Real Blog 2011 : Part 2

Hey I am back. Its 1:20 AM now. The David Gilmour car ride and the innoculation of flasks with bacteria in order to prepare food for an upcoming worm culture was a good change. Now to some more Oakenfold. If you havent read the Part 1 already please read that one first and then come back right here.

By this time I have actually downloaded A Lively Mind , the second album of Oakenfold. Mind you, there is one thing that I try to do when I am trying to write pieces on music and artists. That is to respect their copyright and intellectual property. I use Emusic as a way to download music. Its a paid site. And its quite nominal and I think I do my bit to keep musicians from dying from hunger. :)  Other sites from where I regularly listen new music are gimmesound.com, soundclick.com, myspace.com and of course Pandora and Last.Fm. The last two are probably one of the best things that has happened to the internet. More than facebook. Maybe not more than Google.

I am not sure if I have explained the concept of Pandora in my blog before. Maybe I have. But I will do it again. What Pandora uses is called the Music Genome Project. They have musicians who are paid to categorize music according to their tonal quality, vocal aesthetics, Guitar sound, Beats, and several other parameters. Part of the reason why they would group Free Bird from Lynrd Skynrd with Cocaine from Clapton and All Along the Watchtower from Hendrix and not from Dylan. They also have a like and dislike button. If you like it they will then try to find more songs like that. At some basic level they also use country, singers, members of the band and also the broad genre as hooks to find similar songs that you may like and the result is not that bad. For example I have a station called Audioslave Station, and you will definitely find Rage Against The Machine tracks along with Soundgarden, and then you will found Tom Morello solo. Then you will find music from collaborative artists like Saul Williams and similar sounding artist like pearl jam, radiohead, everlast, and so on. Of course they repeat songs if you keep listening to the same radio for more than 3-4 hours and sometimes even before that if their loops are too small .e.g. Bollywood music. but still its quite commendable to do something like this. This website does not work in India. But you can read about it and maybe someone of you can even start something like this. Of course this would mean giving copy right money to the actual artists which at this point in India still seem to be a wierd context. One of the best things that still goes on here is that the artist gets some money everytime its played on a radio be it online or fm. But in India its really not that case. Why would then an artist really release his songs other than a cd which is really high priced. Anyways hope that changes. But anyways. Pandora was free when I first came here two and half years back. Today it charges you a small amount of money if you exceed a certain amount of time. Which I think is something like 30 hrs a month or something.

Last .fm is still however free. .. And it somehow finds more obscure songs. I like them both.

Coming back to Paul Oakenfold's second album ... Im half way through the album and its almost self evident why this album was although well received by critics it still did never surpass the success of his first album - Bunkka . The music is definitely surrounded by more beats and lesser on the vocal environment created by most songs in his first album. Till now I have no reason to not listen to the first album at the end of all the songs from this one in order to remind me why Oakenfold is different from those thousand others DJs.

While Amsterdam plays in my ears and I kind of wait for the surprise that I expect from this song or else its just another song, I will take you through the list of artists I have in my Electronic Playlist. We will try to go through them one by one. Together. I am definitely  not going to listen to electronic music for continuous 2.8 days in this chair and keep typing to let you know how they are.....

And the surprise does come.. with Atmosphere keyboards and regular circular panning. There are about 8-9 layers in this one with a constant 16 bar loop that keeps revolving in different volume. Now he stretches its too long. Nope. Not really. Breaks it into 8. slows it down. Too much bass. rather repeatative ending is it ?
Cant really figure it out yet. Yup. Explosion with echo and reverb. Its okay. Does leave a small vacuum at the end which meant it did hold a place.

Next one, sounds like a hip hop/scratching one. Something's wrong with my bass level. Let me check.

Nope nothings really wrong. The Way I Feel, feels much better. Got a laid back feel to it.

Anyway going back, lets start alphabetically.

