What God has to say about music...

That subject line is actually way more blatant than I intend to be, but it's a subject I wanted to address nonetheless.

As I immerse myself in the sub-culture of music in general, but more lately, in the ideas and attitudes surrounding noise music, I have noticed some prevailing things. Namely, that the noise scene is full of hate-mongering, violent misogyny - and people are okay with it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a crazy right wing conservative, but... I dunno, I figure maybe there's a limit. Music and sentiment aren't always linked, right? Well, I meant to bring up something that challenged my stance on this.

Lately, I stumbled upon the more beat oriented, but still delightfully rage-filled screamings of Passenger of Shit. The name alone should say something about the musical style, and it does. I managed to get my hands on (digitally speaking, of course) what I presume is the second album by this artist (named 2), and... well, let's take a look at the track name that got me thinking about the sentiment of an artist in relation to music in general.

Filling God's Ass With Severed Cocks.

Yeah, that's a little extreme even for me. I know not everyone out there is Christian - actually, that makes me sound horrible, and from what I know, most people I know in my life aren't Christian... I'm not even sure if I am. But for the people that are - what does a song title like that make you think? Is it okay to enjoy the music of someone who makes songs with names like that? Am I indirectly supporting Satan? Okay, that's a bit of a stretch... but still, it is a puzzler, and it's got me a tad... well, puzzled, I guess.

In any case, all that aside - this album is good, and the artist as well. I'd love to root up more stuff if I can. Anyone who thinks they like more aggressive breakcore, or would like a more listenable (yet more agressive and violent screaming kind) of noise music should also check this out. I swear the titles are deceiving. I'd upload a track later, but it's all free at the Noise From The Death Factory upload blog. Check it out, really.

There's free (obscure) music everywhere, y'know

In the past couple days, I've been doing a lot of perusing of the internet, which mostly starts (and is solely composed around) my love of music that is, in a short amount of words, hard to find. I don't like it because it's hard to find - it just happens to be so.

I don't know how many times I've wondered about whether or not one of my favorite artists even has a CD I can purchase - oftentimes, the answer is no. So, I end up looking everywhere to find music that is like candy to my ears. Candy made of sex. Not to be confused with sex-by-products, which are usually less appetizing.

In any case, in all my searching, I've come upon some wonderful discoveries, that I thought would be nice to share with everyone.

For anyone into noise music, there's the Noise From The Death Factory upload blog - of which I myself am a part of, and the guild as well. Noise from the Death Factory (Uploads) is the link, and there's stuff ranging from early Throbbing Gristle albums (that's early industrial) to Merzbow, and crazy aggressive stuff like Whitehouse and SKM-ETR. Pretty cool.

Then, last night, while looking for stuff by MOSAIC.WAV (A Japanese Gamewave band who does video game soundtracks (H-games, mostly)), I stumbled on this blog: GFX-Beta. They've got lots of stuff - not the exact artist I was looking for, but stuff similar in vein, as well as anime soundtracks, video game arrangements, and monthly issues of a very Otaku oriented magazine. A great site for anyone interested in that kind of thing. Also, they have something I've been meaning to bring about...

Namely, I finally got my hands on the (fairly) new DJ Sharpnel album(s)! I'm quite excited by this, even though I'm not the hugest Sharpnel fan... I have all of his (their) previous work to date, and I was overjoyed when I got all three new albums. Giving them a listen now, and tracks should be selected and uploaded within a day or two.

Might search for some pop-rock or metal stuff some time to sate the masses. Until now, noise, J-pop, and eventually, gabberz. Out.

Music only gets heavier

If anyone has seen any particular trend in music over the past... well, ever since music's inception into popular culture... they'll have noticed a prevailing trend in all the popular music of the decades, from way back when, to the current day.

In short, that trend is that music tends to get heavier, harsher, and more agressive as time goes on. Within genres, least wise - though pop music will all be pop music, and so on with everything else, new genres will continue to exist, and they will continue to get heavier and heavier. This is starkly noticeable in the rock music kind of thing. There are of course fringe groups - in the same way that rock music breeds metal, and metal breeds death metal, and death metal breeds power metal, and so on, rock music will breed things like pop-rock, and indie rock, and everything else in that aisle of musical taste.

When you look at the heaviest music on popular music channels three or so years ago being Linkin Park, it's easy to see how things have changed. I think I may remember seeing some punkish bands, but that's when everyone was sure pop-punk was a real genre. In any case... what things are looking like now... well, there's still a lot of soft, alternative stuff, and their probably always will be, but I think everything is definitely sloping in one direction. In a couple years, stuff like Mudvayne and Alex Is On Fire (not a great example) will be lighter, and we'll have bands like Opeth and Arch Enemy... not them per say, but bands like them... well, they'll be on MTV. And everyone who listened to those older bands will be calling the music of the generations younger than them crap. It's a vicious cycle.

