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MP3: Wavves – So Bored

Noise music doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Maybe I’ve been reading too much existential philosophy, but I’ve come to the realization that noise isn’t something a person can understand. Upon full comprehension of the music, you humanize it; you make it your own. You make it something that it’s not.

Noise music is irrational; it’s not supposed to make sense. Once you can claim to know it, you’ve gone about understanding something other than what the sound waves dictate. In this way, noise is something that us logic-bound humans can’t ever truly “get.” It’s beyond me how the stuff gets made; perhaps an absurd mental fixation is what causes a musician to create, or maybe some dude just records whatever sounds “cool” in his basement and then releases it. I’ll probably never find out for sure. I’ve never liked things that I can’t wholly comprehend, and that’s why I’m baffled by the satisfaction I gain while listening to this latest trend: noise-pop.

Wavves are the most recent subject of this ever-fickle hipster favoritism complex. Read the rest…

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MP3: DD/MM/YYYY – Infinity Skull Cube

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MP3: DD/MM/YYYY – Digital Haircut

I have this compulsion that started back in elementary school when I played the trumpet: I have to identify the time signature of every song that I listen to. Usually it’s pretty easy to do, but sometimes I get thrown off. Any well-masked measure of three will transform me, one of those too-hip-for-your-face type college students, into a little boy who’s just discovered a lollipop in a sandbox. This phenomenon makes listening to DD/MM/YYYY’s (Wiki) latest record, Black Square, like finding a whole candy shop in the endless sandbox of Time. Skimming through the album, there are at least two songs in 5/4 (!!!), one that might be 7/8 time, and many many more rhythmic gems.

Good readers of Aural States, I’m a sucker for irregular time signatures. Every single time. It so happens that the effective use of an abnormal signature is a pretty reliable signal that the musicians at hand know what they’re doing. This probably applies to these choice experimental-rockers.  As far as I can tell, they’ve all got chops.  DD/MM/YYYY are what appears to be 7 Canadians who, if I may borrow a phrase from Zack Turowski (on Abe Vigoda), “find a happy middle ground between knowing how to play their instruments and performing songs that don’t demand to be played at medium-low volume in your bedroom with the blinds drawn and the door shut tight.”

Well said.

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MP3: The Magnetic Fields – Underwear

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MP3: The Magnetic Fields – Queen of the Savages

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MP3: The Magnetic Fields – Long-Forgotten Fairytale

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MP3: The Magnetic Fields – The Book of Love

There’s something poetic about the number 10. Rationally speaking, there’s nothing different about it, but it’s hard to deny 10 its place in our psychology. With that in mind, it seems like high time to look back on what is arguably the Magnetic Fields’ best album to date, 69 Love Songs.

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MP3: Heartless Bastards – The Mountain

Does anyone realize that real authentic folk is vast rarity in nowadays? If you drive for a few days out on I-70 West you’ll find yourself somewhere in Colorado, and things will look quite similar to how they do here on the East Coast. There will be cars, people, houses, and department stores. It seems to me that we have a lot of folk music and not so much folk living, and maybe that’s why it seems so synthetic when Heartless Bastards experiment with the all too popular genre. Especially when it’s so clear that they should stick to blues. Read the rest…

What is this?

I remember the days when Animal Collective would whirl me along in their otherworldly tornado when I put my headphones on. Remember “Leaf House”? Those two-and-a-half minutes of perfection? I do.

And “The Purple Bottle”? The formless wonder-pop of Feels? Remember when Avey Tare and Panda Bear would bedazzle you with lyrics that seemed like a task to decipher? I remember.

If Merriweather Post Pavilion is any indication of the Baltimore natives’ future aspirations, those days of unconventional song structure and general madness are long gone. On Merriweather, Animal Collective offer us their most predictable album yet; but rather than disappointing, they place a very necessary lid on the bottle of joy that they’ve been pouring out consistently since they started making music way back in high school. Read the rest…

Editor’s Note: Each of the writers from Aural States was given free-reign to make an optional year-end post, filled with lists, oped, whining, whatever…this is what one came up with:

My cat gave me Videohippo’s Unbeast the Leash for Christmas, I’m not sure if that’s a statement about her sense of fulfillment in her life or not. Either way, it’s now my soundtrack to Christmas. I’m sitting around, 3:30 on December 25th, still in my pajamas. I’ve eaten a disgusting amount of cinnamon buns in the last week, and I haven’t shaven in three or four days. A little bit of me wants to die. Four cinnamon buns. FOUR.

And it’s perfect. This melancholy, slightly nostalgic music set to my yearly dose of Christmas nausea. Read the rest…

Journal: December 22, 2008. Time: 2:35 AM

A group of friends and I drove from Baltimore to New York City today. We had no purpose there, just to have a good time in the Big City. Going on the trip was a bad idea for me either way because I couldn’t get to sleep last night. It’s my fault completely; sleeping in until 3:00PM every day has its downsides.

Being opposed to classic rock radio, I brought my iPod and its device to play it in the car. Being opposed to “pretentious indie music,” my friends used the device to play their own music.

5 hours up to New York, 5 hours back. Christmas music. I couldn’t sleep in the car because the music was too loud. At some point on the way back, they shifted taste from Christmas music to pseudo-indie pop, the sort of stuff you hear radio DJs call “underground”. Ok Go, Postal Service, the like. Of course, all of it was too loud for any decent conversation to take place.

I was cold, tired, and disillusioned in regards to my peers as I scraped the ice off of my windshield to drive home from my friend’s house. It reminded me of when I had to scrape the paint off of the side of that dilapidated house in Baltimore this summer. I loved working construction. Anyway, I sat down inside of my 1989 Toyota stick shift and selected music to listen to on the ride home. I decided to go with CANNOT BE STOPPED. It reminded me of how much progress music has made from Christmas tunes. Read the rest…

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MP3: Perhapst – Aren’t You Glowing

Around this time every year, melancholy pop albums seem to find their home in my possession. I don’t think it could happen any other way. Any other time of the year is inappropriate. Summer is too sweaty and fun, spring too lively, and autumn too filled with new experiences. During the end of December and the beginning of January my level of cynicism is at an all time high. I watch all the cars rush to department stores to buy gifts for holidays I’m not sure are even necessary, and I enjoy my own loathing.

Every year this happens, just as every year an album like Perhapst falls into my hands. Read the rest…

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MP3: Wild Beasts – Vigil for a Fuddy Duddy

“Room a catacomb, this ghoul a balloon, with the breath from beneath your breast, yes that is best,” opens Wild Beasts’ Domino debut (Limbo, Panto) with Hayden Thorpe’s enormous cry. Even though everything Wild Beasts pull out of their English bag of tricks could have been predicted after just a few verses of Thorpe’s howl, they’ll still surprise you every time. Read the rest…

It was always clear to me that Fabrizio Moretti was the coolest Stroke. Julian Casablancas tries too hard to be hip, and Nick Valensi looks far too much like Euro-trash to be from New York, which is totally uncool. Let’s face it, Albert Hammond and Nikolai Fraiture never even had a chance. Fab Moretti has gone ahead and perfected the apathetic musician look. That 5-day-old scruff, an almost unnoticeable slouch…I bet he probably raises his eyebrows often. I’d like to hang out with him, sit in a Brazilian cafe and watch him smoke cigarettes. He’d tell me about his adventures from touring, we’d listen to old Velvet Underground records.

I don’t even like them that much (but I’d never tell Fab that).

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