although it's not a meme...
Jul. 26th, 2003 12:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
planktondreamsquietlyit really should be. concert/album/song that impacted my life or the way i listen to music...
violent femmes concert at great woods (now the tweeter center), mansfield MA, 1989
my whole family was riding together in the car near worcester MA listening to the radio when an advertisement for the violent femmes show happening tonight came on the air. my older brother was a fan and i had been briefly exposed to them through him. he started begging my parents to take us. we happened to have a copy of '3' in the car, he played bits and pieces of a couple songs. (3 is much folkier and less angsty than their eponymous release, btw). they liked it well enough and (absolutely miraculously, in retrospect) decided that we could go. together. as a family. eep.
so we get there and thankfully my parents had the good sense and kind heart to buy tickets on the opposite side of the stadium. we were surprised that they even chose to come in at all. the opening bands were mojo nixon and the pogues, neither of which this innocent 9th grader had heard of before. all i can remember is that i'd never heard anything so loud before in my life. or in the case of the pogues, so drunken. then the femmes came on and everyone went crazy, dancing in the aisles, pounding on the seats, and generally having a good time. i was absolutely amazed at the energy that could be felt and transfered at a concert. i cringed a few times for my parents sake during add it up and kiss off. they are not the type to run around asking why they can't get just one fuck or taking nine because they lost god, and for some reason i have the tendency to feel embarrassed for people around me when something potentially offensive is happening.
eventually the night ended and my mom seemed to get a bit of a kick out of the show while my dad was just glad it was over. my brother and i had our little bonding/independence experience and were introduced to the wild world of live music. oh and of course i bought a tour shirt (still got it, as a matter of fact) which made me a much cooler 9th grader than i had any right to be.
pixies, trompe le monde, 1991
i saw u2 on tour at the worcester centrum that year, and their opening band was someone i'd never heard before... the pixies. duh. anyways, my brother briefly introduced me to their music in his dorm room just prior to the show. it sounded like angsty and slightly arty rock. didn't really move me, but didn't mind it. seeing the pixies play that night made me like them a little more. they were snotty and dirty and loud. being a BMG music club whore in my youth, i decided to pick up trompe le monde because i was desperate for new music and was willing to give them a more serious shot. once they arrived they hardly left my off-brand walkman. every day on the ride to and fro school i'd zone out and listen to mr francis sign about aliens and goths and countless other things that were a million miles away. i loved it! soon after i picked up doolittle and bossanova and the love affair was undeniable. they were a gateway band to my flirtation with alterna-cool in the 11th grade.
and now this information makes me hopeful that i'll get a chance to see those guys once again.
chucklehead, the paradise, 1993
as amazing an experience it was to feel the energy of the violent femmes live in an ampitheatre, it was even more amazing to go to my first live show. i'd been at tufts for about 2 months and had befriended this guy who was from the area and was quite a little scenester. so a bunch of us were flipping through the phoenix and he sees an ad for chuclehead playing that night. he's like, "dude, chuclehead is playing tonight! we so have to go!", though he managed to say it in a way that sounded less valleygirl than that came out. he explained that they sound a little like fishbone and that they put on an amazing show. that was all we needed to know and about 5 of us piled into his old audi; speeding off into the night and the depths of allston.
while the music wasn't anything fantastic (the only lyric i remember was the band chanting something about 'riding the funky bus'), it was the energy i'll never forget. all the sweating in the crowd, all the sweating on the stage. people bouncing about, forming a circle while people jump in and jump out trying to either smack someone or avoid being smacked, depending on your stature (i fit into the latter category). this show also started my brief love of crowd surfing. the feeling of losing all control, passed about, wondering if you'll fall. after finding out the answer to that question a few too many times (yes, you will fall, and yes, it hurts to land on a dancefloor from 7 feet up). but anyways, i was really amazed by the release of the experience. lying around at tufts afterwards, talking about the show and feeling sore, sweaty and completely drained, it was a wonderful thing.
aphex twin, i care because you do, 1996
this has never been a favorite electronic music album, but it really did introduce me to 'that' world of odd beats and sounds. in particular i remember hearing 'start as you mean to go on', and thinking, i was to hear more music like *that*! the combination of dissonance and beauty appealled to the industrial and goth/shoegazer interests in me. plus it was without lyrics, so the music could be completely personalized and internalized. i've always liked aphex twin but he's frustratingly inconsistent. still, he opened a big door for me. plus he exposed me to the pleasures of dry humping bears, and who wouldn't wouldn't be thankful for that?
