lunes, 16 de enero de 2012

Athlete - "Black Swan"


Athlete are an indie rock band which formed in 1999 in Deptford, London- England. Their sound is a mix of indie rock and electronic music, most recently integrating organic sounds into their music.

Street Date: August 24, 2009


viernes, 6 de enero de 2012

All the Day Holiday - "The Things We've Grown to Love"


The enchantment and gorgeous intentions of The Things We’ve Grown To Love is immediate. Album opener “Autumn” starts with a token lead: urgent guitars, pulsating effects busting through the seams, vocal lines that draw maps across several landscapes and then a lyric that assures “We’re caught up in/A thousand spiderwebs and lies/So let it go, let the pages turn on their own” and then “I promise you we’ll make it out alive.” A key gut-jerking that “this is something real” (as the band puts it on “Real Time”) gives All The Day Holiday a mystic that there is something unbeknownst to us all, and they’re just helping us understand that. But above those virtuous ideals, All The Day Holiday are still a bit naïve. And so are we all - the combination of this all is what gauges The Things We’ve Grown To Love at a mesmerizing level of emotive. Similar experiences have been had with bands like Lovedrug and Pompeii, but All The Day Holiday is the new player on the frontlines of tingly auras.

But enough of these gushy sentiments. The beauty of The Things We’ve Grown To Love has a lot more to do with Matt Malpass production and the band’s nerve for laying pop atmospheres akin to Mae or Days Away. Every track on the album, with the exception of acoustic ender “Invisible”, is a sophisticated calculation of delay and sounds as colors. Despite being new to our ears, All The Day Holiday has the structure of a band who has toyed around with their sound for more than a few years (and was previously splashing around in the screamo genre with former band, Against The Nations). This shows in their secure delivery and precision.

Style: Indie / Experimental / Ambient
Street Date: August 4, 2009

Track list:
01 Autumn
02 Real Time
03 2000 Winters
04 Greener
05 La Voyage
06 Atmosphere
07 Cities
08 The Things We've Grown To Love
09 Flowers And Fireworks
10 Cheers (You Still Love Me)
11 Mountains
12 Invisible

Link: mediafire

jueves, 5 de enero de 2012

Chasing Victory - Fiends



First, a list:
1) The Battle of Verdun
2) Art & Culture During The T'ang Dynasty
3) Chasing Victory
4) Millard Filmore, The 13th President of the United States

The only thing the items in this list have in common is that they are a compilation of subjects that I know little to nothing about. I got the commission to review Fiends, the third release from Chasing Victory, a band I hesitate to call emo-core or alt-core, but nonetheless a band that falls out of my normal bailiwick of extreme hardcore and metal music.

The album opener, "Chemicals," should be enough to rope you into listening to the whole record, which is a magnificently written compilation of hard music written by a clearly accomplished band, not just your run-of-the-mill weepy screamo kids. The vocals are nice, fairly standard; lots of shrieks mixed in with clear falsetto vocals. Songs like "Wolves" and "Fiends" have vocal melodies that remind one a lot of bands like Mindless Self Indulgence with their frantic octave changes and coffee-grinder-full-of-bones screams. On the softer side of Sears, they've got a lot in common with the Bleed American sound of Jimmy Eat World, especially heart-renders like "Brides" with its weepy guitar leads and quavering lyrics.

Fiends is certainly a worthy third effort, and also certainly worth a listen.

Style: Alternative / Hardcore / Rock
Street Date: May 8, 2007

Track list:
01. Chemicals (King Of The Carp)
02. Wolves (G.O.B. Vs Tony Wonder)
03. Fiends (Selling Out Ain't Easy)
04. Queens (The Skeleton Key To A Skeleton)
05. Carnies (Rapture Raptors)
06. Janus (Doctor Jekyll/Stephen Hyde)
07. Zombies (Oceans Away The Sequel)
08. Brides (The Groom Of St. Albany)
09. Kings (Miaminions)
10. Barbarians (Crackle Rotcha Tee Thout) 

Link: mediafire