As I compose this, I am not composed. I've been choked up for the last hour and a half over the news that Anna McDonald likely has written her last regular article. There are many of the same emotions I felt when Tim Wakefield retired - the strongest link to a chapter in my past is now broken, the chapter has ended, and I have to embrace a new reality.
Today I essentially finished revising my book draft on negligent communication before submitting it to my friend in book publishing to get advice on the next step. There's a lot of emotion bound up in that effort, as it's a topic I feel strongly about and that I think needs more people exploring it.
You know who first said to me, unsolicited, that I should write a book? Anna. More or less after my stint at The Hardball Times ended due to looking for work, then finding work, then becoming a columnist in Magic: the Gathering, Anna e-mailed me saying she had read my archive and it, among other things, helped her start establishing enough confidence to write herself, as she had just started to do at The Hardball Times. I was going through a lot of emotional stuff at the time, and she was willing to listen and care about me, and together we boosted each others' confidence enough to get ahead.
For a long time, she beat herself up over an aborted attempt to interview Todd Worrell. But even as I suspect there was always that bit of trepidation, she's interviewed tons of players and coaches since then: Bill DeWitt III; John Mozeliak; Joe Kelly; Adrian Beltre; Devin Hester; and others. And she had a great interview style, being particularly adept at sculpting the interview into a narrative, which was aided largely by her asking thoughtful questions to begin with. There was a fullness and a richness to her interviews, and her regular essays carried the same thoughtfulness and level of detail. There was always a gracious balancing of opposing opinions, and you left the article feeling like you really had gained something.
That style served her extraordinarily well when she became a leading media presence on youth football concussions, spurred by her son's involvement in the sport. She was part of a momference hosted by the NFL to help teach safety-conscious football techniques - a conference commissioner Roger Goodell spoke in. If I had told the 2010 Anna McDonald that she'd hear the NFL commissioner speak to her on the NFL's invitation, and that her experience would get her an article on the front page of the New York Times, she wouldn't have believed me. But that's how it ended up.
And this is the woman who put the bug in my head to write a book. Admittedly, when I completed the first draft quickly in 2011 and she didn't have the time to read it, I was devastated - way more affected by it than I ought to have been - and didn't pick up the material for another 18 months. I'm in my mid-20s; I'm not as mature as I would like to be. But the point is that she believed in me in a way no one else had dreamt to believe in me. And so on the day when the project she started in me came full circle, finding out her writing career has come full circle as well is incredibly emotional for me.
Ultimately, Anna was the biggest fan of my baseball writing, and I wound up becoming one of her biggest fans in return. Her sportswriting far eclipsed mine in quality and in popularity - ESPN and the New York Times are kinda big venues - and I was always kind of in the back as something of a proud parent, like maybe I had some sort of legacy. It's a vain thought, I know, but friendships intertwine like that, where you're just honored to be a part of something special, no matter how small or large.
And that's why the news feels a lot like Tim Wakefield retiring. As long as Anna was writing, I still had a stake, sort of, in current sportswriting, an anchor point for when other things were chaotic. I went from a 9-year-old squirt to a baseball writer to a lawyer with Tim Wakefield still pitching for the Red Sox. And I went from a confused twentysomething in Alabama to an arguably competent lawyer in Seattle with a mostly-completed book while Anna McDonald was writing for ESPN. And I kinda rooted for Anna the same way I rooted for Wakefield; there was a personal investment beyond the basics. (Wakefield is from my mom's hometown, and Anna and I had all these e-mails and times when we helped each other out.)
I'm out of words to describe the feeling. When Anna's last article publishes on ESPN, it's going to be a bookend for something I never wanted to end. As she tweeted to me on August 29, "I would have quit writing a LONG time ago without your encouragement."
And I wouldn't have accomplished what I have without your encouragement, Anna. I'm going to miss your writing more than you know. You mean a whole lot to me, and I hope that our next chapters are as fulfilling as this chapter has been.
-Brandon Isleib
September 26, 2013
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Saturday, August 24, 2013
On Harmonizing All the Various Bits of My Life That I'm Known For
I have a number of different roles and friend groups. And by different, I mostly mean different
from each other - distinct, discrete, or separate. From what I've discerned, my Magic player/writer
and baseball writer friends would be surprised at my level of what they would
deem fundamentalist church involvement.
Meanwhile, my Christian friends would be surprised at who some of my
other friends are. I assume, anyway; I
don't try to jab people with ideological sticks and find out who'd keep me
around if they knew everything I did.
It's not like I'm lying about anything; I just don't go out of my way to
shock people or bring all my groups together.
What this means is that, to each group I'm involved in, I
hold a number of heterodox sociopolitical beliefs. I left Facebook in early 2012 basically
because of this; it felt like every day one group of people I cared about and
respected would post a "people who believe X are what's wrong with
society" statement that would back-door call me an idiot because they
didn't guess that any of their friends would dream to believe X. Every well I drank from was poisoned, so to
speak, and the ensuing melancholy made it difficult to feel sufficiently good
about myself to get anything done.
