommended to me by a friend, and an excellent Jesus and Mary Chain brand of lo-fi -- love that spring reverb! -- but there's such a thing as too much of a good thing...the album is longer than it needs to be by far.
"The Frenz Experiment" by The Fall. I'd buy anything by The Fall. Another excellent album from their Brix/Schofield period. "Hit the North" is such a wonderful song!
"Ljubi in Sovraži" and "Arhiv" by Videosex, both incredibly cheap, both wonderful, both with awful sound quality, and both previously mentioned here.
"Horehound" by The Dead Weather. Since I'm probably the last person on earth who isn't 100% sure who Jack Black is, I can approach this supergroup without any preconceived notions or expectations. It's got a fun, gritty, dark-blues sound that gets a little dull after a while...but when it's good, it's GOOD.
"The Hazards of Love" by The Decemberists. I admit it: I've never heard anything else by them. I only stumbled across this album because amazing animator Julia Pott made part of their album-length music video. I watched the video and said "wow," and bought the album and said "WOW!" (Chorus of dead children excluded)
Many albums by Manfred Mann's Earth Band, bought in release order, from their self-titled release to "Solar Fire." Thank you iTunes, I finally get a chance to hear all the albums by a band I'd Buy Anything From.
"Prince Charming" by Adam & the Ants. It's hard not to love the Adam Ant concept: sexy guy dresses up like a "Top of the Pops" version of a highwayman, then sings a bunch of fetishy, over-the-top songs for a public scandalized, annoyed, and in lust. Do all the albums live up to this? Not "Prince Charming," but it's...well, charming.
"On the Threshold of a Dream" by Moody Blues. Another of my favourite albums, finally remastered and released with tons of bonus material. It's still just as scary and lovely as ever and -- in my humble opinion -- the only Moody Blues album you need to own.
"Tale to Tell" by The Mummers. Weird woman with amazing voice teams up with a soundtrack composer and releases and album with lots of potential. Composer commits suicide shortly afterward. We will never know what could (and should) have happened next, but at least we have this difficult album of outrageous orchestral pop.
"The Family Jewels" by Marina and the Diamonds. The only album in recent memory that has kept me literally SWEATING for its release...and yes, it's good, but the singles are far and above the most distinctive songs. Even so, I'd pay double the money just for that handful of songs, and there are some others that are "just good enough that another fabulous artist might have been able to do them."
"All Request Live" by Ween. They're always fabulous. Their new renditions of songs from the past are all wonderful, but check out "Where Did the Cheese Go," an insane presentation of their rejected Pizza Hut jingle. Six minutes long. It's the best.
All the cassettes by Pain Teens. I've already mentioned that I'd buy anything by the Pain Teens, so imagine my joy when I discovered all of their original cassette albums on iTunes! Well, lots of songs have been removed (probably for copyright reasons) and they're generally overpriced, but I love them both for the chance to hear the "demo" versions of songs from later albums, and for a format that they represent and has largely disappeared: the 4-track 90-minute tape recorded in your parent's basement by a person (Scott Ayres in this case, with a bit of input by Bliss Blood) who seems to have no end of creativity and talent. I recommend "Manmade Disasters" and "Cathy" if you like more song-oriented albums, and "Narcolepsy" for experimental oddness that is still listenable.
The self-titled album by Sons of Freedom. The tightest rhythm section ever, made even tighter by the fact that the guitarist usually played rhythm as well. This one just thumps and thumps and thumps along, and while the songs near the end are a bit self-indulgent and weak, the first half of the album is massively great.
The self-titled EP by Lioness. How appropriate that this should follow Sons of Freedom; take their thumpy rhythms and add the best bits of Dragonette -- everybody being Canadian, incidentally -- and you get the catchiest song in ages and a darn good EP too. They Will Be Big.
"Eyelid Movies" by Phantogram, recommended to me by Joshua, king of the OTHER twin cities, doesn't have a lot of variety to it but is excellent background music.
"Too" by Madita. Ahh, this is so good: a pop album that always sounds great, but still manages to pull the in influences and oddities that make it something special. And she has a perfectly capable voice without distraction.
"In the Flat Fields" by Bauhaus. I never used to enjoy this phase of Bauhaus' career, but now I see the joy. It's a weird album of chainsaw rhythm and guitar effects, held together by Peter Murphy's histrionics: exhausting, alienating, and -- apparently -- the beginning of Goth As We Know It.
"Trip the Light Fantastic" by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Rarely does an album leave me so thrilled and happy! Perfect production, beautiful melodies, and Sophie's expressive voice; this is anything but a pop-by-numbers album and it baffles me that more people haven't heard it. You want to, right?!?
