Short and sweet this week- Ec8or.
Ec8or comes from a short lived relationship between hardcore punk and electronic music. Loud brash and fast, Ec8or was a duo act that played on Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore Recordings label (DHR).
I was first introduced to the group by that same forgotten high school acquaintance that got me into Submission Hold. The tracks "cocaine ducks," "I don't want to be a part of this," and "Notorious 30s" were all on the other side of that mix tape I got. They are also the first three tracks on Ec8or's "All of us can be rich" album.
My mind was blown. At the time I figured electronic music all had to either sound atmospheric like Enya or overly poppy (too poppy) like ABBA but with more synthesizers. As soon as humanly possible I secured a CD copy of "All of us can be rich." Listening to the album during my musically formative years expanded my tastes and got me into breakstyle, drum and bass, and even industrial.
Your homework this week, Dear Reader, is to give Ec8or a spin. I cannot promise that you'll like it as it comes from the era of lofi electronica that's high on treble and bass, and uses low quality sampling possibly as a statement against the techno of the mid/late 90s. It's the distorted guitars, shouting, and rapid fire drumming of hardcore punk played with synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines and turntables.
They were around in the mid-nineties until '99 and they are currently not touring or making more music. However, Gina V. D'Orio still does music with I think her other band Cobra Killer and one of the vocalists from Shizuo. I have actually not looked up Cobra Killer but I'm a fan of Shizuo.
Try "Ec8or & Moonraker" if you want a more techno sound.
Or for the most dynamic range try "All of us can be rich."
Play that at your Thanksgiving dinners!
Monday, November 23, 2015
Tuesday, November 17, 2015
Post no. 0002 Submission Hold
Whoops! I was late on this one.
So, uh, last week...
That was an exciting first post weren't it?
Remember my lil' blurb about the radio in the last post? Yeah back then I was pretty insufferable about the radio. I mean, The Offspring's Americana was the first CD I bought with my own money, and they were a radio punk band. I'm not saying that I felt they sucked, I just wanted to hear more music like that and there's only so much that gets played on a big station. I wanted stuff that went deeper. Stuff that didn't have the same sound that was getting pushed on us all.
For this one I'm going to dig back to my musically formitive years and pull out a band that got me away from radio punk.
Back in high school soome kid, I forget his name, gave me a mix tape of a ton of digital hardcore (I'll go into that in an other post or two), and bands like Crass, Chaotix, Melt Banana, and Submission Hold.
This one's about Submission Hold. The songs on the mix tape that I got both came off of "Waiting for another monkey to throw the first brick." Last Surving Crocodile was my first exposure to folk punk and Deadpan was an interesting one to take at the time. I was looking for the fastest, hardest music after all and that song has a long, slow build.
Submission Hold was a band from Vancouver, BC and being from the greater Seattle area that meant I had the pleasure of seeing them a few times when they came South. Loved 'em. However, I regretably never picked up any of their merch or music and now they're not making music any more. Not like I directly had anything to do with that, but I think this is a good spot to say that if you really like a band the best thing you can do is go to their shows, buy their merch and music. Buy it at their shows even. Years later I found Waiting for another monkey to throw the first brick in vinyl in a bargain bin at a record shop in Olympia, WA and it is one of my most prized vinyls.
They had a good run, '93-05. I guess wikipedia says they were another band in the nineties before becoming Submission Hold, but I never got into them until the early aughts.
Maybe there's a little bit of the nostalgia factor on this one for me but they were a formitive band for me. Their sound departed from the traditional three or four person set up that I was used to. They had a fucking flute. I'm not making that up. Going from a sea of bands that were set up with Guitars/Bass/Drums/Vocals that was mindblowing at the time. There's good use of the flute in Last Crocodile.
Waiting for another monkey to throw the first brick runs around 35~36 minutes long. Perfect length for a punk album.
A quick internetting didn't yield a band site, and while there's a wikipedia page for the band that has a link to a site, it is no longer is active. :( Good luck tracking this one down. Maybe it's elsewhere on the web? I'm sorry for not being super helpful. I feel like even for an anarcho-punk band they may still get checks for their music if it's still pressed somewhere so I wouldn't recommend pirating it. [see above: support bands you like.] You're grown ups, you can find it.
I think this is two posts where I slam radio tunes so I think I'll have to find a more commercial group for my next one or just not make jabs at it. I don't want to come off like a beanie cap and scarf in summer wearing, caramel macchiato ordering hipster.
So, uh, last week...
That was an exciting first post weren't it?
Remember my lil' blurb about the radio in the last post? Yeah back then I was pretty insufferable about the radio. I mean, The Offspring's Americana was the first CD I bought with my own money, and they were a radio punk band. I'm not saying that I felt they sucked, I just wanted to hear more music like that and there's only so much that gets played on a big station. I wanted stuff that went deeper. Stuff that didn't have the same sound that was getting pushed on us all.
For this one I'm going to dig back to my musically formitive years and pull out a band that got me away from radio punk.
