Humour Me

This could either be a great idea that spawns something great! Or it could be the worst thing I have ever thought of.

I made a playlist a couple of weeks ago containing my top favourite albums. This was regardless of genre type, or musical stylings. The end result was 4.4 days worth of music for me to listen to and spend pretty much all my time listening to it and figuring out what it means in the grand scheme of things. This is why I have not updated in a while.

I am still trying to figure out writing layouts as well as statement. The goal I have in mind is to share with those who care why I say what I do. I also want to expose albums and sounds that may not be as well advertised. These are also albums that I feel may be advertised as what they are not. Like calling Aphex Twin just electronica without going into what the Richard D. James album contains.
On That Note

APHEX TWIN- RICHARD D. JAMES ALBUM
This album marks my intro into the world of abstract concepts in music and orchestration. This album contains many different emotions, but the overarching feel is that of confusion and anguish. The album contains some of the most gentile piano lines and some of the harshest drum lines. It is also home to some of the most awkward displays. for example: "I would like some milk from the milkman's wife's tits." Yes. That is a thing. It is also chanted behind some of the most delicate melodies.
I tend to use this album as a background to my day to day. It may explain why my mind can feel so disorganized and draped in chaos all of the time.

For a sound review: I am not quite sure what to say. Though some of his albums hail on the heavier side, this one does not. Pieces from this would go fantastically into a period movie or something. The songs match an imagery of people waltzing. Think almost steam punk; with the random bit of electronics mixed in with period articles of clothing.
I find myself going back to this album at the strangest times for something different every time. I assume everyone knows who Aphex Twin is, by now. I keep being surprised by who people know and who they don't. Now I am rambling. Ramble ramble ramble.

Last post before I leave...

Random link jumping. Came up with some different and interesting artists and whatnot to look into.

Audrey Napoleon :: Random producer who does stuff. Some of it is pretty neat. It is a bit more dance-pop than I usually look into.

Brendan Canning :: Finally got a stream of the new album (in link) and it sounds pretty cool. Also, he started another label, thus the not being released on Arts & Crafts.

Dream Affair :: I keep checking in with this band every so often just to see what is new. 80's Goth, today!

Beliefs :: I'm on a bit of a dream-pop thing. These guys are pretty cool.

CST Sampler :: Constellation Records did a sampler a little while ago. Worth poking around on, if you are looking for something obscure. I'm not a fan of the full 40 whatever minuets, but to each their own.

I hope something in that list brings you a great feeling.
I'm off to do something that is very similar to this list, except I'm not going to tell anyone about it.
Also, I'M GOING TO ICELAND. BYE.

-J

Lest we forget (punk & Metal)

Remember 2002? I don't either don't worry.

(END BLOG)

I kid. 2002 was the year I started high school. The intro metal at the time were bands like Slipknot and Staind, and I really did start the alternative hunt around that time. Death metal got me into looking into the local scene and my Nine Inch Nails discovery got me looking into the budding screamo scene. 

Grade 10 I was introduce the the local music scene of Cambridge by a girl named Becky and a fellow named Jeff. They took me to see The Reason play with 86 This, Handheld, and Farewell To Freeway. So that seems like a good place to start.

A couple of notes:

Every little section will be followed by a "DOES IT HOLD UP?!" to which I am simply asking that if I had come across this album now instead of then, would I have picked it up.

I'd also like to take this line to Nate for introducing me to the phrase 2004-core. All you need to do is look at a few albums from this year to get what it means.

The Reason - Ravenna (2004)

This was one of my first experiences with "screamo." Ex Sewing with Nancy changed their sound and became a form of pioneer in the Southern Ontario punk scene beside Silverstein and Alexisonfire. The reason had that vocalist that would switch between the whining singing and screaming to accompany their soft-heavy-soft formula. The drummer barely used double kick, and it really kept the punk pace to all of their music. The individuel parts of their songs were very simple yet very fluid.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! Well, in the same way that At The Drive In's first album holds up. It is not so much a good listen as it shows a time and a place in music. In the screamo genre, this album has one of the lower production values that will apear on the list. Though this adds to the feel, it does make it hard for new listeners to pick it up and give it a swing. The Reason's next album, Things Couldn't Be Better, is a much cleaner album with much less 2004-core screaming.

