Obscure Music Roundup Part 2

Part 1: Portland Pride

Ok folks time for some more obscure music.  First off the bat is Ether Circus, a band recently brought to my attention by my wife who is somehow related to the drummer/ organist. Of course when she asked me to take a look at this band I groaned inwardly because when it comes to musical tastes Danielle and I are a little bit like oil and water.  However these guys are legit.  They are a little like hardcore punk however more approachable and with an organ that kind of gives it a trippy and distinctly original type of feel that sets it apart from your average dime a dozen punk band.

Besides the Organ, the other instruments are well polished and the lyrics and vocals are what I would expect from a standard above-average punk throwback band.

Definitely check these guys out at

http://www.myspace.com/etherfuckingcircus  Give the song "the Quarry" a listen.



Part 2: The cLOUDDEAD diaspora. 

So last time on Obscure Music Roundup we were introduced to cLOUDDEAD, the flagship artist of the anticon record label.  This week we are going to take a look at Doseone, Why? and Odd Nosdam the 3 men who made up this legendary indie experimental group and have gone on in completely different yet equally weird directions. 

First up is Yoni Wolf the headman for Why? and former cLOUDEAD member.

This guy is a good song writer however he is really really weird:. His lyrics are more about creating some kind of image in your head than in really conveying a coherent idea, its actually a little bit like avant guard poetry and expressive imagery set to music.


Here's a music video



and another:



This is just a song but is its one of my favorites:




The next artist we'll be examining is Doseone, who is more Pure Hip-Hop as opposed to Why? 's Indie rock leanings also due to the fact that he is a hip hop artist he is a little more constrained to use lyrics that make a little more sense and have to rhyme more consistently. His delivery is a little lacklustre if you ask me compared to his time in clouddead. 


He is probably my least favorite of the three former members of cLOUDDEAD




The comments after this video say it all: "He makes me feel dumb all the time but I learned many words from him and use them all the time ^.^" -Some jackass.


This one is pretty solid:




Last but definitely not least is Odd Nosdam the former DJ of cLOUDDEAD, His beats go from bordering on hip hop to being more like ambient music.  He is very popular with skateboarders due to the fact that he was featured in the skate video "This is My Element" sponsered by element skate boards.  He did the music for all the skaters in the video, the soundtrack was also released as and album called the T.I.M.E. soundtrack.  It is very approachable music offering a little something for everyone.   

This is a sweet hip hop track along with a fan vid:





Here is a little bit of ambient experimental with a guest vocalist:



and some more of the same:



And finally one of his songs from the T.I.M.E. soundtrack:




Finally to end this post on a gansta note. Felipe Coronel a.k.a. Immortal Technique the Peruvian born battle rapper and current president of Viper Records. The reason you may not have heard of Tech, even though you should have is because his raps are mostly about social justice, politics, and how much major all the record labels can pretty much suck it. If you are either really liberal, or think that corporations are the devil than you will probably really enjoy this music. His quick wits and inventive beats are what really set him apart in a hip hop market that is oversaturated with mediocre artists.

An older song featuring Mos Def



Heres a song I mentioned in an older post about Pumpkinhead who is also in this song:



Another older one with what is possibly the funkiest beat ever and some hilarious lyrics hating on record labels and Bill O'Reilly featuring Pinnochio (seriously).



A more Serious song one of the best as far as rhymes are concerned:



Last but not least is my favorite song of his just because the beat is so intense:

Paranormal Activity Review

Ok so tonight I went to go see "Paranormal Activity" and I have to say that it lived up to its expectations.  It was very frightning,  and did a lot of things that really resonate with me and with what I think true horror should be about.  First, the acting was rock solid, the actors were also a couple of unknowns, Im sure their IMDB probably has a pretty hefty resume with various television appearances etc, but at a first glance I had no idea who these people were.  The fact that you have no idea who these people are helps to sell the second factor that makes this film really work.  The movie is shot on what is meant for us to  believe is a single camcorder, the picture is grainy and there are no multiple angle shots. However this does not create much of a problem, the employment of a tripod captures much of the action in third person, and the first person view helps to obscure the action enough to make it horrifying, however it does not jump around so much to make the film frustrating on a "Cloverfield" type of level.  This combined with the unknown and yet skilled actors is what really makes this film feel real and complete. 

