Do it for Free!

"Feel Good, Inc." - Gorrillaz

2005-06-14T00:07:00.000-05:00

I am a bad man. I have not posted in a long time, excusing myself on account of the not-at-all-as-fast-as-blogging pace of my precious baby The Groton Independent. Let's all put this behind us. I know that any number of misspelled primates would love to do so. You remember the Gorillaz, don't you?

I'm happy, I'm feeling glad,
I've got sunshine, In a bag,
I'm useless, But not for long,
The future, Is comin' on.

Damon Albarn (of Blur) sure knows how to lay down an absolutely killer/haunting/soothing/jaded/stoned hook line. All of Gorillaz was phenomenal. And, although it says nothing about him here, Dan the Automator is really really good at laying a beat, which is why I have been living off of Deltron 3030 and Handsome Boy Modeling School tracks in my assuption that Gorillaz was done after Gorillaz. Never say die. Demon Days is out now, and the first single, "Feel Good, Inc." really is so so so good. Check out the guitar. Is it a sample? Did they play it all the way through? What is going on? I don't know or care.

Hot Hot Heat - "Goodnight Goodnight"

2005-05-14T09:10:00.000-05:00

Hot Hot Heat, previously reviewed here, has a track from theirn new CD Elevator called "Goodnight Goodnight" about embarassing girls. It's sweet.

D-Stroy - "Roll Out"

2005-05-12T21:19:00.000-05:00

D-Stroy is from Brooklyn. D-Stroy wears a G-Shock watch. D-Stroy was on Matador records summer 2001. D-stroy is part of the Arsonists. D-stroy is of the genre of "mainstream rap beats are kinda tired" genre. I like D-stroy. That generalization about his take on rap beats is kind of unfounded, as my frame of reference is only his song "Roll Out". However, it is almost infinitely better than any number of similarly-named rap songs. And the beat is dope.

The Cuts - "How Can I Get Through"

2005-05-11T22:10:00.000-05:00

Rockmedaddyrockmedaddyrockmedaddy! Yes, The Cuts will throw you into involuntary coital proclamations to the effect that they "do you right" they ought to "keep going just like that."
It 's not hard, but it's not soft. It's quite all right. Its smooth...that's the word, and filling like a cornbread muffin with peanut butter on each half. Their site has a number of streams as well as "How Can I Get Through" for download. It's filling like smoked salmon and cream cheese. I don't have a fetish for electic piano, I swear.

(Thanks, BoingBoing)

Stephen Malkmus

2005-05-06T09:10:00.001-05:00

Lead singer of pavement Stephen Malkmus (does this mean that they broke up?) has struck out on his own with a few albums, and the work is pretty impressive. The vocals are still "fractured," but the instruments are different. The electric piano is killer, as is the guitar. The style is less all-over-the-place, and the tempos are more unified than Pavement.

However, none of this is to say that Pavement fans are going to go hatorade all over the new tracks. I like Pavement; I like Stephen Malkmus. The styles are not altogether that different, but different enough to distinguish the two bands. The work does stand up on its own, though.

"Baby C'mon" has some decidedly psychedelic guitars, as well as some pretty legit normal instruments that don't channel Woodstock. I always kind of zone out his lyrics, so I still don't know what it's about, but I'd guess his baby features in it.

"The Hook" is pretty mellow too. It reminds me of a song that I can't remember, from a place I've never been...Actually, email me if it reminds you of any song, as I really can't think of whatever song it is. On the plus side, it mentions pirates, my favorite genre of international badass, so I automatically like it. Plus, I like mellow.

Since I've already broken my rule about comparing to other bands in this post, as well as referring to myself, I'll go ahead and say that "(Do Not Feed The) Oyster" channels Cream in the beginning, The Beatles circa The White Album in the middle, and Pavement circa Crooked Rain by the end. It's pretty low key until the end, but it still rocks.

"Jenny & The Ess-Dog" does have a bridge in it, which is sort of welcoming after hearing the tracks that sound together all the way through. Disjointedness is still cool, even if tightness is the new disjointedness.

--P.S. sorry about not posting for a week, but AP exams are kind of killer. However, the English Language one had "describe how the following article from The Onion expresses satire. That was actually a really fun question

The Hand that Feeds

2005-04-27T21:11:00.000-05:00

Trent Reznor, lead singer and only member (?) of Nine Inch Nails, released his latest single as a Garage Band format file so that any old musician can remix it. Of the over five-hundred remixes available here, not all of which I have reviewed, Nathan Chase has the most promising ones. Toxic Trent", the remix with Britney Spears's "Toxic" is pretty sweet, contrasting Reznor's dark voice with the you-have-to-dance beat from "Toxic". But there is more to the track than just clever juxtaposition that won't last. The track has legit legs, as the lyrics aren't all doom and gloom; the song has synergy, rather than just clever irony.

