Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
I know very little about these bands, but I assume that these folks are all members of Maraj. They are from Kalamazoo MI and they do hip hop with a twist. I loved that there was a live upright bass player. And that the music had a steel drum sound (although it was all electronic).
The verses were done by two different rappers Motor Cit Kam–whose flow is incredibly fast and clear (even if I didn’t actually know what he was saying, the style was great) and Dari G who has a very different flow (and also sings a beautiful backing vocal later). I enjoyed that there were two rappers, but I liked even more that the third verse (or perhaps bridge) was sung by two of the women in the band. They totally change the tone of the song—an excellent mix of rap and singing.
What I thought set this song apart was that the chorus–while the music was the same, the slower singing gave a very different sound to the song. It really changed the flow from the fast first verse. And the singers–all six of them–all sing well together.
[READ: December 23, 2014] The Graveyard Book
Back in 2009, I read the prose version of this book. Now in 2014, it has been re-imagined as a graphic novel. And it’s funny, now that Gaiman has well established himself as a novelist, that I forgot he was originally a graphic novelist. So this format works for him quite nicely.
As I said, I read the book five years ago, but I didn’t remember all the details. Naturally the most exciting parts came back to me as I was reading it, but the little details has been lost to time.
I gave a rather detailed review of this book here and there’s really no reason for me to rewrite what I thought about it because it is pretty much unchanged.
But in sum: the story is about Bod Owens. His family was murdered when he was 18 months old. He escaped to a graveyard (while the killer tried to track him down) and he was raised by ghosts. They keep him safe from Jack, the killer, whose superiors want him to finish the job. Continue Reading »
Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
Diana Gameros doesn’t do anything flashy or fancy in this video. She simply plays the acoustic guitar (amazingly) and sings. And man, does she have a beautiful voice. Even more impressive is the way her guitar begins as delicate finger-picked melody in the verses and then transforms into a rollicking Spanish guitar style beauty for the chorus—the way she uses her right hand for the chord playing is great.
This is an absolutely beautiful song, and I was happy to read that she was recently featured on Alt.Latino.
I’m not sure what relaxing location she is in, but it’s nice little room. And even her cat—Lulu—seems to have enjoyed the song.
[READ: February 26, 2015] “My Saga Part One”
I didn’t know that Karl Ove had written this piece for the New Yorke Times magazine until someone brought it to my attention. I was pretty excited to read it because Book Four of My Struggle isn’t due out until April and I think I’m going through Karl Ove withdrawal.
This first part of the story (because of course it would have to be in two parts) was, I have to admit, a little disappointing. It features everything that I’ve come to expect from Karl Ove–minutiae, history, shock at people who are unlike him, and a general misanthropy. But it almost feels like Karl Ove lite–like the Times asked him to write a piece like My Struggle, but, you know, more suitable for a newspaper. Which may even be how they phrased it. Of course, it may also be the translation. Unlike the books, this was translated by Ingvild Burkey. It’s not that the translation is bad, it seems perfectly fine to me, but the story isn’t as compelling in some way, and perhaps Don Bartlett knows how to capture Karl Ove’s voice better? Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: ENORMODOME-“I’m Gonna Love You” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).
Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
I know very little about these bands, so I don’t know if they are on the trend (opposite of yesterday) of two guys playing really loud music. And man, they rock the office. Sometimes a gimmick makes you want to watch a video, but the song has to be good for you to watch it more than once.
This video was filmed in the office of the Mayor of Flagstaff–what a good sport! I love that they have his employees coming around and working as usual while these two guys are making an unholy racket.
I’ve been very impressed with most of the two person bands who really make a very full sound. And this one is no exception. I was sure there were more than two guys playing along. And their voices gel nicely. The only weak spot is during the solo, when the rest of the guitars drop out so it’s a little too spare. But aside from that the song is a great rocker. I like the simple blues riff, but I really like the way the middle section (before the solo) messes with that riff somewhat–it’s very cool.
