Sounds Escaping

Non Mountains

2010-11-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

The Non is a progressive post-rock band from Oklahoma.

Moving Mountains is a New York-based post-rock rock band. Combining emotional vocals with elements of post-rock and emo, the band has often been compared to The Appleseed Cast. I'm sure a lot of people will be put off by the vocals, but I hope hope some will be able to appreciate them for their musicianship and wonderful sound.

What a shitty day.

Post-Metalers

2010-11-04T09:36:00.000-07:00

Pelican is a ~~post-rock, instrumental, doom, sludge, progressive~~ post-metal quartet from Chicago. This video is about one man's quest to find Pelican, and sing for them. However, they are very elusive, so instrumental they stay.

Irepress (pronounced ear-press) is a 5-piece self-proclaimed disco metal band from Massachusetts. However hilarious disco metal may sound, I don't think they're it. Similar to Pelican above, Irepress's sound is a very heavy "sludge" type of post-metal. They are an extremely progressive band (they even have a part or two that actually does sound like disco), and their musicianship is very technical.

I hope Pelican managed to get away from that singer this time!

Sgt. Mudy

2010-10-30T17:42:00.000-07:00

sgt. is an experimental post-rock group from Tokyo. They incorporate a wide variety of genres into their music to give them a distinct sound. What really sets them apart from other groups is their use of violin in a pretty nontraditional manner, I would say, creating uplifting compositions comparable to acts like toe and Anoice.

mudy on the 昨晩 is another experimental post-rock / math rock group that is rather hard to categorize because of the massive variety of genres they incorporate in their songs. This is one of their more straight-forward songs, and that's why I like it. Most of their songs have so much going on, and so many guitar effects being jammed together, that it can be overwhelming. The same goes for sgt., but both bands are nevertheless enjoyable to listen to.

SO EXPERIMENTAL!

Special Pianos

2010-10-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

→Pia-no-jaC← is one of the most interesting musical duos I've ever encountered. The first thing you'll notice about these two is the odd instrument that musician Hiro is playing. It's called a cajón, a Peruvian box shaped percussion instrument. The name Pia-no-jaC is actually a combination of the only two instruments they use, Pia-no, and no-jaC (cajón backwards). The piano play is very swift and jazzy, and makes for very energetic music when accompanied with the crisp and minimal sound of the cajón.

Special Others is a jam rock / jazz band from Yokohama, Japan. They blend improvised jazz and post-rock influences to create a modern style of jazz that is popular with younger club scene fans. Their use of vocals is very minimal, so Special Others is mostly an instrumental band. Really fun band to watch and listen to, which is exemplified in this PV.

Almost 100 followers!

Clean Of Core

2010-10-25T17:40:00.000-07:00

Clean Of Core is an instrumental rock band from Chiba, Japan. 436 listeners on last.fm, that's damn low.

Short post.
Still feel like butt.
Take it easy.

Illuminate My Heart, My Darling!

2010-10-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

THE SAMUEL JACKSON FIVE -
EASILY MISUNDERSTOOD

Youtube || Download

The Samuel Jackson Five is a progressive Norwegian band with the cheesiest / funniest name in post-rock. Their brand of slightly jazz and slightly folk influenced music, and their use of a wide variety of instruments and sounds, is really fun to listen to. Each song on Easily Misunderstood gives the listener something different to sink into. From guitar driven rhythms to full string ensembles, slow and easy songs to jumpy and energetic songs, and all while maintaining a high level of musicianship and a sound that is uniquely SJ5.

YNDI HALDA -
ENJOY ETERNAL BLISS

Youtube || Download

‘Yndi Halda’ is Old Norse for “Enjoy Eternal Bliss”, which is the title of this 3 song EP that they released in 2007. With an expansive cinematic sound akin to that of Mono, Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Rós, and Mogwai, Yndi Halda continues on in their footsteps flawlessly. Although the album consists of only 3 songs, they are all in excess of 11 minutes long, the longest being the monolithic Illuminate My Heart, My Darling!, which struggles to be contained in two separate youtube videos at 21:54. One of the only downfalls of this albums is that the songs require so much attention, which is a set back for casual listeners. However, contained within each song is a variety of different phases and sounds that are held together with high quality recording and songwriting. If you're a fan of any of the aforementioned bands, I highly recommend picking this gem up.

How is this format compared to my previous one? I kinda felt like I was half-assing the whole process before, and kind of cheating on the followers. Maybe just being able to click play and listen was what made people stick around? Or perhaps it was Nono. I don't know!

