Opinions Enter the House of Flame

Review: Samantha James's Subconscious

2011-01-12T06:48:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, Amazon had a thousand albums at reduced prices. Being the nut I am, I went through most of them to try to find some gems (I’ve had a hard time knowing where to turn on recent music, and this was as good a place to start as any). I wound up buying 5 of them, and even as the others are daring and wild and more academically what I like, I keep coming back to this album more than the others. (Hopefully I’ll review the others soon; for posterity, they were the self-titled albums from Eskmo and Animals as Leaders, 11:11 by Rodrigo y Gabriela, and the Budos Band’s third self-titled album.)

So why this one? Well, it’s one of the warmest, most inviting albums I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing. To those of you who know me, I don’t say that lightly, particularly because most albums with those terms turn me off for being far too simple. For example, I can’t stand Colbie Caillat at all, but “Dirty Epic” and “Luetin” by Underworld make me serenely happy. This is a bit inverted, I suppose, but the point stands: people who seem happy for no particular reason wind up irritating me. In other words, you can’t just play me a happy song and then say, “Hey Brandon, be happy now,” but you can lead me there with the right musical backing.

To me, this is the essence of Samantha’s best work; while the lyrics are basic, optimistic, sunny, and those other things that normally don’t resonate with me, they’re paired with music that makes me want to embrace the sentiment, i.e. music I would have liked anyway. At the end of the album, you want to know Samantha and draw energy from her outlook; you want to create and be happy with life and all those things she’s doing, as there’s clearly something about her approach that’s unique to her. There’s a reason she needs to be making this music and a reason I need to be listening to her, and that, more than anything, is the definition of artistic vitality.

So how does it stack up in my usual nine-part analysis?

1) Chord sequences. The album’s all about its jazz backdrop, which not only sets a mood but also gives depth to a usually shallow genre. In places, it’s actually pretty difficult to hum anything that isn’t the melody, which is an oddity for accessible music. The title track, for example, has a ton of ninths and sevenths floating in the mix – it’s something like Em9-F#m7-C#m9 in its main progression – so you sing along with the melody because it’s the only thing that would glue it together. So the chords add depth and bring focus to Samantha. I can’t think of a good comparison for this, which is of a course a compliment.

2) Song structure. Generally, it’s verse-chorus stuff here. Nothing groundbreaking, but “Life Is Waiting” is closer to an instrumental than it isn’t, with more of a verse-interlude structure, and it’s a nice change-up.

3) Mood. Oh, the wonderful, wonderful mood. My opening paragraphs basically are about the distinctions in mood that makes this a good album and others less so, but it’s clear from the album and the press that accompanies it that Samantha and her producer are about creating a mood. One of the biggest distinctions between this album and other “happy” electronic artists is that Samantha’s moods are more intuitive (Myers-Briggs N) than sensing (S).

Many dance songs reference beaches or clubs or other places when they want to talk about happiness. I can’t swim, I don’t dance well, and I’m introverted; these places are all places that don’t make me happy, therefore. The music that goes with these sentiments usually is brighter, cheerier, but ultimately simpler as well – throw your cares away and dance!, they tell us; and I can’t really do that.

Samantha’s looking for peace within herself, and so the music is more headphone-oriented and warm than what I’m railing against. She’s not celebrating summer so much as helping you make it through winter. Mind you, there are a few S moments through the record, but they don’t sound as authentic as someone who’s truly letting go in an S way – it’s still sentiments written and musicked (if you will) by a fundamentally introspective person.

4) Layers. Tons of them; I’m still picking them out after almost three weeks with this album. Top marks here.

5) Genre-bending. Not a focus here, but the songs sound of a piece while having more variety than they initially let on, and the organic instrumentation – acoustic guitars, electric pianos, and so on – allow this to be more firmly in singer/songwriter camp than most house-based music. The combination allows it to be neither Dido nor Tiesto, so that’s positive.

6) Innovation. For an album emphasizing warm subtleties, it is fitting that it takes a bit to notice that the lead track, “Waves of Change,” is house in 14/4, with a more difficult melody to fit into those chords than it seems on the surface. It would be foolish to expect some sort of experimental album in the works, but it is nice to know that Samantha knows how to get these oddities into the mix seamlessly.

7) Rhythm. It’s four-on-the-floor house music; what did you expect? That said, she’s clearly the type who would sound amazing working in a more explicit jazz context – something like “Soon” by Jazzanova would be a perfect vehicle for her. If she wanted to go this route, I know she could, so I hope that she does every now and again.

8) Production. This might go under Layers normally, but the production does a fantastic job in putting the synthesized/dance elements in an organic context. Often, you get dance productions that don’t have a good feel for acoustic instruments and produce them in a way that might as well have been programmed anyway. (As an acoustic guitarist first and an electronic producer much later in the game, I cringe when this happens.) Then there are acoustic-based songsters who, when they turn to sequencers, pick the most basic of sounds, get fascinated with the technology, and don’t complement their songs well at all.

The production sounds equally at home with both ends of the spectrum, and it’s always easier said than done when it comes to fusing all the elements. This helps a lot with the feel of the album; shorter songs like “Amber Sky” sound integral instead of between-singles filler, as the production folds it into the mood rather than leave it amateurishly jarring. This is one of the best-produced albums I’ve heard in awhile; it’s much appreciated.

9) Album flow. Given how many electronica albums don’t even feel like albums, the standards are different here than in, say, progressive rock, but the album has a definite, sensible flow even as it might have put a few too many slower songs at the end. There’s never an urge to skip a song or put it anywhere else, so that says they got the flow right.

Two other considerations are worth mentioning. First up: the lyrics. Poking around Facebook and Twitter, I suspect that Samantha is a much deeper person than her lyrics show. “Because I know this is where I belong” rhyming with “Take me where you think I belong” in “Subconscious,” while “Maybe Tomorrow” has “Knowing this is where you belong” as an end rhyme doesn’t speak highly of that depth, however. This is one of those concerns that’s pretty easily fixed if you look at lyric sheets as a whole, so it’s not a fatal flaw or anything, but that area could use a bit of work or maybe just more experience. Ordinarily I would just dismiss this as “who’s paying attention to the lyrics? It’s dance music!”, but it’s clear that she is paying attention and wanting to express something meaningful about herself, so as a fellow lyricist I want her to get to where she’s going.

Second: the vocals. This is how I know she cares about the lyrics; she’s so warm and inviting into those lyrics that she has to mean them and care about them – it’s impossible to sing that way otherwise. Samantha James singing is beautifully authentic and authentically beautiful. I think I could listen to her sing anything and be enraptured for hours; she could sing a spreadsheet or some fine print and my heart still would melt. The biggest touchstone for her music and stylings would be something like Soulstice (the San Francisco group circa 2002 who did “Lovely” and “Illusion,” not the rap group), but Samantha is so much more inviting (it’s a word I’ve been overusing, but it fits) than them or even Jan Johnston or Kirsty Hawkshaw, whose works I adore.

Again, it goes back to the intuitive side of Samantha. If you drew up a “lucky fan gets to spend a day with their hero” sort of contest for several electronic artists, I get the picture that with the divas it would be studio, then business concerns, then the club. With Samantha? You’d go to a cozy coffee shop, discuss the creative power of a morning, meet some deep thinkers, then write songs in the evening, maybe put on a CD or two, and in the end you’d feel like you had known each other for ages and that you had been blessed by getting to experience that day with her. It’s the same feeling you get off listening to the album; you feel blessed to be part of her world for an hour. And ultimately, that’s why I keep coming back to this work, and why you should come to it too. As she would put it, “Lift your head; embrace.”

Review: BT’s These Hopeful Machines

2010-02-09T18:19:00.000-08:00

Released last week, These Hopeful Machines came amidst much hype and fanfare, as BT’s fans were in a veritable frenzy over the album. And why not? Over the last 15 years, BT has put up a catalog where the B-sides outclass entire artists and the A-sides outclass, well, just about everything. Basically, BT is invincible when he’s on, and with every release there’s a hope that it will be the most on collection to date. Certainly, BT himself feels great about this release, noting in a video that for the first time an album of his feels complete to him upon release. You’d imagine that it’s hard to leave something out of a 1:52 long album, but never count BT out for having more ideas than 2 CDs can hold.

This is one of the strangest reviews I’ve done of any album or career. It has some weaknesses in areas that I value highly, but is one of the all-time best in several other categories so that it gets an ace rating from me despite my misgivings. In normal category order…

1) Chord sequences. The album is quite weak in its structures, with the evil I-V-VIm-IV showing up once and the typical trance VI-VII-Im showing up once and again. Given BT’s love of classical music and innovation and his jazz influences on This Binary Universe, it struck me as surprising and a letdown, but I suspect what’s going on is that BT adheres to a version of my theory of complexity creep, i.e. a single song can have only so much complexity to it before it loses meaning to the listener. You can only take the listener so far, and given that BT’s production and song forms are among the most experimental and complex of all time, maybe the concession to complexity creep is here. The most “out there” (the outest there?) track, “Le Nocturne de Lumiere,” confirms this, with only two chords going through it while the production goes insane. BT wasn’t intending to make simple music, so it’s likely that the chord sequences are simple to let everything else bounce off it and still make sense. Still, I can’t rank this category highly.

2) Song structure. The structure is so fluid throughout the album that BT in essence challenges previous ideas of what a song even is. The tracks are so fully developed that at the end you feel like they’ve assumed every possible iteration somewhere in there. Because of that fullness, other songs and albums feel short and undeveloped by comparison. I’ve never heard an album that dwarfs other albums like that. These don’t feel epic despite their length, because they twist and turn so often; instead, they make everything else feel short. Completely unique, which is a way of saying the album gets absurdly high marks here.

3) Mood. BT’s always been about mood, but the critical difference is that, unlike those trance albums that claim to take the listener on some quasi-spiritual “journey” and really just mean that the songs are kinda ambient trance, These Hopeful Machines has real mood swings and changes. When BT’s daughter sings the last chorus of “Forget Me” over chimes, the modern rock number changes gears completely, and you’re forced to reevaluate the chorus’s meaning as well as the entire previous song. That’s what mood changes should do. As for the moods themselves, they’re sometimes obscured by the glitchy production, but they’re still set effectively, and they’re juxtaposed extremely well.

4) Layers. There are plenty of layers of I-don’t-know-what under all that production; BT doesn’t ply his trade in minimalism. For once, though, I can’t hear them all too well, as the mixing/mastering process gave a very modern feel to the album. This may be an area where I haven’t heard the album through enough times to pick them out. We’ll say neutral to positive here.

5) Genre-bending. Several of the songs are both rock and electronic at once, particularly the leadoff single “Suddenly.” At different points one or the other takes over, but overall it’s almost 50% in each category. It’s rare not only to hit the middle dead-on, but it’s even rarer to make a song that is good in both categories. Electronic artists trying to straddle the rock fence often have their production techniques give them away, be it a drum machine taking the live feel off the rock or the guitar sounds being too synthesized to feel rockin’. This is the first electronica album I’ve heard where the rock actually feels like rock, and that authentic feel (aided by BT’s being able to play guitar well) gives it two broad genres instead of sounding like one is compromising the other. Compare this to any of Moby’s rock numbers and you’ll understand what I mean; when the songs need guitars and live drums, BT puts them in, and that alone is worth noting.

