Allan’s World of Music

Arther “Ace” Enders was the lead vocalist for The Early November, a highly successful indie/emo band who’ve disbanded just last year. Ace on the other hand had more music to play and more soul to share, with an album called When I Hit The Ground slated for a late August release date. However, since Enders did not want to disappoint fans who expected the album to come out much sooner, he recorded The Secret Wars in his very own studio, and released it for free on Fuse.tv. This 8-track freebie, can compete with most albums on and off the market, and is a very special listen from a talented artist.

Having heard him for the first time live at the Cute is What We Aim For concert, I knew I was in for a solid album, and it definitely delivered. The live performance was pretty amazing in itself, and the album solidified me as a fan. One of the songs that stood out most from the performance and the album is the very first track, Reaction. Classified as an indie/alternative band, Reaction comes off very mellow, but has a lot of optimistic pop underlining it. With a catchy chorus, and the general flow of music starting slow and climaxing, it is a very easy listen and extremely entertaining. Though the sound is very bright, the lyrics are serious and meaningful, which creates that soulful atmosphere. The simple guitar riffs, drum beats, and catchy piano further add to the sound. It’s a relaxing song, and I think to enjoy it most, you have to be in that relaxing state.

The same can be said for most of the albums on this song. Body Like Mind, is another favourite of mine off the album. It is much less vibrant than Reaction, and has a very serious tone throughout the song. The vocals are a little more aggressive and the instrumentals are very laid back, but progress through the chorus and various hooks. This song is a very classic song, but again it’s a relaxer and if you’re not in the mood it might sound really dull and boring. But when I’m lying down on my couch just reminiscing about the world, I couldn’t think of a better tune to listen to.

Much of the album follows the whole indie/alternative laid back feel, save for Motion, which is an acoustic melody, and my favourite track Bring Back Love. Bring Back Love is the last song on the album, and is such an amazing little tune. Nothing complicated about it, but the whole theme and execution of what it represents was nothing short of perfect. Bring Back Love is a song about just that, bringing back love. It has a beautiful melody, the vocals are on point and completely graceful, and the lyrics are so elegant. Perhaps one of the most inspiring songs I’ve heard in a very long time, this is what music is all about. Spreading messages from the heart, and judging from this song Ace Enders has a heart bigger than most. A perfect way to end the album, it is an amazing song.

Ace Enders is awesome no doubt about it. His down to earth nature can be seen in his music, and he’s all about the music. His work speaks volumes and it’s the kind of music that can inspire others. The Secret Wars was a steal at the very affordable price of nothing, and I’d recommend it to just about anyone and everyone. At the very least give Bring Back Love a listen and be inspired in whatever it is you do in life.

Check out his Myspace for official tour dates and album info.

Get the album fuse.tv

Ace Enders - Reaction

Ace Enders - Bring Back Love (Year 2020)

In light of the Ladytron giveaway on our blog and the fact that I hate posting on Sundays but the search continues for writers to contribute, I decided that it couldn’t hurt delaying my post for a day.

The only tracks I’ve heard were their songs on their myspace, Black Cat, Ghosts, Deep Blue and Versus but otherwise my knowledge is limited from this electroband from England. I’m admitting here that I don’t have any album as a basis for comparison and thus a sort of lackluster/incomplete review. I should probably check out Witching Hour though.

I wasn’t sure what to expect but with their fanbase and the ever popular electro genre. I was thinking more of the lines of something more dance-able and poppy so I was a bit surprised. Not that it’s a bad thing to not have electronic music totally danceable.

There’s a sense of quality to their music without a sense of urgency for you to like their music. I found this album very mellow feeling and was able to enjoy while multi-tasking quite easily. I thought the dream pop label was somewhat funny at first…but I guess understand that now.

Ladytron also features two tracks, Black Cat and Kletva entirely in Bulgarian. I actually thought it was French because of how beautifully it’s sung. Musically there are a ton of elements that you expect of an electro-band but the way they put everything together is special.

I’m admittedly having trouble coming up with much to say, other then it’s a pretty good album. I don’t love it that much but it’s worth noting that there is a lot to like about it and unlike a lot of electro, I don’t see this album becoming annoying in the future and I feel like I can be in any mood to listen to this album.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Ghosts by Ladytron

Burning Up by Ladytron

Predict the Day by Ladytron

Buy the album at: Insound/ CD Universe / Crapazon
P.S. The Nettwerk label rocks for their stand against the gay-RIAA.

Static of The Gods are a band from Boston, MASS (boo the Red Sox) that played at this year’s NXNE. They were one of the bands I was interested in seeing but ultimately decided to do other things on my Saturday night.

Static of The Gods first single of the their soon to be released 2008 album is Peluche which features two other tracks Jaguar Song and Tarnished Cities.

