Category Archives: Music

Concerts, Music, Myself

Concert Diaries: James Blake, Live At The Music Box

One of the happiest aspects of moving to LA has been this – anytime I listen to a new artiste, or even an old favorite, I go to the corresponding last.fm page and look at their scheduled appearances. In nearly all cases, the artiste is scheduled to perform in this city. Maybe it’s just my choice of musicians, but the ones I’ve been to in the recent past have performed in small, intimate locations – the Wiltern, the Greek Theater, The Music Box. The last I went to was James Blake, last Monday. I had a great time.

Blake makes my kind of music. The kind that refuses to let me parallel-process as I listen to it. Moody, atmospheric synth-collages dance around his voice, which itself is auto-tuned, flange-layered, digitally masticated beyond recognition. Hearing his self-titled album for the first time was a sort of quasi-religious experience. I remember sitting in a corner that night with my earphones, my eyes closed, trying to take in every nuance of ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ as it played over and over. That particular song touched a raw nerve – a plaintive five-line refrain that whispered and stormed, echoed and warbled, as the world changed around it. I had associated Blake’s style with that of a solo music-smith’s digital experiments, that would lose its potency live. Sometimes, the mystery behind the curtain – the smoke, the mirrors – is necessary to accentuate the musicmanship. Intrigued by the idea of a live performance, I went looking for his videos online. And was blown away a second time.

As a venue, the Music Box falls into the mid-sized category, perfect for someone like Blake. I got there early – not a bad thing at all, as when the doors opened at 8, I headed straight to the front of the floor and stayed put. For what seemed like hours and hours, groan. Teengirl Fantasy took the stage at exactly 9 PM, and played a set that blew ears, minds and expectations. I had never heard of them before, but whew, their sound-cloud offering does not get a fraction of the vibe of their live set, where thumping bass loops mesh with otherworldly sounds.

[soundcloud url=”http://api.soundcloud.com/users/1448452″]

You knew Blake was coming onstage when the stage lights turned blue. (No, seriously. That’s the predominant color on his album cover. I was expecting that, yeah) Right from the opening song – ‘Unluck’, the first track on his album – Blake and his musical cohorts on drums and sampler/guitar seemed to bend the rules of sound and light that night, playing to an appreciative audience that cheered and woo-hoo-ed at every opportunity. Weirdly enough, there were cheers even mid-song, forcing Blake to break character and smile impishly, in the middle of some particularly soulful passages.

Random observations about the show:

  • The way the singer’s voice shattered my assumptions. It surprised me to see just how much of Blake’s voice is really his voice, not electronically manipulated or enhanced – especially in songs like ‘Give Me My Month’, where it’s just him and the piano. He is a tremendously gifted singer, and it was awe-inspiring to see how the vocal calisthenics that appeared studio-tweaked were just raw talent.
  • I liked the way Ben Assiter used both a drum machine and an acoustic drum-kit, sometimes simultaneously. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but I am obsessed with sounds, and this is what I mean by a peek at the bones of a song – the realization, for example, that the sound of the hi-hat on Blake’s cover of Feist’s ‘Limit to your Love’ is really a hi-hat.
  • ‘I Never Learned To Share’ and ‘Lindisfarne’, two songs where Blake actually sequences and layers his voice, gave me goosebumps.
  • The new songs they played, one to close the show, the other in the encore, sounded more upbeat, much unlike Blake’s usual style, making for a concert where the melancholy, sparse melodies were punctuated with very peppy, head-bopping sequences.  And it also makes me happy to know that Blake is not sticking to the style that has worked for him, and is trying out different things. It’s also made me fairly sure that I am going to see this guy the next time he performs in LA.
  • The throbbing bass, oh dear god, especially on the encore track ‘Anti-War Dub’ and ‘Limit to your Love’. Think about the deepest, most gut-rattling growl of a subsonic frequency you’ve ever heard, and you’ll probably understand. Maybe.
  • Blake introduced drummer Ben Assiter and guitarist Rob McAndrews as his high-school friends, who have been accompanying him since the very beginning of his career. That made me smile.
  • My favorite Blake song, in case you haven’t figured it out already, is ‘The Wilhelm Scream’. It was the last song (pre-encore), just like I had expected, but maybe because I had already you-tubed it, the song did not have the level of spontaneity to it as the others. Perhaps that is not so surprising after all, considering how much these guys must have played the track live.
  • This did not however prevent me from recording the song myself, on the phone.

