Fun Stuff > BAND

The M/F Thread 2009: The Quickening

<< < (24/810) > >>

pebaker2:
Excellent, excellent Will Oldham retrospective. I agree with the other comments that, generally, from the beginning is the best way to dig his music. I personally think that the hight of his career in terms of listening enjoyability is way back in the mid 90s: Palace Brothers: There Is No-One What Will Take Care of You, Days in The Wake, Viva Last Blues, but the absolute best is Master and Everyone.

Tyler:
So yeah. This is maybe less exciting than Mr. Oldham.

Beck - Mellow Gold




--- Quote from: AMG ---From its kaleidoscopic array of junk-culture musical styles to its assured, surrealistic wordplay, Beck's debut album, Mellow Gold, is a stunner. Throughout the record, Beck plays as if there are no divisions between musical genres, freely blending rock, rap, folk, psychedelia, and country. Although his inspired sense of humor occasionally plays like he's a smirking, irony-addled hipster, his music is never kitschy, and his wordplay is constantly inspired. Since Mellow Gold was pieced together from home-recorded tapes, it lacks a coherent production, functioning more as a stylistic sampler: there are the stoner raps of "Loser" and "Beercan," the urban folk of "Pay No Mind (Snoozer)," the mock-industrial onslaught of "Mutherfuker," the garagey "Fuckin' With My Head (Mountain Dew Rock)," the trancy acoustic "Blackhole," and the gently sardonic folk-rock of "Nitemare Hippy Girl." It's a dizzying demonstration of musical skills, yet it's all tied together by a simple yet clever sense of songcraft and a truly original lyrical viewpoint, one that's basic yet as colorful as free verse. By blending boundaries so thoroughly and intoxicatingly, Mellow Gold established a new vein of alternative rock, one that was fueled by ideas instead of attitude
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?nzidmwtim1y
--- End code ---

Beck - Stereopathic Soul Manure




--- Quote from: AMG ---Within months of the release of Mellow Gold, Beck released his second album, Stereopathetic Soul Manure, a schizophrenic collection of lo-fi recordings from between 1988 and 1993. Much of the music on the album draws from the noisy, experimental post-punk of Sonic Youth and the dirty, primitive junk rock of Pussy Galore; his absurdist sense of humor surfaces only rarely, and only in the guise of such sophomoric cuts as "Jagermeister Pie" and "Satan Gave Me a Taco," while his sense of songcraft is inaudible. Essentially, the record was both a palate cleanser, one designed to scare away the "Loser" fans, and a bid for indie credibility, since the music on Stereopathetic is equally as uncompromising and as unlistenable as Sonic Youth or their many imitators at their most extreme.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?muzd2dmnojy
--- End code ---

Beck - One Foot in the Grave




--- Quote from: AMG ---One Foot in the Grave appeared not long after the noisy freak-out of Stereopathetic Soulmanure, and its quiet, folky textures couldn't be more different than those of its predecessor, or the genre-bending Mellow Gold, for that matter. Recorded before Mellow Gold, the record showcases Beck as a postmodern folkie, and the results are revelatory. Stripped of the intoxicating production that dominated Mellow Gold, Beck's songs prove to be wonderful, vibrant tunes, teeming with emotion, haunting wordplay, and simple, memorable melodies. It's alternately haunting and jubilant, and Calvin Johnson's occasional harmonies lend the record an intimate warmth. It's a gentle record, and its collection of small gems are every bit as impressive as the songs on Mellow Gold or its 1996 follow-up, Odelay.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?oguw2nngzni
--- End code ---

Beck - Odelay




--- Quote from: AMG ---Beck's debut, Mellow Gold, was a glorious sampler of different musical styles, careening from lo-fi hip-hop to folk, moving back through garage rock and arty noise. It was an impressive album, but the parts didn't necessarily stick together. The two albums that followed within months of Mellow Gold — Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave — were specialist releases that disproved the idea that Beck was simply a one-hit wonder. But Odelay, the much-delayed proper follow-up to Mellow Gold, proves the depth and scope of his talents. Odelay fuses the disparate strands of Beck's music — folk, country, hip-hop, rock & roll, blues, jazz, easy listening, rap, pop — into one dense sonic collage. Songs frequently morph from one genre to another, seemingly unrelated genre — bursts of noise give way to country songs with hip-hop beats, easy listening melodies transform into a weird fusion of pop, jazz, and cinematic strings; it's genre-defying music that refuses to see boundaries. All of the songs on Odelay are rooted in simple forms — whether it's blues ("Devil's Haircut"), country ("Lord Only Knows," "Sissyneck"), soul ("Hotwax"), folk ("Ramshackle"), or rap ("High 5 [Rock the Catskills]," "Where It's At") — but they twist the conventions of the genre. "Where It's At" is peppered with soul, jazz, funk, and rap references, while "Novacane" slams from indie rock to funk and back to white noise. With the aid of the Dust Brothers, Beck has created a dense, endlessly intriguing album overflowing with ideas. Furthermore, it's an album that completely ignores the static, nihilistic trends of the American alternative/independent underground, creating a fluid, creative, and startlingly original work.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.med!afire.com/?gq353e2vjtw
--- End code ---

