Monday, January 25, 2010
Album review Thievery Corporation "Radio Retaliation"
Thievery Corporation's fifth album "radio retaliation" features a wide array of electronic sounds fused with organic sampling. Overall a solid release the album is no "Mirror conspiracy," the band's second release and by far their best effort to date. "Retaliation" does feature the same trademark Thievery Corporation sound, guest vocalists Sleepy Wonder, Lou Lou, and Notch and musical collaborators including Nigeria’s afro-beat heir Femi Kuti, Brazilian star vocalist and guitarist Seu Jorge, Indian sitar virtuoso Anushka Shankar, Slovakian chanteuse and violinist Jana Andevska, and Washington DC’s own godfather of go-go Chuck Brown bring a very eclectic array of musical style to their effort. The first track "Sound the alarm" brings Jamaican style vocals over a reggae tinged sound while the second track "Mandala" features an eastern style overdubbing found previously on Thievery tracks. Listeners will find a wide array of sounds, Jamaican, Latin American, African, Asian and the Middle Eastern influence without any shortage of electronic beats, samples and sounds to the please the ear.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Evolution of electronic music media
The evolution of electronic personal music media extends back to the development of the phonograph in the mid 1800's and is still metamorphosing into the 21st century. I would like to give a little history lesson on this progression.Phonograph Record
The original author of the word phonograph was F.B. Fenby an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts; he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the "Electro-Magnetic Phonograph". His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokes onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the alternative term talking machine was sometimes used. The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying sound.A gramophone record (also phonograph record, or simply record) is an analogue sound recording medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove starting near the periphery and ending near the center of the disc. Gramophone records were the primary medium used for commercial music reproduction for most of the 20th century. They replaced the phonograph cylinder as the most popular recording medium in the 1900s, and although they were supplanted in popularity in the late 1980s by digital media, they continue to be manufactured and sold as of 2007.The terms LP record (LP, 33, or 33-1/3 rpm record), EP, 16-2/3 rpm record (16), 45 rpm record (45), and 78 rpm record (78) each refer to specific types of gramophone records. Except for the LP and EP (which are acronyms of Long Play and Extended Play respectively), these type designations refer to their rotational speeds in revolutions per minute (RPM). LPs, 45s, and 16s are usually made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and hence may be referred to as vinyl records or simply vinyl.TapesThe Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. Although it was originally intended as a medium for dictation, improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. Between the 1960s and early 2000s, the cassette was one of the three most common formats for prerecorded music, alongside the LP and later the Compact Disc. The word cassette is a French word meaning "little box."Compact Cassettes consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetic tape is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second pair when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement ("auto-reverse").Stereo 8, commonly known as the 8-track cartridge, is a magnetic tape technology for audio storage, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Stereo 8 was created by a consortium led by Bill Lear in 1964 of the Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford, Motorola, and RCA Records. It followed the similar Stereo-Pak 4-track cartridge. A later quadraphonic version of the format was known as Quad 8 or Q8. The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made widely available after World War II in the late 1940s. However, threading tape into the recorders was more difficult than simply putting a disc record onto a phonograph player. Manufacturers introduced a succession of cartridges which held the tape inside a metal or plastic housing to eliminate handling. The first was RCA Victor, which in 1958 introduced a cartridge system, but until the introduction of the Compact Cassette in 1963 and Stereo 8 in 1964, none was very successful.Compact DiscA Compact Disc or CD is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. The CD, available on the market in late 1982, remains the standard physical medium for commercial audio recordings as of 2007. An audio CD consists of one or more stereo tracks stored using 16-bit PCM coding at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm and can hold approximately 80 minutes of audio. There are also 80 mm discs, sometimes used for CD singles, which hold approximately 20 minutes of audio. Compact Disc technology was later adapted for use as a data storage device, known as a CD-ROM, and to include record-once and re-writable media (CD-R and CD-RW respectively). CD-ROMs and CD-Rs remain widely used technologies in the Computer industry as of 2007. The CD and its extensions have been extremely successful: in 2004, the annual