Albums you've been listening to lately

[zuludelta]

Ely Buendia - Wanted Bedspacer: Ely Buendia is probably the most significant contemporary Philippine musician/songwriter of the past 2 decades. Buendia entered the music scene as the frontman for seminal Philippine indie pop band the Eraserheads in the early 1990s. The Eraserheads created a potent pop sound heavily influenced by the Beatles, Lou Reed, the Beach Boys, David Bowie, Elvis Costello, and the Talking Heads, but still rooted in indigenous musical sensibilities, and became a regional hit. The band would go on to release several successful albums and even win MTV Asia's Viewer's Choice Award in 1997 (not an easy feat for an act that primarily sang in their native language of Tagalog, considering the multitude of languages spoken in the Asian region).

Wanted Bedspacer was created in-between Eraserheads albums in 2000, and it's a distinct departure from Buendia's guitar-driven brand of pop music. The album features songs that bear more than a slight tinge of electronica, although they still retain an organic, live feel. A lot of Eraserheads fans I've spoken to have mixed feelings about Buendia's work here, but I, for one, enjoy the experimentation he engaged in in this record.

Media Links:
Over 18
Wanted Bedspacer
Santo (Saint)
Tapos Na (It's Over)
   

[zuludelta]

Mono - Formica Blues: The UK-based group Mono is probably most famous for their single "Life in Mono," which found its way on a number of film soundtracks and downtempo/ambient music collections in the late 1990s. Formica Blues is their only full-length album to date, as far as I know.

I've always enjoyed their brand of synth pop-meets-1960s spy and lounge-meets trip hop, although it is pretty apparent where the most common criticism of their music (that they sound a tad too much like Portishead circa the Dummy period) comes from. In their defense, though, Mono was only part of a large and overwhelming trend in late 1990s where trip-hop groups used 1960s/1970s-inspired instrumentation and were almost always fronted by female vocalists (Portishead, Lamb, Morcheeba, Zero 7, Alpha, and even early Esthero, to a certain extent).

Anyway, they are one of the few 1990s trip-hop groups who didn't overstay their welcome... they put out their best songs, and then got out before they started repeating themselves.

Media Links:
Life In Mono
Slimcea Girl
Penguin Freud
Silicone

Loquat - It's Yours To Keep: San Francisco-based Loquat is one of the more under-appreciated independent pop acts, I find. They are an excellent live act, and their studio material stands up to repeated listens. They have a very spare, somewhat lo-fi sound, which allows the band to showcase its greatest strengths: vocalist Kylee Swenson's vocals and their simple yet effective lyrics.

If you're a fan of Regina Spektor or Rilo Kiley, or even J-pop group Do As Infinity, you may want to give these guys a listen.

Media Links:
Swingset Chain
Take It Back     

[thanoson]

Portishead is often brought up on this thread. Well, the new album came out around a month ago. It's different from the 1st 2 albums. Not a lot of break beats this time around. However, it is still really good. The 3rd albums title is, well, Third. Go check it out.

[Spam]

Coldplay came out with a new album today. Haven't picked it up yet, even though I should probably go and get it sometime.

FORIAMSPAM!

[BWPS]

Coldplay came out with a new album today. Haven't picked it up yet, even though I should probably go and get it sometime.

FORIAMSPAM!

GET.

I'm listening to Viva La Vida right now, it's really pretty good. Better than X&Y I know for sure.

EDIT: Pretty good was a huge understatement, it's amazing, easily the best disc of the year.

[zuludelta]

Santogold - self-titled: I've been in a bit of a listening rut lately, preferring to listen to the stuff I listened to during my formative years (1990s Philippine indie music, late 1990s trip-hop and ambient, the Beatles, the odd jazz and swing records)... it's just that there doesn't seem to be much out there that inspires me these days. I picked up Santi White's 2008 debut album on the recommendation of a friend. The 32 year old White, who goes by the stage name Santogold, serves up a very eclectic sound, combining elements of 1980s pop and dance music, punk, dub, reggaeton, roots reggae, hip-hop, and rock music. The great thing about this album is it sounds very raw and organic, giving it a sense of improvisation and spontaneity not commonly found in today's over-produced and overly slick popular music sound.

Also, I love it when I can find a record that I can dance and rock out to (I've always found it odd that there seems to be a popular but false dichotomy that "rock" shouldn't be danceable and that dance music shouldn't be something one can "rock out" to).

Definitely recommended.

Media Links:
Say Aha
L.E.S. Artistes
I'm A Lady
You'll Find A Way
The Creator
Shove It
My Superman

[Midnight]

Dinosaur Jr., Beyond

[Jakew]

Workout Holiday by White Denim is pretty good.