Back in high school soome kid, I forget his name, gave me a mix tape of a ton of digital hardcore (I'll go into that in an other post or two), and bands like Crass, Chaotix, Melt Banana, and Submission Hold.
This one's about Submission Hold. The songs on the mix tape that I got both came off of "Waiting for another monkey to throw the first brick." Last Surving Crocodile was my first exposure to folk punk and Deadpan was an interesting one to take at the time. I was looking for the fastest, hardest music after all and that song has a long, slow build.
Submission Hold was a band from Vancouver, BC and being from the greater Seattle area that meant I had the pleasure of seeing them a few times when they came South. Loved 'em. However, I regretably never picked up any of their merch or music and now they're not making music any more. Not like I directly had anything to do with that, but I think this is a good spot to say that if you really like a band the best thing you can do is go to their shows, buy their merch and music. Buy it at their shows even. Years later I found Waiting for another monkey to throw the first brick in vinyl in a bargain bin at a record shop in Olympia, WA and it is one of my most prized vinyls.
They had a good run, '93-05. I guess wikipedia says they were another band in the nineties before becoming Submission Hold, but I never got into them until the early aughts.
Maybe there's a little bit of the nostalgia factor on this one for me but they were a formitive band for me. Their sound departed from the traditional three or four person set up that I was used to. They had a fucking flute. I'm not making that up. Going from a sea of bands that were set up with Guitars/Bass/Drums/Vocals that was mindblowing at the time. There's good use of the flute in Last Crocodile.
Waiting for another monkey to throw the first brick runs around 35~36 minutes long. Perfect length for a punk album.
A quick internetting didn't yield a band site, and while there's a wikipedia page for the band that has a link to a site, it is no longer is active. :( Good luck tracking this one down. Maybe it's elsewhere on the web? I'm sorry for not being super helpful. I feel like even for an anarcho-punk band they may still get checks for their music if it's still pressed somewhere so I wouldn't recommend pirating it. [see above: support bands you like.] You're grown ups, you can find it.
I think this is two posts where I slam radio tunes so I think I'll have to find a more commercial group for my next one or just not make jabs at it. I don't want to come off like a beanie cap and scarf in summer wearing, caramel macchiato ordering hipster.
Monday, November 9, 2015
Post no. 0001 - Bomb The Music Industry!
A few weeks back a friend and I were talking bands and they back-handedly complimented me with the suggestion that I write a music blog because my tastes were all ecclectic and nearly all of the bands I mentioned they'd never heard of. How's that for a pretentious opener?
Let's dispel some of that pretention: I'm not a music critic; For a few years I used to play the guitar, cello, and keys; I even tried making electronica but didn't really stick with it. I have some knowledge of music but not enough to really call myself a critic- but when has lack of expertise stopped anyone from jabbering on about anything?
You don't have to be classically trained to enjoy Beethoven; you don't have to paint to like Van Gogh; you may need some background language skills to get olde Englishe in original Shakespeare though; so on and so forth etc.
Back to that ecclectic taste business- I grew up obsessively listening to practically a single genre at a time in the search of the hardest, fastest, most intense music ever. I started out with punk rock because obviously where else are you going to find that? I then went into electronica and kind of have been all over the board since my teenage years when I first started getting serious about music.
I've kind of hated commercial radio since forever; while yes there is talented music being played, and some excellent artists reach a wide audience a lot of it is watered down and censored. Plus you ever notice how some stations will run an ad telling you how little commercials they have compared to the other stations on the dial right before they play a song they've played hundreds of times a day before a ten minute ad-break? I'm not slamming it for any whiny, tired anti-capitalist reasons. Musicians, and radio stations gotta get paid or we'd never hear music on the radio. What I disliked about it was that I constantly found myself getting in the zone listening to a bunch of songs in a row and then that'd get interrupted by ads for shit I didn't want or need. Kind of a buzzkill, right? I'm going to mention commercial and non-commercial radio tunes in this blog but I think if I'm going for ecclectic I'll have to include more of the former.
Ok, maybe I do have the requisite pretention to get this ball rolling.
A brief little blurb about me and how often I'm going to write this for my fan(s). I'm currently a graduate student (not in music, lol), have an active social life, and I do other creative projects like sketching and painting. Basically I think I'm gonna update this once a week or once every two weeks. For now I'll commit to posting on Mondays either afternoon or evening PST. Maybe this'll take off some of the edge of a freshly started work week.
Of all the tunes I listen to, I keep going back to punk rock and that's where we'll begin. I could wax poetic about what makes punk punk or whether punk is dead, but this post is already too damned long. Maybe some other time.
Let's get on with the jams!
Your homework this week is to check out Bomb The Music Industry! Look up my favorite album by them, "To Leave or Die in Long Island." I have a copy that I picked up a few years back when the artist put it up on an online forum I read.
This album rules because it hits a lot of the essential punk buttons. Frenetic drumming. Rapidly strummed guitars. Whoa's, na's, and a bit of that 'pop punk accent.' To Leave or Die in Long Island has hints of hardcore and ska punk mixed in there as well. At eight songs and 25 minutes long it is a perfect length.