worldwide sales of CD-Audio, CD-ROM, and CD-R reached about 30 billion discs.The Compact Disc reached the market in late 1982 in Asia, and early the following year in the United States and other markets. The first CDs available were 16 Japanese-made titles from CBS/Sony. This event is often seen as the "Big Bang" of the digital audio revolution. The new audio disc was enthusiastically received, especially in the early-adopting classical music and audiophile communities and its handling quality received particular praise. As the price of players sank rapidly, the CD began to gain popularity in the larger popular and rock music markets.The CD was originally thought of as an evolution of the gramophone record, rather than primarily as a data storage medium. Only later did the concept of an 'audio file' arise, and the generalizing of this to any data file. From its origins as a music format, Compact Disc has grown to encompass other applications. In June 1985, the CD-ROM (read-only memory) and, in 1990, CD-Recordable was introduced, also developed by Sony and Philips. While CDs are significantly more durable than earlier audio formats, they are susceptible to damage from daily usage and environmental factors.MP3MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular audio encoding format. It uses a loosy compression algorithm that is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. It was invented by a team of European engineers.MP3 is an audio-specific format. The compression takes off certain sounds that cannot be heard by the listener, i.e. outside the normal human hearing range. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation encoded audio in much less space than straightforward methods, by using psychoacoustic models to discard components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner. Similar principles are used by JPEG, an image compression format.Modern lossy bit compression technologies, including MPEG, MP3, etc, are based on the early work of Prof Oscar Bonello of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was involved in Studio equipment design for Broadcast radio automation. At the same time he taught Acoustics at the University, Psychoacoustics being his main field of research. In 1983 he started researching the idea of using the Critical Band Masking principle (a property of the ear) in order to reduce the bit stream needed to encode an audio signal. The masking principle was discovered in 1924 and further developed by in 1959. Bonello's work created, in 1987, the world's first bit compression system, named ECAM, working in real time and implemented by hardware on an IBM PC computer. This plug in card and the associated control software was demonstrated for the first time in 1988 as a fully working product named Audicom and introduced to the world at the international NAB Radio Exhibition in Atlanta, USA on 1990. The basic Bonello implementation is now used in MP3 and other systems. Bonello refuses to apply for any patents around this technology.A reference simulation software implementation, written in the C language and known as ISO 11172-5, was developed by the members of the ISO MPEG Audio committee in order to produce bit compliant MPEG Audio files (Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3). Working in non-real time on a number of operating systems, it was able to demonstrate the first real time hardware decoding (DSP based) of compressed audio. Some other real time implementation of MPEG Audio encoders were available for the purpose of digital broadcasting (radio DAB, television DVB) towards consumer receivers and set top boxes.Later, on July 7, 1994 the Fraunhofer Society released the first software MP3 encoder called l3enc. The filename extension .mp3 was chosen by the Fraunhofer team on July 14, 1995 (previously, the files had been named .bit). With the first real-time software MP3 player Winplay3 (released September 9, 1995) many people were able to encode and playback MP3 files on their PCs. Because of the relatively small hard drives back in that time (500 MB) the technology was essential to store non-instrument based music for listening on a computer.In October 1993, MP2 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2) files appeared on the Internet and were often played back using the Xing MPEG Audio Player, and later in a program for Unix by Tobias Bading called MAPlay, which was initially released on February 22, 1994 (MAPlay was also ported to Microsoft Windows).Initially the only encoder available for MP2 production was the Xing Encoder, accompanied by the program cdda2wav, a CD ripper used for extracting CD audio tracks to Waveform Audio Files.The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) is generally recognized as the start of the on-line music revolution. IUMA was the Internet's first high-fidelity music web site, hosting thousands of authorized MP2 recordings before MP3 or the web was popularized.In the first half of 1995 through the late 1990s, MP3 files began to spread on the Internet. MP3's popularity began to rise rapidly with the advent of Nullsoft's audio player Winamp (released in 1997), the UNIX audio player mpg123 and the peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster (released in 1999). These programs made it simple for average users to play back, create, share and collect MP3s.The small size of MP3 files has enabled widespread peer-to-peer file sharing of