5 posts tagged “derek c. f. pegritz”
This is a late one, but I have five minutes left until midnight to get a Friday entry in here, so here goes!
Hey, it's my own blog: I'll post my own music anytime I damnwell like! I mean, hell...if a brotha can't toot his own horn, well...if I could do that, songs like "I love you even when you don't" would never be necessary.
Sometimes music is the only thing that helps you through the more difficult hours of your life. Listening to music certainly does. I can't even begin to tell you how many times Pink Floyd's The Wall or The Jayhawks' Rainy Day Music has been there to comfort me when the gearworks inside my head have gotten clotted with ash and rust. But MAKING music is an even surer method of audio therapy, and I've turned to it many a time over the last ten miserable years.
Female humans are an utter mystery to me, and have been the source of far more pain than pleasure--to the point that these days I live a positively monastic life and shun all female companionship save that of a few choice friends who've proven to me time and again that they, at least, aren't going to one day snap and put a knife in my back. This is mostly because of events that happened in the summer of 2007...the time when the above track was written.
Suffice to say that no one I have ever dated has been even the slightest bit mentally stable. I'm not talking moodswings or the usual PMS bullshit--I'm talking inexplicable changes of temperament, complete emotional reversal (which is even more dangerous that complete protonic reversal), and just plain unconscionable seizures of behavior whose drivers and ultimate results I've never been able to fathom, no matter how many times I revisit them in memory. Suffice to say that, in summer of 2007, I was involved with a girl who went from being one of the most loving and hopeful women I'd ever met to an inscrutable mess that eventually turned on me like that chimp that one day decided to just bite some woman's face off.
I thought she was merely depressed--something I have ample experience with. I thought she was simply feeling down for a variety of issues that...you know, are perfectly valid issues to be down about. I tried to be as encouraging as possible. I tried to let her know every goddamned day that what she was dealing with wasn't the end of the world. Finally, I just shut up and did my best to be supportive and keep from saying anything that would set her off...which prettymuch meant just keeping my mouth shut and never saying a single thing. Needless to say, this was an incredibly frustrating period and I wrote the above track to kind of get a handle on the effects it was having on me.
You may find this hard to believe, but "I love you even when you don't" consists entirely of only two tracks: the shuddery, massacred beat and the swirly, ethereal synths. Literally, that's it. The "song" is ten minutes long but I don't think it even took me four minutes to write it: I just took some loops that I had lying around on my hard-drive and started dumping effects on them and stitching them together until the above piece was done. This is one of the very few tracks I've ever written that I can honestly say I am proud of, because it's the only one that I think captures a specific mood perfectly: that terrible feeling of helpless love you feel for someone who is suffering from something than only she can wrestle back into control.
Of course, it turned out she wasn't depressed at all. Fucking bitch was just sick of me--her exact words--and she didn't have the goddamned nerve to save me a lot of time and misery by just telling me to step off. Sure, that would've hurt a lot, but it wouldn't've left the festering wound that three months of bootless confusion and pointless self-sacrifice dug into my gut.
Incidentally, this track was going to be part of an EP called Elizabeth (hmm, wonder where I got that title), but after writing this track and one other I just couldn't deal with the sickening rage and hatred that even today I feel just thinking about the whole mess. So I gave up on it.
If you want to download this track and the other one--as well as some much better, more awesome stuff by me--y'all can click here and have at 'em. All tracks are free! Dowhutchalike with 'em.
Ugh. I feel horrible today....I'll save you the disgusting details, but, well...yesterday I met some friends of mine at the local Panera to have some coffee and bullshit about D&D. I've been jonesing for some good coffee for a while, and around Uniontown there aren't very many places to get even vaguely-good coffee save for the mini-Starbucks lodged in the foyer of the local Target and Panera. I hate Starbucks on general principles, but I haven't had the coffee at Panera in ages, so I figured I'd give it a try. So I ordered a mocha latte with soy milk--because I am frightfully lactose-intolerant--and the cute little highschool girl made it up and I sat down with my friends to get wired and get loud.
Buying mp3s online can be an extremely frustrating experience. Even today, after DRM has been soundly shouted down from every tech pulpit in the United States, many online mp3 sellers still continue to sell mp3s encumbered with DRM. Steve Jobs likes to spout a lot of blather about how much he dislikes DRM, but that doesn't change the fact that the iTunes Music Store is still the greatest source of DRM-chained mp3s on the 'Net. Quite frankly, if you buy DRMed music from the ITMS or any other DRM-supporting retailer, you're a goddamned idiot.
