Eternal Play Music

Be Your Own Pet

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Mon, 28 Aug 2006 14:45:00 +0000

Be Your Own Pet is full of energy, and all they want to do is be your friend, fuck things up, and have some fuuuuuun together. This album is loud, noisy and simply a great rock\punk album. I listened to it non-stop for the first several weeks (to my wife's consternation). Now, months later I'm still listening to it at least twice a week. This is high praise. With so many albums and so little time to really absorb them; for a debut album from a band I had never heard of to rise to the top of the pile like this is a once a year event at best.

Stand Out Tracks: "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle", "Fuuuuuun", and "Ouch".

Available on Rhapsody

Grooves Podcast #2

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 17:22:00 +0000

PodCast #2
Hosted by Editor Sean Portnoy. The show clicks at just over thirty one minutes with eight featured tracks. Moderately good although I haven't revisited it after the first couple listens.

Boards of Canada: The Campfire Headphase

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Mon, 27 Mar 2006 14:42:00 +0000

Three years ago Geogaddi was released. We loved it. Now BoC is back with The Campfire Headphase and it is exactly what I was hoping for, but also exactly what I was expecting. It is beautiful, peaceful, and grainy; a nice existentialist beach vacation. A familiar location; just the frame for your thoughts you were hoping for.

The album art invokes child hood vacations, and pictures of your parents when they were happy and you were small. The photos have taken a beating, they look weathered and loved on. Album production reflects the same attention, and I encourage the listener to absorb the album art before and while listening the first couple of times.

I wait for a new BoC album like few others, and I buy it w/o listening to a single sample. I trust these guys because they keep making the music I need for my other moods, and in that they have never disappointed. Let this album be a sound-track for the pre and post climactic moments in your story.

Stand-out tracks: None. The album is a whole and cohesive unit.

Not Available on Rhapsody, but available on Amazon

SignalDrift :: Set Design

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 14:36:00 +0000

This is music for play, while walking alone along a space station corridor, long, and lined floor to ceiling with crystal clear windows viewing a strange green world, clouds sliding across its face, wondering about my new home.

This latest sonic scape offered to us by an American Artist, Franz Buchholtz, surprised me in how quickly I came to replay it. There are certain albums that demand to be played, as albums, not as tracks. Tracks from these albums have me hitting stop on the shuffle, so I can finish the album. I go to these albums and not to genre shuffles or playlists for the mood they impart, for the way they affect my environment. These are drugs we self prescribe to alter our mental state.

This is simply one of the best new albums I've adopted in quite a long time.

Available on Rhapsody and Amazon

Artist::The Ink Spots

Justin Williams — Tue, 21 Feb 2006 02:13:00 +0000

The Ink Spots were the preeminent black vocal group of 1940's pop music and were precursors to the doo-wop, rhythm & blues, and rock & roll sounds that blossomed in the subsequent two decades. The original members of the group were Jerry Daniels, Charlie Fuqua, Ivory "Deek" Watson and Orville "Hoppy" Jones, and sometimes included guest accompany vocalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, though various changes occurred throughout the group's history as members passed on, were drafted into military service or left due to internal disagreements. The following is a list of those vocalist considered to be legitimate members of the group over its recording history: Bernie Mackie, Huey Long, Cliff Givens, Billy Bowen, Herb Kenny, Adriel McDonald, Ernie Brown, Teddy Williams, Jimmy Cannady, Bob Benson, Asa "Ace" Harris, Bill Doggett, Ray Tunia, Harold Francis, Fletcher Smith, and Everett Barksdale.

The sound of the Ink Spots evokes impressions of an era gone by, inspiring images of enjoying a lunchtime sandwich and coffee in a New York deli during the second World War, or indulging in a fine Claret at a social affair in a scene from The Great Gatsby. The smooth mellow flow of the music is relaxing and easily sets a good background for activites such as casual conversation or Sunday morning coffee alone on the veranda. The mild energy level prevents tension yet does not sink into melancholy or depressive ranges. As a vocal group, harmony is the pillar on which the Ink Spots music is founded, and contains only minimal and subdued instrumental flourishes. One side effect of limited instrumentation however as a generic sound that pervades most of their music.

Readers may be familiar with the track If I Didn't Care as it appears often in film and television including the notable movies The Shawshank Redemption and Blade Runner. This track along with 11 other popular Ink Spot tracks appear in the 1999 release The Best of the Ink Spots an album in the 20th Century Masters: The Millennium Collection series of releases by MCA Records, and provides a good introduction for the causal listener to enjoy The Ink Spots.

For more detailed information on the group's history see the Ink Spots entry in Wikipedia.

Saint Etienne: Tales from turnpike house

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 02:09:00 +0000

Saint Etienne delivers a dreamy concept album swirling around fictional characters living in a real suburban london apartment building. The music is electronic and organic. The vocals and warm instrumentals float across the length of the album. This is calm thoughtful Sunday afternoon music, when you are relaxed enough to enjoy downtime.

This isn't an album for every moment, but there are many moments when this would be an excellent choice.

Grooves Podcast #1

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:44:00 +0000

Grooves Magazine has published an excellent podcast for the experimental electronic scene. This is the first one, hopefully one of many. I will be following them closely. This is a premier location to hear what is new and hot in this difficult to follow genre.

