If you don’t like it? won’t you tell me?

This song is eerie. The bass drum thumps, the guitar drones, what’s not to like about gritty music? The Walkmen is the band. Play the song, and enjoi.

Zechs Marquise.  Legendary pilot of the OZ-00MS Tallgeese.  Callsign “Preventer Wind”.  Respected on the El Paso music scene.

This is more than a reason to impose a flashback to my formative years on the blog.  Just bear with me.  A while ago I had heard that Marcel and Marfred Rodriguez-Lopez (related to Omar Rodriguez-Lopez of The Mars Volta) had put together a side project called Zechs Marquise and were keeping it a separate entity in the hopes of not being catapulted into the spotlight by The Mars Volta.  For a while, it seems, they remained pretty obscure and hadn’t been playing any shows in my area, but recently I got ahold of their 2008 LP and an EP and am extremely pleased.

Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare incorporates elements of progressive rock and jazz, but it doesn’t play like a Mars Volta record; or it doesn’t play like a recent Volta record.  There’s a sense of spaciousness on the album that provides room for layers of instrumentals, jams, and ambience to build up into walls of sound that feel ready either to crumble or crush.  The tracks “Strapped to the Mast” and “Sirenum Scopuli” are the perfect examples, escalating from a funky, minimalist jazz overture to an exploding grind, plateauing with an agoraphobic, spacey jam, exploding again, and leaving you with a sort of electronic paranoia.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bias when it comes to the wankery that the Rodriguez-Lopez familia produces, but I don’t think it’s a unreasonable one.  The music is damn good.

Strapped to the Mast

Sirenum Scopuli
 

http://www.myspace.com/zechsmarquise

An angry man walks into a bar, If I Ever Feel Better is playing in the background and the man looses control of himself and breaks out dancing. Pardon me if you thought that set up was for a joke, because it was not. Since that didn’t make you smile, try listening to Phoenix. 

Phoenix is a four-man funky/disco pop band from La France. Their guitarist Laurent Brancowitz was part of the band Darlin’ with Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, the men who eventually became Daft Punk (helping explain that funky sound they produce). 

The two songs featured come from the same album, UNITED. So click below to listen to them, hopefully they will make smile, or break out dancing. enjoi

If I ever Feel Better
 

Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her was a japanese band formed in 1992. Their sound is what we’d now days call indie. Existing during a time when Alternative rock and grunge ruled the airways, SSKHKH (haha) did not rise in popularity as much as they would nowadays in a time when indie rock music has developed solid fan base. SSKHKH was formed by two Japanese girls in Japan blah blah blah. Let’s get to the f*cking music. ahah

This song is solid and you’ll recognize elements from this song have been replicated by other bands *cough* Louis XIV *couuuugh.* enjoi.

Down To Mexico

[Animal Collective] combines a love of sonic free form electronic horror gospel hip hop soul pop madness and brings it all together into something that is (hopefully) at times totally pleasing and at others completely scary and confusing but most importantly is refreshing in this crazy crazy world. - Animal Collective

That summarizes their sound very well. At First listen their music is going to sound really fucking weird. You probably won’t make it through the first minute without going crazy. That is exactly what they were going for. The best part of AC is that you don’t normally hear anything as insane and orderly as their music. Try their latest alblum Strawberry Jam, it is a perfect 10. The songs are like puzzle pieces, clicking together very well without overlapping in strangeness or novelty, while adding more and more definition to an already crazy concept. Try them, but it’s not for everyone.

Eba eba eba eba eba eba eba get passed that near nuisance in Chores and enjoi.

Chores

For Reverend Green

Listening to Blonde Redhead is like discovering your own world.

They are one of those strange bands that sound great at any volume. Their sound is eerie, and yet very calming. The band of three, Kazu Makino and twin brothers Simone and Amedeo Pace, has been around for a good amount of time, having assembled the same year Snoop Dogg released Doggystyle (in case we’re on the same timeline).

Their two most recent CDs 23 and Misery is a Butterfly I find to be their best because their soft vocals and noisy background have developed as a part of their style. Maybe it’s because I love songs where the bass plays eighth notes in the background; it gives them that speedy, racing-down-the-highway feeling (Apparently they do not have a full time bassists either). Send your resumes to them and enjoi.

Blonde Redhead - Dr. Strangeluv

Blonde Redhead - Spring And By Summer Fall
 

The Klaxons made 2007 spectacular. 

For some reason I came across the Klaxons at the same time they released their album Myth of the Near Future. Being a fan of another similar kick ass English band Hadouken!, love for the Klaxons came easy. Their music is loud, stretching from creepy to moving in a heart beat. Every song makes you want to fight ninjas and clowns in slow motion. It’s the soundtrack to the Action hero’s life. 

If you’re not an action hero, then jump around and pretend to be one (because god knows silliness is essential to a healthy aging). The Klaxons music puts life back in your life (sorry for the cliche) and, played loudly, can help soothe redundancy, awkwardness, boredom, and fatigue. Dr. Frank says enjoi.

Klaxons - Gravity’s Rainbow

Klaxons - Golden Skans (click here first time listeners)

Want to hear something awesome? This is a song you’ve probably heard 700 times. You probably wow every time you hear it, and you jam to it in your car before work, before going out, or even sometimes rap the lyrics to it in the shower. I’ll give you hint, Dr. Dre.

I’ll let the obscure David Axelrod speak for himself about sampling. This is the live version of the original song whose sample you’ve heard plenty of times. The bonus song is another one that was sampled by Dj Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World. 

David Axelrod - The Edge

David Axelrod - The Human Abstract

Frank

‘Cool sunny day, surf is good, life is good,’ is what “Divino Maravilhoso” sounds like, although life in the singer’s time was quite the opposite. Gal Costa was the leading female singer in the Tropicalia movement. Standing besides greats like Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, both founders of the movement, Costa sang her way through difficult times with unconventional musical styles and lyrics. 

Tropicalia is not just a song by Beck; it was a late 1960’s Brazilian art movement which heavily criticized sociopolitical problems and the Brazilian military government through poetry, paintings and music. Tropicalia music, mostly a mix of bossa nova, hippie rock & roll and few others, was what Costa called ”a reaction against the dictatorship and the politics of the era… not a political movement.” Themorningnews.org calls ‘Divino Maravilhoso’ a “catchy pop song that vividly describes the violent measures of the Brazilian government and warns listeners to beware of complacency.” Knowing that enjoi.
 

Gal Costa - Divino Maravilhoso

Bonus: Gal Costa - Baby

Frank