Besides that, the fluid song structures are such because it allows BT to insert any genre he feels like at any point in the song. It helps that he wrote a lot of these songs at new wave tempos and with that sort of feel (covering the Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost in You” being the secret decoder ring there); new wave historically was one of the best rock-synth crossover genres, and that tempo allows trance and rock to co-exist peacefully. This album is masterful at genre-bending; just as it makes you question what a developed song is, it also makes you question what electronica and rock even mean. That’s power.

6) Innovation. If somehow you hadn’t picked this up reading so far, top marks for innovation, especially as those innovations go to question basic song construction concepts that no one’s really successfully challenged for a long time. Besides that, the morphing breakdown in “Le Nocturne de Lumiere” from 4/4 to 6/8 and then a slow-down is sick on the song structure and innovation route; it took very careful production to pull it off convincingly, but it’s perfectly presented.

7) Rhythm. The rhythms aren’t that complex this time around, and on the rock songs they’re a bit too simple (although, as noted earlier, they do feel like rock songs, so that’s the tradeoff, I suppose). There are tons of glitchy rhythmic elements present, but the beats are remarkably spartan. That’s not my idea of a good time, but oh well. I suppose too much beat might drown out the other things.

8) Production. BT lives up to the fact (not just my belief) that he is the best producer ever. Enough said.

9) Album flow. Without the thorough development of the songs, this album would feel choppy, a bunch of singles in different genres put on the same collection because it was time to release something. With that development, however, the songs all feel like they belong together, making the flow excellent (which is vital for something this long). It also helps that BT grouped his guest vocalists together, with only his own performances interspersed. It tends to annoy me for flow/authenticity reasons when an electronic artist uses about three vocalists evenly through an album; it’s very hard to make that feel like a unit. But by having the guest vocalists not “interrupt” each other, the album flows naturally, almost like Jes or Kirsty Hawkshaw or Rob Dickinson dropped in and then left. Indeed, the whole album feels like BT’s brain map, in a good way. “Over here, we have trance, while if you look to your right, you’ll see rock. Please feel free to purchase souvenirs from our gift shop.”

I don’t have a category for this, but BT’s vocals are top-notch. If you’ve heard him sing before, you know he’s always been more than serviceable, but it’s to the point where he’s better than his guest vocalists. Again, unlike Moby or someone of that ilk, BT’s voice also works in rock, which is necessary given how many times it shows up. The vocals are key to this album’s success, and on earlier albums I’m not sure his voice would have been up to it. It certainly is now; one listen to “Suddenly” and it’s clear he’s one of the best vocalists, guitarists, and producers in electronica today.

As mentioned, it’s very strange for me to put such high praise on an album where the chord sequences and rhythm (at least drum-wise) are pedestrian. But on song structure, genre-bending, innovation, production, and album flow, These Hopeful Machines is an historical landmark, redefining several musical ideas. I know I’m questioning my own song composition processes afresh after listening to this, and with it being so unique and iconic, I haven’t really been in the mood to listen to anything else since it came in the mail. I’m sure if you give it a chance that you’ll feel the same way.

Magic and Music: Step Links

2010-01-20T13:12:00.000-08:00

Magic and Music: Vorosh (Green-Blue-Black)

2010-01-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81275/

For my last trick, I unveil Vorosh. There are very few differences between this one and Teneb as an album, except for the slight differences between white and blue. In other words, this album's a lot more focused on beat, pulse, and the electronics of it all, while white allows for more acoustic textures in its Golgari-type musings. There's also a large black Simic component to this one. Enjoy.

Global Communication - 4:02
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms (Path 3)
Order in Chaos - Dismiss Space, Science
Mystical Sun - Innerworld
Deep Forest - Deep Forest
Opus III - Outside
Blu Mar Ten - Coloratura
Future Sound of London - Cascade (Part 1)
Bassic - Precipitation
Joachim Spieth - You Don't Fool Me
The Orb - Montagne D'Or (Der Gute Berg)

Magic and Music: Numot (Red-White-Blue)

2010-01-20T11:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81270/

Primarily red Azorius and white Izzet, Numot has a weird but orderly time of it. The beats may be passionate, but they're in their place, the way Boros would want them; it's just that Numot adds blue to make it techy rather than military-y. This compilation's a bit more hodgepodge genrewise than several of these, but it's all right; blue-red combos don't care about such things.

BT is the ultimate in Numotocity, and he proves it with "The Internal Locus" off the immensely colorful This Binary Universe.

Biosphere - Phantasam
(Mega Man) - Electrolytic Man
Plaid - Squance
BT - Ride
Black Dog - Seers and Sages
Blu Mar Ten - The Feeling (Remix)
Deadly Avenger - Deep Red
BT - The Internal Locus
Plaid - Headspin
Way Out West - Sequoia
Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy (Little Lord Faulteroy Mix Version) [just to begin and end the album with weird child voice songs]

Magic and Music: Teneb (Black-Green-White)

2010-01-20T11:52:00.001-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81274/

This wedge is the most balanced across its combinations of green Orzhov, white Golgari, and black Selesnya, consequently feeling complete. That said, it suffers from the same issues one would have listening to Golgari or Selesnya; not a lick of excitement (without blue's oddities or red's passion, what do you get?). But its mood is spot-on, and it's perfect for a wintry night.

(Secret of Mana) - Pure Lands
Marco Torrance - Real Love
Leftfield - Black Flute
Susumu Yokota - Soft Tone
Mystical Sun - 7 Generations --> Ceremony
Opus III - Guru Mother --> Cozyland
Underworld - To Heal
Banco de Gaia - Maya
Kraftwerk - Mitternacht
Opus III - Stars in My Pocket
Durutti Column - Requiem for Mother

Magic and Music: Intet (Blue-Red-Green)

2010-01-20T11:41:00.001-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81267/

This is one of my favorite lists, for although it doesn't really have a strong flavor Magically or musically, it holds up well as a compilation. Like the Simic, the biggest issue with compiling is that you have neither white nor black; all moods must be firmly in the middle. It's almost all green Izzet and red Simic, as blue Gruul is one of the most antithetical combinations around (though "Lush 3.1" pulls it off). I think of the five wedges, this is the one that most feels like it's the colors it is. If I asked you, "this CD is made of three Magic colors - what are they?", you'd probably do a fine job at getting them. This one surprised me with its high quality, I'm proud to say.

BT - Divinity
Underworld - Banstyle/Sappys Curry
Amon Tobin - Nightlife
808 State - Doctors and Nurses
Orbital - Lush 3.1
Hybrid - Beachcoma
Susumu Yokota - A Slowly Fainting Memory of Love and Respect, and Hatred
Underworld - Please Help Me

Magic and Music: Oros (White-Black-Red)

2010-01-20T11:31:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81271/

The wedges have their flavor defined entirely by the Apocalypse expansion and the Planar Chaos dragons. That's not much to go on, so I just named them for the dragons and did my three-part breakdown to make compilations. As a whole, I think you'd say for each one that they feel like their colors, even if those colors don't have a unifying theme Magically.

As I've mentioned, to me Oros's colors are the traditional gaming music, so this one will have the most immediate appeal to playgroups trying this sort of thing out. VNV Nation is an Oros-themed band, and Dream Theater likely is too, both as white Rakdos, which predominates this collection over black Boros and red Orzhov (both being guilds I had a hard time with). It's probably the most-supported wedge aside from Numot (red-white-blue), who gets BT, Plaid, and the like.

Dream Theater - Stream of Consciousness
Spock's Beard - Thoughts
VNV Nation - Kingdom
Hybrid - If I Survive
Blu Mar Ten - Last Dance
VNV Nation - Dark Angel
Eisbrecher - Mein Blut
Porcupine Tree - Anesthetize

Magic and Music: Naya (Red-Green-White)

2010-01-20T11:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81277/

To my surprise, this compilation turned out very nicely. Made with 2 cups white Gruul to 1 cup each of red Selesnya and green Boros, there are many exotic instruments thrown around a Gruul/Selesnya frame to create a feeling of jungly goodness. Of the various compilations, this is one of the best for feeling like you're truly in the place for which it's named. I can see Naya springing up around me with this one. (The Dimir and Simic are my other top ones for this.)

If you want a study in color contrasts, check out "Ten-Day Interval" here v. its cousin "Four-Day Interval" on Jund.

The list:

Brand X - Sun in the Night
Banco de Gaia - How Much Reality Can You Take?
Way Out West - One Bright Night
Ashley MacIsaac - Sophia's Pipes
Jaga Jazzist - Animal Chin
Genesis - Wot Gorilla?
Days of the New - Skeleton Key
Tortoise - Ten-Day Interval
Steve Hackett - Ace of Wands
Jamiroquai - Didjerama
Ashley MacIsaac - MacDougall's Pride
Genesis - The Cinema Show

Magic and Music: Jund (Black-Red-Green)

2010-01-20T11:00:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81269/

Most of you could build a better Jund playlist than this; I don't care for it much. I like the shard all right; I just didn't have the stuff to make a good list. Again, it's my library's general lack of red music. Jund is made of:

Red Golgari (passionate jungly death)
Black Gruul (blood and gore in the darkness)
Green Rakdos (paranoid evil with leaves?)

And it all combines to make a compilation a bit less speedy and exciting than I wanted. Ah well.

(Secret of Mana) - On the Day the World Changed
(Legend of Zelda) - Fear of Sufferance
Future Sound of London - My Kingdom (Part 1)
Peter Gabriel - Passion
Amon Tobin - Bridge
Durutti Column - Mello, Pt. 2 --> Lisboa
Tortoise - I Set My Face to the Hillside --> Four-Day Interval
Safri Duo - Snakefood

Magic and Music: Grixis (Blue-Black-Red)

2010-01-20T10:42:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81265/

I had a hard time making this one cohere. I expected this one to be more blue Rakdos than anything, but instead it's black Izzet (and barely red Dimir). So it's crazy first, dark second; based on the flavor of unearth and all the death going around, I would have preferred my collection giving me more black-centered songs, but it wasn't meant to be. The flavor of Grixis always seemed big-picture death things rather than something you could pinpoint the way you could with Bant or Esper. The compilation suffers as a result, but it's far from bad; it just doesn't do it for me the way its component two-color combos do. Maybe you'll disagree.

Side note: Blu Mar Ten's contribution here may be the only five-color song in existence. It's here in part because the album needed help and in part because its bassline is so very Grixis, but...it's Fusion Elemental. Or Karona, the False God.

Underworld - Pearls Girl
(Shadowgate) - Mystic Piano
Leftfield - Phat Planet
Hybrid - Kill City
Blu Mar Ten - By the Time My Light Reaches You I'll Be Gone
Fluke - Kitten Moon
VNV Nation - Strata --> Interceptor
808 State - Souflex
Autechre - Eutow --> Teartear

Magic and Music: Esper (White-Blue-Black)

2010-01-20T10:25:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81263/

My music library skews Esper anyway; this wasn't hard for me at all. The Esper wanted to turn themselves to artifacts to be immortal, so they mechanized themselves as much as is feasible. Let's see...music that sounds as mechanistic as is feasible? Yep, got that under control. It's important for flavor, however, to note that the Esper largely were humans who made the choice to do this to themselves. There's an emotion, even if it's a cold one, in choosing to be part-machine, and this separates the Esper from their brethren in Mirrodin who were in fact machines. There's color to these artifacts (literally), and so while their ideal world is machine, there's a human side that shouldn't be overlooked. This is how the final song, Cardamar's "Steam," justifies its presence on the disc. Esper wasn't where machines ran everything; it's where humans ran machines. I'm repeating myself, but it changes what music you throw together out of the loads of techno that feasibly could be Esper.