(those who haven't seen his live show are probably pretty confused and concerned right now) ;)
autechre, envane, chiastic slide, and the 1-6-4-7 impulse remix, 1998
the first autechre album i bought was tri repetae++. the first disc didn't do much for me (still doesn't) but i really liked parts of the 2nd cd. especially the more ambient clickly bits at the end. i had heard lots of raves about the band, so i would periodically buy an album of theirs when i'd happen upon it. one of those albums was envane. the first time i heard it i was sitting alone in my basement apartment and for some reason it just completely resonanted with me. the melodic sense, the rhythmic complexity, the crunch and ethereal. just beautiful. that convinced me to go out and buy everything else i could find my them. that lead me to (amongst other albums) chiastic slide, which probably held the title of 'most perfectest album ever' for longer than anything else i've loved. it still is one of my favorites. it just flows together so well and many of the tracks felt like songs i'd heard or imagined before, just realized in ways i never would have thought of. writing this right now makes me smile, i can't think of a single error or misstep they made. i've liked and loved other things they've composed, but chiastic slide just fit completely with what i like about electronic music.
so after buying all the albums, i sought out their remixes. i managed to trade for a 2cd-r set of them. most of it is good, but i'll always remember heading their remix of 1-6-4-7 for the first time. i was sitting at work, happily doing whatever it was i was doing when the song started. at first i found the rhythm annoying and too disjointed to work to. then it calmed down a bit and this absolutely beautiful and delicate melody comes in over the top to tie it together. i stop working completely now, and am transfixed. suddenly i notice that there is a voice saying 'six' over and over again. where'd that come from?!!? there's no reason why it should work, it just does. i think it's the fluid transition from a purely rhythmic sound to a voice that really caught me off guard. i still listen for it, try to figure out when the sound is recognizable as a voice. the track continues to a pretty standard subtractive outro, leaving just the little breakable melody behind to repeat a few more times. i have no idea if this really is a great song or not, but it works for me. and if i ever make you a mix, it undoubtedly will be on it. :)
kraftwerk, hammerstein ballroom, 1998
i'd been a fan of kraftwerk for a couple years and i'd kind of written them off as one of those bands that i love but would never see. their last album came out in 1991 and, while they had done a couple live shows between 91 and 98, i figured they were essentially defunct at this point. so when word spread that kraftwerk were going on a new tour of the US, i was as happy as happy could be.
the show itself was apparently almsot exactly what it was like back in 1981. they stood at 4 consoles/stations each one dressed exactly like the others. they bobbed their heads to the mechanical beat. the arrangements were similar to their remixes on the mix, which was a little disappointing. and while the music was certainly good, what made really made the show for me were the visuals. behind each of them there was a projector screen, and each one played these wonderfully lo-tech images perfectly sync'ed to the tracks. apparently even these were the same as they were 17 years previous. at the time i'm sure they were seen as cutting edge usage of compuer graphics, but by the time i saw them they were retro-cool. but because they really *were* old, they (by definition, i guess) had the formula down perfectly. i particularly remember the images for man-machine. they looked like the graphics used in my VLSI design class in college. just a series of lines of various colors, interconnecting in so many ways. but there was something with how the images zoomed in and out and shifted focus with perfect time to the chorus that said something to me. what that is, i have no idea, but it just made sense.
tresor club, berlin, 2000
around chirstmas time of 2000, as a part of my job i spent over a month living in southern germany. the week days were pretty dull (as everything closes painfully early, which led to the fun habit of eating and drinking a lot every night) but the weekends were wonderful. i was free to travel about the country and work paid for little trips. one of these trips was to berlin. a major reason for me wanting to go there was to tresor, which is a well-known techno club in east berlin. i went there on saturday night and it was absolutely the best atmosphere and music i've ever heard in a club. tresor took over an abandoned bank and turned it into their own space. the original bars for the vaults are still in the walls (one of the dancefloors was *in* a vault), everything had this decrepit-yet-beautiful look to it. and it wasn't the fake cheesy sort of rundown that you'd expect to see in a club in the states. the walls really were falling apart, the steps were half worn down from years of euro hipster shoes chipping away at the edges, there were lit candelabras freestanding on the floor (no fake spencer gift fire lights here!). the atmostphere was perfect in every way. and the music was exactly what i was hoping for. on the main floor they were playing dubby techno (basic channel/chain reaction style) and in the basement was *hard* banging 4 on the fucking floor techno (tresor style). these are two of my favorite types of techno, but before then i really only got to listen to them in my car. now they were being played out, with lights and incredibly thick fog and the beautiful europeans. i spent hours bouncing from upstairs to downstairs and back, keeping up in the vault for short spurts, drinking a vodka/redbull, going upstairs and moving to the more laid back sounds until i got bored or edgy, and venturing back downstairs again. despite spending my day as a tourist walking for miles, i managed to stay out until 4am, pretty ok for me. granted the club was just filling up as i was leaving, but us bostonians aren't adept at staying out that late.
