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An Alternative History of "Pop" Music: Part 3, 2004 -

Started by jamiefairlie, October 25, 2021, 04:39:14 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
Ulrich Schnauss-A Million Miles Away
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay4oQeE3j4g

If Boards of Canada's music evokes educational programmes about nuclear catastrophe and witch trials, this upbeat and hopeful number would surely make a nice intro piece for the bright and optimistic world that will open up for the diligent student who successfully manages German grammar, postmodern architecture, wind farms, object-oriented programming and so on. Ulrich Schnauss is an electronic musician from Kiel in Germany. This track was up as a freebie on his website in 2005, but I'm not sure where it's ever been properly released.

Quote from: The Mollusk on November 09, 2021, 08:08:48 PM
If you've not heard them before, I recommend checking out "Brame" by Ruby My Dear and "Hallelujah" by Igorrr, two highly accomplished albums which nail the crossover of breakcore/classical music but also incorporating a lot of other styles from polka to baroque to black metal. "Hallelujah" in particular is excellent.
Love it, thanks. That kind of witty, spiky quality that a track like "Infinite Loop" has was just what I was after just now. When I first heard breakcore type stuff in the early 2000s it seemed, in its intensity and in its madly eclectic sampling like sort of endpoint, a sort of outer limit or dead end, and it's funny to hear new stuff like this in 2021 where it's become a genre that people can still be working on and getting new things out of.


Greg Torso

My Little Airport - 只因當時太緊張 (Because I Was Too Nervous At That Time)



My Little Airport are a pop dup from Hong Kong consisting of Ah-P and Nicole. They sing in both English and Cantonese and play Sarah-influenced indie pop, usually writing songs about people in their lives, although they became a bit more political later. I don't want to harsh this lovely thread with politics but it's a fucking heart ache what's happened in Hong Kong over the last few years and what it means for all artists, musicians and creative types living there.

This was one of the first CDs I bought when I moved to China in 2005 and one of the few things I listened to that my wife also liked, probably because it's sung in her first language.


Greg Torso

Morane - Do Not Write Me A Love Song



Morane were a three-piece from Germany formed by producer Markus Nikolai. An apparent one-off project who only did this one record, which honestly wasn't that good, but this song was one of my most-played tracks of this year, if I remember my iTunes stats correctly. I loved its squelches and bells and slightly melancholic aura. I don't know anything more about the band, and I guess I got this song from some long-forgotten music blog. Electronic pop music with some sick orchestra stabs and the lovely Teutonic lilt of singer Annika Müller de Vries.

Greg Torso

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on November 12, 2021, 01:04:30 AM
A lot of the time I don't mention when I like stuff because I haven't really got the light human touch for those interactions and end up agonising over saying 'great track' or 'loved that' and finding descriptive words.

I know exactly what you mean. I'm torn between wanting to make comments when I like something and wanting to only post music for the purity of the thread. Anyway, while I'm here, I love Deerhoof and I really liked that Cowabunga track that Astronaut Omens posted.

Greg Torso

Herman Düne - Walk, Don't Run



Herman Dune are a Swedish-French indie-folk type band based in San Pedro, Los Angeles. Originally formed around brothers David Ivar and André, although Andre left in 2006. This is a favourite from their album Not On Top and another song that brings back strong memories of walking by the river at night smoking blue filtered cigarettes with all the lanterns lit up in the trees and an acre of longing in my heart for some girl or other. Christ I wish I could go back there, but not really.

This one's good for singing along to, drunk.


Johnny Foreigner

Melotron - Gläserne Zeiten

Two chaps with synthesisers and a singer formed Melotron in 1995, aiming for catchy, accessible electro-pop. They managed to make some highly melodious tunes, 'Tanz mit dem Teufel' being a particular classic. In 2005, they released Cliché, which contained this prescient song about the digital age making everyone transparent; for we henceforth live in 'times of glass'.


Brundle-Fly

Cocaine Man - Baxter Dury. Released on Rough Trade in 2005.





As a life long huge fan of Ian Dury, naturally I was interested in what little Baxter from the cover of New Boots & Panties had to bring to the party. At first, he evoked mid period Mercury Rev to my ears but it was when he started to sound a bit like his old man it naturally started to click for me and perversely Baxter finally found his voice. He has since blossomed into a unique talent in his own right and no longer in his father's crooked shadow.

Baxter Dury (born 18 December 1971) is an English indie musician, originally signed to Rough Trade Records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DB9n8vjIi4

jamiefairlie

British Sea Power - It Ended On An Oily Stage

https://youtu.be/8PYz-ZLQwng



Taken from second album "Open Season", it's reminiscent of a wild, blustery day, blowing all the cobwebs away.

Ballad of Ballard Berkley

Josh Rouse - Sad Eyes



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-qctKfE8Hw

Josh Rouse is an American singer-songwriter with a penchant for folk-pop and country. This beauteous piano ballad is taken from his fifth album, Nashville.

Quote from: jamiefairlie on November 15, 2021, 02:25:39 AM
British Sea Power - It Ended On An Oily Stage

https://youtu.be/8PYz-ZLQwng



Taken from second album "Open Season", it's reminiscent of a wild, blustery day, blowing all the cobwebs away.

Used to run around a field at night listening to this album.  I wonder if there's a story behind the lyric about finding God in a Wiltshire field. The song was originally called "Elegiac Stanzas" but it was changed in case DJs couldn't pronounce it. Wordsworth's own "Elegiac Stanzas" were inspired by Sir George Beaumont's picture of "Peele Castle in a Storm, Cumbria" near to where most of the band grew up.


daf

Parry Gripp - European Football



Featured on the 2005 album 'For Those About To Shop, We Salute You'

QuoteParry P. Gripp is an American singer-songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist for the pop punk band Nerf Herder. Gripp has written numerous novelty songs for children and has been featured on several Disney television shows.



As a songwriter, Gripp is known for fake jingles, as in his 2005 solo album 'For Those About to Shop, We Salute You' - a 51-track concept album mimicking various musical styles as product commercials. It does not have one single concept; it goes through many various concept suites, such as trucks, beer, and insomnia.



In July 2019, Gripp's "It's Raining Tacos" was used by the city of West Palm Beach to deter homeless people from congregating in some areas, along with the song "Baby Shark". Gripp requested they remove his title from their playlist and made donations to local homeless shelters.

DrGreggles


Brundle-Fly

Bongo Song - Zongamin  Released on Ed Banger in 2005.





I forgot to nominate him in 2002. Lucky he created this retro electro (ed) banger a few years later, eh?

Susumu Mukai (born c.1974, Osaka, Japan),better known as Zongamin, is a UK-based Japanese-born musician and producer.
Mukai was born in Japan and moved to East Anglia at the age of eleven.He attended Summerhill School where he started playing bass guitar and other instruments. He went on to study at the Royal College of Art, and was signed to Mike Silver's Flesh Records label.

Mukai explained his stage name: "When I started this imaginary band I wanted to name it with a new word."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkL0JEYRU98&t=127s

jamiefairlie

#164
Editors - Lights

https://youtu.be/69eao5bjxVQ



Formed in 2002 in Birmingham, this is a blast of neo-postpunk from their debut album "The Back Room".

DrGreggles


Ben Folds - Bitches Ain't Shit

[Arnaud/Young/Brown/Broadus/Curry/Wolfe] {Epic}
(from the Supersunnyspeedgraphic, the LP album)



Originally planned as a b-side to his Landed single from the Songs For Silvermen album, Bitches Ain't Shit was the result of a long-standing Ben Folds ambition to write a beautiful ballad and put existing Hip Hop lyrics to it.
It was originally going to be Public Enemy's Can't Do Nuttin' from Fear of a Black Planet, but Folds couldn't get it to work, saying the finished song had "too much of a Cat in the Hat vibe".
Instead he moved his focus to Dr Dre's Bitches Ain't Shit, from his 1992 album The Chronic - a favourite of secret Hip Hop fan Folds.
He broke down the original song to just a couple of verses and Snoop Dogg's refrain, and layered "pretty chords and one of my best melodies" under it to create "a sad Johnny Cash song with a lot more vulgarity".
His version soon became a favourite in Folds' live set, where he would often introduce it with a plea of "please appreciate this with the irony that's intended".
Folds retired his version in 2008, after narrowly avoiding being beaten up for being demeaning to women (he insisted they take it up with Dr Dre - the lyrics department), but fan demand led to it returning to his set, generally as part of the encore ("hopefully I'll have enough goodwill in the bank by then").

Looking at pop in a historical way, I've really started to see Dr Dre as one of the villains of the whole story. Loads of musicians have had violence or misogyny in their lyrics, he's hardly unique in that, but there's something about the combination of those attitudes with his talent for smooth sounds which meant that his style of gangsterism and misogyny has had much more insidious effect. Even when he was in NWA, that band's "most dangerous group in the world" schtick meant that people would listen with a degree of distance- I think that distancing effect disappeared on his work from The Chronic onwards and has really done way more to normalise misogyny in a way that earlier rappers using shock tactics didn't.

daf

The Like ‎– June Gloom



Released in September 2005 as the opening track on the album 'Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?'

QuoteThe Like were formed in September 2001 by Z Berg (vocals/guitar), Charlotte Froom (bass/vocals) and Tennessee Thomas (drums) at the ages of 15, 15 and 16.

