Category: electronic

MC Chris – Older Crowd (MC Chris Is Dead, 2008)

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The gated synths that lead into the song help set things up, and when the first line of the chorus, “I got the bass for your face,” comes up, it’s a perfect fit.

I got the bass for your face
Yes I can hold it down
These kids are such a disgrace
I need an older crowd

Mental stimulation
Voter Registration
Patches on my elbows
Match the colors of my cords

The vocorder effect, especially on “colors of my cords” (which sounds like an autotune) is like the perfect little cherry on top of the sunday – it’s so sweet. Then we get to the rap – MC Chris’ voice can be hard for some people to take, and it seems like either people love or hate him. But the rapping is solid – I’m not wild about the first verse, but the second and third and damn clever:

Are you joking? It’s too smoky
There’s a cover, we should leave
Let’s not panic, let’s beat traffic
And get home in time for tea

Kids have access nostalgia waxes
Can’t relax if I can’t breathe
Let’s just exit, we’re not sexy
I feel fat and elderly

Let’s play Scrabble, let’s play Boggle
Discovery channel with Ted Kopple
Kids are awful, they’re all moshing
So obnoxious sneezing, coughing

Spilling beer and breaking glasses
They’re no fun, these trust fund fascists
No more head tricks, we’ve got Netflix
Let’s grow beehives and mustaches

“Are you joking? It’s too smoky,” is a keeper, as is “Let’s just exit, we’re not sexy, I feel fat and elderly.”

There is vomit on the toilet
And no soap I can dispense
Girl named Wendy grabbed my testes
Now I have no confidence

Can’t believe it, I smell reefer
We might get a contact high
I feel loopy I see snoopies
I need pizza with these doobies

I feel mellow, legs are jello
Hold me up or I might nap
Someone dosed my Diet Coke
It’s not a joke so please don’t laugh

Freaky Friday might go my way
I feel like a different person
Now I’m tripping, ceiling’s dripping
Wait a minute, no crowd surfing

Once again, “Girl named Wendy grabbed my testes, now I have no confidence,” “Can’t believe it, I smell reefer, we might get a contact high,” and “It’s not a joke so please don’t laugh,” are great lines.

It’s tough for me to be as verbose explaining some songs that I like – especially ones like this that aren’t much more then rapping, a chorus, and some catchy synth accompniment – but it’s all about the gated synth in the intro, the little autotuned fx on “colours of my chords,” and the pacing in those lines I called out above.

Pendulum – Fasten Your Seatbelts Ft. The Freestylers (Hold Your Colour, 2005)

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The chords you hear in the opening minute or so are what you’re going to be hearing throughout. After a bit of reverby jammed up samples, a few vocals, and a dramatic “Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts,” you’re dropped right into the main groove – deep kicks, splashy snares, a brassy bassline supplemented by a barely audible sub line, and an incredibly catchy little hook. Punctuated by occasional “Sound Boy” and “Combination Style!” vocal samples, things continue forward – there’s a lot going on, all revolving around what we were initially introduced to. Occasionally things will break for a moment, or some piano will appear, but it’s mostly the same, until the break at 3:40.

Bleeps and bloops, plus a phased-out pad, and the ever-present “sound boy, you’re too young to be a soldier, combination style!” sample (I don’t know if that’s really what they’re saying, but it sounds like that.) At about 4:45 the song essentially comes full circle, kicking you right back to that head-bobbing hook.

There isn’t really much more to say about this, since it’s a little repetitive, but that little melody line is undeiably catchy – I’ve found myself whistling it several times since I ran across this album.

Kanye West – Heartless (808s and Heartbreaks, 2008)

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This was one of the best albums to come out in 2008, and it was totally unexpected for me – I wasn’t really (and I’m still not I guess) a big Kanye fan, considering he’s acted like a jerk on several occasions, but this album knows exactly how to get to me – auto-tuned vocals, the 808 drum machine, hop-hop that swings more towards funk/soul and electronic music then rap… so tasty.

It starts out strong – just listen to that gut-rumbling kick, and Kanye’s slightly FX’d vocals:

In the night, I hear ‘em talk, 
the coldest story ever told 
Somewhere far along this road, he lost his soul to a woman so heartless…
How could you be so heartless? 

