I've always thought of some albums as winter albums and some as summer albums. Faith In Strangers by Andy Stott is a prime example of a winter album for me. Most of Burial's output, especially Rival Dealer and Kindred EPs as well. There was one time in the dead of winter a few years ago I got on the subway and went to midtown Manhattan very late on a random weeknight when it was deserted and blasted the Rival Dealer EP on my headphones. Listening to that while walking around the freezing, empty streets surrounded by all the skyscrapers felt really perfect.
Anyone else have any go-to albums for the winter?
Okay. So I don't listen to metal, or have any familiarity with the production behind it. So maybe care to illustrate your point beyond the rather esoteric reference to the guitar boards you used to read?
All I'm saying is that the 808 sound is fundamental to trap music. You can complain that the trap music sound is way too prevalent in popular rap, but you can't make trap music in its current, popular form using drums that don't sound anything like the 808.
Also yes, advancements in technology have significantly increased the availability of software and equipment used for music production. That does not mean any moron with a laptop can make professional grade hip hop beats now. This is skewing way too close to "they made REAL music back in my day with REAL instruments" for me. I don't like Soulja Boy either, but him not using state of the art equipment that was probably prohibitively expensive shouldn't just like automatically omit him from being taken seriously as a creative voice.
Flying Lotus was using a 3 or 4 year old version of Reason when he made Cosmogramma, a ridiculously complex record. J Dilla made Donuts on a portable record player in a hospital bed. My point is it doesn't always really matter what is being used if the people making the music know what they are doing.
The 808 sound is like baked into the sound of trap music / southern rap. You can't imply they are used on songs like this out of laziness / being cheap when that sound is like a fundamental part of the genre.
Those are closed hi-hats. They are one of the most basic components of any hip hop drum track behind the kick and snare (or clap in place of snare, basically whatever goes on the 2 and the 4 in a 4/4 count). On a lot of hip hop tracks from the 90's, you can hear them on the 8th notes more often than not, and this can easily be programmed in a drum machine using a tool called "note repeat." Using this, a producer can select "8th note" for the hi-hats and a hi-hat will repeat every 8th note on the beat, so you would hear them on each beat and once in between each beat (assuming the song is in 4/4, which most hip hop is).
What is happening here on this track and a lot of recent hip hop is the producer is manipulating the note repeat function as the song progresses, so say its on 8th note, then it gets switched to 16th note/32nd/64th so you have that like sprinkler sounding kind of effect, where the hi-hats come with increasing frequency.
I hope that made sense and wasn't too technical. This is funny to me though, a friend of mine who also doesn't listen to rap gets annoyed by that too.
Princess Mononoke is amazing. I've only seen it once, but it's such a beautiful film with great characters. That also reminds me that it is about time for my annual dead of winter life is hopeless rewatch of Neon Genesis Evangelion. Hooray crushing existential despair!
Oh man yeah, for a split second you're like huh, this is oddly calm, then the synth and the drums kick in and it locks into that incredible groove and you're fuckin' set for the next 9 minutes.
Where's the part where Ariel Pink does something weird and gross. That's his whole thing! This is way too straightforward. I need to be kind of annoyed and amazed by the music at the same time to really appreciate Ariel Pink.
"Donuts (Outro)" is one of the most iconic things about Donuts, since it serves as both the last and first moments of the album so you can play the it on loop forever.
"Over the Ice" off of From Here We Go Sublime by The Field. Just launches right into it. Great as a litmus test. If you aren't like "oh shit, this is perfect " within like 5-10 seconds, The Field is probably not an artist you will ever enjoy.
"Xtal" off of Selected Ambient Works 85-92 by Aphex Twin. My favorite electronic song ever. The hiss of the hi hats as the opening synth and vocal samples come in around it, maaaan. The moment the vocal sample first appears is legitimately one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard.
The beginning of "Moonchild" by M83 off of Before the Dawn Heals Us perfectly sets the mood for that album.
That's all I can think of for now. This is a cool question though.
The xx are like the ultimate example of where I like the idea of their sound more than I like actually listening to it. So this has me interested if they are trying new things here. In Colour was like the ultimate summer album in 2015, glad to hear they have incorporated more of Jamie xx's sound.
Completely agree. It should get points just for not having the goddamn skits his first two albums had. I think it's a more consistent listen front to back than most of his albums, though I don't dislike any of them.
I'm very curious to see how TLOP ages. So far it's kinda looking like a handful of songs will endure but a sizeable chunk of the album will be forgotten.
In some ways I think TLOP will be like how some people say Return of the Jedi is half of a 10/10 movie and half of a 6/10 movie. When it's good, it's really fucking good. But when it's not, it's Ewoks and Kanye's iPhone going off during an already grating outro. Both works also feature a lot of pointless and irritating alterations post-release!
This leads me to a more important question. Is Kanye West the music version of George Lucas?
