Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Sunday, February 18, 2024

Creeping Rageaholic I


"Set Shit on Fire"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


This is one of my longest idea-to-realization mixes.  I originally had the idea for this mix back in 2003, when the guy who had been hanging out with a cartoon dog and entertaining my kids put out an album, and the first song on it sucked me in with a serene opening and then just exploded into existence about a minute in.  It reminded me rather forcefully of driving back and forth from where I went to college in Northern Virginia to my parents’ house in southern Virginia and belting out ”‘cos it already is!” at the top of my lungs, and I knew I had to pair those two somehow.  But I didn’t finalize this first volume (or at least get it as close to “final” as any of my mixes ever get) until just this year.

Part of the problem is that mix has a very specific mood.  Musically, the hook is that these are songs which lure you into a false sense of security, then just burst into being.  It’s a little more than just dropping the beat; many of these transform fully from ballads to full-on rockers, if not heavy metal bangers, somewhere between verse and chorus, or even between one verse to the next.  But, emotionally, that’s a very specific mood to capture.  Some of these songs are about loss, or about violent discovery, or about reflecting on one’s own faults and the inevitable frustration that comes when you know you need to be better but somehow just can’t manage to achieve it.  I’m just not in the mood for that very specific energy all that often.  But, when I am, these are the songs I reach for.

To give you an idea of the vibe you might get from this mix, I’ve assembled you a little cento, cobbled together from lines of the songs in this first volume.  When it comes to naming a mix volume, there’s two camps that most of them fall into: either there’s a perfect line from one of the songs that instantly suggests itself as perfect, or there’s nothing that really jumps out at me and I have to go scouring.  But this volume is a bit of an outlier: there’s an embarrassment of riches here, and I ended up with so many great candidates that I started piecing them together in my head.  Here’s what I ended up with (attributions given at the end of the post):

Day after day after sorry day,
the sun makes me sick.
One, ’cause you left me.
You hate the things that I like—
that fascist faith will kill you.
I think I’m just paranoid;
I’m fucking lazy ...
there’s just too much pressure to take:
I’m just another soul for sale.
It’s not my time to wonder why ...
You monkey, you left me.
Set shit on fire.

So that should give you a rough idea of what you’re in for.

For the most part, these tracks fulfill the original pattern: they start out slow, or mellow, or understated, then burst into a sudden sonic explosion (though we’ll see a few songs which subvert expectations in one way or another).  The mix title ... well, the imagery is a bit unusual, but overall this is one of my most intelligible mix names.  The volume title is the last line of the little cento above, of course.

So, the first two tracks of this mix were pretty much always going to be Steve Burns’ epic opener “Mighty Little Man,” from his Steven-Drozd-of-the-Flaming-Lips-produced debut album, closely followed by “For Nancy,” the midpoint banger from Pete Yorn’s debut.  Both songs play with quiet/loud dynamics in a way that’s quite different from the standard grunge pattern.  In grunge, the contrasting dynamics are just a part of the structure of the songs; bands like Nirvana and the Pixies have refined the pattern to an art form, but you can’t really claim to be surprised when they do it.1  These tunes hit with more emotional impact when they explode: they lull you into a false sense of calm, then burst into emotional being.  There’s really nothing like that feeling.

“Shutterbug” was the next most obvious choice: it’s a magnificent dichotomy of almost-whispered vocals punctuated by raw guitar chords that are almost metal in their ferocity.  It was easily the most standout track from Veruca Salt’s excellent Eight Arms to Hold You.  It was perhaps a bit unimaginative of me to just tack it on as the third track in the mix, but, honestly, these three really combine to form an opening triptych that firmly establishes the mood.  After that, there were a few other obvious choices: Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory is basically composed of nothing but tracks that fit this pattern (from which I thought “Crawling” was the best exemplar), and the amazing “Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence was still fresh and darkly glittering at the time I was putting together the mix.  It opens with a simple piano melody and Amy Lee’s sweet, understated vocals, then Beny Moody’s grinding guitar licks kick in, and there’s that beautiful single beat of absolute silence before each chorus bursts forth ... it’s quite transportative.  Likewise, PJ Harvey was a no-brainer: I was pretty blown away by Rid of Me when I first heard it, and in particular the way that the title track starts very softly and makes you lean in, only to rock you on your heels with PJ’s aggressive guitar and Rob Ellis’ thundering drums.  There was never a world where this tune didn’t appear on the first volume of this mix.

After that, I looked a bit to the industrial scene.  Stabbing Westward’s “What Do I Have to Do?,” with its sparkly synth-noodling intro, was a pretty obvious choice.  Meanwhile, Machines of Loving Grace’s biggest hit “Butterfly Wings” inverts the pattern by starting out with standard industrial intensity, then dropping down to quiet moments between verses.  “Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes was another obvious choice: it starts with Gordon Gano’s acoustic guitar and quiet vocals, giving it almost a folk song vibe, and this time it’s Brian Ritchie’s bass that provides the burst of feeling; the song quickly turns and becomes a bit of a rant, which makes it fit perfectly here.  In the exact opposite department, it’s the slinky toms and bass of Green Day’s “Longview” that provides the calm before the storm of the guitars and snare.  Obviously Dookie was going to have to feature here, and I thought “Longview” was a great choice (plus it leads into “Kiss Off” quite nicely).

This mix was also started at the height of my fascination with Magnatune,2 so it’s not surprising that several of its artists ended up here.  Perhaps most obviously, spineCar’s “Waste Away” follows a similar pattern to “Longview”: the rhythmic bassline is joined by a studied, pulsing drumbeat, then muddy guitars and quiet vocals join in, building to the crescendo where the lead singer breaks into a scream on the third syllable of the song’s title.  It’s a piece of undeservedly little-known nu-metal from the late 90s.  Then there’s “Dirtbag”: the original version of this tune, by Brad Sucks, is a perfectly lovely piece of alt-pop—the lyrics are a bit edgy, sure, but the melody belies that.  But part of the deal with Magnatune is the artists explicitly give permission for other Magnatune artists to remix their work, and what producer Victor Stone (working under the moniker Four Stones) does with “Dirtbag” is transcendant: he adds a seething undercurrent of anxiety and simmering rage by adding echoes and contrasting drones.  It’s really something to hear.  We’ve heard from Jade Leary before;3 “Meaner than Winter” is a short, not-quite bridge track that never really explodes, but always seems on the verge of doing so.  I felt it was a pretty good transition from the first half of the volume to the slightly harder edge of the second half.  Then we have “Charming Gun,” by trip-hop artist Artemis.  Honestly, I’m not sure this track really fits the theme all that well, and I was on the verge of taking it out several times.  But, in the end, I think it maintains just enough contrast (not only quiet/loud, but also slow/fast) to keep its place.

After that, two later additions were Metric’s “Black Sheep” from the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World soundtrack, and “The Pretender” by the Foo Fighters.  The former is just a solid post-punk offering that actually punctuates its quiet verses with strong guitar/bass/drum licks between the lines in a way that I found irresistible.  The latter ... well, I’m not one to think that Dave Grohl learned his craft from his time in Nirvana, because I think he was always pretty damned talented.  But I can’t help but wonder if his unerring talent for knowing when to crank up the vocals into a a full-on scream and when to back off is at least a little influenced by Kurt Cobain, who was undoubtedly the master of that technique.  When I first heard “The Pretender,” I knew unquestioningly that it had to be on this mix.