sadly nobody spins that kind of techno around here. right? right??? someone please prove me wrong. even if i had to go to NYC, it'd still be worth it.
the brandeis electro-acoustic music series (BEAMS) and teaching my DSP to sing, 2001
ok, so this show was important to me for different reasons than all the other events i've listed, as it helped give me ideas that i'd later use in my own music. the show on its own was pretty neat. this was a 12hr marathon; i stuck around for about 6-7 hrs of it. i really liked about 1/3 of the pieces. nerly all of them were older than anything in my music collection, many of them sounded more advanced than the latest abstract nonlinear pieces from the labels du jour. others had a wonderful sense of humor (still need to track down some music from max matthews). a lot of it was crap - annoying, disjointed, purposefully purposeless. then there was a piece by alvin lucier, the name of which ecsapes me right now. it consisted of two sine wave oscillators (whose pitch i believe was changing slowly and randomly) and a piano player. the pianist would attempt to play music along with the oscillators such that interesting beat frequencies would occur. this lead to lots of pure tones, and the occasional plink of the piano, and perhaps some neat beating of notes would occur. while this might sound dull, i was totally entranced. it was a song governed by a rule that played differently every time. this fit in perfectly with what i was trying to do with my own music project, where i am trying to write music entirely in software, and have each iteration of the track play somewhat differently. before this show, i wasn't really sure how to progress with my music. during the performance i jotted some notes, came up with a basic concept for a song. the next week or so i worked on it and out came... a really bad song. still, it was the first song i'd written with this hardware and i was excited enough with the outcome to continue writing my little DSP tunes. now i can write much better (though arguable not good) songs and at leat they keep me happy and out of trouble.
thanks alvin! i owe you one!
sigur ros, Ágætis Byrjun and the berkely performace center, 2001
this was an album that really came out of nowhere for me. for a couple years i'd been all about the electronic music, giving up on almost all forms of rock and roll. after reading enough glowing reviews from music snobs of all sorts, i decided i'd give Ágætis Byrjun a shot. once i put it on and svefn-g-englar began all i could think was... wow. i stopped cleaning my room, i just sat there and wondered who these guys were and how they managed to take the fuzzed out shoegazer sound and make it both more beautiful and delicate and immense than any electronic track i'd heard before. their music just crushed me in every possible way.
later that year i went to see them play at the berkeley center. even before the show began everyone was emotionally charged. they show was on sept 21st and people were just beginning to feel like the world might not be coming to and end today after all. after much debate sigur ros decided to do their tour. then on the day of the show the government gave out their first terrorist warnings saying that there was an elevated risk of attack and that you should use caution in crowded areas. i began to wonder if i should go to the show, what sorts of bad things could happen, would the terrorists want to kill the hipsters or keep them around (they're all weak and liberal so they're no threat). :) after much debate and confusion i decided to take my chances and go to the show. what i saw and heard i could not have been prepared for. i'd read reviews saying that their live show was far superior to their cd, but i couldn't believe that - what could be better than this album? well, this was. the sheer emotion and intensity was overpowering, almost suffocating. i remember sitting in my chair, unable to move, feeling my breath taken away from me and goosebumps everywhere they could possibly be. i've never been to a show with such a raw effect on me (and everyone else there as best as i could tell). i couldn't talk after it was over, didn't even want to. i just wanted to go home, lie in my room, and feel the way i had just felt for as long as possible.
and to sound even more melodramatic, i think that show helped restore my faith in people and the beauty that they can create. the world might be fucked right now, but somehow it had to turn out ok in the end, because i believed beauty like this had to win.
