One Man's Year-End List

2012 might be the year I stopped giving a shit about music. Maybe I'm getting too cynical, or too busy, or too lazy, but my enthusiasm for the most-discussed releases this year was pretty low. (Maybe I just listen to too much electronica now.) To me, moreso than past years, this has been a year strewn with hype (Lana Del Rey, Purity Ring, "trap", seapunk) and underwhelming efforts from established players (Grizzly Bear, Beach House, Twin Shadow, Dirty Projectors). But all that negativity aside, there has been some really awesome music released this year. These have been my favorite listens, in no particular order or amount:

Familiar Faces
Flying Lotus - Until the Quiet Comes
Liars - WIXIW
Mala - Mala in Cuba
Actress - R.I.P.
Titus Andronicus - Local Business
How To Dress Well - Total Loss
Burial - Kindred


Breakthroughs
Jessie Ware - Devotion
Laurel Halo - Quarantine
Cooly G - Playin' Me
Azealia Banks - 1991 EP
Holy Other - Held
Kendrick Lamar - good kid, m.A.A.d city
Teebs - Cecilia Tapes Collection
Disclosure - The Face EP
Death Grips - The Money Store
The Men - Open Your Heart

Under the Radar
Husky - Transition One EP
Good Night and Good Morning - Narrowing Type

Production Tips Vol. 1: Mixing Essentials

(Yours truly mixing some electronic music live at Cafe Paradiso, Urbana, IL 2010)

I do a fair amount of music production in my other lives, and I like teaching things to people, so I've decided to start a production tips column. Today, my goal is to give you a primer on mixing tracks. More accurately, I want to teach you how to think about mixing, give you some some pointers that will help you understand what you're really doing when you mix, and in turn get better, sexier results.

Accurate Information
Before we do anything, we need to talk about your speakers. A really great producer/engineer could probably mix on Skullcandies and get decent results, but the rest of us need an accurate, neutral(ish) sound source to get the mix down. Why is that? Most consumer speakers, headphones, etc. have wildly varying tonal qualities, so something that sounds good on your hi-fi might sound like shit on your friend's car stereo. It's important to have accurate monitors, and even more important to understand how they sound relative to other speakers so you can tell what your mix really sounds like.

Trim the Phat
The most basic mix control is the volume fader, but an even more powerful tool for balancing tracks is EQ. Our perception of loudness isn't just based on raw volume level; it's also frequency-dependent. A useful analogy for thinking about EQ is to think of your track as a picture made by layering different film exposures together. If your exposures all contain a lot of imagery in the same areas of the picture, it can get too bright, or hard to see what's going on. This is exactly like frequencies in individual tracks; audio tracks have a finite volume limit, so when too many tracks in a mix have the same frequency content, the master level has to be lowered to avoid clipping and the mix sounds quiet. This is where EQ comes in; by trimming unimportant frequency information from background tracks, you create more breathing room for lead tracks and get a louder mix.

One of the most important areas to cut is low frequencies. Tracks with a lot of low end sound full and rich, but because bass frequencies last longer (they have longer wavelengths due to their low frequencies), excessive bass can make your mix level too high, even if it isn't actually loud. Cutting bass (100-200 Hz and below) from all but your most important tracks will buy you a lot of headroom. If you're worried about this ruining your precious tone, fear not: psychoacoustics has your back. When harmonics of a frequency are present, our brains perceive the fundamental frequency; we imagine bass that isn't really there. Plus, if your tracks are all in tune, the low end from tracks that do have bass will help fill in the blanks.

Is it Always Balanced?
When mixing, you're not just after loudness, you want punchiness (unless you're mixing classical, in which case you want to put people to sleep): lead tracks should pop out when they come in, and cut through the other elements of the mix. Sometimes tracks pop out a bit too much, or sound too quiet, and this is when you want to use compression. A lot of people mistakenly think that compression is the key to more loudness, but what compression really does is reduce dynamic range. It's like an automatic volume control that can turn volume down and then back up at superhuman speeds. When misused, it can make things worse than they already were. You need quietness to appreciate loudness; get both in there. Letting your background tracks sit at a quieter level leaves room for your lead tracks to be adequately dynamic, and you'll still hear the background when the lead tracks cut out. This can make your mix quiet and may force you to mix with your master volume up (avoid turning it up too much), but when done properly it ensures that the right sounds are in focus when you eventually crush your mix to hell in mastering anyways.

Thinking a Step Ahead
If your mixes are going to be mastered eventually, there are certain things you can do to help the mastering engineer out (besides not making a shitty mix). Perhaps the most important of these is to leave some dynamics in your mix; compressing a mix is easy, but expanding it is almost impossible to do. Many engineers suggest using buss compression on your master out with a ratio between 1.5:1 - 2:1, which can help tie your mix together if you don't overdo it. Sending both compressed and uncompressed mixes to the mastering engineer is a good compromise and just might save your ass.

Had Enough Yet?
Mixing takes a lot of thought, and can get kind of fatiguing. When that happens, take an hour or so to clear your mind and come back with a fresh pair of ears. The most important thing is to listen, as trite and obvious as it sounds. Can you hear everything you're supposed to? Does something sound harsh/dull/muddy/abrasive? Use yr ears. This post contains a lot of information, and may not make sense to the complete novice, but never fear; I plan to write my next column on using compression to help explain dynamics a bit more. Until then, may your mixes be fresh.

Home Sewing is Killing Fashion (and It's Illegal)

A while back, a Facebook acquaintance of mine posted a link to this article on Trichordist; an open letter from David Lowery (of Camper Van Beethoven) to Emily White, an intern at NPR's All Songs Considered. White published a post on the NPR blog confessing that she had only ever bought 15 CDs in her life despite having 11,000 songs in her music library, and relating an ethical crisis over whether artists have a shot at being compensated in the internet age. Lowery's response is a plea for people to behave ethically and legally with respect to artists' "rights," and though he rebuts her thinking, he shares Emily's fears for the future. They're afraid that music is dying. I think it's time for everyone - especially artists - to get real.

