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Song of the Day: Delirious by Luka Bloom March 12, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment,Music,Review,Scraps , add a comment

This is like the fith time I’ve played this song toda and I think I’m going to be going in for another one very shortly. Not entirely sure why but it’s captivated me with melodic folky flamenco groove. He manages to make it sound like so much more than one man and one guitar. I’m pretty fascinated with his style of guitar, it’s ranging from soft strumming to a furious whip that makes for a snappy and punchy sound, all the time complimented by delicate and carefully selected melodic rhythm.

The lyrics touch that line of brilliance between a specific event and a vague generalisation, I think that anyone can get some level of connection with them, everyone knows a little bit of what he’s talking about. But most important is that groove, woah man, it’s just phenominal.

Here’s the video, I couldn’t find a way to embed it. If you can resist tapping your feet and bobbing your head I don’t know what’s wrong with you.

A surprise of an evening February 27, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment,Music,Review , add a comment

The stars finally aligned to allow me and one of my bestest buds to go into town on Tuesday in order to peruse some live music. Our intention was to go to an open mic night, but when we got there we found no such open mic, or indeed even an open venue. So we instead we headed the independent (and secretly Christian) Bar and Coffee house the Malt Cross, which we’ve been scoping out with timid curiosity for a while. The place is alarmingly hip and feels so oozing with indie cred that it’s a little scary for those of us new to that amount of music cool. It’s also a very interesting building and I’d urge anyone living around Nottingham to go inside and take a look for that reason alone.

Anyhow, as it happened Tuesdays are a night for free music (or at least this one was) and for young people with old, broken cars and pay cheques not coming till the end of the week this was rather perfect. We were there rather early for the music so we got to see the band sound checking. Not the best time to see a band but without this my curiosity would not have been piqued. It was a band not only with quite a large number of musicians but a quite ludicrously large number of instruments to go with it. Ukeleles, mandolins and trumpets combined with more traditional bass, guitar and drums. Plus they had a dedicated chellist. This was something I had to see.

It took us all the way till the very end of the evening to find out what the band were called, but I’m just gonna name them now for ease of writing and to allow me to speak about the EP that we bought (yeah, I have a 60% share in it). As it turns out they are called Hhymn, a name with all the indications of being appropriately indie without being too pretentious. They hail from Nottingham, which is nice purely because I like to find local bands that aren’t playing the derivative drivel of most of the ones I’ve seen.

I didn’t exactly fall in love with them from the live show, but I definitely enjoyed it. And it interested me enough to want some of their music. All live music is improved by knowing the songs though, repetition is such a core concept in music, there is only so much that I can enjoy something when hearing it for the first time. I have to be able to go and listen to it in my own space, in my own world. Luckily the EP captures the best elements of the band that I saw from the live setting as well as bringing in some minimalist production that just enhanced things that little bit. As such it has become a CD (figuratively speaking, all my listening is from my PC) that is really growing on me.

The songs are well put together, full of neat rhythms and piercing melody with a pleasant but yearning backing put out by soft clean and acoustic instrumentation. The structures and concepts aren’t ground breaking, they’re just very well done, and the sheer variety of instruments gives the necessary variety to make each track unique but still cohesive to the sound of the EP and the songs themselves. These guys have got a sound that I think has potential to appeal to a great number of people and I’m really looking forward to seeing more of them, I hope that they continue to write and play, as long as they do I’ll be followingand listening.

Repetition

The trouble with radio February 8, 2010

Posted by Sharny in : Essay,Music,Rants,Society , add a comment

I’ve avoided music radio for a long time. From when I was young I knew how important music was to me but I found it nearly impossible to find stuff that I liked and listening to the radio never helped. I did for quite a while, as you do when you don’t own any music or have any other channels to hear it. It left me entirely disatisfied and I stewed in some kind of musical no mans land for a long time.