i've seen sigur ros twice since that show, and sadly they haven't been able to recreate the same level of intensity. i can't tell if it's me or them. i'm just happy they gave that night to me.
mum, yesterday was dramatic today is ok and 608, 2002
ok so this one might be a little sappy. :) brigid and i had just started hanging out, and we had reached a critical stage. we were willing to copy music for each other! she told me that the new mum album was fantastic. i'd heard their previous album and thought it was ok, a little bland and simplsitic. i really didn't have too much interest in buying the new one, but she insisted it was great and decided to make me a copy. skeptical but happy for the gift, i took it home. after listening to just two tracks i owed brigid an appology - it was fantastic. i couldn't stop listening to it. we both have a bit of an icelandic fetish, this really fed into it. soon afterwards our friendship turned into dating and that turned into a relationship. in the middle of all this excitement we found out mum was going on tour. we quickly scooped up tickets, excited to have another brush with the icelanders.
the night of the show arrives, and it starts off less than stellar. the crowd was obnoxiosly loud during the opening act and it was just too crowded and hot to feel like we could actually forget our surroundings and be sucked into the music. is this night going to be only disappointment? eventually mum comes on and all fears are forgotten. all the fragility and emotion of the album is layed out for us to hear. we stand in the crowd, together, leaning against each other, holding hands or arms wrapped around each other and _it_ _is_ _beautiful_. usually when music is playing i like to bein my own world, but that night i was so happy to share it with someone else. mum made sure we were both thinking the same wonderful things, and for that i am grateful.
violent femmes concert at great woods (now the tweeter center), mansfield MA, 1989
my whole family was riding together in the car near worcester MA listening to the radio when an advertisement for the violent femmes show happening tonight came on the air. my older brother was a fan and i had been briefly exposed to them through him. he started begging my parents to take us. we happened to have a copy of '3' in the car, he played bits and pieces of a couple songs. (3 is much folkier and less angsty than their eponymous release, btw). they liked it well enough and (absolutely miraculously, in retrospect) decided that we could go. together. as a family. eep.
so we get there and thankfully my parents had the good sense and kind heart to buy tickets on the opposite side of the stadium. we were surprised that they even chose to come in at all. the opening bands were mojo nixon and the pogues, neither of which this innocent 9th grader had heard of before. all i can remember is that i'd never heard anything so loud before in my life. or in the case of the pogues, so drunken. then the femmes came on and everyone went crazy, dancing in the aisles, pounding on the seats, and generally having a good time. i was absolutely amazed at the energy that could be felt and transfered at a concert. i cringed a few times for my parents sake during add it up and kiss off. they are not the type to run around asking why they can't get just one fuck or taking nine because they lost god, and for some reason i have the tendency to feel embarrassed for people around me when something potentially offensive is happening.
eventually the night ended and my mom seemed to get a bit of a kick out of the show while my dad was just glad it was over. my brother and i had our little bonding/independence experience and were introduced to the wild world of live music. oh and of course i bought a tour shirt (still got it, as a matter of fact) which made me a much cooler 9th grader than i had any right to be.
pixies, trompe le monde, 1991
i saw u2 on tour at the worcester centrum that year, and their opening band was someone i'd never heard before... the pixies. duh. anyways, my brother briefly introduced me to their music in his dorm room just prior to the show. it sounded like angsty and slightly arty rock. didn't really move me, but didn't mind it. seeing the pixies play that night made me like them a little more. they were snotty and dirty and loud. being a BMG music club whore in my youth, i decided to pick up trompe le monde because i was desperate for new music and was willing to give them a more serious shot. once they arrived they hardly left my off-brand walkman. every day on the ride to and fro school i'd zone out and listen to mr francis sign about aliens and goths and countless other things that were a million miles away. i loved it! soon after i picked up doolittle and bossanova and the love affair was undeniable. they were a gateway band to my flirtation with alterna-cool in the 11th grade.
and now this information makes me hopeful that i'll get a chance to see those guys once again.
chucklehead, the paradise, 1993
as amazing an experience it was to feel the energy of the violent femmes live in an ampitheatre, it was even more amazing to go to my first live show. i'd been at tufts for about 2 months and had befriended this guy who was from the area and was quite a little scenester. so a bunch of us were flipping through the phoenix and he sees an ad for chuclehead playing that night. he's like, "dude, chuclehead is playing tonight! we so have to go!", though he managed to say it in a way that sounded less valleygirl than that came out. he explained that they sound a little like fishbone and that they put on an amazing show. that was all we needed to know and about 5 of us piled into his old audi; speeding off into the night and the depths of allston.
