So I’m sure based on last week’s SNL that many of you have already heard of Foster the People. Now touring with sold out shows across the country, the band is a perfect example of Indie resonating with the masses. Based in Los Angeles, California, Foster the People is composed of the trio Mark Foster, Mark Pontius and Cubbie Fink. With the break through single “Pumped Up Kicks”, the band’s sound is sort of an effortless cool. Not quite hipster but not quite mainstream, Foster the People manages to appeal to a variety of audiences. What I like most about the group is not only their catchy lyrics or calming electronic beats. Rather, despite their alarming popularity, Foster the People has not appeared to sell out. No longer under the radar, the band has risen to the ranks organically with zero pretension.
Heres the band performing my personal favorite, “Houdini” on SNL
“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away”. I heard this quote somewhere a few years ago. I believed it to be true the moment I heard it, but never really did apply it to my life per say. In the past week or so however, I realized that it can apply to almost every aspect of life. Whittled down simply to the idea that the activities you do everyday can be systematically eliminated until only the ones that make you happy and cater to you who you are remain, this quote has immediate sprung relevance. You need to clean out the closet once in a while.
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I don’t listen to much hard rock. I filled out that niche for myself early in my life and adding any more like-bands to my repertoire would be redundant. If anyone remembers my Fall of Troy post, yes that is one of them. But today I want to talk about the other major one, which creates rock music in a much different fashion.
The Mars Volta is a band which has been famed for its beautiful progressive rock. Incorporating influences from krautrock, jazz fusion, Latin American music, and mathrock, their music is melodic, groovy and downright rockin. The band’s lead singer, Cedric Bixler-Zavala, has the most unique and talented voice you will hear. The debut 2003 album, De-Loused in the Comatorium, was the band’s best selling album and earned them critical acclaim. I’ll be bringing it to you today.
The song Son et Lumiere creates a short lead into Inertiatic Esp, sort of like the sound of dread at an abandoned train station at night time. The vocals are eerie and distorted, the lyrics nonsensical yet frightening. The short drum build falls into a crash of musical ecstasy, as almost every instrument this band employs can be heard blaring away skillfully. “Now I’m lost” Cedric wails, as the song quickly changes displaying the technical side of the math-rock influence. It switches back and forth, not losing a beat… that is until the verses melt away at about 2 minutes.
This music takes heavy influences from past bands like Pink Floyd in employing a level of pure trippyness. The psychotic guitar lines are from none other than Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, and display a level of musical creativity unparalleled by anyone. The song ends on a very creepy almost theatrical sounding note. But this is only the first song on the album.
Cicatriz ESP is a 12 beast and my favorite song on the album. This song starts with beautiful melody. The lyrics are in my opinion random one liners which are strung together to create maximum confusion upon listeners. “We’ll drag your halo through the mud, ash of Pompeii. Erupting in a statue’s dust, shrouded in veils. Because these handcuffs hurt too much.” The drum line is repetitive yet completely amazing. The song seems to float along like a river of honey, stopping once in a while to pick up the tension and remind you that this is still rock.
3:50 is my favorite part. The song just disassembles into a sort of pure bliss. The guitar and piano just create the grooviest jazz atmosphere I have ever heard. Like psychedelic lounge music it lulls you away from this planet as it then itself falls apart into nothing. This Pink Floyd esque nothingness has the sounds of creatures emulated by guitars and slowly builds back into a downright epic return of the main verse. Truly amazing in my opinion.
Televators is arguably the trippiest and most psychedelic song on this album. The beginning has the sounds of tropical jungle animals but is slowly overrun by this strange miasma and a classical guitar. “Just as he hit the ground, they lowered a tow that stuck in his neck to his gills”. This is the one song on the album where Cedric’s vocals stay relatively relaxed all throughout. The song is slow and chill, like sailing down a river somewhere in the Amazon, yet retains a certain level of creeping dread reminding you of any dangers that can befall you.