The order is:
White Dimir (ordered, precise, and dark)
Black Azorius (explains itself)
Blue Orzhov (only one song like that on here; hard to define)

Autechre - Clipper
Orbital - Spare Parts Express
Sasha - Xpander
Black Dog - EVP Echoes
Autechre - C. Pach
Black Dog - Dada Minstab
Underworld - Mama Nuxx Jam
Mocean Worker - Intothinair
Sasha - Bloodlock
Cardamar - Steam

Magic and Music: Bant (Green-White-Blue)

2010-01-20T10:08:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81261/

Now we come to the shards. Since some three-color things already were on the guild ones, these are 60 to 64 minutes long instead of 70 to 74. It's harder to find three-color songs than two-color, but they're often richer and therefore more fun.

You can approach a three-color compilation in a couple of ways. You can do like they actually did to make Shards of Alara and define the three colors together by what two colors aren't there. You can go by the uncommon Shards lands (I found this approach unproductive). Or you can do the additive method: taking the principles that made the guild mixes and finding songs that shade toward a third color enough to where they "round up" into the shard or wedge. The last one's probably the most practical if you're trying to do one of these with your collection, because if you're like me, your collection skews to a couple of guilds anyway. It's also the easiest to categorize them by that third method, so I recommend it. This is most helpful when making the wedges, as Magic's given them no flavor save for the Apocalypse expansion and the Planar Chaos dragons.

On to Bant...Bant's flavor is noble military, which seems to skew it toward red-white when you play with it. Wizards has admitted that Bant's signature card, Finest Hour, just felt Bant even though its ability is red. You run into the same problem making a Bant compilation; how do you make it sound all Exalted without turning it into Boros 2.0? The trick is to focus on two areas: the smoothness in the electronic rhythms (what Azorius prefers, which is as far away from red as possible), and the organic sounds (emphasizing the green). By the three-part breakdown, you get the combinations below; for this and all other shards/wedges, I'll list them by their prominence on my compilation, most frequent to least frequent.

Blue Selesnya (dancing hippies)
Green Azorius (natural order)
White Simic (experimenting on nature but only releasing the orderly bits)

Blu Mar Ten's Black Water album is the Bantiest thing I've heard.

So it all leads to this:

Blu Mar Ten - Black Water
Delerium - Silence (Sanctuary Mix)
Bassic - Tranquility Bass
Cardamar - Start
Banco de Gaia - Last Train to Lhasa
(Secret of Mana) - Fear of the Flava
BT - The Road to Lostwithiel
(Gauntlet) - GAUNTLET!!
Blu Mar Ten - Ghost Trio --> Turtle Beach
Chicane - Saltwater

Magic and Music: Simic (Green-Blue)

2010-01-20T07:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81273/

This is one of my top 5 compilations flavor-wise, and it's one of the most important to me, as it's my belief that blue and green are the two most ignored colors for gamers' playlists since they're the two least inclined to power, rawkin', and all those things that many gamers like about gaming.

The Simic were about improving on nature with technology; this calls for a rather specific group of songs. A lot of the environmentally-oriented techno works here (esp. if it's got an aquatic motif, given that we're discussing Islands). Warp's seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation set off a wave of excellent music, a good chunk of which was green. Global Communication's 76:14 album is quintessentially green-blue; one of its flagship songs is on here. It's a narrow mood (it can be tricky to find songs that are neither light nor dark in mood), but if you can put all the songs together, it makes for a powerful compilation.

Mystical Sun - Blue Magnetic Ocean
(Donkey Kong Country) - Blue Vision
Plaid - Gel Lab
Susumu Yokota - The Loneliness of Anarchic Beauty Achieved by My Ego
Global Communication - 9:25
B12 - Interim
BT - Embracing the Future --> Poseidon
B12 - Telefone 529
Bassic - E-World
Xerxes - Cell Progression

Magic and Music: Boros (Red-White)

2010-01-20T07:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81251/

The Boros compilation was one of the most difficult, and I'm not usually in the mood for it (although some are keen on it). The way I framed white and red music, combining them was like saying a did not equal a, but it came through eventually. As I don't own any military music or the Gladiator soundtrack, I had to scrounge a bit, but the main theme is mixing white's orderly songwriting and clean production with Red's tempo and loud, propulsive beats (like military music, the Boros set has the loudest snares of the compilations.) How well it coheres, I don't know, but there are plenty of great individual moments all through here, and it's a good album to pump you up without feeling all metal/dark.

Mu-Ziq - Scaling
UltraMax - Arwen's Song (Galadriel)
Way Out West - The Gift
Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke - Tempest [at least Gerrard was the female voice on the Gladiator soundtrack]
VNV Nation - Electronaut
Bassic - Instigator
Doves - Crunch
Way Out West - Spaceman
Hybrid - We Are in Control
Ken Ishii - Dinosaur.R
(Jackal) - Mounted-Machine Gun Funk
Blu Mar Ten - If I Could Tell You
Durutti Column - Meschugana

Magic and Music: Golgari (Black-Green)

2010-01-20T07:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81264/

Like the Orzhov or the Selesnya, the Golgari's premise is
translated easily into music: where death meets life. The
angle I took for them is creeping lush soundscapes, sort of
"When Nature Documentaries Go Awry." This concept already
has an amazing album behind it, Future Sound of London's
"Lifeforms," but dark acoustic/tribal music can work here,
highlighting the difference between Gruul and Golgari in the
process (Gruul's red makes that nature talk about passion,
while Golgari's black channels it into darkness.)

As I found out when making the Teneb (BGW) and Vorosh (GUB)
compilations, I'm in a black-green mood a lot when I'm
contemplative; this means I have a lot of music for it. This
was a simple one to put together, but it may be too...bland
for some. Unless you like darkness, this is a pretty
downtempo, late-night collection. I'm in that mood a lot, so
it works for me, but your mileage may vary even if you agree
that it's undeniably black-green.

Future Sound of London - Lifeforms (Path 1)
Hybrid - I Choose Noise
Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea
The Orb - Oxbow Lakes
Future Sound of London - Dead Skin Cells
Delerium - Flowers Become Screens
Porcupine Tree - Lips of Ashes
Genesis - Entangled
Electric Skychurch - Limp
Susumu Yokota - The Destiny of the Little Bird Trapped Inside
a Small Cage for Life
Deep Forest - The First Twilight
Leftfield - Rino's Prayer

Magic and Music: Izzet (Blue-Red)

2010-01-20T04:24:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81268/

I'm proud of the Izzet list for its nuance. Izzet music is misunderstood, much like the guild itself. While the guild appeared outwardly to be insane geniuses, they had many highly competent fellows in there; Chronarchs, Dragonauts, and Niv-Mizzet all knew exactly what they were doing and were brutal to deal with. It's the same with their music. Oh, you could say that a bunch of weird techno for 70 minutes could count as a guild album, but that's not really how it works either. The Izzet were passionate about knowledge and loved to express it in whatever way was available. The Izzet loved knowledge for its own sake. In that vein, their music should be extraverted, in-your-face blue. "We have technology and this song is cool because it's complex and technological." That leaves room for the occasional oddity, but extraverted bluism is what should predominate, and that doesn't have to be kitschy or unsettling.

BT early in his career was green/white/blue. Now he's red/white/blue. If you know much of his career, it will show you the competent side of red-blue that I think best represents Izzet. Boards of Canada's Geogaddi album is about as blue-red as it comes, with shades of green.

BT - Orbitus Teranium
Thomas Fehlmann - I Wanna Be a Fishy
Underworld - Cowgirl
Aphex Twin - Polynomial-C
Cardamar - Tears of a Man Who Never Cried
Underworld - Puppies
Boards of Canada - Dandelion --> 1969
Underworld - Deep Arch
The Orb - A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld

Magic and Music: Orzhov (White-Black)

2010-01-20T04:07:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81253/ (Playlist complete)

The enemy pairings are a little bit more difficult to nail than the allied ones because of the color hole between them. For example, with the Orzhov you're hitting a lot of Azorius and Dimir artists, except that they can't have any of the blue bits in the song. That's not always easy to find, but fortunately the Orzhov are one of the easiest to patch together, because light and dark, hauntings, and sacred grounds (or Godless Shrines as the case may be) are common musical themes. Like the Selesnya, the Orzhov are easy to understand; it's just making their music cohere that proved to be difficult. Most of the music on here is reverently dark, as you'd expect, but the thing that makes most of it go together is that it's slooooow. Unless the song so exhibits light and darkness to the extent that the Orzhov will accept it on that basis, the songs need to be church-paced to feel reverential of the area it's covering.

Fortunately, just as the guild would have ethereal, God-sounding music, so it also would have more vocals than the average compilation; a church implies people. Several Dead Can Dance songs could show up on here, but Anywhere Out of the World defines the guild best. Porcupine Tree, a true Orzhov band, shows up prominently here too. (It's that white element that lets me like them, as opposed to several proggy metallic bands who have too much red.) I don't know how well the compilation holds together, but there are plenty of good songs on it.

Black Dog - Biomantric Life
Dead Can Dance - Anywhere Out of the World
Aphex Twin - Icct Hedral
Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke - Pilgrimage of Lost Children
Bassic - Tech Demon
Black Dog - Witches Ov
Porcupine Tree - 'Light Mass Prayers' --> Gravity Eyelids
Hybrid - Blackout
UltraMax - Beauty of My Inner World
VNV Nation - Rubicon
Hybrid - Finished Symphony

Magic and Music: Selesnya (Green-White)

2010-01-19T09:11:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81252/

Hippie nature lovers...I mean, the Selesnya, are all about nature, like the Gruul are. But where the Gruul like it hot, the Selesnyites are about the calmer side of nature. My comment on red improvising while white writes its songs on sheet music applies most directly to the Gruul-Selesnya divide; while Selesnya contemplates life and nature, Gruul wonders what contemplation is.

Of the guilds, the Selesnya compilation is one of the easiest to understand: calm, primarily acoustic music, preferably with female vocals. Green has enough passion to rear its head once and again (the Selesnya did bring us Autochthon Wurm, after all), but it's tempered by the order of white at all times.