Tennessee Thomas : "I actually played piano for 10 years, miserably, and then tried to have a go at the guitar. I just couldn't get the hang of it. It was so hard! In high school I decided to join the choir but the teacher wasn't very nice, so I ended up in the band. I was going to play the piano, but when I showed up there was no one on the drums and I thought I would give it a try. Playing the drums came naturally to me. It's amazing how much different it is to do something when you aren't forced to."

They were the daughters of former Geffen Records A&R exec/record producer Tony Berg, producer Mitchell Froom and ace thunderstick Pete Thomas from The Attractions.

Tennessee Thomas : "Our friend was having a birthday, and it happened to be New Year's Eve. Her cousin is in Phantom Planet, and they'd heard we had been practicing and wanted to see what we could do. They said, 'Come on, it'll just be one song, it will be painless,' and so we practiced. We practiced the entire day before the party, and then at sound check when everyone heard us they thought we were so good they asked us to play two songs. And so, of course, we played one song really well and one song totally sucked."



Over a period of three years, the band independently released three EPs  : 'I Like The Like', '... and The Like', and 'Like It or Not', which they sold at shows and on their website.

Tennessee Thomas : "Z was writing songs for years before she met us, so by the time we got together she had a pile of them and was pretty good at it. Charlotte and I have been trying, but it's all rather silly."

In 2004, the band signed to Geffen Records, and released their first album, 'Are You Thinking What I'm Thinking?', on 13 September 2005. The album was a combination of reworked songs previously released on their independent EPs as well as new material.



The reviews were generally positive. Krissi Murison of the NME had praise for such songs as "June Gloom" and "(So I'll Sit Here) Waiting", but criticized the "over-polished approach" of producer Wendy Melvoin.

Brundle-Fly

The Truncated Life Of A Modern Industrialised Chicken - Matthew Herbert.  Released on Accidental in 2005.





TRIGGER WARNING FOR VEGANS. Fascinating album.

Matthew Herbert (born 1972), also known as Herbert, Doctor Rockit, Radio Boy, Mr. Vertigo, Transformer, and Wishmountain, is a British electronic musician. He often takes sounds from everyday items to produce electronic music.

In 2005, he released a record entitled Plat du Jour, a record made entirely from objects and situations in the food chain. He recorded beneath the sewers of Fleet Street, with Vietnamese coffee beans, inside industrial chicken farms, drove a tank over a recreation of the dinner that Nigella Lawson cooked for George Bush and Tony Blair, and recorded 3500 people biting an apple at the same time. The track entitled "The Final Meal of Stacey Lawton" was made in collaboration with renowned chef Heston Blumenthal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Afl__7M7w&list=PLDQCHcd-7i8PhLtHCUEgJ3lEZ8DqGMOVw

Electrelane - Two for Joy



Single from the Brighton rock band's third album with a cover design by the drummer, Emma Gaze.

I've no sorrow
If i'm glad
Oh let me show it!
Did you see those birds take flight?
She opened her hand
And they flew across the room
How the morning skies are high
I watch them as they turn from black to blue
I was dreaming of boats last night
Boats in the desert and anchors and bridges and you
Oh, let's go out walking
Oh, let's go out walking
They said "no, don't go near the water"
You said "oh, let's get in the water"
You said "oh, let's get in the water"
You said "oh oh oh"

jamiefairlie

Eels - If You See Natalie

https://youtu.be/Cv-jcKzVPes



Typically downbeat but still hopeful piece from Mark Oliver Everett, taken from their "Blinking Lights and Other Revelations" album.

daf

The Blue Van ‎– Revelation Of Love



Released in 2005 - did not chart

QuoteThe Blue Van were founded in Brønderslev, Denmark by Steffen Westmark (vocals and guitar), Søren Christensen (keyboard, vocals and guitar), Allan Villadsen (bass), and Per Jørgensen (drums and vocals) while they were still in school. The band name is possibly derived from the "Den blå vogn" - a van that collected mentally ill people in Denmark. Others believe the name may be a tribute to a band from near the Deutschtown neighborhood of Pittsburgh who had a hit song of the same name in the late 1990s

The group moved to Copenhagen, and released their debut album, 'Time Machines And Sunbeams' in 2000, followed by the EP's 'Supervantastic' in 2001, and 'A Session With' in 2002. In April 2005 they released their second album, The Art Of Rolling.



The band is also known in the United States, due mainly to numerous shows in and around New York City preceding the release of 'The Art of Rolling', as well as their participation in events such as the Austin City Limits Music Festival and the Village Voice's hip Siren Festival.

Quote from: Smeraldina Rima on November 17, 2021, 02:45:16 AM
Electrelane - Two for Joy
Funny, I was just about to post "Bells" from the same album, maybe because the "never thought that time could get so far away from me" line was playing on my mind listening to this 2005 stuff, and because, following the Boredoms thing I posted earlier, I was in the mood for another reckless black-keys-only piano solo.
Electralane's "Axes" album was recorded in Chicago with Steve Albini.

Sleater-Kinney: Jumpers (live on TV)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYAitpi6Dhg
This brilliant rendition of the single from Sleater-Kinney's The Woods album on the David Letterman programme is one of my favourite bits of rock on TV. The multi-sectional nature of the song gives all three members a spot as leader,and though this group have sometimes co-ordinated their stage outfits, on this there's a cool, tense feeling that these three people don't quite belong together.


Autechre-LCC
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gW_Ni2xkJJ0

Sometimes, particularly in their artwork, Autechre deliberately cultivate an inhuman and abstract image, but I think for fans their appeal has always been that their humanity somehow shines through that. A good case in point would be the melodic synth line that kicks in around 3 minutes into this tune. This long, meandering melodic line is not just wistful or melancholy, as IDM stuff often can be, but deeply conversational- to me it sounds like a person explaining a complicated emotional situation with many moments of hesitancy and pauses to add qualifications, like something out of Henry James, or like the verse some sophisticated jazz ballad from the thirties or fourties.
Live they were absolutely magnificent around this time, performing hour-long improvisations that sounded nothing at all like jazz but jazz's sense of freedom and open-endedness.

Quote from: Astronaut Omens on November 17, 2021, 10:27:52 AM
Funny, I was just about to post "Bells" from the same album, maybe because the "never thought that time could get so far away from me" line was playing on my mind listening to this 2005 stuff, and because, following the Boredoms thing I posted earlier, I was in the mood for another reckless black-keys-only piano solo.
Electralane's "Axes" album was recorded in Chicago with Steve Albini.

They shared this cosmic picture and news a few days ago:




Okkervil River - A King and a Queen

https://youtu.be/vWxVFYE3ucE




The original line-up of Okkervil River formed in New Hampshire in 1998, but the band is essentially the project of singer/songwriter Will Sheff. The 2005 album Black Sheep Boy was inspired by the Tim Hardin song of the same name, a cover version of which opens the album. The album features some baroque chamber pop arrangements with strings, horns and mandolins, but recorded (often with the band playing together in the same room) on an inexpensive early 90s tape format, similar to VHS tape, giving it a distinctive sound.


jamiefairlie

Film School - He's a Deep Deep Lake

https://youtu.be/nBzX6mHTonw



Reminds a little of Ride and certainly takes a lot from Shoegaze in general. Taken from their second album, "Film School"

Greg Torso

Quote from: Brundle-Fly on November 16, 2021, 06:18:10 PMThe Truncated Life Of A Modern Industrialised Chicken - Matthew Herbert.  Released on Accidental in 2005.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Afl__7M7w&list=PLDQCHcd-7i8PhLtHCUEgJ3lEZ8DqGMOVw

This is excellent. Reminds me of Matmos.

daf

Monty Norman ‎– Dum Di-Di Dum Dum



Featured on the album 'Completing the Circle' - released in 2005

QuoteMonty Norman : "Cubby Broccoli rang me and said he and his new partner Harry Saltzman had just acquired the rights to Ian Fleming's James Bond novels and were going to turn them into films. Would I like to do the first one? I was very busy at that time with two stage musicals and a theme for a film. I was just about to say, 'Give me some time to think about it,' then Harry said, 'Why don't you come to Jamaica with us? We're going to do all the location work there. You can get the feel of the Caribbean, write some of the Caribbean songs and get the whole essence of the place. Bring your wife, all expenses paid.' And that was the clincher. "At the time I thought, 'Even if Dr No's a flop, we'll still have a sun, sea and sand holiday.'"

The Bond theme was based on the song "Good Sign Bad Sign" sung by Indian characters in 'A House for Mr Biswas', a musical he composed based on a novel by V. S. Naipaul set in the Indian community in Trinidad.

Monty Norman : "It was set in the Indian community in Trinidad, and so had a very Asian quality. But after the first draft we realised it would be impossible, in the late 1950s, early 1960s, to get a full Asian/West Indian cast in London."



Norman had to defend his authorship of the Bond theme twice as others have tried to claim the credit.

Monty Norman : "There's an old saying in showbiz: nobody argues over a flop. And that's pretty true. The first time was hilarious. One of those little music papers said Monty Norman hadn't written the Bond theme tune but had bought it from a Jamaican for $100. I said, 'If you can find that Jamaican I'd like to buy some more from him.' And there was a big case that went on and on for over two years [with the musical arranger John Barry] and it could have been easily sorted out but wasn't. We finished in the High Court and, to cut a long story short, the judge, jury, all unanimously said I'd written the James Bond theme and that was the end of it."

In 2005, Norman released an album called 'Completing the Circle' that features "Good Sign Bad Sign", the "James Bond Theme", and a similar-sounding song titled "Dum Di-Di Dum Dum" For these songs Norman added lyrics that explain the origin and history of the "James Bond Theme" in pedantic detail.