There's a lot of dialogue like this surrounding the state of the music industry, so to me it seems worthwhile to step back and think about that term: "music industry." In the past century we've become so accustomed to records, hit radio singles and music celebrities that we rarely stop to question the mechanisms behind them. "The music industry" comprises a lot of different things, and people have a strong tendency to conflate what I'd call actual music (the performative, cultural and participatory aspects of it) with the record and concert industries. Is it a coincidence that Sony releases CDs on its own record label and makes CD players? Does Clear Channel (subsidiary of Bain Capital) own over 800 radio stations and numerous venues in the US because they want to proliferate art? Color me skeptical. If you conceive of music as an industry, it's important to remember that industries live and die by profit.

We tend to think of musicians as selling music; but do they really "sell music," or do they actually perform/record music and sell records? Given that music is an intangible idea, I'm inclined to argue that it's the latter. Those two spheres of activity no doubt overlap and rely on one another heavily, but I think the distinction is important; while music is fundamentally the same thing it's always been, the record industry (a relatively new entity, historically speaking) is rapidly collapsing. Music sells records, be it cassette, CD or mp3, and up until recently, records were tangible products that needed dedicated players and physical distribution. Then the internet happened. Data and communications technology have made a huge leap that the record industry (essentially a data industry) has failed to anticipate and fumbled to utilize; it's eroding their profits. But Lowery also sees this new technology as eroding artist's "rights," and this is where I take issue with his argument.

What gives music monetary value anyways? When Dave brings up artists' "rights," what he's really talking about is intellectual property*. IP is the most imaginary form of property there is; it only "exists" insofar as it's either acknowledged by society or enforced by governments (and the former mostly happens under threat of the latter). It's the same thing that allows Merck and Pfizer to make enormous monopoly profits on pharmaceuticals, and that lets Monsanto levy fees on fields inadvertently pollinated with their GM crops. I'm not saying that artists are evil corporate entities and deserve to starve (no one does [well, maybe Monsanto does]), but when we ask ourselves what enables them to make a living in the first place (selling records and concert tickets), that's really it. The music industry operates by commodifying (privatizing, really) cultural products. In the absence of some kind of entry barrier (lack of a CD player, DRM, bouncers at the door), the price of admission falls to zero; what Lowery sees as the solemn demise of an art form is really the collapse of a commodity price.

Music - real, proper music - is far from dying. The problem isn't that people no longer value music in the cultural sense; it's that the cost of distributing and accessing recorded music has been dramatically lowered, and the pretense of intellectual property (the privatization of ideas) has become practically unenforceable. This is the reality that musicians need to face. You can hope that someone will pay you $5 for an album via Bandcamp, but who's to say that person won't upload it to Demonoid (RIP) Piratebay and seed it to thousands of others**? While Lowery asks some profound questions ("why are we willing to pay for computers, iPods, smartphones, data plans, and high speed internet access but not the music itself?"), he misses some more pressing ones like: how can artists use the internet to their advantage? and what will people buy that can't be duplicated in milliseconds? Some bands have found great answers: Radiohead famously gave away In Rainbows using a pay-what-you-want model, and Muder by Death is financing their forthcoming album Bitter Drink, Bitter Moon via Kickstarter (to the tune of $187k!). Lowery's right that it's become much harder for musicians to make a buck, but those that have the talent will find a dedicated fanbase that's willing to support them, and will do so in a much fairer, more voluntary fashion than the industry we know today.

--

*Lowery touches on this himself, noting that "by allowing the artist to treat his/her work as actual property, the artist can decide how to monetize his or her work."

**What if they did, and you got famous because people were able to hear your music for free?

On Repeat: HTRK - "Synthetik"

HTRK (Hate Rock) is helping me in my quest for the slowest, most sedate music out there.

Show Don't Tell

In preparation for tonight's screening of Shut Up and Play the Hits, I found myself thinking about "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" and the simplicity of its overwhelming appeal. "Daft Punk is Playing at My House" (my house) is arguably the party anthem of the aughts; "One More Time" by Daft Punk themselves is a strong contender, but this raises a question: how is a song about another band as popular as that band's own music? They're both horses, but completely different colors.

"One More Time" is a party hit because it's euphoric and because it's about celebrating: "we're gonna celebrate, alright, don't stop the dancing!" They're just feeling celebration, you know? We can escape into those golden horn lines for five minutes, before it's too late, and never stop. There's a promise of infinite fun. "Daft Punk..." talks about what's happening around the celebration: fifteen cases of beer, furniture in the garage, and everybody's PA is at my house (my house). It creates a frame out of standard tropes so we can fill in the obvious, implicit blank: we're having a party.

And we're not just having any party. Daft Punk is playing at our house (our house), in real life; THE ROBOTS DESCEND FROM THE BUS. What could be better than that?! And you should note that James Murphy never actually says anything about having fun or celebrating in the lyrics. He's talking about all the shit we have to go through just to even have a party, this impossible Daft Punk house show. But the fun's still there, embedded in the bigger picture of all those real-world things that could otherwise be a total drag. It's a validation and a reminder of why we have fifteen cases of beer and the jocks can't get in the door: because we want to get together and dance (to Daft Punk).

Guts: Azealia Banks' "Neptune" / Ikonika

("Guts" will be a series where I talk about what lies below the surface; things you might not know about a track but that are worth knowing.) Harlem rapper/singer/mermaid Azealia Banks is on my radar for a few reasons; besides being hilariously lewd and awesomely talented, she works with UK dance producers, and awesome ones at that. A few months ago she released "NEEDSUMLUV", a song she did over Machinedrum's track "SXLND", and "Neptune" continues the streak, with the instrumental coming from Ikonika.