Ignoring one song from A.R.Rehman which has been somehow categorized as Electronic, the first artist is Air.  Havent really heard them. Have only one album of them. The Virgin Suicides. Will hear it after we are done with Oakenfold 2. This song is good.

Aphex Twin. Not yet heard.
 Asian Dub Foundation : I wont call them electronica/trance. They are electronic all right. But I would keep them under Dub which is quite a different genre on its own and will write about it another day.
Brian Eno. : Have three of his albums. Havent heard any one completely but have heard lot of him and I like him. He was what you could call one of the leading visionaries in Electronica/Dub Music.
Chemical Brothers:  GOOD BEATS. Sometimes gets on your nerves. Or at least mine.  Only one album, Push The Button.

This song , Praise the Lord. Song starts out really promising. But an interlude sounding very similar to Ready Steady Go, which I thought already got its deserved remembrance two songs earlier in Switch On. The song seems to be sarcastic about Prayer Hot Lines that requests for donations while praying and you really need not have a fully lyric based song to know that. But it does have a groove. Barring that jarring interlude that reminds you of that classic hit from the last album. The song does good.

While I finish that para, the next one has started. Save The Last Trance For Me. Yep. This IS a trance song. Mind you. Electronica is not All Trance. While ALL TRANCE is Electronica. And this song is definitely TRANCE.

After Chemical Brothers its Chromeo. Probably have heard them but cant remember right now.
Daft Punk : Robot music. Good for running , excercise and stuff. Dont remember a song that creates an environment. Definitely Good Beats though.

Faithless : No Ideas.
Goldfrapp : No Ideas.
Grandabob : Weird music. Not sure if I understand it properly yet. Sometimes the time signatures are too erratic for me and I get easily impatient while listening to them. Should hear them while writing here so that can express direct experiences.
Compilation Album - Transitions 4. Need to listen to it as an album once again.
Justice : No Ideas. Damn. I need to hear these bands. 
Karsh Kale : Occasionally pure genius. At other ocassions standard Indian DJ trying to blend Indian roots with Western Beats and trying hard to make it sound exotic. Still worth remembering.
Ladytron : From what i remember I liked them but I think a little too disco for me.

Save the Last Trance ended up being a good song. I could rarely hear it outside the cocoon it created in which I kept writing. And one could really understand that you missed the song when it ended. Yet its not yet or at least not right now a song that I would try hard to find the name of.

Not Over, the next one from the album has started 2 minutes back and once again does not really jump out of the album. But its a 9 minute song and I will wait for it because while the music is regular electronica with background vocals, it does seem to be going for variation. Silence high pitch, Complete stop .. let see. Come on. Bring it on .... :)

Anyways.. after Ladytron its LCD Soundsystem. I do have their complete Discography and these guys are good. Once again they are what you would call Dance Electronica. But unlike other ones they dont always fill their compositions with layered beats and lots of bass. Rather they have a good proportion of vocal singing, random instruments and noises and a general slow mellow attitude blended with a punk rock/electronic attitude. I like them.

Littleboots comes next. Havent heard them. Sounds intriguing.
MIA. - Not so much electronic as hip hop and would want to listen more of her although as of now other than some of her more political songs havent really liked her a lot.
Massive Attack - Trip Hop. Definitely Electronica but of a completely different kind. You will not find these guys in just about any dance club. These guys are slow. Melodious at times and completely random and mind!@$$ing at others. Have a distinct Jazz obsession which I like. Maybe I will hear them once not in my complete senses to truly be complete nuts about them, but I do like them a lot.

Not over is finally over. I wont say disappointing because it was a good groove. Didnt really want to skip the song. Neither did it jump out in front of my face and started dancing. The next one however, called Vulnerable sounds good. I should tweak my bass setting a little more . My headphone , the studio monitors cant seem to be able to handle it.