Here come the hippies:

BT - Firewater
Bassic - Sunbound
BT - Tripping the Light Fantastic
Chicane - Low Sun
Blu Mar Ten - Home Videos
Susumu Yokota - For the Other Self Who Is Far Away That I Can Not Reach
Dead Can Dance - Cantara
Genesis - Horizons
Steve Hackett - Hands of the Priestess, Part 1
Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke - Forest Veil
Deep Forest - Sweet Lullaby
Delerium - Nature's Kingdom
Cardamar - Nic'nik
Delerium - Aria

Magic and Music: Gruul (Red-Green)

2010-01-19T08:38:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81266/

The Gruul would find this introductory sentence too long. Smashing things with big things is all Gruul likes to do, all day and every day, and the more passionately one can smash, the better. In particular, the Gruul distrust artifice, preferring to get all their rage out on natural instruments and thus separating themselves from the claustrophile Rakdos. The jazz-fusion instrumentals of Genesis are a good touchstone here; Genesis, a fairly green-white band overall, ventured into red whenever Phil Collins got a hold of instrumental passages (the Gruul love drums, especially the greenness of tribal drums/percussion). Though the idea of prog rock is kinda complex for a Gruul mind, theirs is a world of feel, and if the long instrumental feels right, then it is right. The sound of musicians letting 'er rip gets the Gruul all happy, and here's to them with the following songs:

Peter Gabriel - The Rhythm of the Heat
Phil Collins - Droned
Genesis - '...In That Quiet Earth'
Easily Embarrassed - Little Trees and Mysteries
Juno Reactor - Pistolero
Banco de Gaia - Obsidian
Susumu Yokota - The Scream of a Sage Who Lost Freedom and Love Taken for Granted Before
Banco de Gaia - Creme Egg
Terrestre - Eita-Leitale
Brand X - Malaga Virgen
Porcupine Tree - Tinto Brass
Genesis - Los Endos

Magic and Music: Rakdos (Black-Red)

2010-01-12T17:52:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81272/

The Rakdos were hellbent on many things, hence their ability word. Dark and destructive, they sought power and they sought it passionately. Anyone who's played with Rakdos the Defiler or Anthem of Rakdos knows how this works. Accordingly, dark passion is bubbling all through this compilation. Many Magic players are conditioned by video games and nerd tastes to put black-red music as game-playing background anyway, so this isn't much of a leap here. Progressive rock instrumentals (which usually are more passionately delivered than lyriced ones) and the frenzied end of drum'n'bass sit remarkably well together on this compilation.

The Rakdos go even more nuts when they hear these:

Blu Mar Ten - Grey Area
Underworld - Pearls Girl (Tin There)
Spock's Beard - Skeletons at the Feast
Riverside - Reality Dream III
Porcupine Tree - Wedding Nails
(Super Mario Bros.) - Bowser Is Ticked
Blu Mar Ten - Clipjoint
Cardamar - Depths of Communication
VNV Nation - Entropy
Blu Mar Ten - Close (VIP)
VNV Nation - Descent
Eisbrecher - Polarstern
Gary Numan - Asylum
Dream Theater - Panic Attack

Magic and Music: Dimir (Blue-Black)

2010-01-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81255

The largely underground Dimir barely revealed to the world of Ravnica that it even was a guild, preferring secrecy and stealth in all their actions. Watery Grave does a nice job of conveying this, although the uncommon land Duskmantle, House of Shadows gives the Dimir game away as well. The album, pretty obviously, is going to be a dark one, although unlike black-red it won't be fast, and unlike black-red it necessarily features electronica.

The easiest way of conveying an underground feel musically is to keep all the notes low - literally looking underground if you had sheet music. That may sound odd at first, but considering how high strings and vocalists give an ethereal feel to white, black sitting on the other side of blue can flip that around to get what it wants. There's a sense of subversion to blue-black, and this compilation is trying to get that across.

(Before posting, a note on vocals. The first song on here has, amazingly enough, appropriate lyrics for the guild, although I chose it for its music. You could make lyrically themed compilations for the guilds and shards; I just went with music ones. I also tried to stay away from vocal songs unless the mood so fit the guild that I had to include the song. It's amazing how easily one or two vocal tracks can derail the flow of several instrumentals, so where possible I've kept compilations instrumental.)

The Dimir love the following:

Hybrid - Choke
Sasha - Immortal
Autechre - Foil
Black Dog - 4.7.8.
Cardamar - Capacity (How Much Can You Take?)
Underworld - Winjer
Leftfield - Swords
Blu Mar Ten - Above Words
Hybrid - Gravastar --> Marrakech
Aphex Twin - Blue Calx
Black Dog - Skin Clock
Sasha - Boileroom

Magic and Music: Azorius (White-Blue)

2010-01-07T18:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81260/

Going around the color wheel, our first stop is at the highly legalist Azorius. Because the Azorius weren't that well-designed (only 9 Forecast cards and most of them bad), their true flavor is somewhat obscured. This is the beauty of going off dual lands for initial inspiration; they give the barest, bonesiest info you can find. And in this case, it helps a lot. Hallowed Fountain was not the flavor I got from cards like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV or Overrule, but it implies that this lawmaking and rules lawyering is somewhat about serving a higher purpose.

To that end, the Azorius compilation is about a few main ideas:

- Maintaining order (everything's measured, especially on the beat - too many frills and it's red, the shared enemy color)
- Clean and pristine production (a white value combined with blue's technology)
- High strings (as opposed to deep bass, which blue likes okay but is more of a black tendency)

So most of the Azorius will be the ethereal/chilly end of trance, with some room for ambient tracks that advance that cold feeling. There may be some warmth on the hallowed end of it, but as the Azorius were generally cold and distant, so should the album feel the same way.

Before listing the album, a few notes about presentation of songs. Artists in parentheses are actually OCRemix-submitted arrangements of the video game listed in parentheses. Many of the names are weird, long, and altogether unhelpful, so the video game is more instructive, with the caveat that I'm not lifting the game versions themselves. Also, if the same artist has consecutive songs on the album, I'll list both songs on one line separated by a --> . Many times, the songs go together on their initial album in the first place. It's just easier to post it that way.

Last, but not least, the most archetypal songs of the guild/wedge/shard will be in bold. If you're truly interested in the album, YouTubing these will give you the best encapsulation of the concept.

Here it is - the Azorius album:

Orbital - One Perfect Sunrise
Sasha - Mr. Tiddles --> Magnetic North
Electric Skychurch - Creation
BT - Giving Up the Ghost
Black Dog - UV Sine
BT - Rose of Jericho
Chicane - Andromeda
Blu Mar Ten - Brother
Gus Gus - Detention
C&M - Dream Universe (16B Still Waters Symphony Mix)
Sasha - Wavy Gravy

If you know any others that you think might fit, feel free to list them. Depending on if I agree, I might buy them just to make the compilations better.

Magic and Music: Intro and the Color Pie

2010-01-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

Early in 2009, I made guild mix CDs for my Magic: the Gathering playgroup, and they turned out to be a hit. I’ve updated them a few times, and in the process learned a lot about how Magic translates into other fields. If you’re like me and fascinated by music theory as well as the Magic color pie, then you’ll enjoy this discussion; if not, you’ll wonder what in the world I’m talking about.

Before I get into specific CDs, it’s important to know where I’m coming from on how Magic colors relate to music. If you’ve seen one of those big fold-out things for new Magic players, where it discusses the philosophy of each color, then you’ll recognize me doing the same procedure for music.

While technically I didn’t start here – since my aim was Ravnica guild albums, I looked at their rare dual lands as the two-word encapsulations of their ideals – behind the best of my song inclusions was a nod to these color philosophies. This worked for my collection, which is about half rock and half electronica; depending on what you have, you may want to fit these ideas to your collection.

Without further ado:

WHITE

In Magic: White loves order and defense. Many of their emblems are sun/light related, with their concepts favoring good over evil.

In music: There are many sunny songs out there, and many of those are fairly well-ordered (i.e. opposed to chaos). So, white manifests itself in these ways:

Writing: Without a doubt, white composers plan their entire song before performing it. It’s written on sheet music to the last detail, with nary a stray note to be heard. To do less would grate on white’s sense of order. Everything is in its right place.

Arrangement: The most important thing to a white arranger is structure – cleanliness would be an appropriate term. They can tell you why a thing is where it is, and they hate the soundfield cluttered with random or too many sounds. This often applies to the beat especially, which is preferred crisp and predictable.

White is also a sucker for high strings and similar pads, as it reminds of ascension and triumph. The ethereal and angelic are highly prized, and a light touch in the arrangement can work wonders in making the white listener feel at home.

Performance: On simple songs, white may be fine with performing live, but sees the real creative entity as the song, an abstraction outside the creator. Once the perfect take is recorded, that’s the song forevermore. White sees no reason to deviate from perfection once attained, so live performances aren’t particularly exciting.

Why White isn’t the other colors:

Blue: White and blue share a love for order and pristine condition, but blue music is much more likely to experiment for its own academic sake (white finds that it messes with good things too often) and pursue technological advances at the risk of losing the song inside.
Black: White and black differ on the value of the ethereal, obviously. This is one of the easiest to understand in Magic, music, and all of life.
Red: Red’s love of passion and feeling swallow white’s ordered tendencies whole.
Green: White and green share a love of nature (nature is highly ordered, after all), but for green it is essential to be organic and show that you’re alive, whereas white tends to subvert feelings and expression somewhat. White also doesn’t know why green tends to shun modern development when it could express its ideas better with technology.

An example of a white artist: Dead Can Dance is the easiest example of a white music outlook. Trance is largely white-blue; English folk music is green-white.

BLUE

In Magic: Artifice. Intelligence. The academic. Isolation. Water.

In music: There is no blue rock music. (If there is, it’s heavily experimental stuff. Peter Gabriel, Tortoise, Wayne Coyne, and Kid A-era Radiohead are possible blue rockers, but even that’s up for debate.) Blue simply does not understand why rock artists would limit themselves to a few instruments; it does not compute.

Writing: The use of technology is understood as the only way to write. Why wouldn’t you lean on the best devices at your disposal? This lends a degree of academic experimentation to the proceedings; blue songwriters are the ones most likely to be considered “out there,” even if it makes perfect sense in their bizarre universe. Like white, blue has a tendency to lay everything out, but blue also has no problem following wherever the technology takes it, as the most creative works come out of the strangest places. Asymmetrical time signatures are favored as a means of exploring the complex and the unique.

Arrangement: Blue arrangements are the most technically proficient of any color, as the production is as or more important than the core song itself. (The other colors tend not to get this about blue.) Blue producers may layer parts countless times, or send the mix through a weird effect, or any number of seemingly leftfield things that become an intellectual triumph.

Performance: White doesn’t feel the need to do anything live because the composition’s there on paper or in the recording. For blue, the recording’s production values and quirky elements are of massive importance, so blue rarely performs either. Blue’s songs tend to have no point live, as the production’s gone.

Why blue isn’t the other colors:

White: Blue and white can get together on several projects, but when blue starts talking all techy, white tunes out, talking to green about a more natural project or sympathizing with enemy red on how annoying blue’s technology jones is. White will work on the melody line while blue will create weird sounds from nowhere, and if they find the other’s work pointless, they can’t work together.
Black: Blue and black create many a dark, scary mood when they collaborate, but it’s that sense of mood that also drives them apart. Blue figures the mood will come from the production, while black is far too easily attracted by any dark object, according to blue at least. When blue is feeling especially academic, creating a dark mood is just too easy, and it’s here where the colors converge.
Red: Red is far too impatient to work with the methodical, experimental blue on a regular basis. Much like white’s problem with red, blue stares at red’s passion with bewilderment, wondering how red gets anything done with that impulsiveness. Red has a similar disdain.
Green: Green has this nature obsession and a love of the organic that blue feels went out with yesterday’s news. To blue, green can accomplish very little new with that mindset. Blue feels held back by green in a number of ways, and green sees no point getting together with a navel-gazing freak.

An example of a blue artist: Aphex Twin sometimes gets into other colors, but he’s about as blue as they come. His crazy stuff is more than blue, but if you consider his ambient works as well, he’s a blue songwriter to the core. Trance is white-blue, but sometimes blue-black depending on the artist. Many other electronic forms are blue-black because of their dark undertones, though if it’s too passionate it will be black-red.