There are plenty of DRM-free online mp3 stores, though. Amazon.com's own mp3 store is 100% DRM-free. So is Amie Street (though I find their popularity-based pricing schematic to be a little weird). And there are many, many, many more. However, when it comes to purchasing mp3s from the Web, there's one place I always go: eMusic.com. eMusic has been around for years, has always been DRM-free, has the best prices, and has a truly gigantic selection of (primarily indie) music to browse through. So much music, in fact, it's easy to get lost in the aisles, as it were, unless you either know exactly what you're looking for or you've got some serious browsing skillz.
Or, you could just read this week's Friday Fivehead and go after the five artists/albums I've chosen to profile this week!
This month, I decided to browse only brandnew music, stuff that has only been added to the site in the last week or two. Naturally, I headed right for the Alternative/Punk section and went straight for the New Wave, Goth, and Indie Pop subsections. Considering my tastes (and the fact that those three "labels" are so expansive that they can contain music ranging from pure electronic to acoustic folk-rock), those are always good places to start, and this week I ended up purchasing music from five artists I had never heard of prior to sampling them on eMusic.
First, I stumbled upon a 4-track EP, Modern Romance, by a lovely little synthpop duo called Tonight. I was sold the second I listened to the first few measures of the first track, "When Galaxies Form," which is a gorgeous oldskool synth gem which features swirling synths, beautiful vocals, and spaced-out sci-fi lyrics that will immediately have you thinking of Peter Schilling and S.P.O.C.K. Tonight's vocalist ("the chick"—I couldn't find names or any further info on either bandmember) has a lovely, soft voice that has a Blondie-like tonality, but isn't slathered in so much reverb that her vocals become just another instrument in the mix—something that I've seen happening a lot in synth music lately. Much like Bobby (from last week, remember?), Tonight's music is both danceable and catchy: the beat will definitely get you moving on the dancefloor, but this is not anonymous dance music like most techno (ugh)—the melodies are very memorable, and you most certainly will find yourself singing along while the tracks are playing, and afterword as well. I can't recommend this EP highly enough. It's got something for everyone, because it's a masterpiece of popular music, but will particularly appeal to New Wave and space disco enthusiasts, as well as sci-fi geeks and analog-synth afficionados.
And then there's Final Fantasy, who come from the complete opposite end of the music spectrum. Where Tonight is an obviously beat-driven, melodic group, Final Fantasy is a mostly-percussion-free, oftimes abstract orchestral outfit. He Poos Clouds is a collection of miniature symphonies, comprised primarily of live strings (violins, violas, cellos), piano, and harpsichord with vocals flying over them all like the titular poo'ed-out clouds. There are very few catchy hooks here, and many of the songs are so abstract that they will primarily appeal to people who like their music complicated and avant-garde. However, several of the songs, particularly "The Arctic Circle" and "This Lamb Sells Condos" are lovely pieces of music that immediately call to mind the orchestral pop of Annie Lennox...only weirder. Final Fantasy is most definitely a weird band. Their lyrics are strange and their arrangements often needlessly complex (too much damn Schoenberg, I think) but I'm still telling y'all to download this entire album NOW. Why? Because it's one of the most unusual and idiosyncratic albums I've heard all year. You may find it a little hard to get into, but just sit back and enjoy the strangeness. It will grow on you quickly once you realize that it sounds like the soundtrack to a mutant, dada-esque stage musical from the 1920s.
If, on the other hand, you want music that's got the same quirkiness as Final Fantasy but is more accessible, then let me point out Hector Zazou and Katie Jane Garside's dark nu-jazz/trip-hop masterpiece Corps Electriques. This album is what Portishead's miserable Third album should have been: a bass-heavy, glitchy barrage of gritty beats and slutty-little-chanteuse vocals. Remember Recoil, Alan Wilder's post-Depeche-Mode project best known for its dark but sexy lyrics and its heavy industrial soundscapes? Corps Electriques sounds like Recoil crossed with lounge jazz. The beats are harsh and clicky, the bass murky, and the music a complicated bolus of live and synthesized instruments over which Ms. Garside's shrill little voice streaks like a trail of sputtering light. The vocals really make this album, as Garside can leap from orgasmic trills that would outdo most pornstars to silky-smooth croons in seconds, her voice shuttling up and down octaves in a dizzying—but seriously hot—hurricane of words. Much like Final Fantasy, this group, too, has a very evident dada aspect to it: the combination of beauty (the melodies) and ugliness (the shattered, rusty beats). But lest you think this a difficult album to listen to, let me assure you, it's not. Garside's gorgeous voice and Zazou's jazzy instrumentation combine perfectly to create a lively, if dark and bipolar, album that will appeal to traditional vocal jazz lovers as well as it does industrial freaks.