I follow that track with another one that manages to simmer without exploding and yet never feels unsatisfying: “Glycerine,” by Bush.  The only proper grunge song on this frist volume, the contrast here is provided by Nigel Pulsford’s crunchy guitars and strings, of all things.  Sixteen Stone is a revelatory album, and I’m kind of surprised it’s taken me this long to feature a track from it.  And I close with Smash Mouth, who, along with Nickelback, it seems to be fashionable to hate on these days.  But Fush Yu Mang is a pretty important album itself, and “Let’s Rock” is a great tune that hits a lazy, almost ska vibe for its verses, then bursts into a beautiful metal-inspired crescendo of emotion.  “Fuck it, let’s rock” indeed.



Creeping Rageaholic I
[ Set Shit on Fire ]


“Mighty Little Man” by Steve Burns, off Songs for Dustmites
“For Nancy” by Pete Yorn, off musicforthemorningafter
“Shutterbug” by Veruca Salt, off Eight Arms to Hold You
“Part 2 [Dirtbag Remix]” by Four Stones, off Ridin' the Faders [Remixes]4
“What Do I Have to Do?” by Stabbing Westward, off Wither Blister Burn + Peel
“Vinegar & Salt” by Hooverphonic, off The Magnificent Tree
“Big Mistake” by Natalie Imbruglia, off Left of the Middle
“Butterfly Wings” by Machines of Loving Grace, off Concentration
“Charming Gun” by Artemis, off Undone
“Meaner than Winter” by Jade Leary, off The Lost Art of Human Kindness
“Waste away” by Spinecar, off Up from the mud
“Black Sheep” by Metric, off Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [Soundtrack]
“Longview” by Green Day, off Dookie
“Kiss Off” by Violent Femmes, off Violent Femmes
“Crawling” by Linkin Park, off Hybrid Theory
“The Pretender” by Foo Fighters, off Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace
“Glycerine” by Bush, off Sixteen Stone
“Rid of Me” by PJ Harvey, off Rid of Me
“Bring Me to Life” by Evanescence, off Fallen
“Let's Rock” by Smash Mouth, off Fush Yu Mang
Total:  20 tracks,  78:00



Which only leaves us with the two tracks that break up my two industrial picks.  I’ve talked before about my discovery of Natalie Imbruglia’s amazing Left of the Middle, so I won’t belabor the point, but it’s a testament to her versatility that, in addition to all the other places we’ve seen her in these mixes,5 here she is again.  “Big Mistake” starts out sweet and synthy, then right at the one minute mark it turns on you and tells you what a big mistake you’ve made trying to pigeonhole the song based on its opening.  Then there’s the truly stunning “Vinegar & Salt” from trip-hop impresarios Hooverphonic (who we’ve also seen on a pretty wide variety of mixes6).  This track is barely more than three minutes long, but it packs so much emotion into its short span that it fairly makes your head spin.  The verses are an almost matter-of-fact enumeration of the problems in a relationship, then the bridges crank up the tension—“honesty’s your church”—and then the chorus explodes into the stunning revelation that “sometimes, it’s better to lie.” It’s a rollercoaster ride in all the best ways.


Next time, I think we’ll dip our toes into the darker side of synthwave.



[As promised, here’s my pseudo-poem along with which songs they derive from:

Day after day after sorry day, [“Meaner than Winter,” Jade Leary]
the sun makes me sick. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt]
One, ’cause you left me. [“Kiss Off,” Violent Femmes]
You hate the things that I like— [“Vinegar & Salt,” Hooverphonic]
that fascist faith will kill you. [“Butterfly Wings,” Machines of Loving Grace]
I think I’m just paranoid; [“Let’s Rock,” Smash Mouth]
I’m fucking lazy ... [“Longview,” Green Day]
there’s just too much pressure to take: [“Crawling,” Linkin Park]
I’m just another soul for sale. [“The Pretender,” Foo Fighters]
It’s not my time to wonder why ... [“Glycerine,” Bush]
You monkey, you left me. [“Shutterbug,” Veruca Salt (again)]
Set shit on fire. [“Dirtbag,” Brad Sucks, remixed by Four Stones]


Yes, I used “Shutterbug” twice; it really worked for this cento.  Those lines, of course, are back to back in the Veruca Salt rendition, whereas I separated them by almost the length of the entire piece.  I don’t think this is as good as either of my two previous centos, but it has a certain charm.  At least I think so.]




__________

1 I’ve mostly avoided using grunge tunes here, but you can expect to see at least a few in future volumes.

2 I told the story of how I discovered Magnatune in Rose-Coloured Brainpan.

3 On Shadowfall Equinox V and VI, and also on Fulminant Cadenza I and Slithy Toves II.

4 Original version by Brad Sucks, off I Don’t Know What I’m Doing.

5 Besides the aforementioned Smokelit Flashback, there was Distaff Attitude and of course her triumphant tune on Cumulonimbus Eleven.

6 Starting with Smokelit Flashback III, IV, V, and VI, and thence to Bleeding Salvador I and Plutonian Velvet I.











Sunday, October 29, 2023

Plutonian Velvet I


"Ministers of Night"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


As we approach the pinnacle of spooky season, I thought it appropriate to present one of my spooky mixes.  And I have several of those, many of which we’ve already encountered.  As a connoisseur of all things creepy and crawly—as an aspiring author whose pentagram of literary idols include Stephen King and Clive Barker—I distinguish among many different flavors of spooky.  We’ve seen Phantasma Chorale, for instance, which is lightly creepy, with a bit of child-like thrown in for good measure.  We’ve seen Darkling Embrace, which is creepy but pretty, and Dreamscape Perturbation, which is creepy and dream-like.  Darktime was all about dark music, and Penumbral Phosphorescence was full on goth.  But how about some music which is downright spooky?  Well, you’ve finally come to the right place.

For this mix, we’ll be concentrating on music which sounds a bit scary or unsettling.  If it has some creepy lyrics, that’s a bonus, but it’s not the focus.  Mainly these are songs from artists which usually are perfectly normal-sounding bands, putting out perfectly normal-sounding albums, except for that one track that makes the fine hairs on your arm stand on end.  The name of the mix is drawn from a few lines from The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe, the patron saint of Hallowe’en if there ever was one.  The ends of two different stanzas of that excellent poem are:

“Ghastly grim and ancient Raven wandering from the Nightly shore—
Tell me what thy lordly name is on the Night’s Plutonian shore!”
Quoth the Raven “Nevermore.”

On the cushion’s velvet lining that the lamp-light gloated o’er,
But whose velvet-violet lining with the lamp-light gloating o’er,
She shall press, ah, nevermore!

So, as we sit here, on the violet-velvet cushion of Night’s Plutonian shore, let’s see what dark and festering cobwebby corners of alternative music we can find to chill our bones.