[READ: February 22, 2015] Axe Cop Volume 4
Like Volume 2, Axe Cop Volume 4 is a full length story. This one pushes the idea that came up in a previous book that Axe Cop is President of the World. For the writing of this book Malachai was 8 years old. It was at this point that I started to wonder how different the stories of an 8-year-old would be from those of a 5-year-old. Since my son is nine, I know that he understands the logic of storytelling a bit more and he even understands the internal logic of stories, so I assumed that Malachai’s stories would be more linear and less surreal.
And of course, the nature of a big graphic novel like this is that it must be linear and coherent.
I liked that the book opened with something we hadn’t seen before–Axe Cop is having a recurring nightmare about a talking gorilla.
But then we get down to business. As president, Axe Cop is going to live in the Gold House in the real Washington (not DC). But his real business comes down to one question–since he got rid of all the bad guys, the people want to know if they will ever come back. Axe Cop talks to God (!) and is told that they will come back in 1 million years, but until then it is time for peace in the world. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: SPIRITS OF THE RED CITY-“Halfway Poem” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).
Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
I know very little about these bands, but I assume that this folkie collective uses this kind of instrumentation all the time, although I have to suggest that two upright basses and a viola seems excessive. The beginning of this video shows an early aborted attempt with different instruments (accordion, banjo, flute, drum and ukulele), so that sounds promising–and honestly the overload of large strings doesn’t sound bad at all in the final product.
It’s interesting that bands with lots of members are a kind of trend–it’s so impractical. And yet when done well, it’s quite lovely. And when these seven folks starts singing along near the end of the song it’s really pretty.
The story of this video is also interesting. They had planned to film their video outside. But on the day of their video shoot it was 33 degrees below zero (in Minnesota). They have some brief footage at the beginning and then the video switches to them inside a quite cozy cabin.
It’s hard to tell from just this one song what kind of folk collective Spirits of the Red City is, but I enjoyed this song quite a bit.
[READ: February 20, 2015] Axe Cop Volume 3
Axe Cop Volume 3 returns to the format of Volume 1 (the one I liked better) with a mix of shorter comics and the return of Ask Axe Cop!
The first comic we see features the return of Bat Warthog Man and features the practical science of Chemist M (whom Axe Cop buys for ten dollars). It also has a chihuahua who was a soldier that was turned into a chihuahua when the soldier’s dog bit him (Malachai’s understanding of how transformations work makes me hope he never gets bitten by anything). The dog can turn back into a man “only when I am not ready to fight…which is almost never.” There’ also a hilarious scene where Axe Cop is inside the imagination of a mouse which is in color and is “full of unicorns and cheese.”
The Ask Axe Cops are more intense in these later variations, like the one that asks if he ever got in trouble (he got in trouble with his mom when he chopped the head off a rabbit who was not following rabbit rules). We also see the introduction of head trash–a place where all the heads that axe cop has removed are disposed. There’s dating advice (very sound); a jumping competition and a hilarious bit about Halloween (where he gets 1,051 candies to share with his friends, but the bad guys have poisoned 1,040 pieces of it. There is also Axe Cop’s strangely violent generosity on Thanksgiving (yipes). Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: REINA DEL CID-“The Cooling” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).
Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
I know very little about these bands, so I don’t know if this is Reina del Cid’s normal band or what. But I love the sound of this orchestral chamber pop. There are plenty of chamber pop bands, but there’s something about the melody of this song that works so perfectly with the strings.
There are seven people in the video (Reina is the singer). I love the way the song starts out with some pizzicato guitar and slowly building violin strings. I also love the starts and stops that the song has–very dramatic. And it all works so well with Reina’s voice which doesn’t soar or hit super high notes, rather it is just powerful and strong and very pretty (even when she does an occasional mmm mmm).
When the song builds to its climax, the violins switch to pizzicato and the drums grow louder. It’s quite lovely and I’d like to hear more from her (them). I gather that the new album is coming out in May!
[READ: February 19, 2015] Axe Cop Volume 2
I enjoyed Axe Cop Volume 1 so much I couldn’t wait to jump into Volume 2. But something was different.
