Music Video of the Day: Glasser - Apply

Back in 2009, a year before their album release, Glasser's Apply created a huge impact in the electronic fanbase. Simple yet experimental, Glasser combines tribal percussion with electronic synthesizers and modulated vocals. As for the video, it's a complete dreamscape-trip-fest into the cerebral psyche. The video is heavily based on the movement of colours on a digital canvas painting. The vocalist appears as an apparition; all blurred, hazed, and overlayed. The video has no concrete plot or direction, it's just a nice journey through art.

Album of the Day: Björk - Homogenic

Björk - Homogenic (1997)

alternative dance, art pop, progressive pop, trip-hop

Following the release of Post (1995), Björk had undergone numerous obstacles that she never had before in terms of her love life, music, and near murder. Sticking with her single word naming conventions, Homogenic (originally titled Homogeneous) is a testament to the poetry of her intuition that this creative watermark so beautifully corresponded with the most turbulent time in her life. Björk’s creative rebirth invited her to re-evaluate the way she had handled herself in the wake of such fame. For someone who had spent the past four years continually undone by travel and tour, concepts of home and belonging resonated strongly to her. Thus, the record is all about her embracing her homeland and reclamation of self as home.

Harnessing artistic bravery and strength, not only did Björk charge with full force in unusual sonic textures, but she wrote and co-programmed it entirely by herself. In addition, she collaborated with a few friends and idols including Dravs, Howie Bernstein, Guy Sigworth, and LFO’s Mark Bell to help her create the exact sounds that brewed in her head. Björk, therefore, gathered all her outrageous concepts and molded those ideas to create sonically captivating paint-on-canvas-like music. As a result, Homogenic consists of a strange but effective mixture of hard electronic beats and string octet performances embracing the beautiful glimmer of ice and rock. As for vocals, Björk stepped up extremely far, screaming out pain in such songs like Pluto and reminiscing tranquility in such songs like Unravel. From dramatic shell shock, Björk returns with a flaming album of fierce poetic expression. Let's delve into the songs more.

The paranoid snares and aching violins work in excellent and darkly contrast with Björk's haunting vocals opens Homogenic in the song Hunter, which explains the omnipresent fear of abandonment. Following Hunter’s chaos is the poignantly gorgeous tune, Joga, which is a track of gratitude for her friend Joga. The song’s beats were unbelievably constructed and manipulated from Icelandic volcanic bubble sounds adjacent to patriotically played strings. Rising and falling to the actual sounds of Iceland's volcanoes, the lyrics explain how love and hate as parallels disappear with greater love. Unravel is one of the most heartbreaking songs of Björk's career, accentuating her misfortune in a gentle yet brooding atmosphere within the pit of a gently thumping heart and blood coursing through the veins. Here, Björk effortlessly combines hope and disaster majestically. Additionally, the lyrically metaphoric song of Bachelorette surrounds listeners in gorgeously haunting violins, chaotically toxic beats, and powerfully painful vocals. The thickly textured tune describes a woman who personifies herself as this loving passive object, while the man she loves is an active animal (or person who comes and goes as he will). The crunchy distorted tune, 5 Years, is Björk’s frustration for a guy—who is acting as if afraid of love—to be straight up with her. Similar to Joga, 5 Years is constructed by manipulated earthquakes, dancing with a Nintendo-like synthesizer tucked away behind the punches and pounds of the beats, and the always brilliant harmonious strings. Trance styled, Immature takes the listener to a less aleatoric surrounding, showing how lyrical repetition is highly effective without any tedium. The rhythmic beats with Björk’s emotional vocals turn infectious within seconds. The track begins with stunningly eerie Björk humming to her own tune, before she scolds herself for being immature, and questioning her actions. Alas, the album ends a massive duo of songs encompassing a contrast sonically and similar brilliancy. Pluto is the most hardcore and audacious songs in Björk history. Consisting of extreme, outrage of shrieks, it is a song of Mars, but radiantly composed. About ending rebirth; shedding your skin on purpose, Pluto is undoubtedly conjured up from a great deal of aggravation. In complete contrast, Pluto follows up with the album closer, All is Full of Love. The tune is none other than pure driving and uplifting beauty. Beginning with an almost electrical serge sound and the gradual enter of cold crisp strings, All is Full of Love is stripped from beats from the aforementioned songs and left with shimmers of enigmatic tones. The rain comes crashing down on all physical matter in its molecular density containing seeds of love. Björk then enters with an umbrella in the dead of night staring at the starry sky and lamenting for one last time. I am in awe by this album, I really am. Not only did Björk show her most inner deepest and darkest soul, she created an unforgettable world to mourn in.