Sleepy In Australia

2010-10-22T12:13:00.000-07:00

I've been rather inactive here due to stomach problems and general sickness. Not sick enough to stay off the computer, of course, but enough to drain any motivation to post out of me. It caused me to miss a few of my extremely hard-to-miss once a week classes, which really upset me for some reason. I usually have no qualms or regrets about missing school, but this time around it did a good job heightening my feeling like a worthless piece of shit attitude, which ultimately led to depression. Let's just say that my ability to take it easy has been severely hampered over the past week.

Trying to write something meaningful when I'm like this is stressful. I can hardly string together coherent sentences in my head, let alone in this little post box. I'll reread everything twenty times before trying to write something else, and very few lines survive the backspace button. It takes hours to write what ends up being read in twenty seconds, and it's frustrating. The worst part is that all this amounts to is a really long excuse, which is something I try my best not to give. However, I think writing things out like this can be beneficial and help me get the thoughts straight in my head, so just write this little bit of rambling off as filler.

It's not all bad news. For one, I'm feeling better, and I also found out about a nice post-rock band that I hope you'll enjoy. They're called Sleepmakeswaves and they're from Australia (hence the post title). I hope my cryptographic blog titles aren't misleading at all...

I'm going to try and start sharing download links to this stuff too.
Download | 320k

Fuckin' Zombies

2010-10-19T14:57:00.000-07:00

"Producing work that is epic in concept, sound, and artistic approach, Steve Moore and A.E. Paterra, the masterminds and multi-instrumentalists behind Zombi, have re-imagined the architecture of progressive rock and dynamic instrumentals -carving a niche in underground music distinctly their own." - Last.fm

In other words, Zombi has taken an extremely creative and awesome approach to Zombie Movie music. These guys are one of a kind. Actually, two of a kind. Bassist Steve Moore somehow handles the bass and synths at the same time.

The Fucking Champs are some sort of rad video game sounding math metal trio that just simply kick ass. They change time signatures like it's nobody's business, abuse those guitar harmonies, and always leave me headbanging. Perfect battle music for shitty MMO grindan', and they're the 2nd most played artist in my library because of it.

Lonely Robot

2010-10-16T22:21:00.000-07:00

Chiaroscuro is a post-rock band from Indiana that I know nothing about, other than the fact that they toured with This Will Destroy You.

cssc is a one man show brought to you by Erik Rodriguez of Chesapeake, Virginia. Armed with only a laptop and a MIDI controller, he creates some great electronic post-rock. He has a bandcamp page, where you can listen to two of his albums for free.

Get your listen on!

8 Strings Wot Wot

2010-10-16T13:23:00.000-07:00

Two of my favorite guitarists showcasing their 8-string talent.

The always fashionable Tosin Abasi of Animals As Leaders playing his song Song of Solomon. My face just melted.

Chris Letchford of Scale The Summit (do I love these guys or what?) playing the song Glacial Planet from their second album Carving Desert Canyons. I hope to some day be as good as either of these guys at guitar.

Jammin.

Slowly Destroy You

2010-10-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

Today I'm highlighting two very slow and lovely post-rock bands, Slow Six and This Will Destroy You.

"Call them post rock, call them chamber music, call them experimental neo-classical. No matter what you choose, understand that broad genre descriptors do little to describe the striking compositions of Brooklyn collective Slow Six." -- Last.fm

When talking about post-rock bands in general, this is how I feel. The "genre" encompasses so many different musical styles and ideas that I often have a hard time placing bands in it. It would be much more descriptive and easier to understand if every thing were labeled "instrumental insert genre here", because as it stands, we're using the post-rock genre for something it wasn't intended for. The post- tag just symbolizes a movement of music in history. From my point of view, it means just using traditional rock instruments for non-rock purposes. Using guitars to create senses of timbre and texture, rather than just riffs and power chords.

Does this mean that bands like Slow Six and Balmorhea aren't post-rock because of their use of non-rock instruments? Are they contemporary classical or ~ambient progressive experimental avant garde~. Or are they -- who gives a shit --? I think the latter is the one that I'm going to go with. I usually just go with whatever labels other people have chosen, just for the sake of convenience and ease of discovery. However you want to interpret the virtual genre naming war that we're going through, don't let it degrade any enjoyment from bands like Slow Six.

