Music

Music Monday – One Take Edition

I am an absolute sucker for one-take media. Movies and music. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I do a series of one-take videos. I prefer it when the one-take is real, but sometimes well-hidden cuts are acceptable.

Dodie – Cool Girl

I just love this song and this video. I really enjoy this style of sort of, “raw dancing” where it’s a little messy and unstructured. I also like the sort of, symbolism of Dodie being slightly “off” from the other dancers, it fits with the themes of the lyrics and theme of the song. It seems intentional because she will be slightly off, then in perfect sync, then off again. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. The song itself is really good as well. It starts out so light then the thumpy beat comes in and it builds up nicely from there.

Total side note, I am slightly enamored with the chest of drawers and nightstand in the opening bit. I have a collection of photos of furniture I have come across in this style because it seems weirdly prolific in the vintage furniture market for some reason.

Kiesza – Hideaway

I think this may be the first video I watched that turned me on to Kiesza’s music.

Something I find amusing about this whole video is that I am pretty sure that a lot fo the non-dancers, are just, people who were out and about. The dudes trying to go to their car. The person ho runs through he shot on the skateboard. One tell for this is how at the end, the Taxi almost gets caught in traffic and almost misses the cue. Also everyone seems to be having a good time, which I like.

OK Go – The One Moment

I could do an entire month’s worth of Music Monday posts on OK Go, instead, I’ll just sprinkle them in here and there. A lot of their videos are one-take videos or fake one-takes. This one is pretty amazing because it’s an extremely fast one take, that’s slowed down.

The behind-the-scenes for OK Go are almost always fascinating as well, or at least, the engineering part of my brain thinks they are. Like all the math that was needed to get the timing for this video down so it would work in the slowed-down version. I mean, I am sure there is some fudging going on, but it’s doing to be damn close.

Nirvana – Unplugged in New York

While I have a lot of “favorite albums”, there is one that I have fairly consistently considered my absolute favorite, and it’s Nirvana’s Unplugged in New York. Originally recorded as part of MTV’s Unplugged show. It was the first Nirvana album released after Kurt Cobain’s death. There are quite a few of these types of albums from MTV’s Unplugged show by different bands. From back when MTV actually played Music all the time.

I just love everything about this album. I love the goofy chatter between the songs. I love the fact that there are plenty of electric effects and an electric guitar in Nirvana’s “Unplugged Set”, because Nirvana doesn’t care apparently. I particularly love that it’s not just an acoustic greatest hits album. I think at least half the songs are covers and most are not their “top hits”. Come As You Are and All Apologies are probably the only real big hits on the album, though there are a couple of others. They aren’t even necessarily covering the big hits of other groups either.

While I really like every track, the covers may actually be my more favored tracks. The Man Who Sold the World, originally by David Bowie is excellent. Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam is great as well. There are three covers of Meat Puppets tracks, Plateau, Oh Me, and my favorite of these three, Lake of Fire. Members of the Meat Puppets also participated in this set.

The set ends with another non-Nirvana track Where Did You Sleep Last Night which is a folk song done by a variety of artists over a period and also goes by several other names. The whole, “angsty 90s Cobain” really shines through on this track and I really like it as well.

The set opens with About a Girl, which as Cobain comments, “this was off our first record, most people don’t own it,” which is certainly accurate as Nirvana wasn’t really popular until Nevermind and then later In Utero. It’s a nice and interesting throwback to the band’s origins. The last track I wanted to throw out as one of my favorites from this album comes from In Utero, Pennyroyal Tea, despite its kind of random and rambly nature, really fits this format well.

I think one thing I really like about this album is just how much it’s Nirvana’s messy and gunge style, cleaned up in a slick format, which still keeps the messy and grunge feel. I don’t really know how else to describe it. That isn’t to say Nirvana isn’t a great band, but I really feel like this album lets them really show a great other side to the band and everyone seems to be generally having a good time making this music as well.

Music Monday – Retro Edition

Let’s roll things back this week for some “blast from the past” videos of yesteryear. Or more, yester-decade.