Homogenic is unquestionably a tour-de-force. Riveting form start to finish, the album overflows with brilliant and intellectually structured songs: creative sounds and one of the greatest voices of modern electronic music. Every track is indispensable, genuine, astounding, each flowing to the next perfectly like blood streams. This is the record that characterizes Björk completely: eccentric, emotional, childlike, reflective, distinctive, and forevermore changing. Within Homogenic, Björk manages to present herself fearlessly. As a result, the album displays exterior textures of robustness and intensity, and interior textures of warmth and emotion.

The Musical Photoshop

Quoted once by Pablo Picasso, "Good artists borrow, great artists steal." To me, this proverb is complex, but primarily illustrates the evident difference between aping and assimilating; copying and internalizing; being unoriginal and innovative. For better of for worse, every artist of every kind builds on what was done by his or her predecessors. It's only when these craftsmen take things to new heights, in new directions, when we see greatness emerge.

In music specifically, sampling is the act of extracting a portion of sound recording and reusing/remodeling it into another tune; sometimes for laziness, other times creativity and respect. The widespread use of this technique originated with the birth of dance, hip-hop and industrial music in the late 1970s to early 1980s. Why sample, you ask? It's more for the craft of bringing sounds, ideas and emotions together like a scrapbook or musical journal. From then, it has progressed into more songs and more genres than ever before. Despite harsher clearing/copyright laws today, sampling, when executed aesthetically well, is an integral part of modern music.

Back in the discotheque era, DJs continued to experiment with sampling in quite facile and basic manners. Repeating electronically generated lines (ie 303 baselines), to studio recordings or samples of live electric bassists, or simply filtered-down samples from classic funk recordings, made such DJs like DJ Francis a musical manipulator guru. Throughout the 80s and 90s, electronic music increased its sample library with sounds from jazz, blues, funk, soul and synth pop. The sole purpose of these samples were often to add the foundation of the drum beat and synth bass line. House music, more specifically, may also include disco and gospel vocals. These fusions made up the musical symbolic representation of freedom, diversity and love. It wasn't until dance music emerged in Britain when rap was sampled, evolving the use of sampling yet again.

Moving along in hip-hop terms, sampling is defined by something a lot more progressive, dynamic and clever. In this genre, sampling started out as splicing out or copying parts from other songs and rearranging or reworking these into a cohesive musical pattern, or better known as a loop. This was the root and main aspect of any hip-hop tune; it drives the rest of the music onward. The sounds ultimately melt into a single instrument and no longer heterogeneous. In 1986, then-Def Jam producer Rick Rubin used Black Sabbith and Led Zeppelin loops in creating the popular Beastie Boy's debut Licence to Ill. Funk and soul are also revisited here in providing breakbeats, especially from the great James Brown. Sometimes, samples are recognizable and other times they're not. The true craft of sampling in any genre is to convert it into another entity.

Some types of industrial music, or Electronic Body Music (EBM) rely heavily on sample use. Unlike electronic and hip-hop sampling, EBM includes heavy use of sampling, yet an absence of vocal modification.

Forwarding to the 2000s up until today, sampling has colossally evolved: despite greater copyright laws, even greater sample usage is implemented today than ever before. We will first delve into non-mainstream music. Electronic pioneers Herbert, Mum, Matmos and Bjork were the first artists to take found-sound sampling to an entirely new level. Herbert introduced this idea of microbeats; Matthew Herbert essentially recorded privatized, introspective sounds, such as teeth clatter, bees buzzing, and a zipper travelling up its spine into creatively passive beats. This began a creative revolution for electronic music. Mum, however, drove down a different route, meddling with cutlery, toys and static TV sets and manipulating them in IDM-fashion. The result brought on a cute and tastefully cluttered side to IDM music that's still considered unique today.

