19-12-2021 FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 2002-2006 (2h 45m)

HAPPY WiTH WHAT YOU HAVE TO BE HAPPY WiTH FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 2002-2006 (2h 45m)  >>King Crimson, Peter Gabriel, Radiohead, King Crimson, Steve Winwood, PJ Harvey, Califone, Cowboy Junkies, Adrian Belew, Ali Farka Touré, The Black Keys<<

 M U S I C  (2h 45m)

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2002-2006

If there is one group that embodies progressive rock, it is King Crimson. Led by guitar/Mellotron virtuoso Robert Fripp, during its first five years of existence the band stretched both the language and structure of rock into realms of jazz and classical music, all the while avoiding pop and psychedelic sensibilities. The absence of mainstream compromises and the lack of an overt sense of humor ultimately doomed the group to nothing more than a large cult following, but it made their albums some of the most enduring and respectable of the prog rock era...

King Crimson 

Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With (Adrian Belew / King Crimson) 3:54

Potato Pie 5:03

from Happy With What You Have to Be Happy With 2002

The relationship between this EP and King Crimson's Power to Believe (2003) long-player mirrors that of the six-track Vrooom (1994) sampler and subsequent full-length release Thrak (1994). The music perfectly contrasts the primarily instrumental and live Level Five (2001) EP by honing in on the latest lyrical contributions from Adrian Belew (guitar/vocals)... This slams headlong into the thrashing title track, which is not too far removed from the angst-ridden alternative metal from the likes of Therapy?, Tool, and Rammstein. In true Belew style, he incongruously twists the subject matter into a sonically aggressive backdrop, cleverly dissecting his craft as a singer/songwriter, exemplified in the lyrics: "And when I have some words/This is the way I'll sing/Through a distortion box/To make them menacing."... This is without a doubt one of the most lyrically poignant and musically refined tunes in the King Crimson repertoire, taking its rightful place alongside tracks such as "One Time" or "Frame by Frame." Belew's vocals hang ethereally over the languid, inspired instrumentation. "Potato Pie" is a moody and dark blues containing angular chord structures as well as some symbiotic fretwork from Fripp and Belew... 

As the leader of Genesis in the early '70s, Peter Gabriel helped move progressive rock to new levels of theatricality. He was no less ambitious as a solo artist, but he was more subtle in his methods. With his eponymous debut solo album in 1977, he explored dark, cerebral territory, incorporating avant-garde, electronic, and worldbeat influences into his music. The record, as well as its two similarly titled successors, established Gabriel as a critically acclaimed cult artist...

Peter Gabriel 

Darkness (Peter Gabriel) 5:51

Sky Blue (Peter Gabriel) 6:37

I Grieve (Peter Gabriel) 7:24

from Up 2002 

Ten years is a long time, especially in pop music, but waiting ten years to deliver an album is a clear sign that you're not all that interested in the pop game anyway. Such is the case with Peter Gabriel, who delivered Up in 2002, a decade after Us and four years after he announced its title. Perhaps appropriately, Up sounds like an album that was ten years in the making, revealing not just its pleasures but its intent very, very slowly... Really, there is no other choice for an artist as somber and ambitious as Gabriel to craft an album as dense as Up; those who have waited diligently for ten years would be disappointed with anything less and, frankly, they're the only audience that matters after a decade. And they're not likely to be disappointed, since this album grows stronger, revealing more with each listen. Initially, it seems to simply carry on the calmer, darker recesses of Us, but this is an uncompromising affair, which is to its advantage, since Gabriel delves deeper into darkness, grief, and meditation... But those serious fans who want to spend time with this will find that it does pay back many rewards.

Radiohead is an English alternative rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire, UK which formed in 1985. The band is composed of Thom Yorke (lead vocals, rhythm guitar, piano, beats), Jonny Greenwood (lead guitar, keyboard, other instruments), Ed O'Brien (guitar, backing vocals), Colin Greenwood (bass guitar) and Phil Selway (drums, percussion).

Radiohead 

2 + 2 = 5 (Radiohead) 3:19

Sail to the Moon (Radiohead) 4:18

There, There (Radiohead) 5:23

A Punchup at a Wedding (Radiohead) 4:57

from Hail to the Thief 2003 

Radiohead's admittedly assumed dilemma: how to push things forward using just the right amounts of the old and the older in order to please both sides of the divide? Taking advantage of their longest running time to date, enough space is provided to quench the thirsts of resolute Bends devotees without losing the adventurous drive or experimentation that eventually got the group into hot water with many of those same listeners. Guitars churn and chime and sound like guitars more often than not; drums are more likely to be played by a human; and discernible verses are more frequently trailed by discernible choruses... At nearly an hour in length, this album doesn't unleash the terse blow delivered by its two predecessors. However, despite the fact that it seems more like a bunch of songs on a disc rather than a singular body, its impact is substantial. Regardless of all the debates surrounding the group, Radiohead have entered a second decade of record-making with a surplus of momentum.