Recently however, I’ve found myself listening to rather a lot of radio (for me, anyway), not through choice but because it’s on where I work. Now, it’s not local or national radio like you’d typically listen to, but actually it’s very similar in style, it just has adverts for products from the store rather than from other companies.

Listening to it more and more has really brought me to realise just why DJs let down their audience time and time again. Indeed, it’s such a deep betrayal that no one even knows it’s happening. Every day I find myself hearing the same songs. The same bland, un-musical pieces of factory made pop music.

I’m not about to suggest that DJs not play chart music, as much as I would like that. No, instead all I ask is that DJs do what I percieve their job to be. Not everyone has time to seek out music, to dig and listen and cast away and listen and love and seek and find and pour themselves into.  It’s their job to not just play what people already know they like, but to play them stuff that they may find they like. To open new doors, to new and interesting places.  To introduce people to worlds they never thought existed.

Music has incredible power. You ask almost anyone and they’re likely to say they like music. As a species, we are built to enjoy music. But some of us more than like music. Taking my average tracks per day (from my pretty damn accurate last.fm profile) and the median (since the mean would take a ridiculous amount of time to find) length of songs in my music library we can calculate that on average I spend 4.725 hours a day listening to music. Ish. Of course, that’s not exclusive (and doesn’t include when I’m at work, or when someone else is playing the music). Doesn’t sound like the hugest portion, but bare in mind that’s over 4 years that average, and includes times when I’ve been working or at school full time. It’s been slowly rising over the past year as well.

Now I’m sure there are plenty of people more obsessed with music than I am but I’m pretty deep in at this point. Most of me is focused around it. And it’s damn important to me. Because of the effect it’s had on me, I want to share that effect. I want others to feel it and to know it. That’s why it annoys me so much that DJs are always playing the same songs, they never give your average every day music liker to become a full blown music lover because they limit them to the top 40, or even smaller groups of songs.

I think that’s fundamentally wrong, and something of a moral injustice. There’s a further element that I’ve become more and more receptive to further reaches of music and I want to have another source to say “Hey, listen to this, see what you think”. I want to be able to trust that DJs are playing music because they think it’s interesting and good, not because it’s what’s been handed to them by their major record label funded bosses, not because it’s what we’re being told to like.

I do have a big problem with pop music, I hate about 99% of it. Mainly because it’s pretty much all the same. Doesn’t matter what genre it claims to be. If you think of all music as coming from a centre and spreading out in different directions all around as different genres then what’s played on the radio accounts for the tiniest spec in the middle. Yes, some of those bits are on the bit that starts to be come Electronic, or Blues, or Rock or Punk but ultimately it’s so close to the middle that it shares almost nothing in common with the further reaches of the genre.

And that’s my problem. A lack of variety. Currently all we get is a tiny spec of all the music out there and that’s not fair on anyone. Not fair on the listeners who never have the chance to discover music that could change the way they see the world. Not fair on the artists that work so hard to produce original and interesting and likable music that goes entirely ignored by the mainstream population. And more importantly, not fair on me for having to listen to all the shit they do play.

Opium Toad Updates November 26, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Life,Music,Opium Toad,Ramble , add a comment

It’s been a while since I posted about anything really. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve started again, I guess because I can’t help feeling it’s pointless to just have this sitting around here doing nothing.

I don’t think I ever really explained what happened with the band after I returned.

Not that long before I came back, our singer abruptly left, leaving us with rather a huge gap and feeling as if we were back at square one. In a way, that was kinda true except that our experience in song writing had gone a long way. But without a singer we were certainly in trouble. After exhausting possibilities elsewhere we looked inward for vocals. I’d always liked the idea of singing but I don’t think I ever could have done it before going to the US.

It’s strange to me in a way that singing is so much scarier than being on stage with any other instrument but for some reason the voice feels like something that is judged much more readily by others than anything else. Perhaps it’s because everyone has a voice, everyone can do their own level of singing, so there’s an even greater chance people with see themself as better than you.