Those not familiar with Ikonika should take a moment to educate and appreciate. Born Sara Abdel-Hamid, she's one of the few women out there running with the big boys of bass and dance music. She's been released on Warp and Hyperdub, neither of which labels is a small feat. If you listen to "Please" (below) you can hear that "Neptune" is definitely an Ikonika track, the dead giveaways being the simple square-wave synths and dark-empty-room feel. She's said in a Guardian interview that she "would like to make really good pop music"; maybe's she's on her way?

Theory vs. Practice

I might take some flack for this post, but I feel compelled to opine on how certain ideas just don't work out. For example: what if Jay-Z and Kanye did an album together? That'd be awesome, right? But Watch the Throne fell pretty flat for me. Granted I'm not a huge fan or knowledgeable listener of either individually, but there's something overblown about the whole thing. It feels like they just emailed their verses to the producer and were like "okay, there, done."

Similarly, and again at risk of flack, I think the album version of "Not in Love" by Crystal Castles is better than the single version featuring Robert Smith. There are some differences in the mix that are kind of a wash, and I think Robert Smith did a killer job on the vocals, but the problem's the pacing; whereas the album version shows a lot of restraint and then explodes into a euphoric haze at the 2:50 mark, the single version is just as loud in the first chorus. It blows its load way too early, and the end of the song loses a lot of its effect. Compare for yrself:

   

On Repeat: Liars - "The Exact Colour of Doubt"

It's typically a good move to open an album with one of your most compelling songs, and "The Exact Colour of Doubt" fits that bill to a T. Its gentle percussion and airy swells of synthesizer conjure an image of the ocean as seen from a mountain at 7 AM: there's a sense of being gently cradled close to something, but in the presence of an incredibly vast and powerful space.

Review: Laurel Halo - Quarantine

Laurel Halo, Brooklyn synthwaver extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention over the past two years. She's released a deluge of material both under her main stage name and as King Felix, as well as featuring on Games' That We Can Play EP and gotten the Oneohtrix Point Never treatment on her 2010 track "Metal Confection." Quarantine, fittingly released on Kode9's boundary-crushing Hyperdub label, distills her previous work into a release that's beautifully bold, odd, mature and complex.

Quarantine's charm has as much to do with its deviation from Halo's previous work as it does its similarities. Much like its artwork (anime schoolgirls slaughtering themselves/each other with katanas, blood, intestines, a crumbling rainbow, all superimposed on a glittery hologram grid), Quarantine is a delicate exercise in self-contradiction: almost lacking percussion but still rhythmic, mechanical and yet somehow cathartic; foreign and difficult, but still what might be called pop.

Those already familiar with Laurel Halo will recognize her stacked-fifth, J-pop-esque melodies and complex '80s synths, but will no doubt be struck by the floating, almost arrhythmic feel that permeates much of the album. Halo's vocals are mixed much more loudly and clearly on Quarantine than on King Felix or Hour Logic; on "Years" (above) they're jarringly up-front, dry and vulnerable. Peeling back the layers of synth and reverb on the older records, Quarantine reveals a capable vocal talent whose conversational tone, loose rhyme schemes and intricate melodies feel more like meditative chants than songs.

Halo has said that Quarantine is about "contrails, trauma, volatile chemicals, viruses," but lines like "travelling heart \ don't go away" and "stare at my bed \ feel nothing \ want to realize you're my dream" reveal themes of longing and isolation at play beneath the sci-fi veneer. These decidedly emotional, yet somehow unnatural-sounding gestures are what makes Quarantine so compelling: like a musical equivalent of the uncanny valley, it's at once coldly alienating and warmly human. From abstract wanderings like "Wow" and "Carcass" to the near-pop "Thaw" and "Light & Space" (below), Halo blurs the line between man and machine to craft a contemplative, breathtaking first full-length.

Soundcloud Picks: Holy Other, Morning High

Holy Other's With U EP was easily one of my favorite albums of 2011, and now just seconds ago I saw this pop up in my Soundcloud feed. (It's been posted for 4 days already, but... you get the point.) "Love Some1" sounds darker and thicker than older Holy Other tracks, but still has the emotive, spacious feel and re-pitched vocal slices they've come to be known for. I also give this track 5 math points for starting in 6/8 and transitioning to 4/4 for its last minute. If this track is any indication, their upcoming LP Held is going to be amazing.



Morning High is one of my followers/followees on Soundcloud and recently posted this gem with a free download while supplies last. Its fizzy, sweeping pads and light percussion snaps remind me of "Ruby" or "Would Know" by Mount Kimbie, but with vocal slices a la Lapalux or Holy Other. But most importantly, it's sexy.

Cut from the Same Cloth

     

Yesterday's post (and Pat's enthusiasm therefor) reminded me of an interesting tidbit I discovered a while back: The National's Boxer and Interpol's Turn on the Bright Lights were recorded in the same studio. What was striking about that discovery to me is that I always thought they sounded similar; their monotone, baritone singers and busy drumming have led me (to some disagreement) to describe The National as "a folksier version of Interpol." And lo, it turns out that both were produced by Peter Katis and recorded at Tarquin Studios in Connecticut, meaning the sonic connection is even deeper than I imagined.

Bonus fact: Animal Collective's Water Curses and Deerhunter's Microcastle (as well as Atlas Sound's Parallax) were both recorded at Rare Book Room in Brooklyn.