Beck - Mutations




--- Quote from: AMG ---According to party line, neither Beck nor Geffen ever intended Mutations to be considered as the official follow-up to Odelay, his Grammy-winning breakthrough. It was more like One Foot in the Grave, designed to be an off-kilter, subdued collection of acoustic-based songs pitched halfway between psychedelic country blues and lo-fi folk. The presence of producer Nigel Godrich, the man who helmed Radiohead's acclaimed OK Computer, makes such claims dubious. Godrich is not a slick producer, but he's no Calvin Johnson, either, and Mutations has an appropriately clean, trippy feel. There's little question that with the blues, country, psych, bossa nova, and folk that comprise it, Mutations was never meant to be a commercial endeavor — there's no floor-shaker like "Where It's At," and it doesn't trade in the junk culture that brought Odelay to life. Recording with his touring band — marking the first time he has entered the studio with a live band — does result in a different sound, but it's not so much a departure as it is a side road that is going in the same direction. None of the songs explore new territory, but they're rich, lyrically and musically. There's an off-the-cuff wit to the songwriting, especially on "Canceled Check" and "Bottle of Blues," and the performances are natural, relaxed, and laid-back, without ever sounding complacent. In fact, one of the nifty tricks of Mutations is how it sounds simple upon the first listen, then reveals more psychedelic layers upon each play. Beck is not only a startling songwriter — his best songs are simultaneously modern and timeless — he is a sharp record-maker, crafting albums that sound distinct and original, no matter how much they may borrow. In its own quiet, organic way, Mutations confirms this as much as either Mellow Gold or Odelay.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?zfwj4cqf5jw
--- End code ---

Beck - Midnite Vultures




--- Quote from: AMG ---By calling the muted psychedelic folk-rock, blues, and Tropicalia of Mutations a stopgap, Beck set expectations for Midnite Vultures unreasonably high. Ironically, Midnite Vultures doesn't feel like a sequel to Odelay -- it's a genre exercise, like Mutations. This time, Beck delves into soul, funk, and hip-hop, touching on everything from Stax/Volt to No Limit but using Prince as his home base. He's eschewed samples, more or less, but not the aesthetic. Even when a song is reminiscent of a particular style, it's assembled in strange, exciting ways. As it kicks off with "Sexx Laws," it's hard not to get caught up in the rush, and "Nicotine & Gravy" carries on the vibe expertly, as does the party jam "Mixed Bizness" and the full-on electro workout "Get Real Paid," an intoxicating number that sounds like a Black Album reject. So far, so good -- the songs are tight, catchy, and memorable, the production dense. Then comes "Hollywood Freaks." The self-conscious gangsta goof is singularly irritating, not least because of Beck's affected voice. It's the first on Midnite Vultures to feel like a parody, and it's such an awkward, misguided shift in tone that it colors the rest of the album. Tributes now sound like send-ups, allusions that once seemed affectionate feel snide, and the whole thing comes off as a little jive. Musically, Midnite Vultures is filled with wonderful little quirks, but these are undercut by the sneaking suspicion that for all the ingenuity, it's just a hipster joke. Humor has always been a big part of Beck's music, but it was gloriously absurd, never elitist. Here, it's delivered with a smug smirk, undercutting whatever joy the music generates.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?nymmijytzgj
--- End code ---

Beck - Stray Blues



A must for any beck fan. Contains "burro", a spanish version of "jackass"; "halo of gold", a Skip Spence cover, along with many other greats


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?v0tymnzydhr
--- End code ---