Artists have also been daring in the sampling business. Venetian Snares, for example, is a breakcore artist who has willingly sampled Dinah Washington, Danny Elfman, Billie Holliday and various film and television dialogue in his tracks. Dubstep artist Synkro has sampled Marvin Gaye, Ne-Yo and Aretha Franklin. Even Amon Tobin didn't go anywhere near sample clearance until recent years. There is a fundamental reason why artists like to play with fire like this. Artists remember a time when a great abstract artist once said "[...] great artists steal." And thus, these artists rebel for a chance of artistic freedom by literally dissecting songs, and that can be a powerful asset to work with. Additionally, as underground and with sparsely distributed releases, these artists are not likely to be discovered and attacked by the mainstream.

Now, the mainstream music industry samples as well, obviously with permission. But how much creative power is there? With the money circulating the mainstream industry, artists and producers alike can lazily and blindly take people's work to give their song a "boost". The first time I heard Beyonce's Who Run the World (Girls) I was absolutely shocked. The song is actually, in fact, Pon De Floor by Diplo's side project, Major Lazer, with Beyonce's vocals subbed over top. By not crediting such a large sample, listeners may misleadingly refer to the song as original. A very similar use is illustrated in Kanye West's Bigger Stronger Faster (Daft Punk's Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger). Although the song was more artistically blended, it was still apparent that West used a Daft Punk classic. Is this called abuse? Unethical? Disrespectful? That's up for debate. What is known is that sampling has been saturated in mainstream to the point of losing its mystique.

Despite the fact that sampling is good and bad in different situations, it still shaped a great part of music today. I am personally a sucker for great sampling in any style of music. There is something powerful about someone who can successfully musically Photoshop, especially when the artist is under the radar. With limited wealth and fame, artists tend to be more clever and imaginative in creating infectious loops and jolting vox. Conversely, with wealth, artists enter a place where the egoism shadows creativity.

Joanna Newsom's Take on Lady Gaga

In the six years since Joanna Newsom released her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, she has remained a constantly surprising presence. The reasons are legion. She makes ambitious folk-inspired records in an era when the album is meant to be dead. Her lyrics mix archaic language with modern vocabulary, sung in a distinctive, stark voice – which a critic for AllMusic.com described as "somewhere between Bjork and a handbrake". She has made harp music influenced by Venezuelan and west African rhythms fashionable to indie fans. And stranger still, this mix sells out venues such as the 3,000-capacity Royal Festival Hall in minutes.

Newsom, however, worries that she doesn't read enough and watches "too much crappy TV". She's also a big fan of Jay-Z and Kanye West – though not Lady Gaga. "I'm mystified by the laziness of people looking at how she presents herself, and somehow assuming that implies there's a high level of intelligence in the songwriting. Her approach to image is really interesting, but you listen to the music, and you just hear glow sticks. Smart outlets for musical journalism give her all this credit, like she's the new Madonna …" She breaks off and laughs. "Although I'm coming from a perspective of also thinking Madonna is not great at all. I'm like, fair enough: she is the new Madonna, but Madonna's a dumb-ass!"

Later, she emails to clarify what she describes as her "late-afternoon dopiness" on this subject: "I may have contradicted myself. My problem isn't actually with Lady Gaga. But there's not much in her music to distinguish it from other glossy, formulaic pop. She just happens to wear slightly weirder outfits than Britney Spears. But they're not that weird – they're mostly just skimpy. She's fully marketing her body/sexuality; she's just doing it while wearing, like, a 'fierce' telephone hair-hat. Her sexuality has no scuzziness, no frank raunchiness, in the way that, say, Peaches, or even Grace Jones, have – she's Arty Spice! And, meanwhile, she seems to take herself so oddly seriously, the way she talks about her music in the third person, like she's Brecht or something. She just makes me miss Cyndi Lauper." And on the subject of Madonna: "I shouldn't have called Madonna a dumb-ass. Her music and she have just gotten so boring to me, this last decade. I think maybe she doesn't hold her money very gracefully, the way some people can't hold their drink. But one thing she is surely not is dumb." Newsom says it as it is in the truest and bluntest form, and I, for one, agree. And as the smart artist she is, I'm glad she re-assessed and clarified her opinions.

