Interview With Woods

To make our work days go by, Woods and I will message each other random questions. They're usually not all music related, but seeing how this is a music blog - here are the music questions I asked him this week. 

Q : What CD has been played most in your car?

A : I don’t have any CD’s in my car, but the album that has been played most in my car is probably “Blonder Tongue Audio Baton” by the Swirlies. 

Q : Do band members personalities have any impact on you liking/disliking their music?

A : Sometimes.  It depends on the band.  If the band already has barely listenable to mediocre music, it’s easy to write them off when you find out the members of the band suck worse than their recordings. 

Q : Where do you think you’ll be with making/listening to music in your 50’s?

A : Probably still talking about starting bands and ideas, with or without the same people, with nothing coming to fruition.  I’ll always find new (and old) music to keep me excited and inspired, regardless of my age.

Q : Is there an instrument you find interesting but wouldn’t play yourself?

A :  Vibraphone.  I’ve always loved the way these sounded, especially when the song is good and moody.  I couldn’t tell you a thing about jazz, but Walt Dickerson played one well enough that I don’t ever need to.

Q : What is the saddest sounding instrument?

A : For me, piano.

Q : Most listened to band of 2016 thus far?

A : I can’t narrow it that precisely.  I might listen to one album every day for a week or two, and not revisit it for months.  Towards the beginning of the year, I was on a Sonic Youth kick for a while…I listened to almost nothing but “Sister” and Washing Machine” for weeks it seemed.  The past couple days it’s been a lot of Blue Cheer, and a band called The Firebirds – who really blew my mind.  They pre-date Sabbath by a year or two, and sound like a bizarre mix of (what would become) Sabbath, Hendrix, and just general 60’s weirdo psych rock.  That’s where I’m at right now, maybe next week it’ll be something different.

Q : Do you think music apps like Spotify and Apple Music have helped or hurt the music industry?

A : I don’t know if it’s possible to answer this from a single perspective.  It’s certainly a convenient way to find something new to listen to, and I guess that’s a plus.  I also think it cheapens the personal experience, and connection you have with music when you’ve taken a risk and bought something that maybe looked like it might be cool, or you dug through old dusty record bins to find an album you only heard of through the grapevine, but never thought you’d find.  You listen to those albums more intently, you read the liner notes 100 times, you take notes of other things to look for next time, there’s a connection you have with that particular piece of music.  The internet, and apps like these, makes that part of the journey obsolete.  It’s done far more hurt than good, from my point of view.

-Novak

Can: Tago Mago

Can- Tago Mago

 I'm sure I've posted about this album before, but probably not in depth. This might trigger an entirely different post but I can't see it being posted any time super soon. I want to post something about bands that I personally consider to be a classic. Bands you know like the back of your hand. Bands that you looked into and sent you off into what felt like an unlimited branch off into subgenres and beyond. 

Can was undoubtedly one of these bands.

This was the first album I heard from Can. This album specifically was a bit different even for Can. It was their first with singer Kenji "Damo" Suzuki. Some of the tracks off this album were improvised jams played while the producer was fixing issues, kept and then sliced together for the record. There's a general sense of independence between instruments, while all maintaining the same groove. I get a very vivid visual of these guys playing this music live. 

The production on this and most of their albums is a somewhat "thin" and clean sound compared to other krautrock bands of their time. The clarity of each individual instrument is outstanding. Regardless of how obscure some of their jams can be, the production never lets you lose focus of what's being played.

I quite honestly didn't get into these guys when I first heard them back around 2009 when a band mate at the time showed them to me. He showed me the Tago Mago album, but my ears just didn't accept it. I don't really know when I went back to re-listen exactly, but I'm really glad I did.

One of my favorite things on this album are the drummer, Jaki Liebezeit. The drums are so fucking tasteful. They never take your focus off the melody but they're always doing something interesting and groovy. The way most of their albums are produced makes his snare snappy, super warm toms, his kick is crunchy but full, and his cymbals dark but sharp. 

If you haven't heard of these iconic freaks, do your ears a favor and check them out. Start with this album and work your way around their chunky discography.




-Novak

Workday review: The Earth Disciples, Jean Plum & more.

The Earth Disciples, "Getaway Train" LP has been a constant in my headphones for a few weeks now.  Ranging from smoothed out, warm 70's soul - to jazzy, funked out madness (sometimes even in the same song). Finding an album that can both transport you to a different place, and make you want to jump out of your seat and dance like no one's around is a true gem today.

Stand out tracks : Spirit of the Bells, La Bahemia, Getaway Train, Native Planet.

Cloud One, "Atmosphere Strut" LP is a bit harder to describe.  In fact, I don't think I can really give a definitive stance on this one.  The synth tone on this album really something else, and takes some otherwise good-to-excellent soul inspired cuts, to levels I've never heard.  The downfall to this album is how dancey and almost disco influenced it is.  It works well on some songs, especially where the piano seems to be leading, but overall kills most of the album for me.  With that said, 3 out of the 6 songs on here have been in steady rotation.  Take that however you want.

Stand out tracks : Dust to Dust, Spaced Out.

Jean Plum, "Back to You" single is one of those pieces of music that stops you dead in your tracks, makes your heart hurt, and your mind wander deep into nostalgia.  A piece of music that you feel, more than hear.  Nothing else needs to be said.

Stand out tracks : Back to You.

Nils Frahm

If you haven't heard of Frahm, where do I begin? He's a master at blending smooth piano compositions while seamlessly sneaking in gorgeous synthesizer noises at certain points. Most of his music is played live and he has done several collaborations over the last decade. Each album and collaboration uniquely represents itself. He has too many releases for me to review each one, so I'll just scratch the surface a little to get you familiar with his work.

 

Felt- 2011  

 I believe this was the first Frahm album I heard. I've been on a writing rampage myself so my ears are more absorbent specifically of production quality and song arrangements. This has it all. The coolest thing is listening to this delicate album loud. You can hear him shuffle around a bit in his seat, you can hear the floors creek, it's all just as evenly mixed as the piano itself. It sounds like you're laying inside the piano as he plays. The name "Felt" actually came after he applied dampening felts to his piano to be kind to his close neighbors. He realized he liked the delicate sound the piano was making and decided to revolve this album around putting the mics much, much closer to the piano strings to pick more up. It was an interesting production sound, but more importantly the songs were amazing. Beautiful album.

Trance Frendz- 2016

This is my favorite as well as most recent album under all of Frahm's work. This was actually a collaboration with composer Ólafur Arnalds. The combination of these two is pure magic. With ambient music, there can be so much reworking, adding, or replacing. These two sat down together in Frahm's Berlin studio and improvised the entire album. This is a great example of the warm, electronic undertones over the improvised piano takes. It never ventures too far into "electronic" or synthetic sounding. I think it helps not having drum machines or any type of synth pads oscillating over top of the songs.

They had a videographer shoot the entire process. It was uploaded to Vimeo as well as YouTube. I can't recommend watching this enough!

 

The Bells- 2010

I could go on for hours on this guy, but I'll stop after this album. One of the most refreshing things about 90% of his work was always the consistency of material, without lacking depth. It's easy to just "jam" with a band and put whatever good or bad is done in that session out as albums. Typically those albums suck. The Bells is a go to album of mine when my mind won't stop wandering. There really isn't many tricks to this album instrumentally. It stays very stripped down with just piano for almost the entire record.

 

Everyone has heard bands that have piano, but they're usually backed with a live band or follow some type of similar structures. Nils stay true without drums, guitars, or any other typical band sounds even when performing live. It's captivating melodies done in such a clever, emotional way. 

-Novak