Music Exploration #1

Last night I was in a strange mood. I was sifting through TVTropes as I am apt to do and discovered a band called Bull of Heaven, cited as having the longest recorded piece of music ever. In fact, they have a song called "Like a Wall in Which an Insect Lives and Gnaws" which clocks in at fifty thousand hours, or slightly short of six years. The band is in a genre known as 'drone' which is a minimalistic type of music, using simple patterns and having only slight variations over the long run. Obviously, the music isn't recorded live, but is rather designed by computer, which generates the ridiculously long piece.

Anyway, it sparked a pretty fervent search for other novel genres and music out there. I ended up re-reading a lot of information I'd read before, but it's always good to go back and read about Math Rock and Doom Metal, isn't it? What it all resulted in was igniting a bit more curiosity when it comes to music. So, who's the person I go to for more music to consume? The all-knowing Dana, of course!

I asked for recommendations and I'm working through them right now. Time to review.

The first album I decided to listen through today while working was Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996) by a band called Stereolab. My guess as to their genre would place them somewhere between ambient rock and indie rock, since much of their music is light (some songs have only drums and bassline along with vocals) and it serves very well as a background music to working. I noticed that many of the songs feature vocals in French, which adds to the already-reasonably-noticeable variation between songs.

Artist: Stereolab
Album: Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Genre: Post-rock, lounge rock
Hardness: 1-3
Rating: 7.5
Best Thing: They use moog pretty extensively in a lot of their songs. Awesome.
Reminds Me of: Hammock, Boards of Canada, Heavenly


Next up is Exploded Drawing (1996) by Polvo. The first two songs on the album are fairly standard indie fair, even crossing over just a little with noise at times. The true nature of the album comes out in its third song, though, "Feather of Forgiveness," which has dissonant chords and sine-wave-esque sound zipping off sharply angular guitar riffs. Certain songs also exercise several instruments more associated with Eastern music, with use of sitars and other Asian strings, before zipping off into more conventional indie fare. They seem to have a tendency to play with meter and pacing a lot, as is pretty expected with math rock. Polvo is also a fan of distort, pumping up the hardness of their music considerably at times ("High-Wire Moves") to contrast with slower, lighter pieces. The vocals are generally pretty good, much of the time half-spoken, half-sung over the music. The melodies tend to be fairly repetitive if quite complex.

Artist: Polvo
Album: Exploded Drawing
Genre: Indie rock, math rock
Hardness: 2-5
Rating: 6
Best Thing: The meter changes are interesting, as well as the pacing - many of the songs begin with slow sitar and evolve into faster-paced, more punk-inspired bits.
Reminds Me of: Soundgarden, Nirvana


Animals (2010) by This Town Needs Guns is another math rock album, this one British. All the songs are named after animals, and as is almost a requirement of math rock, each one is pretty complex musically. From the debut song "Chinchilla," it becomes clear that the band is fond of strange time signature and has a style that seems to chase itself across the musical staff. Disjointed jumps from chord to chord are the norm, as are irregular stopping and starting of the tempos. It all comes together quite well with the vocals, which don't seem to follow anything but their own melody. Guitar strokes hop around the scale much more rapidly than in most music; the bass moves to become more guitar-like by playing the melody. This is particularly noticeable in songs like "Badger":



I'm a big fan of the complexity of the rhythms matched up with the mellowness of the lyrics and presentation. The juxtaposition of This Town Needs Guns and Polvo really illustrates each end of the genre - This Town Needs Guns is like jazz, constantly changing melodies, where Polvo sticks to the rock formula and chooses a very complex melody to adhere to.

Artist: This Town Needs Guns
Album: Animals
Genre: Math rock
Hardness: 2
Rating: 8.5
Best Thing: Really great vocals.
Reminds Me of: Incubus


The last album for today is Blonder Tongue Audio Baton (1993) by Swirlies. The title is certainly word salad, and the lyrics tends to lean that way as well. The music is interesting in a dream-like, wall of sound way, and sometimes the lead singer's vocal style and voice reminds me a lot of John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants. It's a bit strange moving from This Town Needs Guns to Swirlies, particularly because of the shift from no guitar distortion to heavy distort and use of the effects pedal. This is a signature of shoegaze, however, a method of blending the music into one long, 'bent'-sounding note that encompasses all of the instruments, sometimes even including the vocals.

Artist: Swirlies
Album: Blonder Tongue Audio Baton
Genre: Shoegaze, post-rock
Hardness: 3-5
Rating: 7
Best Thing: Another perfect album for background listening; very ambient and dream-like.
Reminds Me of: They Might Be Giants, Hammock