This book was made for Dark Horse as a three issue arc. It’s in color and it’s all one long story. Ethan is super proud of it, and I think he should be, it’s pretty impressive that he and his brother (now aged 6) were able to come up with such a huge story.
But I found that like the longer stories in volume 1, I got a little bored by the end of this book. Indeed, I let Clark read the first book (it was placed in the YA book section, but I figured if it was written by a 5-year-old, my nine-year old could read it). He liked the first book but only gave this one a few pages before he gave up. He likes Ask Axe Cop best too. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: COLD BLUE MOUNTAIN-“White North” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).
Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
I know very little about these bands, and I seriously hope that the guys from Cold Blue Mountain look like this when they play all the time.
This may be the best set up and reveal of a joke that actually contains an awesome song. The video is 4 and a half minutes long, but the music doesn’t start for nearly a minute and a half as the set up proceeds.
When the music starts it is heavy, like really heavy, but beyond heavy there’s a great riff mixed into the music on the second guitar–it’s a great sound.
But the “joke” isn’t over, since at 2 minutes the music stops for 20 seconds until the next reveal comes in. It’s pretty awesome.
My only gripe is that I don’t like the vocals (growly cookie monster type)–they work pretty well with the music, but it’s not something I want to listen to, which is shame since the song really really rocks.
And the video is awesome.
[READ: February 15, 2015] Axe Cop Vol. 1
After watching Archer on FX the other week I saw a few minutes of an animated show called Axe Cop which looked weird and silly and starred Nick Offerman as Axe Cop. I only watched a few minutes of it and then went to bed. A few days later I was in the library and saw four volumes of Axe Cop books. Well, I had to check that out right away.
And here’s what I learned. Axe Cop is a web comic that was drawn by Ethan Nicolle. But the best part is that Axe Cop was written by Ethan’s younger brother who was 5 at the time. That’s right, five. So Axe Cop comes from the delightfully twisted imagination of a (rather precocious in my opinion) five year old.
This book collects the beginning web comics, including the first slew of Ask Axe Cop, perhaps my favorite feature of the comic. It also has a forward by Mystery Science Theater 3000’s Kevin Murphy!
In the beginning, there was Axe Cop. No, in the beginning Ethan tells about how he was visiting his younger brother over a Christmas break and they started playing with action figures and what not. And one of the guys was a firefighter with an axe. Malachai didn’t want to play fireman, so he called this guy Axe cop. Ethan decided to make a comic out of it and it all started from there. Continue Reading »
When I looked for a picture of this book cover, I was connected to Connell’s blog which has links to many songs by Kodagain. After some more work, I learned that Kodagain features music by Saša Zorić Čombe and lyrics by Brendan Connell!
It was hard to find any real details about Kodagain (they have a media presence, but it is rather abbreviated), until I saw their soundcloud page which gives these nuggets of information
Kodagain formed in 1985 in Knjazevac, SE Serbia, where it’s hard to be alternative but easy to be alone.
Kodagain writes and records songs with English lyrics because English is more musical than Serbian.
Kodagain has a miniaturist approach to pop music, channelling influences from Henry Purcell, through Dean Martin, to Roxy Music, into short compositions combining a bubblegum-pop concern for melody with lo-fi experimentalism, resulting in songs as soulful as they are playful.
Many of the lyrics have been provided by the existing poetry of famous poets such as Dorothy Parker, Oscar Wilde, Chu-I Po (Bai Juyi), Lord Byron, Ogden Nash, Sara Teasdale, Louisa Stuart Costello and Robert Creely.
Since 2007, Kodagain has also been using … original lyrics from the writer Quentin S. Crisp; since 2012, Kodagain has similarly collaborated with the writer Brendan Connell. Brendan Connell says: “My ultimate goal is to write a vast number of lyrics about natural wonders, public parks, lost watches, Indian villages, hidden love, birds, trees, mountain passes, fake Taoists, imperceptible colors, rhetorical mysteries, and flowers. Ideally these would be compounded into a ‘Guide for Modern Life’ which could be used to build better relations between workers and their bosses, the various sexes, and those whose religious beliefs differ.”