Beck - Sea Change




--- Quote from: AMG ---Beck has always been known for his ever-changing moods — particularly since they often arrived one after another on one album, sometimes within one song — yet the shift between the neon glitz of Midnite Vultures and the lush, somber Sea Change is startling, and not just because it finds him in full-on singer/songwriter mode, abandoning all of the postmodern pranksterism of its predecessor. What's startling about Sea Change is how it brings everything that's run beneath the surface of Beck's music to the forefront, as if he's unafraid to not just reveal emotions, but to elliptically examine them in this wonderfully melancholy song cycle. If, on most albums prior to this, Beck's music was a sonic kaleidoscope — each song shifting familiar and forgotten sounds into colorful, unpredictable combinations — this discards genre-hopping in favor of focus, and the concentration pays off gloriously, resulting in not just his best album, but one of the greatest late-night, brokenhearted albums in pop. This, as many reviews and promotional interviews have noted, is indeed a breakup album, but it's not a bitter listen; it has a wearily beautiful sound, a comforting, consoling sadness. His words are often evocative, but not nearly as evocative as the music itself, which is rooted equally in country-rock (not alt-country), early-'70s singer/songwriterism, and baroque British psychedelia. With producer Nigel Godrich, Beck has created a warm, enveloping sound, with his acoustic guitar supported by grand string arrangements straight out of Paul Buckmaster, eerie harmonies, and gentle keyboards among other subtler touches that give this record a richness that unveils more with each listen. Surely, some may bemoan the absence of the careening, free-form experimentalism of Odelay, but Beck's gifts as a songwriter, singer, and musician have never been as brilliant as they are here. As Sea Change is playing, it feels as if Beck singing to you alone, revealing painful, intimate secrets that mirror your own. It's a genuine masterpiece in an era with too damn few of them.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?ozk1mmizjtz
--- End code ---

Tyler:
Beck - Guero




--- Quote from: AMG ---Ever since his thrilling 1994 debut with Mellow Gold, each new Beck album was a genuine pop cultural event, since it was never clear which direction he would follow. Kicking off his career as equal parts noise-prankster, indie folkster, alt-rocker, and ironic rapper, he's gone to extremes, veering between garishly ironic party music to brooding heartbroken Baroque pop, and this unpredictability is a large part of his charm, since each album was distinct from the one before. That remains true with Guero, his eighth album (sixth if you don't count 1994's Stereopathetic Soul Manure and One Foot in the Grave, which some don't), but the surprising thing here is that it sounds for all the world like a good, straight-ahead, garden-variety Beck album, which is something he'd never delivered prior to this 2005 release. In many ways, Guero is deliberately designed as a classicist Beck album, a return to the sound and aesthetic of his 1996 masterwork, Odelay. After all, he's reteamed with the producing team of the Dust Brothers, who are widely credited for the dense, sample-collage sound of Odelay, and the light, bright Guero stands in stark contrast to the lush melancholy of 2002's Sea Change while simultaneously bearing a knowing kinship to the sound that brought him his greatest critical and commercial success in the mid-'90s. This has all the trappings of being a cold, calculating maneuver, but the album never plays as crass. Instead, it sounds as if Beck, now a husband and father in his mid-thirties, is revisiting his older aesthetic and sensibility from a new perspective. The sound has remained essentially the same — it's still a kaleidoscopic jumble of pop, hip-hop, and indie rock, with some Brazilian and electro touches thrown in — but Beck is a hell of a lot calmer, never indulging in the lyrical or musical flights of fancy or the absurdism that made Mellow Gold and Odelay such giddy listens. He now operates with the skill and precision of a craftsman, never dumping too many ideas into one song, paring his words down to their essentials, mixing the record for a wider audience than just his friends. Consequently, Guero never is as surprising or enthralling as Odelay, but Beck is also not trying to be as wild and funny as he was a decade ago. He's shifted away from exaggerated wackiness — which is good, since it wouldn't wear as well on a 34 year old as it would on a man a decade younger — and concentrated on the record-making, winding up with a thoroughly enjoyable LP that sounds warm and familiar upon the first play and gets stronger with each spin. No, it's not a knockout, the way his first few records were, but it's a successful mature variation on Odelay, one that proves that Beck's sensibility will continue to reap rewards for him as he enters his second decade of recording.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?lkjyf5tyghz
--- End code ---

Beck - Guerolito




--- Quote from: AMG ---When all is said and done, Beck's Guero might be the quintessential album of 2005. Not the best, nor the one that captured the sound of the year, but the album that illustrates that in 2005, there was no such thing as a finished album — that a set of songs could be packaged and repackaged in so many forms, it never really seems to exist as a finished work. That's because in the course of the year there were roughly five different incarnations of the album. At the beginning of the year, the unfinished album was leaked on the Internet, causing such a commotion that it was reviewed on the front page of Salon. A couple months later, the album was officially released as a 13-track edition, along with a greatly expanded 20-track special edition, containing a few remixes and several songs that didn't appear on the 13-track album but did appear on the leaked bootleg. Then, after a couple of import editions containing various bonus tracks, Guerolito appeared at the end of the year. Guerolito is a remix of the entire album, with each track being remixed by a different act, including Air, Boards of Canada, Octet, and Ad-Rock. Sometimes these songs bear different titles than their source material — "E-Pro" became "Ghost Range," for instance; this practice was in place for the deluxe version of Guero as well — and Guerolito itself had its own alternate edition, which was packaged and sequenced slightly differently from its main edition, plus an import with a bonus track. All this packaging and repackaging, mixing and remixing, titling and retitling has the effect of diluting a good set of songs by Beck — there may be many ways of enjoying these songs, but having them exist in different physical and musical forms makes them harder to grasp, not easier to appreciate. And while the mixes on Guerolito are, by and large, good, they neither illuminate the original songs, nor do they offer much new — they don't expand the songs, they still try to keep the basic structure in place, so it's not a good showcase for the remixers. Instead, they just reconfirm the suspicion that this set of songs was never quite finished or sequenced, it was just released. And while that may be a very 2005 experience, that doesn't mean that each grouping makes for satisfying listen. After all, given all the capabilities you have at home these days, why not make your own mixes and play lists of the Guero material? The deluxe edition of Guero even gives you the ability to remix it on your computer — which means there may be many more versions than five of this album floating out there in the ether.
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?wtn0nknmy2r
--- End code ---