The noise cancelling ones does, at least for this song, a big difference. Half way into the song, the song does captivate some of my senses. Cant really make out the lyrics except some guy trying to plead that he is vulnerable, for someone else, guy or girl one cant say. But nonetheless, the song has sonic booms, Distance Looping or thats what I call the effect that makes a sound feel like as if its coming from a distance, then makes it come closer and then it goes further and then comes back again. Definitely could call it Doppler Effect cause Im sure this is what it would sound like.

While the song leads to the next one called Feed Your Mind, I should go back to the list I was making and I think I stopped at Massive Attack. Two more lines for them. The one song that I love from them is Angel. You should definitely hear it. I think I have it on my play list on the blog. That play list does give a cross section of some of the songs that I could really hear at any point of the day and still feel good about it.

Feed your mind seems to be the last song of the album , at least in my playlist. Complete Dance song, and definitely one of the best ones in this album. If it really is the last one in the actual CD i can see why. Does use Vocal harmony with sound effects. Thats good.

This leads way to Ready Steady Go from his first album. I first heard this song in NFS. Loved it immediately. But never really found out the artist. Later when I heard it in Bourne Identity I was more than thrilled. Amazing song selection for that car chase sequence. Tremendous. Anyways.. I have never stopped loving it since then. Give it a listen. If ever I make a top25 electronica song this would be definitely part of it :)

Southern Sun takes over. Not exactly where Ready Steady Go left but if you can imagine the cliff right after a really high peak you would probably be able to understand the difference between the two songs. Or maybe if you imagine an inclined plane from your high school physics book . Guitar intro. Only 3 layers. compared to at least 7 in Ready Steady Go. A rather husky, melodic female voice with ocassional alternative echo panning where you hear the same sound in alternative ears slowly circling as if transmitting from one ear to the other. The volume decreasing in one ear and increasing in the other. Its a rather common technique. In electronica and dance/ trance. Which is why i said that you need a good headphone to really feel the song. And trust me, if while wearing the headphone if you can feel the song coming not from either of the ears but somewhere in the middle or sometimes even coming front of you, even though the sound can only come from the two sides, thats a successful 3D surround sound and successful DJ. Something Oakenfold achieves so easily in both these two songs that I am kind of really surprised that his second album was rather boring 2D eletronica :( .

Massive Attack is followed by Mice Parade. Have heard them once. Dont remember them except maybe one of their songs does refer to the Pied Piper. Although the album is named All Roads Lead to Salzburg.
Next up is a couple of lonely tracks. Meaning the artists are not well represented in my play list. Surprisingly it shows only one Moby track whereas I know for a fact that I have completey Discography of Moby. Anyways.. Moby is very good. The few times he creates his own stuff and doesnt just put beats on old jazzy slow music he does create some amazing tracks. Once again extreme ways , from Bourne Identity stands out in my memory. How could it not. Its my phone ringtone ! :)

Time of your life , the next track is an example of how you can take a very regular trance song and just by introducing an effect of really spaced noir film music as a layer along with ocassional tabla loops, you can really make a rather repeatative beat pattern really, really interesting. Guys, buy this album. download it. get it somehow. Its called Bunkka. I promise you, if not anything it is going to be one of the best few tracks you can play in a long drive.

Hypnotised, the next track, is another favorite. Cello beginning loop. Rather middle eastern vocal loop. Good bass and really by the time the female vocals ask you "Ever been hypnotized ? " and a rather strong sampler funk loop takes over and my typing speed goes down. You know its so much tougher to explain a good electronica song in words. Especially if there are multi layers each taking the song to a different dimension.

I was talking about Moby. I should hear all his music once again because while I know I really like him, I cant rattle more than two songs of his off the back of my head and that shouldnt really be the case.

Never mind. We move on to Orbital. A band that came out from nowhere in a  Last Fm playlist. And I was later introduced to more of their music by an Irish lab mate of mine. These guys come from Engalnd/Ireland I think and he has grown up with their music and I shared his excitement because these are pure techno or what you would call Rave.