Sunny Day Sets Fire is a very straightforward, no-nonsense indie pop band, and Summer Palace, their latest album, is a very straightforward, no-nonsense indie pop album. But don't think that this is an "easy-listening" album—Sunny Day Sets Fire's lyrics are peculiarly dark, which gives their bouncy, melodic songs an ironic edge. But not the all-too-common, self-aware "irony" of your typical Pitchfork Media Darling: SDSF is a band who clearly enjoys writing music high in hummable content and low in self-righteousness. "Stranger" is, first and foremost, a good jam whose rather somber lyrics don't detract from the jam but actually bolster it by making both the music and the lyrics sound rather tongue-in-cheek. Classic pop melodies and good songwriting always works, no matter what the subject matter of your lyrics may be, and SDSF is very aware of this: they're not trying to sneak some kind of "message" into your head via their perfectly-crafted songs, they're just out to write some good songs that, okay, do deal with rather tough topics at times. "Teenagers Talking" is a rather vicious song, lyrically, but, man, if you don't find yourself bouncing along to the melody then, unlike Sunny Day Sets Fire, you're clearly taking yourself and your music too seriously. After the weirdness of Final Fantasy and the harsh realities of Hector Zazou * Katie Jane Garside, Sunny Day Sets Fire is a good palate cleanser that doesn't leave you with the stilted, self-important aftertaste of, say, a Radiohead album.
And finally, back to synthpop for a moment. Terminus' first album, uncreatively named Debut Album, is actually a very creative little collection of New Wave songs that combine synths and "real" instruments to create excellent jams that are both inspiring and melancholy, at the same time. Much like Tonight, Terminus is big on science and science-fictional themes: "Song for Laika" is a pretty—if necessarily sad—song dedicated to the first dog in space, and the album opener, "Colossus", is an eerie ambient soundscape built around a sample from the awesome old AI movie Colossus: The Forbin Project. The album is evenly divided between instrumental numbers that recall early-80s Kraftwerk without sounding particularly dated, and club-friendly synthpop songs that vary widely in their BPMs. This is a good thing: it keeps the album from becoming repetitious. In fact, Debut Album sounds more like the soundtrack to a late-1970s sci-fi movie than it does a typical synthpop album. The airy, heavily-reverbed female vocals give the songs a very retro feel, especially on "One more Love Story" and "Girl in Electronica", but the despite all retro connotations this album still sounds futuristic—mainly because Terminus uses the classic analog synth sounds that have entered into the collective unconscious as the iconic Sounds of The Future. Make sure you're wearing your tinfoil spacesuit with the fishbowl helmet before you listen to this record, just in case you experience any loss of cabin pressure or find yourself beyond the orbit of the Moon!
Aaaaaaand, that's it. Go forth and get ye an eMusic membership—hell, $20 a month for 75 downloads is a damn good deal—and grab these albums. You won't be sorry...unless, like, you really wanted that new Britney single and somehow ended up with Final Fantasy instead. Then you might be sorry, for a little while...until you realize you downloaded something a thousand times more interesting. I'm gonna go and listen to that Terminus album a few more times now, so I'll catch y'all next week. Same Bat Time, same Bat Channel!
Holy shit—get in here before someone sees you out there! Didn’t I tell you to never knock on my front door? You want the entire Internet to know we’re doing this?! Do you have any idea what the government would say if they….<sigh>. Nevermind. Here’s the Friday Fivehead. Yes, in Russian: I did the translation myself. DON’T OPEN THE ENVELOPE—the CD-R in there will melt down and erase itself five minutes after you expose it to oxygen. No traces, right? OK, now when you go out the basement door, don’t go through the yard—just—aw, jesus, he didn’t just—
Oh! Hey there! What’s happening? I wasn’t expecting you this early. Who? What guy with a ski-mask pulled over his head running down the alleyway behind my place? I don’t hear a helicopter—oh, wait, that was just a sound-effect on the soundtrack to Good Morning Vietnam that I was listening to. So. Uhhh. Have a seat and let me run this Friday Fivehead past you. That’s not a real Uzi, by the way: it’s just a special controller for GTA 4 on my Wii.