"Wild Young Hearts" by Noisettes. This is my most recent purchase so I haven't listened enough to give even a capsule review, but I'm liking it so far. Embarrassing fact: Delirium gal Annissa (her again!) told me about the Noisettes several months ago, and I brushed them off as manufactured entities ala VV Brown, then I forgot about them. This week I gushingly asked Annissa if she'd heard of the Noisettes, and she revealed to me my reactionary music snobbishness. Reality check!
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Videosex (No, It's Not What You Think)
I have long been enchanted by this cover of "Across the Universe." It is somehow -- inexplicably -- both heart-wrenchingly beautiful and David Lynch creepy. Likewise the video, which gives me goosebumps and makes me want to run away fast at the same time. It all makes me think of a cross between "O Superman," a church choir, and a meeting of the Hitler Youth.
The band (and tongue-in-cheek presentation) is certainly Laibach, but the singer (Anja Rupel) was in her own band: Videosex, '80s darlings of the former Yugoslavia.
"Videosex" is very weird to the contemporary, non-Yugoslavian listener. Their early new wave/post-punk music has aged poorly with its generic drum machine and vomit-inducing keyboard sax, but even then there was something INTERESTING about their work...a little twist, a little something added to make it stand out, even when they were working in a straight-forward pop genre.
Fortunately they didn't stay there for long. It's on their third album ("Svet Je Kopet Mlad") that they start performing a weird electro-cabaret-swing, as exemplified in this (fortunately translated) video for "Zemlja Pleše."
It's the final album -- "Ljubi In Sovraži" -- that's truly great. It's full of crazy beats and wild stylistic changes...from the quiet ambient booping of "Space Lab" to the over-the-top Foetus-like swing of "Snip Snap" (a cheerful English song about a boy whose thumbs get cut off because he sucks them). "Computer's First Christmas Card" is like nothing I've ever heard, a nonsense scat montage that you'd consider impossible until you actually hear it.
Fortunately the final album is available on iTunes, and so is their enormous "best of" compilation (at a very cheap price). The catch is that the sound quality ranges from "good" to "terrible." It's poorly mastered, has no mid range, and the bass sounds occasionally clip with an awful ripping sound.
The other sad thing is that I can find very little information about the band or their music. They obviously never made a dent in the English-speaking world, and their CD re-releases seem to have made fast-and-loose with the discography, transplanting songs from various eras as "bonus tracks."
Anyway, I'm happy to have found these little gems. If you're a fan of odd pop with a healthy tinge of complete insanity, check out "Ljubi In Sovraži" or -- since the "best of" collection contains most of those songs at the same price -- just get "Arhiv." "Across the Universe" is on there as well, though they've amusingly tried to remove the Laibach grunts at the end.
The band (and tongue-in-cheek presentation) is certainly Laibach, but the singer (Anja Rupel) was in her own band: Videosex, '80s darlings of the former Yugoslavia.
"Videosex" is very weird to the contemporary, non-Yugoslavian listener. Their early new wave/post-punk music has aged poorly with its generic drum machine and vomit-inducing keyboard sax, but even then there was something INTERESTING about their work...a little twist, a little something added to make it stand out, even when they were working in a straight-forward pop genre.
Fortunately they didn't stay there for long. It's on their third album ("Svet Je Kopet Mlad") that they start performing a weird electro-cabaret-swing, as exemplified in this (fortunately translated) video for "Zemlja Pleše."
It's the final album -- "Ljubi In Sovraži" -- that's truly great. It's full of crazy beats and wild stylistic changes...from the quiet ambient booping of "Space Lab" to the over-the-top Foetus-like swing of "Snip Snap" (a cheerful English song about a boy whose thumbs get cut off because he sucks them). "Computer's First Christmas Card" is like nothing I've ever heard, a nonsense scat montage that you'd consider impossible until you actually hear it.
Fortunately the final album is available on iTunes, and so is their enormous "best of" compilation (at a very cheap price). The catch is that the sound quality ranges from "good" to "terrible." It's poorly mastered, has no mid range, and the bass sounds occasionally clip with an awful ripping sound.
The other sad thing is that I can find very little information about the band or their music. They obviously never made a dent in the English-speaking world, and their CD re-releases seem to have made fast-and-loose with the discography, transplanting songs from various eras as "bonus tracks."
Anyway, I'm happy to have found these little gems. If you're a fan of odd pop with a healthy tinge of complete insanity, check out "Ljubi In Sovraži" or -- since the "best of" collection contains most of those songs at the same price -- just get "Arhiv." "Across the Universe" is on there as well, though they've amusingly tried to remove the Laibach grunts at the end.
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