I just came across a couple songs I REALLY like and I wanted to share them. I think its time we start another thread for music tastes... so we can all benefit from the different paths we are on.
Here's #1: Roisin Murphy
The song called "Overpowered" is a very nice blend of electronica and pop with a hint of the stuff I love about Bjork. YES, I love Bjork.
And # 2: The Ting Tings
The Ting Tings - first off I like it from the name of the band, but then there's something cool about a song they have called "That's Not My Name". For one, it seems to be structured perfectly (which really means nothing to me since one of my favorite songs is Angels & Airwaves "The Adventure" and I suspect they tried to follow no structure.)
So how do you participate by putting snazzy links in?
Add links like this:
Here's #1: Roisin Murphy
The song called "Overpowered" is a very nice blend of electronica and pop with a hint of the stuff I love about Bjork. YES, I love Bjork.
And # 2: The Ting Tings
The Ting Tings - first off I like it from the name of the band, but then there's something cool about a song they have called "That's Not My Name". For one, it seems to be structured perfectly (which really means nothing to me since one of my favorite songs is Angels & Airwaves "The Adventure" and I suspect they tried to follow no structure.)
So how do you participate by putting snazzy links in?
Add links like this:
So what do you think of Roisin and Ting Tings?
7 comments:
It is so interesting to listen to these songs and wonder what daily influences you encounter to take you there.
Not in a bad way or anything, it's just like I used to wonder what Albuquerque lloked like to someone who had never seen it, especially coming over the hill to the west of town as you drive in from Grants. The closest I could come was if I was away for a while, and it had that sense of surprise, but always that would be plowed under by the sense of familiarity.
When I listen to those songs, I kept waiting for the sense of familiarity, since I know you and I know what you like.
It never came.
It was kind of cool, like seeing Albuquerque through the eyes of a stranger, hearing the music you dig, and realizing it's new and different and not at all what I listen to.
I don't get the Bjork thing - I had an album of hers for a while and it's one of only a few I've actually erased from my hard drive. It seemed like art to me, and I guess I am more a photo guy. I seek comfort from the little parts of my life I control, and to get that comfort I put pictures of places I've been on my walls, and I listen to songs I'm familiar with. I think it's due to the fact that I learn so much every day, and every day I do something new, and so the world around me is not reassuring and boring, it's hard work to stay afloat. It's not a struggle for me to experience new things, it's routine, and the struggle is to maintain constancy.
But good for you that are somewhere in your life that you can embrace new and artsy things and grow and change and morph...
Thanks for sharing.
Alex,
You are growing not just as a surgeon of medicine, but also of words and thoughts. I appreciate how well you got across the very difficult concept of seeing something familiar with fresh eyes and then transposing that over to your expectation to see something familiar in something fresh. Well done.
But I didn't get a sense of whether you liked or disliked the songs :^) My first take was that you didn't find anythign to like, then I reread your posting and realized that that wasn't what you said.
So do you like them? If you listen to them a few more times, you might. "That's Not Mt Name" grabbed me from the first instant she went into the chorus and then when I relistened to it, and figured out the lyrics are about a kid that no one knows "last kid standing on the wall" when they're picking teams and such... then I really liked it even more.
Roison Murphy is a serendipitous find that I saw a review of the song first, she's Irish so I thought I'd give it a chance, then another instant spark. Once I read more about her and learned that she's the voice of Moloko (you have some on your hard drive) I started liking her even more.
WRT Bjork: My first exposure to Bjork was a remix of a song called "I Miss You" in which she talks about missing a lover that she hasn't met yet, but she knows everythign about him. The remix was very special sounuding to me. Then when she wore the swan dress to some award show, that cinched it for me - she's wacky. She literally says she goes into the forest and listens to the trees and animals before she records. As a guy who wishes he could spend more time in the forest like when I was young... that works for me.
well....
I liked Roisin, and so far listening to the Ting Tings they sound pretty cool too, sounds a little 80's ish - "Hey Mickey"
You guys amaze me with the eloquent ways that you write and express thoughts. I feel embarrassed to contribute sometimes! I am starting some classes in August, maybe being around adults will help with that, although I don't think that computer nerd / artists have great speaking skills either...
The ting ting girl is singing now, - makes it less 80's.
I just got a new Cold War Kids (ha - sounds 80's already huh!, not the music though) Hospital Beds is cool, I haven't listened enough to get any inner deeper meanings yet, maybe those would be more apparent to Alex? But I like the way that they sound, we saw them on some MTV discover and download show, they are pretty funky guys (not swan dress funky, they are guys after all)
I also am quite fond of Pink's new album, of course you and your hand is fun to me being a girl who just likes to go out dancing with her girlfriends, but the rest of the album is cool too, a little too political at times, but whatever, I still listen to the Dixie Chicks too, I just like the music. I never really agreed with a lot that Tracy Chapman sang either, but she is just so awesome you can just listen to the musical value of the songs and the way the lyrics are delivered and it doesn't matter...
Do you guys (Eric and Alex) have the addiction to live music like Matt and I? I absolutely love to be at a concert, or in a bar and I can feel the music in my whole body, it is like the heat in Phoenix, it gets all the way in you, like an overlapping / cell mixing / saturating kind of feeling. I love to know that I am in the same room with such amazingly talented people, such incredible artists who can do such amazing things, and I am feet away. I was once about 15 feet from Tracy Chapman - F@#*! That was sooooo awesome! And when we went to Harry Conick Jr, our friends who had front row center tickets left and gave us their seats, we were in a very intimate amphitheater, with no thing and no one in between me and Harry Conick Jr!!!!!!!! Anyways, i was just wondering if you guys felt that way too, I know Matt does - remember Staind Matt? Justin wants to go see Korn, I am afraid of that music being in my whole body!!!! :)
Well, so I didn't pay close enough attention to know how to put the link in, so I am going to try to post this, and then go back and edit it...