And this is This Will Destroy You, and it did. They did... This song did. Anyways, TWDY is crafted with haunting ambiance, and sadly no one on youtube knows how to upload a song with proper quality. There are seriously 5 different versions of this song with their own user-interpreted video on youtube, and they all have awful sound quality. Do you wanna know what the best one is? An AMV for the animated movie Origin: Spirits of the Past. It's actually not a bad AMV (or movie), surprisingly, but the song is truncated to hell, so it's not really worth posting. This song is from their 2006 EP, Young Mountain.

Clever sign-off comment.

Crappy Cover

2010-10-14T15:35:00.000-07:00

In the previous post, I mentioned that I might try to record a cover of that Scale The Summit song. I did the best I could with my headset microphone and 15 watt amp, I think. Rolled my face around in the effects window in Audacity, and tried to get as little fan noise in there as possible, but neither was accomplished very well. I screw up a lot, but this isn't really meant to be super professional or anything, just practicing like normal and recording it.

Nothing fantastic, but at least this post has Nono in it.

The Metal

2010-10-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

Gonna take a break from the Japanese post-rock only theme I have going here and talk about some metal \m/.

I apologize for the abysmal audio quality of this video, it hardly does the song justice. Scale The Summit is a progressive instrumental metal band with an average age of 22. This extremely young band got their start at the Los Angeles Musical Institute, where guitarists Chris Letchford and Travis LeVrier set out to form a band. Letchford plays a custom made 8-string guitar, while LeVrier plays a 7-string, and these guys are mavericks of their instruments.

I've been learning this particular song on guitar now for a few months. It's a real joy to play, especially the tapping riff at the end. Maybe I'll post a cover recording some day (if I can ever make good quality recordings).

Shelter Red is an Oregon born instrumental progressive metal group consisting of just 2 dudes. You'll notice that there isn't a guitarist in the video, because they don't have one. All of the guitar parts were pre-recorded by drummer Stephan Hawkes. I can't help but headbang to this song, the riff at 1:04 just kills it.

I'm rewatching Kamichu!. So good.

Sunlit Dinner

2010-10-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Sunlight Ascending is a young that band formed in Detroit, Michigan, USA around the beginning of 2007. Their music is a mix of Post-rock, Shoegaze and dreamlike soundscapes. Very ambient and mellow stuff.

Dinner is a little known Japanese post-rock band. This album, and... hearing things, is really neat to listen to due to how creative these guys are with their songwriting. The drum beat in this song, for example, really caught my attention. Bits of jazz and funk can be heard in their music, and the whole album flows really well. Their music is really hard to find, and I even had to upload this song myself so that they could be heard. If you're interested at all, you can get a few albums from here and here.

So few listeners!

Toggle On Some Toddle

2010-10-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

Everything Hisako Tabuchi touches becomes diamonds.

toddle is the missing link between Number Girl and Bloodthirsty Butchers. Hisako Tabuchi was the driving force behind both bands. She started playing guitar at 13 and stuck with it, joining Number Girl at 19 and later Bloodthirsty Butchers. However, after Number Girl broke up in 2002, she teamed up with guitarist/vocalist Ai Kobayashi and bassist Noritoshi Ezaki to form toddle. Taking over vocals for the first time in toddle, Tabuchi shows a never-before-seen side of herself; apparently she had been karaoke buddies with Kobayashi before forming the band. They didn't release an album until 2005, however, because in 2003 Tabuchi joined Bloodthirsty Butchers.

toddle brings everything I like about her other bands together into one, and tops it off with her amazing voice. Many comparisons can be drawn between toddle and MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS, not only because of the mature female vocals, but the distinct bass and guitar driven shoegaze sound that they both possess. toddle songs have a brilliant relaxing quality to them, and I think this video captures that nostalgic feeling perfectly. This song is from their Dawn Praise the World album.

Why don't we take it easy a lot, forever?

Nostalgia 5

2010-10-10T12:48:00.000-07:00

I'm stealing Honda's nostalgia spin on LzK's idea to post 5 random things.

5. L.A. LIGHTS

LOOK AT THOSE FLASHERS. LOOK AT THEM. In the dark of night, when you saw the ground light up from these bad boys, you could feel safe knowing that was a badass hero of justice in the vicinity. It is said that the lights were a defense mechanism designed to blind predators and ward off attackers, but who would dare attack someone sporting such flashy footwear? No one, that's who.

4. CROSSFIRE

Did anyone else get Caught up in the CROSSFIRE with this amazing board game back in the day? You would pick up the little metal balls and shoot them at your opponent while he did the same to you. I think the objective was to hit those things in the middle into your opponent's goal, but all I remember was shooting metal balls everywhere, and absolute mayhem.