music, which would previously have been near impossible. The major record companies, who argue that such free sharing of music reduces sales, reacted to this by pursuing law-suits against Napster, which was eventually closed down, and eventually against individual users who engaged in file sharing.Despite the popularity of MP3, online music retailers often use other proprietary formats that are encrypted (known as Digital Rights Management) to prevent users from using purchased music in ways not specifically authorized by the record companies. The record companies argue that this is necessary to prevent the files from being made available on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. However, this has other side effects such as preventing users from playing back their purchased music on different types of devices. Some services, such as eMusic, continue to offer the MP3 format, which allows users to playback their music on virtually any device.When creating an MP3 file, there is a trade-off between the amount of space used and the sound quality of the result. Typically, the creator of the MP3 file is allowed to set a bit rate, which specifies how many kilobits the file may use per second of audio, for example, when ripping a compact disc to this format. The lower the bit rate used, the lower the audio quality will be, but the smaller the file size. Likewise, the higher the bit rate used, the higher quality, and therefore, larger the file size the resulting MP3 will be.As described, MP3 files encoded with a lower bit rate will generally play back at a lower quality. With too low a bit rate, "compression artifacts" (i.e., sounds that were not present in the original recording) may be audible in the reproduction. Some audio is hard to compress because of its randomness and sharp attacks. When this type of audio is compressed, artifacts such as ringing or pre-echo are usually heard. A sample of applause compressed with a relatively nominal bit rate provides a good example of compression artifacts.Besides the bit rate of an encoded piece of audio, the quality of MP3 files also depends on the quality of the encoder itself, and the difficulty of the signal being encoded. As the MP3 standard allows quite a bit of freedom with encoding algorithms, different encoders may feature quite different quality, even when targeting similar bit rates.Quality is heavily dependent on the choice of encoder and encoding parameters. While quality around 128kbps was somewhere between annoying and acceptable with older encoders, modern MP3 encoders can provide very good quality at those bit rates. The advances in this technology is exploding as is the quality of the devices, will our grandchildren be as shocked at our current media as we are with our grandparents?
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com
The original author of the word phonograph was F.B. Fenby an inventor in Worcester, Massachusetts; he was granted a patent in 1863 for an unsuccessful device called the "Electro-Magnetic Phonograph". His concept detailed a system that would record a sequence of keyboard strokes onto paper tape. Although no model or workable device was ever made, it is often seen as a link to the concept of punched paper for player piano rolls. Arguably, any device used to record sound or reproduce recorded sound could be called a type of "phonograph", but in common practice it has come to mean historic technologies of sound recording. In the late 19th and early 20th century, the alternative term talking machine was sometimes used. The phonograph, or gramophone, was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. Usage of these terms is not uniform across the English-speaking world. In more modern usage, this device is often called a turntable, record player, or record changer. The phonograph was the first device for recording and replaying sound.A gramophone record (also phonograph record, or simply record) is an analogue sound recording medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed modulated spiral groove starting near the periphery and ending near the center of the disc. Gramophone records were the primary medium used for commercial music reproduction for most of the 20th century. They replaced the phonograph cylinder as the most popular recording medium in the 1900s, and although they were supplanted in popularity in the late 1980s by digital media, they continue to be manufactured and sold as of 2007.The terms LP record (LP, 33, or 33-1/3 rpm record), EP, 16-2/3 rpm record (16), 45 rpm record (45), and 78 rpm record (78) each refer to specific types of gramophone records. Except for the LP and EP (which are acronyms of Long Play and Extended Play respectively), these type designations refer to their rotational speeds in revolutions per minute (RPM). LPs, 45s, and 16s are usually made of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), and hence may be referred to as vinyl records or simply vinyl.TapesThe Compact Cassette, often referred to as audio cassette, cassette tape, cassette, or simply tape, is a magnetic tape sound recording format. Although it was originally intended as a medium for dictation, improvements in fidelity led the Compact Cassette to supplant reel-to-reel tape recording in most non-professional applications. Its uses ranged from portable audio to home recording to data storage for early microcomputers. Between the 1960s and early 2000s, the cassette was