Music Video of the Day: Mario Basanov & Vidis - I'll Be Gone

This video is as intricately composed as the music itself. The director ingeniously brings sound directly to picture by illustrating four different polygraphs in four corners picking up on specific sounds within the composition itself. Regardless of its simplicity, the video does not allow our eyes to drift away, instead creatively warps our perception. The red ink on white paper (which I find to symbolize energy in sound form) is a moving and evolving entity within the video and its illustrated in a fantastic way by mixing live video with computer animation. Probably one of my favourite videos.

New Artists to Pay Close Attention To

Abel Tesfaye is a Toronto-based singer/song writer/producer. He steps outside of the box and challenges the structural definitions of genres, particularly R&B. He is the one-man project of The Weeknd; a futuristic, drugged-out, after-after-party take on R&B, yet I would not consider it R&B nor dubstep. Alongside R&B vocals, he incorporates dubstep and indie rock style instrumentation. As a result, he creates some amazing atmospheric elements to involve the listener into pure euphoria. His astounding debut, House of Balloons, truly hits you in the gut--not only emotionally, but as a music fan as well. He breathes life into the boring and stale R&B music culture today.

The Weeknd - What You Need by ajay-patel

Experimental Brit artist, James Blake, arrived with a large splash following his stunning cover of Feist's beautifully elegiac Limit to Your Love. As an artist he is a disciple of the less-is-more school with his self-titled debut album characterized by a predominant sparsity. His music is often introspective and undefined, charting to strange landscapes and unknown textures. Unlike The Weeknd, James Blake's atmosphere is a lot more experimental and minimalistic. There is something about how he provokes emotion in silences and spaces that lie in his songs--makes you want to lye down in them for a while.

James Blake - Air & Lack Thereof by ajay-patel

British producer, Jamie Smith of indie-pop band The xx, made himself a powerful ingrediant of dubstep overnight from his debut, We're New Here, with Gil Scott-Heron. Jamie xx knows how to seamlessly sample poetry and spoken-word into trance-inducing music. As a result, he creates some cutting-edge, high-quality post-dubstep tracks. His sound is said to be influenced by fellow British acts Burial and Kode9.

Album of the Day: Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - The Doldrums (2004)
lo-fi, psychedelia, psychedelic rock

After years of recording in relative seclusion in the hills of Los Angeles, Ariel Pink—or otherwise known as Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti—makes his official Paw Tracks debut with The Doldrums, an avant-guard psychedelic album. Originally a handmade CD-R release a couple years before its official release, The Doldrums was discovered by Animal Collective during one of their west coast tours and became an immediate favourite.

Ariel Rosenberg (his real name) creates music that stretches imagination in incredible depth and surrealism. Recording at home with only a guitar, keyboard, 8-track, and drum sounds unbelievably created with his voice, Rosenberg manages to blend lo-fi pop with 70s mono-rock into something beautiful and confusing, yet highly addictive. The album tends to paint a picture or poem in the air from that era. However, I think Rosenberg did something interesting to the 1970s. It wasn’t what was heard, it was more of what the child’s minds was thinking during that time, especially his. Most people in the 70s do not have many luxuries that we have today. They did not have cable, and so Rosenberg escaped to some place quiet and created his entertainment from the memory of things he picked up in his head. This clutter of synths, drugs, cheap drum loops and effeminate young men with lined eyes was all that was needed to amuse a child to salvation.

There are many highlights on The Doldrums. The album opens up with Good Kids Make Bad Grown Ups, an almost nauseating acid-trip tune with Ariel Pink’s David Bowie-esque vocals when he sings in his lower register. For Kate I Wait and Among Dreams are two of my favourite songs. There is a sense of innocence to both songs, being upbeat yet gentle at the same time. He sings in his higher register in Among Dreams, bringing out a more annoying nasality to his voice; whereas in For Kate I Wait, he dips down in his Bowie-sound-a-like, bringing out his more haunting and less playful atmosphere. The Ballad of Bobby Pyn is a collection of hypnotizing and mad sounds from synths, voice and found sounds. I love how this song starts as a structured song, and gradually transforms into the most indescribable trip through the brain. There is something to say about the simplicity and complexity of the song, and the entire record for that matter. The Doldrums is very avant-garde for this century because of this ability to combine hot and cold together yet separate simultaneously.