3. GATOR GOLF

Barely beating out Mr. Bucket for this spot, because nothing is greater than golf with a gator. Whether you actually wanted to become an all-star putter, or just beat your friend/sibling with a golf club, Gator Golf was your game. Putt the shitty plastic ball into the gator's mouth, and he'll gobble it up and mock you for being a failure. He wasn't a very intimidating gator though, and you were the one with the weapon.

2. KABLAM

Best cartoon to ever grace the non-Nihon audience. Not sure if you remember KABLAM? Maybe the intro will jog your memory. The intro song was by the best ska band ever, The Toasters. KABLAM brought together comics and cartoons in an awesome format with tons of different skits and shows. The best of these skits was Prometheus & Bob - documented files of an alien attempting to educate a caveman.

1. LEGOS

The LEGO was the greatest toy ever invented. It was like Minecraft Beta. You could spend hours building the greatest yellow castle known to man, and never show it to anyone. The worst was when you were a hour into that castle and you ran out of yellow blocks! NOOOOOOOOOOOO IT'S RUINED! So you'd demolish the castle and build a fleet of speedboats. LEGOS were dangerous as hell too, at least for me. I remember many cuts and scrapes, and the occasional excruciating pain in the foot upon stepping on one.

Back To The Post-

2010-10-09T14:23:00.000-07:00

Rock.

Ovum. It's Japanese post-rock. It rules.

Russian Circles is one of the most unique post-rock groups out there. Everything they make is so heavy and haunting that I'm tempted to call it post-metal half of the time. I listened to their discography on repeat while reading the manga BLAME, it was incredible.

Rad to the max.

Don't Bump Into Wimps

2010-10-09T00:32:00.000-07:00

Two very similar bands on this easy Saturday morning, RADWIMPS, and BUMP OF CHICKEN.

I only just recently started listening to RADWIMPS, but the second I heard Noda Youjirou's vocals, I was reminded of BUMP OF CHICKEN and Suneohair and instantly loved it. You'll notice that guitarist Akira Kuwahara is dressed like, and playing the signature guitar of his idol Angus Young of AC/DC. They have a plethora of cool music videos too.

And of course, there's BUMP OF CHICKEN. Hailing from Sakura, Chiba, Japan, they formed in 1994 and have been making beautiful music ever since. The write some of the most emotionally engaging lyrics of any band I've ever heard. If you haven't heard the song [k] and don't mind tearing up right now, go ahead and give that a listen. I didn't want to use it as the video in this post because it is so damn sad. BOC actually started their musical career playing covers of The Beatles songs. They have a song on their 2004 album Flaming Vein called Arue, which is dedicated to the band's waifu, Rei Ayanami.

Cool facts, yo!

Bees and Cows

2010-10-08T14:14:00.000-07:00

Husking Bee is a fun punk band. Singer Kazuya Hirabayashi provided the singing voice for the Koyuki Tanaka in BECK: Mongolian Chop Squad. Husking Bee is funny to listen to sometimes because they use a lot of engrish.

Cowpers is another Japanese punk band that is largely overshadowed by Number Girl, Bloodthirsty Butchers, Eastern Youth, and the like. I really like Cowpers though, something about their messy distortion and catchy riffs just pleases my ears.

A glossy orange button for when the morning's siren no longer sounds.

Two Great Music Videos

2010-10-08T02:18:00.000-07:00

a flood of circle is a pretty cool j-rock band. They actually don't have too many songs that stick out to me, except for this one. This song is incredibly badass and hilarious, just because of the video.

Supercar is a electronic / alternative band that was around from 1995 - 2005. It wasn't until the latter half of their career that they started experimenting with a more electronic-heavy sound, with their album Futurama. I prefer their music before that album, but it's all good. Supercar is best known for the song Storywriter that they did for the Eureka 7 soundtrack. This PV is so cheesy, and yet so awesome, just like the a flood of circle one.

Caution: There is like 2.5 seconds of NSFW toward the end of this video (3:44-3:47).

Here's the song Storywriter if you need a blast from the past.

Mmm, delicious.

Sequencing Static

2010-10-07T16:46:00.000-07:00

Sequence Pulse is another great experimental post-rock band from Japan. They like to use electronic drums and other synthesized sounds on top of their tracks, which gives their songs a very mysterious sound.

Sequence Pulse is very similar to this English post-rock group, 65daysofstatic. More sampled drum kits and electronic sounds. This track is off their first album, called The Fall Of Math.

I also fixed my dumb comic. Now with less sleep deprivation and mental handicap~

Running out of words to say ;_;

Gaijin Comics

2010-10-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

Back by popular demand!