032 ALTER.NATION: weekly favtraX 28-04-2019

ALTER.NATION #32

Foxygen, The Black Keys, Josh Ritter, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Cranberries, Lamb, Kevin Morby, Guided by Voices, Altin Gün, Otoboke Beaver, Rodrigo y Gabriela

weekly favtraX
 28-04-2019

A classic rock-leaning experimental duo who do warped takes on pop masterpieces.
Foxygen - Face the Facts from Seeing Other People
...“Face the Facts” explores what it’s like to become an irrelevant musician, offering a tongue-in-cheek list of regrets and impossibilities. While some of the tune reads as genuine, it walks the line between sincere and ridiculous, with absurd banter like “I’m never going to see your face again/ I’m never going to dance like James Brown/ I’m never going to be black/ and I’m never going to get you back” making it hard to take too seriously.
Regardless, the song fits well with what we’ve heard from Seeing Other People thus far, continuing to move the group in the self-proclaimed “Sad-Boy Plastic-Soul Adult-Contemporary Cartoon-Noir” direction they’ve been promoting...

Intense Akron, Ohio blues-soaked duo that began by overwhelming indie rock critics and quickly moved to arena audiences. 
The Black Keys - Eagle Birds
The Black Keys have just announced their ninth studio album. “Let’s Rock” will be their first in five years, following 2014’s Turn Blue... they share the album’s second offering. “Eagle Birds.” They wrote, tracked live, and produced “Let’s Rock” at Dan Auerbach’s studio Easy Eye Sound in Nashville. Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson contributed backing vocals. “The record is like a homage to electric guitar,” the band’s Patrick Carney says. “We took a simple approach and trimmed all the fat like we used to.”

Idaho singer/songwriter with a deep, expressive voice and a subtle blend of folk, country, and pop styles. 
Josh Ritter - Old Black Magic from Fever Breaks
...Less prone to stylistic detours than previous outings, Fever Breaks is a straight-up band album, with Ritter and company administering some serious muscle on cuts like "Old Black Magic" and "Losing Battles," the latter of which gives off a distinct Crazy Horse vibe.

Australian psychedelic collective with an intense work ethic and a wildly experimental outlook that reaches from synth prog to folk rock. 
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Booieman Sam from Fishing for Fishies
After taking a break from releasing new albums for over a year, the always entertaining, often brilliant King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard returned in 2019 with Fishing for Fishies, a blues-inspired recording... "Boogieman Sam" is the most normal-sounding track on the record with its choogling groove and singsong vocals; it also features harp glissandos, strange vocal effects, and a long and wobbly guitar break. Here, and throughout, they sound like a jam band that was shot into space and came back to earth with alien DNA...

Irish alt-rock band that featured the brassy/melancholy vocals of Dolores O'Riordan and earned considerable chart success in the 1990s. 
The Cranberries - Wake Me When It's Over
...Like the rest of the songs on In The End, the new track still features O’Riordan’s sly, impassioned vocals. “This was a song Dolores had been working on for a little while,” Cranberries lead guitarist Noel Hogan explains. “It’s a fun song to play and it’s bright and quite uplifting. It’s very much a classic Dolores song with a soft verse and a massive chorus.”... In part, it explained their decision to release In The End with permission from O’Riordan’s family.

Mancunian duo who blend heartfelt songwriting with complex, inventive arrangements influenced by jungle, classical, jazz, and other genres. 
Lamb - Armageddon Waits from The Secret of Letting Go
British duo Lamb wrote and recorded their seventh studio full-length after completing a European tour which commemorated the 21st anniversary of their beloved 1996 debut. Since that album's release, Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow have continually refined their genre-splicing sound without losing their touch for relating deep human emotions. The duo's songs have often featured complex arrangements that draw from jazz and drum'n'bass, but they've always served as a pedestal for Rhodes' grand, poetic sentiments...  "Armageddon Waits" injects swells of Bond-worthy cinematic strings, and while it's one of the album's most outwardly expressive, hair-raising moments, it never seems like overkill.