I am sure a lot of people would be thinking dark rooms, semi lit with colourful blue and fluorscent white/orange balls providing a rather cool effect on both the floor and the ceiling. You would also be thinking lots of mad dancing. But while I take two seconds off to really assimilate this rather awesome piece that is currently playing , called Zoo York , next song of Oakenfield 1, I would assure you is that you dont need to be high to really like these music pieces. If you really want to enjoy them in a different mood, switch off your room light, Dont get disturbed, maybe silent your phone, and keep writing. Anything. Ideas for your experiments, honest love confessions, hard and rude letters to friends who need to be brought back to the reality of things or even a long droning blog. :) Or stare at a screen of colour ful explosions happening according to the beats.

With 15 seconds left of the song I can definitely say this was one of the best rendering of Requiem for a Dream soundtrack I have ever heard.

Next one, called Nixon's Spirit track initially makes me feel I know where Midival Punditz gets their inspiration from. The lyrics or rather the growling voice of a man talking behind this rather mysterious track that makes you hear what is probably the first phone call that paul got from his record company saying that his demos were amazing and they would be interested. But the worlds about Nixon's spirit are rather funny and yet kinds of make sense in a completely non-sensical way.

Hold your Hand - starts of sounding nothing like an electronica song. But the rather sweet voice of Emiliana Torini makes you believe this is really a jazz.blues song if only you could remove the beats. This is one of those songs that might make you dance slowly with your loved one in a rather empty bar or house for that matter. This is also an example of how even with the rather stereotypical genre of electronica/trance music you can make a song really say what it means and make a romantic song sound romantic and a mysterious trippy song sound exactly that.

Starry Eyed Surprise sounds like 1960s funk rock on roll song. Or Bollywood songs of 1970-1980s picturised on a party where a band is playing and the hero sings with a rather long wired microphone while the guitarist is rather bored. The drummer is having a hard time pretending he is really drumming and the bass player is probably thinking how many of the viewers would know the difference between his instrument and the other guitar . The vocals however is hippy hop and the song is really a dj example of scratching, looping, echo and good mixing. I dont like it too much though.

Get em up - Starts of as definition Hip Hop. And of course it would. Vocals courtesy Ice Cube. Read up on him. Needless to say a big name in good hip hop. What is good Hip Hop ? Some other day along with the answer of what is the kind of music that I try hard to not HATE.... or rather what is bad hip hop?
The song is really just some good rapping with some extreme DJing. Rather repeatative but this song is vocal based. So the background looping is really secondary. However the song definitely reminds me of some popular new hindi bhangra pop dance numbers. It does have a bhangra feel to it I wont deny it. But if delved deeper I am sure I will find a connection to more than one song in the last 10 yrs of Bollywood music that is ripped from this one.

Motion - Quintessential Trance. Sounds as a rather bass heavy song. To give you a good picture of what this song really sounds like, imagine you are driving in a hilly road right before dawn and suddenly you see small peeks of the sunrise and in the distance the sky looks a little reddish, followed by the faint blue and then the darkness surrounding it. The camera pans out and one can only see your headlights in the darkness with this rather interesting colour display in the right hand side of the screen. You lose it when you make the left turn but of course a hilly road goes round and round and once again you will reach the eastern side of the hill and see the beautiful sight once again. This song is exactly that I dont know how he does that. If he consciously loops the sound in that way or if it just comes naturally without him even knowing it. And before you know it, you can almost feel the entire sky being lit up and a rather cool breeze coming in through your windows. And seriously... turn up the volume again. Because it only makes sense to hear it at high when the wave comes back and hits you again . This song is a personal favorite. You can use this one also while running. The song indeed does justice to its name although it does end in a rather uninteresting way if you ask me ! :)

Last song - Harder they Come - Starts of with a very cathedral sound effect and the moment beats enter, you have already figured out that this song could only work with the rustic sound of Nelly Furtado's voice. The song has a quality to hold you at your seat till it ends. i rather not interpret the lyrics. There are some dark lines out there with equally haunting sound effects with the male vocals almost exhaling right above your hair. Suffice to say, The Harder they come, the harder they fall, Maybe I would rather not go there at all...... Reminds me of Enigma you know. Have been searching for their entire discography for a long time now. Do have their albums but at different places and never have had the time to consolidate that. Maybe I will do it sometime in the near future. The song goes back to its original beginning and its a good song.

