SOUNDTRACK: HARVEY MILK-“I Did Not Call Out” (2010).
This album is #2 on Viking’s Metal and Outer Sound list of 2010 CDs (from NPR). During the radio show when Viking revealed his Top Ten albums, he mentioned that Harvey Milk is his favoirte band of all time. I’d never heard them before, so this was eye opening (confusing them with Harvey Danger is a big mistake). This song comes from the album A Small Turn of Human Kindness.
The melody is dark (pretty but in a bleak sort of way), but the instrumentation is sludgy and menacing. It is very slow-paced with occasional “riffs” that run through the “verses.” It has a sort of Melvins meets Swans kind of vibe, but run through the menace of a black metal band.
The lyrics are sung/growled, but unlike a lot of growled vocals, there are only a few words and they are stretched and held for several beats. It’s a weird thing to hear the demon voice hold notes and actually sound like it is singing!
Interspersed within the ponderous heaviness are some beautiful if not uplifting guitar melodies and soaring solos. Until, that is, the very end when the song slows to a crawl… deep notes and ambient noise stretch out and the track ends with crackling silence.
It’s menacing, but after several listens, I’m hooked.
[READ: December 30, 2010] “Empire Records”
This is the second of the one page articles labelled “Something Borrowed.” I have also never read anything by Mistry before.
A few months before leaving Bombay for Toronto, Mistry loaned a friend his LP of A Hard Day’s Night (this was circa 1975). Albums were very important to him because his father ritualized the playing of the gramophone. When they eventually progressed to 45s and LPs the family got into pop music and from there, obviously, The Beatles. (more…)
SOUNDTRACK: FANTÔMAS-Suspended Animation (2005).
If you know Fantômas, then you know what you’re in for. If you don’t, well, it’s a surprise!
I Just Read About That... 