BLACK

In Magic: Ambition, darkness, and a general pall over the proceedings.

In music: Dark music is plentiful, and black loves it all, no matter what else is going on.

Writing: Black may be orderly or chaotic, but it’s all to the end of creating something menacing and powerful. In general, power dominates whatever black is doing. Muscular riffs, relentless rhythms, and an overall growl work just fine for black.

Arrangement: Still about darkness, though this can manifest itself different ways. Like white, black loves strings, but the point is to create unease, not ethereal tones. Black is unsure of major keys and anything deemed reflective music, relenting on the latter only when blue convinces black the song’s dark enough.

Performance: When black is allowed to set the mood of the venue, then black has no problem performing – it’s all about mood, so the song can be performed if the mood is right, regardless of how it sounded on the album version. Do not expect black to play Selesnya’s outdoor festivals anytime soon – stupid hippies taking all the power out of music. (Seemingly every discussion among teenagers about metal gets to whether it’s dark enough; this is a discussion on the blackness of the music.)

Why black isn’t the other colors:

White: They disagree on mood almost all the time. White wants to add this high strings bit, and black hates it because it furthers the wrong mood. There is common ground here, but that ground is always in a bit of mood tension.
Blue: Blue has the technology to fuel black’s desires effortlessly, but black is too obsessed with the desires to let blue experiment too much. Blue also is sometimes a little bit too just-so for black’s tastes, at which point black asks red for some chaotic goodness.
Red: Black is passionate like red, which makes them a good match most of the time. However, red’s passion, like blue’s academia, trips over itself constantly, and at that point black is like white, seeing no value in things pursued as an end unto themselves. Much as white tries to express the ethereal, black tries to express the evil, and red wastes a lot of energy along the way to that expression.
Green: Green normally likes things alive, while black prefers them dead. Like blue, black sees no reason for green to continue in its nature fantasy land, preferring like blue to mold things for its own benefit.

An example of a black artist: Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is a top-notch exploration of the color black, with the first track “Angel” being one of the ultimate anthems of the color. Leftfield’s Rhythm and Stealth is similarly helpful. As you might guess, a lot of trip-hop is black. Dark drum’n’bass and trance can be blue-black, as is deep house a lot of times. Metal and hard rock ordinarily are black-red. (Progressive metal ordinarily is black-red-white.)

RED

In Magic: The Unglued card Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire sums it up right in the name.

In music: It’s all about passion and feeling. Jam sessions, loud beats, rawkin’ – all of the heart of red. This is the color that casual music fans understand the easiest, because so much popular music is dedicated to love songs and the visceral.

Writing: Red will bang on instruments for awhile and build a song off it. Red sees very little need for sheet music or forethought – you just have to catch the flow at the right moment. Like blue, red loves asymmetrical time signatures; but where blue loves them as academic exercises, red loves them because sometimes they just feel right. Did putting the jam in 7/8 speed up the song over 4/4? Then it was worth it. That said, red is suspicious of things getting too complex, preferring simple, direct statements at all times (hence its love of drums).

Arrangement: Loud is good. Sometimes the song can become subverted through loudness for its own sake; in this way it shares with blue a fascination of certain things for their own sake. Red is uncertain of modern instruments and technology, but will use them if someone can use them passionately.

Performance: It’s almost all about the performance; that’s where the pathos happens. In popular music culture, red music does the best job of promoting itself as a result. (If you’ve been to any coffeehouse live acoustic gigs, you’ve been attending a red-green performance.)

Why red isn’t the other colors:

White: One hides feelings; the other consists of feelings. That doesn’t bode well for a collaboration.
Blue: Red finds blue awfully chilly and detached. Why would anyone do that to themselves? With both enemy colors, red can’t stand that reserved sense it gets and moves on.
Black: Black has a definite passion, which red can get behind, but black’s passion is for darkness, and that can be expressed many ways, several of which red doesn’t like. As much as black loves showing its dominance externally (a very red way to do it), it also loves messing with the mind (a very blue way to do it), and red has to jump ship at that point.
Green: Simply, when nature is passionate and living large (large beasts and smashing things), red and green have a raucous jam. When nature is more reflective (small elves and growing things), red stands there puzzled why green would hang out with such fey partners as white.

An example of a red artist: Most items on the radio, any jam band, or percussion ensemble Stomp. Rock as a whole is red. Phish and its ilk are red-green. Nortec, the Mexican techno genre, surprisingly is red-green. It’s dance music, but the drum choices are usually organic, and most of the interesting elements are traditional Mexican instruments.

GREEN

In Magic: Nature and life in its many forms, be they small like Saprolings are large like Beasts. Green celebrates living and shuns the artifice that might hold that life back.

In music: Fairly well the same thing as in Magic. Not a whole lot of difference there.

Writing: Green’s style is straightforward – get outside, get inspired, and write. It’s a simple process. In contrast to black, green favors major keys, as they just sound happier.

Arrangement: The more natural the production sounds, the better. Acoustic instruments are preferred strongly, though green is appreciative of field recording and nature sampling. This also gets into red’s territory of liking drums, as drums can be played just about anywhere; tribal rhythms and percussion are always green. (If they’re fast, they’re also red.)

Performance: Get outside, get inspired, and play. Campfire sing-alongs are green. Also straightforward.

Why green isn’t the other colors:

White: White tends to hide itself every once and again, and its love of order sometimes makes its world too civilized and advanced for green’s simple, heartfelt tastes. If White could just get back to basics, it and green could hang out more often.
Blue: Blue’s love of knowledge and progress usually does so at the expense of green’s world. To green, blue appreciates nothing of the real world. How can it improve on the already beautiful?
Black: Like blue, black is too concerned with itself to appreciate anything good in life. Nature is meant to be loved and lived, not holed up for ambition. Black’s motivations are all wrong.
Red: The circle of life type of outlook gives green balance and harmony – traits that red abandons at the drop of a hat. Green and red get along well, but the chaos unnerves green severely.

An example of a green artist: Susumu Yokota allies freely with the other colors, but his core is green; the Love or Die album is green in every song. As you’d guess off Yokota, the organic side of ambient music is green; folk music is often green. The Canterbury progressive scene of the early ‘70s was green-white, much like the slower short pieces on Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte. Yes drummer’s Bill Bruford’s distaste for the “twinkly bits” of prog would be the green-white sections. (He had tons of red in him, obviously.)

Hopefully, the foregoing has been clear enough to do the music color pie justice. In the next segment, I’ll cover a specific album, one entry at a time, until all 20 are done.

Entering the Decagon: Way Out West at #8

2009-08-01T09:56:00.001-07:00

Sorry, presumed readers - bar exam consumed much time of late, but I'm ready to get writing again.

Way Out West is a bit enigmatic of a band. This is in large part because they ply their trade primarily in trance and its environs. When people know how to do trance, it is very, very good, among the best music around. But finding that quality trance is very difficult and can make you give up on the genre if you don't find it. When Way Out West is on their game, they make incredible stuff; otherwise, it's just sort of there. As a result, I don't listen to them much aside from their top songs, so in terms of career/band analysis, this one's a bit more down on the group than I'd like for it to be. They've been ahead of the electronica curve several times, and there's no reason to think it won't keep happening; it's just that the results are less than stellar when they're not on their A-game.

WOW is a Bristol, UK duo comprising Nick Warren and Jody Wisternoff. Both are well-known in the electronica scene, the former for all sorts of things (the first mix CD of the Back to Mine series and other similar works) and the latter for a recent string of dancefloor hits with retro vibes ("Cold Drink, Hot Girl" and "Starstrings" being the main ones). Their busy schedules elsewhere have held them to only three albums in 13 years, but there's a fourth coming soon.

Their relevant works are:
Way Out West (1997) - With songs like "The Gift" and "Domination," the debut album established what makes WOW so great; melodic trance productions with rhythms rarely matched in the genre. This is one of those classic "next level" albums; if you like trance and have gotten all the seminal works, this one gives your collection the extra bit of depth and variety needed to make it a vital collection.
Intensify (2001) - Moving more towards a more streamlined trance but leaving room for some vocal numbers, I rate this one higher than many (Allmusic gives it only 3 stars and I have no clue why). In terms of completeness as an album, this is one of the best trance albums out there. Some moves are obvious (like building opener "The Fall" around Mixmaster Morris's version of "Autumn Leaves"), but there's still plenty of material to separate them from the pack.
Don't Look Now (2005) - As some of you may know, the early-to-mid-'00s were not kind to electronica in general. BT's noted (I believe in a live Twitter-fueled interview this summer) that he felt completely uninspired by what was going on in the scene for a number of years. He hadn't done any dance stuff since his album in 2003, choosing instead to make the dramatic electroniscore This Binary Universe in the interim, and it's only this year that he's returned to dance. The gap really was that big, and this album is one of the albums from an innovative artist that failed to innovate.

The problem plagued the genre at large as mainstream audiences were embracing electronica; increasing vocal turns and a move toward pop may have gotten songs on Dawson's Creek or some similar show, but it weakened the music. This is especially so with WOW, who slowed down their songs to pop tempo for their vocalist, leaving no space for the rhythmic detail that is usually their over-the-top strength. When they left the pop alone, such as on "Anything But You," the results with vocals were brilliant. To be fair, there was a lot of average-to-above-average material on the album, but the clunkers drag them down significantly, as the album generates no momentum. Of all artists who could make the transition to vocal electronic pop for an album, this isn't one of them, sad to say.

Spaceman single (2008) - Vocals are out, rhythm's back in, song is a return to form. The band says their next album is a bunch of "cosmic disco" stuff, which from what I've heard loses the beat again. But appreciate this gem of a song for all its awesomeness.

Nine-point analysis:

1) Chord sequences. For the most part, WOW avoids the most cliched of its genre, and it doesn't have one song that makes you think of another automatically on that front. From a trance group, this is about all you can hope for. Fair enough.

2) Song structure. They shine here, especially relative to trance. What WOW does that I haven't heard from any other trance artist is what I like to call the "late break"; i.e. they'll take a mood that's been going for the whole song and bring in new instruments and usually a new chord sequence. On "Domination," which Warren considers the quintessential Way Out West song, you get new chords for the first time around the 6-minute mark, when most songs would consider it too late to introduce something new like that. "Hypnotise," another personal favorite, has a fairly standard trance motif until the middle, where it breaks down and comes back with this 2-step type rhythm that reintroduces the vocal sample saying "Hypnotise" but with more of the sample, as in you get more lyrics suddenly. For a genre like trance that tends to get repetitive quickly, that they're able to introduce these twists so late in the game, in a way saving the best for last, makes them singular. They don't have to be big twists, but they're always effective due to genre. Points here.

3) Mood. They don't really ply their trade here. Though songs like "The Gift" have a solid mood to them, usually they're just trying to get people to dance. Their short ambient pieces that show up every now and again aren't that effective, either.

4) Layers. These primarily serve song structure and rhythm and don't have independent value in this case. Their songs always sound sufficiently fleshed out, which, like most things, isn't standard for trance. (There's some cheap trance out there, people. Stay away from it. It's poison.)

5) Genre-bending. They've only really been in this area twice, once with "The Gift" and arguably a second time with "Hypnotise." On the latter, it's what I already mentioned, that a trance song went straight into a 2-step shuffle without blinking. Given that the producers of each came from very different assumptions on how to go about making a song, that WOW put them together as though this happened all the time is a special thing indeed.

But it's "The Gift" that really shines on this front. Nick Warren admits that the idea was just to slow down a drum'n'bass/jungle vibe, but that allows for completely different instrumentation and mood. "The Gift" isn't trance and it isn't jungle; it's jungle at trance speed with ambient soundscape, and the song feels like it knows it's unique. If you're a genre omnivore (genrevore?) like me, you're incomplete without giving this song a spin. WOW as a group doesn't always care about fusing things, but they're absolutely brilliant when they do.

6) Innovation. For "The Gift" and for ratcheting up the rhythmic complexity of trance in an era when that wasn't really the thing to do, they get some points here, but it's not its own category for the group. Certainly it's not a weakness, though.

7) Rhythm. The other major point-grabber here, as their best work is full of rhythmic elements all over the place, and not just on the drums either. They're also adept at hitting the off-sixteenth note in a natural-sounding way. One of the early elements of "Domination" has them introducing an Ab sound at the 9, 10, 12, 14, and 16 of the 16 notes in the bar, which is extremely difficult to pull off when your hi-hats are at 3 and 10 and your snare's at 5 and 13. It's pulling in a different direction, but they work it all in. "Activity" puts a closed hi-hat at the off-sixteenths as well while making it sound house, which it clearly isn't. Normally, when I hear someone use off-beat syncopation that way, I think Gloria Estefan or someone similar, which isn't helpful. It is next to impossible to syncopate house or trance in a non-annoying, cohesive way, but WOW's ace at this. Their sense of rhythm is nearly unmatched by their peers, and it's their calling card for sure. This is why I can't get into Don't Look Now; they traded in a lot of that complexity to put vocals in, and they like Samson seemed shorn to weakness.

8) Production. They glue their elements well and always sound full, but that doesn't make it an over-the-top point like it was for the Doves. It's good production, but it's not surprising production. Solid, but not a strength or anything.

9) Album construction. Way Out West and Intensify both had solid construction, particularly the latter. Don't Look Now had awful sequencing, but this was mainly from the confused nature of the songs themselves. They could have taken the instrumentals + a couple vocal songs, added a few others, and made it sound like a successor to Intensify if they had wanted to. Overall, I'll call this a strength, at least when they have the songs to support it.

Overall strengths: 2,5,7,8,9. So with only five strengths, how did they get above two bands with six? Basically, WOW is so good when they play to their strengths that they outshine almost everyone when they're on. Very few artists can fill the rhythmic element as well as they can, particularly in trance; even BT, who's a rhythm master, rarely pushes the beat in his trance, preferring to make breakbeat/nu-skool numbers for that urge instead. WOW makes the best rhythms in trance, period. I hope they continue to care about that, but for now they've left a great legacy in what trance can be at its top end.

Entering the Decagon: Doves at #9

2009-07-15T03:38:00.000-07:00

A very different sort of band from the previous entry, the Doves are one of the best Brit alternative bands out there these days. After a dance incarnation as Sub Sub and a fire to their studio that forced them to start afresh, they've put out four albums since 2000, all worth having. They draw comparisons to Elbow frequently, but there are some key differences:

1) We get two vocalists here, bassist Jimi Goodwin (75% of the time) and drummer Andy Williams (the other 25%), both generally easier to listen to than Guy Garvey's full-of-marbles delivery; and

2) The secondary influences are more from electronica, which was what the Doves used to do way back in the day, than from prog.

But other than that, the comparisons work well enough. The Doves make serious, moody rock that keeps them distanced from most of their twee contemporaries; they're too grounded to bear even a resemblance to Coldplay or their ilk, although both peddle grandeur. You can't use a Doves song to make the girls swoon; there's no "The Scientist" in the oeuvre or any "I'm a sensitive guy; love me" trick in the bag.

Their relevant works are:
Lost Souls (2000), a cloudy-day album that's one of the few where a band can play dilettante and have it sound better for it. This is probably still their most intriguing work and it's recommended without reservation. Getting this album the year it came out marked a turning point in my becoming serious about musical innovation, especially the production end, which this album forced me to notice (this might be my favorite album from a production standpoint).
The Last Broadcast (2002), a sunny-day album that was just as intriguingly produced as the first one and has the lion's share of the band's hits, including the band-defining "There Goes the Fear." This album is their best evidence of how they can turn out a killer single that's so good because it's innovative, not because it's a more mainstreamed version of what they're doing already. I kinda miss this those days for albums, where singles are now misleading in the case of several bands because they consciously write one. That's a different topic, though.
Some Cities (2005). This album is good, but not as good as the first two, for a couple of reasons. First, their general theme of satellite towns (city suburbs if you prefer) decaying calls for a more direct approach to the music. They pull this off well, but this album's more gut-punch than drowning, which is not my first choice for their style. Second, this album is primarily produced by Ben Hillier rather than the Doves by themselves. Hillier is one of the best producers in the business at the moment (his work the same year with Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel singlehandedly resurrected their competence), and his work here is spot-on; it's just not the Doves, who are some of my favorite producers ever. Still some great singles here, like "Black and White Town," but the album as a whole doesn't feel as essential as the last two. There's also a tendency here to repeat the four-on-the-snare beat that they used to great effect on earlier songs like "Pounding" (and Coldplay used all over the place for awhile). It works once an album or so, but not for too many songs. Also, "Walk in Fire," generally a fine song, uses the same structure, chord sequences, and drum ideas as "There Goes the Fear," and feels like a poor imitation every time. This is a rare misstep for them.
Kingdom of Rust (2009), sitting somewhere in between their directness and sprawl. The title track is one of their best ever, bearing a passing resemblance to "There Goes the Fear" but being built completely differently, with a '50s country motif (walking bass and all!) merging into their signature warm epic sound. On the whole, there are higher highs and more tepid lows (no true lows) than on Some Cities, although it's a more interesting album on the whole than its predecessor. There are purely "ok, that was a decent enough song" songs ("Winter Hill," "The Greatest Denier," "Spellbound," and "Lifelines"), more so than the other albums, but the rest feel vital. Still behind their earlier work a tad, but compensated for by the title track. It's really that good.

Nine qualities analysis:

1) Chord sequences. Lost Souls had plenty of odd ones, like on "Here It Comes," with different innovative ones for verse and chorus. Since then, they haven't been trying here, which is a right shame. It's close to a liability for them now, but you can always retreat to their earlier work if it irks you.

2) Song structure. They mess with this all the time, and it's a strong plus. This may be what they traded chord sequences in for, as their best surprises have been later on. "There Goes the Fear"'s snare doesn't come in for about 1:30, and when it does, it surprises with its outright ferocity, hogging the spotlight for the rest of the song. "Snowden" off Some Cities has several moving parts, including a surprise distortion-o-rama in the middle that crackles out just as suddenly but still moves the song forward and an increase in tempo afterwards. "10:03" off Kingdom of Rust is sold entirely off its structural surprise. They also have a knack for surprise instruments hijacking mood effectively. Points here.

3) Mood. It's their bread-and-butter; listen to "Kingdom of Rust" if you don't believe me. What sets them apart from their contemporaries is how they use their mood elements. They're explored more for their own sake than for any obvious references (which bothers me about many alternative/indie rockers. We get it; you like New Order and cheap vintage synthesizers. Homage is not innovation.) Plus, the choices for mood are integral fabric of the songs; the Doves are adept at taking textures that would be novelty, "look at what we did" items in the hands of others and turning them into mood setters. "Snowden"'s first important layer post acoustic-guitar is this strange warbly choir that would be more cheesy than affecting with everybody but them. The kitchen sink is loaded with mood tools, but they're used correctly every time. This gives them both uniqueness and appropriateness of mood, a potent combo anytime a band pulls it off.

4) Layers. I was ignorant of layers until Lost Souls hit my ears; in the ensuing 9 years, I've craved excellence of layers (this may have accelerated my foray into electronica, come to think of it). Not only are there plenty of things to follow, they're unusual choices. Probably aided by their earlier electronic days (or initially to hide the fact they weren't virtuosos), the Doves aren't afraid to sound unremotely like a live band; that "macho" factor has always been dumb if you're not an improv band, and they're right to abandon it. It sounds like there are always 10 times as many tracks are you're picking up in any of their songs. Great example for layers here is "Words," off The Last Broadcast. The first verse/chorus is built largely off a chiming guitar line; pleasant but nothing by itself. Second verse, it gets doubled up note-for-note, rhythm-for-rhythm with a glockenspiel. I kid you not. Third verse? They add a glockenspiel harmony atop the whole thing. And it never sounds pretentious or "cute," two of the normal uses of glockenspiel by their contemporaries. They legitimately thought glockenspiel was the necessary textural element to take the guitar line to the next level for impact. And they were right.

5) Genre-bending. They're more a song-to-song difference than within a song, but they've turned up with some surprises, like the acoustic guitar+woodwinds+strings pastoral scene of "Friday's Dust" (seriously, there are oboes and clarinets all over the place), the band-admitted Blade Runner-sounding "Jetstream," and "Compulsion," which has somewhat justifiably been compared negatively to Blondie's "Rapture" but has enough merit on its own. There's slap bass and all sorts of white-boy funk in it. They're also not glued to one strain of alternative rock, writing in several tempos and feels. A slight positive overall.

6) Innovation. They were one of the first prominent Britrock bands to establish this template, one that's neither the retromania of Oasis nor the overt oddity of Radiohead. That's not innovation per se, but depending on how many bands follow in the wake of Elbow the way Elbow's success can be partially traced to the Doves, this may prove a more enduring strain than their forebears.

7) Rhythm. Andy Williams is a fantastic Larry Mullen type drummer on his own, but their production sense gives layers and moods that most alternative bands wouldn't bother with. "There Goes the Fear" is an obvious masterpiece, but "Darker" with its loose groove shows there's more than one side to them, and "Kingdom of Rust"'s use of brushes for that '50s county feel is masterful in a tonal way rather than obvious competence. Very few bands in 2009 could pull off the shades necessary to pull the song off convincingly. Their rhythmic versatility is a major factor in their uniqueness, and is most certainly a strength.

8) Production. As my flagship song for it in my "Eight Qualities of Music" post, I don't need to say too much about it here, but they turned me on to how intriguing production is its own analytical category. Their production style, like on "Catch the Sun," "makes" their songs several times. Give the song to another band and it would be average; let the Doves multitrack it, and it becomes special. They seem to be precisely those chaps who say "oh we can fit in one more part" before finishing the track, relentless studio tinkerers in the positive sense. I know of very few producers who can hold a candle to them (BT and Steven Wilson are the only two in my collection who are in the same league). A Doves song is a production, and that's the key difference among peers.

9) Album construction. They always do well here, helped primarily by a variety of tempos and feels in the original material. Their singles are better highlights in their album context, a standard indicator of a good job on this element. It's usually more rewarding to listen to a Doves album than a Doves single.

So we have positives on 2,3,4,7,8,9. Blu Mar Ten was 3,5,6,7,8,9, so they're equal on overall strengths. Hopefully the contrast between styles but similarity of analysis shows how I view music generally and how liking different genres is pretty easy depending on your perspective. You the reader probably have a similar set of analytical categories, whether conscious or un-, that influence why you like the range of genres you do. Starting off with an alternative and a drum'n'bass/chillout band is a great primer into that range for me.