Now as promised, Air with the first song from their album Virgin Suicides called Playground Love. Quite a refreshing change from Oakenfold. This isnt your more than 180 rpm songs. Starts of with a synthetic and verymuch omni present cello/bass line. Gripping vocals reminding you of 1960s psychedelia bands, with saxophone to really really trip the line, I remember definitely hearing this album. Sorry folks. This is good stuff. Dont know why I forgot about them.

Did you guys know about a word called backrnoym ?  I didnt. Apparently AIR stands for Amour, Imagination, Reve which is French for Love, Imagination , Dream. They are a French Duo... Duo!!!!!!

Couldnt be more jazz psychedlic than their third song Bathroom Girl. Atmosphere surround sound comes in. Floyd like guitar chords that sound like little music explosions. I like their use of what sounds like a real drum kit.
Cemetary Party - starts with a definite memory of Floyd and to be more specific Dark Side of The Moon. At this point some of you might be thinking, there goes his Floyd obsession again.. REALLY GUYS.. listen to the dark side of the moon first. and then listen to this album. Really. I am not even joking. There is a reason why these guys are here in my play list and now not only do they justify being their because of electronica, they consolidate their place with their sound reminding me of both floyd and Massive Attack.

Dark Messages sounds straight out of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Half way into the album I know these tracks required an elevated sense level achieved by certain practices and while I wont go so far to say the must have been created while under such heightened sense states, they definitely would make more sense at that point of time. But once again, all you really need is a good pair of head phones.
All of their songs are about 2.5 minutes long.. Rather short , although this one, the next one, Dirty Trip is 6 minutes long and is the only one that is longer than 3 minutes. But by now I feel these guys either met Syd Barret in person or were products of invitro fertilisation of his sperm or somehow is just Syd reincarnate.  This album is not for the faint hearted.

I can promise you not many of you will like this one and you would have to be trained to listen to Pipers at the Gates of Dawn and albums of Yes and Solo albums of Syd Barret first to really appreciate this but you will like it. Although this particular song, Dirty Trip, is only half way through and while it succeeds as a brilliant psychedelic track I know I am scared of the song and its really really weird sound effects. The bottom of my feet itches and I feel a sense of restlessness. And trust me guys. This is normal for a psychedelic song to make you feel like this. As if you are stuck in a glass room with your head inside a small chamber. It suffocates you, but you are really curious to see the room and the view inside and outside from inside.

I'll pause here. because the song finally ends in a rather incomplete fashion.

And when I hear Highschool Lover, I am convinced these guys started off as a Pink Floyd cover band and at least this abum is a tribute to Dark Side of The Moon.
A quick look at their Wikipedia page and definitely solves the mysteries. I most definitely need to check up on these other composers that they seemed to be influenced by because I am quite sure I will like them. I also need to get their complete discography.

Their next song, Ghost Song, is more than scary with a constant echoing jarring tuning fork sound. These guys surprise me more in every song . For example the next one, is a constant repeating loop of computer sound that you would get from a synthesiser. Not the keyboard instrument, but the music sampling synthesiser. and then it gives away to some really soothing whistling and vocal harmony. Do not listen to this band in high volume. Probably might make them more palatable.  This is a band that will grip all hyour senses and you really want to keep a little space for outside noises to come in or else I feel you will either not feel like listening to them or will go crazy. The last song , Empty House, was haunting indeed and their last song , once again to my surprise is rather upbeat and beat based with a complicated string loop, even though the name of the song is Dead Bodies.