Note: the pictures were taken off the iPhone, please excuse the poor quality.
Standard
Mixtapes, Music

A Mix For Midnight

Years ago, when I could still say the word with a straight face, I made a mixtape. It was good, or so people said. It was a collection of music that made me smile and want to be creative and go through my work-day punching programming problems in the face, be able to attend meetings without caffeine injections and handle annoying colleagues all without losing that smile. Sometime later, I made another one, dedicated to The God of Indian Contemporary Music. My last attempt was for a short-lived site called Muxtape (for everyone reading this and wondering WTF a ‘mixtape’ is, this link should give you an idea of what one looks like, at least). The theme for that happened to be female electronica vocalists – and once the site went down, taking my playlist with it, I gave up on the idea of trusting third-party sites to host any music content. Until recently, when I thought it was time to, y’know, revive the franchise.

Captain Obvious and his sidekick Private Meh-mori speaking: Tapes are no longer around – the last time I tried looking for one was in 2008, when I got the weird idea of making a “permanent” mixtape – buying a walkman, filling up a 90-minute blank cassette with songs, sticking it into the walkman. Really sticking it in forever. That cassette would be all that the walkman would play, and then it could be thrown away. I have no idea why I thought that was a cool idea. But it was there in my brain, for a bit, and when I saw that there were no walk-men to be found in the cluster of grey-market shops in Abids and Koti – and these guys, they would stock everything – I gave up on the quest. Sayonara, TDK and Denon and Meltrack, even you, T-Series, you were cheap and terribly bad but you were there for a penniless student when he needed The Corrs and Michael Kamen and could not afford to buy both. You’re almost-science-fiction now, tiny little tremors in my neural impulses, though you still exist in Nick Hornby books and wiki pages about Metallica, and overly sentimental blog posts.

“Please say mix-tape, man, it’s ok” my friend said, when I told him what I was up to. I tried very hard to come up with an alternative title. Mix album. Compilation. A Mix. (“You could be the local bhel puri guy”, he retorted. *Snicker*) Well, call it what-the-fuck-ever. I know it’s sucky to go all meta about a bunch of songs arranged together – but please bear with me. The  collection’s 16 songs, 115 MB zipped, about 60 minutes long, which is about all the time I can borrow from you fine folks. The titles exist, the artiste-names don’t – just to keep some element of surprise intact. Try to listen to all of them without skipping any, even if you might know quite a few – I am fairly sure you do. Hmm, what else? Oh yeah, try to listen to them at night, with your choice of beverage, alcoholic or non-alcoholic, hot or cold, doesn’t really matter. I think the songs work best at low to slightly below-medium volume, but whatever floats your boat.

Ok, I am done. Download here.

Standard
AR Rahman, Life, Music

A most unexpected Rahman concert

The first, and only, AR Rahman concert I had been to was in Hyderabad, in 2003. It was the first time Rahman had ever toured, and expectations were high, the man himself had not sold out was at the top of his game, and I had all-access backstage passes. Since then, I’ve passed on every ARR concert that happened in the vicinity, partly because I could not really top the 2003 experience, and partly because there was not really anything new happening in any of the concerts – you could make out parts being badly lip-synched, there would be the mandatory Sivamani jam, garish background dancers, and a bunch of crowd-pleasing songs. Ho-hum.

But when Sasi told me about Rahman playing at the Hollywood Bowl in July, I was struck with that Rahmantic yearning again. And that’s how we landed up there this Sunday, with a bottle of wine, bags of popcorn, and a cumulative high after listening to ‘Jiya Se Jiya’ in the car. (the Hollywood Bowl allows you to bring your own food in, which was a pleasant surprise) As expected, the place was desi-ville, right from the parking lot to the crowded stands. (Which also meant there was a great deal of queue-bumping. Or queue-nonexistence.) A bhangra group, apparently a bunch of SoCal dancers called the Sher Foundation were performing at the entrance and inviting passers-by to join in, leading to much exhibition of left feet.