ヽ(｀⌒´ﾒ)ノ Blogger wants to resize my image, so click this. ^

There's Jazz In My Soil.

2010-10-06T04:06:00.000-07:00

It grows PIMPIN' plants.

The pimp just sits there and smokes his cigar like a BOSS while his jazzy minions jam out. Soil & "Pimp" Sessions is an energetic Japanese club jazz band, and they're going places. The frantic 6-piece was born out of the Japanese club scene, and became the first unsigned band to perform at the Fuji Rock Festival. I don't know if anyone watched Michiko to Hatchin besides me, but S&PS did the opening theme for that show. Everyone thought it was going to be the next Cowboy Bebop, probably because the opening was bebop jazz. Most everyone was disappointed with the show, but I liked it a lot.

Nobue knows all about pimpin'.

Obligatory Mono Post

2010-10-05T00:51:00.000-07:00

What is there to say about Mono? They're the pinnacle of Japanese post-rock as far as I'm concerned. They were one of the first post-rock band that I ever listened to, and it was so radically different from everything I had listened to before that I was simply blown away. Mono is one of those bands that really speaks through their music, and pours every ounce of their emotion into it. Mono are known for their long, quiet, minimalistic songs that can sometimes ramp up into a beautiful echoing wall of sound. One of the most relaxing bands ever.

Balmorhea is an experimental post-rock band from Austin, Texas. Like Mono, they have songs that are very minimal in nature. However, what Balmorhea is known for is their use of more classical instruments, most notably the violin, cello, and upright bass. Pianist Rob Lowe also incorporates a banjo and melodica into a few songs. Balmorhea released their 4th full-length album, Constellations, in February of this year, and began touring Europe with none other than Mono this fall.

How sublime~

Early Morning Ramble

2010-10-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

I've barely moved a muscle in the last 6 hours other than my well-trained index finger. I've been sniping blocks of coal, iron, gold, and diamond in that order with my .50cal diamond encrusted mining apparatus. Yeah, I've been playing minecraft, and I'm literally in pain from it, so I figured I'd take a break and write something stupid.

My goal for today was to first, post some music, and second, to catch up on the anime from the current season. I watched Hyakka Ryouran Samurai Girls, Bakuman, Ore no Imouto, MM!, and Star Driver. I had varying degrees of interest in all of them, and was pleasantly surprised with the enjoyment I got out of their first episodes. I'm not quite sure which is my favorite of the bunch yet, but I'm leaning toward Bakuman. J.C. Staff is really hit or miss with me, but I think they're back in my thumbs-up book this season.

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MUSICAL INTERMISSION - BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE EVPATORIA REPORT

___________________________________________________________

Yeah, that just happened.

And then of course, I played minecraft, which doesn't count as a goal. Minecraft is something you do when you run out of goals. You can't wake up in the morning and say to yourself "I'm gonna butcher 100 pigs and light my house on fire today", and expect to feel like you've accomplished something at the end of the day. But, it's a great way to exercise your autism muscle and kill some (a lot of) time.

I also sat down in front of Guitar Pro, which is a shitty tabbing program, and tried to write something, but all that came out was shit so I closed it and dove back into the mines. I've been feeling completely uninspired lately about writing music, because there's so little I can do with GP alone. I'd like to attempt to write some relaxing post-rock-ish songs, but since I answered "$0" in that bank account poll, I don't have the equipment to record or even make cooler sounds than my little 15watt amp can produce. The situation isn't as frustrating as I make it sound, but it's still a little annoying.

One of my two classes is today in a few hours, and I decided it would be a great idea to not sleep before it. I'm no Kaguya, so I'm starting to feel the hurt after just 30 hours. Sleep deprivation is a nice segue for one of the questions I wanted to ask of the home security community:

How do you feel about energy drinks?

Do you think they're disgusting? Delicious? Love them? Hate them?
Personally I'm slightly addicted to them. I have no reason to be extremely alert or energetic throughout my days, and I've all but become immune to any energy-gaining effects the drinks might contain. However, I still drink them, and I'm not really sure why. I usually drink at least one per day and it's almost like a treat, rather than just something to quench my thirst. My brother and I scout out the local gas stations and grocery stores for deals on AMP and Monster. I prefer the sweeter flavors of AMP, and he likes Monster, but either of us will just drink what's on sale. I feel kind of bad because I'm pretty much responsible for getting him hooked on them as much as I am, and he's shoveled out his fair share of cash to buy the seductive liquid for the both of us.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh.....