while the music wasn't anything fantastic (the only lyric i remember was the band chanting something about 'riding the funky bus'), it was the energy i'll never forget. all the sweating in the crowd, all the sweating on the stage. people bouncing about, forming a circle while people jump in and jump out trying to either smack someone or avoid being smacked, depending on your stature (i fit into the latter category). this show also started my brief love of crowd surfing. the feeling of losing all control, passed about, wondering if you'll fall. after finding out the answer to that question a few too many times (yes, you will fall, and yes, it hurts to land on a dancefloor from 7 feet up). but anyways, i was really amazed by the release of the experience. lying around at tufts afterwards, talking about the show and feeling sore, sweaty and completely drained, it was a wonderful thing.
aphex twin, i care because you do, 1996
this has never been a favorite electronic music album, but it really did introduce me to 'that' world of odd beats and sounds. in particular i remember hearing 'start as you mean to go on', and thinking, i was to hear more music like *that*! the combination of dissonance and beauty appealled to the industrial and goth/shoegazer interests in me. plus it was without lyrics, so the music could be completely personalized and internalized. i've always liked aphex twin but he's frustratingly inconsistent. still, he opened a big door for me. plus he exposed me to the pleasures of dry humping bears, and who wouldn't wouldn't be thankful for that?
(those who haven't seen his live show are probably pretty confused and concerned right now) ;)
autechre, envane, chiastic slide, and the 1-6-4-7 impulse remix, 1998
the first autechre album i bought was tri repetae++. the first disc didn't do much for me (still doesn't) but i really liked parts of the 2nd cd. especially the more ambient clickly bits at the end. i had heard lots of raves about the band, so i would periodically buy an album of theirs when i'd happen upon it. one of those albums was envane. the first time i heard it i was sitting alone in my basement apartment and for some reason it just completely resonanted with me. the melodic sense, the rhythmic complexity, the crunch and ethereal. just beautiful. that convinced me to go out and buy everything else i could find my them. that lead me to (amongst other albums) chiastic slide, which probably held the title of 'most perfectest album ever' for longer than anything else i've loved. it still is one of my favorites. it just flows together so well and many of the tracks felt like songs i'd heard or imagined before, just realized in ways i never would have thought of. writing this right now makes me smile, i can't think of a single error or misstep they made. i've liked and loved other things they've composed, but chiastic slide just fit completely with what i like about electronic music.
so after buying all the albums, i sought out their remixes. i managed to trade for a 2cd-r set of them. most of it is good, but i'll always remember heading their remix of 1-6-4-7 for the first time. i was sitting at work, happily doing whatever it was i was doing when the song started. at first i found the rhythm annoying and too disjointed to work to. then it calmed down a bit and this absolutely beautiful and delicate melody comes in over the top to tie it together. i stop working completely now, and am transfixed. suddenly i notice that there is a voice saying 'six' over and over again. where'd that come from?!!? there's no reason why it should work, it just does. i think it's the fluid transition from a purely rhythmic sound to a voice that really caught me off guard. i still listen for it, try to figure out when the sound is recognizable as a voice. the track continues to a pretty standard subtractive outro, leaving just the little breakable melody behind to repeat a few more times. i have no idea if this really is a great song or not, but it works for me. and if i ever make you a mix, it undoubtedly will be on it. :)
kraftwerk, hammerstein ballroom, 1998
i'd been a fan of kraftwerk for a couple years and i'd kind of written them off as one of those bands that i love but would never see. their last album came out in 1991 and, while they had done a couple live shows between 91 and 98, i figured they were essentially defunct at this point. so when word spread that kraftwerk were going on a new tour of the US, i was as happy as happy could be.