My room is dark right now and I have been staring at this screen for more than a couple of hours now and if I look around I may see wierd shadows move around... are they people ? Is this Sixth Sense? Do I feel someone's presence now ? Maybe . Maybe not. Bottom line, Air's only album in my play list rocks more than I could imagine and this is what I was saying. I discovered this band with you guys. So I am not really writing these long boring descriptions of music styles I like not because of you but for me. With that in mind, I hear the sarangi. Next track from some band called Amar. But the Hindusthani Classical Female Vocal and the rather misplaced extra bass kinds of does it for the song.

I will hear this song later but not right now.

Lights on. Nope. No one else in the room. I have two more bands that i want to talk to you while I listen to them.

The first one's name intrigued me. Littleboots. First song , Automatic Lover .... disco beats, ethereal drops, over sweet female vocals, robotic impersonation by the male vocal. and its stereotypical 1980's disco.

Quick look at the wikipedia and I understand this is called Electropop. She is quite famous.. considering that her first album came out in 2009!!  Once again influences include Pink Floyd and can you believe it, Britanny Spears !! But wait. This is the second time I get this name .. Jean Michel Jarre. MUST HEAR HIS / HER MUSIC...

Her music also does remind me of Lady Gaga and Robyn. Quite rightly she does seem to be part of a  new wave of Female Artists.

Good beats. But this is too techno/dance/pop for me. I will come back to this. If you like Lady Gaga / Robyn you should really listen to this lady. You'll like her. But right now, lets move on Orbital. The last band to be written about today. The album we are listening to is called The Works (1989-2002).


Sounds like compilation of their unpublished work of sorts maybe not their best. The first song is kind of boring. Not much variation. Rightly called the Chime.  I will actually skip the song.


Choice sounds like it could be used as an inspiration by Aqua. Good Music. I would hear them . Rather simplistic but these guys were apparently the biggest electronica band in 1990s british electronica scenario and thats saying something. This album only made it to Number 36 in the uk charts compared to 4th or 5th of some other albums. So probably as I said before not their best album.

4minutes 20 seconds with another minute and half to go, I feel there is a lack of structure to both the pieces that i have heard. This album really is a sort of filler album. With a number of re-recordings and sample pieces/ unpublished pieces.
More like an album a band brings out when it really does not have a lot of material but their album will sell since they have made a niche already and by the time the audience and the record company realises the album isnt really brilliant, they would have come up with a really really good single. The record company forgets the album not selling more. They are selling the new song now. The fans are a little disappointed and wait for the next one, while the hard core ones try to find depths in these songs which otherwise doesnt make sense and all the newspapers have written it off. But how can a committed supporter of the music desert them like that.

The sogns are a little long considering the lack of variation in the processing. But this song does seem to creat an atmosphere.

ok. I thing i am losign my patience a little bit on this album. The beats are really good. But somehow I can feel the songonly coming from the two headphones and I can actually different which beats or which layer is on which side. That means the blending did not work properly. So I will play what seems to be their most popular song reaching Number 3 on UK Charts and 109 on the USA BillBoard. But this song isnt as bad as they all start! :


Rather basic intro. Nothing impressive. Lets wait for whatever that this song reached the top of the charts.
Rather interesting video. But didnt really like the song. So maybe I should listen to their entire repertoire first and then comment about them.

So anyways guys.. nice to write so much after a long time. Hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Hope to see you soon. I am thinking of making these blogs like a 2 times a week thing. So that every Wednesday / Saturday night there would be a new blog written.  Is that a good idea.. Of course that will not stop me from having sudden urges to write but I think as a part of bigger scheme of ordering my life a bit better maybe thats a good thing. So lets see if I can write a Wednesday blog. Or maybe even one before that

Take care guys, and till I meet you again, Keep listening to good music and let me know if you like something new or like any of my suggestions.