Discovery Review

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Discovery ReviewEven if you bought this record just for it's liquefied metal cover, you would not be disappointed. This is truly a fantastic album in every sense of the word. And the techniques used in the creation were just fabulous. One of the things my friend said when he first heard me playing it was "the samples sound so CLEAN!" And they do. Every sample has been processed at incredibly high quality, there is no "Lo-Fi" on this record. The entire record is permeated with funky-style samples that you swear you know but just can't seem to place. Every song has some fantastic SOMETHING about it:
1.One More Time - the perfect party track! a thick thumping bassline and everybody-that's-not-a-raver's-view of the raver world lyrics -:)-, catches your attention immediately.
2.Aerodynamic - by far, the most significant bit on this track is the squealing pseudo-guitar solo. It may be simple, but it sounds REALLY COOL!
3.Digital Love - early 80's motivational tapes samples with cheesy vocoded lyrics = something still meaningful? To be honest, it's still fun to listen to, despite it's cheesiness.
4.Harder, Better Faster, Stronger - one of my favorite songs on the record. Easy to dance to, but it features one of the most incredible things I've ever heard. To understand you have to know what a vocoder is. A vocoder is a device that takes your voice, specifically the vibrations in your voice, and converts it to the tone of the instrument it is attached to, which is almost ALWAYS a keyboard for simplicity. What's really neat about Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger, is that at 2:25, the vocoder is switched over to an odd device that triggers it by a guitar. It's especially obvious at certain points, where the player is playing a really neat solo. Truly interesting to hear.
5. Crescendolls - A little odd at first, but it's got the throw-your-arms-in-the-air "HEY!" sample going on. A lot of fun, eh?
6. Nightvision - a slow, short instrumental track, but still extremely well put together. I wish it were longer with some vocals.
7. Superheroes - When I looked at the sample list for the record, and saw "Barry Manilow - Who's Been Sleeping In My Bed?" I wondered "what the heck?!" But when you hear the track, and the thumping bassline and beat and "love is in the air" echoing over and over it really makes sense and the song is a lot of fun.
8. Night Life - Brings back memories of disco! And that's always a good thing, right?
9. Something About Us - Listening to the beginning of the track I was expecting Barry White to start singing. A nice slow mellow groove.
10. Voyager - A little distortion on the bassline kept it interesting.
11. Verdis Quo - After you get by the somewhat slow intro, it starts getting kind of neat, and you want to keep listening. The layers get thicker each minute, and by the end it's a real sonic jubilee.
12. Short Circuit - I can't really say anything in favour of this song, neither could amazon.
13. Face To Face - This will HAVE to be the next one on the radio! I've already remixed this into an extended version and played it at some parties where we play a lot more old-school funk and stuff. The version on the record is about 3 and a half minutes, my version was nearly 9 minutes, and still when it ended people acted dissapointed because they were getting so into the groove. I love this song!
14. Too Long - when I first saw the length of the song, I thought the title was a joke! Ten minutes? An epic pop-techno song? But yes, it's an incredibly well done track, and as Romanthony says in the lyrics, it's really been "too long" since we've heard from the Daft Punk.
In all, this is truly a fantastic record with a lot of vision. A combination of funk, pop, disco, and techno, this isn't techno up front, and it doesn't claim to be. In fact, it doesn't CLAIM to be anything. Whatever it is, it's REALLY good at being it.Discovery Overview