It’s really difficult for me to describe this album. It is unlike anything I have heard or felt before, and I love every minute of it. The music is nostalgic, psychedelic, confusing, dreamy, and utterly insane. I am immensely pleased that there are people who still believe in breaking boarders beyond the first boarders to begin with. The Doldrums is a piece of fascinating art that literally takes one to another galaxy; no-man’s-land if you will. Being the first non-Animal Collective member on the Paw Tracks roster, Ariel Pink proves to be a highly creative individual that lets nothing stand in his way to create the sounds he wants with the voice of many octaves warped by the sun. Thank you for messing with out minds, Ariel Pink.



Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - For Kate I Wait by ajay-patel

Pop = Electro?

Is it me, or has most pop turned electro? Thanks to David Guetta, who is a huge sell-out slut, electro made its popularity into mainstream pop music. Guetta was amazing in being unique and interesting as a solo artist, but is now slowly blurring away from that. I can't tell pop artists apart anymore--they all want to be dance divas, or rather gods/goddesses. Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Lady Gaga, Kesha, and J. Lo all sound the same that they are pretty much the same person. Kelis is the only exception because she created an exquisite and captivating album garnering talent from Benny Benassi as well as David Guetta that flies beyond what other pop "divas" are capable of. Pop stars need to stop using electro unless they know what they are doing. Otherwise, it's just a huge embarrassment to electro music, including Peaches and Ellen Allien. Believe it or not, artists will get more respect for being themselves rather than being posers and keeping up with trends--crazy, I know.

Music Video of the Day: Dan Black - Symphonies

This video is neat and creative homage to typography and film. An array of film styles tell the story of the Black's song. Various titles and credits run throughout the video in styles from western to romantic comedy to sci-fi to animation--they reflect the lyrics sung by Dan Black. This is very new and different approach to a music video that I find to be clever and visually stimulating. The visuals almost make you forget what the song is actually about because the video is constantly changing in style, yet at the same time, keeping them cohesive to each other. The video is constantly changing and provides excitement. This is a novel approach to a sing-a-long.

The Day the Concert Stood Still

The nature of a concert varies by musical genre and the individual performers. Nevertheless, we all admire a thumping sound system at a concert; that bass drum the kicks you in the gut, that guitar solo cutting through the air like a sonic razor. A concert, in many ways, is a spiritual connection between the artist and audience, through music or more specifically, emotion. With some dough, one has the opportunity to be in the presence of an admired musician or musicians and to feel them for who they are. So, why then would artists destroy this special interaction with lip-syncing, overpowered visuals, and album replicas? Corporate media has taken control over artists, and because of that, artists gain evil power or lack thereof on as well as off-stage. There was a time when bands like The Beetles, or artists like Nick Drake relied solely on their own raw talent. Today, for the most part, is a different story.

Lip-synching is a commonly-used shortcut in live music, but also considered to be controversial. As more elaborate shows came into place in the 1990s, lip-synching was introduced as a tool to dance, sing, etc. simultaneously and accurately. For example, Michael Jackson has performed complex dance routines while lip-syncing and live singing on stage. Unfortunately, artists like Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Rihanna and the like of them have taken extreme advantage of this tool to fool-proof their entire shows. According to The New York Times, the increased use of lip-syncing has made legislators in New York and New Jersey irritated, and suggests informing concert-goers that they are essentially paying for a non-live live concert.

Name any band or artist in mainstream pop culture—they are guaranteed to be satans of the lip-syncing machine. Music making is becoming too easy in this generation to the point where power, creativity and raw energy have trivially fluttered out the window in exchange of the power of purgatory perfection. In today’s brainwashed culture, concert-goers expect nothing less than perfection and any off-note or mess-up is deemed unacceptable. The difference between Cat Power and Kesha is paranormal advertising empowerment. Kesha is an image that has been stripped from her humanity to become a product—the pressure for perfectionism is greater here. However, better isn’t always good; more isn’t always beneficial.

Whether it’s Britney Spears in a 2009 Australian show, Luciano Pavarotti at the 2006 Winter Olympics or Ashlee Simpson on Saturday Night Live in 2004, lip-syncing has undeniably created a bad and non-credible image in which people nevertheless blindly eat up. Therefore, the process repeats itself until the very definition of a live show becomes the very definition of a digital download of the album.

