Inside Nokia Music

Somewhere in between Glastonbury and the work I’ve had to catch up as a result of being away for it, The Smashing Pumpkins sneaked this beauty in below my radar and as a result, I feel a little violated for missing out on a few extra days of absolute bliss!

If you haven’t heard Freak yet, the first track from Vol.2 of the one-track-at-a-time mega 11 EP 44 song project Teargarden By Kaleidyscope then do yourself a favour and stop reading this, do not pass go, do not collect $200 and listen to it immediately!

Freak is classic Pumpkins with murky overdrives, Zwan-like optimism and Na-Na-Na-Na sing-alongs. Having thrown countless hard earned reddies at The Smashing Pumpkins for half my life now, I’m completely stunned that tunes of this quality are up for grabs free for the anticipated 5 year duration of this project (if it’s seen through to the end).

It’s worth pointing out that 19-20 year old drummer Mike Byrne is beginning to show signs that he may well be capable of filling the horrific void of Jimmy Chamberlin’s departure and that The Smashing Pumpkins 3.0 are about to hit their stride.

The Smashing Pumpkins are available to download from the Nokia/Ovi Music Store and if you’ve got Comes With Music download the lot for free!

What can be said about Rage Against The Machine fulfilling their promise of thanks to the 500,000 strong anti X-Factor campaigners who propelled the unlikely 17-year-old Killing In The Name into the coveted Christmas No.1 spot?… albeit that only 40,000+ could attend from a ticket lottery draw.

Well firstly, credit to the band for being true to their anti-establishment creed, as the absence of sponsored branding is immediately noticeable. Secondly, with no sponsors this raised the question of how a free event of this magnitude was being bank-rolled… Turns out the band are for it themselves with the money earned from festival appearances with 100% of the proceeds from the Xmas sales of Killing In The Name going to homeless charity Shelter… This selfless act, in my opinion certainly adds insult to injury for the X-Factor money machine… a glorious victory indeed!

So how was the show?… Full beer cups flying around, revellers in trees, pumping fists in the air, and a bouncing pit so infectious there was no escape!… you know, the good stuff!

With a setlist that included Justify, Sleep Now In The Fire, Guerilla Radio, Bulls On Parade, Township Rebellion and a cover of The Clash – White Riot pre-ceeded by the band introducing couple of the hour and now legendary Joe & Tracy Morter. After which, these thirty-year-old knees had seen better days… but era-considered, I’m sure I’m not the only one!

Here’s the show opening Simon Cowell skit that set the mood. Thanks to to Chris Fishlock at Sound-Revolution for fishing it from the oceans of YouTube uploads (sorry dude, I didn’t mean to play on the fish thing)

Also check out the great review from Rock Bitches

Well I thought I would just voice a couple of counter-arguments to a previous post about saxophones.

Slight note, I am biased, my siblings are all somewhat musical, so I had the opportunity to play other instruments including violin, drums, guitar, piano and the saxophone. Although I got as far as playing a scale in C and that’s about it. As well as the guitar, it’s one instruments I’m tempted to learn to play if I had time (maybe if I win the Lottery).

Let’s start with Amy Dickson who is a “classical saxophone” player, which is bit of an oxymoron when you say it the first time. After all, anyone seen an orchestra playing classical music that involved a saxophone? Exactly…

Still, Amy Dickson, who started playing at 6, decided to become a classical saxophone player, even though her music teacher suggested that perhaps she should try another instrument. She probably had the condescension adults tend to give to a small child when they are ask “So what do you want to be when you grow up?” And the child in enthusiasm would talk about things like being an astronaut, fireman or secret agent, to climb Mount Everest or to reach the South Pole. The adult, although listening intently would, in the back of their mind have already pegged the child as an accountant, after-all all families need an accountant, plus maybe a doctor and lawyer.

I recall a story I read somewhere that mentioned a child who once said he wanted to be President of the United States. I’m sure that got a few laughs. The child’s name? Barack Obama.

Anyhow, back to the discussion. Part of the problem is that I think the saxophone has been typecast into one type of music and that’s jazz. It’s a bit like William Shatner. Who as Eddie Izzard says in a sketch, is so typecast that when you watch a show like ‘TJ Hooker’, then it is not William Shatner playing TJ Hooker, but Captain Kirk playing TJ Hooker.