So the intro is the chorus, and all it takes is a clap and a caliope-sounding staccato chord line to moves us into the verse:

How could you be so, cold as the winter wind when it breeze, yo 
Just remember that you talkin’ to me though 
You need to watch the way you talkin’ to me, yo 
I mean after all the things that we’ve been through 
I mean after all the things we got into 
Hey yo, I know of some things that you ain’t told me 
Hey yo, I did some things but that’s the old me 

I’m not sure why the ‘street’ vocabulary doesn’t annoy me – normally a lot of that sort of slang turns me off, but in this context, “afta’ all da tings dat we been do, afta all da tings we got into” sounds… I don’t know, it sounds refined, almost cultured, like the narrator is trying to be reasonable with his girl, which I’m sure is exactly what it’s supposed to sound like. It works. The perky yet minimal hits that hit towards the end of the verse, into the chorus, keep with the ‘less is more’ approach that a lot of the tracks on this album take.

There’s more good lyrical candy in the second verse:

How could you be so Dr. Evil, you bringin’ out a side of me that I dont know… 
I decided we weren’t gon’ speak so 
Why we up 3 A.M. on the phone 
Why does she be so mad at me fo’ 
Homie I dont know, she’s hot and cold 

“How could you be so Doctor Evil?” Good stuff – and the short conversational “Why do she be so made at me fo? Homie I don’t know, she’s hot and cold,” line is so appealing, as far as the rythem and meaning goes.

And then there’s the bridge, where things get super grunged out for a second on the line, “and we jus’ gon’ be enemies.” It’s a nice quick break, before we get back to the chorus. That’s basicly all there is – no additional instrumentation, just some auto-tuned vocalizing.

I think a lot of my attraction to this song comes from its minimalism, and the fact that it’s telling a story. This is established in the first chorus right up front: “In the night, I hear ‘em talk, the coldest story ever told, somewhere far along this road, he lost his soul – to a woman so heartless…” It’s almost like a ghost story. This is good stuff.

The Aquabats – Fashion Zombies (Charge, 2005)

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A little bit of ska right up front in the beginning with that snare, some bass guitar, some spacey effect synth, and then the real song at 0:11. “Whoaaa”, ha ha. Right away you know how the groove goes – the fairly simple rock percussion, the bass and lead guitars, and the the shouty-yet-in-tune vocals. The distinctive distorted high guitar line helps tie everything together.

See them creep out to nightlife
You see them walk the streets
These children of the undead look dressed for the endless Halloweens
And this horror like production,
Takes total dedication
Of black clothes and pale complexions
Rock jet black hair and monster makeup

Listen for the zombie vocal accompniment at the end of each chorus line…

And who can blame them?
They walk through asphalt cemeteries
Zombie fashions—
They must have been born that way
So can you hear me?
Can you get hip to what I’m saying?
These fashion zombies don’t walk this world alone…

The instrumentation is solid, but doesn’t do much to distract from the lyrics, which are the real treat. And once you’ve seen the music video, you can’t get the ‘fight’ or ‘performance’ scenes out of your head. The song barrels onwards, past numerous explicit ‘Thriller’ references, until the ending bar, which cuts off after the bendy sci-fi synth.

The whole song doesn’t evolve much throughout, but I’d argue that it doesn’t need to – it comes it fast, says what it needs to say, and then leaves – and it’s fun. That’s what really matters – isn’t that right, kids?

Chumbawamba – Scapegoat (Tubthumper, 1997)

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The nineties were probably when I first really became aware of ‘music’ as an entity – before that it was always in the background (my mom is never not listening to music, a trait which I’ve thankfully inherited) but sometime between ages 4 and my early teens I started to become able to distinguish tracks, albums, artists, and genres. A friend of mine had the Chumbawamba audio cassette tape, and we’d listen and dance to it all the time – and while everyone might consider Tubthumber’s eponymous track overplayed, the rest of the album has some really fun stuff on it. The last track, ‘Scapegoat,’ is my favorite.