All About the Sound

As an aspiring engineer and general audio nerd, sometimes I like the timbre of an album or song as much as the piece itself. There are a lot of factors that go into making a record sound good, and the engineering choices made throughout the process have a profound, make-or-break impact on how we perceive the finished product. Here are some examples of things I both love and hate, though all are records I love:

(Note: the YouTube versions of these songs might not be representative of how the album actually sounds. An MP3 320 copy will give you the best idea what the hell I'm talking about.)

Loves:



Land of Talk - Some Are Lakes: In a word: warmth. omfg warmth. Some Are Lakes has lots of low midrange and silky smoothed-out high mids. Some might argue that it's mixed too dark, but I can't describe how pleasant it is to my ear.



Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain: This might be the most perfectly-balanced rock album ever. Crooked Rain is a great example of the benefits of mixing a little bit soft: smooth midrange with incredibly light high-end clarity and detail. I want to know everything about how this album was made.


Flying Lotus - Los Angeles: Everything Flying Lotus touches, including his work producing for Gonjasufi and Thundercat, has this awesome, warm, rubbery saturation on it. He has a tendency to mix too loud, but somehow the analog overdrive isn't overbearing, and he always keeps his bass in check.


Hates:




Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: This album is great. It's also flat. To (mis-)quote my friend Miles, "it sounds like it was just slapped together." I wouldn't be surprised to find out its dynamic range is less than 4 dB. What does that mean in human speak? All loud, no soft. You need one to appreciate the other.


Washed Out - Within and Without: I like Washed Out a lot, but the compression on this album is straight-up wrong. I don't know who the fuck mixed this, but I find myself turning up the volume every 5 seconds. Why? Too much low end in the mix and too-fast attack on the mastering compressor. Let it breathe, man.



Memoryhouse - "Lately (Deuxieme)" [2010 version]: This song (and video [and actress]) is orgasmically beautiful; the tapey/distorted guitar, pulsing bass drum and twinkly synths are amazing. But there's one glaring flaw: the vocals are riding the hard limiter. Most people wouldn't even notice, but it's especially tangible when heard on headphones, manifested as a rough, crackly distortion, and it bothers me to no end.

On Repeat: Death Grips - "Klink"

I was a huge screamo fan in high school, but for the past while I've mostly eschewed really aggressive music. I "get" why things like brostep and metalcore appeal to people, but I've always kept a skeptical distance from the  vanity machismo and token aggression that people try to project via that music. So it's a little bit weird to me that I like Death Grips so much; they're loud, angry and abrasive as fuck. But they're more than that, which is why I think it works.

Besides just being loud, Death Grips is weird: their production is thick, disorienting and laden with glitchy sounds, and they've somehow managed to revive rap-rock without it being douchey. If chillwave is a hazy escapist dream, Death Grips is the sharp sober awakening from that. And unlike Skrillex or (i.e.) Killswitch Engage, they're pissed off with a social purpose: "Klink" is a FTP anthem, with lines like "whatcha gonnna do when they come for you? \ A gang of hatin' pigs! \ What have they ever really done for you? \ Ain't never done shiiit!" Death Grips combine power and frenzy with a focus that demands attention, and repeat listens.

Review: Beach House - Bloom

Like so many younger siblings, it seems impossible to avoid comparing Beach House's new album Bloom to 2010's Teen Dream; when a band releases an album that popular and well-received, they have a tough act to follow, and face the all-too-real risk of fading into obscurity. That risk isn't something Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally need to worry about, since Bloom can certainly hold its own, but I feel like Beach House have hit rather than raised the bar this time around, if that makes any sense.

Bloom is immediately recognizable as a Beach House album - lush walls of reverb, simple drumming, tambourine, Legrand's smoky vocals, Scally's telecaster ringing like a bell - but it feels more energetic than Teen Dream, seeing the duo experimenting with louder sounds and (slightly) faster tempos. Songs like the album opener "Myth" (above) and "Other People" (my personal favorite) will feel most familiar to Teen Dream fans, whereas the syncopated "New Year" and "Troublemaker" go uptempo without sacrificing the dreamy sound Beach House are known for. And the lyrical content will be familiar to Beach House fans as well; Victoria Legrand can still be heard belting out love-lorn lines like "the consequence \ of what you do to me" and "someone like you."

While Bloom and Teen Dream might feature similar songs, the sonic differences are prominent: the latter's thick, languid, mid-heavy sound has been dialed back a bit in favor of louder, more detailed-sounding production. Bloom's tighter compression and heavier reverb (really Beach House? More reverb?) sound overwrought to me, but the tracks also sound more spacious, with a not-unwelcome tad more treble in the mix. The drums are also busier and featured more prominently in the mix throughout the album, which is no doubt a factor in Bloom's fuller sound and higher energy level.

If I can make any complaint about Bloom, it would be a lack of restraint. Beach House has a knack - a reputation, even - for making their small lineup sound big, and while Bloom's arrangements aren't any more grandiose than Teen Dream's, it comes off somehow sounding a bit bloated and repetitive. All the euphoria of past Beach House albums is still there; there's just too much of it too often. Bloom's louder production is at least partially to blame for that, with a lot of the dynamic subtleties of Victoria Legrand's delivery squashed out and the bass at a constant rumble. The album seems to meander between mezzo-forte and forte; all loud all the time.

All things considered, Bloom is a solid continuation of Beach House's dream-pop legacy and absolutely worth listening to. I once described it to a friend as "a Beach House album," but based on their previous work that's not a bad thing at all.

In the Flesh Vol. III.V: Kurt James Werner (Again)

Check this video of Kurt James Werner performing live at CCRMA Modulations 2012

On Repeat: SBTRKT - "Something Goes Right"

I don't feel like I need to say a lot about this. Ignore the weird video.