"Even a fool who
keeps silent is considered wise; when he closes his lips, he is deemed
intelligent." - Proverbs 17:28
So what ties all of me together? Am I two-faced or cowardly in what I
believe? I don't think so at least. The key for me is apparently rare but
surprisingly simple:
I respect the
viewpoint difference between me and God.
When I explain what I mean, I think you will agree that this
is the single biggest reason (apart from hypocrisy) that some end up hating
religion. Buoyed by passages such as
Matthew 7:1ff (you'll be judged as strictly/nicely as you judge people), Romans
14:5 (being convinced about something doesn't automatically mean everybody must
agree with you), and James 4:11 (only God is the ultimate judge), here's what
I'm talking about.
The Bible claims, as you would expect, that God made the
universe and is over it. What that means
theologically is that God gets to set terms and conditions on the use of the
universe in a way that would make no sense for me to do. Being the lawyer that I am, I like to
conceive of it as God having copyright control over the universe - He made it,
so he gets to say what happens with it.
If Dr. Seuss's estate wants to be incredibly strict with fair
use/parody/all that, I don't agree that they should care so much, but I don't
hold the rights to their stuff. If
Disney wants to warp copyright law just to keep Mickey Mouse under wraps, I
don't agree with that line, but why would I?
It's not my stuff.
So when the Bible says X behavior is offensive, I don't
always see why that is, but it's not my universe, so why would I have found it
offensive in the first place? I don't
care about X behavior personally one way or the other and I have no cause to. Just as you might not care about certain racy
jokes at work but you understand why there's a policy in place against them and
could articulate that policy to somebody who asks, so I can be ambivalent about
a bunch of things that God cares about and be fine with that while telling you
what the Bible says about them.
And this is where the breakdown occurs in society, I
think. There are people who,
understandably at the outset, try to conform their thinking to God's as
outlined in the Bible. But their version
of it - feeling like they have to both ascertain every reason God cares about
something and then care about the thing just as hard - makes them come across
like they are God. If you've ever been pulled over by a cop who
seems way too happy to get you for speeding, that's exactly the type of
Christianity I'm talking about.
Essentially, the cop agrees too much with the speeding law. If the cop ran the universe, there'd be no
speeders, so when there is a speeder, the cop acts like (s)he runs the
universe.
People don't convert anyone; God does. "What then is Apollos? What is Paul?
Servants through whom you believed[.]" (1 Corinthians 3:5) My role in the universe isn't to get a piece
of running it, or act like I run it, or even agree 100%
with how it is run. My goal is to be a
servant and tell people what God says; what happens after that is basically
none of my business. So why go into my
personal relationships looking for a "win" with them, like this was
sports or politics? I'm a servant and a
messenger; neither job has a win-loss record.
And this is how, whether you are an atheist, a Christian, or
something else, I keep some friends you might not expect. I believe in a higher power, but it isn't me.
So while I can tell you some things He
cares about as the One who runs the universe, I'm not in the same position as
Him, so my interactions with you are different.
I'm supposed to love everyone and be a servant as best I can, and I
can't do that if I'm the cop and everybody looks like they're speeding. If I ran the universe, a lot of things would
be different around here. But I don't,
so I'm not going to act like I do, and the goal of my religious activity isn't
to ascertain every reason the universe might be run this way. My goal is to follow, obey, and serve.
Maybe that sounds glib to you - a version of "I just
work here" - but the truth is I do
just work here, so I'm going to pour myself into my work rather than into being
bossy. A bunch of God's concerns don't
make personal sense to me, but they don't need to, and I'm not going to
apologize for believing He has those concerns even as I don't care about them
myself. I don't relish telling people
certain things from the Bible, but as with the example cop, I don't think
talking about right and wrong is a thing you're supposed to relish anyway. You're supposed to figure it out, but there's
no triumph or smugness available in it; it's just a thing. It's a shame that modern western Christianity
seems to have forgotten this (assuming it ever knew) in a culture that overly
cares about publicly taking sides and identifying with groups.
So there's my answer.
Hopefully it's coherent.
Thursday, December 6, 2012
My double album Hapax Legomenon is out. Would you like to buy it?
I finished my long-time-coming double album Hapax Legomenon yesterday. It's 1:41:25 of my kind-of life story, the song cycle of an INTP's adolescence and moving into adulthood. As it's my story, there are a lot of references and me/nerd-specific imagery. It's the personal album for people who don't like personal albums (like me, actually).
I was going to run a Kickstarter to secure a release on CDBaby and physical spaces, whereby preordering the album as a physical copy or as mp3s would get you the album and finance the release. But for right now, because it's a double album, physical production expenses, including the album art and so forth, is pricier than I like. This is because of the special casing necessary to make a 2-CD jewel case as well as the minimum amount you need to order at a lot of sites. So...
What I'm offering is a serial release of the album. Here's what you'd pay and what you'd get.
What you pay: $10. It's my production rather than professional production/mastering; I'd put my level of volume/recording quality and so on as something like a late '70s album before remastering. If you're into that, then you'll have no problem with this. If you're looking for gloss, I can't provide it. On the flipside, you're paying single-album prices for 1:41:25 of music.