The album contains a lot of sampling used in ‘intermissions’ between tracks, and this one starts off with a little orchestral ‘presenting…’ sequence, which quickly drops off into an electronic into for the real song – warped synth and classic drum machine claps transition to an easily understandable electro-rock groove. Electric guitar, a dancey percussion / bassline combo, and a trancey snare fill lead into the first verse, courtesy very ‘folky’ (as opposed to ‘electronic’ or ‘rocky’) female vocals:

Aftershave and smoke 
And the same unfunny jokes 
They say they’ll take you 
‘Anywhere 
But there’ 
Believe every half-whispered 
Half-remembered lie 
Where truth is a luxury 
They can’t afford to buy 

The accompaniment takes a break during the chorus, cutting back to a nice punchy kick, sparse guitar (which synchronizes with the bassline), and the tasty brass lines that are generally featured on most of the tracks of this album. Things are kind of orchestrally electronic for a few moments, until the break at 1:36, with just the distorted synth line and the dancey percussion, and then we get back to the verse again:

Backed into a corner 
He barricades his life 
Fastens up the shutters every night 
This island is big enough 
For every castaway 
But most of us are looking round 
For someone else to blame 

And once again, the chorus:

Scapegoat 
Looking for a scapegoat 

There’s always someone else for 
you to blame 

By now we know exactly what to expect from this song – all the elements are pretty firmly established. But just for fun, another quick breaks gives us an almost mournful brass line which sounds a lot like an earlier track called ‘The Big Issue’, especially the last little melody bit, before the trancey snare fill and cymbal crashes pulls us back into the meat of the song again. One more break at 3:52, and we’re done – all the layers play at once, and the track fades out.

Once again, keeping with the album’s practice of sampled intermissions, we get a man admitting tearfully that “Boy – you can know out a bloody good tune, but what the fuck does that matter? Now I’m going to take my boys onto the town. Thank you.”

What does the song mean? I’ve got to admit that the parts I find most appealing are the solid electro-rock areas, especially how the intro resolves into the section at 0:26. The rhythm and sounds are perfectly spot-on, clean and poppy. I like the phrasing in the chorus too, although I change the words a little in my head: “Scapegoats, looking for our scapegoats, there’s always someone else for us to blame.” Culture wars, moral panic, scapegoating, and the resulting witch-hunts are human social phenomenon that I find fascinating (plus I feel a little smug that I have the detachment required to recognize them rather then just getting swept up, or at least I think I do), and my version of the chorus makes it sound like Chumbawamba is observing the same thing.

Speed Suit – Evidence (This Party Is A Time Machine, 2008)

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My friend Dan Beyer is a member of the duo known as ‘Speed Suit‘ (Nathanial Oester is the other player). After his first show in a basement somewhere in NE Portland, Dan hooked me up with a sweet bootleg CD of the tracks they performed. The second track is easily my favorite.

So compare the beginning to ‘Map of the Problematique‘ by Muse off of their album ‘Black Holes and Revelations’ – hot, totally danceable percussion right up front, an explosive stand-in for a splash cymbal, and then nearly the same grinding electric guitar sounding synth. The expertly-clipped drum samples and winding synth line drive the whole thing forward.

At 0:36 we get a short little ‘one two three four’ moment where the highhat counts us into the first verse: breathy vocals, the same punchy drums, and a great echoey synth on the off-beat.

show me some evidence, don’t give me lies
when left in the darkness we’re led by our hearts
and our hearts are so easily carried away

this isn’t a carousel ride this is life
so if youre feeling lucky and brave take the reigns

The coupling of the syncopated vocals with the kick at 0:50 doesn’t give us any time to catch our breath – it’s almost impossible to relax, because the song just keeps moving forward. The breathy sigh and vamps into the chorus at 1:10 is another bit of Muse-like sensability, while the break at 1:24 keeps things pretty solidly focused on the dancey percussion.

hey
is passion just a weakness
when were acting out on impulse

Another verse at 1:43, this time with an extra distorted synth lead atop the rest of the instruments, and a neat little bendy break at 1:58, which we didn’t get the first time around. I don’t even know what the lyrics are at this point, and I’m not really sure that it matters – enough words sneak through to give you a sort of general good feeling about things. Everything drops down for another great break at 2:14 – and back into the chorus again, and that Muse-esque bassline.

so take back the heresy unless you’ve got spite
meet me at dusk and we’ll settle this
lets bury the hatchet youre using as if its an axe

Short and sweet, things cut right off at 3:00. After talking to Dan and Nate, both Justice and Muse gave some  cues when they were hashing out the instrumentation for these tracks. If you’re into it, feel free to download and listen to the other Speed Suit tracks- I uploaded a .zip of the show for your listening pleasure. And if you’re interested in the group, check out Speed Suit on Myspace.

update july ’09 – check out Speed Suit’s website on thehinge.net for some sweet new tracks!

ATB – Mysterious Skies (No Silence, 2004)

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Talk about formulaic – but this is a good formula. I hadn’t thought of it this way before, but this is early 2000′s trance – compare to Ian Van Dahl’s ‘Castles In The Sky’, released a few years earlier, or even ‘Days Go By’ by Dirty Vegas in 2002.

