Category: electro-rock

Horse The Band – Bunnies (R. Borlax, 2003)

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The epic beginning… the synth chords… and then the devolution into screamo madness. Luckily it’s not all bad – occasional breaks make it bearable, which is good, because those synths are hot! And the lyrics are interesting, the delivery is good, the guitars fit in nicely, the percussion is exactly what the doctor ordered… it’s just all too much sometimes. Anyway, the music video fits in nicely both with the oldskool synth sound and Horse The Band’s signature ‘nintendo-core’ sound. What’s the song about? Maybe we care a bit more then Cutsman:

And a beef will rise… again!
broken machine in his hand!

Ten words:
snapping - bunnies - twitching - gurgling – forget – the – bombs – in – your – eyes

Roaring with whispers to the tiny bunnies
SMASH/SPLAT those fucking bunnies.

Send them information in a sensationalist manner, THEY CORRUPT!
Heads snapping and misspelling eyes twitching in response to the sound of the words.

Red world-like words
zooming, boiling
Moons in the shallow sky.

Roaring with whispers to the tiny bunnies
SPLAT/SQUISH those fucking bunnies.

Twitching, bleeding, screaming,
bring the hammer down.
Screaming bunnies bleeding
bloody bunnies smeared across the ground.

Drool spilling down his chin
unto his beard
as he screams red words at
A blank and pointless sky
of mothers.
Red words popping and crackling black.

Ten words:
Snapping – bunnies – twitching – gurgling – forget – the – bombs – IN – YOUR – EYES!

Forget the bombs in your eyes,
Speak the words to crack open the sky.

What’s going on? “forget the bombs in your eyes” is an excellent line, and the breakdown at “drool spilling down his chin” is good too, bringing up the ‘red words’ again, the ‘red world-like words’. The “Send them information in a sensationalist manner, they corrupt! Heads snapping and misspelling eyes twitching in response to the sound of the words.” line seems like the important part. It sounds like people with knee-jerk reactions – paranoid people, people who watch the news and keep their kid inside or out of chat rooms, people who post totally ignorant comments on any news article or piece of online media they run across.

Anyway, you’ve got to admit this song is a wild ride. Due to my general lack of appreciation of the genre, Horse The Band rarely comes up with tracks that I really enjoy, but this one is definite a winner. The music video is cool as well, of course.

Horse The Band – Cutsman (R. Borlax, 2003)

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Normally I’m not into this kind of music – but this track has several saving graces that round out the harder-to-stand attributes: it starts off with a sample from ‘The Wizard‘ talking about the Power Glove… and then the oldskool synth arpeggio hits you at :18. It’s raw, it’s held together by occasional bursts of percussion and guitar, and slides right into the hardcore instrumentation that populates the rest of the song.

What are they singing about? Do you really care with all the guitar and drums and synthesizer? I don’t! But it warms my heart to know that it’s at least somewhat related to the eponymous megaman boss. Luckily it isn’t all-screaming-all-the-time, and the breakat 1:50 is fun… “cut, Cut, CUT, CUT!”

Luckily, the synth reappears at 3:08, in time to save the song from descending into screamoblivion with some well-placed perky chording, and wraps up with another Power Glove reference from The Wizard. Breath a sigh of relief – we made it! What a ride, amiright?

Shiny Toy Guns – Ghost Town (Season of Poison, 2008)

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things start off weird, with some almost wild-west theatrical vocals, which quickly transition into something that reminds me more of The Offpsring. Then, at :29, we get the female vocals:

everyone livin in ghost town
everyone buried in wasteland

we don’t want to we don’t have to
be like that livin in ghost town

all the boys shout it out loud now
all the girls scream it out loud uh,

we don’ t want to
we don’t have to
live like that.

pull me back you know
we’re never gonna back down

Like ‘When Did This Storm Begin’, once the female singer starts belting out those lyrics, time flies by – the backing instrumentation keeps things solid in the background, but it’s really all about the sound of her voice. The male singer jumps in to help out with the chorus: “we’re dead in this ghost town, you’re better than ghost oh, let go let go.”

A break at 2:32 returns to the brief intro, then moves into the bridge, with new lyrical melodies and additional accompaniment, and then a nice big break at 3:02, ending at 3:12 and jumping right back into the chorus. The synths bend around, the guitar jams, and everything stops suddenly as the track ends, leaving the two vocalists hanging in midair.

Shiny Toy Guns – When Did This Storm Begin? (Season of Poison, 2008)

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The nearly minute-long intro for this track sort of makes sense to me – it’s like a bridge from the previous album ‘We Are Pilots’ to this next one. The staccato bass line is joined by occasional bursts of vocal samples and spacey synth sound effects until a short burst of kicks at 1:09 heralds the arrival of the Muse-esque male vocals: ”Call my name, answer me where I stand.”

In the background of this plea, trance pads warm up, until – boom! angry female vocals at 1:34!

Here’s a story of the way I wasn’t meant to be raised,
bright yellow sun that fades away to black and blue every place
There’s a bottle in the shape of your love for me

A little more reasonably, she continues: “Now the clouds are racing higher, blinding arrows away. There’s in darkness off the streets that my electricitay,” before getting angry again:

Gold ( or God?) shatters the sky,
this is the first day of the rest of our lives,
’cause no one really lives or dies.

You can’t help getting caught up in the epic 3/3/2 drum line, the heavy pads and guitar, and the reverbed vocals – the next few minutes go by quickly, droning requests to “call my name, where I stand” are interrupted only once more by the angry girl from before:

Every night you drink the money left to pay all the bills.
No room for us, but there’s another fucking bottle of pills.
Here’s your trophy on my face, it’s just an eye anyway..