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The Fall Review

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The Fall ReviewDamon Albarn talked about retiring Gorillaz, but instead he made a new album, almost immediately after Plastic Beach. The Fall is low-key and concise, the shortest Gorillaz album. It only has one guest vocalist (Bobby Womack on "Bobby In Phoenix"), and even Albarn's presence is muted. His lyrics are often simple, fragmented chants (e.g. "little pink plastic bags blowing on a highway") that barely seem to rise above the music. Many songs sound like vignettes: only one is over four minutes long, and seven are under three.
What this means is, The Fall is as close as Gorillaz have ever come to making a pure electronic album. For the first time, we get a chance to focus on all those weird sound clips, effects, textures and layers that were always bubbling beneath the surface of Gorillaz albums. They come to the forefront and inspire a new emphasis on atmosphere. The instrumental opening track "Phoner To Arizona" starts with a fuzzy digital bass sound, fairly close to Plastic Beach, and adds some synth beeps from the same album, but also brings in dark, uneasy strings and a rhythmic hook that sounds like it was made by distorting the pitch on Albarn's voice and then chopping it up.
You can hear Plastic Beach in the rhythm section, the beats have the same tinny, cheap drum-machine sound. Maybe Plastic Beach was actually recorded on an iPad, too! But, surprisingly, the music on The Fall actually has more detail. Even the idyllic acoustic guitar line in the beginning of "Hillbilly Man" is more technically and rhythmically interesting than any ballad from Plastic Beach. The best tracks are the instrumentals. The biggest stand-out is the strutting, cinematic, horn-driven "The Snake In Dallas." But the breezy synth lead in "Detroit" is adorable and gentle, and the interplay between bright keyboard background and moody minor-key organ in "Shytown" (with some vocals, but it feels like another instrumental) creates a delicate mood, thoughtful but not gloomy.
The pacing is excellent, and short as the songs are, they reveal a surprising amount of variety. "Hillbilly Man" switches gears completely from acoustic guitar to trip-hop beats, dirge-like synths and scraping noises, but the same downbeat tone persists through the entire song. "California And The Slipping Of The Sun" kicks into a pretty great techno groove, but only close to the song's end. The production (but not the composition) is fairly simplistic and one-dimensional, the instruments sound compressed and artificial, but they are often manipulated in interesting ways, for example the desolate synth-chirping in "Little Pink Plastic Bags." Somehow the garish production style matches the somber mood and the album's overall concept. Apparently, it was recorded while on tour, and it has an atmosphere of transience and impermanence, sitting in some anonymous hotel room, looking out the window onto the usual highway, city or airport views and just killing time until something happens. "Slipping Of The Sun" even has what sounds like clips from a news broadcast or PA announcement.
It'd be a miracle if there wasn't any filler. "The Joplin Spider" is blaring synth noise (that can be good, but not with this flat production), and "The Speak It Mountains" takes too long to get going, with nearly a full minute of voices repeating "it is the dawn" before any music shows up. But even those two songs aren't a total loss. "Spider" brings in more melodic keyboards in the second half for a more trance-like sound. It fades out almost immediately on arrival, but what can you do? And "Mountains," once it gets over the voices, has a very relaxing two-note synth loop. It sounds like a nice intro to a song about the dawn, which unfortunately does not show up. "Aspen Forest" is a pleasant bit, not very memorable at first, but then a cascading harp-like phrase livens up the ending.
A couple of songs are basically just typical Albarn ballads: "Amarillo" sounds like "Herculean" from The Good, The Bad And The Queen," whereas "Revolving Doors" is a shuffling mope like "Rhinestone Eyes." I don't suppose we can blame him for playing to his own strengths. Over the past ten years, he's become an amazing crooner.
This may become a very under-rated album. There is no big single (in fact, no obvious single at all), the promotion is relatively modest, and yeah, the album was made in a month. One might be tempted to dismiss it as an insubstantial EP, collector bait like G-Sides or D-Sides. In fact, The Fall might even be better than Plastic Beach.The Fall Overview

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Play Review

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Play ReviewI've never been, what I would consider, a huge Moby fan. I've only recently become associated with him from his work on the "Saint" and "The Beach" soundtracks. Boy oh boy, do I wish I had discovered this talented individual sooner! My friend bought this CD and let me borrow it. Although I don't like the first two tracks, I immediately was hooked in by "Porcelain," which is also featured on the "Beach" soundtrack and in a recent Neiman Marcus commerical. I used to think that Orbital was the best techno artist around, but after this CD, Moby takes the cake! I've never known any techno artist to put so much feeling into a song, without saying anything. This album gets you grooving and relaxing all at the same time. Some tracks to defintely listen to: "Porcelain," "Rushing," "Bodyrock," "Machete," "Inside" and the last track, "My Weakness." "My Weakness," "Porcelain" and "Inside" have a spirituality that is rarely seen in techno music. So haunting and beautiful all at the same time. If you saw the episode of the X-Files where Mulder finally finds out about his sister, you heard "My Weakness" in the final scene with the ghost children. When I heard it there, i immediately wanted to know who did it. This is without a doubt the most moving techno song I've ever heard. It just hits you right in the gut. This CD is a MUST have for all Techno fans. Look out wallet! I'm buying more of his work! Look out Moby, you've got a new fan who looks forward to more years of this awesome music!Play Overview