Stringy analogue synth lines introduce the track, giving us a sort of baseline, establishing a foundation that the rest of the song will build up from. Hints of trancey staccato synth blips filter through, delayed out to echo around amongst the sort of wash of trance pads, until it all gives way to exactly what we’re hoping for at 0:56 – a cymbal crash, four-by-four kicks, bass on the offbeat, hihat layered over top, and the persistent synth line. Things slow down for a bit at 1:54, because there’s only so much stereotypical trance you can take in one sitting, and the instrumentation acquires some nice dramatic piano, which it sweeps up into more bars of classic trance.

Things slow down again around 2:56, breaking down until we’re left with some quiet bass, the trance synth cutting back in, some splashy cymbals, and a nice breathy lead that flies over the rest of the instruments – this is the peak of the song, where all the elements that’ve been introduced are all playing together.

Naturally, the epic echoey piano is brought through again at the end, while everything else calms down, and then everything swims into a way phased-out pad that refers back to the previous track ‘Marrakech’ earlier on the album, and leads into the next one, ‘Collides With Beauty.’

It isn’t unique, it isn’t special, but it’s not bad either – if you like pictures of Jesus, you don’t care that the dozen or so in your collection all look nearly identical, even they’re created by different artists. You just like looking at that iconic depiction of Jesus. Same with this – if you like this particular brand of trance, then you like this track, and if you’re a DJ, you love it because it mixes so effortlessly into any of the others.

Enya – Caribbean blue (Shepherd Moons, 1991)

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This is one of my favorite Enya songs – as an artist, her music can be a little hit-or-miss for me. Sometimes it’s too ethereal for its own good, and loses its appeal in spaced-out vocals and ‘world music’ instrumentation. Caribbean Blue doesn’t have this problem.

The beginning is a great way to introduce a concept – brief orchestral strings, which fade away to trancey plucked arpeggios and nice bass swells. The beuty of the chord progression is made clear, along with the sort of flowing, lilting rythem of the song. The brief ‘ah’ vocal sting at :25 should make it abundantly clear to anyone listening that this is, in fact, an early Enya song. The swirling vocals immediatly afterwards give way to the enchanting lyrics:

So the world goes round and round
With all you ever knew,
They say the sky
High above
Is Caribbean blue.

More orchestral strings follow, along with more vocalizing, keeping things interesting but not varying much from the original music premise of the song. Next verse:

If every man says all he can,
If every man is true,
Do I believe the sky above
Is Caribbean blue?

More vocals, more orchestal strings, a little stronger this time, with more bass, intensifying things a little until the bridge at 1:58, carrying the song swirling onwards with higher notes, until the last verse comes around, this time transposed upwards a bit:

If all you told was turned to gold
If all you dreamed were new,
Imagine sky high above
In Caribbean blue.

By now we’ve heard all the song is going to give us – things roll onwards to the ending at 3:50, which is as brilliant a way to usher the track out as was the intro to usher it in – everything drops off, leaving a lone vocal pad, which briefly hints at a solo, before abruptly fading down to silence.

What’s the song about? To begin with, there are a few observations we can make about the ‘narrator’ – the fact that “they say the sky” is blue, and that its blueness is questioned in the next verse, and finally imagined in the last, suggests that wherever this song takes place, the colour of the sky is not readily ascertainable. Are they underground? Are they in space? Are they in a world that’s perpetually cloudy? When I think of the colour ‘caribbean blue’, I think of the deep endless ocean off the shore of a tropical island – impossibly deep dark blueness, accompnied by a fring of shallow green and sandy yellow. It sort of feels like a yearning for a lush vegetative island paradise – something the world in the song is possibly missing.

The phrase “so the world goes round and round” pretty explicitly refers to the passage of time – after all, that’s how our chronology works, revolutions of planetary bodies. “with all you ever knew” seems like another reference to time, and perhaps a sort of elder wisdom – a world in the future, where all the secrets of the past are contained somewhere on the planet? A planet which has lost its island paradise? The other lines seem to suggest that it’s possible for this paradise to be reclaimed: “If every man says all he can, if all he says is true… If all you told was turned to gold, if all you dreamed was true…” If the shattered world worked together, imagined progress, dealt honestly, and communicated… would the sky high above once again become caribbean blue?

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?