So that begs the question: What are we actually paying for if the concert we’re viewing is a hoax? The answer is the artist brand. Every artist/band has a brand and hype surrounding that brand. This is why Madonna’s concerts are $300+ and Devendra Banhart’s are $40, if that. Tactlessly, the fact that one is a real musician/singer and the other is a performer who uses fake means to get by is completely irrelevant when it comes to branding and revenue. It’s a sad, yet unnecessary truth in the music industry. Plainly, authentic artists are not popular, which garners more fake imitators to merge into the music industry.

The ‘80s, 70s, and even earlier years were fundamental times in concert history: the popularity of experimentation and improvisation. The goal and purpose for a concert back then was not to mimic songs in the exact deliverance of a record or cassette tape, but rather create an atmosphere of emotion and humanistic connection. Music is a living, breathing entity, and when played live, songs change in shifting rhythm and details of instrumental performance—whatever the mood may strike at a certain time. A great part of Hendrix’s popularity came from his pure vigor and improvisation on stage. It was this that made fans yearning for a personal assembly for something fresh, real and animalistic. Jazz has been implementing these stage characteristics since the 1950s. Free Jazz, in particular, was a response to the dissatisfaction on the limitations on already established 1940s jazz. Come 1980s, freestyle made its way to modern settings, introducing rap battles and beat boxing. The craft of freestyle rap is improvising rhymes on the spot, and the art still exists today.

There has been a great speed of careless emergence of technology from the ’90s up until now. For better or worse, technology makes situations easier and more convenient. Consequently, media culture grabbed technology by the throat and altered the outlook on the process of human life, and specifically how concerts were to be executed. Enter the music industry. Alongside lip-syncing, Auto-Tune and scarce instrumentation in songs cultivates faster than The Spice Girls receiving their first record deal. In response to the decline of revenue from experimentalism and popularity of widely accessible generic pop, rock, etc., managers and major record labels placed artists into predetermined boxes, employing an apparent middle finger between creativity and music. Concerts became structured and although experimentalism still existed, the feeling was quickly forgotten by the large majority due to the role of the sheep in an overly produced world.

Furthermore, I should point out there is a vital difference between experimentalism and simply creating clutter. Discerning how much processing occurs on an album in comparison to the live show is incredibly easy to pinpoint. The Black Eyed Peas is a superior example of a band who are 100 times worse on stage than their actual recordings present (and this is during the technological age). They are filled with so much ego that they focus on sales rather than talent and skill.

Speaking of skills, many people today who have played an instrument for about a decade might easily become divorced from it. The main reason behind this is due to never instilling the instrument as part of his or her emotional being, but rather primarily learned as a mechanical device to be operated, not a living process in which to invest thoughts and feelings. Because of this notion, we see musicians taking more shortcuts than ever before into stardom, and concerts do not differ. It’s a story of the cookie cutter.

Today, artists are essentially slaves driven by egoism. There is no soul, no presence, no anything. An event that once drew the public to a whole new universe, is a puppet-show run by corporate media. That’s not to say all bands and artists are awful live. However, to find them we must delve underground. Animal Collective is just one band that stands apart from the rest by entrancing a group of fans into an all-night psychedelic euphoria. They are not corrupted by media and stay true to their genuine selves. Their live shows are heavily experimented and use visuals as a supplement to their outlandish songs. The point being, there is still hope in the world for honest shows. Underground bands are the role models for change, and are increasingly being discovered and uncovered by its shrouds. However, in a way, I'd prefer the underground bands to remain as such so as to prevent another musical homicide.

© Ajay Patel

Album of the Day: Akron/Family - Akron/Family (2005)

Akron/Family - Akron/Family

Alternative Folk, Freak-Folk

The Brooklyn, NY-based collective of four multi-instrumentalists combine a variety of modern and pre-modern styles into a strong, singular whole. Their self-titled debut is a string of acoustic glides recalling rural folksy warmth and fractured folk-rock experimentalisms with tender carnival-esque stories. The raw, natural, unprocessed feel ironically presents an authentic and engaging album from the once lost aesthetic folk-rockers. Their slow-burning songs are well decked with alien metallic clacks, skittering tones, tape hiss storm clouds, and field recorded thunder. There is also a poignant strength of spirituality in every tune they orbit around us, bringing forward lush and dreary swells. For, as this world gets older, and novelties increase along with our exposure to everything, we must consider that everything we are exposed to influences us in some way.