Roses Dead - Stages (2006)

Holy fuck technical punk and/or Djent has come a long way, but my god this album is pretty. This is the first band I heard that played with rhythms and time signatures to a point where someone looking to learn the progressions would HAVE to break it down into segments, some of which lasting less than 3 seconds. The album starts with a "dirty breakdown" and the noise doesn't end for the entire 11 tracks. A Wake In The Water is still one of my favorite instrumental tracks of all time. The only real gripe I have about this album is that, even though it is one huge track, every song starts with a very similar guitar riff. This band has an EP prior to this release the broke up due to internal conflict and the inability to find a singer.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! New listeners and people who don't remember the early years of this sound would probably not enjoy this as much as those of us who lived through it to tell the tale. I mostly put this one on the list to remind the old 519punk users that they exist. 519 REGION PEOPLE, GIVE THIS ALBUM MORE PLAYS ON YOUR ITUNES! If you need a copy, talk to me. I think I still have mine somewhere.

Tugnut - Ode To Pete (2006)

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA



*recomposes self*

I played so many shows with these guys and my do I miss it. The first time I saw them, their bass player played half the set outside and I had no fucking clue what the hell was going on. People didn't know whether to dance or to kill each other. Still remains one of the loudest bands I have ever seen and will always stay close to my heart. I am reviewing this album mostly because when scanning through all of them, this was one of the only ones I could hear. The recordings, minus this and one other album, were all self done analogue. The first few albums were put together using photocopiers, sharpies, and time. There was some mention that the singer would actually write poetry and base the songs around how he thought the music would accompany it. To be honest, there are still parts of their songs I can't play after all these years of trying because it makes ABSOLUTELY no sense, and I love it.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! If for no other reason than there is nothing that could ever sound like this ever. Their strange use of jazz chords followed by broken jazz chords followed by a saucy dance bit will never be able to be replicated, and that is a bit depressing. Where are they now? Joe is making acoustic guitars in, I believe, BC. Marc was playing bass for Fuck The Facts and Steve was playing with the Great Sabitini. Marc and Steve are also in a two piece doom metal group called Greber. Please help these amazing friends with their respected projects.

Poison The Well - Opposite of December... A Season Of Separation (1999)

I can't tell if I have to love this album for what they influenced and were at the forefront of, or if I should hate them for making entire songs on this album out of "dun dun dunundun dun." There was a time where the first track had blown my mind with it's blistering double kick outside of metal and how personal the lyrics are. When looking at my iTunes for albums that came out that same year, I can't find anything remotely similar with the exception of Calculating Infinity (The Dillinger Escape Plan) and Refused's The Shape of Punk To Come from the year prior. There are still some great moments on this album and I'll still bust Slice Paper Wrists out at social functions to watch a couple people go scouring the ground for nickels.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! To put politely, fuck no. It is little more than nostalgia and their second album Tear From The Red (2002) was the same idea but so much better. I still love this album, and I'm sure most people who picked it up back in the early 2000's still love this album. If you have never heard of Poison The Well, save this one for last on the list of which albums to check out.
...
*puts Slice Papers Wrists back on to sing along with the middle bit*


ALEXISONFIRE - ALEXISONFIRE (2003)

When the hell did this album hit ten years old? That aside, what a fantastic piece of audio. This album has some of the prettiest string work to date. This album was before Dallas Green could sing properly and before George Pettit knew how to scream without thrashing his voice. The drums on this album are simple because they have to be to make this album perfect.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! I am way too biased to say honestly whether it does or not. It is still in my top Canadian albums of all time and in my top twenty albums of all time. There is something I love about how unpolished it is. In fact; if they cleaned it up, I probably wouldn't care for the album at all anymore. It is gritty and off key and strangely mixed because it HAS to be. I'm still looking for someone to cover Counterparts And Number Them, by the way.