My voice, it’s not really anything special. My only real boost is the fact that actually how well a person can sing doesn’t seem to be the biggest factor in how sucessful bands and artists are. It depends more on other elements. A lot of bands get around having the best vocals technically by simply playing to their strengths and the style of the music. I’ve always dreamed of playing as the front man to a band, guitar and vocals. Now I have a shot at that actually happening.

So from deciding I would be doing vocals, we started writing again, this time with me sitting around with pen and paper whilst the rest of the band played our new songs over and over as I wrote lyrics. At first it was quite hard, learning to see where lyrics should go and what melody feels best for them is a skill that certainly takes time to develop, but it’s one that I’ve known I had a bit of for a very long time. I’ve always liked to improvise over music and have sung my own tunes since I was little.

It’s taken us a few months but we are now at a point where we have a 30 minute live set that we’re comfortable to play and are actively looking for gigs. Our next one falls on Sunday December 13th at the Grange Hall in Radcliffe-on-Trent, which is where we’re all based out of, nice to have such a local gig. Unfortunately it’s an extremely packed show, we’ve been told a total of 14 bands are playing which limits our time (and presumably most of everyone else’s) to 15 minutes. So we’re looking for other stuff in December. We played our first gig as we are earlier this month at a pub in Southwell, it was a nice place, 30 minute set with 2 other bands (originally 3 but one had to drop out due to lacking a drummer).

Ideally we’d probably be playing every couple of weeks but whether we can achieve that is yet to be seen, it’s quite a task. So alongside looking to play we’re also full steam ahead in the writing department. We’re in the position of having enough potential material to fill an album but we’re obviously taking things one step at a time. I’d like to go it at on our own, but that’s the enterprise side of me kicking in. I do want to run my own business in the future, work for myself. All the number crunching and looking at statistics for sales would give me such a kick. It’s one of the reasons I think I probably should be an accountant.

The complication and expense is a problem but really at the moment we’re just going forward in the ways that we can, with a goal of getting our music to as many ears as possible. Who knows if many people will like it, but surely someone will, and if we can find that someone then I’ll be a happy person.

We’re going to be getting an EP together pretty soon, when we do I’m gonna be getting it out for free onto the web wherever I can just trying to get as many people to listen to it as possible. I’m trying to do as much as I can to work on back end stuff as well, just to keep myself busy in these crappy boredom times. I should probably post about that. So look out for a heavily understocked merchandise shop coming to an Opium Toad website near you…!

Musical musings July 16, 2009

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment,Music,Ramble , add a comment

So, I say right up there in the tag line that I talk about music, but short of a few gigs and bits and pieces on Opium Toad I haven’t done much. Over time, I’ve really come to learn what makes good music for me although still new things open up and make me think in different ways.

The easiest thing for me to write about would probably be where I am at now musically, and to do that I’m gonna consult my last.fm profile. My top charts from the past 6 months say a lot I think, although said a little more a month or two back. Here they are:

  1. Porcupine Tree
  2. Karate
  3. Ayreon
  4. Riverside
  5. Turisas
  6. Finntroll
  7. Clutch
  8. Seth Lakeman
  9. Kalmah
  10. Opeth
  11. Dark Tranquillity
  12. dredg
  13. Alestorm
  14. Eluveitie
  15. Paul Simon
  16. Anathema

Symphony X, Queensrÿche, The Sword, Megadeth, Pure Reason Revolution, Korpiklaani, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Blackfield, Kiuas, Orange Goblin, Show of Hands, Equilibrium, Ensiferum, Children of Bodom, Spock’s Beard, Jethro Tull, Metallica, Thin Lizzy, Down, Municipal Waste, Indukti, Annihilator, Taint, Arch Enemy, Bert Jansch, Primus, Edguy, Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier, Pineapple Thief, Afro Celt Sound System, AC/DC, Weather Report, Led Zeppelin.

