Mogwai – Ten Rapid April 1, 2008

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I came across Mogwai while reading Rock On: An Office Power Ballad in which the author describes at some point his nights listening to this band, and I liked the book enough to give it a try.

I really like it. Ten Rapid is a collection of singles released by Mogwai in the mid-nineties. The songs are typically a mix of quiet music and very heavy guitars at times (along with other instruments).

Angels versus Aliens is a very good example:

Listen to: Angels versus Aliens (quiet part)

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Listen to: Angels versus Aliens (loud part)

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It’s actually interesting to visualize this track with Audacity to see the melody build up and then deflate:

Another track that I really like is Ithica 27 Ø 9, which also has an interesting profile:

Listen to: Ithica 27 Ø 9 (quiet part)

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Listen to: Ithica 27 Ø 9 (loud part)

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Obviously, it’s not the kind of music that everybody will like, but I really got into it.

Click here to buy Ten Rapid by Mogwai.

The Clash – The Collection March 28, 2008

Continuing my journey exploring Joe Strummer’s music, I went looking for The Clash albums. I was actually looking for some kind of best of, collection of singles. There’s quite a few out there, but reading reviews from fans, every single one seemed to be missing some major piece of their work. I therefore reverted to looking into original studio albums, and found a set of 3 CDs that actually capture most of The Clash’s work and got approval from a number of fans, and for less than $20!

The Clash (U.S. Version)

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The first album of The Clash is the best one in my opinion. Very few albums capture so much energy: it’s a collection of short, enraged songs ((White Man) In Hammersmith Palais and Police & Thieves being somewhat an exception).

Listen to: I’m So Bored With The U.S.A.

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Listen to: White Riot

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London Calling

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London Calling was released two years after The Clash and has a slightly different style, with softer music and more reggae, with slower and longer songs, though the lyrics remain very engaged.

Listen to: London Calling

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Listen to: Hateful

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Combat Rock

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Combat Rock has a mix of songs that feel very punk, and others that feel much lighter, such as Inoculated City or Death Is A Star – though again, this really applies to the music than the lyrics. Interestingly, it contains the only song from The Clash that surfaced in France’s popular culture: Should I Stay Or Should I Go.

I like it less than The Clash and London Calling, but it does contain some excellent tracks:

Listen to: Know Your Rights

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Listen to: Rock The Casbah

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Overall, these albums (especially the first two ones) feel like a necessary addition to any rock collection.

Click here to buy The Collection: The Clash/London Calling/Combat Rock by The Clash.

Christian Scott – Anthem February 2, 2008

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One of the nice things about living in a timezone nine hours away from France is that I can listen to shows on the French radio that are not mainstream and usually more interesting – and with less commercials, as well. One of those shows is L’Heure du Jazz on RTL every Sunday at 11pm (French time), which has live jazz performances every week. This is how I discovered Christian Scott last year, and after listening to his performance, I immediately bought his CD, Anthem.

It took me six months to get to listen to the CD carefully, and for that, I’m glad I started this blog. I sometimes buy CDs and forget that I even did, which would have been a shame in this case.

Christian Scott is a jazz musician from New Orleans and he plays the trumpet. His second album, Anthem, is not “classical” jazz, but more modern, mixed with some rock-ish sides, such as saturated electric guitars and rock rhythms.

The album opens with Litany Against Fear, which is really excellent, and deserves to be listened to just for the drums and the trumpet. The next song, Void, is a very nice quiet piece, which contrasts with the energy of the first track.

Anthem (Antediluvian Adaptation) follows, which contains an awesome piano part, emphasized by saturated guitars. It is a reference to hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in August 2005.

Re: has a nice heavy bass line and trumpet, but it feels too short, with it’s quick fade out after only 2:14. It is followed by Cease fire, which is a little repetitive to my taste, and Dialect, which has heavy guitars and piano sounds, but isn’t to the level of the first three songs of the album in my opinion, and feels a little repetitive again.

The Uprising and Katrina’s Eyes that follow are two great, very calm tracks, and so is Like That which is a jazzy ballad.

The album closes with Anthem (Postdiluvian Adaptation), which echoes Anthem (Antediluvian Adaptation). This is the only track with lyrics, sang by Brother J of the X Clan. This song is a nice mix of jazz, rock and and hip-hop, which embodies the anger around the Katrina catastrophe and the way it was dealt with by the Bush administration (Was it genocide by drowning or homicide by clowning with time?).

This is a great album of modern jazz, mixing jazz instruments with rock effects and a touch of hip-hop. The middle of the album (tracks 4-6) are a little weaker than the rest, but it’s overall a very interesting album to listen to.

Listen to: Litany Against Fear

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Listen to: Anthem (Postdiluvian Adaptation)

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Click here to buy Anthem by Christian Scott.

Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros – Streetcore January 23, 2008

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After seeing The Future Is Unwritten over the holiday break, I decided to investigate the musical world of Joe Strummer. Weirdly enough, I started with Streetcore, a posthumous album released one year after he suddenly passed away in December 2002.