Their songs and videos can be found in generous supply on YouTube and SoundCloud. Albums include: Speed Up, The Nowhere Land’s Echoes, A Drink With Something In It, 000, Vranje, Letters From Quentin, Time to Get Ready for Love, My Fear of His Fear of Death, and Supernatural.
Since encountering Kodagain, I have become totally transfixed by them. The melodies are simple and lovely and Zorić Čombe’s voice is gentle but wise. Lyrically the songs are certainly all over the place, and most of the songs are under 2 minutes long. The instrumentation is simple–usually a gentle guitar, steady drums and multi-tracked voices.
It was really hard to pick a song to talk about because there are so many. But I decided to pick “King of Curls,” in part because the video is fantastic, and so are the lyrics
If I ruled the world
I’d call myself
The King of Curls
If I were king
I’d change damn near
Everything
If I ruled the world
My army wouldn’t fight wars
But rather eat chocolate bars
And move to the beat
In shorts
While my advisors wise
Would do jazzercise
(and that’s just the first part!)
Zorić Čombe’s voice sounds a bit to me like a smoother Jens Lekman (although that could just be the enunciation style). I find his songs utterly enchanting.
And if you look on YouTube, you’ll find dozens of videos–most of which are masterpieces of found footage.
[READ: February 20, 2015] The Metanatural Adventures of Dr Black
About 7 years ago, I read a novella called Dr Black and the Guerrillia and I liked it quite a lot. I liked that Connell created this character, with no apparent context (at least none given in the story) and that it was so amazingly detailed and “real” and yet so seemingly unreal–an unsatisfying word which Connell has corrected for me with the title of this collection–Metanatural.
This book is something of a collection of short stories about Dr. Black, but it is far more than that. It collects some of the adventures that Dr. Black has been on as well as some of the patents and other ephemera and fashions a kind of narrative (although a very sketchy narrative) about the life he leads.
Before I even get to the “plot” of the book, I need to say just how much I enjoyed reading this book. I was absolutely captivated by Connell’s voice. Over the years I have known that Connell was an accomplished writer with an unparalleled attention to detail and to choosing the precise word. But somehow in the Dr. Black stories Connell’s details and specifics push the narrative to real heights. Perhaps it is because Dr Black seems so real that when anything “metanatural” happens to him, it is entirely believable–drawing you into his exploits even further. I really wanted to read more and more.
Having said all that, while this book is certainly his most accessible, it is still not light reading. Connell challenges the reader with his extensive vocabulary, his lack of compunction about throwing in some obscure sections of text (that I won’t pretend I understood, but which didn’t bother me at all) and his willingness to defy reality, which may lose some readers. But the rewards of the stories are worth it. Continue Reading »
A friend of mine posted this video on Facebook and I had no idea what it was. Another friend filled me in that the singer is Leslie Hall (check out her site, which is full of wonderfully gaudy design). I think her band is called Leslie and the LY’s (or some variation) and they are from Ames, Iowa.
There’s something absolutely wonderful about not knowing a thing about them when you watch this video as it is so out there. She does have a wikipedia page in addition to her website, so if you need to fill in unanswered questions, you can do that there.
In the meantime, just enjoy:
[READ: January 8, 2015] Brain Camp
Camp Fielding is a place for losers–people who can’t get into any other camp. They often go in because they are stupid and yet after just a few months they come out like geniuses. It is the perfect place for a couple of misfits like Jenna, a girl who is lost in her own imagination (while her 14 year old sister just got accepted into Harvard. Heck, even her younger sister is embarrassed by her). Or like Lucas, a boy who we first see breaking into cars and whose mother has basically given up on him.
Neither one is terribly excited to go and neither one is pleased about the other one (they share a ride together). But once they get to camp and the boys are bullies, the girls are worse and the food is so disgusting as to be deemed completely inedible, they form a reluctant bond (with a dorky boy who is the butt of everyone’s jokes).