When I first discovered Falling You, back in the early days of the Internet,1 I immediately fell in love with them2 and started trying to download every single thing I could find by them.  Which is how I stumbled on this “remix” of “Hush” by Abney Park.  The original is pretty good—listen to it if you like—but it’s not significantly creepy.  What Falling You did was to entirely mute Robert Brown’s lead vocals, kick up Abney Park keyboardist Kristina Erickson’s almost whispered backing vocals, cut out nearly all the instruments except for the synths (which are perhaps even enhanced a bit), and add some creepy sound effects.  The result is something entirely different from the original ... and insanely dark and excellent.  For years I had it paired with “Mad Alice Lane” as the opening to Darktime, but honestly it transcends just being about darkness.  It’s a wonderfully creepy tune that serves as a wondeful intro.

And it’s followed by my other great find from those early Internet days: “Mad Alice Lane” by Peter Lawlor, founder of the Scottish band Stiltskin.  It took me forever, but I finally tracked down the CD single of this excellent (and excellently spooky) song; the version I’m using here is the slightly longer “A Spooker Ghost Story” one.3  The story of the song is just as creepy as the song itself, so defnitely give that a look-see.

Once I divorced these two excellent tracks from Darktime, I decided they should form the core of their own spooky mix.  And instantly I knew the first two companion tracks that had to be added: both are by Siouxsie and the Banshees and both are off Peepshow.  “Scarecrow” is one of my favorite tunes to play at this time of year, and, while the choruses are a bit rockin’ (as much of the Siouxsie œuvre is wont to be), the verses are super eerie.  As for “Rawhead and Bloodybones” ... well, based on a disturbing British tale of child-snatching boogeymen (or a single boogeyman with a compound name; versions conflict), the song has a lot of discordancy and notes that just jangle your nerves.  It made for the perfect closer.

After that, “The Lights are Going Out,” the closer for OMD’s 1985 masterpiece Crush, was so unlike anything else on that album that I’d always had it in the back of my mind as a candidate for a spooky mix, and the Cure’s short “Subway Song” is a little two-minute gem with a little jump scare built right in.  I follow up the latter here with “Barrowlands” by the Bolshoi.  The Bolshoi were contemporaries of OMD, though not nearly so well-remembered these days.  They had a similar sort of new-wave/synthpop sound, and “Barrowlands,” the penultimate track on Lindy’s Party, is similarly conspicuous in its dissimilarity to everything else on that album.  It’s got a great graveyard feel to it, and also provides our volume title.

Rounding out the 80s contributions (though I embarrassingly didn’t think of it until quite recently) is “Sanctum Sanctorum” by the Damned.  I was looking for a replacement for another track that just didn’t seem to fit, and it suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have anything by the Damned.  And, while the Damned may not be a proper goth band, lead singer Dave Vanian is the gothiest motherfucker on the planet: black leather and huge white streak in his jet-black hair (at least during the Phantasmagoria era), married to Patricia Morrison of the Sisters of Mercy (which is a proper goth band)—hell, he even used to be a gravedigger before becoming a rock star.  And Phantasmagoria has some goth gems on it, of which “Sanctum Sanctorum,” with its Phantom-of-the-Opera-style opening organ chords and backing thunder-and-lightning effects, is easily the spookiest.

Other obvious, if more modern, choices were “Shadow of a Doubt” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl (with Elysabeth Grant breathily telling us how she “met a stranger on a train” and Sam Rosenthal’s goth-soaked arrangement), “Mary of Silence” by Mazzy Star (more organ, sludgy percussion, and echoey vocals by Hope Sandoval), and “Danny Diamond” by Squirrel Nut Zippers (a taste of New Orleans creepy accompanying a song of tragedy sung by Katharine Whalen).  Those fell naturally into a little block, starting with “Diamond” and ending with “Mary,” that closes out the first third and sets us up for the middle stretch.

A few more self-evident choices: modern goth masters Faith and the Muse, who here give us the breathy, bassy track “Kodama,” and dark ambient, strings-heavy Amber Asylum, who provide “Cupid.” The lyrics of “Kodama” are actually about the commodification of Hollywood,4 but the song still retains enough sinister to secure its position here.  As for “Cupid,” it’s a rare vocal outing for band founder Kris Force, and those vocals soar and swoop; it’s not always clear exactly what the words are, but the arrangement is a bit menacing and a bit tortured, so it works well here.

Tossing in a bit of early-to-mid-’aughts trip-hop, the Belgian band Hooverphonic can go dark with the best of ’em, and I always thought “L’Odeur Animale” was one of their darkest.  The whole song just feels ... off, and that creepy little tag at the end just seals the deal.  When Geike Arnaert sings “deep inside,” it makes you shiver, even if you don’t know quite why.  My other choice was Germany’s Trost, whose Trust Me is normally fairly uptempo, if a bit surreal.5  But the last track,6 “Filled with Tears,” has more of that bass-driven, echoey and breathy vocals that have popularized so many of the other tracks I chose.  Plus the one-two punch of Hooverphonic and Trost makes a fantastic wind-down to our closer from Siouxsie.



Plutonian Velvet I
[ Ministers of Night ]


“Hush [Flashback Mix]” by Abney Park [remix by Falling You] [Single]7
“Mad Alice Lane (A Spookier Ghost Story)” by Lawlor, off Mad Alice Lane (A Ghost Story) [CD Single]
“Cupid” by Amber Asylum, off The Natural Philosophy of Love
“Scarecrow” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, off Peepshow
“Kodama” by Faith and the Muse, off :ankoku butoh:
“The Lights Are Going Out” by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, off Crush
“Danny Diamond” by Squirrel Nut Zippers, off The Inevitable
“Shadow of a Doubt” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off The Scavenger Bride
“Mary of Silence” by Mazzy Star, off So Tonight That I Might See
“Now, When I'm This” by the Black Queen, off Fever Daydream
“Ghost Children” by Bruno Coulais, off Coraline [Soundtrack]
“Toccata” by Nox Arcana, off Legion of Shadows
“Waltz of the Damned” by Lee Press-On and the Nails, off Swing Is Dead
“Subway Song” by the Cure, off Boys Don't Cry
“Barrowlands” by the Bolshoi, off Lindy's Party
“Sanctum Sanctorum” by Damned, off Phantasmagoria
“L'Odeur Animale” by Hooverphonic, off The Magnificent Tree
“Filled with Tears” by Trost, off Trust Me
“Rawhead and Bloodybones” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, off Peepshow
Total:  19 tracks,  79:13



And that just leaves us with the centerpiece of the volume.  We start with 3 instrumentals: a rare double-bridge leading into a hardcore synth-driven update of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor.” First up, the Black Queen, a dark synthwave band composed of former members of Trent Reznor’s touring band for Nine Inch Nails.  I discovered these guys while checking out the veritable cornucopia of dark synthwave that’s springing up these days (such as Urban Heat and Light Asylum), and while dark synthwave doesn’t necessarily mean creepy, there’s certainly something ominous about “Now, When I’m This,” which is the short intro to the Black Queen’s debut album, Fever Daydream.  And the transition from “Mary of Silence” straight into “Ghost Children” wasn’t working for me, so this little track made a nice bridge to the bridge, if you see what I mean.  And “Ghost Children” itself was picked to be a little bridge into “Toccata”: it’s a nice (but creepy) little track off of Bruno Coulais’ excellent soundtrack to Coraline.  I mean, all of Coraline is pretty creepy—it’s the entire raison d’être for Phantasma Chorale after all—but I tend to think that “Ghost Children” is one of the few actually spooky ones.  And it tees up the Nox Arcana take on Bach’s classic, given its uncanny bona fides by association with early silent horror films such as Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1931 (it didn’t become associated with The Phantom of the Opera until 1962, by which point it was already cliché horror film music).  Nox Arcana does some excellent work here, keeping it lively while also providing the appropriate amount of darkness for being the anchorpoint of an album named Legion of Shadows.