Entering the Decagon: Blu Mar Ten at #10

2009-07-09T08:05:00.000-07:00

This will kick off an overall artist analysis for my 10 favorite artists. I'll judge them by the eight categories I listed in my relevant blog entry, with one addition: album construction. An artist who knows how to pace an album, give flow where it's necessary, and produce the album in a cohesive fashion can make the album greater than the sum of its parts. This criterion was inapplicable to just talking about songs, but it's a crucial ninth element in distinguishing the novelists from the article writers, so to speak.

Anyway, to Blu Mar Ten, coincidentally at #10 on my list. They're a trio of guys from England who work in the at-odds genres of drum'n'bass and chillout, but their overall style of songwriting suits both equally. More recently, they've started to fuse the two strains, and this year's results on the experiment are breathtaking. They were already great before, but the album due this year may put them over the top into greatness. They've had some underground success and got a song into the Dance Dance Revolution franchise, but chart success is still far away. Not that they seem to care as long as they make good music and continue to travel to places to play their stuff. For that matter, band member Chris Marigold is highly accessible on Facebook and even on AIM; this connection's only a small point in their favor, but it's still a point.

Their relevant works are:
Producer 03 (2003, unsurprisingly), a drum'n'bass work released without their permission but is still their only freestanding album in the genre.
Six Million Names of God (2003), an instrumental chillout work that, while suffering occasionally from lack of melody, nonetheless has a fantastic flow, competent mood-setting, and a leftfield cover of The Cars' "Drive" that must be heard to believed.
Black Water (2007), another chillout album but one more determined to bring the beats and the occasional club/vocal track. This album is an all-time great and my recommended entry point, as it's lush, colorful, inviting, and engaging enough to be far more than background. Best album of 2007, all things considered.
Close EP (2009), only three tracks but a prelude to a single coming out this month and the album later this year. The title track is bland, but the other two tracks, "Above Words" and "If I Could Tell You," are chillout produced with a drum'n'bass vibe and at that tempo, which makes for propulsive chillout, if that can even happen. Both the tracks I mentioned have YouTube videos up from the band, so go check them out.

(This is a great opportunity to state my linking policy. A, I'm lazy. B, You know to how use the Internet as well as I do if you've come across my obscure blog. C, I run the risk of making my posts outdated if I link. D, It just doesn't accomplish much for the work I'd have to put into it. The Facebook reprint served a different purpose initially; it's aberrational re: this policy.)

Back to the discography for a second...for some odd reason, Blu Mar Ten has a bunch of random singles available on ITunes, even sometimes just one song for .99. I have them all, and on the whole they're just not worth getting compared to the albums. The primary exceptions are "Starting Over" from the Weapons of Mass Creation 3 compilation (although Chris Marigold has told me that he doesn't like it, which is strange) and the Clarky Cats/Untitled No. 1 single. If you buy "Mace" from Beatport, it has a skip in it that they haven't fixed for me after over a year. Just random warnings there.

On to the nine qualities of an artist:

1) Chord sequences. This isn't a strength, but it's not a weakness, and in a lot of electronic music that's as good as you're gonna get. You're not going to get sudden key changes or chords leading into another scale, but you're not going to suffer through overused chord progressions or the group's using a chord progression they always use. Since, with the exception of their worst pieces on the d'n'b side, they keep their pieces short relative to electronica, they can get away with a more standard batch of chords anyway.

2) Song structure. Most of the time, BMT sets a mood early and develops it in normal ways; again, the brevity of their pieces leans towards this. But they can pull out the oddball, which is especially true on the cymbal'n'bass style they toyed with on two Black Water songs, "Brother" and "The Feeling (Remix)." (The original "The Feeling" is awful. Do not buy.) On the former, cymbals of various sorts (kinda sounds like a Duke-era Phil Collins pattern, to be honest) propel a clean electric guitar/bass/ambience mix along until halfway through the song, where the cymbals drop out, a major synth at half-speed overpowers the mix, and the song continues at the synth's pace with a dub beat and the guitar/bass/ambience still intact. It blew me away the first time I heard it, and it still does. So they don't normally try for points here, but they score majorly when they try.

3) Mood. An A on mood for sure. Their soundscapes are rich and never off-putting even when they're experimental, and they insert mood everywhere they can; even their drum'n'bass pieces tend to be high on mood factor, which is rare for beat-heavy entries in the genre. Especially on Six Million Names, the mood is established so well that the album's lack of melody doesn't kill it, and that's rare in my estimation. These guys know how to set a mood, and they know how to change it from song to song. They're not stuck in one mood, as contrasted with Moby's style of ambience.

4) Layers. The songs are well-layered, but they primarily serve the mood rather than add a countermelody or anything this separate category is looking for. I will say that the group seems inclined towards natural instrument samples; there's guitar and even electric bass all over Black Water, and Producer 03 and Six Million Names are heavy on saxophones. Real instruments add to the warmth of the sound, and by having a definite goal for their layers they use them more effectively than many.

5) Genre-bending. They write equally well in two genres, so they get high marks here. Rarely have they put them together in the same song, but they're consciously moving in this direction, which to me was the missing piece to conquering all they survey.

6) Innovation. For fusing chillout and drum'n'bass together in the first place, they get some innovation points. How many they get depends on how much they set the bar on this fusion. I have high hopes that they out of all similarly situated artists will do just that - "If I Could Tell You" bleeds innovation - but there's a time element involved here.

7) Rhythm. Their chillout rhythms are fairly unobtrusive but appropriate, and their d'n'b rhythms are intricate enough to avoid growing stale, even if their version of it has no jungle or breakbeat influence. The genre fusing of late has showed up primarily in how they handle a beat, so they're growing in this area.

8) Production. They're not pushing the envelope in this area, but they're highly skilled in it and have no trouble creating the mood they want. A definite plus.

9) Album construction. Black Water was intended to have "clubby" singles and Producer 03 wasn't put together by them, but they each flow well given the constraints. Six Million flows excellently, its continuous mix making sense given the brevity of pieces and attempted mood, and that flow is a key component to that album working on any level.

Bottom line is that these guys manage to pour just about everything into mood creation, whether or not that should bring a beat along with it (and they know when that is). But their versatility, fed by a wide range of influences, is what makes them such a vital listen since Black Water came out and especially with the upcoming material.

The band is friendly to YouTube posters, so a decent portion of their songs in my top 200 should be up there. As a newer entry to my Decagon and one whose strength is based off basically 1.5 albums, these guys are only going up, and I strongly recommend ascending with them.

What do YOU want?

2009-07-09T04:45:00.001-07:00

As mentioned in the "About Me" section, there are a number of ways I can go with reviews and analysis. If any of you readers want me to go a certain direction for awhile, I'll honor that. This is all about developing and communicating why we like music and what makes it good, so any developing and communicating is productive. If it's a direction I don't have listed, suggest a new one. I'm open.

Eight Qualities of Good Music: An Analysis - Reprinted from Facebook

2009-07-09T04:39:00.000-07:00

I find about eight qualities in good music, regardless of their genre. It helps explain my disparate tastes to know that I have analytical categories for what makes good music. (Welcome to the world of an INTP.) As a general matter, if I haven’t been able to break down the components of the song in the time it takes me to listen to it, it’s got me hooked. Here are eight things that matter.

Note: I make no warranty as to the visual content of these YouTube links; some of them are fan made and awful to look at, some are suggestive, etc. I’m referring to the songs only. Put them up and go check your e-mail or something.

1) Chord sequences. In most songwriting, everything works off chords, and the more innovative the sequence, the more innovative everything else has to be. You can’t take a lazy way out on making something sound good when you’ve started off on a unique template.

“Blood on the Rooftops” by Genesis (performed here by Steve Hackett’s band) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MO_CX3ytvd4
Ignore that the dude he has can’t sing; I wouldn’t like this song if that guy sang all the time (Phil Collins did the vox in the original). Listen to the verses: there’s NO song in the universe that sounds like that. And it all feeds off the chords.

2) Song structure. Surprise me with where the song goes, but organically. Sure, you can splice jams together (Yes is guilty of this a lot), but does one part naturally go with the other? At the same time, though, the direction ought to be novel and unexpected. Underworld were absolute masters of this concept, with Orbital managing to a decent job of it as well. For trance artists, Way Out West do extraordinarily well at putting late-breaking developments in their songs. Asymmetrical (not odd – to me, they’re normal) time signatures go here too, and I’m particularly a sucker for asymmetrical electronica. Hard to explain perhaps w/o a song, so…

“Song of Life” by Leftfield
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F58AjZY892E
It goes along just fine as its own thing…and then at 3:29, the piece starts morphing into something else entirely. Two song halves that are decent by themselves, by being linked in surprising ways, go over the top to greatness.

3) Mood. And this isn’t just whether it’s cinematic or not – there are a number of movie soundtracks that sound soundtracky but set no mood because the parts themselves aren’t evocative. But if music is a language, then songs ought to say something definite. In a lot of ways, mood is the articulation of precise musical language. This can range from the cinematically evocative to an artist that sets a unique mood, one that makes sense only within the rules of the artist (again, Underworld and Orbital ruled this category). Mood and song structure are why I like Genesis and Porcupine Tree but not Yes or The Flower Kings; Yes songs often say no more than “we’re really, really good on our instruments,” while Porcupine Tree’s are an artistic statement, a fragile and beautiful delicacy. Aphex Twin was so good at mood that his Selected Ambient Works, Vol. II is a success musically even though almost nothing’s there.

“Blackout” by Hybrid (feat. Kirsty Hawkshaw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FElGUGqnOXM
Especially as the closer of an album that was incredibly tech-oriented/heavily dependent on electricity, a song that’s primarily orchestra, percussion, and vocals is an incredible mood setter. As Kirsty sings “no electricity” repeatedly, it feels like she may be the only person or even living being around. Absorbing in every way, which is to say it nails mood.

4) Layers. Although layers is normally just a method of changing mood and structure in unexpected ways, it deserves its own mention. If mood is articulation, then layers are an expanded vocabulary. Poetry is favored over prose in several settings in large part because of the vocabulary and structure difference, and well-orchestrated layers do about the same thing in turning prosaic music into poetry, if that makes any sense at all. This is also somewhat the same as just good production, although that can have its own importance. Countermelodies and the like fall here too, and they’re vital to most good songs.

“Dirty Epic” by Underworld
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hikzB892adc
This one’s also about mood and structure, sure, but the use of layers is perhaps the most brilliant part of it. Drum loops add and drop from the texture at unusual times (esp. notice 1:13-1:14 v. 1:15-1:16 – even the drop of the kick beat for one measure can matter! Also check out some of the hi-hats disappearing around 2:16-2:24 and the denouement around 2:45 after a measure of full drums from 2:41-2:44), giving the whole piece an unsettled feel that matches the stream-of-consciousness lyrics perfectly. The mood is created by the layering on this one, and it’s genius.