In the Flesh Vol. III: Kurt James Werner

Kurt Werner and I share a special bond. A former bandmate/roommate/confidante and fellow engineer, he's one of the few people I can count on to both greet me as "slut" and enthusiastically nerd out with me about psychoacoustics. I mean, who can you text about audio masking at 10:30 on a Friday? Kurt. So when he finally finished this gem, I was excited. I've always known Kurt as a capable musician, so I'm not surprised at what a solid effort this album is, but "impressed" might be the right word.

Schism Method is a confluence of Kurt's various audio projects: a blend of ambient/concréte, circuit-bent glitches, algorithmic breakbeats and poppy NES synths. It meanders between spacious soundscapes and twee chiptunes, like an Atari occasionally dissolving into the sky, with the rhythmic and ambient moments carefully arranged to blend together seamlessly. It covers an impressive range of moods, from warm and wistful to cold and tense, all while maintaining a cohesive sound. I was especially happy to hear "Into the Ocean" and "& Fingertips", chiptune reworkings of World's First Flying Machine songs (our old band; RIP), albeit with some embellishments in Kurt's straight-ahead, energetic pop style. And he's working on his PhD at the same time? This guy's too good.

Adventures in iPodlessness

I love the iPod, but iTunes? Not so much. It's slow, increasingly bloated, and for some inexplicable reason, my iTunes library started fragging itself every 3-4 months this year. After my last mass extinction event, I said "ya basta" and made the switch to Songbird. It's been interesting.

Unfortunately Songbird hasn't had iPod support since version 1.2 (I'm running 1.10), so that meant using another device. I've always been opposed to having music on my phone because I could never carry a significant amount of it (and people who listen to music on phones are douches), but after deciding that maybe 16GB wouldn't be so bad, I decided to go for it and load my music onto my Droid RAZR.

The Gear: Songbird 1.10.2, Songbird for Android, Motorola Droid RAZR Maxx, SanDisk 16GB SD card

The Good:

Songbird's extensions and integration features are flippin' awesome. After adding my music to Songbird, I was able to sync my play counts with Last.fm directly (crucial for managing music on limited space), making migration a cool summer breeze. Hooray for data! I also added the Songkick add-on, which notifies you if an artist is playing near you soon. Another major like is that Songbird automatically looks for new music in your library folder. As far as managing your library on your computer it's very hassle-free.

You don't need the android Songbird to sync with Songbird on PC, but I recommend it. On the device end, the Android Songbird interface is much better than the standard android music player; its menus are more intuitive, and it features a lock screen widget that has play/pause and seek controls, which is a hell of a lot faster than unlocking your phone every time you want to skip a song. It also scrobbles to Last.fm in real-time(!) and lets you pull up a flickr stream for whatever artist you're currently listening to, which is kinda gimmicky but fun.

The Bad:

Songbird's sync capability, at least with Android devices, suuuuuuucksss. I plugged in my RAZR expecting to be able to sync selected playlists like in iTunes, but only the stock smart playlists were available for that. But oh! I discovered, you can click and drag playlists to your device! That'll do it. That'll get your songs onto the SD card, but it doesn't properly sync; it only adds missing files on top of what's there, without deleting anything. Eventually I had to download a folder sync add-on to sync my custom management playlists, which is pretty pathetic, and even that has sync errors.

As for the phone/app, I have some minor gripes that are fixable. The scrolling motion in Songbird is hypersensitive and makes choosing artists harder than it should be. And I miss hardware buttons, but this is a problem with any touch-screen phone. As with all Motorola droid phones, the volume intervals are stupidly wide, letting me choose between "a little too quiet" and "significantly too loud." A continuous volume slider in Songbird would be a nice touch; strangely that's missing.

The Verdict:

Overall, the experience of switching from iTunes/Pod to Songbird and Android has been better than I expected; I thought I'd be running back to my iPod and trying to put Linux on it, but I'm actually kind of liking this. 16GB of space for a 65GB library isn't much, but it's surprisingly livable, and can easily be remedied by just buying a 32GB SD card from Newegg. Songbird has some major shortcomings, but it also has some really nice features, and because it's open-source there will hopefully be more. I'm even contemplating writing my own "smarter playlists" add-on that'll let you do playlists for most-listened albums and artists so you can keep albums intact.

In the Flesh Vol. II: Good Night and Good Morning

Good Night and Good Morning are some of the most talented musicians I am honored to say I know. Their new album Narrowing Type was just released and will be available on Own Records as a limited-edition 12" (you betcherass I'm buying that), and in case you're wondering, yes, they sound like this live. They have tremendous restraint, incredible tone and are super-nice guys to boot. "Philadelphia" also features violin from my former bandmate Gautam Srikishan.

Streaming Part II: The Day After Streaming

On a note related to my post "Don't Cross the Streams," how is the iTouch the only 64-GB mp3 player out there? I want 90 GB and hardware buttons, dammit. /rant

On Repeat: EMA - "Marked"

When Past Life Martyred Saints got Pitchfork'd into hypeland, I kind of slept on it; for a while I was just generally not interested, then I downloaded the album and wasn't super into it. So EMA kind of hibernated in my music collection for a long time until one day shuffle brought me to "Coda" from the same album, which is a brilliant, a capella interlude. "Marked" reprises and builds on a lot of the themes and lyrics in "Coda", building from a quiet intro to a mezzo-forte chorus. It's a quiet song, but it's mixed loudly, giving it a fitting air of proximity and vulnerability; the guitar fret scratches are terrifyingly loud, and Erika M. Anderson's groans sound like howls when she cries, "I wish that every time he touched me left a mark." It's a song about hurt, shame and regret, and Erika sounds so hurt that I have to believe her.