And all that takes us to perhaps the only surprising choice of the volume: Lee Press-On and the Nails.  Retroswing auteurs LPON are often silly, but also occasionally gothy, and their album Swing Is Dead contains a few tracks that aren’t out of place in the Halloween season.  But only one is truly spooky: “Waltz of the Damned” sounds almost exactly like what you would hear while waiting in line to see the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland.  The amusement-park-style sound effects fade into some New-Orleans-style dirge before leaping into LPON’s more typical big-band sound, with Lee’s vocals heavily processed through a voice-distortion unit spewing lines like “and when the leader waves his fiery baton, the band begins to scream in three-quarter time!” It’s eerie, spooky fun.


Next time, we’ll sneak up on some sonic explosions.



__________

1 Which is when I also discovered a bunch of other crazy things I’ve shared with you, like Ensemble of the Dreamings and Zoolophone.

2 Well, him: Falling You is almost entirely composed of John Michael Zorko.

3 That single also contains the nearly-ambient “Dogs of Breakfast,” which we heard on Shadowfall Equinox III.

4 Or at least that’s my interpretation.

5 We’ve heard from Trost once before: her weird little ditty “Even Sparrows Don’t Like to Stay” was featured on Gramophonic Skullduggery.

6 These sorts of weird, creepy songs are often used as closers for their native albums.

7 This one is so damned hard to find that I just gave up and uploaded it myself.  You’re welcome.











Sunday, September 24, 2023

Sirenexiv Cola II

"Sneaky Like a Fiery Fox"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Sometimes a volume II consists of all the songs that just wouldn’t fit on volume I.  But sometimes it’s just that certain artists were so good that they had multiple candidates, and I was working very hard to restrain myself from including them all.  That latter case sums up Sirenexiv Cola pretty well: there’s yet another brilliant opener from KT Tunstall—”(Still a) Weirdo,” in fact, includes the brilliant line “Optimisitc, but never quite elegant,” which came very close to being our volume title—and the promised inclusion of alt-radio favorite “Polyester Bridge” by Liz Phair.  The Sundays and the Katydids are back; the former provide the gorgeous “Here’s Where the Story Ends,” another alt-radio favorite and quite possibly my introduction to the London band; the latter give us a slightly less folky take than last volume with “Don’t Think Twice.” And, speaking of folky, you know I had more from folks like Feist and Regina Spektor and the inimitable Tori Amos.  For Feist, the album that immediately precedes the one with her breakout hit “1234” (which was featured last volume) is Let It Die, which features her first charted single, “Mushaboom.” It’s a sweet pop gem which sweeps us into the middle stretch of this volume.  As for the Russian-born NYC-raised Spektor, “Fidelity” was her first song to chart in the US, and features some beautiful musical hijinx, such as pairing pizzicato string work with some glottal stops and stretching the word “heart” into a dozen or more syllables; it’s pretty breathtaking.  And, while I still maintain that Tori Amos’ debut Little Earthquakes is the most brilliant album of her career, “Caught a Lite Sneeze” is probably the first of her singles that I really enjoyed after that initial infatuation.  It’s somehow both dreamy and poppy, ethereal but with a strong beat.  Definitely a classic.

But that’s not the extent of our returning artists—in fact, it’s perhaps only as I’m writing this blog post that I realize how much throughline there really is in terms of the vocalists.  Bella Ruse is back with “Hold Me Close,” a spare acoustic anti-folk ballad that develops into a dreampop synth wash; its’s somehow hopeful and melancholy all at once.  We hear once again from Beth Quist; the swooping vocals of “Goodbye” show off why she’s part of Bobby McFerrin’s “Voicestra.” There’s another Meaghan Smith tune, “Poor,” which shows off her ability to start out slow and build to something beautiful.  And, on the harder side of this mix, I once again come back to Swedish powerpop star Lykke Li, with “Dance, Dance, Dance,” and P!nk, with “Stupid Girls.” The former was never a hit, but it is off Li’s first, best album (Youth Novels), and it showcases her ability to blend a lot of different instruments and styles into a coherent whole.  The latter was a fairly big hit for P!nk (#13 in the US; #4 in the UK) and contains a lot of typically smart lyrics such as “What happened to the dream of a girl president? She’s dancing in the video next to 50 Cent” and laments “where oh where have the smart people gone?” And it still manages to be a banger, of course.

Still, we must have new blood to keep a mix fresh.  One of the things I realized when putting together volume II was that I had failed to include the incomparable Suzanne Vega.  And, while normally my go-to Vega album is 99.9F°, there’s also much to be said for her follow-up Nine Objects of Desire.  And I just felt like “No Cheap Thrill,” a little more upbeat than most of her œuvre, worked best as our penultimate track.  It’s got that slinky vibe that I featured on Slithy Toves I (speficially, “Caramel”), but a bit more of a pop vibe, with catchy lyrics that compare a relationship to playing poker.

It also felt a little weird that I hadn’t included anything off Fur and Gold.  The brilliant debut of British vocalist Bat for Lashes has provided tracks for Porchwell Firetime I, Slithy Toves I, Darkling Embrace I, and Wisty Mysteria II, but this mix was really tailor-made for her.  “The Wizard” was her first single and, though it didn’t chart, it’s really a great, dreamy track that works quite well here.  I also thought to return to the smokier voice of Chrissy Amphlett and Divinyls; “Heart Telegraph” really lets Amphlett’s pipes shine, and I think it transcends the mid-80s new wave that it also indelibly evokes.  (Last we saw Ampheltt—on Totally Different Head II noted that she died fairly young.  Since then, I’ve actually passed her age at the time she died, so it hits even harder for me now.)

Of course, I’ve also just plain discovered some new bands since I started this mix.  A former coworker of mine introduced me to a bunch of new music, from his favorite obscure subgenre (Italo-disco) to just stuff he knew because he was much younger than I.  And sometimes he would have tenuous personal connections to a band: I believe he knew the Dum Dum Girls (who are indeed from our native LA) because an ex-girlfriend was close friends with one of the members.  Or something like that.  But he threw up one of their songs onto our big screen that we used to play “push songs” and I was mightily impressed.  “Caught in One” is my pick for their first appearance here: while they can often be a bit shoegaze-y, this tune is more jangle-pop, with Dee Dee’s powerful vocals singing about the loss of her mother (“Death is on the telephone / I lie and say she isn’t home”).  It’s a great tune.

Another major discovery was Lucius, whose Wildewoman was nearly as exciting a discovery as Tiger Suit, which is what arguably kicked off this mix in the first place.  This indie pop four-piece from Brooklyn features two harmonic female vocalists.  Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig are not related, but they tend to dress alike and wear their hair in similar styles, so you could be forgiven for thinking they were sisters.  The title track off this amazing album is a bit of a revelation; Wolfe and Laessig do that thing they do so well where they alternative between harmonizing and singing in a round-like style, and it includes great lyrics such as our volume title, as well as the chorus:

She’s gonna find another way back home,
It’s written in her blood; oh, it’s written in her bones.
Yeah, she’s ripping out the pages in your book.
...
Yeah, she’ll only be bound by the things she chooses.