What you get: I will e-mail you the album a song at a time every day for 20 days. Given file sizes, I anticipate these being 256 kbps mp3s, although for shorter songs I could do 320 with no difficulty. Each e-mail/song will come with all my annotations for the song - lyrics, subject matter, what all the references are, and so forth. It's like an Advent calendar but for songs. Not everyone likes long albums or digests them at once. I like long albums, but even this album is about the seventh-longest I own out of several hundred.
So $10 would get you the album and full discussion of each of its songs over three weeks.
If you are interested, e-mail me: earthdyedred at gmail dot com. You can also send me your e-mail address via Twitter (@earthdyedred). I am set up on Paypal as earthdyedred at yahoo dot com (as an e-mail address, not as those words spelled out). Once you pay me, you're added to my list of people to send the songs out to, and you'll get those songs once a day for 20 days.
I have many of the songs up at soundcloud.com/earth-dyed-red . If you have any other questions about it, tweet or e-mail me. I want to sell this in a way I have access to and in a way you would appreciate, so let me know if this works for you.
I was going to run a Kickstarter to secure a release on CDBaby and physical spaces, whereby preordering the album as a physical copy or as mp3s would get you the album and finance the release. But for right now, because it's a double album, physical production expenses, including the album art and so forth, is pricier than I like. This is because of the special casing necessary to make a 2-CD jewel case as well as the minimum amount you need to order at a lot of sites. So...
What I'm offering is a serial release of the album. Here's what you'd pay and what you'd get.
What you pay: $10. It's my production rather than professional production/mastering; I'd put my level of volume/recording quality and so on as something like a late '70s album before remastering. If you're into that, then you'll have no problem with this. If you're looking for gloss, I can't provide it. On the flipside, you're paying single-album prices for 1:41:25 of music.
What you get: I will e-mail you the album a song at a time every day for 20 days. Given file sizes, I anticipate these being 256 kbps mp3s, although for shorter songs I could do 320 with no difficulty. Each e-mail/song will come with all my annotations for the song - lyrics, subject matter, what all the references are, and so forth. It's like an Advent calendar but for songs. Not everyone likes long albums or digests them at once. I like long albums, but even this album is about the seventh-longest I own out of several hundred.
So $10 would get you the album and full discussion of each of its songs over three weeks.
If you are interested, e-mail me: earthdyedred at gmail dot com. You can also send me your e-mail address via Twitter (@earthdyedred). I am set up on Paypal as earthdyedred at yahoo dot com (as an e-mail address, not as those words spelled out). Once you pay me, you're added to my list of people to send the songs out to, and you'll get those songs once a day for 20 days.
I have many of the songs up at soundcloud.com/earth-dyed-red . If you have any other questions about it, tweet or e-mail me. I want to sell this in a way I have access to and in a way you would appreciate, so let me know if this works for you.
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Review: Samantha James's Subconscious
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.”
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.”
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Review: BT’s These Hopeful Machines
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.
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.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Magic and Music: Step Links
Now that the series is over, this last post for January serves as a repository for all the playlist links from Lala.com. Since I'm still uploading the songs, I have brackets next to the links indicating [how many are up/how many are on the album] if the album is incomplete.
Furthermore, all my posts for January are about Magic and Music. So, by using this link to the January 2010 blog archive (http://evidenceofautumn.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html), you'll have a permanent link restricted to this segment of the blog.
Azorius: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81260/ [8/12]
Dimir: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81255/ [11/13]
Rakdos: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81272/ [10/14]
Gruul: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81266/
Selesnya: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81252/ [12/14]
Orzhov: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81253/
Izzet: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81268/ [7/11]
Golgari: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81264/ [10/12]
Boros: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81251/
Simic: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81273/ [7/11]
Bant: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81261/ [9/11]
Esper: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81263/ [7/10]
Grixis: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81265/ [8/11]
Jund: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81269/ [8/10]
Naya: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81277/
Oros: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81271/
Intet: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81267/ [6/8]
Teneb: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81274/ [10/13]
Numot: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81270/ [8/11]
Vorosh: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81275/
Furthermore, all my posts for January are about Magic and Music. So, by using this link to the January 2010 blog archive (http://evidenceofautumn.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html), you'll have a permanent link restricted to this segment of the blog.
Azorius: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81260/ [8/12]
Dimir: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81255/ [11/13]
Rakdos: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81272/ [10/14]
Gruul: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81266/
Selesnya: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81252/ [12/14]
Orzhov: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81253/
Izzet: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81268/ [7/11]
Golgari: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81264/ [10/12]
Boros: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81251/
Simic: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81273/ [7/11]
Bant: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81261/ [9/11]
Esper: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81263/ [7/10]
Grixis: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81265/ [8/11]
Jund: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81269/ [8/10]
Naya: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81277/
Oros: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81271/
Intet: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81267/ [6/8]
Teneb: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81274/ [10/13]
Numot: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81270/ [8/11]
Vorosh: http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81275/
Magic and Music: Vorosh (Green-Blue-Black)
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)
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)
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