Brand New - Deja Entendu (2003)

Keep your voice low...
This album is beautiful. The use of vocal harmonies and almost vocal battles at points must have been something short of impossible to arrange in a way that didn't make them sound conflicting. This was my emo secret, and I owe it all to my friend Jaymi for reminding me every once and a while that I still have this album somewhere in this massive library of music I have. The songs are unfairly catchy, yet not cheesy. The lyrics are personal, but not pathetic, though they do hinge at times. Every song is about some horrible personal moment that could have ruined a life, and quite possibly has. At the heart of this wrist-cutting hair-dying masterpiece is a punk heart who beats with just as much hate as any of us. The vocalist is a lyrical genius with lines that seem relatable, quotable, but still incredibly personal to the one who wrote them.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! Like most major label releases from the early 2000's, there is little change is recording quality or methods so from a strictly auditory standing; yes. It comes from the same background that most modern pop-punk comes from and, since emo is a dead language, I would say that it would definitely hold up to date. Forget I dropped the emo line and pretend that punk was never used in this review. Use them as an idea to check out this classic album, but don't base the album on those merits. It's an experience, not a label. Listen, enjoy, and welcome to the family.

Norma Jean - O God The Aftermath (2005)

This album starts with a "...wat..." and it just never really drops it. I would like to think that I'm ok at drums, but I still can't figure out the first track. Speaking of tracks; this was the first album that I have ever seen that had not only a witty play on words every track title, but also had two titles per track (the second of which was equally witty). I can't make out a damned word he says on this album, but it all sounds equally brutal and harsh and something that's fun to punch walls to. I don't know if it's the gargled screams, the driving and fucked drums, or the constant slides of dissonance on the guitars that make me so angry when I listen to this album. Don't get me wrong, it's a good kind of angry. The kind that you get after you watch that bully who was just making fun of you get his ass handed to him by someone who just can't take his bull shit anymore. The biggest bit of regret I have around this band is that, when I got to see them (2005), I couldn't mosh or maim because the God Damned hardcore kids were dancing in every possible pit area.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! Oh fuck yes and no. It sounds like shit. The mid is totally scooped out and if you are in a car, the bass rattle from the windows will be louder than anything going on in the music. As far as musically, it is in a field all to it's own. When I say sliding guitars, I mean that the first track and a couple others are literally based around synchronized slides and dissident chords being hit in perfect unison. The drums are, though simple in skill, are so fucking tight with the random nature of the tracks, that following them can feel like you are going to loose your mind. Please, pick this album back up. Show them that they shouldn't have dropped this sound and that we may have supported them for longer if they hadn't. Seriously, Norma Jean: your other albums after this one suck.

I Hate Sally - Sickness Of The Ages (2004)

So fucking metal. This album came out before they got their more recognizable female front. I personally prefer where they went, but I can completely see why this album was so well received in the metal scene and why so many fans still hold it on such high. It was metal through and through. There was no attempt at making anything sound pretty and the message was very straight forward.
DOES IT HOLD UP?! Yes. The metal community should always remember these great Canadians and all the good that they did. The next big album they did (Don't Worry Lady) was much more drone feeling and came at everything from a different lyrical edge. Check them both out!1 Also, I will never do this band justice. Luka is a much better fan than I, ask her about them if you want more information!

BAHHHHHHH THERE IS TOO MUCH!

I will come back to this premis later if this is well received. If I left something out that you KNOW I shouldn't have, remind me in the comments! I'll probably hate myself forever if I don't get something I'm not thinking of right now in the next one.

12) Feeling Lucky?

So let us talk about sales of audio mediums and why the music industry is not going anywhere any time soon. I will try to keep my reasons and such, though opinion based, as unbiased and as educated as I can. Please keep in mind that my opinions for stating the reasons for changes in the industry are based on sales and opinions working at a used CD shop in Cambridge and should be seen as an idea or argument. Do not use this blog as any sort of absolute fact on anything, but especially this piece. The charts the actual numbers come from will be linked at the end.