Like a lot of modern creative folk recordings, Akron/Family’s debut triggers a great deal of emotions, sometimes complex and contradictory with imaginative sounds and lyrics. The record starts off with Before and Again, opening beautifully with sweeping folk of plaintive nylon strings and distant, electronic homing signals. Following up is the soft and freely tune, Suchness. The poignant and quirkily playful song is a morph into a poor-man's rumba. The unforgettable eight-minute epic, Italy is a sonic journey and a soar to heaven at that. Stumbling on easily the best percussion work, Running, Returning throw in as many strange and random noises into the track. With lead singer Ryan Vanderhoof calling over a dissonant swirl of guitar, percussive noise, and a chorus of distant, shout-sung voices, the tune is rhythmically enthralling. The melancholy scrap of Afford catches a soft jet-stream of air and float elegantly into a dusky campfire sing-a-long. The quiet incantation of hidden track, Untitled, ends the album appropriately with gentle and majestically sways into slumber.

Akron/Family are a folk band at heart, and beneath all the off-note harmonizing, stretched out electronic buzzes and awkward silences is a band wholly obsessed with where a room full of instruments and some youthful ambition can take some poignant acoustic tracks. They are rare in that they can work effectively on both sides of the mystic-folk and indie-rock divide. This debut is well written, produced and delivered. The introspective depth achieved in this album is absolutely unparalleled. They exists in a dimension unbeknown to us, and occupies a space of its own.


Akron/Family - Italy by ajay-patel

The Hip-Hop Evolution: For Better or for Worse

Hip-hop is the expression of cultural and societal issues through positive and meaningful messages of inclusion, activism, equity, justice, political consciousness, education and success—or at least it was in its early years. Thus, hip-hop was not just a genre of music, but rather a 1970s lifestyle stance starting in the Bronx. For over three decades, this lifestyle rapidly expanded from the streets of south-central Los Angeles and New York (east side and west side) and into the consciousness of listeners and performers alike. Today, hip-hop has evolved into consumer hip-hop—a colossal music industry with, for the most part, no to very little connection to its roots.

Just like rock and pop, hip-hop music reflects the changing lives and audiences it speaks through in the past decade. While hip-hop still talks of the griminess of the streets, those lyrics are countered by a manifesto of ‘the good life.’ Come 1990s, however, the culture of hip-hop began to remodel itself. Artists such as Buju Banton and Elephant Man have been criticized for their homophobic lyrics, promoting hate crime. Similar claims have been aimed toward Eminem and 50 Cent during their early stages of artist development. To this day, Canada has refrained from allowing Elephant Man to perform a show.

Overall, most rappers today have as much lyrical skill as emos have on epidermal pigment. Pimps, hoes, money and swearing for the sake of swearing seem to be common culprits in hip-hop music. Arbitrary rhyming without any fundamental meaning does not in any respect mean one is hip-hop. Refer to Kanye West’s Getting It In: Don't try to treat me like / I ain't famous / My apologies, are you into astrology / Cause I'm, I'm tryin to make it to Uranus; or perhaps Lil Wayne’s nonsense in Jump In the Air: Mijo, zero degreeyo, frio / Get into your soul like Neyo, weeyo / Oh I meant ohwee or is it oohwee. It’s humorous how anyone can take these and similar lyrics seriously. Compare these to legendary Nas in I Can: We were kings and queens, never porch monkeys / It was empires in Africa called Kush Timbuktu, where every race came to get books / To learn from black teachers who taught Greeks and Romans / Asian Arabs and gave them gold. There is, evidently then, a shift in content and context within hip-hop music. It seems what was once an art can be destroyed and rebuilt by just about anyone. Record labels create revenue by enforcing safe, generalized, omnirelatable music. Consequently, activism, equity, justice and political consciousness are deficient in mainstream hip-hop. It’s mainly a gimmick which blinds everyone, including myself at times, with sensational beats.