The concert began with a performance by Rhythms of Rajasthan, a folk singing troupe. Nobody really paid them much attention, people were still streaming in, it was not dark enough to see the screens, and there were no crunchy beats to make you get up and dance, yo. Karsh Kale was up next. He played an excellent 45-minute set, with some great singers joining him onstage, as well as a female violinist named Lili Haydn, who owned. Salim Merchant came onstage for a bit, jamming to his song ‘Shukran Allah’ from Kurbaan with Kale and his crew. Overall, a fantastic performance, and I was primed for the evening. But no ARR in sight, instead Sher Foundation and something called Bollywood Step Dance came onstage and did what every wannabe on every talent show on every TV channel does – dance to Bollywood songs. Omkara, Jab We Met, facepalm. Thankfully, this did not last too long.

The announcer came on stage, did his usual Rahman spiel. Mispronounced name, check. Slumdog Millionaire mention, check. Audience going wild, check. Random drunk Tamil dude screaming ‘thalaivar’ over and over again, check. Conductor Matt Dunkley walked in. The opening sequence to Enthiran played on the giant screen, and the crowd roared as Robonikanth sauntered into view. The music began to play, slowly building, and the choir launched into ‘Arima Arima’. But whoa, it was a version much different from the one on the soundtrack. I believe the precise moment I began to gape with disbelief was when ‘Arima’ became a rearranged ‘Puthiya Manithan’ . Because this was good, guys. This was not stick-to-the-crowd-pleasers Rahman I was expecting. The  Spirit of Unity tour in 2003 had the bombastic ‘Oruvan Oruvan’ from Muthu opening every show. The overture to that song is a magnificent orchestral piece that was tweaked a little, so that the meaty beats and SPB’s robust vocals that lead to the song became a bubbly hymn of anticipation, driving fanboys like yours truly delirious with happiness. This version of Enthiran evoked something quite like that. But I expected the singers to emerge any minute, destroying those few minutes of sonic adventurism that we were witnessing. I was wrong.

Rahman came onstage, talked a bit about how happy he was to be there. Said something funny about this not being a ‘rockstar event’. A brief speech about Roja, and he walked away. The orchestra struck up again, with a delicate reinterpretation of ‘Kaadhal Rojave’, with ARR regular Naveen on the solo flute. It was at this point I realized this was going to be much, much more than a regular concert.

Chances were high that something like this would suck. You know why? Because orchestral reinterpretations fall into two categories – gimmicky or wannabe. An outfit like Apocalyptica, once the novelty of hearing METALLICA-ON-CELLO-WOO-HOO wears off, is just a bunch of celloists scraping on their instruments as hard as possible to make them sound like badass Les Pauls. Off the top of my head, the only orchestral version I loved whole-heartedly, without coming back to it some time later and going ‘wha-huh, I enjoyed that?’ was Jon Lord’s Concerto For Group And Orchestra.  And please don’t say S&M. No, it does not hold up. Matt Dunkley, who was the conductor and arranger for the concert, has apparently worked with ARR since forever.

The choice of songs was superb. These were the underrated gems, the pieces that do not make it to your top 10 ARR lists. ‘Ayo Re Sakhi’ from Water, (which was nearly ruined by the female vocalist, a lady named Amrita. I will get to her in a minute) , pieces from Couples Retreat and 127 Hours.  ‘Mausam & Escape’ from Slumdog Millionaire was a frenzied piano/sitar duet, with sitarist Asad Khan joining Rahman on the keys, and a very unexpected choice for that soundtrack. The predictable inclusions – the theme from Warriors of Heaven and Earth and ‘Once Upon A Time in India’ from Lagaan, the Bombay theme. The most unpredictable one was a suite from The Rising, otherwise known as Mangal Pandey. I have to admit that the piece made me itch to go and revisit the OST, though I am not courageous enough to consider watching the film again. (Shudder!)