Now the clouds are racing higher, blinding arrows away.
There’s in darkness off the streets that my elec-tricity

This will go no further, I swear it dies today.
Your nights will stay forever if you dare once more touch me.

The ‘plot’ is fairly familiar – a girl with an abusive alcoholic of a lover/father finally getting the balls to stand up for herself. But the lyrics go so well with the vocal style, and the whole thing works incredibly well as an introduction to Shiny Toy Gun’s new musical direction on their new album. The track ends with a school bell, but it’s only there to set up the next song. Unfortunately the majority of the other tracks don’t live up to the expectations that this one suggests, with the exception of ‘Ghost Town’, and possibly ‘Ricochet’, both of which are in the same vein.

David Bowie – Hallo Spaceboy (Outside, 1995)

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My other favorite track from Bowie’s ‘Outside’ album, ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ starts out heavy and barely lets up – the crunchy synth line at the beginning keep things on-track while various ambient vocal samples swirl around (similar to the intro to The Heart’s Filthy Lesson), until the percussion hits hard at :25. This relentless pounding lets up just as it edges on annoying, making room for the vocals:

Spaceboy, you’re sleepy now,
Your silhouette is so stationary
You’re released but your custody calls
And I want to be free
Don’t you want to be free?
Do you like girls or boys?
It’s confusing these days
But Moondust will cover you, cover you
This chaos is killing me

At the mention of the murderous chaos, the percussion slams back into the track, along with some more guitar and subtle synths in the background, spreading out into a sort of industrial soundscape, which boils around for a bit until a short break at 2:20. The berse repeats, but this time along with the pounding percussion, which intensifies as the lyrics wrap up, ending in another short break at 3:02 (filled by mutterings about moon dust), immediately stepping back up into the familiar pounding rhythm and guitar exploration. This time things break off at 3:34, as brass stings and spiraling electric piano spread out for a bit, before collapsing back to the default lineup. At this point, the song has given all it has to offer – it continues to rage for another minute or so, ultimately fading out.

The repeated return to the slamming ‘kick and snare on every beat’ pattern doesn’t ever really get annoying, since it’s broken often enough to give the listener time to rest, and the lyrics are obscure enough to catch your attention – is this song about drugs? about sex? about rock’n'roll? Anyway, played through headphones at full volume, it’s inescapably catchy.

David Bowie – The Heart’s Filthy Lesson (Outside, 1995)

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Bowie’s ‘Outside’ album is an entire trip in itself, but a couple of track stand out, mixing the abraisive experimental sound of the project as a whole with an accessible sort of heavy industrial pop. As soon as The Heart’s Filthy Lesson begins, there’s a sort of harsh droning line, maybe an organ, accompnied by some ambient sounds, creating the tensions that’s broken as the instrumentation enters at :24. The sporadic overdriven electric guitar and Bowie’s vocals trade off over a quieter rythem guitar, bass, occasional piano arpeggios, and a consistent drum line.

Things get weird for a moment – “Paddy? Who’s been wearing Miranda’s clothes?” – before featuring a frantic piano break, and surfacing back into the main theme. This is good enough to be a sort of interstitial, but the song continues to progress after a quick break and vocal sigh at 3:21. The bridge sounds the same, but changes things up enough to keep the song interesting, and adds more guitar, building tension until the peak of the song at 3:59: “Oh Paddy… I think I’ve lost my way…”

The rest of the sound is a devolving outro. Through the song, Bowie doesn’t really identify what filthy lesson the heart has to offer:

There’s always the diamond friendly
Sitting in the Laugh Hotel
The heart’s filthy lesson
With her hundred miles to hell

Oh, Ramona, if there was only something between us
If there was only something between us
Other than our clothes

Paddy will you carry me, I think I’ve lost my way
I’m already five years older I’m already in my grave

Will you carry me?
Oh Paddy, I think I’ve lost my way

The line “I’m already five years older, I’m already in my grave” is great, and Bowie’s repeated cryptic remarks during the outro, “Paddy, what a fantastic death abyss! Tell the others.” is full of suggestion as well. Other then those lines and the interstitial ‘quotes’ throughout the song, I think the vocals work better as instruments themselves then as communicating any concrete idea.

The Faint – Forever Growing Centipedes (Fasciination, 2008)

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Every time I move I’m in another dimension
Everything I do changes what I want
I see a choice I make explode in thousands of pieces 
Every time I choose I become a shard

I could step outside and walk in any direction
Everything I choose erases ghosts of potential 
But it makes some new ghosts that I can fill
I can just choose one as far as I can tell 

Forever growing centipedes
Forever growing centipedes, you and I

If you take the 1980 Atari Centipede arcade game and mix it with some thoughts on destiny/fate, you’ve got this song: until he reaches the point of decision, there are two equally viable futures that exist, and once he’s chosen, he lives on, while the other disapears. The little arcade SFX arpeggio (first instance at 0:14) that follows each ‘forever growing centipedes’ line is like the perfect little bit that ties this all together. The interplay between the vocals and instruments is precisely engineered, trading off back and forth as the song skips along. There’s also a sort an element of companionship in the lyrics:

You and me eating mushrooms together 
We’ll stretch out so long, and hope we don’t sever 

We could both grow up to be a hundred and fifty
But for now we are children together 

The verse at 2:14 is a great little quirky break, and the words continue to refer to the game. This song is just lots of fun to listen to.