Los Angeles-based indie singer/songwriter with mellow, rootsy sound who started out working in Brooklyn bands the Babies and Woods. 
Kevin Morby - No Halo from Oh My God
On the four albums leading up to Oh My God, singer/songwriter Kevin Morby channeled some of rock & roll's greatest heroes, calling on various phases of Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, and others with rootsy tunes that breathed with restless longing. The mystique of the songs was supported by fully fleshed-out arrangements and sharp, guitar-centered production...  Morby worked again with producer Sam Cohen (who assisted with the songwriter's 2016 album Singing Saw) and instead of the dense instrumentation of earlier work, Cohen suggested some songs be stripped down to just a few spare elements...

Long-running band led by Robert Pollard who revolutionized indie rock with ever-evolving lo-fi pop created by a rotating cast. 
Guided by Voices - Dead Liquor Store / The Pipers, The Vipers, The Snakes! from Warp and Woof
Just when we were all getting used to the notion of Guided by Voices making only one album a year and recording songs that were in the neighborhood of three minutes long, Robert Pollard has to go and remind us he's still the guy who made Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. Something of a throwback to GbV's early lo-fi era, 2019's Warp and Woof -- which arrived a bit less than three months after the super-sized Zeppelin Over China -- is a manic burst of bite-sized tuneage, whipping through 24 songs in less than 37 minutes... And even more important, this lineup of Guided by Voices continues to demonstrate it may be the best in the group's nearly 35-year history, and guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare, Jr., bassist Mark Shue, and drummer Kevin March hit a near-perfect sweet spot between raw, scrappy basement jamming and the power of a tight, emphatic rock band in full flight. Warp and Woof is a series of short sprints compared to the marathon of Zeppelin Over China, but it covers a lot of ground at a brisk pace and it's a whole lot of fun. Who would have guessed that GbV would be in the midst of a new golden era 15 years after they first broke up?

Altin Gün - Leyla from Gece
Altin Gün were formed by former members of Jacco Gardner's band to pay tribute to the Turkish psychedelia of the early '70s that they discovered and fell in love with while on tour in Turkey. Bassist Jasper Verhulst fell under the spell of artists like Baris Manço, Selda Bağcan, and Erkin Koray, who blended traditional Turkish folk sounds with the wild sounds of their day, so Verhulst decided he wanted to do something similar in the 2010s, using modern production techniques and synthesizers along with psych guitars and Turkish instruments... Powered by the rhythm section's elastic bounce, the guitar's fuzzy wandering, the bubbling keyboards, and the bewitching sound of the electric saz (as played with fiery precision by Erdinç Ecevit), the album has a rich sound that rivals anything by modern psych masters like Dungen and King Gizzard, while remaining true to their brief of making the classic Turkish sound come alive for the modern era.Ecevit's alternately mournful and joyous vocals are a clear tie to the past, as is Merve Daşdemir's hauntingly beautiful singing. .. and songs as spookily pretty as "Leyla" or "Anlatmam Derdimi" make for perfect soundtrack music for introspective summer evenings when the shadows are just beginning to creep in.

Punk-rock-garage quartet from Kyoto, Japan. Taking their cue from other Japanese acts like Hikasyu and Yapoos, Kyoto's garage-punk quartet Otoboke Beaver also share the raucous energy and feminist perspective of Bikini Kill and the Slits
Otoboke Beaver - datsu . hikage no onna from Itekoma Hits

おとぼけビ〜バ〜 - 脱・日陰の女

When the English label Damnably Records released the 2016 compilation Okoshiyasu!! Otoboke Beaver, it made it easier for those outside of Japan to hear exactly why the Kyoto band had such a fervent fan base... Otoboke Beaver add more detail and sophistication to their music on Itekoma Hits' new songs...  Itekoma Hits doesn't leave listeners a moment to catch their breath -- or grow bored. Arriving a decade after Otoboke Beaver formed, it suggests they're becoming bolder and more surprising with time.