Well yeah, I know it's always been around. I grew up in places where a lot of people thought that way.
My point is there's now an increased amount of it. I now see it popping up a lot more than I used to, in places I didn't used to regularly encounter it, and I want to figure out a way to shut it down that isn't acting condescending about it, because people clearly didn't respond much to being shamed into changing their views.
I'm just trying to say it's depressing that people who think that way now feel empowered to just state that openly more often and I guess this is only the beginning of the bullshit.
But there has to be a way to address it, or what the fuck do we do, just continue to let them win?
I'm just going to post this here because it's related: has anyone else noticed, since the election, an increased amount of "white people are the real victims of racism!!!!!!!!!!!1111" and/or "you claim to be tolerant but you don't tolerate differing opinions so really you're the intolerant one for not tolerating my different opinion" (when that "different opinion" is something racist/homophobic/etc).
I've been trying to figure out the best way to shut down that bullshit, but it's really disheartening.
They have said in interviews that they want to release an album of their favorite tracks that didn't fit on Wildflower, so it looks like this is the first taste. So glad it looks like its actually happening.
I can't decide if Deadmau5 being an overly self serious dickhead makes this story funnier or less funny. That statement from the attorney is like straight out of The Onion though.
I definitely felt in the run up to Currents being released that the indie blogs really wanted to make Kevin Parker happen more than he actually was/is happening, even with the increased ubiquity this year. I like Tame Impala and think Parker is a talented dude, but he ain't Jack White in terms of musical/rock stardom, despite how much the blog world wants to elevate him to that level.
Yeah that seems particularly egregious. The entire bit about The Range especially had me thinking about that, because everything written about The Range's album you could say about Wildflower, and while I liked Potential well enough, I kind of forgot it even came out by the end of the year.
"Consider the Range’s rebellious compositions. In an evolutionary step from the process of scouring record bins, 27-year-old James Hinton dug through an infinite amount of files online, scavenging YouTube for sounds, voices, and rhythms. This year’s Potential is a deconstruction and reworking, with fragments of found sound from a vast online archive incorporated into each track. "
So much of Wildflower is exactly that. Robbie Chater mentioned in an interview how him and Tony would spend weeks going through an endless amount of old movies, youtube videos, etc just to find like the perfect dog barking sound or city noise. He specifically said that they like to seek out sounds from unlikely sources and find great moments in otherwise forgettable, dollar bin records, because it brings out this underlying humanity that resonates with them.
This is also all on top of the fact that they are one of the most significant artists in terms of sampling, they released a notable album this year after a 16 year hiatus, and that album was very much shaped by the changing environment surrounding the use of samples both legally and creatively in 2016. It's extremely relevant to the conversation.
It's weird to think at one point there were very few artists I respected more than Daft Punk. Then the interviews for Random Access Memories happened and they couldn't be more pretentiously douchey, then Random Access Memories was a glowing tribute to mediocrity, then they were very weird about refusing to do a single live performance in support of an album they spent months making sure everybody knew was created with REAL instruments unlike all the nerds on their computers making dumb bullshit that isn't even really music if you think about it, then they started selling fucking $40 candles on their website, and here we are, where I kind of want them to just go away?
This past summer, post-Brexit, I was at a work function and talking with a British guy from another company. Brexit came up and someone asked his thoughts on it. He says he couldn't really say since he lives in the US now, but his parents both voted to leave and he assumed they made the right decision, then says some vague, meaningless nonsense about sovereignty.
He then goes on to say that he was really, really disappointed in James Corden, because apparently he was at one point pro-Brexit, and then went to visit Obama in the White House and some point after that had reconsidered his position and was on his show saying Brexit is probably a bad decision. This guy says that Obama obviously either paid him off or brainwashed him and what a disgrace that was, Jame Corden used to be a respectable figure.
During this whole conversation I was pretty much just
http://www.hilariousgifs.com/i/tZOS8.gif
Listening to 2014 Forest Hills Drive, it felt like hanging out with someone who keeps telling you they are over their ex, but keeps bringing up their ex every 15 minutes.
Like dude shut the fuck up about other rappers, you just sound insecure.
If you are looking for an entry point for Tribe, I'd listen to The Low End Theory first, though any of their first 3 or the new one would also probably work (but Low End Theory is my favorite). I'd say Beats, Rhymes & Life, while great, should not be the first thing people hear from ATCQ, and The Love Movement is definitely their most uneven album.
1. We Got It From Here… Thank You 4 Your Service by A Tribe Called Quest
2. Coloring Book - Chance the Rapper
3. Vince Staples - Prima Donna
4. Domo Genesis - Genesis
5. Mick Jenkins - The Healing Component
6. Danny Brown - Atrocity Exhibition
7. Kanye - The Life of Pablo
8. Kendrick - untitled unmastered
9. Isaiah Rashad - The Sun's Tirade
10. Noname - Telefone
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