The weirder think about the camp is that they don’t actually teach anything–they just put kids in a classes and talk at them assuming they’ll just pick it up. And they seem to. Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: JEFF The Brotherhood–“Black Cherry Pie” (2015).
JEFF the Brotherhood is back with a new album. The first song I’ve heard from it is called “Black Cherry Pie.” It is a slow, heavy, nihilistic track with slightly more instrumentation than the usual duo set up.
And then at 40 seconds, there’s a FLUTE SOLO!
The lyrics are crazy–glass in my teeth, driving vans off cliffs, knives in eyes, with the simple chorus of “black cherry pie.”
And then just as you sorta forget that here was a flute solo (although it is hard to forget), a second one comes up at around 3 minutes. And since you can’t help but think it sounds like Jethro Tull, I’ll tell you that that flute solo is by Mr Jethro Tull himself–Ian Anderson! Huzzah!
As you can see by the photo, the Brotherhood has always been fans of Jeffro Tull, so this is a nice flourish.
[READ: February 15, 2015] “Labyrinth”
This is the first story I’ve read by Amelia Gray. Now, any story that is called Labyrinth pretty much invokes the idea of a maze and a minotaur. In this short work (only two pages) Gray takes these basic ideas and twists them in an interesting way.
Dale is a local farmer who holds and annual Pumpkin Jamboree to raise money for the fire department. It features a hayride, face painting and a corn maze. The narrator, Jim, tells us that Dale had recently been reading about Hellenic myths, and that this year he wanted to do something different with his maze. So he’s made a labyrinth. The difference? In a labyrinth, there’s only one road and it leads to only one place.
The folk are disappointed saying that there’s no point if you can’t get lost. And they’re even more upset when he says that each person must go in alone–there’s no way folks are letting their kids go in alone. Even when Dale says that people believe the center of the labyrinth possesses magic, allowing you to discover the thing you most desire, the folk start to wander off. But Jim, feeling bad that Dale went to so much trouble, volunteers. Continue Reading »
I don’t like the blues. I find it dull and repetitive. I also don’t really like singers who are described as “soulful.” And yet here is Son Little with a soulful blues stomper that I really like a lot. WXPN has been playing this song pretty often, and I like it more with each play.
It’s a fairly simple set up with handclapping and a two note guitar riff. Even Son Little’s voice doesn’t seem all that special at first. But there’s some way that all of the elements combine that makes it so much more than the sum of its parts.
And with each verse, more elements are added, a synth sound, some guitar lines, even some bass riffs, building the song’s intensity.
But it’s that chorus–so catchy and ominous at the same time with interesting harmonies that just sound like he is echoing himself. I really can’t get enough of it.
[READ: January 31, 2015] What if?
This book was just entirely too much fun. Well, actually I thought it would be a bit more fun, but Munroe is so scientific that at times (when he got really factually scientific) I just felt dumb. Which lessens the fun. In fact, the first couple of pieces are really heavily sciencey, unlike some of the later ones which are really funny.
But what am I talking about? This book is a collection of the “what if’ section of the website xkcd. There’s no real guidelines on the site for what kind of question you can ask, and many of them are quite strange (and often hilarious). They are hypothetical (what if?) questions and, depending on the arcane rules that Munroe follows he will answer them to the best of his scientific scrutiny. And he will take the questions very very seriously–no matter how stupid your question may seem, he will try to answer it scientifically. It’s fun!
But it’s also serious, and seriously scientific–Munroe is a former NASA roboticist.
So the first one “What would happen if the Earth and all terrestrial objects suddenly stopped spinning, but the atmosphere retained its velocity” almost seems to be put in the front to scare off those who might not want to be too scientific. And the second question comes more down to Earth (but also destroys the Earth): “What would happen if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent the speed of light?” Continue Reading »
SOUNDTRACK: MARAJ-“Gettaway” (Tiny Desk Contest Runner-Up 2015).
Last week, a Tiny Desk Contest winner was announced. This week, All Songs Considered posted ten runners up that they especially liked. And I want to draw extra attention to a couple of them.
I Just Read About That... 