Also, Hercules & Love Affair.

[zuludelta]

Violent Playground - Primordial Soup: Named after a 1958 British film that was a cautionary tale about the dangers of rock and roll, you'd think Violent Playground would be one of those artsy, ironic, post-rock outfits. Somewhat surprisingly, the Manila-based group plays straightforward, radio-ready, adult-contemporary "alternative" rock. Primordial Soup, the group's only album, was released in 1996, amid the burgeoning wave of independent local music releases that characterized the 1990s Philippine music scene. Comparisons to Toad the Wet Sprocket and early Pearl Jam aren't too far off. Not really a strong record when compared to what the their contemporaries were releasing at the time, but a competent pop record that manages to create a by-the-numbers 1990s sound (complete with the customary descending pentatonic scales!).

Media Links:
Starvation Army
Never The Bright Lights

Air - Moon Safari: One of the most influential records of the late 1990s, Moon Safari, the first album by the French duo Air, popularised the "chillout" ethos, taking it from the confines of European clubs and post-rave afterparties into the musical mainstream. Air took healthy helpings of lounge, acid jazz, ambient, and downtempo electronica and mixed them with a vibe that is as much about relaxing beats as it is about atmosphere. Still one of my favourite records to just chill out to.

Media Links:
La Femme D'argent
Le Voyage De Penelope
Sexy Boy
Ce Matin La         

[zuludelta]

Ben Folds Five - Whatever and Ever Amen: Few bands remind me of the mid/late 1990s more than Ben Folds Five. Pianist/vocalist Ben Folds managed to tap into a pop-gold vein with 1997's Whatever and Ever Amen, writing a major hit in the poignant "Brick" as well as a couple of lesser successes with "Battle of Who Could Care Less," "Song For The Dumped," and "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces." The group developed a distinct sound, throwing the conventional "angsty alt-rock" of the day on its ear by totally dispensing with guitars and instead layering piano, bass (usually overdriven and distorted to make up for the lack of guitar arrangements), and occasionally orchestral sounds to create what Folds jokingly called "punk rock for sissies." They never really replicated their success with succeeding records (while I think their follow-up record, The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner was a more consistent album from top to bottom, it didn't have any ready-made hits). 

Media Links:
Brick
Song For The Dumped
One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces
Battle of Who Could Care Less
Steven's Last Night In Town

[zuludelta]

Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle: 1994's Doggystyle was Dr. Dre protege Snoop Doggy Dogg's (Calvin Broadus, Jr. in real-life) debut record. It was a fairly controversial record at the time, panned by parents and moral guardians alike for its violent and misogynistic lyrics and unflattering and misleading portrait of black urban youth culture. Broadus defended his music by claiming that he was only broadcasting the stark reality faced by a disaffected segment of the population. The truth, of course, was somewhere in the middle: many of Broadus' lyrics do glorify gang violence, drug use, and the objectification of women but it was also clear that he had managed to give voice to the growing discontentment and the teeming violence in the inner cities.

Controversial lyrics notwithstanding, Broadus' impact on the hip-hop scene was undeniable. His particular brand of "g-funk" combined with his distinct vocal delivery helped him stand out from the glut of West Coast rappers emerging during the mid-1990s. Doggystyle combines a powerful sense of production innovation and practiced craft, something that Broadus has been hard-pressed to replicate in his succeeding releases.       

[zuludelta]

Björk - Homogenic and Post: Björk gets a generally bad rap from the media these days, she's somewhat viewed as an emotionally unstable, self-important artiste. To be fair, the reputation isn't purely undeserved. She's had some baffling public incidents in the past few years, and her unconventional approach to music is probably considered impenetrable by the more traditional and conservative music critics.

1995's Post and 1997's Homogenic, to me, showcased Björk at the height of her creative powers. She melded ambient, dance, industrial, noise-core, and traditional music into something that the popular music scene had never seen before, introducing something genuinely novel in an industry that had been recycling and repackaging 30 year-old tropes. The "perpetually new" quality I find in her music lends itself to being used as a "palate cleanser" of sorts between more traditional album listens.

Media Links:
Hyperballad (one of my favourite songs of all time)
Hunter
All Is Full of Love (Radio Edit)
I Miss You (video directed by Jon "Ren & Stimpy" Kricfalusi)
It's Oh So Quiet
Possibly Maybe           

[Spam]

Listened to OK Computer today. That was about it, besides me still saying that the album is amazing.

Listened to The Appleseed Cast's first album yesterday. More amazingness. If you like music, you should like these guys.

FORIAMSPAM!

[BWPS]

Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle

Björk - Homogenic and Post

THAT is a diverse musical taste if ever I saw one.

[zuludelta]

Snoop Doggy Dogg - Doggystyle

Björk - Homogenic and Post

THAT is a diverse musical taste if ever I saw one.

Heh heh... yeah, my CD/mp3 collection inspires some double-takes every now and then. If there's one thing I pretty much avoid, though, it's the bulk of what I call "Max-pop." It's that generic boy-band/pop diva songwriting, popularized by Swedish songwriters Max Martin and the late Denniz Pop (they've written the bulk of hits for "artists" like Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, and the Backstreet Boys). If there's any lyrically vacuous and creatively bankrupt pop song that's managed to annoy the hell out of you in the last decade or so, chances are it was written by Martin and Pop or one of their imitators/protégés.     

[Jakew]

The Black Kids - Partie Traumatic

Benga - Diary of an Afro Warrior

Beans - Thorns

Fleet Foxes

[laughing paradox]

The Oranges Band [All Around] - Fantastic band with a lot of fun songs

Portishead [Third] - It's a departure from their previous albums, but I'm finally starting to enjoy it

[ow_tiobe_sb]

Communic - Waves of Visual Decay (2006): This sophomore album by the Norwegian progressive thrash metal trio Communic reminds one of the condition of certain special, serious musical acts: they make music not as a devotion to the beauty of sound but rather as if they were trying to cure themselves of an acute malady.  Waves of Visual Decay blends raw, raucous thrash and progressive metal methods with superior production and vocalist/guitarist Oddleif Stensland's sometimes sweet, sometimes rough, sometimes stratospheric, but always haunting voice on an album that will leave the listener thrilled, (perhaps) a bit frightened, and happily exhausted by record's end.  Highlights include the riff-heavy antiwar opening track, "Under a Luminous Sky," the powerfully crunchy "Frozen Asleep in the Park" (a diatribe against the unnecessary condition of homelessness, society's open dirty secret), the down-tempo "Watching It All Disappear," the darkly sinister "My Bleeding Victim," and, IMHO, one of the band's best, most representative songs, "Fooled by the Serpent," which demonstrates Communic's ability to couple driving and slow tempos with alternating passages of fury and tranquility.

Pagan's Mind - Infinity Divine (2001; rerecorded in 2004): Not just another power-prog metal act with a mystical space travel fixation, Norway's Pagan's Mind features the dual guitar force of Jørn Viggo Lofstad and Thorstein Aaby, the flying fingers of keyboardist Ronny Tegner, and the unique, almost extraterrestrial vocals of Nils K. Rue on the band's stellar (ho-ho!) debut album.  Infinity Divine not only introduces the listener to the themes that would dominate Pagan's Mind's next three albums (Celestial Entrance (2003), Enigmatic: Calling (2005), and God's Equation (2007)) but it also does so in a fashion more faithful to progressive metal methods than the later records, which tend toward more traditional, melodic power metal characteristics.  Highlights include the lyrical ουροβóρος "Infinity Divine" ("You are what you mean you can be..."); the gritty, riff-heavy "Embracing Fear"; the eerie, atmospheric "Astral Projection"; and the soaring, festinate "Angels' Serenity."

ow_tiobe_sb
Phantom Bunburyist and Fop o' th' Morning

[thanoson]

I'm digging a lot of Nekromantix, Tiger ARmy and Wanda Jackson right now. No particular albums.

I agree about Post and Homogenic. Both are great albums.

[Kommando]

KOMMANDO LIKE HAWKWIND

[lugaru]

Jamshied Sharifi - One   World music at it's best, you've got a really good Iranian american composer selecting some of the best traditional artists from their respective countries and weaving it all together. Unfortunately it has a small stink of new age but the good songs make up for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqxP9qRvX4M

Nomo - Ghost Rock   A mix of Afro-Beat and 70s Funk, only add to that a huge wall of horns and some strange home made african instruments that sound like a mix of of a bass, piano and electric guitar.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WOrNrLCIPug

Stratovarious - Episode   I really loved this power metal album in high school and recently I've been listening to it a LOT. Also I saw those guy's live when I was like 19 or 20... what an amazing act.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4I9lT1Nv_bo

DJ KRUSH - Jaku   Really good Japanese techno and trip hop. Actually it's just something I can get away thing playing out loud while my gf studies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wghFsc1cWyc

[zuludelta]

DJ KRUSH - Jaku   Really good Japanese techno and trip hop. Actually it's just something I can get away thing playing out loud while my gf studies.

Great choice. Easily one of his best albums.