Mexican guitar duo that plays an appealing amalgam of classical, Latin, world music, and heavy metal. 
Rodrigo y Gabriela - Echoes (Pink Floyd cover) from Mettavolution
Mettavolution, the title of acoustic guitar duo Rodrigo y Gabriela's fifth studio album, is drawn from two distinct words. "Metta" is Sanskrit for loving kindness, compassion for self and others, and one of Buddhism's engines of "bodhichitta," the awakened heart's desire to benefit all beings through meditation and action. The word "revolution," with its Latin root, offers several meanings, including "a fundamental change in the way of thinking about something." What does Mettavolution have to do with rock & roll, particularly the metal- and flamenco-influenced inspiration of R&G's music? Doesn't beautiful music benefit all who encounter it? Mettavolution is the first studio album by the duo in five years... While the album's most previewed track is a sense-altering 19-minute cover of Pink Floyd’s "Echoes," it's in the five front-end cuts where R&G reveal their latest musical evolution...  The staccato lyric fills set up a contrast for the labyrinthine "Echoes," that commences briefly with an insistent, clarion single-note pulse. This version doesn't drift. It asserts its languid bluesy persona before articulating the melody in verses that preface the innovative themes that emerge later. It's a breathtaking conclusion that serves to underscore the abundant originality and soul R&G bring to everything they play...

Foxygen, The Black Keys, Josh Ritter, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, The Cranberries, Lamb, Kevin Morby, Guided by Voices, Altin Gün, Otoboke Beaver, Rodrigo y Gabriela

024 ALTER.NATiON: weekly favtraX 08-03-2019

ALTER.NATiON #024

The Stroppies, The Black Keys, Black Mountain, Royal Trux, Stef Chura, Stephen Malkmus, Facs, The Mountain Goats, Sebadoh, Bobby Long
 
weekly favtraX
02-03-2019

Scrappy indie pop band from Australia made up of members of Dick Diver, Twerps, Blank Statements, and White Walls. 
Stroppies - Entropy from Whoosh
After releasing a couple of strong, home-cooked, and charmingly lo-fi records, Stroppies decided to see if their small sound would work in a larger studio setting. They took two days to lay down as much as they could in a professional environment, then took the tapes home to work on the songs some more. After a long period of fooling around, adding and subtracting sounds, and almost driving themselves crazy with self-doubt, the band decided they were done and 2019's Whoosh was the result.

Intense Akron, Ohio blues-soaked duo that began by overwhelming indie rock critics and quickly moved to arena audiences.
The Black Keys - Lo/Hi
It took the Black Keys nine years to become one of the biggest rock bands in America, an honor that is at once shockingly difficult yet nearly bereft of any real competition... “Lo/Hi,” the Black Keys’ first song in five years, opens with a revitalized yelp from Auerbach, but it sounds like no time has passed at all. They’re still sleepily ripping off ZZ Top and there’s a demonic little solo two minutes in that could reignite the white-hot suburban-dad beef between Auerbach and the Whole Foods to his Trader Joe’s, Jack White... One promising new development in the duo’s sound is the addition of soulful female backup singers, Nashville’s Leisa Hans and Ashley Wilcoxson, who introduce a welcome texture to a tune that’s otherwise wholly unsurprising.

Vancouver indie band that combines doomy riffage with risky experimentation. 
Black Mountain - Future Shade
Vancouver psychedelic rock outfit and Jagjaguwar mainstays Black Mountain are back this year with a new album, Destroyer... The warping, rending new song is also the new album’s opening track. Frontman Stephen McBean says it has a riff that “traveled around the world then hit the bong with a chorus a year and a half later.” He goes on: “A last attempt at double frosting produced a chorus on chorus death match. Anxiety is the new heavy metal.”

Boundary-breaking underground rock project from guitarist Neil Hagerty and producer/singer Jennifer Herrema.

Royal Trux - Suburban Junky Lady from White Stuff
When Royal Trux's late-2010s reunion led them into the studio to make new music, there was a small hope that Neil Hagerty and Jennifer Herrema might go even further with the freewheeling experiments that have been missing from indie rock since they disbanded in 2001.Instead, for better or worse, White Stuff sounds like an amalgam of Accelerator, Veterans of Disorder, and Pound for Pound... While fans of Royal Trux's inventiveness might find more of that in Hagerty's and Herrema's solo work, White Stuff is still another entertaining part of a reunion that once seemed impossible.

Dylan Carlson-led project based in Seattle whose sporadic bursts of ambient metal wowed critics.
Earth - Cats On The Briar
“I wanted this to be a ‘sexy’ record, a record acknowledging the ‘witchy’ and ‘sensual’ aspects in the music,” he adds. “Sort of a ‘witch’s garden’ kind of theme, with references to mind altering plants and animals that people have always held superstitious beliefs towards. A conjuror or root doctor’s herbarium of songs, as it were.”
...they’ve shared the monumental, majestic instrumental track “Cats On The Briar,” which is “simultaneously uplifting and ominous, with a sense of perilous beauty,” as Carlson tells Consequence Of Sound. “It was the first song written for the new album. Inspired by a vision of my wife, Holly, dancing through a desert landscape, filled with dangerous flora and fauna.”