Sublime.



Sirenexiv Cola II
[ Sneaky Like a Fiery Fox ]


“(Still a) Weirdo” by KT Tunstall, off Tiger Suit
“Stupid Girls” by P!nk, off I'm Not Dead
“Caught a Lite Sneeze” by Tori Amos, off Boys for Pele
“The Wizard” by Bat for Lashes, off Fur and Gold
“Dance, Dance, Dance” by Lykke Li, off Youth Novels
“Goodbye” by Beth Quist, off Lucidity
“Mushaboom” by Feist, off Let It Die
“Poor” by Meaghan Smith, off The Cricket's Orchestra
“You and Me” by Sara Watkins, off Sun Midnight Sun
“Hold Me Close” by Bella Ruse, off Bella Ruse [EP]
“Wildewoman” by Lucius, off Wildewoman
“Fidelity” by Regina Spektor, off Begin to Hope
“I Say Nothing” by Voice of the Beehive, off Let It Bee
“Caught in One” by Dum Dum Girls, off Only in Dreams
“The Gold Medal” by the Donnas, off Gold Medal
“Here's Where the Story Ends” by the Sundays, off Reading, Writing and Arithmetic
“Polyester Bride” by Liz Phair, off Whitechocolatespaceegg
“Don't Think Twice” by Katydids, off Shangri-La
“No Cheap Thrill” by Suzanne Vega, off Nine Objects of Desire
“Heart Telegraph” by Divinyls, off What a Life
Total:  20 tracks,  74:45



There’s nothing too surprising here, though there are a few obscure tracks.  Voice of the Beehive was a group comprised of two sisters from California who formed a band in London that included a couple former members of Madness.  Let It Bee is fairly typical for the late 80s, though it does include a few quite clever songs such as “There’s a Barbarian in the Back of My Car” and “Sorrow Floats” (the problem with trying to drown your sorrows, of course).  But I’ve always had a soft spot for “I Say Nothing,” their second single but first to chart (in the UK and Australia only, although they reissued it the following year and it made it to #11 on the US alternative charts), which contains the brilliant line “That’s why I drink: so I’ll be who they think I am.” It’s a bit of 80s-style poppiness that’s hard not to like.

Now, the Donnas might be a little surprising: they’re typically hard rockers in the same vein as the Runaways or Sleater-Kinney, so you might them more suited for something like Distaff Attitude (and I’ve no doubt we’ll see them there eventually).  But in their calmer moments (which still aren’t all that calm), they put out some tunes that work well here.  One of which is “The Gold Medal,” which is a surprisingly non-aggressive song about leaving someone who can’t appreciate you.  Brett Anderson (a.k.a. Donna A) has the perfect, apathetic vocal take on this song, and it’s kind of perfect coming off the Dum Dum Girls and setting up the Sundays for the quieter back third.

And that just leaves me with perhaps the most unlikely artist of all—or at least unlikely that I would own an album of hers.  I first heard Sara Watkins on A Prairie Home Companion, and at first I was convinced that she was way too country for me ... I mean, she started off playing fiddle for a “progressive bluegrass” band, of all things!  But there’s just something about her voice, and I do appreciate a fiddle, especially when it’s not particularly country-fied.  Now, her album Sun Midnight Sun does contain a few tracks which are entirely too country to be tolerated, but many—and in particular “You and Me”—are just gorgeous alt-country tunes.  Powered primarily by what I suspect is a mandolin, with perhaps a few touches of steel guitar and surprisingly little (if any) actual fiddle, “You and Me” is too perfectly apt for this mix for me to ignore it just for the sin of appearing on an album with a few other songs I can’t particularly appreciate.  So here it sits, and I’m pretty happy with my decision.



Next time ... well, Hallowe’en is coming up.  Maybe we’ll find some tunes that would work well for that.


Sirenexiv Cola III










Sunday, July 30, 2023

Eldritch Ætherium IV

"Tales Around the Desert Crossroads between Aribeth and Anauroch, over the High Seas, beyond the Druid Grove"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Well, it’s another volume of music to inspire tabletop roleplaying, and yet again we’ve got another long, silly title cobbled together from the track names—I may have actually reached the limit at this point, and whenever next volume comes along I’ll probably have to reset to a shorter title and start building up again from there.  Many other things are the same too: Midnight Syndicate is back, with two more tracks off the excellent Dungeons & Dragons album, as are Nox Arcana, Colm McGuinness, and Ian Peter Fisher.  Jeremy Soule’s soundtrack for Neverwinter Nights, which exploded into this mix last volume with 3 tracks, now appears with a whopping four (but they’re all very short); Adrian von Ziegler (from volume II) finally returns; and we have two more tracks from both the 13th Age soundtrack (from two different composers: Chris J Nairn and Thery Ehrlich) and Michael Hoenig’s Baldur’s Gate II soundtrack.  Not to mention another track from the World of Warcraft soundtrack, and two more from the Witcher 3, including our amazing opener.

But of course we must have differences too.  For the first time, I don’t feature a track from the Shards of Eberron album that arguably inspired this whole mix.  There’s no Dead Can Dance this time out either, nor any zero-project.  Missing too are Epic Soul Factory and Faith and the Muse, and, perhaps most disappointing of all, no Loreena McKennitt.  Still, changes also mean new artists, and, to make up for McKennitt’s absence, we have a great piece from violinist Lindsey Stirling.  Stirling is one of those musical success stories that are truly inspirational:  She asked her parents for violin lessons and dance lessons, but they told her they could only afford one.  So she stuck with the violin lessons and taught herself to dance.  Then she started developing an act where she danced while playing violin, and everyone told her that no one wanted to see that.  So she took her impressive skills to YouTube and proved everyone wrong by amassing 13 million subscribers and over 3 billion views.  Stirling’s music is remarkable all on its own, but for the full effect you really have to visit her YouTube channel; you could start with the video for the track I use here, “The Arena.” This track has a bit of the McKennitt flair, but it’s also transcendently Stirling.  She has a fondness for fantasy-themed music (such as her Skyrim tribute with Peter Hollens), and I thought “The Arena” fit right in here.

I’ve also found a couple of new soundtracks to mine.  Greg Edmonson’s score to Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune, for instance, works well here; franchises such as Indiana Jones, Tomb Raider, and Uncharted have a lot of traipsing around in jungles and ancient temples, which sort of makes them first cousins to D&D-style adventures.  Then there’s the Assassin’s Creed franchise, which is even closer to your average D&D campaign.  Here I’ve chosen one track from Jesper Kyd’s score for the first installment, and one from Brian Tyler’s for the fourth.  Staying on the videogame kick, we’ve got one track from Yuka Kitamura off the Dark Souls III soundtrack and one from Christopher Larkin’s excellent soundtrack for Hollow Knight, and even more Jeremy Soule, this time from his score for Oblivion, the Elder Scrolls game that immediately preceded Skyrim.

