I thoroughly enjoyed the surprise release of a new Fleet Foxes album last week. Here’s one of my favorite tracks:
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TOTW Playlist:
TOTW: Fleet Foxes_ Can I Beleive you:
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TOTW: Jay Electronica_ Fruits Of the Spirit
I have been focusing most of my free time this week on my own music. Covid has stopped any live performances from happening and, after doing my stream of the album, I decided to turn my attention to working on something new.
That is both a daunting and exiting task. Playing with ideas and finding new limitations to base music around can feel refreshing, but can also be massively aggravating. Experimentation often results in failure to create good music and a lot of humbling learning experiences.
That’s the loop I’ve been in for the past few weeks. Trying out ideas that often fall flat or don’t quite resonate with me. It’s been such a long time since I’ve worked on new stuff that I feel like I’ve lost many of the skills I used to make “Made In Japan.” To the point where listening back to it now almost feels like somebody else created it. I guess, in a way that’s true. We move through life and the ideas that drive us change.
What should music be for its creator? I’ve never been one to try and base my music in a particular style or genre. When I have, I always end up feeling restricted and dulled by the experience. The artistic process starts to feel formulaic as creativity is replaced by production line composition and creation.
Jon, a very good friend of mine, said “you should stop thinking so much,” when I mentioned this to him. I think that’s a good point, but it’s a piece of advice that I find the hardest to take.
I think the greatest and worst part of any form of creation is you never feel like you can master it. That’s why I will never get bored of music, but at the same time feelings of fulfillment and achievement are few and far between.
Starting again on new work after a year of mixing and mastering feels like a new mountain to climb and I’m still on the approach; nowhere near base camp. The one thing I do know is it will get better with time but, whilst I’m in this situation, it’s always good to hear completed works by great artists.
“Fruits Of the Spirit“ is a great example; short and to the point with traditional samples and classic hip hop production, with a silky vocal delivery from Jay Electronica. It gives me hope to carry on with my experimentation. If anything pays off I will let you know next week:
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TOTW_Giant Swan_55 Year Old Daughter
Well this track was quite a thrill on first listen. Throwing out any form of subtlety, and going all out crazy with aggressive electronic beats and vocal samples, 55 Year Old Daughter Is an intense but rewarding listen:
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TOTW: Bruno Pernadas_ Leaving Paris
I’d like to start this week’s blog post on a bit of a tangent. Regular readers may have noticed that over the past few months the TOTW posts have been more sporadic then they have in their history.
I used to release them on a set day each week. Occasionally I would try new things, but there would always be a structure to these release times and they were always at least once a week. Recently, this has slipped. For that, I apologize.
I’ve been writing about music I love or find interesting on this blog post since April 2012. Over that time, I have changed my thoughts on what this Track Of The Weeks Sections aims are.
When I started the post, I believed that my opinion on music mattered, and that over time I would build up a collection of readers and introduce them to an eclectic world of music that they wouldn’t have heard of without me. I guess I was a little naive in this dream.
This section has never grown to more than a handful of readers over the past eight and a half years of doing it. The rare but amazing times I have heard back from artists have been few and far between.
So, for a time, I then started to think about it less as a blog purely for other people, but instead a musical diary for myself. This especially came into focus when I created the Spotify TOTW playlist. Listening back took me to moments in my life and the music that made those times. Reading the blog posts that accompany the tracks further enhanced these memories.
But over the last few years I have begun struggling again with these blog posts. To be honest, my passion has been waning.
Writing each week about a piece of music requires a lot of listening time and thought. This then takes away time I could spend on working on my own music or my other hobbies and life commitments.
For the past few months I have been contemplating these problems and trying to find a solution that will keep me happy.
The easy solution would be to end my TOTW posts and spend the time I work on them on my own music. However I have realised that I need these posts.
TOTW forces me to dedicate time listening to new music. This expands my musical knowledge and understanding of all the techniques in music production. Without this TOTW blog, I could quite easily resort to listening to music I already own, falling into a trap of becoming a musical historian, like so many people do as they get older.
So what should this blog become?
Although my thoughts about the posts have changed over the years, I have always tried to keep one aspect of the blog posts the same, and that is to only talk positively about music. To not be critical about things I don’t like. Instead, to celebrate and champion, either to the readers or myself in the future, music that genuinely interests me at the time of writing.
That I will continue to do.
I’m hoping maybe we can build a community around music that was closer to my original idea then what the TOTW posts have become.
From this point on, I’m going to continue to highlight music each week and write a blog post. However, if I like a piece of music, but don’t know why, I’m not going to try and bleed a stone by writing a few formulaic paragraphs on it that don’t add anything meaningful for either myself or my readers. And from now on the posts may be more about what I’m up to, my thoughts outside of music, and my ideas about my own music.
This may work as part of a TOTW post, or it may be a separate blog post outside of TOTW, in which case I will label it as such.
Also, if I’m working hard on my own music, or have other commitments and need to spend my spare time that week on that rather than my TOTW posts, I will let you know. I will still post a track, whether I write about it or not.
I hope the few readers I have will understand this change in my TOTW posts but if not please leave a comment.