Beck - The Information




--- Quote from: AMG ---Beck began work on 2006's The Information after Sea Change but before he reunited with the Dust Brothers for 2005's Guero, eventually finishing the album after Guero was generally acclaimed as a return to Odelay form. So, it shouldn't come as a great surprise that The Information falls somewhere between those two records, at least on sonic terms. Musically, it's certainly a kindred spirit to Guero, meaning that it hearkens back to the collage of loose-limbed, quirky white-boy funk-rock and rap that brought Beck fame at the peak of the alt-rock revolution, with hints of the psychedelia of Mutations and the folk-rock that was the basis for Sea Change. Since this is a Nigel Godrich production, it's meticulous and precise even when it wants to give the illusion of spontaneity, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, since it also pulls the album into focus, something that the generally fine Guero could have used. Guero had many strengths, but its biggest weakness was the general sense that it was unfinished, a suspicion fostered by its endless issues in deluxe editions and remixes. Beck embraced these changes, most extravagantly on the cover of Wired, where he was hailing the future of the album, which would now no longer be seen as finished: it would be a project that covered a certain amount of time, the artist would package it one way, then listeners would offer their own spin. That is precisely what Guero turned out to be, so it would have made sense that The Information would run further down that field, particularly because it has a design-your-own-art for its cover and is supplemented by a DVD filled with quick-n-dirty videos for each of its songs. But Beck isn't so easily pigeonholed: as it turns out, The Information is far more of a proper album than Guero, coming fully equipped with recurring themes and motifs, feeling every bit the concept album Sea Change was. Credit might go partially to his collaboration with Godrich -- who is nothing if not a taskmaster, helping to sharpen and focus erratic talents like Paul McCartney and Stephen Malkmus (for good in the former, not as good in the latter) -- but this also feels like the work of a refocused Beck, who shook off the cobwebs by reuniting with the Dust Brothers, thereby getting his "return to Odelay form" notices out of the way, and then getting down to the real work here on The Information, as he tackles the hyper-saturated info-world of the new millennium here...
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?yqxmezdfajy
--- End code ---

Beck - Modern Guilt




--- Quote from: AMG ---At first glance, it seems like the teaming of Beck and Danger Mouse is a perfect pairing of postmodern pranksters, as neither musician has shaken the first impression he's made: for most, Beck is still seen as that ironic Loser, trawling through pop culture's junk heap, while Danger Mouse is the maverick of The Grey Album, the mash-up of the Beatles and Jay-Z that reads like a joke but doesn't play like one. Close listening to either man's body of work easily dispels these notions, as Beck has spent as much time mining the murky melancholia of Mutations as he has crafting neon freakouts like Midnite Vultures. He's made a career bouncing from one extreme to the other, occasionally revisiting the cut 'n' paste collage that would have seemed like a natural fit for the sample-centric Danger Mouse, but when he partnered with Danger Mouse in 2008, Beck's pendulum was swinging away from the Odelay aesthetic, as he spent two records on the lighter side, thereby dictating a turn toward the dark. As it happens, this is Danger Mouse's true forte, as his productions have almost uniformly been dark, impressionistic pop-noir, whether he's working with Damon Albarn on the Gorillaz or the Good, the Bad & the Queen, or collaborating with Cee-Lo as Gnarls Barkley (whose fluke hit "Crazy" had nasty rumbling undercurrents) or even blues-rockers the Black Keys. So, he turns out to be a perfect fit for Beck, just perhaps not in the way that many might expect, although the title of their album Modern Guilt should be a big tip-off that these ten tracks are hardly all sunshine and roses...
--- End quote ---


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?z2wcdazvnyr
--- End code ---

Tyler:
Beck - Loser EP



An EP. Its pretty ok!


--- Code: ---http://www.mediaf!re.com/?nznd2nqljfm
--- End code ---

Scandanavian War Machine:
dude Tyler you are the shit.

i just wanted you to know that.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page