This album combines a set of songs with very distinct styles: pure rock (such as All In A Day), reggae-ish songs (such as Get Down Moses), and acoustic (like Long Shadow or Redemption Song). I started listening to it, and have been playing it again and again, really appreciating each of those different styles.

This album really feels like a closing chapter on Strummer’s life though, which is somewhat troubling. First, there are multiple references to songs by The Clash: London is burning in Burnin’ Streets, This is London calling in Midnight Jam.

Second, there are lines like:

You cast a long shadow
And that is your testament

Somewhere in my soul
There’s always rock and roll

in Long Shadow or the following which closes the album in Silver And Gold:

I’ve got to hurry up before I grow too old.

Streetcore really makes you feel sad that Joe Strummer had to go so soon.

Listen to: Get Down Moses

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Listen to: Long Shadow

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Click here to buy Streetcore by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros.

Best of Bootie 2007 January 13, 2008

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Best of Bootie 2007 is a collection of the 21 best mashups of 2007 compiled by DJs Adrian & the Mysterious D. It can be downloaded for free, and there’s a track by a guy called DJ Moule on it (you need to be French to really get the kick out of DJ Moule’s name). How could you not give this album a spin?

Quoting Wikipedia, a mashup or bootleg is a song or composition created from the combination of the music from one song with the a cappella from another. It allows to listen to well-known song with a brand new angle, and despite some hit-and-misses, but it’s always interesting.

Galvanize The Empire (Chemical Brothers vs. John Williams) by Party Ben has an interesting Star Wars theme that will appeal to geeks. Go Home Productions give us a good rendition of Fever using the rhythm of The Passenger on Passenger Fever (Peggy Lee vs. Iggy Pop). Fade To Pretty Vacant (Visage vs. Sex Pistols vs. The Charlatans vs. Fun Lovin’ Criminals vs. Nouvelle Vague) by Copycat is also very nice, helped by the good basis that Fade To Grey is.

I feel bad for criticizing my fellow Frenchman DJ Moule, but I did not like Sympathy For Teen Spirit (Rolling Stones vs. Queen vs. Nirvana). Similarly, I have issues with Funky Goes To Hollywood (Wild Cherry vs. Frankie Goes To Hollywood) by Earworm; all the energy from Play That Funky Music builds up, but the chorus in this mashup is the one from Relax, which feels frustrating.

Phantom On The Bottom (The Lady Tigra vs. Justice), Don’t Stop Believin’ In Planet Rock (Journey vs. Afrika Bambaataa) or More Than On Point (House of Pain vs. Boston) are other tracks that I do not care too much for.

On the other hand, Say It Right Away (Nelly Furtado vs. The Egg vs. Madonna) by Earworm (using The Egg’s Walking Away as the basis of the track), Divide & Kreate’s Illiterate City (Jackson 5 vs. Guns N’ Roses) (associating Jackson 5 lyrics with Guns N’ Roses music), and especially DJ Magnet’s Love Comes Running Up That Hill Quickly (Placebo vs. Pet Shop Boys vs. Kate Bush) are excellent.

Go listen to it. Below are a couple of excerpt to give you a taste.

Listen to: Say It Right Away (Nelly Furtado vs. The Egg vs. Madonna)

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Listen to: Love Comes Running Up That Hill Quickly (Placebo vs. Pet Shop Boys vs. Kate Bush)

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Click here to download Best of Bootie 2007.

Rihanna – Good Girl Gone Bad January 11, 2008

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I came across Rihanna for the first time on the radio when I starded hearing Umbrella. I hated this song, I found it repetitive, I couldn’t understand why people liked it, but for some reason my wife did, so Good Girl Gone Bad is another CD that I got her as a present. Once the CD was in our music collection, I got curious about why she was so popular and started listening to the album.

The album’s opening song is Umbrella, which gave the CD a bad start for me. However, I liked a number of subsequent songs quite well, such as Don’t Stop the Music, Breaking Dishes, Rehab, even though that’s a style of music that I don’t usually listen to. Question Existing is interesting, but I could not help but wonder how real the lyrics are; they try hard to show that she is a good girl, compared to today’s Hollywood’s crazyness.

Good Girl Gone Bad is also nice, but I really have issues with the repeated use of we was; I don’t like misuse of grammar in general, especially intentionally, and every instance of we was makes me cringe.

What I wasn’t expecting was that, after a few listens of the album, Umbrella would start growing on me. I now appreciate the rhythm of this song, and by listening more carefully to it, I really got into her voice.

There are other songs that I am still undecided on, such as Push Up On Me and Sell Me Candy, and others that I don’t like (e.g. Say It, which sounds like a Spice Girls song), but despite my first impressions, I quite like this CD in the end.

Listen to: Don’t Stop The Music

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Listen to: Breakin’ Dishes

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Click here to buy Good Girl Gone Bad by Rihanna .