The Crystal Method – Born Too Slow

A song that I started listening to thanks to Need for Speed Underground, a racing game from EA. I liked that game a lot until I didn’t because it got super cheap on it’s AI at a certain point. At least I think it was NFW UG, i was also playing a lot of Midnight Club around that time, so they kind of blend together.

While the track itself, “Born to Slow” actually fits a racing game in name, it doesn’t really fit it in pacing. This really doesn’t feel like a very racing track. Kind of the opposite actually, The funky guitar sound almost feels just a little “too slow”, and kind of gives this slightly eerie feeling. Which does fit the video with it’s creepy glitchy gray man.

The Refreshments – Banditos

I remember seeing this video at like 2 AM on MTV in the 90s and loving that it referenced Captain Picard but I missed the credit tag. Like a year later I caught it again in the middle of the night and bought the CD like the very next day. Fun fact! The Refreshments did the theme song from King of the Hill, it’s called Yahoo and Triangles. Also this dude kind of looks like Joseph Gordon Levitt as a cowboy and i can’t not see it.

Flip – Possibilities (feat Elou Elan)

This video is weird, I have to say I have not watched it a lot. I used to really dig this track though. I am pretty sure it was on the Muzak system back when I worked at KB Toys, and it became ingrained into my brain after listening to it a thousand times. So maybe I don’t actually like it, I just have been tortured into thinking I like it.

Sigrid – Sucker Punch

It’s possible, that at some point, I am legally required to talk about this album (not really). I don’t listen to a ton of Sigrid currently, though I have not moved on or anything, there is just so much other I want to listen to. I also probably burned myself out on Sigrid listening to her TOO MUCH. Her album, Sucker Punch still has a special place. I’ve always been into music, but I’ve never really been, ACTIVELY into music. I’m not any level of “hardcore” or anything, but there was kind of a perfect storm moment around me discovering Sigrid that lead to me being more active in music communities and actually caring about music on a slightly higher level than I had previously.

There probably isn’t anything particularly special about this album, like I said, it just got caught up in the perfect storm moment. That isn’t to say it isn’t a good album, I actually really really like this album. Checking my YouTube History, it looks like I first listened to Sigrid, and the song Sucker Punch on November 18th, 2018, though I didn’t listen to it again until February of the next year. Something inspired that though because my YouTube history says I specifically searched for it. Anyway, the history shows I watched some Selena Gomez, Taylor Swift, and Kiesza videos, then right before Sucker Punch, 5 Seconds of Summer – Youngblood (Alt Version), for some reason, and then Sucker Punch, which was likely a recommended video.

Sometimes through 2019, I started listening to Sigrid a lot. Also through YouTube, there was one of those banners, “Tickets in your area.” I didn’t really do a lot of concerts then but clicked through on a whim. The tickets were cheap, super cheap. I bought some, immediately. At some point, I also joined the fan Discord server. There was a fun active community there, most of whom migrated to the new official Discord earlier this year. This was also the start of actively seeking out Discord servers for communities of artists I like, though the only others I ever really participated in actively were CHVRCHES and Aurora’s servers.

I think what drew me in was how, weirdly simple the video was, and how slightly weird it was. It’s just Sigrid dancing around in a kind of cocky way, despite not really looking like someone who would BE cocky. Then there’s that fun montage of clips at the end, with some anime clips and like, she’s in a grocery store throwing food on the floor. WHY DOES SHE HATE THOSE TACOS??? Why is that marching band so sinister???

It also has some really slick editing on some of its transitions, which is really appealing to me.

And that point at the end where the music drops out. Excellent.

But there’s a whole album of songs here, just because the album and the first song I listened to from Sigrid bear the same name.

Mine Right Now is the second track of the album. I really love the running retro-sounding underlaying track on this one. It’s also a fun song suggesting that even if a relationship doesn’t work out, at least it’s good “now”. It also has an incredibly amusing video.