5) Genre-bending. Many an artist becomes confined by its genre, unable to reach out and incorporate something different into their aesthetic. This is one reason pop bands don’t usually last long; there’s nothing they can work into the formula. Obviously, this isn’t always true; Blondie and Queen were able to get just about anything into their sound, and they are all the more enduring for it. Knowledge of genre is important as a way to play with it. This is particularly important with tempo; several disparate genres reside at the same tempo, and a lot of innovative music can happen when you mix-and-match at that tempo. Generally speaking, Tortoise’s stew of genres takes this into account best of anyone I’ve ever heard, though the Flaming Lips aren’t bad at it. This one gets two songs:

“Sleepy Maggie” by Ashley MacIsaac
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoApELfgWcg
The album from whence this came was all about genre-bending, taking traditional Celtic fiddle tunes (plus Gaelic vocals in this case) and ‘90sifying them, with this being the easy standout example. It takes deep knowledge of each genre you’re blending together to be able to do it effectively; you can’t just graft house onto Celtic or Celtic onto house without sounding hokey (see, for example, the Rednex version of “Cotton Eye Joe” that’s popular because it blends genres, even though it does so horrifically and makes both genres sound worse in the process).

“The Gift” by Way Out West
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIkuduk0JMM
Nick Warren has admitted that this song essentially was birthed as what happens when you slow down drum’n’bass/jungle rhythms. But that slowing down gives opportunity for a completely different arrangement around those rhythms, with ethereal stretched-out pads, seemingly infinite echo, and a calm vocal sample to create a half-chilled, half-beat-heavy atmosphere that stands out even 12 years later.

6) Innovation. This may seem like a noncategory given what’s stated above, but it’s an important point all its own. The first few to figure out (and yes, to me songwriting is in large part a matter of figuring out how pieces can fit together in new ways) how to make something work get extra credit. Susumu Yokota made consecutive albums of electronica all in 3/4 time. This, my friends, is HARD.

“If I Could Tell You” by Blu Mar Ten
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fenSc2Aj_Zg
Finally learning how to combine their chill and drum’n’bass sides is resulting in some heady stuff from Blu Mar Ten, this being foremost among them. This came out a few months ago and is just brilliant.

7) Rhythm. A good understanding of how to move a song along is important. Yes, a four-on-the-floor can stick just about anywhere, but good rhythm adds vibrancy and can be the backdrop for an entire mood, particularly hypnotic pieces, for which I’m a sucker. Detail is important here too, as is rhythmic interplay between drums and instruments.

“La Ritournelle” by Sebastian Tellier
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu1fTcGdS8A
This song would go nowhere without that super-funky beat carrying it.

“Squance” by Plaid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u_83y75ZG0
Several likable elements here (the synth hook is to die for) but the way the rhythm treats the song as 2/4 rather than 4/4 is a crucial element, along with the seemingly random rhythmic interludes (check 1:55-1:59). The rhythm allows everything else to bounce seemingly randomly off it.

“Growls Garden” by Clark
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMS3gqc7eRs
The synths contribute so much rhythmic interplay to an already strange 808 drum pattern that it’s sick. Biggest track of 2009 for sure.

8) Production. Skills here are about layers and mood, sure, but being able to spruce up your content with nuance is critical. The best current rock band on this one (and I’m choosing rock here in part because I’ve been putting a lot of electronica on this list so far) is very easily the Doves.

“Catch the Sun” by the Doves
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqlIFLb6jU0
This song’s made entirely off its production, as they fit a TON of distortion in the background, and my favorite part, the twin leads in the chorus that go perfectly together (one’s a warm, mid-heavy bit, while the other’s trebly). You don’t notice how much they’re synergizing until the warm one leaves; contrast the chorus at 3:20-3:35 with any other chorus and you notice it (it doesn’t hurt that they also raised the volume for the trebly part in the chorus where it’s by itself). The track is massive in every way, and that massiveness is what carries the song to greatness. But it took some killer production skills to fit it all in.

“Tremelo Song” by the Charlatans
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNdrXNFiSSA
Though this single mix adds too many parts around it to get the full effect, that piano dink in the center of the mix propels the song far more than you’d think it could. Check the verse around 0:37 – it’s drums, a bass part that’s not easily scrutinized, and the piano dink supporting the vocals. That’s it. Producer Flood makes it a focal point of the song even though it’s not much by itself, and that gives it a refreshing singularity.

These 8 elements explain the bulk of why I like what I like. A song may have pedestrian chords but have mood and production and layers, like “Dirty Epic,” and become a favorite. A song may have tame production but a great rhythm and mood, like “La Ritournelle,” and become a favorite. The more of these elements are present, the more I’m likely to be hooked.

My top 200 songs

2009-07-09T03:53:00.001-07:00

This has been updated on Facebook for years now, but here's a more detailed version of my favorite 200 songs. This gets updated whenever a song deserves to go there. It's always 100 rock and 100 electronic songs. I've listed them here in alphabetical order of genre (I have 10 genres into which I break my favorite music).

ALTERNATIVE (26) - Primarily early '90s college rock, the stuff that Nirvana stepped on.

Charlatans - Tremelo Song
- Weirdo
Crowded House - Kare Kare
- Distant Sun
Depeche Mode - In Your Room
Doves - Catch the Sun
- Crunch
- Your Shadow Lay Across My Life
- There Goes the Fear
- Kingdom of Rust
Flaming Lips - One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21
Jars of Clay - Flood
Matthew Sweet - Don't Go
- Devil with the Green Eyes (Remix)
- Thunderstorm
- Sunlight
Modern English - Face of Wood
- Dawn Chorus
New Order - Someone Like You
Peter Gabriel - Steam
Sarah McLachlan - Possession
Smashing Pumpkins - Untitled
Tasmin Archer - Sleeping Satellite
Tears for Fears - Break It Down Again
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fly From Heaven
Tori Amos - Bliss
10,000 Maniacs - These Are Days

AMBIENT/CHILLOUT (24) - Moody soundscapes intended for contemplation. Hard to find sort through the genre, but the good stuff is great.

Aphex Twin - Blue Calx
- Hexagon
Bassic - Seduction
- Any Minute Now
bLiNd - Blue Vision (arrangement from Donkey Kong Country)
Blu Mar Ten - Black Water
- Brother
- The Feeling (Remix)
Dead Can Dance - Anywhere Out of the World
- Cantara
- How Fortunate the Man with None
Future Sound of London - Dead Skin Cells
Hybrid - Blackout
Mystical Sun - Blue Magnetic Ocean
Opus III - Stars in My Pocket
- Cozyland
Orb - Star 6 & 7 8 9
- Oxbow Lakes
Ozric Tentacles - Crackerblocks
- Spyroid
Spooky - Belong
Underworld - Winjer
VNV Nation - Distant (Rubicon II)
Xerxes - Angelina

BREAKS/D'N'B (17) - Complexity of beat makes for some heady mixes.

Blu Mar Ten - Starting Over
- By the Time My Light Reaches You I'll Be Gone
- If I Could Tell You
- Nobody Here
BT - Orbitus Teranium
- Running Down the Way Up
- Love in the Time of Thieves
Cardamar - Tears of a Man Who Never Cried
Hybrid - If I Survive
- Snyper
- Just for Today
- Can You Hear Me
Susumu Yokota - The Scream of a Sage Who Lost Freedom and Love Taken for Granted Before
Underworld - Pearls Girl
Way Out West - The Gift
- Anything but You
- Spaceman

ELECTRONIC (20) - A catchall genre, or leftover bin for songs that relative to my collection are ungenred.
As One - Contours
Banco de Gaia - Creme Egg
- How Much Reality Can You Take?
Bassic - Instigator
BT - Suddenly
Craig David - Fill Me In
Culprit 1 - Hollow
- Tell Me It Isn't True
David Gray - Please Forgive Me
Depeche Mode - Policy of Truth
Easily Embarrassed - Little Trees and Mysteries
Hybrid - Until Tomorrow
- Break My Soul
Massive Attack - Angel
Orbital - The Girl with the Sun in Her Head
Ozric Tentacles - Ghedengi
- Wob Glass
Peter Gabriel - Growing Up
Primal Scream - Don't Fight It, Feel It
Underworld - Cups

EXPERIMENTAL (27) - IDM, post-rock, etc. fall here. Sounds like a catchall, but it's one of my favorite genre listings.

Autechre - Foil
- Eutow
B12 - Interim
The Black Dog - Virtual
- Seers and Sages
- Squelch
- 4.7.8.
- UV Sine
Cardamar - Capacity (How Much Can You Take?)
Clark - Growls Garden
Durutti Column - Lisboa
- Otis
- Meschugana
- No More Hurt
Eltro - Storm Cloud of the Century
Eskmo - Moving Glowstream
Jaga Jazzist - Animal Chin
- All I Know Is Tonight
- One-Armed Bandit
- Toccata
- Music! Dance! Drama!
Plaid - Squance
Susumu Yokota - A Slowly Fainting Memory of Love and Respect, and Hatred
Tortoise - Djed
- In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Women and Men
- Monica
Underworld - Banstyle/Sappys Curry

FUNK/JAZZ (12) - Largely fusions of all sorts.

Brand X - Nuclear Burn
Deadly Avenger - Day One
Jazzanova - The One-Tet
- Hanazono
- Another New Day
- Soon
Lo-Fidelity Allstars - Battleflag
Massive Attack - Safe from Harm
Orbital - Know Where to Run
Phil Collins - The West Side
Sebastian Tellier - La Ritournelle
Soulstice - Lovely

HOUSE (16) - The midtempo dance genre. Not pursued at large anymore, but some gems still come out every once and again.

Ashley MacIsaac - Sleepy Maggie
As One - Theme from Op-Art
BT - Rose of Jericho
Everything but the Girl - Wrong
Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea
Jamiroquai - Supersonic
Leftfield - Song of Life
Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy
Samantha James - Waves of Change
Susumu Yokota - Soft Tone
Underworld - Dirty Epic
- M.E.
- Luetin
- Beautiful Burnout
Way Out West - Activity

PROGRESSIVE ROCK (31) - The most complex rock in the universe, but prone to pointless jams. Not on this list.

Animals as Leaders - The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing
Dream Theater - Stream of Consciousness
- Panic Attack
Frost* - Hyperventilate
- Black Light Machine
- Welcome to Nowhere
- Pocket Sun
- Dear Dead Days
Genesis - Firth of Fifth
- Dance on a Volcano
- Entangled
- Ripples
- Blood on the Rooftops
- Down and Out
- Home by the Sea/Second Home by the Sea
- Fading Lights
Neal Morse - Author of Confusion
Ozric Tentacles - Oakum
- San Pedro
Porcupine Tree - Signify
- Don't Hate Me
- Where We Would Be
- Lips of Ashes
- Gravity Eyelids
- The Creator Has a Mastertape
- Anesthetize
- Way Out of Here
- Cheating the Polygraph
Riverside - 02 Panic Room
Spock's Beard - In the Mouth of Madness
- The Great Nothing

ROCK (16) - The catchall counterpart to Electronic.

Genesis - Man of Our Times
- Turn It On Again
- No Reply at All
- Mama
- Taking It All Too Hard
- On the Shoreline
Peter Gabriel - No Self-Control
- The Rhythm of the Heat
- Red Rain
Phil Collins - I Cannot Believe It's True
Robbie Robertson - Fallen Angel
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Buster Voodoo
- Hora Zero
Squeeze - Another Nail in My Heart
Sting - Russians
Stone Temple Pilots - Sour Girl

TRANCE (11) - The difference between bad and good in this genre is huge. Never enter this genre without a guide.

BT - Flaming June
- Remember
- Godspeed
Sasha - Boileroom
- Wavy Gravy
Underworld - Pearls Girl (Tin There)
- Two Months Off
VNV Nation - Rubicon
Way Out West - Domination
- Hypnotise
Xq28 - Wake Up