"The Ghost that Feeds" is a remix with the lyrics and beats over the instrumental from the theme to Ghostbusters. I guess that the same applies to this as applies to "Toxic Trent". Still, the song is catchy, and kind of different than a lot of the other tracks on the site.

Songzilla!

2005-04-25T20:29:00.000-05:00

I just found another friendly repository of free hotness. Songzilla is cool in terms of quantity (at least 1500 songs), although it doesn't do reviews. Still, if quanitity is your game, Songzilla is the place to go.

Dizzee Rascal - "Fix Up, Look Sharp"

2005-04-24T21:37:00.000-05:00

When I reviewed Atmosphere, I said outright that really sincere rappers are my new thing. Dizzee Rascal falls into that category in a different way. He raps about life in London, where the "front gate" and "the road" both refer to the street. The beat on "Fix Up, Look Sharp" is kind of crazy. Crazy Simple. Simply Crazy. Drums, claps, and a "Whoo". Don't get low, just dig. This is a sort of half garage half hip-hop tune. And it's old, but since he didn't blow up nearly enough in the states, he goes here. Hats off to you, Mr. Rascal.

Jasper Perkins - "James Wilson"

2005-04-20T22:06:00.000-05:00

How many guitar tracks are enough? Two? Three? No, if you want to go absolutely bananas and dance dance dance, you need four guitar tracks. And a bass track. And simulated percussion. You need one minute and twenty-four seconds of pure unadulterated guitar dance. You need Jasper Perkins'"James Wilson". Jasper, my dear older brother, recorded this track with Thomas "Tomo" McDonnell, lead guitar and vocals of Tres Coronas, whose EP (album?) is this blog's namesake. They recorded it one afternoon with Garage Band on Tom's iMac. Jasper Played all of the guitar and bass tracks; they both mixed and added the drum loop. They sampled James Wilson's audiobook The Earth Shall Weep: A History of Native America, narrated by Nelson Runger. The sample is legit, as they are, according to me, parodying the Nelson Runger's academic tone by juxtaposing it over a dance beat. That they didn't clear their sample, and that they didn't even use an amp, makes them true cowboys of independent music.

Atmosphere

2005-04-18T12:58:00.000-05:00

Really sincere rappers are my new thing. Slug, half of the group, Atmosphere is that kind of rapper. He has been pretty underbround for his whole career, and his latest album, last year's Seven's Travels showed a certain frustration at his anonymity. His songs are all pretty gritty, kind of dark. On this album, his lyrics are far more assertive than on his earlier work, he throws the words out of his mouth rather than sings them. "Trying to Find a Balance" is definitely kind of dark, but not so depressing. Slug makes you want to listen to him. Compelling comes to mind. And Ant's beats mesh really well with Slug's tone.

I'm not going to lie: I haven't listened to "Cats Van Bags" yet, but it's on my to do list. If it's in keeping with the rest of Atmosphere's oeuvre, then it promises to kick your hearts ass.

Podcast!!!

2005-04-17T13:07:00.000-05:00

Podcast is now available. I had to make a new blog to do it, since the traditional podcast model doe not apply to this blog, as I publish multiple songs instead of just one recording. The link to the podcast is in the sidebar, and the title of this post, and here http://feeds.feedburner.com/DoItForFree-Podcast.

For those who don't know whatup with podcasts, here's quick tutorial.
-Download and install iPodder
-Click the "subscriptions" tab, then the "add new subscriptions" button
-Paste the feed address in the box
-Right click (control click) and hit "Check Now"
-Select the songs you want in the checklist.
-Life is a peach!

By the by, if you use MS Internet Explorer, the sidebar on this site is all the way at the bottom of the page, not by any fault of my own. If you use any browser that actually does anything right (e.g. Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, Konqueror)then the sidebar is right where it should be: the top of the page. Please consider switching to Firefox if you use MS Internet Explorer; you really make the world a safer place when you do (seriously).

Smoosh "Massive Cure"

2005-04-15T11:26:00.001-05:00

The mind boggles at Smoosh. The above picture is not two girls pretending to be Smoosh; it is Smoosh. And they do exactly what the picture indicates, play piano and drums and sing about whatever. Their interview on NPR (in Real and WMP) is really amazing. They just write whatever they feel like, and they have fun doing it, and then they open for bands like Sleater Kinney and Cat Power. While their website is sparse, their label, Pattern 25, offers "Massive Cure" for download to promote their debut album She Like Electric. They also have a video (in Real and WMP) of Smoosh playing live at Seattle's Capitol Hill Block Party on July 24, 2004. I like Smoosh. I wish long, prosperous careers to Asya and Chloe.