one of the three most common formats for prerecorded music, alongside the LP and later the Compact Disc. The word cassette is a French word meaning "little box."Compact Cassettes consist of two miniature spools, between which a magnetic tape is passed and wound. These spools and their attendant parts are held inside a protective plastic shell. Two stereo pairs of tracks (four total) or two monaural audio tracks are available on the tape; one stereo pair or one monophonic track is played or recorded when the tape is moving in one direction and the second pair when moving in the other direction. This reversal is achieved either by manually flipping the cassette or by having the machine itself change the direction of tape movement ("auto-reverse").Stereo 8, commonly known as the 8-track cartridge, is a magnetic tape technology for audio storage, popular from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. Stereo 8 was created by a consortium led by Bill Lear in 1964 of the Lear Jet Corporation, along with Ampex, Ford, Motorola, and RCA Records. It followed the similar Stereo-Pak 4-track cartridge. A later quadraphonic version of the format was known as Quad 8 or Q8. The original format for magnetic tape sound reproduction was reel-to-reel audio tape recording, first made widely available after World War II in the late 1940s. However, threading tape into the recorders was more difficult than simply putting a disc record onto a phonograph player. Manufacturers introduced a succession of cartridges which held the tape inside a metal or plastic housing to eliminate handling. The first was RCA Victor, which in 1958 introduced a cartridge system, but until the introduction of the Compact Cassette in 1963 and Stereo 8 in 1964, none was very successful.Compact DiscA Compact Disc or CD is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. The CD, available on the market in late 1982, remains the standard physical medium for commercial audio recordings as of 2007. An audio CD consists of one or more stereo tracks stored using 16-bit PCM coding at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. Standard CDs have a diameter of 120 mm and can hold approximately 80 minutes of audio. There are also 80 mm discs, sometimes used for CD singles, which hold approximately 20 minutes of audio. Compact Disc technology was later adapted for use as a data storage device, known as a CD-ROM, and to include record-once and re-writable media (CD-R and CD-RW respectively). CD-ROMs and CD-Rs remain widely used technologies in the Computer industry as of 2007. The CD and its extensions have been extremely successful: in 2004, the annual worldwide sales of CD-Audio, CD-ROM, and CD-R reached about 30 billion discs.The Compact Disc reached the market in late 1982 in Asia, and early the following year in the United States and other markets. The first CDs available were 16 Japanese-made titles from CBS/Sony. This event is often seen as the "Big Bang" of the digital audio revolution. The new audio disc was enthusiastically received, especially in the early-adopting classical music and audiophile communities and its handling quality received particular praise. As the price of players sank rapidly, the CD began to gain popularity in the larger popular and rock music markets.The CD was originally thought of as an evolution of the gramophone record, rather than primarily as a data storage medium. Only later did the concept of an 'audio file' arise, and the generalizing of this to any data file. From its origins as a music format, Compact Disc has grown to encompass other applications. In June 1985, the CD-ROM (read-only memory) and, in 1990, CD-Recordable was introduced, also developed by Sony and Philips. While CDs are significantly more durable than earlier audio formats, they are susceptible to damage from daily usage and environmental factors.MP3MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a popular audio encoding format. It uses a loosy compression algorithm that is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording, yet still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio to most listeners. It was invented by a team of European engineers.MP3 is an audio-specific format. The compression takes off certain sounds that cannot be heard by the listener, i.e. outside the normal human hearing range. It provides a representation of pulse-code modulation encoded audio in much less space than straightforward methods, by using psychoacoustic models to discard components less audible to human hearing, and recording the remaining information in an efficient manner. Similar principles are used by JPEG, an image compression format.Modern lossy bit compression technologies, including MPEG, MP3, etc, are based on the early work of Prof Oscar Bonello of the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. He was involved in Studio equipment design for Broadcast radio automation. At the same time he taught Acoustics at the University, Psychoacoustics being his main field of research. In 1983 he started researching the idea of using the Critical Band Masking principle (a property of the ear) in order to reduce the bit stream needed to encode an audio signal. The masking principle was discovered in 1924 and further developed by in 1959. Bonello's work created, in 1987, the world's first bit compression system, named ECAM, working in real time and implemented by hardware on an IBM PC computer. This