I was thinking about this in relation to noise music, and I realized something... that all music, is polarized into a set of kind of three spectrums, and that every set of music follows a certain subset of rules. If you have your popular music - that's the most treacherous field of any kind of music, because while one day might herald unbridled success, the very next day could bring anonymity and nothingness. When you have popular music concerts, even fans who have only heard the one song will come out to watch the band or artist perform - and a week later, may possibly not even admit they've ever listened to them in the first place. All fans are die-hards within popular music, but can revert to their normal states within days. There are no true hardcore fans.

Then there's your 'popular within unpopularity' scene. Any group in here inevitably has a huge yet underground following... they seem like they would be so popular, and yet your average MTV listener will never have heard of them. This is usually 'progressive', 'post', and 'indie' bands, as far as I can tell. Dream Theater, Rush... those are my two notable examples. Anyone who's heard of those two bands and is a real fan probably holds their idolized band members to God-like status, and yet it is probably true that three out of four people have never heard of the group or the members. I think there are some pretty wicked followings after groups like this. Mostly a metal thing, now that I think about it. Conventional metal is a whole different deal, but that's a sub-set...

Then there's your 'no one has ever heard of this music before, ever' sub-set. Which I think basically consists of a group or artist, and the 100-1000 fans who think they are the greatest thing that has ever hit the planet. Noise music and obsure electronica are really good for this - more often than not, in electronic music, you have a chance to associate with the person, not just the sound, and thusly, stuff like this is bred. Indie works too, I would assume.

So, then there are a bunch of rule benders... I'm not 'punk', so I can't speak largely there, but I don't think punk fans general care what they're listening to as long as it's... well... punk. And even if two people love all the same bands for all the same reasons, there can be one band they're completely opposite on for the stupidest notion. It's just weird.

Then there's your metal, where fans of bands that don't like each other or are slightly different can get into blood feuds and horrible brawls with each other. That's also a bit over the top... I blame this on the fact that metal artists like to propogate this thing on occasion... the notion of a lead singer proclaiming that a band is the best thing out there generally leads to other bands making the same claims getting angry, and then it's just trouble.

As for electronic music - in a popular circle, even one hit wonders never get any fans. The songs are known, not the artists, and that's just sad. Then the artist tries to capitalize, comes out with ten songs that sound exactly the same as the hit, and fade out of existence. Anyone trying to listen to them seriously gets stuck with recursive rip-offs.

That's a bit of a seperate thing from the whole 'future of music', but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Maybe more thoughts on this kind of thing later.

It's Weird, It's Better

So I've been listening to a lot of more abrasive, avant-garde music. That's ranging stuff from like, free-jazz combos to Japanese performance art-experimental rock and noise music. Really, I'm surprised that the human brain can even process this stuff and like it - so far it's turned every other person I've exposed it too quite off, but one can always hope.

As far as I can figure, free-jazz is a delicious amalgamation of the things that make jazz great, but mindless flailing on respective instruments to create a sometimes unlistenable atmosphere of sound. I've heard it compared to throwing a saxophone down the stairs. It's the most fun form of music to play, because you can do whatever you want, but apparently not so fun to listen to. Well, actually, I have to disagree with that.

In my scouting around of the internet, I did a lookup on Mike Patton - he's the vocalist for the bands Mr. Bungle and Faith No More, both disbanded, and both which did crazy, insane stuff music wise. Both are beyond description, but for a good approximation of Mr. Bungle, think funk-metal fused with mathcore, and samplings of every other genre in existence. Haven't listened to Faith No More that much, so I couldn't tell you what to expect. Mike Patton did guest vocals for the Dillinger Escape Plan album I reccomended a while ago - Irony Is a Dead Scene, which, exasperatingly, is my favorite album of theirs. It's representitive of their work as a whole, sure, but a vocalist that wasn't at all constant. Anyway...

In looking about Mike Patton, and with some help from some online aquaintances, I got turned on to two bands - Naked City and The Boredoms. I'd already heard of the latter, but the former was completely new to me.

Both of the groups are... kind of odd. They both feature, to an extent, the same vocalist - all though in this instance, the word 'vocalist' might be a stretch. Yamatsuka Eye (otherwise referred to as eYe) is the closest thing The Boredoms have to a front man, and has the weirdest 'singing' style I've ever heard, consisting of distorted grunts, squeaks, wails, and all sorts of crazy shit - with occasional real singing. He's also the vocalist on a great many Naked City albums... so you see, everything has connected. His main group, The Boredoms is what you would call... experimental avant-garde Japanese noise rock. They do a lot of weird things, ranging from albums full of noise, to tribal drum patterns, to freaky performance art.

Naked City is the reason I'm making these connections, however. Basically, it consists of some amazingly talented and odd instrumentalists (or performers, in eYe's case) putting together experimental 'composition workshop' albums that are a total earfuck - in a good way. The band is fronted by John Zorn, who is in fact the recipient of the MacArthure "genius grant" - for his genre transcending performances and virtuoso saxophone playing.

The band is a total head-trip. I really can't describe a lot of their sound - it's certainly odd. Most people I showed it to would pronbably 'wtf' their brains out, but there's some more coherent stuff on their albums, especially their original self-titled. For that reason, I'm uploading said-album, but I really reccomend checking out the other albums - any requests, and I will delve out the other two I have.