The third track, Basic, is my favorite released track and second favorite track of Sigrid’s overall. It’s even better in the live version (almost all music in general is). A lot of Sigrid’s tracks have to do with relationships, either friendships or possibly romantic, and Basic is one of those. The idea is that you just want something authentic and basic, without drama, with its simple wailing vocals. Like Sucker Punch, it features a fun interlude moment as well, on the album version it basically becomes acoustic, on the live version it becomes a cappella.

(Side note, my favorite Sigrid song is Go To War, but I’ll probably bring that one up in a future post).

Another really good one (aren’t they all?) is Strangers, at slot number 4. This was also the second single released from the album. It also has an amusing and surreal video to go along with it, where Sigrid gets to dance around in her own sort of special way in a sort of open movie set. It’s kind of reminiscent of the idea of the song, which is almost the opposite of Basic, … Strangers, perfect pretenders, falling head over heels…. That sort of thing.

The first single for the album was track 9, and I believe it was her first “big hit” track in general, with Don’t Kill My Vibe. A fast-paced, pump-you-up anthem about keeping others from bringing you down.

In the interest of a bit of brevity, I wanted to sort of group the other tracks together a bit. They are all good, some I didn’t like as much initially, but they have grown on me over time, like Level Up, In Vain, and Business Dinners.

It’s probably also worth bringing up Dynamite. Sigrid has several “low-key” sort of songs, and Dynamite is one of those. It’s a good track, I just have never super been able to get into it. I think part of what I like about Sigrid is how carefree and upbeat most of her music is, and Dynamite, while a good song, is just such a different tone, I can never feel the vibe.

Anyway, this is one I’ve been meaning to write up on for a while. And so it’s done. I’m sure at some point I’ll get to Sigrid’s second album How to Let Go, and I’ll probably do a combined write-up on her two previous EP releases. I also want to do a write-up for the “missing album”. Sigrid has a large number of unreleased older tracks. They don’t exist anywhere except live show performances. Enough to fill a whole album. It would be worth doing a write-up of these I think, as it it were an album. (Go to War is one of these tracks.)

Music Monday – Science-ish Edition

Let’s see how long I can manage to keep up a vague theme for these posts. This week I wanted to throw out some videos with some fancy “science-y” themes. I use that in the vaguest since, because at least one is kind of a stretch but it’s certainly nice to look at.

Also, it’s a bit “Music Monday-ish” as well, since it’s Tuesday, because yesterday I posted about the Alanis Morrisette Concert. (Unless for some reason I didn’t go and forgot to remove that line, wait, now I need to remove this line if it does happen….)

Lusine – Just a Cloud (feat Vilja Larjosto)

I am completely fascinated by this video every time it comes up on y playlist. I really like the sort of layering of patterns that is present across the entire length of the track. It does a nice soft build as the song goes along. What I really like though in this video is the use of light.

I mentioned those patterns, and they essentially each also have their own light effect in the video. It’s about as close as you can get to “seeing music” without, I dunno, dropping acid or something, I’ve never tried that I can’t really say.

Wintergaten – Marble Machine

This guy has essentially made a career out of this crazy marble machine. He’s got a whole series of videos about the process he is doing to continually update and upgrade and basically build a more perfect device. I still really love this version though, with all the shaky jank going on. It’s a nice pleasant little song too.

The Engineer part of my brain loves all the technical planning and design that had to have gone into making this all work as well as it does, and the work being put in on the updated device.

Nigel Standford – Cymatics: Science vs Music

I mentioned about about being the “best way to see sound” and I guess I was wrong, because this video is the best way to see sound. Quite literally. Most of the experiments featured in this video are sound based experiments. The vibrations in the water pans, the way the water curls with the base, the funny patterns made by the graphite on the trays, the way the flames pop up and down in patterns. It’s all matter reacting to sound in a clean enough way that we can see it.

Sound travels in waves, most of these are just the sound waves visualized.

Except the Tesla coil at the end, that’s just, “cool science” that doesn’t really have much to do with sound.