the show itself was apparently almsot exactly what it was like back in 1981. they stood at 4 consoles/stations each one dressed exactly like the others. they bobbed their heads to the mechanical beat. the arrangements were similar to their remixes on the mix, which was a little disappointing. and while the music was certainly good, what made really made the show for me were the visuals. behind each of them there was a projector screen, and each one played these wonderfully lo-tech images perfectly sync'ed to the tracks. apparently even these were the same as they were 17 years previous. at the time i'm sure they were seen as cutting edge usage of compuer graphics, but by the time i saw them they were retro-cool. but because they really *were* old, they (by definition, i guess) had the formula down perfectly. i particularly remember the images for man-machine. they looked like the graphics used in my VLSI design class in college. just a series of lines of various colors, interconnecting in so many ways. but there was something with how the images zoomed in and out and shifted focus with perfect time to the chorus that said something to me. what that is, i have no idea, but it just made sense.
tresor club, berlin, 2000
around chirstmas time of 2000, as a part of my job i spent over a month living in southern germany. the week days were pretty dull (as everything closes painfully early, which led to the fun habit of eating and drinking a lot every night) but the weekends were wonderful. i was free to travel about the country and work paid for little trips. one of these trips was to berlin. a major reason for me wanting to go there was to tresor, which is a well-known techno club in east berlin. i went there on saturday night and it was absolutely the best atmosphere and music i've ever heard in a club. tresor took over an abandoned bank and turned it into their own space. the original bars for the vaults are still in the walls (one of the dancefloors was *in* a vault), everything had this decrepit-yet-beautiful look to it. and it wasn't the fake cheesy sort of rundown that you'd expect to see in a club in the states. the walls really were falling apart, the steps were half worn down from years of euro hipster shoes chipping away at the edges, there were lit candelabras freestanding on the floor (no fake spencer gift fire lights here!). the atmostphere was perfect in every way. and the music was exactly what i was hoping for. on the main floor they were playing dubby techno (basic channel/chain reaction style) and in the basement was *hard* banging 4 on the fucking floor techno (tresor style). these are two of my favorite types of techno, but before then i really only got to listen to them in my car. now they were being played out, with lights and incredibly thick fog and the beautiful europeans. i spent hours bouncing from upstairs to downstairs and back, keeping up in the vault for short spurts, drinking a vodka/redbull, going upstairs and moving to the more laid back sounds until i got bored or edgy, and venturing back downstairs again. despite spending my day as a tourist walking for miles, i managed to stay out until 4am, pretty ok for me. granted the club was just filling up as i was leaving, but us bostonians aren't adept at staying out that late.
sadly nobody spins that kind of techno around here. right? right??? someone please prove me wrong. even if i had to go to NYC, it'd still be worth it.
the brandeis electro-acoustic music series (BEAMS) and teaching my DSP to sing, 2001
ok, so this show was important to me for different reasons than all the other events i've listed, as it helped give me ideas that i'd later use in my own music. the show on its own was pretty neat. this was a 12hr marathon; i stuck around for about 6-7 hrs of it. i really liked about 1/3 of the pieces. nerly all of them were older than anything in my music collection, many of them sounded more advanced than the latest abstract nonlinear pieces from the labels du jour. others had a wonderful sense of humor (still need to track down some music from max matthews). a lot of it was crap - annoying, disjointed, purposefully purposeless. then there was a piece by alvin lucier, the name of which ecsapes me right now. it consisted of two sine wave oscillators (whose pitch i believe was changing slowly and randomly) and a piano player. the pianist would attempt to play music along with the oscillators such that interesting beat frequencies would occur. this lead to lots of pure tones, and the occasional plink of the piano, and perhaps some neat beating of notes would occur. while this might sound dull, i was totally entranced. it was a song governed by a rule that played differently every time. this fit in perfectly with what i was trying to do with my own music project, where i am trying to write music entirely in software, and have each iteration of the track play somewhat differently. before this show, i wasn't really sure how to progress with my music. during the performance i jotted some notes, came up with a basic concept for a song. the next week or so i worked on it and out came... a really bad song. still, it was the first song i'd written with this hardware and i was excited enough with the outcome to continue writing my little DSP tunes. now i can write much better (though arguable not good) songs and at leat they keep me happy and out of trouble.
thanks alvin! i owe you one!
sigur ros, Ágætis Byrjun and the berkely performace center, 2001
this was an album that really came out of nowhere for me. for a couple years i'd been all about the electronic music, giving up on almost all forms of rock and roll. after reading enough glowing reviews from music snobs of all sorts, i decided i'd give Ágætis Byrjun a shot. once i put it on and svefn-g-englar began all i could think was... wow. i stopped cleaning my room, i just sat there and wondered who these guys were and how they managed to take the fuzzed out shoegazer sound and make it both more beautiful and delicate and immense than any electronic track i'd heard before. their music just crushed me in every possible way.