So with that all said, and the heavy stuff out the way, the track that grabbed me this week was “Leaving Paris” by Bruno Pernadas. I’ve never seen the film “Patrick,” which this track was written for. But I’ve always been a fan of this type of wistful, plodding piano playing, which carries a nostalgic resonance, encapsulated in the title of the track.
Add string swells to enhance the piano, and we have a bittersweet track that takes me to a place I could return to again and again.
From now on the TOTW section will change and morph into something new. Leaving Paris is a great track to say goodbye to the old way of doing things. Hopefully you will enjoy what the future has to offer:
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TOTW: U.S. Girls_ Overtime
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the last few U.S. Girls albums. Their blend of art-pop and experimental pop takes influences throughout the history of pop music, and delivers them with pristine production and a great vocal delivery from Meghan Remy.
“Overtime” feels like a classic soul track. Driven by an organ and featuring vocals dealing with a darker subject matter, it is reminiscent of the blues, but with a faster tempo.
This is a tried and tested genre, which still holds as much power today as it did decades ago. U.S. Girls continue to prove this by creating an exhilarating piece of music that’s easy to listen to and enjoy from its first through to its 100th listen:
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TOTW: Porridge Radio_Circling
“Circling“ by Porridge Radio instantly grabbed my attention with its guitar that bends its way around the pitch, which perfectly accompanies the apathetic vocal delivery.
I have always found this downplayed style enjoyable, but it’s a detached sound that’s hard to do well. Fortunately Porridge Radio pulls it off wonderfully, even in a crescendo, which manages to provide energy to the piece without drifting from the context of the track.
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TOTW: Leonard Cohen_ Happens to the Hart
I’ve only just got around to listening to “Thanks For The Dance;” a posthumous album by Leonard Cohen. Cohen’s son took poetry recorded before his death and added instrumentation to it to create the album, which works especially well on the opening track “Happens to the Heart.“
Leonard Cohen’s strongest point was his poetic verse and its delivery through his rustic baritone voice. He always managed to conjure the dark sinister corners of the mind and take you there, often delivering one-two punches in his rhyming couplets that left me as the listener in awe. The end of “Happens to the Heart“ is another example, leaving you with something to stew over on the tracks conclusion.
When you have lyrics this good and delivered perfectly in context, the instrumentals surrounding it should always play second fiddle. For me this was often Leonard Cohen’s downfall. I found that often music would get in the way of what was being said. Fortunately “Thanks for the Dance“ reverts to traditional instrumentation and a supportive role.
“Happens to the Heart” features nylon stringed guitar (prominent in early music by Leonard Cohen) strings, woodwinds and piano. It cements the lyrics in a sound that will stand the test of time. Building them into something greater without removing any of their raw power:
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TOTW: The Soft Pink Truth_ Grace
For those of us who like to listen to an album start to finish, and appreciate it in this way as a complete, creative work, “Shall We Go On Sinning So That Grace May Increase?” is definitely worth a listen. Drew Daniel (one half of Matmos) has gathered a collection of musicians and created a complete piece of work that defies genre, instrumentation and structure to create both a joyful and adventurous listening experience.
Although the tracks flow into each other, and therefore picking an individual track can seem a bit abrupt in its opening and closing passages, I decided to pick the penultimate track “grace” as a highlight for you to start with if you don’t have time to listen to the whole thing.
For me the album builds to “grace,” which summarises all the ideas laid out in the album up to that point. Weaving a beautiful collage of instrumentation and genre, it creates an uplifting and drifting piece as the result. It’s a stunning piece of work that deserves a listen:
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TOTW: Alabaster DePlume_ Visit Croatia
On the track “Visit Croatia,” Alabaster DePlume demonstrates the qualities great musicians can impose on a single melody.
The 8 bar melody provides the fundamental structure, looping throughout the track, with the instrumentation provided by alto sax, cello, piano and guitar. However, each instrument takes turns to lead and changes its intonation with each repetition of the track, keeping it permanently intriguing and in flux.
When the instruments aren’t taking centre stage, they either provide counter melodies or back up the others and round off the lead instrument. A great example (and highlight for me) is the way the cello creates a rich deep base tone underneath alto saxophone early in the piece.
“Visit Croatia” is what you get when you put great musicians in a room together and allow them to play off one another. It is music captured at its purest for all of our enjoyment.
The simplicity in production is a huge strength, putting the listener in the room with the musicians. You feel part of the performance, as though you can access the tactility of the instruments, and swim in the emotions portrayed in their playing:
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TOTW: Asa-Chang & Junray- Hana
This track popped up in a playlist I was listening to and intrigued me instantly with its unique, creative sound. Although the track predominantly consists of just four layers of instrumentation – a violin loop, a male and female spoken word recording, and a tabla as the percussion – it is the way these layers interact that’s so fascinating.
The tabla seems to be the driving force, setting the pace of the violin recording. Where it gets interesting is how tightly woven together the tabla and the vocals are. As the track progresses, these two instruments become closer entwined until it sounds as if the complex rhythms of the tabla are triggering the vocals themselves.
The tabla is an instrument that’s centuries old, and the human voice has existed longer than our recorded history; yet on this track Asa-Chang & Junray do something completely new with them. And throughout that uniqueness, they still create something that is relatable and enjoyable. Give it a listen below:
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