Don't Cross the Streams

(Video unrelated, but really good.) There's a cold, precise, strategic logic behind the shift towards streaming services and devices. The reduced onboard memory of streaming devices enables portable form factors and makes them cheaper to produce, and having instant access to a plethora of content without sifting through shady sources or waiting for downloads ain't bad either. While the music industry's been busy dropping ball for the past ten years, the founders of Spotify made an important realization: if you want to compete with piracy, you need to be more convenient than piracy. And for better or worse, they're doing just that.

But there's a slight contradiction at play here: if Moore's law keeps up and memory keeps getting smaller and cheaper, what's to keep people from wanting - and consequently buying - devices with more memory? iPods aren't exactly prohibitively expensive (they couldn't move millions if they were [although they are a low-margin-high-volume product]). And services like Google Music allow you to upload your own library and stream from any device. So there might be a chance yet for us music aficionados to avoid being herded into the pay-per-play system. But we need something new.

If memory costs and personal streaming are non-issues, the real weak point emerges: convenience. Spotify lets you listen to whatever the hell you want (if you have an internet connection), and requires zero ripping, management, etc. I personally am not interested in streaming because I want to have high-quality (320 kbps) audio available with or without internet, and possibly because I'm old-fashioned. I enjoy managing my music library (I chronoalphabetize my vinyl records). But most people don't. So why not create pirate streaming services? Data connections are fast enough; anonymity seems like the biggest problem. Streaming services are great, but to me they smell like a closing door on free information. Once someone has exclusive control of data they can charge (or advertise over) whatever they want. Let's hope someone in the underground cooks up something better.

In the Flesh, Vol. I: Wolfgang strutz.

In the Flesh (if I keep it up) will be a series of posts of awesome music by people I know IRL. Most of them will probably be close friends of mine. But today's ITF is an exception, in that I don't really know her that well. The lovely lady you're hearing is named Madelyn, and she plays a banjo or two. She described her music as "Hindu spiritual folk," which I'd pretty much agree with. Her album, Wolfgang sitz., spans chanting, meditation, sassy blues and folk, and if I'm not mistaken was self-recorded. It's semi-lo-fi and delightfully light. Favorites include "FolkLore" (above), "Sat Dat" and "Dazing Days".

Sweet and Fleeting

Some things just aren't meant to last. You know it, but you see it out and enjoy it while you can. (I could stand to think this way more w/r/t women.) As I began to come of age as a music fan, I started to realize that certain albums I liked probably wouldn't be in rotation further down the road, and that they didn't really matter to a lot of other people. When I was 15 I was hooked on Juturna by Circa Survive. I actually still like it a fair bit, and to my surprise have some good friends who liked it back in the day. But it's kind of a rare, closeted mutual love, like we were all in marching band together or something.

The latest album in that vein for yrs truly would be Foals' Total Life Forever. Foals are decidedly what Will Sheff would call a "mid-level band": they've got the chops to be signed to Sub Pop, but they've never managed to garner the snob-level acclaim that some of their other labelmates have. And to be a bit blunt, rightly so. I love Foals, but I know in my heart that they're "just" a mathy, atmospheric dance rock act. Most people don't appreciate (see: care about) the subtleties that make their bloopy guitars different from say Bloc Party or Maps and Atlases, and you need most people on your side to be relevant.

That being said, I like this album a lot. Like I think I like it more than I should. But fuck doing what you should. Despite its Nevermind-cum-movie-poster album art and weird title, Total Life Forever is a step forward for Foals. Their earlier Antidotes only stood out slightly from the rest of the dance-rock pack, but TLF feels more unique and mature. It's funkier, more emotive, has better lyrics; it's better in every way. Even if I'm bound to look back on it as "just another indie rock album" from my youth, it's good enough to make Foals my 13th most listened artist for the last 12 months (thx last.fm), which is no small feat.

Yasiin Bey - N****s in Poorest

As I just learned, Yasiin Bey is probably better known to you as Mos Def. Whatever you call him, he's a pro, especially at tearing down Jay-Z songs (a la "The Rape Over" [a burn on "The Takeover"]). As someone who thought Watch the Throne was too bloated and gaudy to be really enjoyable, this is pretty vindicating.

Breaking: World Officially Over

*facepalm*

Review: Patrice & Friends - Champagne Saunas

What if you inverted part of the Chillwave formula; instead of dropping funky pop from house tempos to 85 BPM, you pump it up to 145, 150? You'd get Patrice & Friends, give or take an 808. Champagne Saunas is a smart and successful attempt at bringing some pop sensibility to juke, and I am smitten. Its 11 tracks are as fast-paced and spazzy as any Addison Groove or Ramadanman cut, but the old school funk jams layered on top of the hyper/-repetitive booty bass makes for a collection of songs that you can sing along to as hard as you'll want to juke to it.

I have some minor gripes with the production, and at times it seems like the samples do all of the heavy lifting, but those are minor blemishes on what's otherwise a solid listen front to back. Saunas' cohesiveness lends it an air of musical maturity, and although all of the tracks are cut from a common formula there's enough musical and lyrical contrast to let each stand out. "Back Room" is dark and abstract; "Dancefloor Whispers" is glittery disco euphoria; "Stutterin'" is wistful and melancholy. I wouldn't expect Champagne Saunas to light the world on fire, but it's a brilliant experiment in juke that'll please more than a few ears. Check it all out on Bandcamp:

On Repeat: Bonobo - "Eyesdown" (Machinedrum Remix)

Behold: a half-assed update for my loyal reader(s). I've listened to this track roughly 8 times in the past 24 hours. There's some dance music that seems way too fast to actually dance to (Gabber, Juke, DnB, whatever this is) but there's an interesting contrast at work in this remix that makes it worthwhile to at least braindance/head nod to. The drums are jittery, light, almost microtonal, and the vocals are on the quick side, but the sweeping, spacious pads loom in the background like a slow-moving cloud. And that vocal arp made up of "so slow" is to die for. Mmm.