later that year i went to see them play at the berkeley center. even before the show began everyone was emotionally charged. they show was on sept 21st and people were just beginning to feel like the world might not be coming to and end today after all. after much debate sigur ros decided to do their tour. then on the day of the show the government gave out their first terrorist warnings saying that there was an elevated risk of attack and that you should use caution in crowded areas. i began to wonder if i should go to the show, what sorts of bad things could happen, would the terrorists want to kill the hipsters or keep them around (they're all weak and liberal so they're no threat). :) after much debate and confusion i decided to take my chances and go to the show. what i saw and heard i could not have been prepared for. i'd read reviews saying that their live show was far superior to their cd, but i couldn't believe that - what could be better than this album? well, this was. the sheer emotion and intensity was overpowering, almost suffocating. i remember sitting in my chair, unable to move, feeling my breath taken away from me and goosebumps everywhere they could possibly be. i've never been to a show with such a raw effect on me (and everyone else there as best as i could tell). i couldn't talk after it was over, didn't even want to. i just wanted to go home, lie in my room, and feel the way i had just felt for as long as possible.
and to sound even more melodramatic, i think that show helped restore my faith in people and the beauty that they can create. the world might be fucked right now, but somehow it had to turn out ok in the end, because i believed beauty like this had to win.
i've seen sigur ros twice since that show, and sadly they haven't been able to recreate the same level of intensity. i can't tell if it's me or them. i'm just happy they gave that night to me.
mum, yesterday was dramatic today is ok and 608, 2002
ok so this one might be a little sappy. :) brigid and i had just started hanging out, and we had reached a critical stage. we were willing to copy music for each other! she told me that the new mum album was fantastic. i'd heard their previous album and thought it was ok, a little bland and simplsitic. i really didn't have too much interest in buying the new one, but she insisted it was great and decided to make me a copy. skeptical but happy for the gift, i took it home. after listening to just two tracks i owed brigid an appology - it was fantastic. i couldn't stop listening to it. we both have a bit of an icelandic fetish, this really fed into it. soon afterwards our friendship turned into dating and that turned into a relationship. in the middle of all this excitement we found out mum was going on tour. we quickly scooped up tickets, excited to have another brush with the icelanders.
the night of the show arrives, and it starts off less than stellar. the crowd was obnoxiosly loud during the opening act and it was just too crowded and hot to feel like we could actually forget our surroundings and be sucked into the music. is this night going to be only disappointment? eventually mum comes on and all fears are forgotten. all the fragility and emotion of the album is layed out for us to hear. we stand in the crowd, together, leaning against each other, holding hands or arms wrapped around each other and _it_ _is_ _beautiful_. usually when music is playing i like to bein my own world, but that night i was so happy to share it with someone else. mum made sure we were both thinking the same wonderful things, and for that i am grateful.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-26 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-28 06:17 am (UTC)but yeah, alberto balsalm is the real winner on that album. i think it's funny that lots of aphex fans are convinced that he has hundreds of alberto balsalms in him, but instead he chooses to release bucephalus bouncing ball and other likeminded works because he likes to annoy and tease people.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-28 06:59 am (UTC)for me, _icbyd_ is a great over-all album, but his wacky drill and bass pieces stand out more for me. _girl/boy song_ is my favorite, even though the rest of the _rdj album_ is hit or miss, and you know how much i like _54 cymru beats_. i can kind of tone out and do work to _icbyd_, but the dnb stuff commands all my attention.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-28 07:48 am (UTC)mine too. :) love how it's so evocative for an instrumental piece. those beats meant something! i was obsessed with this song in college. i don't listen to that cd too often, but every time i do i'm pretty impressed. a lot of people didn't care for it though, felt he was riding the drill-n-bass bandwagon for a little too long.
i honestly don't know that i really have a favorite album from rdj, almost everything he'd done has 3-4 tracks i love, but the rest feel a little aimless. someday i'll make the perfect rdj comp and i'll listen to little else.
no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-29 01:28 pm (UTC)http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/music/beams/archive/mar2001/2001mar.html
the song i really liked by alvin lucier is called Music for Piano with Slow Sweep, Pure Wave Oscillators. there's a good short description of it on that website.