Free-jazz and experimental avant-garde projects aren't for everyone, but it's certainly a very diverse range in music to cover - so, without further ado, Naked City. Upload is here.

Later, I'll return for a real post - one on my thoughts about noise and experimental music, and how musical trends look for the future.

Ludicrously Talented Extra (Musical Project) - the Music of Liquid Tension Experiment

Just a little something to tide any readers over until I can make a more cohesive update - and, also, this song has snagged me, so it's worth sharing.

Just recently, I acquired Mike Portnoy's (of Dream Theater) instructional drumming video, Liquid Drum Theater, which is a walkthrough of a lot of popular songs from both DT, and from his side project (featuring DT members John Petrucci and Jordan Rudess) Liquid Tension Experiment. Basically, Mike was asked by record label Magna Carta to put together a progressive super group, and LTE was what he came up with. The group recorded two albums, each one in about the span of of a month or less - some improvised jams, others carefully planned out songs. Bass player Tony Levin (of note for his work with King Crimson) was also on board - and one of the jam tracks that happened on the first album is the one I'm posting today - meet Chris and Kevin's Excellent Adventure. Mostly, I'm giving it note because a bass playing friend and I are trying to learn it. Mostly, it is ludicrously complicated, even with the instructional video... but we persist nonetheless.

Basically, this is a two and a half minute jam between Mike and Tony, with Mike (of course) on drums, and Tony on chapman stick... there's some whistling involved too. It's a hard track to describe... basically, what it is, is a jam. You have to listen to it to experience it. Thusly, I'm not trying to learn it ad verbatim, but the framework. Anyway. Both the Liquid Tension Experiment albums (Liquid Tension Experiment 1 and 2) are worth checking out if you like a kind of more free-form, jazz influenced (yes, really) kind of progressive instrumental thing. There's even talks of a third album, maybe, but that's tentative. Anyway, Megaupload link is here.

Right now, music is sparse, but I'm trying to keep my ears open. Would help if I had more traffic - despite all my efforts, still none. Really bothersome. But more tracks later, if I can find 'em. Maybe even an artist. Rant. who knows.

Not so obscure J-Metal

For those of you who might not be aware, it is sometimes a point of mine to listen to foreign music. Sadly, I'm not as indulgent in this pursuit as I would like to be - most of my 'foreign' comes from Japan. I've dabbled in French, German, Korean... but only dabbled. I do firmly believe in a diverse musical palette, however. I think other countries of course have a lot to offer... they have thriving music scenes of their own, that we're not a part of. Even if you can't understand the language, the music will be just as beautiful, especially if it's electronic. Metal's kind of big for this though, so I suppose I listen to some foreign bands. Not nearly enough. I remember I had a liking for French pop one time when I heard it... anyway, it always irks me when someone says they have a diverse musical palette, and have never heard anything outside of their country of origin. Or when people claim they listen to German music, and then cite Rammstein as a key band. Ugh. Of course, everyone listens to J-music of some degree... anyway, enough on that.

Way back in the day when I first started to get into music, I happened upon a lot of J-Rock. That's exactly what it sounds like... Japanese rock music. It can very in intensities... I've mentioned one of my favorite bands, Glay, before... so today, now that I've gotten some more of artists I vaguely remember, I thought I'd take that Japanese in a different direction...

Today's song of the day is Kodoku Ni Shisu Yueri Kodaku by Japanese rock/metal band Dir en grey. Yes, their name is not supposed to be capitalized in the latter half. Japanese people do weird things with capitalization... This is off their 2005 album Withering Death (apparently they have cliche' metal names in other countries too), and let me say... if I was listening to these guys at that time, this would have been a top contender for album of 2005. Well, one of, anyway. It's one of those groupings of tracks that contains nothing bad - you could just sit and listen to the whole album, and have a condensed appreciation for the entire thing. Therefore, it was difficult to pick a particular track - the above nomination may have been partially at random. Megaupload link is here.

Dir en grey has gone in a lot of different directions since they first came about - and while they maintained a wholly 'dark metal' atittude, it's only in recent years that they've seemingly discovered what that means. While not as industrial tinged as, say, D'espairsRay, they've got a very heavy sound. Growling vocals (which are delightful on this album) are interspersed with high-pitched male singing, creating a very unique sound - at least in the scope that North American listeners will recognize it. This track in particular is just.. well, there's nothing I can say about it that I can't say about the album as a whole. The pounding background and death vocals are just intoxicating - and the mellow, almost choral segments in between are just as delightful. There's a grungy, pinched riff the song is based off, and it's also wonderful. Really, this song might be the best on the album. I highly reccomend this band's later albums - earlier stuff was still good, but not in as much the same style. If you like this band, also, check out girugamesh... yes, again the capitalization thing. A friend turned me on to them, and they're a pretty good and heavy Japanese indie-metal band. Definitely worth a listen.

Over the next week or so, expect efforts on my own part to expose myself to a more musically diverse grouping of artists. Recent downloads indicate a trend in that direction, anyway. I'll give no overt previews, but for anyone interested... Chester Thompson. That's all I have to say.