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Come With Us Review

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Come With Us ReviewFor those eagerly waiting on this, the new chem bros cd, you will not be disappointed. 'Come with us' is very much a chemical brothers record, with high-octane songs for starters, more rhythmic songs in the middle, the usual 'coming down/female vocal' songs towards the end, and finally, the epic song to end the cd. Overall, I would say this is an improvement on 'surrender', though in many ways the beats and effects are reminiscent of 'exit planet dust'.
What are the songs like? you ask...
Well...
'Come with us': Starting with strings and a booming voice, and following with drawn-out, spacey effects (along with the next song, these are as close to the high-frequency/kettle-whistling/acid effects that filled 'dig your own hole' as you'll get on this album), this song acts as a steadily building welcome to the rest of the album.
'It began in afrika-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka-ka...': When the single was released it was admittedly annoying. However, look past the repetitive vocals and you'll find the chemicals reverting back to old methods with a song that would fit in neatly on any of their previous albums.
'Galaxy bounce' differs slightly to the version that appears on the tomb raider soundtrack. Preceded by turntables scractching in the vein of 'in dust we trust', this song shows the chems cutting up samples, backed a rolling bassline. Though this song is fine on its own, it seems somewhat out of place on this album.
'Star Guitar' is an exercise in sequencing beats (as indicated by the film clip). This dreamy song is the flagship of the album, showing the chems production qualities at their finest.
'Hoops' will no doubt stay in your head long after you've listened to the album. Though the song begins to speed up 'out of control' style, it doesn't go overboard, with more emphasis on drums, guitars, and a bassline familiar to that on blur's 'music is my radar'.
'My elastic eye' has Instant Hit written all over it. This song captures attention immediately with its deep bassline, quick drum snares and 'yayaya' vocals. At a constant crescendo, this song will no doubt be a personal favourite to many.
'The state we're in' is this albums come-down song, after the previous three tracks have taken you on a high. Beth Orton thankfully returns, though this song never quite hits the spot emotionally as well as 'Alive alone', and doesn't progress to anywhere in particular (unlike the industrial noises that concluded 'where do i begin'. More effective than Hope Sandoval at least, and the track segues nicely into...
...'Denmark', which is as generically 'dance' music as the chems get. The opening snare/high-hat routine seems a bit cheesy to me, but is redeemed by a funky bassline and melody. Slightly disappointed by this song, though should sound good when played live (the dance template wasn't altered too much to make this one).
'Pioneer skies' starts of low key, despite the jackhammer effects, but eventually builds into a heavy track. Frequency changes are not unlike previous chems songs, though the track fails to 'enlighten', as much as songs like 'orange wedge' which are of a similar pace and feel. Essentially a preparation for the final, long track.
'The test' features Richard Ashcroft. It's not a folk song like 'dream on', but rather the emotionally charged Ashcroft vocal backed by 'competent' beats. They are neither slow-and-dreamy nor hard-and-fast. Ashcroft is a good person to sing 'epic' songs (see Unkle), but he only barely 'passes the test' on this song. The chems seem somewhat indecisive as to how use Ashcrofts vocals effectively, and eventually the vocals take command over the song and its beats. Nevertheless a good song (judging by the fact that the 7 mins seem to go by quickly), that will have you singing all the way.
Well, that's an outline of the album, and if you're considering buying it, then I would say go for it. If you're already a chem bros fan, 'Come with us' will only increase your admiration of their work.Come With Us OverviewCD > POPULAR MUSIC > ELECTRONIC

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