Static of The Gods are a bit different from the typical female-fronted indie rock bands. I generally like female-fronted bands either way but SoTG has more of a shoegaze feel to it which is weird because they list bands like Metric, Weezer and even The Foo Fighters as influences.

Anyway other then what I said there isn’t much I can say to give off some much needed praise. The talents of Jen Johnson is apparent as she has a great voice more comparable to the Jenny Lewis side of things as it is a very sweet soothing voice. She doesn’t overpower the music and really allows herself to blend into the music despite not putting in maximum effort. Sort of soft but in such a great way. Musically it almost challenges you to find all the intricate moments that would seemingly be lost in a supposed relaxing feeling.

Static of The Gods make wonderful music that puts me into a trance or sedated like state that I don’t want to get out of. Whether they have new or old stuff, it’s all great and I look forward to their new album.

Check out the video to Peluche and some mp3s:

Peluche by Static of The Gods

Tarnished Cities by Static of The Gods

With the Radiohead-style release of Feed The Animals this was my first opportunity to check out Girl Talk. I’ve heard about his work and saw an Of Montreal remix but otherwise it was just one of those I just didn’t bother with.

The main reason I checked out this album was in fact due to the strategy of accepting any amount for the album. With all the surrounding hype around the album, why wouldn’t you check it out?

Girl Talk’s music strategy is simple take music samples from a million different tracks to create new songs. All these songs are usually recognizable pop songs to make one “epic” dance song. Epic depending on your tastes and I can see this being a hit or a miss for someone else.

One of the more fun things to do while listening to this album, is doing the test of how many songs you recognize. I personally recognized most (err if you count half as “most”) as there were ton of those guilty pleasures used like Len’s Steal My Sunshine, The Cardigan’s Lovefool to recent guilty pleasures if Avril Lavigne’s Girlfriend or Kelly Clarkson was your secret thing.

The most endearing quality is that while a lot of songs that I end up hating (mainly due to annoyance) work incredibly well in these songs. As well as the mesh between hip-hop rock is done incredibly well. Check out Jay-Z’s rap over Radiohead’s Paranoid Android riff on Set It Off (some very cool stuff).

I personally enjoyed this music very well. However it’s really hard to define other then putting mixing and sampling tons of music what make’s this so great. It’s mixed well etc but I can see many really hating this and I’d personally have trouble saying one certain song is better then the rest as it’s more of a personal aspect of which tracks you once liked.

There is that argument that sampling isn’t that great and it’s not of his own stuff. I think that one is fair but I also understand that sampling and mixing tracks together is one ridiculously strenuous process (I’ve tried to it as well but scrapped it after just getting a beginning of a track lol).

There is also the fact that people may get tired of Girl Talk’s novelty as he hasn’t changed the strategy of his mixing like his past albums. It’s unlikely that if you disliked his previous efforts I won’t see how this effort will do anything else for you.

Rating: 4.5 I still like it a lot I guess even though I know others may not. It’s something that I can probably show my friends as I know they’ll like it.

Set it Off by Girl Talk

No Pause by Girl Talk

Hands in the Air by Girl Talk

Buy the album at Illegal Art

Plants and Animals is a band from Montreal that released their album Parc Avenue awhile back on February 26th here in Canada and March 25th to excellent review. They are currently on the long-list for the Polaris Music Prize for the top critically awarded album. Two bloggers are on jury (I(heart)music and Chromewaves) and while I may never get a sniff to be considered a “critic” I figure that reviewing more then a fair share of the top 40 should give me some idea of who is actually deserving in my opinion (we’ve covered 16 of the 40 albums on the long list).

Anyway, I’ve had this album sitting on my computer for some time. Since mid-April…I’ve really tried to listen to it and while some critics gave it high marks (including Pitchfork and PopMatters) the album itself has garnered a real quiet amount of blogging hype outside the Canadian’s blog that I read on occasion.

This review was never meant to be written once I have all but decided to not like this album. Thanks to Nancy for peer-pressuring me and mocking me into asking why do you seem to like everything? Well I don’t and I guess it’s time to let loose with no victims spared (you’ll see me hating some of your favorite records that I’ve tried my best to like).

What makes me dislike Parc Avenue? Well I guess you can argue that they are genre-bending as they don’t have a typical style that one can label with ease. However, the sense I feel like, is that I don’t want to label them anything. There’s a little bit of everything but not enough of one thing for me to say: “hey, this shit is amazing”.

Pitchfork threw a comparison to Blitzen Trapper and while it may be an alright comparison with a band being indefinable by genre, this album has nothing interesting nor the same risk-taking involved.

