Tag Archives: TOTW

TOTW: The Flaming Lips_Mother I’ve Taken L.S.D.

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Long term readers of this blog will know that one of my favourite bands is The Flaming Lips.

The Flaming Lips have been a regular fixture on my Track Of The Week segment, reflecting their frequent additions to my library of music since my teenage years. I continue to appreciate their unique identifiable sound that has remained consistent throughout their experimentation with musical form, and for the lyrics of Wayne Coyne. His take on the world has always been perculier and for a long time reflective on light and darker subject matter with a nuance I’ve always found uplifting.

They have always dealt with dark subject matter in their music; especially death. But throughout all their sci-fi and psychodelic constructions, the route of Wayne’s lyrics have always stemmed from a portrayal of grief and happiness that I find very realistic. This stands in opposition to most other music, which overdramatises for emotional weight.

Wayne seems to show effortlessly the way that both grief and happiness are fleeting, and so they should be respected and recognised for what they are, and we should be aware of both when experiencing either. They wouldn’t exist without their counterparts.

However, over the past decade some of that optimism seems to have been withered with time. It is still their on some tracks, but not as bright. Instrumentally the band has turned to darker textures which have reflected the less positive themes found in the Lyrics.

I thought this may have changed with their previous more whimsical album “Kings Mouth” but it has returned in spades with their latest record “American Head”. Its sounds like a very personal album this time around. The Lyrics repeatedly focus around the interactions of a family as it goes through some difficult emotional struggles and life changing events.

“Mother I’ve Taken L.S.D” is the track that stood out to me most on first listen. It exemplifies the darker and less hopeful contexts found the majority of the more recent flaming lips work. It also provides a great starting point for listeners to get a rough idea of the themes found on the album.

“American Head” is another great album from the flaming lips, A complete work that continues it’s themes throughout. It adds to a back catalogue of varied and wonderful records that all do the same. If you are new to The Flaming Lips then I would probably start with either “the soft bulletin” or “yoshimi battles the pink robots”. But If you’ve heard there stuff before but would like to dip into what their latest record is like “Mother I’ve Taken L.S.D” is a great place to start:

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TOTW Playlist:

TOTW: Oneohtrix Point Never_ Long Road Home

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Oneohtrix Point Never has been one of my favorite acts for several years now. He has such a unique approach to sound design and its arrangement that it has become iconic for his listeners.

Although his music has always clearly come from the same artist, the textures on each album have been varied. From the minimalist verging on ambient washes of synths found in his early work, he then developed the darker plunderphonics and sample loops used on his album “Replica”. From there we got a more melodic, and at times romantic album, In “R plus Seven,” which pushes his use of space and textures further. He followed that up by the far harsher and aggressive album “Garden Of Delete,” and then the R&B inspired “Age Of.”

You add to that a couple of movie projects, commissions and production credits on several albums, and you have a massively eclectic collection of music, which is always routed in his unique arrangement and compositional style. This is how they relate to each other.

His latest album “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” proves that an experimental and varied collection of sound elements used in his back catalogue weren’t actually that sporadically different after all. It feels like a collage of all his work up until now. As a fan who is well versed in all of his albums they are all represented in this one. It is a great summery of his work up to this point.

For someone who wants to get to grips with his methods and style in under an hour “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” is a fantastic place to start.

What resonated with me most about OPN’s work since the album “R plus Seven” is his ability to trade on the listeners own musical nostalgia. He toys with it regularly, highlighting figments of your musical memory briefly before jolting your focus in another direction. “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” shows that he now has a catalogue of his own music that’s large and old enough that it itself has become the musical nostalgia he can trade off. He has created an ouroboros for his own music. Its a bold and interesting vision that continues to be rewarding on repeat listens.

In its conclusion (as with all of his past works), I’m always left wondering where he will go next? OPN has always seemed to surge forwards with every release, moving in directions you wouldn’t expect. In “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” he has surprised me by doing the opposite and reflecting on the music he has created over the years.

Whilst it works incredibly well for this album, it puts the next one in another interesting predicament. Can he continue a style he has managed to wrap up so well on this album without loosing the surprise of what has made his music so great to me over the years? Are there more soundscapes and genres he can plumb the depths of to continue this style with a fresh take? Or is “Magic Oneohtrix Point Never” a send off for the compositional style itself? A swansong to just over a decades work of major releases. Whatever the answer I’m sure fans of his work will be surprised by whatever comes next.