The thing that gets brought up oh-so-often at my cash counter is "isn't the music industry dying?" and "why not just download everything?" Well, the easy reply to the downloading idea is that it is still illegal most places and most websites do not want to get caught in the crossfire. When people bring up places like iTunes and (legal) Napster, opinions and feelings often become thrown around as fact.

The first point I would like to make is that the music industry would not bother if it was not profitable. It is far too early in the year to have any sort of fair comparison to last years numbers, so let us pretend it is closer to January. Physical sales are down from a sudden peak in the year prior and digital sales are spiking from a very low 2011. Physical medium sales are still 80 million units outselling digital distribution. Now, would those sales go to digital if there was not an option for physical sale? I have a couple of customers who come to our store from the country who can barely get internet access. Would these people be able to switch to digital? Obviously not. Now, I am aware that the few customers I mention is not enough to even make the industry bat an eyelash, so I'm going to bring up some census information! YAY CANADIAN CENCUS!

A study done in 2010 shows that 1 in 5 Canadians do not have internet access (so just over 6.8 million Canadians). With Canadian physical purchasing sitting at 20.5 million last year and digital sitting just over 10 million, and assuming we go by the idea that 0.9 albums sell per person, would mean a decrease in sales by 6.12 million albums. The average price of a new CD at my work is approximately $15 dollars. This would mean a loss of 91.8 million dollars in revenue. Now factor in people like me: I do not download albums from iTunes unless I have to and I never purchase one off songs because the album is what is important to me. When you compile all the numbers, it will cost the music industry less to press CDs than they will loose in total sales.

Signs that the physical age will be on its way out? Price hikes would be one, and rarity of mainstream albums being another. I feel as though we would see Wal*Mart stop carrying CDs long before HMV went out of business, but we might see random pop albums all of a sudden become very difficult to find. Though I can no longer find the information on the actual situation, who remembers the Warner snafu? Warner went through some huge reconstruction thing at the corporate level and threw their distribution of music into the strangest tither. Customers would be able to find some WMG merchandise at my store, but not at the HMV in the mall behind us. Kitchener would be the only city in all Ontario to have Lykki Li, for instance. It was awkward to explain the situation to those who were just looking for that new release and it seemed to get fixed out of nowhere. There were a couple of us who started speculating a digital only push in cities. If it was an experiment, the consequence was the loss of thousands of sales..

What about vinyl? At one time is was viewed as the dominant source for quality of sound. People still spend tens of thousands of dollars getting setups and rooms for perfect acoustics. Audiophiles will always be around for every medium, but vinyl was always viewed as the "purists" form. This grand resurgence has been great for people who just prefer the sound and feel but did not want to give a million and one reasons every time a friend came by. It has now become accepted as just another medium to a huge part of the market and, with sales increasing in double digit percents every year, that market has become bigger and bigger. We now have Record Store Day with sale numbers that almost double every year. I personally do not think that vinyl will ever be the dominant form of music distribution ever again, but what a fantastic decade for vinyl to come back!

Before I wrap up, I would like to mention song sales. This is a fairly new idea, since singles from the days of old always came bundled with a couple of perks. When you purchase a song from iTunes at a dollar, 30 cents goes to Apple and 60 cents to the distributer. The total number of songs sold in 2012 was 1336 million. The cost for an indi artist to upload a song to iTunes using TuneCore is $9.99 per year. With these numbers, I am having a very hard time why anyone thinks the music industry is hurting.



Website used and not tagged already :

This article had a nice collection of charts with all the sale information from 2012 and 2011. Very informative and just kind of cool to read over.





During the writing of this, I was enjoying 2 records: Do Make Say Think Goodbye Enemy Airship the Landlord is Dead and John Coltrane's A Love Supreme. Both seminal albums in their genres and two of my favourite albums of all time. Please, as music fans, check into these.

7) Yep

Well, this blog is going to have a couple of parts to it. It has been a busy week in my head, and in person, not a whole lot has happened.