For the most part this album is safe, 615 condom safe to be exact (slight exaggeration and 615 condoms is not very safe). I think what gets me the most is that Plants & Animals choose to be safe, soft with nothing to the forefront on the tracks that are 6 minutes long (4 of those). I was not a fan of “Good Friend” or “Faerie Dance”. I want to see much more experimentation on 6 minute tracks, we live in a world of attention deficit disorder kids (you could include me…).

This album does have it moments but I can barely find those moments and it just becomes another album that lost in my increasingly growing music folder. Definitely overrated by critics. I just don’t see what’s great about this album.

Rating: 2.2 out of 5.
If you don’t like my review, fuck you! just leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Bye Bye Bye by Plants and Animals

Feedback in The Field by Plants and Animals

Even with the bad review, support your artists and buy records (Don’t need to buy from me)!
Buy Parc Avenue here: CD Universe/ Insound / Amazon

So while catching up with some of my favourite post-rock bands, I came upon an indie label called Dynamophone Records. Most of the music is experimental electronic/post-rock/ambience; pretty awesome. Anyway, I came upon the band Disinterested, who released their second album (but first on Dynamophone Records), Behind Us last year. Disinterested originally started off as a guitar project by a man named Matt Brown, who wanted to test the depths and limits (or limitlessness?) of the guitar. What resulted was some pretty good post-rock music! In a similar tone to that of Mogwai, Disinterested definitely fulfills every post-rock lover’s dream. I’ve been listening to more “avant-garde” post-rock as of late, so listening to Behind Us was definitely a nice break—to just sit back and let the music flood my ears.

That being said, it was pretty hard to critique this album because it’s just too enjoyable. You can definitely tell that the main focus is the guitar instrument—it is the melody of the songs. Synths help back up the melody nicely without stealing too much focus. Generally, this is a mellow album with lots of experimentation of synthesizers and guitar riffs that will hook you in. This albums proves that a mere strum of a chord can sound so good. One song, “Felt Leaves,” features a bit of soft female vocals, very fitting for the general ambience of the song. Other than that, you won’t hear much vocals…pretty much on par with the fundamentals of the genre (except for maybe the fact that the songs are pretty much at a standard pop song length, nothing going past 5 minutes).

The album starts off with “Dissonance,” a song with lots of reverb and synth use. Reminds me of a typical Sigur Ros song, a very slow and mellow tempo. Additional instruments are introduced in a sort of fading in manner for the build up. There is the use of the crescendo-decrescendo style, but it’s pretty much subtle and doesn’t linger on. “What You Wanted” has a similar style to “Dissonance,” what with the reverb and the addition of instruments as the song progresses. “January” has a more explicit sense of guitar instrumentation with a pretty catchy riff a la Mogwai. “Sunnydayafter” is pretty awesome; pretty awesome use of the whammy. Again, pretty mellow. “Blankets” is kind of creepy sounding, like something out of a Silent Hill soundtrack. The synth riff reminds me of the song “Time” by Pink Floyd (on their Dark Side of the Moon album), but it sort of just ends the song off abruptly with the synths. I felt like there was really no closure there. “Felt Leaves” is the next song, and is the song I mentioned earlier that has a bit of vocals. It fits. I like it; it’s a bit creepy and is sung in a similar style to that of Sigur Ros, except with all the falsetto and unintelligible lyrics. Musically it is very similar to the other songs on the album (starts of with synths with a slow addition of instrumentation and build up). I’m not going to go into detail about the other tracks, stylistically they are similar to the tracks I have mentioned. It’s a pretty solid album.

So yeah, if you really like Mogwai or just mellow ambient music that focuses on guitar, I would definitely recommend Behind Us. I’m sure you’ll like it. You can order the album or download it iTunes at the label’s site.

Disinterested - January

Disinterested - I Wish It Were the 90’s

Watershed is the ninth album by Swedish progressive death metal band Opeth. Being only exposed to one Opeth album before, Still Life, I thought this album started off a bit soft. By soft, I don’t mean bad. The first track on Watershed is ‘Coil’. It is an acoustic song with two clear vocals. It’s a good track but I felt that it just didn’t have the Boom factor and the build-up suspense needed for an opening track like ‘The Moor.’

The singles on this album are ‘Porcelain Heart’ and ‘The Lotus Eater’. ‘Porcelain Heart’ sounds a lot like old Opeth stuff to me; lots of Tool-like melodies, lots of repeating riffs, not so much randomness. ‘The Lotus Eater’ offers much delight to my ears. It starts off as a quiet hum which suddenly shifts to a death metal song. The song also proceed to drift to Floyd ish solos and 70s funk jam. In fact, the song never stayed the same for more than a minute. Another song I like is ‘Burden’. It’s got clear singing vocals throughout the whole song and sounds really Lord of the Rings ish. Anyways, have a listen for youselves:

The Lotus Eater

Porcelain Heart

Burden