plug in card and the associated control software was demonstrated for the first time in 1988 as a fully working product named Audicom and introduced to the world at the international NAB Radio Exhibition in Atlanta, USA on 1990. The basic Bonello implementation is now used in MP3 and other systems. Bonello refuses to apply for any patents around this technology.A reference simulation software implementation, written in the C language and known as ISO 11172-5, was developed by the members of the ISO MPEG Audio committee in order to produce bit compliant MPEG Audio files (Layer 1, Layer 2, Layer 3). Working in non-real time on a number of operating systems, it was able to demonstrate the first real time hardware decoding (DSP based) of compressed audio. Some other real time implementation of MPEG Audio encoders were available for the purpose of digital broadcasting (radio DAB, television DVB) towards consumer receivers and set top boxes.Later, on July 7, 1994 the Fraunhofer Society released the first software MP3 encoder called l3enc. The filename extension .mp3 was chosen by the Fraunhofer team on July 14, 1995 (previously, the files had been named .bit). With the first real-time software MP3 player Winplay3 (released September 9, 1995) many people were able to encode and playback MP3 files on their PCs. Because of the relatively small hard drives back in that time (500 MB) the technology was essential to store non-instrument based music for listening on a computer.In October 1993, MP2 (MPEG-1 Audio Layer 2) files appeared on the Internet and were often played back using the Xing MPEG Audio Player, and later in a program for Unix by Tobias Bading called MAPlay, which was initially released on February 22, 1994 (MAPlay was also ported to Microsoft Windows).Initially the only encoder available for MP2 production was the Xing Encoder, accompanied by the program cdda2wav, a CD ripper used for extracting CD audio tracks to Waveform Audio Files.The Internet Underground Music Archive (IUMA) is generally recognized as the start of the on-line music revolution. IUMA was the Internet's first high-fidelity music web site, hosting thousands of authorized MP2 recordings before MP3 or the web was popularized.In the first half of 1995 through the late 1990s, MP3 files began to spread on the Internet. MP3's popularity began to rise rapidly with the advent of Nullsoft's audio player Winamp (released in 1997), the UNIX audio player mpg123 and the peer-to-peer file sharing network Napster (released in 1999). These programs made it simple for average users to play back, create, share and collect MP3s.The small size of MP3 files has enabled widespread peer-to-peer file sharing of music, which would previously have been near impossible. The major record companies, who argue that such free sharing of music reduces sales, reacted to this by pursuing law-suits against Napster, which was eventually closed down, and eventually against individual users who engaged in file sharing.Despite the popularity of MP3, online music retailers often use other proprietary formats that are encrypted (known as Digital Rights Management) to prevent users from using purchased music in ways not specifically authorized by the record companies. The record companies argue that this is necessary to prevent the files from being made available on peer-to-peer file sharing networks. However, this has other side effects such as preventing users from playing back their purchased music on different types of devices. Some services, such as eMusic, continue to offer the MP3 format, which allows users to playback their music on virtually any device.When creating an MP3 file, there is a trade-off between the amount of space used and the sound quality of the result. Typically, the creator of the MP3 file is allowed to set a bit rate, which specifies how many kilobits the file may use per second of audio, for example, when ripping a compact disc to this format. The lower the bit rate used, the lower the audio quality will be, but the smaller the file size. Likewise, the higher the bit rate used, the higher quality, and therefore, larger the file size the resulting MP3 will be.As described, MP3 files encoded with a lower bit rate will generally play back at a lower quality. With too low a bit rate, "compression artifacts" (i.e., sounds that were not present in the original recording) may be audible in the reproduction. Some audio is hard to compress because of its randomness and sharp attacks. When this type of audio is compressed, artifacts such as ringing or pre-echo are usually heard. A sample of applause compressed with a relatively nominal bit rate provides a good example of compression artifacts.Besides the bit rate of an encoded piece of audio, the quality of MP3 files also depends on the quality of the encoder itself, and the difficulty of the signal being encoded. As the MP3 standard allows quite a bit of freedom with encoding algorithms, different encoders may feature quite different quality, even when targeting similar bit rates.Quality is heavily dependent on the choice of encoder and encoding parameters. While quality around 128kbps was somewhere between annoying and acceptable with older encoders, modern MP3 encoders can provide very good quality at those bit rates. The advances in this technology is exploding as is the quality of the devices, will our grandchildren be as shocked at our current media as we are with our grandparents?
Article Source: http://www.ArticleBlast.com
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Thursday, January 7, 2010
Album review Massive Attack "100th Window"
Music review-Massive attack"100th window"
Article Author:ajay pats
Thi s article reviews latest albume"100 th window" by massive attackIf you have not yet heard of Massive Attack, expect to. Hailing from the UK, this trio of trip-hop revolutionaries (Grant Marshall (a.k.a Daddy Gee), Robert del Naja (a.k.a. 3D), and Andrew Vowles (a.k.a. Mushroom)) took the music world by storm in 1991 with their debut album, "Blue Lines", which was followed up by 1994's "Protection", both of which included contribution from members of the band Everything But The Girl, and those who would later go on to be fame-swept as well - Tricky and Nicolette.
In 1998, the behemoth that is "Mezzanine" was released, scoring major critical acclaim and mesmerizing and haunting listeners from all parts of the world. "Mezzanine" was the band's trend setting break that made more people aware of their skill. This work includes the vocal talents of Sara Jay, Horace Andy and Elizabeth Frasier (Cocteau Twins). They are credited for having their music used in many blockbuster movies (some of which are: Mission: Impossible, Blade 2, Stigmata, Moulin Rouge). Andrew Vowles left the band in 1999, due to dislike of "Mezzanine"'s outcome.
Mushroom's unhappiness with the last album has not halted the creative juices of the remaining members, however, as their new album popped onto the shelves a very short time ago. "100th Window", the group's newest effort splendidly pleases old fans and welcomes new ones. This new nine track CD includes vocals by Damon Albarn (of Blur and Gorillaz fame), Sinead O'Connor, and a return performance from Horace Andy.
Following in the footsteps of "Mezzanine", "100th Window" starts with an ominously melodic song, "Future Proof". This starts off the experience with great melodic bells and is a worthy introduction of the album, which changes pace many times within the course of the album. The soft-toned, love-song track is here too, "What Your Soul Sings" plays with a relaxing beat reminiscent to that of Mezzanine's soft-song, "Teardrop".
The whole album sounds very new, while keeping the vital style of the original. Vibrant and entertaining, "100th Window" sets a new bar for trip-hop ambience, and is in many ways like a soundtrack to a movie. Superb intros and outro's bind the songs into a swimming unity, making the album more of an experience than a collection of single songs.
Spending money on this item is worth it. There are fewer tracks than Mezzanine, but the quality makes up for most of that loss.More reviews are available at http://venturemall.tripod.com/winbidbuy/id33.html
About the Author
Ajay Patole is a qualified management professional working as sales manager and runs a site 'Venturemall',a cool hangout to play money games,buy and sell in auctions,date and photochat.It is available at URL http://venturemall.tripod.com/ and newsletter to rediscover true colors of life at http://www.topica.com/lists/venturemall.Also he runs a community 'Venturecon', for entrepreneurs which is available at URL http://groups.msn.com/venturecon.
Article Author:ajay pats
Thi s article reviews latest albume"100 th window" by massive attackIf you have not yet heard of Massive Attack, expect to. Hailing from the UK, this trio of trip-hop revolutionaries (Grant Marshall (a.k.a Daddy Gee), Robert del Naja (a.k.a. 3D), and Andrew Vowles (a.k.a. Mushroom)) took the music world by storm in 1991 with their debut album, "Blue Lines", which was followed up by 1994's "Protection", both of which included contribution from members of the band Everything But The Girl, and those who would later go on to be fame-swept as well - Tricky and Nicolette.
In 1998, the behemoth that is "Mezzanine" was released, scoring major critical acclaim and mesmerizing and haunting listeners from all parts of the world. "Mezzanine" was the band's trend setting break that made more people aware of their skill. This work includes the vocal talents of Sara Jay, Horace Andy and Elizabeth Frasier (Cocteau Twins). They are credited for having their music used in many blockbuster movies (some of which are: Mission: Impossible, Blade 2, Stigmata, Moulin Rouge). Andrew Vowles left the band in 1999, due to dislike of "Mezzanine"'s outcome.
Mushroom's unhappiness with the last album has not halted the creative juices of the remaining members, however, as their new album popped onto the shelves a very short time ago. "100th Window", the group's newest effort splendidly pleases old fans and welcomes new ones. This new nine track CD includes vocals by Damon Albarn (of Blur and Gorillaz fame), Sinead O'Connor, and a return performance from Horace Andy.
Following in the footsteps of "Mezzanine", "100th Window" starts with an ominously melodic song, "Future Proof". This starts off the experience with great melodic bells and is a worthy introduction of the album, which changes pace many times within the course of the album. The soft-toned, love-song track is here too, "What Your Soul Sings" plays with a relaxing beat reminiscent to that of Mezzanine's soft-song, "Teardrop".
The whole album sounds very new, while keeping the vital style of the original. Vibrant and entertaining, "100th Window" sets a new bar for trip-hop ambience, and is in many ways like a soundtrack to a movie. Superb intros and outro's bind the songs into a swimming unity, making the album more of an experience than a collection of single songs.
Spending money on this item is worth it. There are fewer tracks than Mezzanine, but the quality makes up for most of that loss.More reviews are available at http://venturemall.tripod.com/winbidbuy/id33.html
About the Author
Ajay Patole is a qualified management professional working as sales manager and runs a site 'Venturemall',a cool hangout to play money games,buy and sell in auctions,date and photochat.It is available at URL http://venturemall.tripod.com/ and newsletter to rediscover true colors of life at http://www.topica.com/lists/venturemall.Also he runs a community 'Venturecon', for entrepreneurs which is available at URL http://groups.msn.com/venturecon.
Album Review - Weebl's Stuff - "Yesterday's Lemon
Anybody who knows anything about the Internet knows about Weebl, or at the very least about Badger Badger Badger. Turns out that Weebl, otherwise known as Jonti Picking, has his own website, where you can find all sorts of cool animations. His signature style is to make a cartoon with his own music that makes no sense and loops indefinitely. Lo and behold, he has released some of his tunes on his new album, "Yesterday's Lemon." I picked up the album on iTunes, and after listening to it on repeat for the umpteenth time, I am ready to review it.
Track list: 1-Amazing Horse 2-Electro Gypsy 3-Narwhals 4-Owls 5-8bit Shrooms 6-Blimp 7-Electro Gypsy (Angle Grinder 8 Dnb Remix) 8-Baby Baboon 9-Pelican
The first three tracks on this album are a trifecta of addictive electronic beats. "Amazing Horse" soars with tight synth melodies with a nice panned drum kit to back it up. "Electro Gypsy" sings a ballad about future music while bringing credibility to the title. And then there's "Narwhals", a happy go lucky tune about nature's oddest sea mammal. These three tunes will be stuck in your head for the next two weeks after you hear them. You might even sing along. It's an incredibly strong opening to an album.
Ironically this album has no songs about lemons. Five of the nine tracks are dedicated to animals. This album should have been titled "Weebl's Menagerie." "Yesterday's Lemon" relies heavily on comedic value, since most of the songs were designed for looping Internet cartoons. It's really obvious where the loops were meant to end, because it's where the breakdown of the song is. Some of the songs have a children's music feel to them similar to They Might Be Giants. However, when you produce an album with the line "Look at my horse, my horse is amazing... With a stroke of its mane/It turns into a plane/And then it turns back again/When you tug on its winkie", you've exited the realm of children's music. The humor of this album is superb in my opinion, but if you've ever watched a Weebl cartoon and thought to yourself, "Fuck this noise," then you won't like this album.
The only other song on this album I found notable was "8bit Shrooms", because I'm a Mario fan (I grew up on the NES) and its the sole heavy metal song in "Yesterday's Lemon." Weebl's vocals are clear and solid throughout, and some of the tracks are even supplemented by female vocals. Personally I'd like to find out what kind of home studio setup Jonti Picking is using. The production values of this album are slick, and remind us how pretty much anybody can release a record these days. The only shortcoming of this album is the remix of "Electro Gypsy", which has a hard hitting edge to it that sticks out like a sore thumb (too much compression on the drums). I didn't find the remix particularly creative, and would have preferred more original songs.
If you are willing to give these tracks a chance, they'll worm your way into your regular listening schedule. The songs may be short in length, but their brevity is made up for by their replayability. If you don't already love narwhals now, you soon will, and realize that they are in fact the most awesome sea mammals in the world.
http://www.lurchworld.comHome of unlimited possibilities
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Fannon
Track list: 1-Amazing Horse 2-Electro Gypsy 3-Narwhals 4-Owls 5-8bit Shrooms 6-Blimp 7-Electro Gypsy (Angle Grinder 8 Dnb Remix) 8-Baby Baboon 9-Pelican
The first three tracks on this album are a trifecta of addictive electronic beats. "Amazing Horse" soars with tight synth melodies with a nice panned drum kit to back it up. "Electro Gypsy" sings a ballad about future music while bringing credibility to the title. And then there's "Narwhals", a happy go lucky tune about nature's oddest sea mammal. These three tunes will be stuck in your head for the next two weeks after you hear them. You might even sing along. It's an incredibly strong opening to an album.
Ironically this album has no songs about lemons. Five of the nine tracks are dedicated to animals. This album should have been titled "Weebl's Menagerie." "Yesterday's Lemon" relies heavily on comedic value, since most of the songs were designed for looping Internet cartoons. It's really obvious where the loops were meant to end, because it's where the breakdown of the song is. Some of the songs have a children's music feel to them similar to They Might Be Giants. However, when you produce an album with the line "Look at my horse, my horse is amazing... With a stroke of its mane/It turns into a plane/And then it turns back again/When you tug on its winkie", you've exited the realm of children's music. The humor of this album is superb in my opinion, but if you've ever watched a Weebl cartoon and thought to yourself, "Fuck this noise," then you won't like this album.
The only other song on this album I found notable was "8bit Shrooms", because I'm a Mario fan (I grew up on the NES) and its the sole heavy metal song in "Yesterday's Lemon." Weebl's vocals are clear and solid throughout, and some of the tracks are even supplemented by female vocals. Personally I'd like to find out what kind of home studio setup Jonti Picking is using. The production values of this album are slick, and remind us how pretty much anybody can release a record these days. The only shortcoming of this album is the remix of "Electro Gypsy", which has a hard hitting edge to it that sticks out like a sore thumb (too much compression on the drums). I didn't find the remix particularly creative, and would have preferred more original songs.
If you are willing to give these tracks a chance, they'll worm your way into your regular listening schedule. The songs may be short in length, but their brevity is made up for by their replayability. If you don't already love narwhals now, you soon will, and realize that they are in fact the most awesome sea mammals in the world.
http://www.lurchworld.comHome of unlimited possibilities
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Paul_Fannon
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