I’ve realised that this was more of an album review than a track of the week. I think the album is great as a whole, however the track that I would describe closest to a “single” and easiest to put into a playlist in its own right is “Long Road Home” so that’s a great place to start. Just bear in mind it’s only the tip of the iceberg for the music on this album and in his back catalogue:

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TOTW Playlist:

TOTW: Sharon Van Etten_ Let Go

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The stand out track I heard this week is the latest from Sharon Van Etten. Her album “Remind Me Tomorrow” was a nominee for my albums of the year 2019.

Her latest track “Let go” is an evolving rock piece with a great pallet of sounds. It continues the trend of high quality pop music with a slight twinge of regret. Based on this example, it looks like she’s continuing to create great music. I look forward to hearing what she has in store for the future.

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TOTW Playlist:

TOTW: Bob Dylan_ Murder Most Foul

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Bob Dylan needs no real introduction. His musical output has spanned decades and continued to be prolific. Any artist creating this much work over this much time will have varied output and Bob Dylan is no exception.

On the last track of his latest album “Murder Most Fowl,” he seems to have both the ups and downs of his career all wrapped up into a track that’s over 16 minutes in duration.

At sixteen minutes and fifty four seconds it’s certainly one of the longest if not the longest track he’s ever released on an album. His vocals and poetry are the focus of the whole track and he uses this time to speak in rhyming couplets throughout.

Although a fairly rudimentary poetic form, Dylan proves his unique vision and artistry can create truly iconic art using it.

But this isn’t the case throughout the track and it’s what interests me most about it on multiple plays.

Its long playtime allows this poetry and word association to drift in and out of poignancy for the listener. There are sections that seem to drift into the background before suddenly a few sentences are delivered with so much relevance that they resonate in your brain like sunbeams piercing through the clouds.

It’s in those moments that you remember what a talent Dylan has and will always be. It’s a style and thought process that will never be recreated and something that should be cherished.

Murder Most Fowl manages to play off it, with the maturity of an artist is coming towards the end of his career. A perfect swansong to his latest album and indication that Dylan can still create music that relates and is relevant to this day:

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TOTW: Ash- Oh Yeah

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I’ve been a bit lackadaisical last week. Both Listening to and working on music has taken a sidestep.

I used my listening time for podcasts and audiobooks instead. And in this depravation of melody my mind always tends to wonder back to tracks from my teenage years. Oh Yeah drifted its way into my brain and lingered there for several hours until I had to play it to myself.

On a more analytical listen its quite a strange song in both its vocal delivery and composition. The track is clearly influenced from its time period with a mix of the garage rock/grunge aesthetic but blended with the string arrangement and production of 90’s Pop.

It feels to me like the track shouldn’t work, and yet it does. It’s this mix of two competing styles that has kept Oh Yeah in my subconscious over the past couple of decades:

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TOTW: Neil Cicierega_ Mouth Dreams

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In 2017 I gushed like a broken spigot about Mouth Moods; Neil Cicierega’s previous meme based remix album. Now in 2020, he comes back with its successor, Mouth Dreams.

I have decided not to pick a track from the album but say that you should just listen to the whole thing. Don’t get me wrong, I have my favorite tracks, but they work so well in the context that it would be a shame to split them from the rest of the work on first listen.

I don’t want to spoil the album by going into details about individual tracks however I will talk broadly about it.

Mouth Dreams has an even greater maximalist approach than Mouth Moods, which was already a layered and dense. The memes are even more grating, and the technical wizardry used to make the remixes is even more complex.

Listening to his work requires some humility from the listener. Niel Cicierega will blend massively different styles of music with a trolling wink and a nudge.

If you can get past that and accept that your nostalgia and connection to music is going to be challenged, and occasionally mocked throughout, you will be rewarded with some fantastic musical revelations that have resulted in me laughing maniacally many times.

You can download the album for free from Niel Cicierega’s Website below:

http://www.neilcic.com/mouthdreams/

Or listen to it on soundcloud here:

TOTW: Jay Electronica_ Fruits Of the Spirit

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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 Playlist:

TOTW_Giant Swan_55 Year Old Daughter

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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

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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 Playlist: