Archive for category RECORDS.

Bought this along with the Meshuggah record. I don’t remember if it was on clearance or I had read something good about it. I’m sure I would have gotten Vol. 1 if they had it. Oh, but that Grammy sticker! The sweet siren call of something I don’t really give a shit about at all. (This might be the Grammy-winning last slack key album to win, btw. The Grammys no longer have a Hawaiian category.) I guess I’ve always been curious about what a decent example of genuine slack key guitar really is and a Grammy winner in the category must be somewhat legit. Probably safe and boring, but not total bullshit, right?

Right, exactly. This disc cleared a major misconception I had about the term; it has nothing to do with slide steel guitar, that really stereotypical sound that comes to mind when you think “Hawaiian music”. I was hoping for the “real” version of that, if there is such a thing anymore. But real Slack Key Guitar (on this CD, anyway) is simply an acoustic guitar using various open downtunings. Here, it’s literally one guitar: solo acoustic guitar tracks, different players, different tunings, but they just brought the guys into the studio to all play the same guitar. So it’s like they designed it for maximum sameyness. (Perhaps maximum Grammywinningness.)

This is some good guitar playing really well recorded, but it just sounds like an album of chilled-out acoustic instrumentals. And by chilled-out I don’t mean anything “cool” just s l o w. There’s nothing that’s like, “wow, tunings”! It’s all very subtle. This could be background music in a gift shop. It would be nice to have a tuning chart in the liner notes, supposedly each track uses a unique one. They all sound pretty similar. You got to figure these guys know each other and probably play together. Doesn’t seem like a competitive scene.

This is an album that nobody’s having sex to is what I’m saying. Or did that just come out of nowhere? Well it’s true. You could imagine old people hugging to this music and being like, “ok, that’s enough.” Hey, that’s the common theme of my music buying around this time; math metal, classical, wallpaper world music—total anti-sex! Sometimes you just wanna not think about it. I mean, it’s great, but sometimes you gotta get other stuff done. Like shop for grass skirts and, uh…coconuts? Actually this music does not conjure up any kind of image of anything Hawaiian at all. The only thing that seems Hawaiian are the names of some of the players. I don’t feel ripped-off by this aspect of it, in fact it’s exactly what I wanted: the real thing, not what I thought it was.

Had to listen on repeat a bunch of times to think of anything to say at all. The harmonics really are quite nice. Just noticed I forgot to include the disc itself in the picture because it was still in the player. It’s the same image as the cover, and I like the transparent case. So there. No photos in the booklet either. I’d like to see what the players look like. They are probably awesome dudes; even though their music is not very exiting, it’s not very commercial either. It’s not like it’s smooth jazz or something, that stuff doesn’t even sound like it’s made by humans. I guess you could have sex to it, but really only if you are making terrible softcore porn. And nobody wants that. %

Bought this when it came out at the Borders in Cherry Hill. Seems like a long time ago. Everything about seemed post-apocylyptic. Very few CDs left. I used to love the CD section in that store. The whole thing’s gone now of course. I remember I bought this and a small stack that day, this and a bunch of classical stuff. It was one of those intentional shifts.

I only had a download of Destroy Erase Improve“>Destroy Erase Improve before this. Future Breed Machine was a huge standout track on that but I never got that much into the album as a whole.

The big song off this one is supposed to be Bleed (stream the full track or watch the video here— you can also download it free here) But once you get past that opening bendy riff, which is pretty awesome, the rest of the song is kind of a standard extreme for the sake of extreme type thing. It represents their sound and general mood really well, but doesn’t really do the weird things that make them great. The video/single version takes out a long solo but this band isn’t really about solos either. It’s about the way they perform as a group.

My favorite is the opener, Combustion. It starts with a “oh shit, shit is going down” kind of intro guitar riff. (Very similar to the Kill Bill theme, but more uptempo). Indeed, shit is about to go down and it’s going to be fast. The stage is set. Right, but then the hi-hat starts counting off another beat entirely. “Oh shit—different shit is abo—“, too late! Two entirely different shits are now going down, it’s very loud, it’s very fast, there’s a crazy man screaming at you…it’s probably exactly what you were looking for or you hate it and it makes no sense. Fair enough. But consider this: you can always make it faster, you can always make it louder. That’s building the music up vertically. This band also takes it sideways. But they do it with complete precision and grace. That first countoff almost sounds like a mistake they left in. But when it comes around again and repeats exactly it just seems bonkers. The guitar plays alternating bars of 6/4 and 4/4, not that hard to count. But the drums are doing something else—I listened to this 100 times and I can’t really explain it and that’s fucking outstanding.

It segues very nicely into Electric Red and there’s time things going on in all the songs, I’m not breaking them all down, but I really like the dissonant half-note chords they slash out in this one under the verse, scraping with the sides of the pick it sounds like. Crazy.

The middle of the record seems like one big chunk to me, which is not a putdown it’s just how I’ve been listening to it. There’s moments of space and even beauty, but I couldn’t tell you what individual songs those are in. What I like about this band is when they are trying to get across a feeling that isn’t just bashing your brains in with brutal volume and complexity, they do it with only the guitars. There’s no sudden crooning or mallet work or anything like that. I like bands that can mix it up, but most suck at it. I like that there’s no attempt here. It’s really a cohesive whole.

Dancers to a Discordant System is a nice long, slow(ish) classic album ender. It’s that epic album ending feeling, perfect. I’ll never get tired of a band that knows how to end an album. The whole thing is a journey. I was going to comment on how tastefully short the album is but it’s just shy of a full hour. That’s really the ultimate, to make the thing seem go faster than it does. An hour with no boring parts.

Negatives: no idea what any of these songs are about. I’ve even a lyrics booklet and uh…no I don’t really care what all the words are. It is what it is. I mean, even the title only works as a pun if you have a Swedish accent. (“obscene”?) Really. And the artwork of course. Kinda dumb. Like, what was that video. But who cares about that stuff? Oh, most people? Well, their loss.

Still need to get the new one. Missed seeing them live last week. Stupid. Broke again. %