You Know I Couldn't Last

Wherein I become the nth person to write about Lana Del Rey. Lizzy Del Grant has generated a lot of hype, and as buzz artists do, a lot of hate too (her horrible SNL appearance hasn't helped there). There are a lot of quixotic debates about her authenticity, which to me seems like a waste of breath; she's very obviously a fabrication, a pop star in progress produced for crossover alternative appeal. So to me, the question becomes what the worth/appeal of that fabrication is, and why it provokes the reaction that it has.

In this Jezebel article one of the authors' distaste is related to the fact that she seems like a "'pre-fabricated indie' affair," which is a pretty unsettling contradiction. And it's that contradiction that I think makes Lana Del Rey so challenging (see: divisive); it's not just that she's constructed, but rather what she's made of. A self-described "lolita lost in the hood", her project combines retro Americana and Hollywood glamour with a sultry, pseudo-gangster persona. Her image is built on all of the nostalgia and kitsch that's become synonymous with hipsterdom, but in a way that's very overtly and unironically sexy. And when was the last time "indie" was really "sexy"?

So we're faced with a crisis of aesthetics, and that's really the crux of this Del Rey business. The once-esoteric(?*) realm of analog pictures and retro clothes is being repurposed as a vehicle for a pop singer. And really it was about time, wasn't it? In the age of instagram, chillwave and Urban Outfitters, it's a good branding decision more than anything. Her iffy live performances have created a lot of backlash, but what if she survives? We might be experiencing a shift in the means of seduction. Stay tuned.

You Know This Can't Be Good

Have you ever clicked on something just to prove to yourself you were right?

Turds: "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out"

Part of my criteria for a great album is that almost all songs on it be really good. There's always some wiggle room, so I'll usually allow for one throwaway track: for example, I don't think "Untitled" adds much to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. On The Replacements' 1984 Let It Be, the throwaway track is very much "Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out." I love The Replacements' consequences-be-damned, play-whatever-whenever attitude (especially on Let It Be, which is more eclectic and less cohesive than Tim), but this song is very much not The Replacements. Paul Westerberg's charm is his ability to write songs that are either witty and amusing or endearingly blue, and "Tommy" is neither of those. Paul's delivery is oversexed and swagger-y. The lyrical content is unrelatable. The music is "meh." It's a turd.

On Repeat: Wye Oak - "Civilian"

Jenn Wasner from Wye Oak has recently joined Liz Powell (Land of Talk) and Victoria Legrand (Beach House) on the "boss lady singers Chris has a boner for" list. Although these women are all reasonably attractive, I should explain that this list has little to do with physical appearance and everything to do with being an amazing singer-songwriter. Jenn Wasner sings lower than most women do, but her tone's still airy and beautiful, and when you combine that with the intervals and elaborate melodies in this song it's a recipe for orgasm. And then she plays an amazingly distorted, sloppy, raw guitar solo.

If I'm interpreting the lyrics correctly, "Civilian" is about a woman whose insecurities have either ended or prevented her relationship with this Civilian guy. He still "sleeps in the bed with (her)," but as the song goes on the prevalence of past tense makes it clear that he's only metaphorically there. It's an achey-breaky song in general, but the part that really guts me is when she laments how she's "perfectly able to hold my own hand, but I still can't kiss my own neck." I'm gonna go cry now.

The Ghost of What Should Have Been

Sometimes albums are kind of disappointing; it sucks, but it's true. Waiting for You by King Midas sound is sadly one of those for me. When I first started listening to dubstep around early 2008 I could tell it was gonna catch on with people, and I always expected there to be some sort of vocal/pop dubstep album that would blow everyone's collective mind and break into the mainstream. But aside from that one Britney Spears song Rusko did, it never really happened. As far as acclaimed full-length dubstep albums with a vocal focus go, pickings are pretty slim; there's Waiting for You, London Zoo, Kode9's Memories of the Future, and the self-titled James Blake (which I think is genius).

I know I'm coming off as a downer, but it's not all doom and gloom; "Cool Out," "Meltdown," and "Goodbye Girl" are complete bangers. The concept's brilliant, too: a nocturnal, grimy, Portishead-esque, vocal-oriented dubstep album has a lot of potential. But there are some loose ends that hold it back. The songwriting and melodies aren't very strong on a lot of the tracks, and you need those for pop appeal. On top of that, the production feels a little formulaic at times; the first half of the album's almost too cohesive. And "Earth a Kill Ya" and "I Man" deviate thematically from what's obviously meant to be a breakup album by delving into spiritual Rasta bullshit, not to mention those songs are just kind of turds.

Overall, it's certainly not a bad album. I'll admit I'm demanding. But as far as what I was hoping for, I didn't really get it until last year's James Blake LP, and while it's a brilliant album, it's more minimal than what I'm envisioning. Dubstep has undeniable popular appeal (see: Skrillex is nominated for 5 Grammies), so I'm kinda surprised it hasn't been done... well, poppier. I guess there's still time; maybe the next Materielle release.

Dreaming of a Free Music Economy

You've no doubt seen the SOPA/PROTECT IP hubbub raging today on the webs, and as a lover of music (nevermind how I procure it) it seems fitting to let my own political ideas vent a bit. SOPA and PIPA both threaten the free flow of information, supposedly to protect the rights of authors, musicians and creators. But the real purpose of these laws is to guarantee big entertainment (RIAA, MPAA, et al) their price point.

As a musician myself I sometimes find it hard to defend piracy; making great albums takes time, energy, expensive equipment and artistic brilliance. And all of the people involved need to eat. But the reality of current technology is that reproducing digital information takes practically no time, no energy, very cheap equipment and minimal brainpower. So how do we reconcile these two seemingly-conflicting facts?