This week we’re going all over the map, transcending international borders, genres, eras, species, orbits. So if you’re sensitive to sudden changes of direction and gravity, then you’d better take some Dramamine before we get started. A’ight, ready to go? Then let’s kick it:
Y’all know by now that I’m a major synthpop freak, right? Electronic pop music just makes my world go ’round. And right now, my world is spinning around at nearly 3000RPM because of Bobby (official site). Their latest album (only their second), Thursday In This Universe, is the most exciting, most melodic, and most beautifully-produced synthpop album I’ve heard in ages. There is not ONE track on the entire album that hasn’t earned a five-star rating in my media player. The opening track is a beautiful dance number written in honor of one of the bandmembers’ father, who passed away during the recording, but is still a killer dance track propelled by swirling synths and a funky plucked bassline. The current single, “Autumn Never Leaves” is simply gorgeous, with its sensual string intro and its acoustic guitar lead and its “In Fashion” is an unbelievably beautiful track on which vocalist Julian Barndt’s voice is literally aching with emotion and the piano melody is perfectly matched with the main vocal melody. “Dancing in Los Angeles” is another floorburning dance track, as is my personal favorite “Masquerade.” The album has a few extraordinary ballads as well, such as “Ingrid Wait For Me” and the rather cheesy but still great “Romantic Flow” (I mean, hey, it’s a ballad: it’s supposed to be cheesy). The best thing about these songs is that they are propelled by bare emotion that most emo bands would give their asymmetric haircuts to express and propelled by sweet, memorable melodies. I cannot recommend this album enough. Seriously. Get it. NOW.
Mindless Self Indulgence (official site) has returned with another sizzling, Ritalin-driven album, the simply-titled If. These crazy motherfuckers really are too cool for the second grade, as spastic vocalist Jimmy Urine howls on the opening track “Never Wanted to Dance” (which will, right out the gate, make you want to leap up out of your seat and start flailing around like a complete idiot on crystal meth). There’s nothing on this album that pushes the envelope: it’s just another album of punkish, high-BPM freakout music that mixes ludicrous-speed drumbeats, crunchy guitars, and staticky synths with loopy vocals drenched in irony. Every word Jimmy Urine sings or shouts is sharpened with his silly, but usually spot-on, sarcastic lyrics that make fun of everything from the bands own fans to the singer himself. This is one band that resolutely refuses to take itself seriously, and aims only to rock and roll. In that sense, they really stand out in the pathetic ashes of the industrial-music scene. They aren’t trying to bring back the heydays of the 1990s or write music that will stand out for centuries—they write music that is fun, energetic, and very listenable even as it is harsh, pissy, and uncompromising. “Lights Out” with its bouncy little chorus “Punch your lights out / hit the pavement / that’s what I call entertainment” and its pit-summoning beat is the highlight of the album, but almost every track on this psychotic little shotgun blast of an album is worth listening to. But don’t—I mean don’t—listen to this album if you’ve got a headache, because it’s so driving and punchy that it will probably make your skull crack open and let a UFO fly out. Pegritz ain’t kiddin’ you, people. “All that violence makes a statement” as the song goes—and that statement is: rock n’ roll is not serious business. Lighten the fuck up. Now get out there and beat the shit outta some stupid goth kid in the pit because he thinks that goth is a lifestyle, not a choice.