As our journey begins this time out, we’re sitting around a campfire with “Geralt of Rivia” telling “Tales Around the Fire”: after a hushed introduction, they start out quite dramatically, but soon lapse into a comfortable rhythm.  The next morning we begin traveling, exploring fantastical vistas and “Kismet,” which lead us to a “Night on the Desert,” where spooky things lurk in the darkness.  This brings us to a “Crossroads” of conscience, but we forge on into the dark, where mystical things await (“Soft Mystical Fantasy Theme”).  We stalk the magic by doing a bit of “Grave Robbing,” and the danger builds to an “Earth Shaker.” Then we’re immediately plunged into “Battle Aribeth.”

In its aftermath, “The Eyes of the Stone Thief” are upon us, leading to some creepy feelings of being watched.  But we forge on through the jungle, danger lurking at every turn (“Plane-Wrecked”), and then there’s a sudden “Skirmish,” from which we emerge victorious.  Then we must embark on a “Journey Through Anauroch,” which is apparently a romantic, foreign land, but, “In the End,” it is the dramatic bass tones of “Fjölnir” that lead us inevitably to “The Arena.”

After a whirlwind adventure on that field, it’s off to “The High Seas” where we end up “Commanding the Fury” in fierce ship-to-ship combat.  We arrive at our destination just in time for a “City Battle”; fleeing from that encounter, we pass through the sinister and eerie “Stranglethorn Vale” where we have a “Premonition” of danger, so it’s off to “Waterdeep, City of Splendors”—which we find has some similarities to the “City of Jerusalem”—to search for a “Secret Sanctuary.” There we encounter the “Sœurs martiales” (martial sisters) in all their stately grandeur.  That inevitably takes us to the “Final Confrontation” and bestows upon us our “Bloody Blades.” We acquire healing from “The Druid Grove” and reflect on fallen comrades (“Trost” is German for “consolation”).  Our journey is done, but the dramatic airs of the “Reign of the Septims” remind us that further adventures await on the morrow.



Eldritch Ætherium IV
[ Tales Around the Desert Crossroads between Aribeth and Anauroch, over the High Seas, beyond the Druid Grove ]


“Geralt of Rivia” by Marcin Przybyłowicz, off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Tales Around the Fire” by Chris J Nairn, off The 13th Age Suite [RPG Soundtrack]
“Kismet” by bond, off Born
“Night on the Desert” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Crossroads” by Christopher Larkin, off Hollow Knight [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Soft Mystical Fantasy Theme” by Ian Peter Fisher, off Soundtrack Music
“Grave Robbing” by Greg Edmonson, off Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Earth Shaker (Drums)” by audiomachine [Single]
“Battle Aribeth” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“The Eyes of the Stone Thief” by Thery Ehrlich, off The 13th Age Suite [RPG Soundtrack]
“Plane-Wrecked” by Greg Edmonson, off Uncharted: Drake's Fortune [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Skirmish” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Journey Through Anauroch” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“In the End” by Eklipse, off A Night in Strings
“Fjölnir” by Adrian von Ziegler, off Fable
“The Arena” by Lindsey Stirling, off Brave Enough
“The High Seas” by Brian Tyler, off Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Commanding the Fury” by Mikolai Stroinski, off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“City Battle II” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Stranglethorn Vale” by Jason Hayes, off World of Warcraft Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Premonition” by Yuka Kitamura, off Dark Souls III Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Waterdeep, City of Splendors” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“City of Jerusalem” by Jesper Kyd, off Assassin's Creed [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Secret Sanctuary” by Nox Arcana, off Winter's Majesty
“Sœurs martiales” by Xcyril, off Coeur Martial [Soundtrack]
“Final Confrontation” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Bloody Blades” by Jeremy Soule, off The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [Videogame Soundtrack]
“The Druid Grove” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Trost” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“Reign of the Septims” by Jeremy Soule, off The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion [Videogame Soundtrack]
Total:  30 tracks,  78:23



Whew! that’s a lot of tracks.  In fact, this is not only our longest volume title so far, but also our longest in terms of number of tracks (though not in terms of total time—9 of the songs are under 2 minutes, and another 12 are between two and three minutes).  There’s not a whole lot unexpected going on here, but let’s look at what there is.

You may recall French composer Xcyril from his two appearances on Phantasma Chorale I and his single track on Paradoxically Sized World VI.  Those other tracks were from what I believed to be “soundtrack portfolios”—that is a collection of tunes that are likely used to demonstrate the composers skills and hopefully net them a job.  Well, the track here appears to be from an actual movie—if a very short and experimental one (you can watch it yourself and form your own opinion)—called Coeur Martial.  So I guess it worked.  There’s also a track from Audiomachine, an LA-based production company that does music for film and television.  I can’t remember how I stumbled across “Earth Shaker (Drums)” (which is, by the way, different from “Earth Shaker”), but I think I saw that someone on the Internet had cobbled together a playlist for one of the D&D adventures (Tomb of Annihilation, perhaps) and this one I thought was just too perfect.

And that just leaves us with the two string quartets, both of which are attempting to update that very classical sound with a lot of modern production values.  First we have Australia’s bond, who play chamber music infused with a lot of glam, and perform it much like a girl group.  Their first album Born has a lot of great tracks on it, but “Kismet” was the one that I thought really gave that feel of traveling through a fantasy landscape.  Last but not least, Germany’s Eklipse do chamber music covers of pop songs and dress like über-goths.  Their first album, A Night in Strings, has some great covers, including this one, “In the End.” It’s a bit of a challenge to take a Linkin Park song and recontextualize it as a fantasy theme, but Eklipse did most of the work, and I think sandwiching it between Jeremy Soule and Adrian von Ziegler adds a bit as well.


Next time, we’ll take a second look at some indie ladies.



Eldritch Ætherium V










Sunday, June 25, 2023

Shadowfall Equinox VIII

"Oceans of Storm Clouds"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


Last volume I noted that Shadowfall Equinox was catching up to Salsatic Vibrato in terms of number of volumes.  And, with this latest one, they’re officially tied.  Realistically, I think SfE may hit a volume IX before SVb does.  We shall see.

As I said last time, the primary reason is that Equinox is what I use for background music when I work, and this volume is no exception to that.  And, as usual when getting to these large numbers of volumes, the challenge is to bring something fresh to the mix without abandoning the dependable artists that have been with us on every volume.  Let’s see how we did.

In the category of repeating artists, there’s one who has been on every volume, and two who have been on every volume but one, and they’re all three here.  The inimitable Jeff Greinke is certainly back, with an album we haven’t heard from yet on this mix: Winter Light.1  “Mountain in the Clouds” is the same drifting, ethereal ambient that we’ve come to expect from Greinke, but this album has more of a brittle, crisp feeling, as the seasonal reference in its title implies.  Still, I feel this particular track works in a more autumnal setting, which is what this mix is all about.  As for pianist Kevin Keller,2 “Stillness” is a melancholy, cello-heavy piece that’s pretty perfect for the mix.  And, finally, darkwave masters Black Tape for a Blue Girl3 also provide a cello-heavy piece, “Fitful.” This is a particularly ambient track for Rosenthal, with the occasional crescendo of what might be brass (or just synth), and the gentle, almost unnoticeable, wordless vocals of an uncredited female singer.