Ratatat

2005-04-09T11:43:00.000-05:00

Ratatat is two guitars and synths. Ratatat is occasional vocal samples. Ratatat has bass lines to make you twurk. Ratatat is great rock and roll music. Two-guitars, drum machine, no vocals, occasional synth that actually sounds really novel: they are the real freaking deal. "Seventeen Years" is kind of like a slowed down dance song, with grungey guitars and a synth bringing the pain. Part of it sounds like the intro to Sonic the Hedgehog for Gamegear, but they aren't hokey or hipsterish about videogames. The whole no lyrics thing sort of sets them apart from most dance music and rock music, plus the ending of this song is pretty slow. They also have a few remixes of some hip-hop tunes. Method Man's "PLO Style" is kind of mediocre. Plus, I don't know how honestly I can endorse a song whose message is that conducting oneself in the manner of "a political and paramilitary organization of Palestinian Arabs dedicated to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state" is a way to conduct your life. The song tends to drag anyway. Ghostface's "Run" is a killer song, but Ratatat's remix thereof is likewise kind of shabby. At least, after the mastery of "Seventeen Years" it just does not cut the figurative mustard. Their remix of Missy Elliot's "Hot" totally redeems their decision to make a rap mixtape in the first place. They manage to take Missy Elliot's funk and mix it with their own. The result is better than the constituent parts.

Hot Hot Heat

2005-04-06T19:42:00.000-05:00

Hot Hot Heat blew my doors off their hinges a little over a year ago with Make up the Breakdown. Now they are poised like coiled pit vipers to release Elevator and set up camp on your alternative radio station. Their sound is definitely modern, without sounding like poseurs. They don't use any frilly stuff like synths or drum machines or what will have you, rather just straight guitar, bass, drums, and vocals. Except they also have an organ, used to great effect on "Talk to Me Dance With Me" (streaming wmvideo, S M L XL). The video was refreshing, as the band is revealed to not be another clique of thin, pale hipsters with skinny ties. They just updated their website for their new release, and hid all of their old stuff, but I found it here. Unfortunately, they removed all of their mp3 downloads, fortunately I found them (I am cheeky). "Bandages" also racks the organ to magical effect. It's a good song for your convertible...or bike. "Touch You Touch You" is from Knock Knock Knock. It lacks organ, but it still rocks out. The clapping on the percussion track is pretty cool too, without being too "We Will Rock You." "5 Times out of 100" is pretty sick too. All of their songs feature kind of a lot of repeats of the hook, sometimes nonsensically, but always in a really appealing way. Just check 'em out.

Pitty Sing "Radio"

2005-04-03T11:14:00.000-05:00

Pitty Sing is, by default my favorite band named for a fictional cat. They don't rock as hard as one might like, and their production values are kind of too much, especially for a less is more type of guy like me. Definitely would like to here some harder guitar. Still, I like any song with the hook: "We'll fuck on the radio...We'll make it go ooh oh oh..." Escapist songs are cool in small doses, and I think that this one will hold me over for the next long while.

Podcast coming soon!

2005-03-27T16:30:00.000-05:00

I will soon be offering the mp3s that I link to here as a syndicated podcast, just as soon as I can get my head the HTML required of me. Sorry for the delay until then!

Data Destruction Tour 2005

2005-03-22T16:17:00.000-05:00

Hypothetically, if you were to set out on a tour of the US on which you played the greatest music to ever come out of a GameBoy, NES, or Atari, could you come up with a better title than DATA DESTRUCTION TOUR 2005? No.

A friend and I went to the final show on this tour in Brooklyn USA. The venue was a garage that had been labeled a gallery and called vertexList in trendy Williamsburg. vertexList is actually a pretty cool venue in that it provides a certain intimacy between the performer and the audience, which provided for much schmoozing between sets. The performers were all really cool guys, and since 8bit is a sort of niche genre, they haven't blown up the the point of unnapproachability. The net result of that is my friend's schoolgirl crush on Bit Shifter.

The opening act was Mark DeNardo from New York City. His set was comprised of songs with an 8bit rhythm, but melody on guitar with vocals. He was, unfortunately, plagued technical problems. When he sang his ode to Street Fighter unamplified, I could only make out that Chun-Li was his "little China girl" out of all the lyrics. The allusion was lost on some of the hipster attendees only for lack of volume, hopefully. Mark DeNardo's homepage does not feature any free downloads, but the flash-plagued "omac"section features some streaming songs. However, omac provides neither authorship information for the songs, nor a definition of "omac".