Now for something a little less confrontational and vicious. Mark Nicholas has been writing great electropop music for years under the name Cosmicity. Mark retired the name Cosmicity so that he could work on “edgier” stuff, and, yes, his new stuff, released under his name, is definitely edgier than his Cosmicity work. The synths are more distorted, the beats harder, and the subject-matter of the songs a lot darker—but Mark’s excellent songwriting skillz still shine through in catchy, witty lyrics and heartfelt vocals. Make sure you download his Free EP to get a taste of his new stuff, which is supersaturated with energy, vocoded vocals, and bitchin’ beats. “I Wish” is definitely the standout song, with its relatable lyrics—”I wish I could stop scrubbing my skin / but I’m sure it’s still not clean.” A little darkness does Mark good: his “solo” work is a lot deeper than Cosmicity, and as such the songs are more memorable. But don’t think Mark’s now taking himself too damn seriously. Ooooooh, no. The Free EP comes with a awesome cover of Dr. Dre and Tupac’s “California Love” that is pure fun, and you all saw the video for his cover of “Maniac” that I posted the other day. If that shit doesn’t get you up and moving, then you’re either dead or a zombie, and no matter how much they may think they can, zombies can’t dance. Get on over to Mark’s site and freakin’ show him some damn love already! You can order both of his CDs—autographed or not—for just $20. You get more good music for you $20 than you will buying some shitty “alternative” CD at the record store. Get real. Get Mark.
Now let’s take a left turn toward the hip-hop side of the spectrum. Atmosphere, one of the most innoventive and deep underground hip-hop acts in the world, is back with a new album: When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold. I just saw Atmosphere on freakin’ MTV the other day—which is actually a very encouraging sign: it means that people are finally giving these guys the recognition they deserve, and perhaps—just perhaps—the era of ringtone rap is growing old and people are looking for more content in their music. Slug brings that content, rapping about real-life situations that bring us all down: drugs, bad life decisions, stupidity, relationships….You name it, it’s all on this album. It will speak to you. But this album’s a little different than Atmosphere’s last handful of albums: the music on this one, very jazz-inflected and laid back, is a LOT more memorable (damn, that really is my World Of The Day, ain’t it?) than anything else Atmosphere has ever done. This album is what Outkast’s Idlewild should’ve sounded like. Take “Puppets,” for instance. What we’ve got here is a soulful tracks whose big beat is armor for the powerful ’60s-soul harmonies of the hook. “Shoulda Know” and “Yesterday” are strong songs with lyrics that don’t hesistate to point the finger—both at you, and Atmosphere themselves. There is an everyman humbleness to Slug’s flow that makes you immediately identify with him, because he’s not rapping about bling and bitches and bullshit, but about stuff that has happened to him and you. This isn’t disposable, worthless ringtone rap, this is real world rap. And if you’re not brave enough to face up to Slug’s lyrics, then go listen to some shit like…Soldier Boy, or any of that crap (I don’t even know the names of these chumps, they’re so interchangeable).
And finally, let’s wrap up this Friday Fivehead with some nice, lowkey weirdness that will slip through your ears like brain worms and infect your dura mater with some acid-head chillout music. Arkestra One’s debut album brings some ’60s lounge music back to life, twists it, mutates it, then let’s it float free into the atmosphere of your mind like a silver balloon full of xenon. This is spacey stuff, yo. “In The Light,” the album opener, is pure atmospheric lounge music that will slowly come over you like the settling feeling you get after eating a handful of Valiums. You just want to sit back and turn into a puddle while the nu-jazz bassline and slinky beat of “I Really Want You” (featuring vocals from Nina Miranda) wraps around you like cool satin sheets and Miranda’s vocals caress your lips with the taste of a frozen margarita. Ahhhhh, yeah, baby…that’s the ticket in this thicket of swirling sounds. Even more upbeat numbers like the samba-infused “Train to Machu Pichu” have a Beat-Era coolness to them that just makes you feel sooooo, sooooo good. So quit abusing those painkillers, jack—here’s some musical Vicodin that will leave you craving for more than just another handful of hydrocodone. This music will literally make you feel poetic. Man, what I wouldn’t give to hear Slug from Atmosphere droppin’ some science over Arkestra One’s moonraker beats and hookah-headed melodies. As I’ve always said, music is better than drugs because 1) it’s cheaper; and 2) the highs last ever so much longer. Drugs just tweak your biochemistry. Good music tweaks your very soul. Arkestra One is good music. I am very tweaked, sitting here in lotus position languidly typing this sentence to the luscious lushness of “Shine.” Shine on, people. You crazy diamonds, you….
And, like, yeaaaah…that’s it for this week, peeps. I’m sorry I’m a little late getting your Fivehead out here, but my stomach was giving me hell last night. But hey, it’s still Friday, so don’t gimme no grief and bust my Arkestra-One-influenced chillness, yo. Peace.