De-loused in the Comatorium is a masterpiece in every sense. Every song on this album can stand entirely on its own, yet as a whole it creates a story. The album actually tells a story of a friend of the band. Nicknamed “Cerpin Taxt”, a poet and an artist, he overdosed purposely on drugs and fell into a coma for several years. Upon waking up he committed suicide a few weeks later. The way they tied the tragic story in while maintaining the beauty just speaks of their insurmountable skill.
The Mars Volta has released 4 albums since this first one, each one maintaining the same level of artistic skill as the previous. I will most surely return to them at some point in time. In the meantime be sure to mentally make room for them by removing similar but sub-par bands.
-oko
P.S. Oh and here is the last song on the album Take the veil, Cerpin Taxt. Beware. The part starting right before 4 minutes might put you in a coma.
I’d like to pay homage to some bands that I haven’t quite gotten to talk about, not because of any faults with these bands, but because they each bring something different to the table. Whether it be through interesting instrumentation, unique song structure or unique influences, I couldn’t quite fit the following bands into any other category. Here goes nothing.
They may have recently garnered a Grammy for Album of the Year and yet it’s still not the Arcade Fire’s best album. Don’t get me wrong, the winning album is good, but it gets away from their baroque roots in favor a more modern rock sound. “Neon Bible” and “Funeral” both sound like complete orchestras as many of the band members play multiple instruments, accentuated as band members switch up what they play during songs (compared to the new album which is more guitar heavy). The varied instrumentation and the influences of multiple styles of music makes Arcade Fire more than a band that keeps churning out similar sounding albums, but a group of musicians that creates many different cool sounds.
Beirut also features a full band but centers really on a single particular influence not normally heard. I mean, who listens to Eastern European folk music (like polka) and decides they want to start a band with it? If you didn’t get the hint, that’s what the members of Beirut did, fusing Eastern European folk music with indie pop sensibilities, highlighting such a global span with songs in other languages, notably French. Like Arcade Fire, Beirut does not rely upon the guitar and instead mixes up instrumentation to create music corresponding to their influences.
This post isn’t really going to be music related but it is something I want to get off my chest.
I’m going to confess something. I’ve never owned a Macintosh, a Mac Pro desktop, or the slim and elegant Macbook Air. I’ve not even owned the powerful Macbook Pro. I’ve never owned a Shuffle or an iTouch, not even an iPhone numbered one thru 4s. In 21 years the only reason why I can’t say I’ve never owned an apple product is the iPod that I’m currently listening to, which by now is from the technological Stone Age (it doesn’t even have a touch screen!). But sitting here, writing on a machine that I bought in lieu of Mr. Jobs’ lineup of a Mac laptop, he still has done me a great service that I can only repay by sharing.
I’m not here to tell you the impact that Steve Jobs had on the computer industry or that his dream of a personal computer is a major reason I, as a young kid, had a personal computer in my house. Someone would have eventually gotten the idea, hell someone probably even had the idea before Mr. Jobs, but it was Apple at the forefront of the computer revolution that allows me to write this sitting at my desk in my home. You don’t need me to say that Jobs’ impact as head of Apple revolutionized cell communications with the iPhone and that his iPad tablet is changing the way companies can do business and students such as myself can take notes, share them and stay wired to the rest of the world with a tablet. I wanted to toot his horn just in case you weren’t sure how important he was and still is, not just in the world of computers, but also in that everlasting quest for technological perfection. As Jobs’ life and work become his legacy, I wanted to share what Jobs’ conquests meant to me: that the dreamers haven’t quite lost yet.
Apple wasn’t started by a man with a fancy college degree, but a college dropout who audited classes while sleeping on friends’ floors and returning cans for money. Jobs’ aspiration wasn’t to be a businessman and Apple wasn’t created simply to make money. The company’s modest beginnings in a garage so sharply contrast with its current success and this paints such a strong rag to riches dream that it’s founding mission sometimes gets obscured. This, though, is what resonates with me the most.
