Tag Archives: TOTW

TOTW: BadBadNotGood & Samuel T. Herring_Time Moves Slow

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BadBadNotGood are a Jazz Quartet for the modern generation. Their influences span multiple genre especially Hip hop and because of this they have become a regular collaborators with some of the biggest current Hip hop acts in the world.

Their own albums also show this willingness to adapt and morph between styles and genre for the sake of the track. It leads to a versatility and unpredictability in their work that is always refreshing to the listener.

On Time Moves Slow, laid back soul music is clearly the main influence. Future Islands Samuel T. Herring providing the vocals to a bed of lush organs, gutar and drums with a natural swagger that really give the track an organic sense of place. It’s the atmosphere that’s created that really elevates this track. Talking you to a world of dark smokey clubs and late night recording studios. It’s a sound that’s missing from a lot of modern production as technologies and cost have removed the more natural sounds of people playing in a room together and It’s great to hear it still existing on tracks like this:

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TOTW: Sun Kil Moon_ The Highway Song

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Sun Kil Moon has been developing his own style in the genre of the singer songwriter over his past four albums and his last three could almost be seen as a trilogy. Benji was a nostalgic masterpiece that looked back on lead singer/guitarist Mark Kozelek’s life in a mix of joy and sorrow with a forward facing honesty that hit home on many counts. Then the album Universal Themes brought the same style of honest story telling the current day with diary like detail. Now on his latest entitled Common As Light And Love Are Red Valleys Of Blood Kozelek has blended both the past and the present together in more detail. We spend a lot of this album inside his head as it goes to some uplifting and unsettling places.

The Highway Song is a great example of this. Boiled down the song is about his thoughts whilst driving around with the A B structure almost working as two separate songs. The opening A structure deals with immediate thoughts that he experiences as he sees things from his car before it reminds him of his fascination with Murder and Serial Killers which then become the B section. These sections are explained with a detail of the crime with a police report accuracy. This Structure creates a dark and occasionally uncomfortable piece of music but an intriguing one that’s worth listening to.

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TOTW: Boards Of Canada_ Peacock Tail

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Boards Of Canada have always being and enegmatic presence in the music industry. Staying secretive and creating music that is unique and has become iconic for fans of the fringe elements of electronic music. It’s a sound that is so distinguishable that any listener of their work will recognise it within seconds when its frequently used in films and television, even if its is a track they haven’t heard before. No mean feat for any artist.

Peacock Tail blends the mix of field recordings, sampling and instrumentation well. With large synth pads and heavy use of delay and reverb to create a cavernous sound that is then cut through with precise and dry drums. The song slowly shifts through different instrumentation and iterations of the melody, effortlessly creating a sound that sits somewhere between the the foreground and background. It’s this style that captivates fans of their work. Crating a pallet of tonality that is constantly shifting yet rarely intruding, instead reflecting the thoughts of the listener onto it.

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TOTW: Mogwai_Reno Pano

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Mogwai have had a long and productive career developing their instrumental atmospheric sound which can vary from light ambiances to heavy rock.

Reno Pano has been out for a few years now but it’s a track I continue to come back to. Its abrasive build of guitars and synths are Layered on top of each other with different styles of distortion to create a wall of sound that becomes somewhere between overpowering and hypnotizing on the senses.

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TOTW: The Libertines_ Music When The Lights Go Out

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The Libertines will always have a special place in my heart. Their first two albums were a key part of the soundtrack to my early twenties. Today looking back on this work I still find something that is missing from a lot of modern main stream rock music, It sacrificed production polish to keep a raw live sound.

This is something that since Punk has been lacking from rock music and it’s no surprise that The Clash guitarist Mick Jones was producer on their first two albums. What you loose in sound perfection is more than made up for in the energy of the recordings. You can hear that this is a band playing together and it connects you as a listener to something real. It sounds like you are in the room with the band recording together rather than in some virtual space unconnected from reality and with that comes a connection that is lost on a lot of more modern production.

That connection has always been prominent in The Libertines from the beginning. Both in live shows and on record. They had a fascinating shambolic lifestyle that was reflected in their music and their lyrics which is exemplified in Music When The Lights Go Out.

The self titled album this track came from can be seen as a break up album for the band and only got toured briefly before they split up. And this track perfectly summarises the tumultuous feelings in the band at the time with an honesty and fragility that still resonates to this day:

TOTW: Scott Walker_ Best of Both Worlds

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Scott Walker has had a log and evolving career. Starting with a more standard popular music fair with dark tinges, which over multiple releases slowly seeped their way into experimental dominance on his works over the past three decades. For record listeners who enjoy hearing an artist develop, there are few out there that have developed so extremely as Scott Walker and yet still have a mood that resonates throughout their entire catalogue of work.

Best of Both worlds goes back the late 60’s and the beginning stages of His solo career. His iconic vocals haunt almost any instrumentation he sings over. It’s this sinister edge added to the orchestral accompaniment that really elevates the lyrics and the track as a whole to a level other versions of the song from different vocalists can’t achieve.

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TOTW: Oh Sees_ Jettisoned

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Orc is the latest album from the prolific band Oh Sees who have released thirteen albums over the past nine years. Although on my radar over the past few albums due to highly positive reviews. I haven’t really given them the chance they deserve until now.

Orc manages to blend many different areas of rock music with a garage rock aesthetic and with it comes an album full of vigor. It works better as an album as tracks complement each other well blending the harsh and smooth to great effect. So choosing a single song is a little hard and I recommend you give the whole thing a listen however I need to pick one track for the week and that will go to Jettisoned as it manages demonstrate a nice blend of their different influences:

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Charles Bradley- Victim Of Love

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Charles Bradley- Victim Of Love

Last week we lost the incredible voice of Charles Bradley who passed away from cancer. He didn’t rise to success until later in life, working as a handyman and even living homeless before his music finally got recognition. Like all great singers he can pull from this experience and add a weight to his delivery which goes further than the lyrics themselves.

Victim Of Love is a great example the qualities unique to Charles Bradley. The power and pain that come from his vocals make this track more than the sum of its parts. It’s a skill that will be sorely missed:

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TOTW: Nina Simone_ Who Knows Where the Time Goes

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Originally an English Folk song written by Sandy Denny, Who Knows Where the Time Goes has been covered by many artists and always manages to entice with its wistful lyrics and interesting chord progressions.

On this cover Nina Simone manages to portray the longing of the lyrics which is only enhanced by an instrumental accompaniment that gives plenty of breathing room. The track is also a live recording which creates an intimacy and seance of place that makes it even more compelling.

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TOTW: Marvin Gaye- Funk me

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Listening to Soul, Funk and Disco music has been fun over the past month and helped me raise my awareness to old classics that I’d either never heard or forgotten. It also made me aware that I hadn’t put one of my favorite tracks on my Track Of The Week playlist yet. Funk me may be less well known than some other tracks by Marvin Gaye but it has one of my favorite bass lines ever recorded which manages to be both technically complex and catchy from first listen.

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