Fergie – The Dutchess January 7, 2008

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My journey into pop music land continues with The Dutchess by Fergie. I became fond of the Black Eyed Peas, so I was wondering how much I would like Fergie, as she’s been one of the main personnas in the band. However, the style of her album is fairly different, not as edgy as what the Black Eyed Peas would do. That means less interesting, in my opinion.

I did not get into Fergalicious, London Bridge, Pedestal or Voodoo Doll. The beat of the music is too overwhelming.

All That I Got (The Make Up Song) makes me think of a Mariah Carey song, even though I’m no Mariah Carey expert (nor fan); it turns out that the song isn’t actually bad. Clumsy and Velvet are interesting, but my favorite songs are Big Girls Don’t Cry, Losing My Ground and Finally. This last song made me think of a tune coming straight out of a Walt Disney movie.

Overall, the album is uneven: it sometimes sounds like a number of different influences battling each other, but there are a number a number of interesting songs.

Listen to: Losing My Ground

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Listen to: Finally

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Click here to buy The Dutchess by Fergie .

Nelly Furtado – Loose January 3, 2008

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Loose from Nelly Furtado is an album that I bought as a gift to my wife. I would not have bought it for me to start with, but as I am curious when it comes down to music, I wanted to listen to her more carefully and give this album a spin. This basically was not setting this album for success in my rate-o-meter to start with.

The music is too much dance-oriented to my taste, so I had problems getting into it. Songs like Maneater or Maneater are not my cup of tea, neither musically nor when it comes to their respective themes. I found Glow very repetitive. Te Busque reminded me of some songs that Santana wrote for some reason, but without the cool guitar parts, and the looping keyboard bits on Do It are just too much.

I did appreciate a few songs though. Afraid, which opens up the album, is actually pretty nice. I do like Say It Right; maybe it is because I heard it many times on the radio, but I quite like the different parts with the different pitches of her voice, and the background voice effects. In God’s Hands is a mellow, enjoyable track, and the closing track – I’m ignoring the Spanish version of Te Busque, since it was earlier in the album –, All Good Things (Come to an End) is also pretty nice.

Basically, I didn’t dislike the lighter, slower songs, but I’m far from being in love with this album. It might not be a fundamentally bad album, it’s just not my style, I guess.

Listen to: Afraid

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Listen to: Say It Right

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Click here to buy Loose by Nelly Furtado.

Emily King – East Side Story December 31, 2007

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I bought East Side Story by Emily King as part of my exploration of R&B, after she came to play a mini concert at work. I actually missed the concert, but it was enough to make me curious about her and try her album.

I really got into the first song, Walk In My Shoes, which has a very good beat. This is apparently the title that she tried to put forward, as the album contains a bonus track, with is an alternate version featuring Lupe Fiasco. Another song that I quite like is Alright.

Not all songs pleased me though. The rhythm box is really overused on You Can Get By. E Melody doesn’t do it for me.

The album also features a cover of Bill Whithers’s Aint’ No Sunshine. It’s a nice cover, and you can really hear that Emily King has a very nice voice on it, but it’s not that different from the original. I always wondered about the appeal of artists to do covers on album studios that are not radically different; examples of good covers in my opinion are Hey! Joe by Willie DeVille or All Along the Watchtower by The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

As I’m really a beginner in R&B, I’m not quite sure how this album would fare with R&B fans. Coming with a rock background, I found it a promising but unequal first album. Emily King is only 21 years old, so I’m sure we’ll hear from her again soon.

Listen to: Walk In My Shoes

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Listen to: Alright

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Click here to buy East Side Story by Emily King.

PJ Harvey – White Chalk December 29, 2007

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I had gotten comfortable with PJ Harvey’s rocky sound. From To Bring You My Love to Who The Fuck?, she had a lot of decibels to release, in a way that very much pleased me. However, when I listened to the preview of her latest album, White Chalk, on her Web site last summer, I discovered that it was going to be very far from the sound I was familiar with coming from her: no heavy guitars, no screaming, but harps, pianos, fiddles and other acoustic instruments with Polly-Jean Harvey’s voice.

This is why, when I bought the CD, I was wondering how much I was going to listen to it.

The packaging itself is different: instead of a standard jewel case, a very thin cardboard sleeve with PJ Harvey wearing a white dress, in a photo that could have been taken a century ago.

The music turned out to be very soothing. Songs mainly feature her voice, sometimes a-cappella, and a piano, with a few other instruments. Some really bear her style in my opinion (e.g. The Piano), but all the arrangements are extremely simple. It took me a couple of listens to really get past what I thought PJ Harvey’s music for to really get into it; I then learned to enjoy it in a way which is completely different from her other albums.

It is basically a short (only 33.5 minutes), refreshing album. It’s not the type of album that you’ll be listening to in a loop, but rather one that you’ll be very happy to put on when you’re in the right mood and that will do its job then. Below are a couple of my favorite songs on this album, Dear Dearkness and Before Departure.

Listen to: Dear Darkness

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Listen to: Before Departure

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Click here to buy White Chalk by PJ Harvey.