We have established that the film feels real, but the thematic elements employed in the film and the writing are what really drive it and take that real feeling and amplify it and make it terrifying.  A friend of mine said that the movie was boring and I can see why some people would get that idea, the majority of the movie is just suspense and rising action leading you on with more and more tension.  Be advised that while this movie is definitely really scary, it does take a great deal of patience to reach the payoff. 

This thing is bad news...

By far the thing that will either make or break this flick for you is the "less is more"  approach to horror that has been so absent the past few years in horror cinema.  This film really uses the viewers own imagination against them, the majority of the weird scary stuff happens off screen, and the monster itself is invisible.  For people with vivid imaginations such as myself, this creates a creature in their mind that is completely horrifying.  Then again the filmmakers do show a shadow of the creature, and they also show the footprints of it which give you a little bit to work with in your mind.



In all I think that this is a genious work of low budget character driven horror.  If you are more frightened by what a hollywood special effects shop can cook up as opposed to your own dark imaginings you may be disappointed, and if you need nonstop action you will also be disapointed.  However if a sense of impeding dread and doom punctuated by creepy happenings and the slow degeneration of two characters sounds like something you wouldnt mind watching you will probably get scared good and hard.  The ending of this movie is where all the payout is at and where you will really be left looking in your backseat nervously when you get in the car on the way out of the theatre.


Oh yeah and according to IMDB.com this guy right here:

         Left his screening early because he got too scared...

Obscure Music Roundup!!!!!!!

Ok folks its been awhile since my last update and I know that I promised some reviews of new movies, however I am poor as hell right now so instead its time for me to introduce you to some crazy music that you may or may not have heard of, and that I can write about for free. Just a disclaimer, I am not an expert on many of these bands, in fact I know little to nothing about most of them because I have one or two songs from a mixtape I picked up god only knows how long ago.  The purpose of this post is to expose people to something new and weird.

For Example you may have heard a little snippit of this following song for the commercial to skate 2, the song is called "Ince Ince" by Selda Bagcan, a turkish folk singer. (You will soon see that for some reason I love Turkish music) Anyway just give the song a listen, its like a crazy middle eastern Jefferson Airplane or something. I first heard this song on a Cd given to me by a friend, he thought it was a mix of Israeli music, I was able to figure out that it was mostly Turkish music, but it was virtually impossible to get any information about the album itself or any of the artists featured on it.  All I know is that 90% of them kicked some serious ass. 





Here is the song remixed slighty by "Dr. No's Experiment" Awesome. 



Ok time to get away from turkish music for a second and onto the good old USA, Another band that I think is really interesting and definitely an aquired taste is cLOUDDEAD (dont ask me why they capitalize it like that).  This band is a trip... very experimental hip hop that borders on noise at times with some bizarre beats and distortion effects.  If I had to call this band anything I guess it would be Sludge-Hip Hop fusion. Anyway anyone who is familiar with the Anticon Label may know these guys or may know the 3 members of the band individually as Why? Odd Nosdam and DoseOne. 









Now, Onto one of my favorite Genres, METAL
First off we have Acid Drinkers, which is a polish metal band with weird accents and a crazy eastern european sense of humor.
These guys have a rediculous amount of original material with 6 albums that I know of, they may have even more that I havent found, they are also willing to cover just about any song that you can think of, on youtube they have covers of Kashmir, Ace of Spades, Proud Mary, NIB, and others. These guys were definitely heavily influenced by classic rock and 80's power metal and traditional heavy metal.




This is my Favorite of their songs:





Time to throw in some thrash metal, from Turkey no less. this is Mezarkabul (The Pentagram)



And for the Coup De Grace, one of the most hardcore badass black metal bands that scandanavia has ever graced us with, Antestor. Wait a minute is this a Christian Black metal Band? it seems like a contradiction but I guess life is full of contradictions. The band is still completely rad if you like black metal however so give it a listen.







Okay Navigating away from Metal, here is a little Erkin Koray, another singer from Turkey who is known for his psychadelic style and his electric baglama, his album Elektronik Turkuler is a must for people who like either psychadelic music, middle eastern instrumentation coupled with a healthy dose of experimentation (and probably drugs).