Michigan-based indie singer/songwriter with a distinctive fingerpicked guitar style and twangy voice. 
Stef Chura - Method Man
Lead single “Method Man” is hooky and blasting, a gnarly pulse of guitars delivered with swagger. “He is a method man/ Sipping on a taurine can/ Rippin’ up a box of books he says I’ll never understand,” Chura repeats, switching up rhythms halfway through, expressing frustration with being thought of as less-than.

The former Pavement frontman's solo career has a broader musical palette, evoking British folk, '70s prog, psychedelia, and blazing guitar rock. 
Stephen Malkmus - Come Get Me
The song itself is one of the less electronically oriented tracks on Groove Denied — more like a classic Malkmus rocker with a slight machine edge to it, or “warped psych” as Malkmus himself refers to it. “Won’t somebody come get me?” he sings. “I’m all alone here, I can’t see/ Any reason to wallow/ In this decanter.”

Dark, propulsive post-punk trio formed from the ashes of Chicago's Disappears. 
Facs - Total History
The Chicago noise-rock trio FACS are especially good at what they do. As demonstrated on two advance tracks from their upcoming sophomore album Lifelike, that involves layering waves of ominous sound atop tightly wound grooves until you feel trapped inside claustrophobic nightmare that’s also somehow liberating... with an even gnarlier exercise in tension-building. It’s called “Total History,” and it rules.

The primary outlet for the melancholy wanderings of cryptic yet revered lo-fi singer/songwriter John Darnielle. 

The Mountain Goats - Cadaver Sniffing Dog
For decades, the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle has been writing these incredibly dense and evocative lyrics. And even though he’s now a respected, award-nominated author, he’s still cranking out new music. Last month, the Mountain Goats announced that they’d release the new album In League With Dragons this spring... now come out with “Cadaver Sniffing Dog,” a song that describes a gruesome crime scene. As ever, Darnielle holds back in big-picture details, instead describing a setting where some horrible crime has just taken place: “Stray clumps of hair and blood and brain / Fragments of bone in the drain / Rookies trying to keep the airway clear / But the damage is too severe.”
The song also includes hints about something more fantastical: “Leopards on their hands and knees / Nobody’s ready for days like these.” And are there actual dogs who sniff cadavers? Musically, the song is choppier than “Younger,” built on a driving and slightly obtuse riff. There’s a squirmy, Sonny Sharrock-esque guitar solo in there, too.

The quintessential lo-fi band of the '90s, centered around the neurotic observational genius of depressive-obsessive Lou Barlow. 
Sebadoh - Celebrate the Void
Indie rock legends Sebadoh are back this spring with their first new album in more than six years. Titled Act Surprised, it was written and recorded after Lou Barlow moved back to Northampton, Massachusetts and reconnected with bandmates Jason Loewenstein and Bob D’Amico...
Here’s Barlow’s statement:
"The first line of this song: “I get the feeling you don’t feel me” is pretty good. It could be a line in an Ariana Grande song, I like it. I followed it from there through some general complaints about a composite character in my life, someone I could never crack. Sometimes the walls are too high. If you think about it, the resistance was always there, even in the very beginning. What to do? Pick endlessly at the seams? Replay moments in my head looking for a way to explain it all? No, stop, there is no one answer and that’s OK…Celebrate the void."
You will not be surprised to learn that “Celebrate The Void” sounds a lot more like ’90s indie rock than ’10s pop.

Songwriting has always been a soul-baring exercise for British singer-songwriter Bobby Long.  From the dark themes of his earliest work through to the thought-provoking subject matter he has traversed since then, his body of work is at its core captivating and emotionally raw. 
Bobby Long - Serpentine
...That friction works in spades on “Serpentine,” a driving, ominous mini-epic with a slithering guitar lead and lyrics that bemoan the vagaries of co-dependence. “The riff I had for a while—that was one of the more instinctive songs, really,” says Long. “I have a lot of wonderful women in my life who seem to dote on me, from my mom to my wife to my sisters. It’s more of an ode to them.”

Bobby Long with Jack Dawson

The Stroppies, The Black Keys, Black Mountain, Royal Trux, Stef Chura, Stephen Malkmus, Facs, The Mountain Goats, Sebadoh, Bobby Long