Other returning artists include Ruben Garcia (seen on volumes IV, V, and VII) and Ludovico Einaudi (seen on volume VI), whom I paired back to back so that Einaudi’s spare piano on “In Principio” could highlight Garcia’s departure from that style with some fuller, synthy work on “Five Dreams from Yesterday” (which really sounds more like Greinke than Garcia’s normal output); Dead Can Dance and Loreena McKennitt (who I paird on volume V), here again with a touch of worldmusic: on V, I used McKennitt followed by DCD as an opener, whereas here I’ve followed DCD’s somber “Agape” with McKennitt’s beautiful “Tango to Evora” as our closer; and, last but not least, cellist Jami Sieber (seen on volume IV).

Cello, in fact, is a pretty common instrument for this mix: we’ve heard not only from Sieber before, but also cellist David Darling and groups like Amber Asylum and Angels of Venice who feature full-time cellists.  Plus various guest cellists: Martin McGarrick on This Mortal Coil tracks, Audrey Riley on Hope Blister tracks, and Mera Roberts on several Black Tape for a Blue Girl songs.  Here, I’ve put together a solid block of cello music as our centerpiece: 5 songs in a row, and I kick it off with Eugene Friesen.  He’s a recent find for me, which explains why we haven’t seen him here yet, but he’s been around since the 80s, and I think he may become a regular here.  For his debut on this mix, I’ve chose the title track from his 2005 album In the Shade of Angels, a very spare, not-quite-melancholy, ultimately gorgeous instrumental to kick off the block.  From there we go into the melancholy track from the Kevin Keller Ensemble (including Clarice Jensen on cello), and then to Colm McGuinness, who we’ve mostly seen in this series as a purveyor of gaming music: his “Welcome to Wildemount” is the explosive opener of Eldritch Ætherium II, and he has one more track there as well as one on the following volume.  But he’s also an excellent cellist (as well as playing many other instruments) and “Koala” is a sweeping yet still tenebrous track that is perfect for the midpoint of this block.  Then we hit Sieber, who is surely my favorite cellist of all time, with “The Burning Dawn” from 2013’s Timeless.  It’s an anticipatory track, though it’s not clear exactly what the listener is waiting for.  But it carries us sedately to the block closer, BTfaBG’s “Fitful.” Frequent contributor Mera Roberts plays the cello here, and the light, wordless vocals may well be Roberts herself, who provides vocals as well as cello for her other two projects.4  She’s very talented, and lifts this BTfaBG track to a level of sublime I don’t think it could otherwise achieve.

And, speaking of blocks of tracks, I close out the mix with a fun triad of worldmusic, starting with Thievery Corporation’s “Indra.” The DC-based Corporation is normally too upbeat for this mix: we normally see them in places like Smokelit Flashback (volumes III and V), Paradoxically Sized World (volumes I and IV), and Apparently World.  Still, we also heard from them on Zephyrous Aquamarine and even once on Numeric Driftwood (volume IV), so we know they can do mellow when the mood calls for it.  And “Indra,” while it maintains a decently strong hip-hop beat, really brings the dreamy trip-hop with some Middle Eastern flair.  Then to “Agape,” continuing the Middle Eastern theme with what is probably an oud and a qanun, layered with more of Lisa Gerrard’s powerful vocals, singing in a language which might be Earthly or might be just Gerrard’s glossolalia.  And we close with McKennitt’s “Tango to Evora,” which starts out with a simple flamenco-style guitar and then layers on violin, harp, and finally McKennitt’s angelic wordless vocals.  A gentle, soothing track which makes for an amazing closer.

Once again, we’re quite short on lyrics to draw a volume title from, so I used the now-typical method in such situations (that is, I plucked words from various song titles and glued them together).  I actually really like this particular one.



Shadowfall Equinox VIII
[ Oceans of Storm Clouds ]


“For the West Coast Dark Ambient Bedroom Warriors” by the Mountain Goats, off Goths
“Oceans of Change” by Stray Theories, off Oceans, Volume 1 [EP]5
“Tanaris” by Tracy W. Bush, off World of Warcraft Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Aquarium” by Casino Versus Japan, off Whole Numbers Play the Basics
“Stay with Me” by Clint Mansell, off The Fountain [Soundtrack]
“In Principio” by Ludovico Einaudi, off Nightbook
“Five Dreams from Yesterday” by Ruben Garcia, off Lakeland
“Riders on the Storm” by Yonderboi [Single]
“In the Shade of Angels” by Eugene Friesen, off In the Shade of Angels
“Stillness” by Kevin Keller, off In Absentia
“Koala” by Colm R. McGuinness [Single]
“The Burning Dawn” by Jami Sieber, off Timeless
“Fitful” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off Remnants of a Deeper Purity
“Mountain in the Clouds” by Jeff Greinke, off Winter Light
“Seelenlos” by Scabeater, off Necrology
“Indra” by Thievery Corporation, off The Mirror Conspiracy
“Agape” by Dead Can Dance, off Anastasis
“Tango to Evora” by Loreena McKennitt, off The Visit
Total:  18 tracks,  80:11



Clint Mansell’s beautiful if haunting score for The Fountain makes its first appearance here; “Stay with Me” is a slow, synthy track that seems to have ghostly tones in its background.  The World of Warcraft soundtrack also makes its first appearance outsdide Eldritch Ætherium, where I used two of Jason Hayes’ tracks on volume III.  This is a Tracy W. Bush composition, “Tanaris,” which also has a very haunted quality, as well as sounding somewhat oceanic.  I thought it might be a bit too much to put those two back to back, so I broke them up with an interesting track I found while looking for different versions of Saint-Saëns’ “Aquarium.”6  This track of the same name by Casino Versus Japan (the musical moniker of Wisconsin electronica artist Erik Paul Kowalski) has nothing to do with the piece from Le Carnaval des Animaux, but it’s a great, underwatery ambient/downtempo piece that I’m glad to have stumbled onto by accident.

For the rest, there’s nothing too unexpected here.  Stray Theories is a cinematic and electronica project by New Zealand artist Micah Templeton-Wolfe; “Oceans of Change” is a gorgeous ambient piece that flows insanely well off of our opener and sets us up for the more cinematic tracks to come.  That opener, of course, is the exquisitely named Mountain Goats’ track “For the West Coast Dark Ambient Bedroom Warriors,” which is, as the Brits would say, exactly what it says on the tin.  John Darnielle’s long-running (since 1994) project is musically eclectic, and was originally a one-man affair, though by the time of 2017’s Goths, he was opening up to more long-term bandmates.  This amazingly spare track is, as its name suggests, the epitome of what this mix is all about, so the second I heard it I knew it had to be a volume opener.  It’s a bit of a departure for the Mountain Goats, but then you can say that about most of their songs, so it starts to become meaningless after a while.

And that just leaves us with a small bridge from Scabeater, a band not only so obscure that neither AllMusic nor Wikipedia know they exist—which, you may recall, are my criteria for “really obscure band”—but even Discogs says “hunh??” when you ask about them.7  I found Scabeater on Jamendo, and their Skinny-Puppy-adjacent brand of industrial-flavored goth is certainly not for everyone—hell, a lot of it isn’t even for mebut they hit a winner every once in a while, and the 46 seconds of strings-backed piano simplicity that is “Seelenios” is just sublime.  For the longest time, “Mountain in the Clouds” just butted directly up against “Indra,” and it wasn’t working for me, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it, until I remembered this perfect little bridge.