My vision is something like Kickstarter meets Bandcamp: bands post their material, for free or for a donation, and fans can download music and see how much still needs to be donated to the "keep X alive" fund. A quick glance at Last.fm shows that Grizzly Bear has almost 800,000 listeners. That's just Last.fm users. If each of them donated just $1 yearly, each member of the band would be making (see: raking in) $160k per year before expenses. That's executive-type shit. Drake would be making $2 million. There are obviously hidden expenses and overhead to consider, but compared to buying a $15 CD, that's a really cheap way to support your favorite artists.

I firmly believe that music and musicians have value; that's why I go to as many shows as I can, tell friends about bands I like, and buy albums that I love on vinyl. But I also believe that value should be constructed through a voluntary dialogue, and SOPA would stop just that. The media industry has been misdirecting its energy for years by trying to enforce its profits rather than earn them, and has only recently realized the benefits of making their products freely/cheaply available on services like Spotify and Netflix. The internet is a beautiful thing, and it doesn't have to mean poverty for artists (although it might for high-overhead media conglomerates). Let's keep it free.

In Five Words or Less...

Depsite being a sucker for songs and songwriting, one of my more recent fascinations has been songs with very few words. Songs like "Tequila" "Search for Delicious" by Panda Bear manage to say a lot with very little; rather than dragging on and on, the message is simple: "it's good to be a little scared." "Near Dark," above, is an awesome example too. The repeating "I can't take my eyes off you" usually expresses fascination, but in this dark, emotive context it might equally imply distrust. It's an amazingly complex message conveyed in seven words, and a great subversion of an overplayed trope in love songs. I'll call it "semantically dense" to really bring the academic fuckfacery.

Love/Hate: Toro y Moi

I'm incredibly guilty of having mixed feelings. In one of my darker moments, an ex-bandmate accused me of being "kind of lukewarm on everything." That cut deep. But in the context of dis/liking an artist, I think it's pretty understandable; sometimes even great artists put out shit songs, so it's entirely possible to like half of someone's discography and hate the other. Enter Toro y Moi.

I'll admit to being a chillwave hater when it first started popping up (I still scoff at the name, although the discovery that it's a hipsterrunnoff joke makes it slightly acceptable), and I didn't listen to Toro y Moi for a long time after he broke. Eventually I came around and gave Causers of This a shot, and as my cynical ass often is, I was pleasantly surprised. So when Underneath the Pine came out and got Pitchfork's Best New Music blessing I was optimistic. Torrented that shit in a minute. And was promptly disappointed.

Here's the thing: Chaz Bundick is not a good vocalist, nor is he endearingly bad. He's pretty mediocre. And that's my beef with chillwave in general; aside from some choice singles, it's just kind of boring. Underneath the Pine is a brave album artistically, taking a huge step away from Chaz's older sounds, but it falls flat for me. Whereas Causers had syrupy, reverby production and catchy melodies to make up for the OK vox (see tracks like "Freak Love"), Underneath the Pine just sounds like rehashed late-'70s funk, only without any of the energy that made that music so good. I love "I Can Get Love" (above) which came out as a B-side from Underneath... and executes the retro-funk formula well. But songs like "New Beat," which was supposed to be the lead single, sound completely dead to me. I guess it's got a catchy synth line and some wah'd/flanged guitars, but those aren't enough to carry the rest of the track. Stay spacey Chaz Bundick. Please.

Tropes I: The Break-Up Dialogue

I've had this stuck in my head all day, so I figured it'd be fitting to write about the breakup dialogue. There are a lot of songs that follow this format, and each has its own distinct flavor that no doubt endears it to certain people more than others. And it's that nuance that interests me; the tiny details and subtleties of this otherwise pretty-universal experience that keeps these songs (and those awful, wonderful experiences) from blurring into one another. In "Don't You Want Me," the male dump-ee isn't just hurt and rejected, he's pissed. He shook this girl up and made her happy and now she's leaving him? And she still loves him, she says. But she guesses it's just what she must do.

This is a mile away from "Nothing Better" by The Postal Service. Ben Gibbard plays the mopey, heartbroken lover who won't let go. There are melodramatic images of cracked rib cages and literal broken hearts. He's clinging hard, still infatuated and gargling shit like "my darling, I love you so," trying to tell her how awesome it'd be if they got married. But there's something he's ignoring, namely the huge list of transgressions his ladyfriend alludes to. There's no fondness left on her end. He's had his chance. And again she has to leave.

It seems like she's always leaving (probably because of the relative male dominance in, well, everything), but in Titus Andronicus' "To Old Friends and New", Patrick Stickles seems resigned and apathetic. He's not obsessed, he's not in love; he seems pretty jaded with her, actually, and all he offers is a lukewarm sense of tolerance, letting her know that "it's alright, the way that you live." "To Old Friends..." isn't explicitly a breakup song (and the writer claims it's about family), but that confusion is what makes it so unique. Whereas the above stories have someone who's trying to keep the dream/ruse alive, this ship is pretty sunk. "We could build a nice life together if we don't kill each other first," she says. But everything's a mess; nothing is good. They're overlooking all of the awful things the other does as long as they "keep up (their) part of the deal." This is on some real Tainted Love shit.

It's easy to wax trite about how complicated relationships are, but trite things are often overplayed because everybody feels them. And just because everybody's felt a certain way doesn't make it insignificant; if anything, that's the exact opposite of what the cult of pop professes. Think about the last two relationships you had. Are they the same? (Hopefully the answer is no.) Underneath the surface of "breakup song" or "failed relationship" are myriad spaces to occupy, and that's what keeps tropes like this - and the rest of us - alive.