Oh, and I also LOVE Kelly Clarkson's new album, and OF COURSE Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen :)
guess i couldn't edit it, I did once, don't remember how...
Cold War kids
Kelly Clarkson (listen to Sober)
Lily Allen
Okay, I liked the Cold War Kids sound. I, too, kept thinking that maybe there was a subtextual meaning to "Hospital Beds" but, like Jane's Addiction Been Caught Stealin' is really only about getting caught stealin', maybe there is no message. Who cares? Sounds cool and different.
I also am able to set aside my politics for music. I love the Dixie Chicks song "Not Ready To Make Nice" even though I wasn't really a fan of theirs. I like the song and I'm a big fan of this war. Yes, that's what I said.
I realized early on that "Rage Against The Machine" lean a bit to the left of me (179 degrees to the left) but I still rock it out to them. Difference is, when they sing "Rally 'round the family with a pocket full of shells" they think they are being sarcastic and I think they are being helpful to those of us who might otherwise forget our shells.
NOW: BIG FRIKKIN NEWS:!!!
BLAQK AUDIO This band is so hot! If you put Depeche Mode, Information Society, and AFI in a room and made them transport themseves out using Jeff Goldblum's fly-catcher, you'd get this band. Okay, its some of the guys from AFI (obviously the dude with the keyboard) but MAN do I like that SONG on the website StiffKittens (Who'd a thunk that name would be a cool song) but seriously, CHECK IT OUT. SERIOUSLY.
SERIOUSLY!
So here I am, stuck at the hospital, in between sets of push-ups, trying to catch up on all of the music you've recommended.
My socks and the industrial grade carpet are interacting poorly so I'm doing my first set ever with my feet up on a chair. Adds a certain amount of difficulty to the chore. I had been up to doing sets of 40 and today I'm doing sets of 25 to be safe with my left shoulder, who never liked the idea of pushups in the first place.
I jammed the BlaqkAudio the other day. It's really really REALLY interesting the blend of styles. Remember when Sarah McLaughlin and Linkin Park got together and created that band Evanescence? This is sort of like that, but without a female involved.
Now, if you listen to Evanescence, it sounds normal, almost necessary to have the lilting operatic soprano being bouyed, mosh pit-style, by the riffs and drums and shouts of angry young men. Balance. Complement. Completeness.
Where BlaqkAudio fails, and having heard only the two songs on the website, is where AFI succeeded - the soft side won. In the last twenty years, a steady stream of below-the-radar synth pop has been created and ignored by mainstream music. I have a bunch of it, and the reality, for better or worse, is that the sound hasn't changed much from the People Are People days. Occasionally a new production technique will appear or some media frenzy will take off (T.a.T.u.) and we'll hear some of it. Mostly, though, it's been there in the background, while Nirvana / Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews / someotherwhinywhiteboywho'snameescapesme, Linkin Park / Staind, Britney / Xtina / Beyonce, P.Diddy / , Eminem / Kid Rock duel it out over the airwaves like the Camaro / Mustang brand wars that Sony and Geffen and such don't want us to think about.
Back on track - so then along comes AFI, who, as best as I can figure, progressively softened with serial lineup changes, until their album went to number 1 with a bullet. (If you have some free time, read the wikipedia entry on KLF (Justified Ancients of MuuMuu) it's a musical education in a single band.) The lesson to AFI - if ya wanna get paid, stop sounding like a punk band and start sounding like Linkin Park.
Now we get back to BlaqkAudio - the marriage of an ever-softening AFI frontman with a synth-pop style, and we end up with, instead of Linkin Park saving Depeche Mode from "Where Are They Now" but rather FULL-ON 80's synth pop with nary a deviation from the pattern that Apoptygma Berzerk,
Kie The Vez, and De Vision have been pumping through my headphones for about 8 years in total obscurity.
I'm a fan. Buying the album? Maybe. Considering I buy about 1 or 2 a year, that's a ringing endorsement. More on the others in a minute.
So i think that I understand from Alex's comment that he does like Evanescence? I am a fan, Justin is an even bigger fan, I like the older album better than the newer one. I played it with dad in the car one day, he said she was just shrieking, but - you can take that with what you want to take it with! Anyways... my point was that Kelly Clarkson works (Writes/records/dated, etc...) with a couple of the guys from Evanescence, and if you listen to the current album, it rocks more like Evanescence, and while I am a big fan of Amy Lee, and think that she has a beautiful voice, I absolutely LOVE Kelly's voice, I think it has a richness, and smoothness that most voices lack, and so when she sings with the rocking out in the background it is sooooo cool!
I have to say, I am not as in to the synthesizer stuff, the 80's-esque music, I like real guitars, and drums, and love most acustic version of my favorite songs - Daughtry has released a version of "Rocket Man" LOVE IT!! I do however like listening to the Depeche mode that I used to listen to (Black Celebration) and Erasure, etc (which I am pretty sure that I caught some grief about when I was listening to it - um Alex???) but that is more nostalgic than anything... Crowded House just released a new album too!
Anyways, have to get back to house cleaning, Beth's best friend from AZ and her family are coming to visit this evening, so....
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