Sparked by rappers experimenting with a new art form, hip-hop fashion became an expression of the hip-hop culture demonstrating a particular stance. The fashion of hip-hop was chiefly influenced from Mafioso and breakdance references. Break-dancers (or B-boys) wore, and still wear, clothes that were functional for dancing, such as baggy jeans. Conversely, Mafioso established the classic gangster look. Beginning in the 1990s, the style was immensely exasperated with iced out jewelry, fully-loaded and pimped out vehicles and an overall commercialized, egotistical lifestyle. Just like any other pop artist transformation, hip-hoppers ultimately become the product of relations, instead of a product of the self.

Adolescents are, and have always been, the most impressionable people on this planet. Unfortunately, this rose as hip-hop was symbolizing guns, rape, violence, drugs, and female sexualization. At this time, rappers start to endorse a heartless cohort of ego driven thug soldiers. This is where the fine line is drawn between hip-hoppers and everyone else. I am not African-American, so I'm perhaps not ideal to critic such a dividing issue, however, being brown-skinned, I can look at racial stereotypes from an outside perspective – from a viewpoint that is neither black, nor white. So then, the debatable and omnipresent million-dollar question is: Does hip-hop—specifically its clothes—promote these negative stereotypes? Yes and no; it all depends on the outcast and the observer. However, one may believe it may be easier to avoid a hip-hopper to circumvent any trouble (I use trouble loosely here). Although, despite the negative stereotypes upon hip-hop clothing, the average hip-hopper wears baggy clothes, not to breakdance more efficiently, although that is of course plausible, but to challenge the negative societal perception against them.

Whether for good or evil, Auto-Tune processing has taken over modern hip-hop music. Audiences have been transfixed by the robotic vocal alterations Auto-Tune creates. Auto-Tune is impractical in two accounts: it was originally used to correct vocal pitches that were amiss, even by a hair, to ensure superhuman perfection at all times; it is now used as an esthetic property, which enforces the profound laziness of lyricists and producers alike. Therefore, music has become so "perfect" today that it has literally lost reality.

Either audible or not, this phase vocoder will consequently give off the illusion that the performer can actually sing, therefore not worrying too much about anything else in the production process. In fact, according to the Boston Herald, artists confessed to using Auto-Tune, suggesting it ensures a good performance. That made me sick to my stomach. Had it been used sparsely and more artistically, rather than a bombardment of cover-ups, Auto-Tune could have brought a new challenge to the music industry. Unfortunately, it’s currently doing the opposite. Think of Auto-Tune like steroids was to baseball—we seem to want to mimic everyone because it "seems" to work.

Browsing through this weeks Billboard Top 100, one can easily discover its rise in pop culture. There are at least 10-15 artists on the charts who are heavily over-using this musical “technique”, including Lady Gaga and Flo Rida. The effect reached to such popularity and irritating peak levels that Jay-Z expressed his own opinion on his amazing track, Death of Autotune.

Hip-hop will undoubtedly continue to grow, which is a great thing, but it must not forget the raw impact it once had. Hip-Hop was not only a pivotal point in music, but also culture. Hip-hop died when it became the very thing it was originally against. Of course, I don’t believe all hip-hop today is trivial. There are many sublime artists today who raise the bar to staggering heights. Sage Francis is the smartest, most profound rapper/lyricist I have come across. He does not depend on fame and auto-tune to create his image, rather speaks from the soul regarding a sociological, ideological and political culture that he is surrounded in. Other artists who bring something climatic to the table include: M.I.A., Lauryn Hill, Q-Tip, K’NAAN, El-P and RJD2. Whether through rhymes, graffiti, clothing, and the like, hip-hop is an art form and should remain as such. Anyone who takes shortcuts into hip-hop or uses it for fame and fortune is completely disrespectful to the entire culture and what it represents. Although I am aware there are other issues within the hip-hop lifestyle that more or less changed the world, I covered the most crucial shards. For now, however, we need to be critical listeners and decide what is appropriate for the human race.




© Ajay Patel

Welcome to Interference

Welcome to the blog: Interference. This is a place for music and sociological discussion with a spectrum of genres with more emphasis on the non-mainstream culture. I will also be analyzing and decrypting music videos and album covers from a designer's stand point. This is a place for musical outcasts and artistic visionaries. This is a place that will open the consciousness into a level of pure informational bliss on music and life.