MP3: Nachtmystium - Cold Tormentor (I've Become) from Nachtmystium (2003) To me, "black metal" means a style of music pioneered by Norwegian bands like Darkthrone and Mayhem in the early 1990s. The (again, for me) defining elements of the genre are densely layered trebly guitars, often low-fidelity production, high screechy vocals, lyrics about darkness, despair, and evil (as opposed to dismemberment, gore and violence), and riffs that are more melodic than one finds in other extreme forms of metal like death metal. In recent years, American bands have produced some of the best music [...]
I love Lisa Loeb's tweets because they're so pedestrian. The woman thinks she's still on a reality show, and that everyone cares about the tiniest bits of information: spoonful of home-made chocolate pie for breakfast appetizer. I made it last night... practicing making crust. Lisa's tweets are kind of refreshing, considering that many other musicians only tweet when they're trying to pimp their music. "Stay" was one of the best songs of the 1990s, and the one-take video has stood the test of time. [...]
I'm almost afraid to publish this, since I know I'll get all kinds of grief about it. Before you comment on what a dope I am for omitting Graduation/Fishscale/Speakerbo xxx/etc., please read the title of this post again. Only independent releases were considered. But this did include street albums and mixtapes. Another point: I debated whether to segregate out rap records, and decided to do so only because I haven't seen too many bloggers writing decade-rap lists, so I thought this might help fill a void. Okay, now you can tell me how little [...]
Dreamy indie pop quartet, The Sundays , had a uncanny knack for crafting charming, innocent and introspective tunes in th e early 1990s. The band was f ormed in London in 1987 by mutual friends and partners, Harriet Wheel er and David Gavurin at the University in Bristol. The Sundays were heavily i nfluenced by Th e Smiths and [...]
The 1995 album by the Depeche Mode-esque German act who brought you "The Great Commandment" gets remastered and reissued with a bonus disc. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, record companies found some success by signing moody synth-pop acts and dropping an album in the space between Depeche Mode releases. Thus, bands like Celebrate the Nun, Red Flag, and Cause & Effect were given brief moments in the sun. The best and longest-lasting of these, though, is the German band Camouflage, who had a big club/college radio hit with "The Great Commandment" in 1988, then swiftly retreated...
By Oliver Wang Mainstream R&B radio, retail and video industries never had cause to pay retro-soul much mind until Amy Winehouse demonstrated its commercial potential. ( Sean Gallup / Getty Images Entertainment ) In the early 1990s, two brothers and some friends in Munich formed the Poets of Rhythm, a band inspired by the "deep [...]
Back in the 1970s, as part of their holiday marketing scheme, the RIAA introduced the world to the phrase, "Give The Gift Of Music." Over the years, during the holiday season, people do tend to buy more than they would at any other time. Often, it is the new releases that fly off the shelves and under the tree, but just as often, people are buying those old reliables, the Greatest Hits albums, to give as Christmas presents. With that said, I thought I would offer my thoughts, in chronological order, on 15 of the top Greatest Hits albums of [...]
In what may very well be the most curious and unexpected reunion, three original members of the Velvet Underground will gather for an extremely rare public appearance. On December 8th, former VU members Lou Reed, Doug Yule , and Maureen Tucker will appear at the New York Public Library's Celeste Bartos Forum, located at Fifth Ave. and 42nd street. Unfortunately, the trio will not be performing a live set (despite reuniting for scattered shows throughout the 1990s with fourth surviving member John Cale), but will instead discuss the band's legacy and music with rock journalist [...]
Former Velvet Underground members Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule will make an extremely rare joint public appearance on Dec. 8 at the New York Public Library. The three will discuss the Velvet Underground's music and legacy with rock journalist David Fricke as part of the "LIVE from the NYPL" series. The unprecedented reunion of the legendary New York band comes on the heels of the publication of "The Velvet Underground: New York Art," a new compendium of previously unseen photographs, poster and cover designs by Andy Warhol, Lou Reed's handwritten music and lyrics, underground press clippings [...]
If you're like me, your head spun around when you found out that KRS-One was teaming up wiht Buckshot. The "teacher" from Boogie Down Productions, the man behind the Stop The Violence movement of the 1990s, joining forces with the best part of undergound East-coast collective Boot Kamp Klick, who hail from the Raekwon "storyteller" school of rap? It's an unlikely pairing, to be sure. KRS is known for a bombastic, clear and forceful delivery, while Buckshot is all about crooked style and substance. Yet, they're both rap veterans with above-average vocabularies (and intelligence) who have survived over 2 decades [...]