And that just leaves us with perhaps the oddest choice, Hungarian producer László Fogarasi Jr., better known as Yonderboi, who here graces us with an instrumental, jazzy-to-the-point-of-being-loungy version of “Riders on the Storm” by the Doors.  I love the original track (it is almost certainly my favorite Doors song), and something about this offbeat cover really caught my ear.  It takes the song in a completely different direction (as all the best covers do) and is somehow faithful to its inspiration while also being a completely new song.  I’ve drug it around through several volumes of this mix, never quite finding the perfect placement for it, until it finally managed to land here.  Its Hammond-organ-style melody flows beautifully off the fading synth of Garcia’s “Five Dreams,” and it serves as the perfect palate cleanser before we leap into the 5-cello block of Friesen / Keller / McGuinness / Sieber / BTfaBG.  I’m glad I finally found it a home.


Next time, we’ll look at some more creativity-inducing gaming music.


Shadowfall Equinox IX




__________

1 Although I used “Orographic” from that album on Mystical Memoriam.

2 Seen on every volume except the first.

3 Seen on every volume except IV.

4 Mera is half of Mercurine, a third-wave goth band that occupies the same space between goth and industrial as Faith and the Muse, and all of Oblivia, a cello-driven dark ambient project reminiscent of Amber Asylum, but with more vocals.  Both are relatively unknown, and both undeservedly so.

5 You guys know how much I hate to link to YouTube, but I can’t find anywhere else to get this song.

6 I used one version on Classical Plasma I and one on Phantasma Chorale I.

7 I may have to invent a new term ... super duper obscure band, perhaps?











Sunday, May 28, 2023

Music Story #3: Into the Groove

[This is the third post in a sub-series of my music mix series.  It’s basically a story about some music discovery event in my life, so it’s a combo of music info and personal history info.  You can find a list of all the music stories in the mix series list.

This is one I originally published on my work’s Slack channel #tunes.  It’s a shorter post than usual, but I thought it worh sharing nonetheless.]


This sub-series has covered music in various formats.  But they’ve all been about music formats that you buy.  Obviously that’s not the only way we hear music—in fact, one might argue that we hear way more music for free than we ever do paying for it.  And that’s primarily because of one thing: radio.  Or it used to be, anyway, before the Internet came along.  I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with radio.  Here’s a thing which happened to me recently that may help illuminate that.

A week ago today, we packed up the whole family and went to the Renn Faire (I wrote about this last week).  My youngest had never been, and the other two hadn’t been in years (and the eldest’s partner had also never been), so there were six of us.  Obviously we weren’t going to fit in my Prius, so into The Mother‘s SUV we hopped.

Now, The Mother’s SUV is old enough not to have a Bluetooth connection for the sound system; it used to have an “aux” plug that we would just plug our phones into, but the jack got wonky, so we either have to do CD’s, or listen to the actual radio like we’re the Flintstones or something.  For this trip, we decided to do the radio.

Now, when I listen to the radio, I have a very low tolerance for songs I don’t like, and zero tolerance for commericals, so it’s a constant bouncing around of stations.  The Mother has programmed all 12 possible FM stations with something, even if one is country and one is classical, so it’s like we really only had 10 stations.  But it’s an eclectic mix: KROQ, K-Earth (our local oldies station), Jack FM (which there’s one of in every market, I gather), MyFM (current pop music), etc.  We were just as likely to hear Led Zeppelin as Lady Gaga (both of which we did hear on the trip, for the record).

[Brief tangent: I don’t typically like pop, so I would never listen to stations like MyFM in my own car.  Still, there’s almost always one song by every megapop star that I really love.  So I hate Ricky Martin, except for “La Vida Loca,” which is awesome.  Can’t stand Whitney Houston, except for “How Will I Know?” which I adore.  Or, for a more contemporary example, I’m fairly unimpressed by Olivia Rodrigo ... except that “Brutal” is absolutely bangin’.  I’ve never really cottoned to Taylor Swift either, and thus far had also never found her one exception.  But I stumbled across “Anti Hero” on the way to Renn Faire and I was like, shit, that’s Taylor Swift??  It’s great.  (I had a similar reaction to “How Will I Know?” ... for months I was convinced it was the Pointer Sisters and that’s why I loved the song so much.  But I digress.  In my digression.)]

Anyways, there was a fair amount of 80s music, as K-Earth—who originally played like fifties music when i first arrived in Cali—now considers 80s music old.  Bastards.  But, nonetheless, we heard some 80s classics on the ride down, like “Our Lips Are Sealed” by the Go-Go’s, “White Wedding” by Billy Idol, and “Into the Groove” by Madonna.

Then we had a lovely day at the Renn Faire (although it was was more vendors and way fewer entertaining bits than I’d remembered), and we got in the truck again to head home.  On the way, we heard “We Got the Beat” by the Go-Go’s, which wasn’t too surprising ... but also “White Wedding” again.  Then, a half an hour later, there was “Into the Groove” again.  Weird.  I probably hadn’t listened to any Madonna in a few decades—Madonna is less of a megapop-star-with-one-good-song-exception to me, and more like a used-to-be-a-cool-alternative-singer-then-turned-megapop-star-and-so-I-stopped-liking-them type thing.  Early Madonna is great: “Lucky Star” is awesome, “Borderline” and “Holiday” are pretty good too.  Then you get to “Material Girl,” which is still pretty good, and “Like a Virgin” is okay, and by the time you hit “Papa Don’t Preach” I’m pretty much checked out.  So “Into the Groove” is right on that borderline (pun inteneded, I suppose) between good-to-mediocre Madonna and bleaugh Madonna.  So I’ve probably listened to Madonna at some point in the past couple of decades, but certainly not that particular song.

Friday I had jury duty.  My county’s courthouse is about an hour’s drive for me, and it was The Mother’s truck again (for family-vehicle-related reasons).  By this time it was all 80s Memorial Day weekend or somesuch on K-Earth and KROQ was doing some sort of “top 500” thing, so I was mainy back and forth between those two.  And I heard “Into the Groove” again.  And I was like, what the fuck is going on???

Yesterday we drove my middle child out to another city about an hour away (though in the opposite direction) for homeschool prom.  We took the youngest with us and went out to dinner to kill time so we didn’t have to drive all the way to Glendale and back twice in one night.  On the way back home, guess what came on the radio again?  Yes, that’s right: “Into the Groove.” By Madonna.  Again.  A song from nearly forty years ago (I looked it up: it was released in 1985) that I haven’t heard in around twenty years and now I’ve heard it four times in a week.  On the radio.  Which I rarely listen to any more.  What the fuck is up with the universe?  I was ranting in the car a bit about how unlikely it was that I heard this stupid song 4 times in a week when i hadn’t heard it once in the past 20 years, and my middle child opined that perhaps the universe wanted me to refamiliarize myself with the song.  I was like, I was plenty refamiliarized by play #2: numbers 3 and 4 were just redundant.

So, anyway, that’s my random weird radio story for the day.  Or week.  Or month—hell, probably for the year.  I hope.