And if you have not watched a single one of these videos I would really recommend not to pass this one up:
Fast forward to 4:40 to hear what may be the one of the sweetest breakdowns in music.  Really what makes the breakdown so sweet however is the 4 minutes of weird crap you have to listen to to get to it first though so I reccomend the whole song.




Last but not least, I recently stumbled across a rapper from Alberta Canada that Does a pretty good job expounding on the Wu-Tang obsession with Kung-Fu and well crafted beats.  Of course his delivery could use less fake hip hop bravado and his guest rappers are generally better than him but still, I give you: White Lotus.





More Obscure Music Roundup to come sometime in the future... Stay Tuned.

The Days, The Nights.

So today I found out that I had my first request.  The request was to review "The Days The Nights"  a band based out of Portland, OR.  Of course this brought me to a realization, since people asking me to review things may have a vested interest in something receiving a good review. This leaves me with a dilemma, Should I help people I know out  by giving good reviews and possibly damage my integrity, or should I be brutally honest and damage projects that may be important to friends?

Well its not going to be a problem this time because this band is pretty solid.  Of course if you have my type of tastes and are more into Sizzla and Immortal Technique this band will probably turn you right off.  However if you are down with the Murder City Devils, or The Queens of the Stoneage this band might really do something for you.

For this review I only had the rather limited sample of four songs that are up on their Myspace page, but I will detail what I liked about them here.

"Her Name is Alice"  - Okay I can see why this song has the most plays out of all of the songs on their page.  It has a pretty sweet hook right off the bat, its got some heavy distortion and your basic hard rock instrumentation, the lyrics are nothing to write home about however the delivery of the lyrics makes this song shine. It is a little bit too long for me but maybe you have a longer attention span.  

"Greenlight" Again the guitar riffs in this song are catchy, this time the vocals could be improved. The bridge about 2:25 into the song actually really took me by suprise with an almost Muse-esqe chord progression and tempo change that was very pleasing to the ear.

"You Should Ask Yourself"  This song seems to be an attempt at showcasing the vocal talents of the lead singer however it lacks the interesting riffs and hooks which immediately caught our attention in the first two songs other songs, leaving this song alas, a bit mediocre, of course it has its moments, a interesting breakdown before a guitar solo that while not that impressive is probably the perfect length helps to break up the song so it is not monotonous.  By the end I was actually enjoying it bit more than I was at the beginning.

 "One Last Kiss" A little more punkish with less emphasis on trying to harmonize; makes this song the most unique of the four  It is nice and upbeat with a good catchy chorus and it is the perfect length to hold the attention of the listener. However the song is soured by the screaming at the end which I can never accept by any band besides 'System of A Down"  period.  This song was still good however it was my least favorite of the four. 

The Days the Nights will be playing Corvallis at a venue near you on December the 10th check them out.   







 

Pandorum (GO SEE IT)

Tonight I saw pandorum and wow I have not seen such a good sci-fi thriller/horror film since Event Horizon.  I am completely serious when I say that any fan of horror and especially fans of scifi-horror should go see this film immediatly.  In fact I would actually put this flim before Event Horizon in the sci fi horror film pantheon and say that it ranks up there with alien.

The first ten to twenty minutes of this film will scare the shit out of you. Yes thats right; a horror flick that actually scares you instead of just grossing you out.  We have returned from the blighted wasteland of Eli Roth and Darren Bousman to the land of the genuine scare instead of the simply disgusting gross-out snuff flick horror that has dominated hollywood for the past few years.

To be honest this film isn't completely original due to the fact that it is "The Decent" in space. However if you have seen "The Decent" you know that it completely kicks ass, and you might not mind seeing something similar in the sci fi genre.  So if you dont mind watching that same damn thing plus a crazy mind screwing ending that you probably won't see coming; I would definitely fork out the 8 bux to see this immediately.

As far as acting goes in this film Dennis Quaid does a good job acting but is far surpassed by Ben Foster, and pretty much everyone else in this film. Also the character played by Cung Le establishes himself as a bad ass early on and does not disappoint by the end. I give the acting for the film an A-. I was totally impressed by what I thought was going to be B film material.



Again. If you like scifi-horror, go see this film immediately.