PodCast #1
Hosted by Senior Editor Rob Geary. The show clocks at just over thirty two minutes with six featured tracks. The podcast has a relaxed upbeat vibe. Its fun, inventive, sometimes strange, but only strange enough to give this carpet of solid dub and electronica a fringe of freakiness. I predict, you'll dig.

Takeshi Muto :: Expect More From a Past Life

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:00:00 +0000

This is glitch music with beats and distortion; a math professor dancing like Christopher Walken. This is not popular music, you need to aquire the ear for it, but once you have, you will be participating in the listening experience and realize its worth every minute. Glitch has its luminaries and notables and Takeshi is not one of them. But with this album he has made a good start and a good addition into a genre worth admiration. He is one half of Miami's Phoenecia, and you can see the beat decomposition and sublte hip hop tint leaking into his solo works here too. Listen to this album when you are actively thoughtful, either while programming or while relaxing at the house in solitude. This is a soundtrack for your mental activities.

Stand-out tracks: "Quiloid", "Fuqpulga", and "Ntak / 7me7a"

Note: Album is available on Rhapsody, but not iTunes or Napser

Black Keys::Rubber Factory

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 15:01:00 +0000

I liked this album on the first listen. After the second, I was planning to pick up a copy on the way to the pub. By the fourth it found a place in my daily rotation.

The album lands under the genre "Garage Rock Revival" which houses notables such as The White Stripes, The Vines and And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead. Comparison: first album Black Crowes (i.e. shake your money maker) mixed with third album White Stripes (i.e. white blood cells), with more natural blues sensitivity thrown in and you'd have a smoothy that tasted much like this album sounds; refreshing.

Feist::Let it Die

Dork Ass — Wed, 02 Nov 2005 04:53:00 +0000

I discovered this Canadian song bird while surfing on Rhapsody. While most of the album spins like crappy elevator music that will have you frantically searching for the escape hatch there are a few really great songs. For the uninitiated, I would recommend the extremely fizzy "Mushaboom". I have no exposure to commanding pop but after listening to this song I know what it should sound like. "Tout Doucement", which translates to something French, is also another stand out. It's one of those songs that lingers in the periphery and eventually wins you over. Lastly we have the muti-layered masterpiece "Lonely Lonely". As the title suggests, the song starts off slow and deliberate but ends with a such a great instrumental ditty that it's repeated twice.

Album::Big Calm

Justin Williams — Sun, 30 Oct 2005 14:25:00 +0000

Artist::Morcheeba

Released by Morcheeba in March of 1998, Big Calm does contain a calmness that the title suggests. This calmness though is built on pop guitar, driving beats and rhythms, and the smooth but sultry vocals of Morcheeba front Syke Edwards which provides a smooth energy that permeates the entire album. Built upon the core pop and dance type rhythms are an eclectic palette of accent styles including jazz, funk, soul, reggae, Indian, folk and country-western. These ranging accents give an interesting variety to the album all within a down-tempo framework that produces a robust and melodic lounge atmosphere.

Strong Track::The Sea
As a popular favorite not just for the album but for Morcheeba as a group, this track is exemplary of the melodic feel and usage of accent styles throughout the whole of the Big Calm album.

Desert Island Band::Hüsker Dü

BoboBonobo — Wed, 26 Oct 2005 21:05:00 +0000

While I celebrate these punk godfathers' entire catalog, I'll choose their cover of 'Eight Miles High' as a definitive song. To quote uncle Bob: "they've mastered the feat of yoking elemental noise and elemental melody". Surprisingly, it's Mould's vocal that clinches the noise and his guitar the melody; a reversal of the usual strategy. I like to play this loud and on repeat.

Lyrics: http://www.lyricsvault.net/songs/3845.html

Album by Sleater-Kinney: The Woods

BoboBonobo — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 18:43:00 +0000

One of two undeniable albums I've heard in the last year (see also 'Arular' by M.I.A.), this one digests the internalized tension of unsettling times (see google search: 'failure') and allows the results to be appropriately messy and challenging. In contrast to Arular's rise-above celebration of fun, these Woods seem to contain Twin Peaks' black lodge: an opportunity to confront something fundamental and, for better and worse, to be changed by it. The exceptional results offer pleasure and escape (thanks especially to Brownstein's standout guitar work) but mostly the inviting comfort of solidarity and the satisfaction of struggle.

Album by M.I.A.: Arular

BoboBonobo — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 18:01:00 +0000

Named for her Tamil Tiger absent father, Arular embraces funk, favela, grime and good times. Halfway between the Moldy Peaches and the Coup (and as good as either), she instructs by example. Playfulness to soothe the soul is grounded in a political reality the first world needs more of. She'll free your ass and I hope your mind will follow.

Artist::Beck

t3chnomonk@hotmail.com (Technomonk) — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 13:31:00 +0000

Beck has come a long way since "Loser". He has a half dozen albums under his belt, all good and all different. He's gotten more polished and mature in his song writing which has taken some of the care free fun that characterized his first couple albums out but added back in is a depth of emotion that he did not have when he started.