Next on the bill was Glomag, also from New York City. He focused on the game consoles during his set, instead of just using them for rhythm. He also used a Kaos Pad and to great effect on his vocals. "Bad Therapy", his opening song, had a great vocal track, whose effects worked with the haunting rhythm section to produce a chorus reminiscent of Radiohead's "Idiotheque," except fuller, darker, and better enunciated. "Garbage In", another song in his set, is similar to "Bad Therapy" in its tone. It too, either by virtue of the industrial sort of sound or the quality of Glomag's voice, is a definite Nine Inch Nails flashback. While not really as angst-y as "Bad Therapy" it is dark, but the audience understood that Glomag's catalog is not really light. However, as he had no sound check before his set, the vocals were far less intelligible live than on recording. "Ich Und Die Wirklichkeit" (Reality and I) was the only other song of his whose name or lyric I could remember. The whole feel during his set was kind of low energy. On the whole he is pretty low key. Everyone was sitting on the floor like some sort of post modern Woodstock run by robots. Glomag's homepage is flash based and thus loses usability points. However, I found with some legit snooping that all of his downloads, including some that he doesn't advertise, are available here. The Internet Archive has the contents of his album "Naught" here. [This picture is honestly the best I could find. --perko.]

Huoratron from Finland started his set by yelling out "This is music from the lands of Santa Claus!" over the beginning of one of his house numbers. His set was a long mix of dance songs that had the whole crowd rocking out, especially two brothers (I think); they faked a street fighter match. Huoratron's style is sort of house/dance; his songs don't really have beginning, middle and end. His set list was a number of songs that do not lend themselves to direct linking, so I won't even bother trying. He does offer "Male Bonding" but it is really sub-par, not at all indicative of his better work; some of the tracks sound out of synch in a not artsy way. The section that offers streaming clips of his songs has them in the order of his set list at Ekko Festival 2004, which is strikingly similar to his set list at Data Destruction Tour 2005. The clips can be found by clicking the ".GET" and then ".MP3" buttons on his site. I'm also kind of mad that he drew an illicit grafito on my tour poster by way of autograph, when I inteded to give it to someone.

The headline acts were a real shift from the previous three. Not to disparage on the effort of the first three acts, but Covox and Bitshifter absolutely took the house down. Bitshifter did a set of short numbers, i.e. songs rather than dance a dance mix. Most of his material was from a new, as yet unreleased album, as of yet unannounced on his website. My friend was very taken with his to the point of schoolgirl crush. The whole set hand the crowd balls to the wall dancing. Call it a hipster rave. The only track that I recognized was "Science City Zero", which, I have to say, is not my favorite. His homepage offers a few downloads. My personal favorite is "March of the Nucleotides", but there are only three choices anyway.

Covox of Stockholm took the stage next with what I though was the best set of the night. He had GameBoys and a classic Nintedo Entertainment System and a vocal sequencer. Since singing does not usually feature heavily in 8bit (particularly not in his work), no on knew what the microphone was for. That changed when, with one excellent cross-fade he went from a dance track to an 8bit version of the melody from Usher's "Yeah!" His sequenced, digital "yeah" provided Lil' Jon's punctuation. Then he mixed it back into the dance mix to brilliant effect. I almost C-walked to the music I was so happy. There is nothing to get hipsters dancing like electronic versions of rap music and plenty of irony, and that just brought the house down. Covox's homepage is kind of skimpy on info and design. Still, he does tantalize with the promise of a new album in the near future. My favorite of the downloads is without a doubt "The Sun was Shining", even though the intro is a little unpromising. However, the page for Little Sound DJ (the GameBoy cartridge that makes this all possible) offers "Dubslide", my favorite of all of his works.

Nullsleep (NYC), my favorite of all the 8bit artists going into this, was shut down by the Five-Oh in the middle of his second song. He still gets rocking bonus points for having a necklace with the center of a floppy-disk on it, plus a NASA t-shirt to advertise his love aerospace. His homepage awesomely offers a huge selection of downloads. Unfortunately, all of them are in .zip archives, so if you live in the stone-age you can't listen to them. My favorite song is "Her Lazer Light Eyes", one of two mp3s available here (also available as a zipped mp3, in case he gets rid of the raw mp3).

Tres Coronas: "Hotness"

2005-03-18T02:52:00.000-05:00

Tres Coronas is a band made up of some of my brother's friends from high school. The sound is refreshingly hard, not in a "society has cast me out" way, or a "three cords is my limit" way; rather, they quite simply play hard, with more than just power-chord driven rhythm. The guitar hook at the beginning of "Style on Trial" is incredibly catchy, in a way that will get your foot tapping when you think about it, and your head banging when you hear it; the drums in "Mess" keep the quiet parts interesting. "Sick Parade" just rocks refreshes the hard-bridge-hard style, wrenching it away from the poseurs who almost killed rock music back in 2000. In short, they bring music back to the music, in a genre where so many artists depend on a conglomeration of mediocre performance to define their style, Tres Coronas is the harmony of a number of really solid elements that combine to form a refreshing spin on Rock and Roll music.