Back to Andrew Weatherall's group of the early 1990s, Sabres of Paradise. This time with remixes of other people's work. Includes Chemical Brothers, Bjork and Red Snapper. Andrew Weatherall's Sabres of Paradise were one of the U.K.'s most celebrated experimental techno groups. A combined effort of Weatherall and collaborators Jagz Kooner and Gary Burns, the group released a flood of singles and EPs, many of which were collected on compilations released by Warp and Weatherall's other main focus: the Sabrettes label, with releases from Plod and Slab, among others. Born in Windsor, Berkshire, Weatherall considers himself [...]
Manic Street Preachers by Nick Parker Growing Old Gracefully but it's a Mixed Bag that results... In the 1990s British music scene there were hardly any bands faster and more furious than The Manic Street Preachers . Leading the charge of Welsh guitar bands in the period, the Manics were also among the most radical of them, both musically and politically. Then of course, there was James Dean Bradfield's [...]
By Eric Garland, founder and CEO of BigChampagne Media Measurement In 2007, Radiohead no longer had a contract with its record company, EMI, and was about to release its seventh full-length album, In Rainbows . For its first new release in four years, one of the world's biggest [...]
The November 16th show of Mountain Stage featured Vagabond Opera , Brett Dennen , Eric Bibb , Madison Violet , and Sister Hazel. I was most excited about seeing Vagabond Opera, and they were fantastic! As expected, the kooky cabaret band put on a fun and dazzling set of songs from their new album, The Zeitgeist Beckons . Their colorful costumes and theatrics were fit for Vaudeville, and lead singer Eric Stern's voice was astounding live. Their set was as entertaining for the eyes as it was the ears. [...]
Slow Bongo Floyd is a silly name. But they were a wonderful, criminally under-rated, UK psychadelic dance group of the early 1990s. Their biog says: Formed somewhere between Oxford Road and Haight-Ashbury, Slow Bongo Floyd was a spiritual journey into the undiscovered depths of experimental soundscapes - where acid house morphed with hippie-folk, rock, punk, psychedelica and the blues. Early recordings were chaotic and beautiful, anyone who came to the studio appeared on the music in progress in some way, either playing an instrument of some kind, singing, clapping [...]
WFMU and The Free Music Archive are incredibly excited to announce a remix contest featuring Anti-Pop Consortium ! NYC's legendary hip-hop innovators are sharing hi-fi stems & a capellas from "Reflections", a cut off their brand new album Fluorescent Black ( Big Dada ). After five exploratory years apart, Beans, M. Sayyid, High Priest and Earl Blaize have re-joined forces to craft what may be their finest work yet. Now they're making multitracks from "Reflections" available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Shar eAlike license, and we can't wait to hear [...]
[ download ] In these days of hyphenated musical sub-genres and cross-pollinated, hybridized taxonomies, Surfer Blood writes songs in what feels like an increasingly endangered idiom: that straightforward lexicon of a bunch of dudes rockin' out. There is more than a touch of 1990s college radio to the Palm Beach, Florida quartet's tunes, with the guitar-heavy tones of all time favorites like Pavement, The Pixies, and early-era Weezer shining through. The band just wrapped up a tour opening for Art Brut (speaking of all time favorites), and the pairing [...]
Non ci riesco proprio! Davvero. Questo disco non mi rimane in testa. Non c'è niente da fare. Passa via un po' grigio, come la polvere sotto il letto o i raggi di sole che filtrano dalle persiane di prima mattina. Pensi di averlo imparato, di averlo impugnato, di canticchiarlo comodamente nella vasca da bagno. Ma l'unica cosa che ti si pianta nella mente è la domanda peggiore: " 1990s chi"? Oddio. "Kicks" non è proprio un disco da buttare via o brutto in una qualche particolare maniera, solo è la raffigurazione di un [...]
I wasn't gonna do this, 'cause I know I'll catch all kinds of shit and lose mad respect just by putting my opinion out here, but here I go anyway. Just to get this out of the way, I have nothing but love for Joe Budden. But he wasn't one of the 10 most important rappers of the decade. With my list, I'm trying to pick the 10 people who I think did the best to move rap forward during this decade. As the 2000s started, many of us thought that rap had seen its [...]
I'm rather partial to a bit of Tori Amos and her wild piano playing. Her "Smells Like Teen Spirit" cover is a classic. But not for posting here. Instead, this week and next, two blogs on her remixed work of the mid-1990s. For starters, here's 1996 single "Talula" given a remix workout by, normally dubious, US trancer Brian Transeau (better known as BT). The Synethasia Mix goes on a bit but is pretty good. Tori's voice is better than so many of the 'big lung' belters that dance music sadly prefers. [...]
new music from vampire weekend – cousins + music video
Friday Five: Surf Songs
No Curve Allowed (Grading This Week's New Tracks)
HOT CHIP TAKE another crack at IT and I’m IN