First off, I spent very little time at home researching things to blog about for Wednesday, thus the no show. I wanted to have an interview done, in all honesty. It's something I think would be neat because I have never done one before. So, on Tuesday morning, I realized that I was 3 days behind in prep, let alone in actual work. Life goes on.
I purchased myself a new laptop this week! By new, I mean my first laptop ever. I picked up the acer Chromebook. It's pretty in it's simplicity. So far I have used it for browsing, a thrilling round of Angry Birds, and now this blog post into starting bit. It is kind of strange; I feel like I'm using an oversized tablet. The screen is small (11.5 inches) and the keyboard is bizarre, but I'm enjoying its company all the same. I think I'm going to name him Ace. Every piece of electronics need a name. Except consoles: They do not have a soul.
Since I haven't pushed this thing yet, I'm not sure of it's processing power. It is hard to push a PC that is a web browser and, therefore, you have to go out of your way to find games.

{Please be kind to the following opinion piece about the music industry}

EVERYONE MUST REMEMBER THAT RECORD STORE DAY IS APRIL 20TH. GO FIND A LOCAL RECORD STORE AND LET THEM KNOW YOU APRECIATE THEM.


Yes, there will be a lot of links to allmusic.com for this next bit. Mostly because I feel like they have some solid information. Partially because I like links.
I have had a few conversations about where the music industry is going this week. I see it either crashing and going the way of the late '80s/early '90s, or the more early '80s. Early '80s being a world of happy people being happy about the everything they think they have, and the early '90s being a world of "fuck the mainstream." Right now it appears to be something along the line of an over saturation of bands who all either sound the same or use the same ideas to convey the popular sound. The underground is starting to swell again to the same capacity like the early 2000s when we had the emo invasion happening beside the semi hip-hop British Invasion-Inspired sounds by bands like The Gorillaz and Danger Mouse making huge waves. Along the sides of all of that, Jack White was getting his start with The White Stripes and Weezer made a come back. All of a sudden, it seemed like those bands started to become background to acts that used those ideas and made them accessible to everyone. Even bands that had been around forever changed their sound just enough to fit in. The prime examples being Kings of Leon having a single (and album) which barely resembled the previous albums.
My personal hope is for the industry to change in every way. We already have had a major upset with things like home recording and self distribution becoming incredibly easy and cheap. This has caused a massive over saturation of sounds and ideas which has a major up (new music always popping up and around) and major downs (a million to one odds to find anything to enjoy). The way I would like to see everything go is either a movement or a community in popular music. From what I have seen, there hasn't been a real mass community built around a band since Death Cab For Cutie circa 2005. Back then, it was rare to know someone who wasn't either gushing over how great Plans was, or how Transatlanticism was better. Regardless of your views, it felt like everyone had some sort of tie to that band. Now it feels like there is a greater segregation between cliques. I will admit, this may be an age thing: although I work at a music store, I haven't been a part of a community that wasn't metal in years. Please, for the love of all that is Holy, let this paragraph be my absence from something amazing, then let me know how to get in.
A movement is something I feel like I have always missed out on. I came in late for the early 2000s punk uprising, but too early for the Emo brigade. I jumped ship from metal just before the death metal revival of 2005 (I say that because Cephalic Carnage had just released Anomalies), and I hated the people jumping into the post-post-hardcore. I only really got into math rock in the last few years and this fucking country has always had shit electro.

I would like to conclude with what I think this current music industry is doing right from my perspective and where they could improve. I think bringing vinyl back to the forefront was a brilliant move. Though I do not have exact numbers (hook ups?), I know that new music sales at my work have increased exponentially since we started carrying vinyl. I sell (on average) a record a day with one record a week being a new release.
Digital distribution is probably a new market standard for top twenty groups thanks to the reinstatement of the single buying ability: it is quite nice to grab that one song if the rest of the album sucks. I do not think iTunes will reign supreme for another decade, but they will try.
BandCamp.com has made everything so beautiful for the independent musician and label. With free download readily available for those who want to do so, plus the introduction of the supplied online store, TuneCore and iTunes actually have a true competitor on the field. I just hope they can keep it up without corruption.