Recent spins:

Genius/GZA - Liquid Swords: I have to admit, the initial reason I bought this CD was for the cover (it was drawn by Deathlok and The Question penciller Denys Cowan). Turned out the album contents were okay, too. Although the album was released under the Genius/GZA artist name in 1995, Liquid Swords is pretty much a Wu-Tang Clan album from top to bottom, with guest appearances by every significant member of the group. In fact, I'd say that this is probably the tightest Wu-Tang album (better than the more popular and critically-acclaimed Enter the Wu-Tang), and in my opinion, one of the most solid hip-hop albums of the 1990s. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the album for me is how it shows that despite all the macho posturing by the Wu-Tang, they're pretty much comic book and film nerds at heart. Interspersed in the album are samples from the samurai film Kozure Ōkami, and there are frequent lyrical nods to Marvel superhero characters. If you're only beginning to get into hip-hop (as I was back in the early/mid-1990s), it's hard to do any better than this record as an introductory piece.

Media Links (warning: some par-for-the-course swearing):
Labels
Cold World
Liquid Swords 

[Ephemeris]

I've been listening to Camel recently.  Particularly stuff off The Snow Goose and Mirage. 

Here's a live performance of The Snow Goose/Friendship/Rhayader Goes To Town from The Snow Goose.
And a live performance of Lady Fantasy from Mirage.

[Kommando]

Pilgrim Heart by Krishna Das as well as some of his other stuff...

[Zippo]

Oracular Spectacular by MGMT. This is the first time I've enjoyed an album so much since Stadium Arcadium by the Chili Peppers was released.

[Midnight]

The Tough Alliance - A New Chance (2007)

[zuludelta]

Andrew Lloyd Webber (composer) and Tim Rice (lyricist) - Jesus Christ Superstar: The Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Album: 1973's Jesus Christ Superstar was my first introduction Andrew Lloyd Webber's work. I know a lot of the Webber fans out there think that the soundtrack to the motion picture version of the acclaimed 1970 Broadway rock opera is the weakest in terms of recording quality (the guitars and drums are very muddy in certain songs), but for me, the motion picture version is the only version, never having seen any of the numerous official stage productions.

The standout performers on this album are Ted Neeley (who played the protagonist), Carl Anderson (Judas), and Barry Dennen (Pontius Pilate). Neeley brings incredible range to the role, sounding almost like vintage Uriah Heep vocalist David Byron in certain parts. Anderson (who sounds vaguely like 1970s rock icon Ken Hensley) and Dennen, on the other hand, provide the fuller counterpoint to Neeley's vocal acrobatics.

Some people might be put off listening to this album because of the subject matter... there is an odd but pervading attitude among many music fans that popular/commercial music has to be strictly secular (a foolish qualification in my opinion, good music is good music, regardless of subject matter) but independent of the religious overtones, the music and lyrics are solid 1970s pop/rock and the stylized adaptation of the Jesus narrative isn't half-bad.     

Media Links:
Heaven On Their Minds
What's the Buzz/Mystifying
Pilate's Dream
I Don't Know How To Love Him
Pilate and Christ
King Herod's Song
Judas' Death

[style]

None lately but I will be getting the Detox album and that Blueprint3! :thumbup:

[Midnight]

The Decemberists - The Crane Wife (2007)

[zuludelta]

Death From Above 1979 - You're a Woman, I'm a Machine: Death From Above 1979 is one of my favourite new acts of the past few years. The Toronto-based duo's music is often classified as "dance-punk," featuring plenty of punk, hardcore, and metal stylistic conventions laid over disco beats. You're a Woman, I'm a Machine, released in 2004, is the group's only album, the pair of drummer-vocalist Sebastien Grainger and bassist-keyboardist Jesse Keeler splitting due to creative and personal differences a scant two years after the album's release. The album was a minor hit in Canada and sold relatively well in Japan, but they never really got much mainstream exposure in the US.

The music on You're a Woman, I'm a Machine has a raw and infectious energy to it, although it can be argued that they could have easily cut a couple of tracks to streamline the final cut. Anybody looking to revive their interest in punk-inspired music should consider giving these guys a listen.

Media Links:
Romantic Rights 
Pull Out
Black History Month
Blood On Our Hands

Thievery Corporation - The Richest Man In Babylon: Thievery Corporation is the Washington, D.C. based DJ duo of Rob Garza and Eric Hilton. Along with Spain's Jose Padilla and England's Chris Coco, Garza and Hilton are probably the most popular "chillout" DJs today. The Richest Man In Babylon, while not their most critically well-received record, is Thievery Corporation's best-selling and arguably most accessible release, fusing acid jazz, dub, reggae, traditional Indian music, ambient, and trip-hop into a heady downtempo mix perfect for cooling down.

Media Links:
Until The Morning
Heaven's Gonna Burn Your Eyes
Un Simple Histoire
The Richest Man in Babylon