The big ones right at the top there, PT and Karate. Porcupine Tree have to go down as my all time favourite band. Still when I listen to them now I love them as much as when I first heard “Where we would be” amazingly, a song that is very different to much of their work is what brought them to me and I love it. PT did actually drop to 2nd to Karate whilst I was still in the US and indeed Karate deserve a mention.

They are a band that came around at exactly the right time. “Some Boots” somehow captured me exactly as I was when I first heard it, listening to “Airport” in my guitar lesson, it’s smooth main idea just took me away, combined with lyrics that filled me with what I like to refer to as “future nostalgia” and a unique delivery. They are a band completely different to any other, I’ve listened to their number one similar artist on last.fm and they sound nothing like them. Spectacular. Indeed, “Airport” is currently the number 2 most played song in my iTunes library, the only song in the top 50 to have been added to my library in 2008. Every other song there is there because, yes, I love them but I listened to them over time. This is one of the only times I can say that a single song got me through so much but it’s true. It’s an absolutely magnificent achievement but I can only do so much to sell it to others. It has such a personal connection to me that I love it as much for the memories and comfort it gave and continues to give me than for the music itself (which is still very good).

There it is, for all to enjoy.

A shout has to go to Ayreon too, for the music of Arjen Anthony Lucassen has taken me on many adventures in the soundscape. I do really enjoy his music, as demonstrated by the number of plays he has. It’s also down to how much of his music I have due to his tendancy to always produce double albums and my tendancy to like all the songs on them.

Number four is a band that have captured my attention for a little while now but are still fairly recent additions to my regular listening; Riverside. Their style of progressive rock is one that I can really connect to and they do a great job of balancing good song writing with interesting musicianship. Somehow their music manages to be appropriate for being happy, being sad and everything in between. That in itself is a bigger accomplishment than I think many would realise.

Turisas and Finntroll remain strong as my favourite offerings that folk metal have. To me, these two are the quintessental folk metal bands. They have the perfect combination of folky melodies and rocking metal riffs that are what define the genre, as well as the little bits of extra epic cool fun that folk metal should be full of.

Clutch have been entertaining me with their breed of stoner rock for about a year now and I’m still loving it, “Blast Tyrant” remains an incredibly strong album, an unrelenting onslaught of rock. I haven’t delved much further into their offerings but do enjoy a good portion of “Pure Rock Fury”.

Then comes Seth Lakeman, the only indication of the oncoming of more folk influence into my spectrum. I was delighted to see a few BBC shows at the cambridge folk festival which introduced me to a few folk artists, the one that stuck being Seth Lakeman. I really struggle with folk because as a genre it’s just so varied. I absolutely love strong folky melodies and strong story telling vibes mixed with top notch vocals but so much of folk is just same old acoustic guitar chords with a bit of singing on top, just not enough for me. I want to hear violins and vocal harmonys, I want engaging stories not just crappy love songs that I can hear on any pop record. Seth gives me a great mix of the stuff I love and I’ve been continuing to listen to his music on a regular basis since seeing those tv pieces.

Wow, I seriously have waffled on here. I’m not entirely sure what this was supposed to be exactly, but I think it’s collapsed in on its self. Still, I put quite a lot of time into writing it so I mayaswell post it. You’d have to care quite a lot about my personal musical motives to really find it interesting though, and I get the feeling that audience is very small.

Like, 1 person max.

Turisas 01/10/08 (Dragonforce were there too…) October 9, 2008

Posted by Sharny in : Entertainment,Music,Uncategorized , add a comment

After a rather chaotic day where nothing much really went to plan we eventually managed to get on a bus and find ourselves in town, this was not before freaking out the rest of the bus with our loud talking on a whole manner of topics, the last of which was horrific porn… Of course, this was not the beginning of our reign of terror, before getting on the bus we had filled the “Rowdy gang of youths” role very well due to the fighting and throwing of biscuits going on.