Amy Dickson did become a sax player, creating sophisticated sounds in her playing style. Some of her more demanding pieces (such as the snippet below) required learning the continuous breathing method for playing instruments. Anyhow, I may have lost all my street cred talking about classical music, so let the brickbats fly. But here is Amy playing a piece that has been arranged for the soprano saxophone.

So, onto the second area of the saxophone defense.

Read the rest of this entry »

Recently there have been a load of confessions from various Nokians about their guilty music pleasures, so I thought to follow up with my own rather dodgy arena of music taste.

For me it’s the 70s, especially Funk and Disco. Bands like George Clinton , BT Express, Rose Royce, Ohio Players and numerous others. Big hair, a splash of slap bass and outrageous styles, it’s music that certainly defined an era and features in one of my favourite films, “Undercover Brother”. The story of a “Soul Train reject, with a Robin Hood complex”, it is silly but underneath, there is sharp humour and in-jokes about the era.

So here are three songs that I find defines my guilty pleasure. Rose Royce of ‘Carwash’ fame, Suzy Q with a funky disco number and a really hard to find tune from Swamp Dogg.

And as Undercover Brother might say:

“There are times for falling apart, and there are times for getting funky. This is one of them funky times. So whats it gonna be? ”

You dig?

You can download George Clinton , BT Express, Rose Royce, Ohio Players and loads of other Spells approved disco at Nokia Music Store. If you’ve got Comes With Music download the lot for free!

Futility is rife.

Have a look around you, right now – I guarantee that there are at least three things occurring in your immediate surroundings that are utterly and irredeemably futile. We live in a world full of worthless activity. And let’s not kid ourselves that it’s a new phenomenon, either. People have always been driven to do utterly pointless things. That’s why mountain climbers exist. And people who buy anti-aging cream.
Personally, I’ve always considered the ‘concept album’ to be one of the most pointless and futile endeavours mankind has ever poured his limited ability into. I guess it’s because I don’t really understand the principle behind them. As far as I’m concerned, all albums should have a concept – a loose set of musical or lyrical ideas running through the songs that brings them together, forming something greater than the sum of its parts. Without this binding thread, all you’ve got is a collection of unrelated songs. That’s not an album. That’s a bad mixtape.

One of the issues I have with the whole idea of concept albums is that, more often than not, it turns out that the “concept” is either unbelievably vague, or not actually a concept at all. Take two of the most famous examples: The Beatles’ “Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of The Moon”.

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I have several memories of discovering a number of new bands during my formative years. My music tastes expanded rather rapidly during a period of my life just before I went to university.

Gone was the dogmatism about what was good or not good. And in came eclecticism. It was an exploration of a wide range of styles and musical genres. Access to music channels like MTV, Star TV and VH1 helped to broaden the horizon.

An example of this journey was discovering No Doubt, Gwen Stefani’s band before she went solo. A big hit at the time in the Asian region was “Spiderwebs” and it used to play a lot on Star TV.

I also became interested in how music creates a “family tree” of inter-related artists. You explore one group and from that you come across others that are just as good. From No Doubt I discovered another band called Sublime. Great tunes, although the groups output was tragically cut short when the lead singer died from an overdose.

They played a fusion blend of reggae/ska and other genres. Tracks like “What I Got” and “Santeria” are the sort to play on a sunny afternoon, perhaps on the beach with some surfing action! Or maybe to play in the car with the top down, driving down some sunny boulevard with palm trees and a surfboard in the back. Hmmmm… Think it’s time to plan my next holiday.

Anyhow a couple of tunes to slide into the weekend!

There’s loads of No Doubt and Sublime albums available to download at Nokia Music Store or if you’ve got Comes With Music get them all for free!

Jerome recently posted about the new Tron: Legacy film and the music being done by Daft Punk. So it got me thinking, what other movies, games or anime of the “cyberpunk” genre had memorable music. Cyberpunk has perhaps evolved a lot from the dystopian novels of William Gibson (Neuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive and Count Zero) to a genre that has pervaded a lot of sci-fi movies and other media like games and animation.

As an aside, it’s interesting to note that as the internet developed (25 years ago the first dotcom domain was registered) Gibson’s next series of Novels (Virtual Light, Idoru, All Tomorrows Parties) changes tack slightly, portraying a future that was perhaps less darker in its dystopian outlook than Neuromancer. Likewise, films have moved on. Films today seem to involve lots of holographic display technology and the “computer is everywhere” paradigm, as well as nuances towards the surveillance state.

So here are a few thoughts. Its not the most exhaustive list, but a list of what I think are the most influential in my exploration of this genre.

Vangelis – Bladerunner

Probably the archetypical cyberpunk movie with its dark, foreboding atmosphere and the claustrophobic tension of the city it portrays.

Ghost in the Shell – Movie

Ghost in the Shell is, I think, a classic animation that came out of Japan, portraying a world where the internet is all pervasive, cybernetics commonplace and asked what happened when soul and machine meld together to the point you can’t tell each other apart. I tend to think of it as a spiritual successor to the Bladerunner ideal of a dystopian future governed in part by the technology that has been created. The opening title sequence with the below haunting chant involves the lead character being “built” in the cyborg manufacturing plant.

Ghost in the Shell – Stand Alone Complex

This was a spin-off series from the original movie. They made two series each with its own story arc. Again it is compelling viewing exploring the world that was set up in the movie.

Wipeout 2097 – Fluke

A computer game that launched on the original Playstation. I remember it for the song Atom Bomb by Fluke which played repeatedly on MTV, which took the premise of the game (a high tech futuristic race) and melded it into the music video.

Adverts, especially TV ones, are usually a great source of frustration for me.

The reason?

Music.

You’re sitting through the commercial break, usually bored out of your mind. For some reason British TV seems to be full of ads for heartburn or constipation drugs, gold companies wanting to buy for less than market rates or dating websites. So would that make me a single, overweight, bunged up, junk food eating couch potato, with enough bling that would make even BA Baracus from the A-Team take notice?

Music is always a good hook for me; if I like a song I’ve heard then I usually attempt to find it. There are dedicated websites (do a search on Google for ‘advert music’ and you’ll get a whole raft of them) which can help you find the tunes in commercials, although it can be a challenge sometimes.

It’s a great way to extend to expand your music tastes. Without TV adverts I probably wouldn’t have discovered tunes from Boss Hog, a punk blues group, which featured in a Levi’s ad with their song Itchy & Scratchy. I only discovered Goldfrapp, one of my favourite groups,through a few adverts, with Ooh La La appearing recently.

Sometimes you run into a brick wall or discover that the tune was written specifically for the ad.

The latest tool in my arsenal is Shazam. A phone app that records the tune and matches it up to a database of songs. In the UK you can also phone up a number which listens to the tune and sends you a text message if they work out the song title.

My recent discovery was the song used in the demonstration video from HP.

After drawing a blank or two with searches on the Web, I was able to use Shazam to work out what the song was.

At first I thought it sounded like Goldfrapp, who have a new album turning up in the next few weeks. But turns out it’s the song “Ooh Yeah” by Moby.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe8mM2obFws

In a sense, the advert has done its job. My active involvement in finding the song will probably mean I’ll also remember the product as well.

Memorable Tune = Halo Effect For Brand = Awareness = Consumer Mindshare = $$$

Simples…

So, where’s my wallet so I can buy that computer…?

Anyone remember this sick short from Director Chris Cairns, Neurosonics Audiomedical Labs and a bevy of big name Turntablists, MC’s and a Beatboxer (credits)? Well, now the concept’s been brought into the realm of the live performance with some truly mind-blowing results… enjoy!

I’m a big fan of Shakira, she has a great voice and well, certainly rates highly on the hotness factor!

But, I actually don’t think her voice is great in English and personally prefer a lot of her Spanish language songs instead.

Even her English hits like “Whenever, Wherever” I think sound much better in the Spanish version.  Perhaps it’s because Spanish is a rather deeper and seductive language that suits her very unique voice.

If you listen to the two versions, then I do think the Spanish version feels a lot better! (Must apologise for the lack of embedding capabilities for the below YouTube video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKS7QkYvum0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_LkjpYx8do

It does make me think about the culture around music and the subtle differences that I think exist when it comes to regional tastes. I’m bit of a fan of the Latin genres of music. Perhaps it’s the romance and passion - the perfect antidote to the Stiff Upper Lip and British sensibilities?

As an example, I recently picked up, what is in my view, one of the definitive versions of the folk song Guantanamera which is sung by Joan Baez.

In any case, here are a few of Shakira’s other Spanish language tunes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyXTMjF7cWU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m-Se_oeyLw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LznYGrYSVG4