Happy Anterrabae Day!! - Opens the album up with a lot of energy, and you'll see what I said above about hitting essential punk buttons. I believe Anterrabae was/is a band. I've never looked them up.
Congratulations, John, On Joining In Every Time I Die - Some more of that awesome sonic energy.
Showerbeers! - like the act of drinking a beer naked under the showerhead is a good tune.
Stand There Until You're Sober - Haven't we all been there or am I a lush?
Dude, Get With The Program - Lots of ska up in this one.
Bomb the Music Industry! (and Action Action) (and Refused) (and Born Against) Are Fucking Dead - Starts off with a quote from the UK version of The Office, pipe organ, and then gets right down to it. Subject matter is fairly punk.
Brian Wilson Says SMiLE! (a.k.a. Beard of Defiance) - Awesome tribute to beards everywhere.
Syke! Life is Awesome! -Pretty good tune to close 'er out on.
I don't want this to read like I just reviewed wine. That's not the point of this blog. I'll have to be even snarkier about each song in the future.
To my eternal chagrin I haven't seen them live.
Check the band out.
I believe this is their official tumblr so uh, get it while it's hot.
http://bombthemusicindustry.tumblr.com/
Let's dispel some of that pretention: I'm not a music critic; For a few years I used to play the guitar, cello, and keys; I even tried making electronica but didn't really stick with it. I have some knowledge of music but not enough to really call myself a critic- but when has lack of expertise stopped anyone from jabbering on about anything?
You don't have to be classically trained to enjoy Beethoven; you don't have to paint to like Van Gogh; you may need some background language skills to get olde Englishe in original Shakespeare though; so on and so forth etc.
Back to that ecclectic taste business- I grew up obsessively listening to practically a single genre at a time in the search of the hardest, fastest, most intense music ever. I started out with punk rock because obviously where else are you going to find that? I then went into electronica and kind of have been all over the board since my teenage years when I first started getting serious about music.
I've kind of hated commercial radio since forever; while yes there is talented music being played, and some excellent artists reach a wide audience a lot of it is watered down and censored. Plus you ever notice how some stations will run an ad telling you how little commercials they have compared to the other stations on the dial right before they play a song they've played hundreds of times a day before a ten minute ad-break? I'm not slamming it for any whiny, tired anti-capitalist reasons. Musicians, and radio stations gotta get paid or we'd never hear music on the radio. What I disliked about it was that I constantly found myself getting in the zone listening to a bunch of songs in a row and then that'd get interrupted by ads for shit I didn't want or need. Kind of a buzzkill, right? I'm going to mention commercial and non-commercial radio tunes in this blog but I think if I'm going for ecclectic I'll have to include more of the former.
Ok, maybe I do have the requisite pretention to get this ball rolling.
A brief little blurb about me and how often I'm going to write this for my fan(s). I'm currently a graduate student (not in music, lol), have an active social life, and I do other creative projects like sketching and painting. Basically I think I'm gonna update this once a week or once every two weeks. For now I'll commit to posting on Mondays either afternoon or evening PST. Maybe this'll take off some of the edge of a freshly started work week.
Of all the tunes I listen to, I keep going back to punk rock and that's where we'll begin. I could wax poetic about what makes punk punk or whether punk is dead, but this post is already too damned long. Maybe some other time.
Let's get on with the jams!
Your homework this week is to check out Bomb The Music Industry! Look up my favorite album by them, "To Leave or Die in Long Island." I have a copy that I picked up a few years back when the artist put it up on an online forum I read.
This album rules because it hits a lot of the essential punk buttons. Frenetic drumming. Rapidly strummed guitars. Whoa's, na's, and a bit of that 'pop punk accent.' To Leave or Die in Long Island has hints of hardcore and ska punk mixed in there as well. At eight songs and 25 minutes long it is a perfect length.
Happy Anterrabae Day!! - Opens the album up with a lot of energy, and you'll see what I said above about hitting essential punk buttons. I believe Anterrabae was/is a band. I've never looked them up.
Congratulations, John, On Joining In Every Time I Die - Some more of that awesome sonic energy.
Showerbeers! - like the act of drinking a beer naked under the showerhead is a good tune.
Stand There Until You're Sober - Haven't we all been there or am I a lush?
Dude, Get With The Program - Lots of ska up in this one.
Bomb the Music Industry! (and Action Action) (and Refused) (and Born Against) Are Fucking Dead - Starts off with a quote from the UK version of The Office, pipe organ, and then gets right down to it. Subject matter is fairly punk.
Brian Wilson Says SMiLE! (a.k.a. Beard of Defiance) - Awesome tribute to beards everywhere.
Syke! Life is Awesome! -Pretty good tune to close 'er out on.
I don't want this to read like I just reviewed wine. That's not the point of this blog. I'll have to be even snarkier about each song in the future.
To my eternal chagrin I haven't seen them live.
Check the band out.
I believe this is their official tumblr so uh, get it while it's hot.
http://bombthemusicindustry.tumblr.com/
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