On a side note, being part of such a gang of youths is quite a lot of fun. Good confidence boost to just be able to be silly and get funny looks from people.

So, once we arrived in town we headed to Rock City and found that people were being let in but that obviously hadn’t been going on long since our friends in the queue were not too close to the door. We easily joined ourselves to them and headed in.

From this point we spent a long time in a sort of oddly shaped circle, making people around us give us strange looks due to our various innuendos and fondlings and whatnot. During this, most of us got our faces painted in the Turisas red + black stripes. We weren’t alone in this painting, despite Dragonforce being the headliners there were clearly plenty of Turisas fans there. As time went on we gradually got more and more crushed by the crowd forming and had to push out a little to avoid just being swamped.

Eventually Turisas came on, with an epically awesome cheesy intro. I’m not going to try and recount the set list in order, that’s just a train to fail. However, I’m pretty sure these were the songs they played: A portage to the unknown, Battle Metal, In the court of Jarisleif (which was slightly extended, woot!), Rasputin and to Holmgard and beyond. They also did their little Fuck guitar solos bit and, for an extra treat, we got to sing happy birthday to their newest accordion player who’s birthday would be the 2nd of October, I do believe. According to their lead singer, she was only 16 when she started to tour with them and now is just turning 18. Pretty insane really, to be doing something so awesome as that so young.

During the performance I got jostled a bit round the crowd away from everyone else but somehow ended up back next to them at the end, through some kind of pure fluke. After that we ploughed our way out of the crowd and went outside. As expected, we were all pretty hyped up. A couple of my friends went back in to see if earlier promises of getting backstage to meet the band were possible. I hung back since I figured it was very unlikely but after a while we headed in and were met with a fun surprise.

Just as we were heading up the stairs back to the main room, two of the members of Turisas were coming out of the door to the Rig. My friends and I were actually the first people to jump at this opportunity and we immediately all got ourselves high fives from both of them. The two in question would be Jussi Wickström (guitarist) and Netta Skog (accordion, as mentioned earlier). After this I saw a couple of my friends at possibly the most excited I have ever seen them, both getting hugs and autographs from both of them. After this quite a crowd was forming with other people wanting to get autographs and such.

I guess the irony is that arguably the biggest fan of Turisas of all of us (me) didn’t bother getting an autograph. Why? I was happy enough meeting them, the thing about autographs is that I don’t collect them for a start but if I did get them I would simply end up loosing them. No one can take away the experience of having high fived them both though, that was truly awesome. It’s also that I’m a little afraid of asking for things such as this, what with my difficult to spell name.

After all this hubbub we all headed down to McDonald’s (as it is reliably open at almost any hour) and bought various different foods and drinks. I didn’t get anything myself as…well…I don’t really go for that stuff and wasn’t especially hungry/thirsty. Of course, our delightfully painted faces caused us to get some nice funny looks from people that we passed, that’s always fun.

Once we were done there we headed back up to Rock City and went in to find Dragonforce in full swing. We watched for a little while but none of us really like Dragonforce and nothing about the performance was interesting enough to stick at it. I can’t say that they were bad, just that I don’t like them and therefore had little interest in seeing them once I had confirmed that their solos weren’t laughably bad (they seemed to be playing alright, from what I could see/hear, although you can get away with a lot of mistakes in what they play) so we all left, barring the one of us that does actually like Dragonforce.

Halfway back to the bus stop, it was realised that we had left a jacket behind so a couple of party members went back to get it. We all just stood around waiting for them and eventually caught the bus back home again. The bus, incidentally, was surprisingly full for such a journey. Probably Goose Fair’s fault.

So that was that.

Another spectacular show by Turisas, easily upstaging Dragonforce but perhaps not if you’re a fan of them. Proof that you should never have Turisas as your support. All in all an awesome stuff once again, I can be sure that I’ll be seeing them live many more times whenever I get the chance.