It gets hard nowadays to recognize that not everything Jobs touched turned to gold and that many of his works were financial failures. It took a legend to remind me of something that I had long forgotten, that the path to success does not start with a college degree, nor end with the lack of one, but dreaming and that success itself is not defined by financial reward, but by making your fantasy reality. Despite the stress in academia to stay grounded and to be realistic, Jobs reminded me that being grounded is just a state of mind and that unrealistic dreams are only those you don’t have the passion to see through to completion. The grind of everyday life made me forget that I must limit the size of my dreams only to the limit of my personal ambition, that the path I choose must be my own and that success will come regardless of how others measure my success but I won’t forget ever again.
So last weekend on Friday I was in the city (NYC). After eating lunch I decided to go and check out the protests on Wall Street. As I neared, the first thing I noticed was an extremely congested block of people being rallied by the police. I sort skirted in and around, dodging police and staying clear of most of the protesters. A parade of them marched along the outline of liberty square, chanting something along the lines of “Down with the Wall”. In the middle of the square, tarp and make-shift mattresses made the place into a sort of campsite for those “occupying” Wall Street. The “campers” were kids just hanging out trying to be rebellious, while the protesters marching around and yelling were just strange characters trying to be noticed. I didn’t go to the event trying to be inspired or anything, but honestly I was a lot more disappointed than I thought I was going to be. This protest was way unorganized. The towers surrounding it weren’t going anywhere and were full of laughing brokers.
This protest is still growing impressively all over the country and it has even entered foreign countries as well. Even if it is unorganized, they are at least showing others that there are those who are standing up. Honestly, a protest on Washington would make a lot more sense, but regardless something is brooding on the horizon.
There was a group of people playing drums on the street in a very tribal fashion. This will never start a revolution. Tribal drum music is exactly opposite of what will garner the attention of the American populace and it is quite honestly counter-productive. What is needed is some real revolutionary music, like the kind that made the American Revolution successful. We need some post-rock.
A Silver Mt. Zion is a Canadian band (slightly ironic) goes by multiple names and originated as a solo-project by a guitarist from Godspeed You! Black Emperor. The band plays a brand of post-rock deeply rooted in strong political motifs. Their debut album, *He Has Left Us Alone but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corner of Our Rooms…, aside from being quite lengthy in title, is almost purely instrumental. It engenders the sort of feelings in people which would make those smug towers shake in fear.
“Sit in the middle of three galloping dogs” opens with scratchy radio transmissions. The message is that a revolution is imminent. “Let us not sleep as do others, underline it, but let us watch. We are to be watchmen of this empire. And to be sober, be serious…” The transmission fades and a drum beat takes over, beckoning the violins to begin their epic wails. Their sound melts over itself as the beat coolly keeps it under control.
At about three minutes the drummer goes all out, picking up the tempo and the ante. The violins respond with a beautifully reverberating stutter and a guitar in the background shreds away furiously. This song is immensely powerful yet beautiful.
“Blown-out joy from Heaven’s Mercied hole” is like the actual sound of a revolution happening. A stand-up bass accompanied by lyrics sets the mood amazingly. “Don’t tell me that I am free, cause I have not been well…. lately”. The instrumentation is almost jazz-like in sound, yet a very sad form of bluesy-jazz. The 9 minute piece winds to and fro, but never really builds, just maintains a steady atmosphere of depression. The vocals at the very end create a perfect cap on the piece, making it whole in every regard.
“13 Angels Standing Guard ‘Round the Side of your Bed” is probably one of the most beautiful pieces you will ever hear. Less revolutionary and more just downright eye-openingly sad, this seven minute piece starts with the gentle meows of angels. A harp like instrument strums humble notes and again the violins sneak their way in playing a melancholy tune. Towards the end of the song even more angels call out, now with shriller yet ominously more powerful voices. This song is actually supposed to be about black bloc protests, where everyone wears black, covering their faces and appearing as one big ‘black bloc’.
If someone took a large pair of speakers to the protest and played this album from start to finish, glorious things would happen. First and foremost I predict that a silence would sweep over anyone who heard it. That silence would spread to anyone listening and the impression made would only be more silence. From silence emerge words. And hopefully those words can be those of reason.
The Music Court 