Gaming World Forums
General Category => Entertainment and Media => Topic started by: the_bub_from_the_pit on March 17, 2009, 01:21:49 am
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I’ve been meaning to write this topic for a while now but I have constantly delayed it because a) school and b) I honestly could not think of what to call this topic, and as you can see the title is still shit so I apologize for that. Also posting this to revive the music forum a little bit ...
Anyway, I have compiled a few bands which either … sound very similar to other older bands or which take elements of said bands and create a new sound. It’s basically to show that good music these days isn’t dead if you know where to look for it. That sounded really awful, but here goes …
A Place to Bury Strangers
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/aplacetoburystrangers_photo.jpg)
Probably one of the more popular shoegaze/noise bands out there today. Formed in 2003 in New York City, they didn’t pick up much buzz until they played a show with the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Since then, they’ve been described by several publications, including the New York Times and Washington Post (as well as picking up a good review from Pitchfork), as one of the loudest bands [of ][/of]. Upon first hearing it, immediate influences instantly bring up a Skywave-Jesus & Mary Chain hybrid. The vocals, drumming and bass are all heavily reminiscent of Skywave with a huge “wall-of-sound” in many of the songs.
Oliver Ackermann, frontman of A Place to Bury Strangers, is known for using a multitude of different effects pedals and has actually created his own line, Death By Audio. Bands ranging from Lightning Bolt to U2 to Nine Inch Nails to TV on the Radio and I believe even Thurston Moore (he performed at the warehouse where Death By Audio is located) have began using some of his pedals.
A Place to Bury Strangers are signed to Mute Records (which has now been sold to EMI) but which did include acts such as Einstürzende Neubauten, Wire, Depeche Mode, Sonic Youth and Nick Cave.
Raveonettes
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/raveonettes_1_.jpg)
Formed in 2001 in Denmark, The Raveonettes gained popularity once they had played a show at SPOT festival in Denmark’s second largest city, Aarhus. Since, they have picked up acclaim from Rolling Stone and Q Magazine, where their albums have been compared to Psychocandy.
And in some ways their albums do resemble Psychocandy, providing melodic vocals contrasted by heavy instrumentation that waves in and out of songs as they build up. As last.fm puts it, “they sound very much like a slightly more melodic version of The Jesus and Mary Chain.” To put it further, I would describe them as Karen O teaming up with the Jesus and Mary Chain.
I highly recommend the album Lust Lust Lust.
Have a Nice Life
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/deathconciousnessig9.jpg)
I’m not sure of any of their previous activity, but they released their full-length, double-disc record Deathconciousness in January 2008. The band was formed between Tim Macuga (black metal member of Nahvalr) and Dan Barrett, member of some band called In Pieces.
This record is extremely overwhelming, and also a lot of it is shit. The two-disc package comes with a 75-page booklet about medieval Italian heretics or something and was entirely hand-made (each disc was individually painted). For fucks sake, they’ve got Marat on their album cover – how much more pretentious could you get?
The album is lo-fi, shoegaze, drone, industrial and a medley of tons of other genres mixed in one. With that said, however, the disc only features a few good songs, the rest being at masturbatory-lengths that do not go anywhere. When I say this, I mean the extra piece of lint on my pants becomes far more interesting. However, several tracks on the album stand out and make this album extremely worthwhile. I think this man’s review put it best, actually:
Hidden content (Click to reveal) But first track Bloodhail kicks in, and it turns out that's not quite the case. It's all bleak, anti-funk basslines and distorted drums, and anyone with more than a mild aversion to Pitchfork-beloved hipster fare will have probably sprained their wrists diving for the stop button already. Still, the rest of us will find a rather charming track with dreamy, ethereal vocal harmonies, and even some black metal riffing towards the end to please the more grim and frostbitten among us. The black metal riffing is used throughout the album, though in this context it feels more like a glorious wash of sound than an ear-raping blizzard. OK, so we've ascertained that Have A Nice Life are not your average indie rockers. But then, what indie rock band starts out their career with a 90-minute double album with lyrics partly based on medieval French apostates? Deathconsciousness is certainly an impressively epic release, and so it's fitting that the music goes off in several different directions. Over the two discs, we get unremittingly grim post-punk (Hunter) cooler-than-thou indie rock (Waiting For Black Metal Records To Come In The Mail, The Future) slightly incongruous noise-pop (Holy Fucking Shit: 40000) and even something approaching post-rock (closer Earthmover). Despite the tonal shifts throughout, the record feels oddly unified, perhaps due to the same grimy, distorted guitar and detatched vocals throughout. So even when Have A Nice Life are at their sunniest, it never seems like a completely different band's hijacked the recording studio. It would be nice to see things spread out a little better though, the first disc generally being one long, dark slog while the livelier fare is bunched together at the beginning of the first disc.
The December Sound
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/decembersound.jpg)
This is probably my favourite band on this list for the moment, I’m having some huge obsession with them. Thing is, I don’t even know how to describe them … buzzing guitars, drone-like beats, soft, echoing vocals, and generally amazing overall.
Fun fact: I just stopped writing mid-sentence in that last line and went to the bathroom to throw up. I’m pretty sure I have strep throat as my throat has been hurting like a bitch for a while now, I’m going to go to the doctor to check it out tomorrow. I’m going to have to cut this a little short and just list the rest of the bands, sorry :(
The Fleeting Joys
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/fleeting_joys1.jpg)
This band is basically My Bloody Valentine. No joke.
To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/394682363_f60faeafaa.jpg)
A noisy portishead.
Holy Shit
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/ARIEL_PINK.jpg)
Collab between Ariel Pink and Matt Fishbeck (of Push Kings) making amazing lo-fi sometimes 60s sounding music.
LSD and the Search for God
(http://gamingw.net/pubaccess/50857/lsdgod.jpg)
Another shoegaze band that I like because of the interplay between male and female vocals (otherwise I could list you tons of other modern shoegaze bands).
Anyway, to make this all worthwhile, I’ve uploaded zip file with two songs from each band for you to sample. If you like what you hear, you can … acquire the album from elsewhere!
Tracklist:
1. Missing You – A Place to Bury Strangers
2. Don’t Think Lover – A Place to Bury Strangers
3. Aly Walk With Me – The Raveonettes
4. You Want the Candy – The Raveonettes
5. Waiting for the Black Metal Record to Come in the Mail – Have a Nice Life
6. Holy Fucking Shit: 40,000 – Have a Nice Life
7. Never – The December Sound
8. Kill Me (Before I Kill You) – The December Sound
9. You Are the Darkness – The Fleeting Joys
10. Lights Underground – The Fleeting Joys
11. The Patron – To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie
12. Lovers & Liars – To Kill a Petty Bourgeoisie
13. Written All Over Your Face – Holy Shit
14. I Don’t Need Enemies – Holy Shit
15. Backwards – LSD and the Search for God
16. Starting Over – LSD and the Search for God
Download:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=6ATO54II
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i am downloading right now i will report back with why i hate it all shortly
i am going to skip the ravonettes though because that band is fucking awful
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oh cool, someone else who is annoyed by the raveonettes.
but yea i'll dl it and check back too. who knows maybe the new iterations won't be embarrassments to the original bands who pioneered the sounds.....mayby
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i remember being okay with a place to bury strangers like two years ago when they had that album buuut i haven't thought about it in sometime.
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The JAMC's gotta be more than just an influence to APTBS. Just listen to the JAMC's "In a Hole" and then APTBS's "I Know I'll See You."
I also think there is definitely room for better recommendations of "modern" bands that work within this framework than the ones so far mentioned. :x
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this is by no means any definitive list, just whatever i've found. it'd be great if you anyone could talk about any others you know!
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A Place to Bury Strangers - Not bad, Missing You was a good song. Not feeling the second one as much though.
The Ravonettes - Bad, awful, terrible, nobody listen to this band they're not good.
Have A Nice Life - Liked the first one the vocalist got a little annoying though, the second track i did not like much.
The December Sound - I don't know if it's because it's the fact that they're 128kbps MP3s but I thought this band sounded awful and the vocalist sounds like a whiny asshole.
The Fleeting Joys - I really liked the second song, didn't like the first. The first one sounds like it could be a Fallout Boy/Sugarcult/Newfound Glory song if you got rid of the distortion.
To Kill A Petty Bourgeoisie - Ugh, fuck this boring shit. Who the hell wants to hear a bitch sing over some feedback and cheesy keyboard tones?
Holy Shit - Not bad, I thought these songs were fun and enjoyable to listen to, the second one was a little corny though.
LSD and the search for God - I got sick of it halfway into the first track and then skipped around through the second and I wouldn't want to sit through a whole song by these guys.
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I really like one song of Have a Nice Life's Deathconciousness something like Waiting for Black Metal Records to Arrive in the Mail(?) but beside that I didn't care for the album. There were maybe a couple other songs that were less memorable I like but overall I was pretty disappointed for how highly recommended it came
I'll check out some other bands but I dunno I'm not too into this stuff
Edit: Oh yea that song I was talking about was on the tracklist I didn't see. The black metal one is good.
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I love these topics because I get to check out a whole load of bands without downloading individual albums. I havent really listened to this genre (I don't think I'll like it) but its worth a try........ I do like shoegaze/post rock tho
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welp guess this topic is dead/sucks :welp:
at least my strep throat is almost gone
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I don't mind shoegaze but man it's the worst fucking genre name
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gw doesnt like this music i dont think. no one wants to talk about it basically ever
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holy fuck > holy shit.
shoegaze is okay imo. some is really annoying and pointless, but there is some good stuff...
yeah. shoe gays is a stupid name.
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gw doesnt like this music i dont think. no one wants to talk about it basically ever
Nah, I'm pretty sure there are some people here who at least listen to post-punk and new wave. Shoegaze is not popular here and I can only listen to it in small doses because it gets really boring otherwise.
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SOME, yeah. that's the point! topics like this do not get much attention tho. it's hard to start a gw music krew with five people. postrock on the other hand. . .
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*gazes somberly at own shoes*
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apart from couch's topic there hasn't been a post-rock topic in ages i think! no one listens to it anymore.
i can't even say what is popular on gw anymore.
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ive mentioned like three of these bands to you panda, so some gw does want to talk about it ever
also the first two raveonettes albums blow hard but "lust lust lust" is actually quite alright if its super loud and you're stoned to the bone etc. i loathe "you want the candy" actually but the first few songs on that album are great even if just for the guitar sound. it's twangy and shit and sort of the noise i feel like a lot of bands veer towards but do not actually get to.
anyway... i have sort of a soft spot for this type of music (i will download your tape right now) but even so something about a lot of it irks me. the aesthetic especially and usually.
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is that a fact ds. yeah i guess i can't either. buuuuuut i don't think it's stuff like this. whatever it is . . .it aint this.
also bort i never said no one at all ever liked it!! i just said not enough people did to really have active topics about it, which is fairly evident at this point. also you normally suggest weird bort/chefmusic to me and i rarely find it's something that i can get into so i kind of stopped following up. if you wanna compile a list tho i'll listen dutifully to all of it.
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also what aesthetic? i'm not sure i understand.
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it's often girly and romantic and ummmmmmmm... you know, man!
songs addressed to "you" and sad and tragic and sexy or whatever
aptbs and raveonettes do it, like jesus and mary chain did it, etc
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if you wanna compile a list tho i'll listen dutifully to all of it.
1. bongripper - the great barrier reefer - 01:19:23
edit: oh you don't mean bortmusic you mean THIS music. : (
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nah man trust me i don't need any help finding this type of music. if i have a thing, this is it
gimme some bort music. gimme some sludge or some psycho-something.
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My biggest problem with a lot of these bands is that, especially in the case of the Ravonettes, they're not just 'inspired' by the music scenes/genres that are mentioned in the title, they're pretty much just aping them.
Wire recently put out a new album called Object 47 and I don't think anyone has heard of it!
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yeah i feel the same way. i don't like being like heh.....newshit, because there are genuinely good new bands within this genre, but like you said, a lot of it seems to be an uninspired rehash of the shit that happened 20-30 years ago and it's fairly undisguised. if i just wanted more of the same i would be alright with this but generally speaking it is not as good. it is just attempt at capturing old style minus the inspiration and talent that was the basis and driving force behind said old style. what you are left with is a HOLLOW MOCKERY, if you will, of what bands like ymg or wire did.
ahaha thats harsh but idk. i just don't care about it that much. i think the problem is, bands like wire had a ton of influences at the time. the sound they created was a direct result of numerous other sounds that other people created. and the same goes for most of the other good postpunk/shoegaze/whatever groups. the newer incarnations of these bands seem pretty intent on trying to replicate this one style without letting anything else in. i think a lot of the problem with <genre> revival or 2nd and 3rd wave iterations of genres is that the acts who belong to the scenes are too unimaginative to try to do anything but recreate the sounds they like and do not really appreciate the varying types of music that went into making that sound. it is like the musical equivalent of a final fantasy fangame, essentially. it's really limited and one-note.
also hey i don't have anything from wire after the 80s. are they still any good? not many bands can KEEP IT UP for 30+ years. like how does it compare to their first three albums? these are by a wide margin my favorites.
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also yea borto i know what you're saying now. i think i was talkin about this to yourhero a few days ago maybe. just this kind of IMAGE that they are painfully trying to exude. it's appealing but that's because it's supposed to be. ultimately i think it's probably contrived and quasi-cinematic and both of these things irritate me, yeah.
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im gws shoegaze fan. shoegaze owns. if you say otherwise your wrong. shoegaze "4" ever. and dreampop.
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Wire recently put out a new album called Object 47
recent as in 09?
also fun fact porcupine tree's lead singer loves wire.
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recent as in 09?
also fun fact porcupine tree's lead singer loves wire.
late '08
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also hey i don't have anything from wire after the 80s. are they still any good? not many bands can KEEP IT UP for 30+ years. like how does it compare to their first three albums? these are by a wide margin my favorites.
I dunno, wire kinda went in a completely different direction after 154. Their new one is similar to their last 4 releases, 3-part Read and Burn and Send. It's nowhere near as good as the first three, but it's not terrible.
they gettin fucking old
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bongripper - the great barrier reefer
that is the best
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yeah i feel the same way. i don't like being like heh.....newshit, because there are genuinely good new bands within this genre, but like you said, a lot of it seems to be an uninspired rehash of the shit that happened 20-30 years ago and it's fairly undisguised. if i just wanted more of the same i would be alright with this but generally speaking it is not as good. it is just attempt at capturing old style minus the inspiration and talent that was the basis and driving force behind said old style. what you are left with is a HOLLOW MOCKERY, if you will, of what bands like ymg or wire did.
oh fuck wall-of-text pandapost.
actually i can agree with this. i can probably pick out like 10 new shoegaze acts off the top of my head that pretty much all sound the same / try too hard to capture the old style without really adding in anything of their own. i only included fleeting joys because they really really sounded like MBV to me.
the kinda good thing about them though is that sometimes its like having new songs by old bands (though this...rarely happens..)
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is that a wall of text? i have a rather large monitor so it's hard for any paragraph to seem oversized to me. whoops. idk i'd rather have them imitating good old styles than sucking but the ideal would be that NEW INTERESTING MUSICAL STYLES would be happening right now instead of _____ revival and so on. i guess you got electroshit but..........no thanks
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lol my screen is kind of small so it sort of is. i just find it funny that half the time i scroll through topics generally full of one-liners and then see a post by you i just think to myself "this is going to be several paragraphs" and it usually is.
and yeah, better SHOEGAZE/NOISE revival then ... 80s hair metal or something. tbh I can't think of that many new interesting musical styles nowadays; it's mostly combining old styles together. the only distinct one I can think of is post rock...
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woah bro if that is a wall of text then how do you read books
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that was like less than a paragraph and only took up like a third of my screen (i have it zoomed in a lot because i'm a little far away from the screen)
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oh fuck wall-of-text pandapost.
what? your monitor must be fucked to hell.
great like five people said this already but really what?
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w/e my monitor is sorta small, let's move on ppl.
new genres of the 21st century: ???
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i don't know but whatever LCD Monitor...I mean...LCD Soundsystem plays...
seriously dude wtf up your resolution. ahhhh I can't imagine how you read the forums!
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lol lcd soundsystem is like ... electro-dance-punk?
i was mainly remarking on how panda always makes multiple-paragraph posts!!
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i dont think i do tho. i looked through my post history and it seems recently it's been half and half between one-liners and 2-paragraph posts but i feel like beyond the first page of my history, there are probably 80% one-liners. i can be pr. fuckin wordy tbh. i get it from my dad but it only comes out TEXTUALLY as i am relatively brief when talking :///
also electro-dance-punk fuck all that. i don't want to make blanket statements but ELECTRO//DANCE//PUNK or any combination of these three genres kind of grates on me at this point.
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aaaaaa i was kidding i was making an lcd monitor joke.
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tehre has been a pretty big shift from indie to electro/dancepunk these days its kinda weird.
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I've been listening to Jesus and Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine for the first time in my life the past couple of days. They are okay. I think I like Jesus and Mary Chain better but that song Sometimes by My Bloody Valetine was really good.
I've got Have A Nice Life's Deathconsciousness album. The lyrics are really, corny? I dunno, I just don't like them and I've always found the aethetics of these groups to be half cool and half intolerable so I've got a conflict going on deep inside about this kind of music. I checked out A Place To Bury Strangers and it was too noisy. The other bands mentioned in the first post look really really annoying and I'm not gonna listen to a band called To Kill A Petty Bourgeosie. I'm just not prepared to do that.
I thought shoegaze was slower and closer to soundscrapes than it is. Like a more distorted kind of post-rock or something. If JAMC and MBV are the starters of this genre though I guess I was mistaken!