The one piece I could not recognize at all was ‘Changing Seasons’. Was it from Raavan? I have absolutely no clue, because my post-2009 ARRfu is weak. I do not remember seeing it anywhere before, even on promos.

The low points –

  • Almost no connection between the content of the video clips and the piece being conducted at the moment. Imagine watching an action sequence with a romantic theme playing in the background, and you will understand what I mean.
  • The multiple anti-British themes (and their corresponding videos) got a little tedious. Thankfully, no pieces from Bose: The Forgotten Hero.
  • The choice of ‘Jai Ho’ as the closing song. While I get it, it’s the most recognized Rahman song in Hollywoodland, familiar enough for even the random drunk woman sitting next to me to wake up and cheer. But you have a Philharmonic orchestra and start off with programmed beats and a bunch of under-trained vocalists to substitute for Sukhwinder Singh’s power-packed vocals. Seriously?
  • The terrible, terrible female vocalist, who had no business sharing a stage with the Man, or anywhere near a microphone. She sounded nervous at first, a little out of breath, when singing the Water song, but one can only forgive so much. Her voice was grating enough to suck away all the joy out of ‘Jai Ho’. I missed you, Tanvi Shah. You may be the only Indian woman who can say ‘Salut, baila baila!’ without making me giggle.

And now to wait for an official CD release.

Standard
Music

How it all comes together

Most of the music that I listen to come together in a complex algorithm of recommendations, accidental mentions that usually have no connection at all to what I am doing or feeling at the moment, and a dedicated time devoted to web-trawling every day. This usually does not have much bearing on the quality of the stuff I listen to – the basic demand I have, from any new album that I hear – is that it must stop me at least once from whatever it is I am doing, and make me listen to it. If it does not, it will probably earn itself a second listen if the buzz is pretty good, but not more. Life’s too short.

Robyn’s Body Talk came into my consciousness because of two reasons. One was the fact that I was making a dedicated effort to track down artistes who feature as – um – ‘feat.’ artistes on stuff I’ve heard. Example: Esthero and Keri Hilson, both of whom have been featured on Timbaland tracks, and whose solo albums are delicious slices of pop. Listen to Esthero’s ‘Wikked Li’l Grrrls’ from her album of the same name – the retro brass line itself is worth the price of entry. Wait, I digressed again. So, Robyn. She was on Röyksopp’s Junior, on a track called ‘The Girl and The Robot’ – lovely voice, a very unconventional melody that really grabs you. Yes, I know Junior released in 2009, but I heard Senior last year and it pretty much kicked my expectations into the ground so I went back to the former to regain some of the Röyksopp-love. Then again, I heard I Blame Coco’s The Constant just after it released. (I Blame Coco, FYI, is the stage name of Coco Sumner, she who’s the offspring of the Honorable Gordon Sumner Esq. You would recognize the vocal resemblance if you listen to any of her songs – my recommendation would be ‘In Spirit Golden’) The Constant featured Robyn on a track called ‘Caesar’ – and that was it. Eager to see what exactly was it about this Swedish lady that made her pop up in all these albums, I checked for her discography. Wait a minute, this could not be right – she has been around since 1991. And she was coming up with – believe it or not – THREE albums in 2010.

That  was Body Talk. Because she did not want to wait for all the songs to be recorded, she broke down the album’s release into three parts – yeah, some of the songs from Body Talk vol 1 did carry over into Body Talk vol 2. The first song from Vol 1, ‘Don’t Fucking Tell Me What To Do’ was whimsical enough, but it was ‘Fembot’ that made my heart stop. ‘I’ve got /some news for you/ Fembots/have feelings too’. She pronounces ‘noos’ instead of ‘news’, and these opening words are buoyed by thumping beats, a reedy synth line that accompanies the rest of the song as well, and a crunchy, snazzy bassline that forces you to pump up the volume. Everything works for it – the auto-tuned robot voice that punctuates her lines, the sudden jumps in the melody, the rap portions. I saw a live version of the song on Youtube and that made me love it even more, and for about 3 days, ‘Fembot’ was on repeat on the playlist.

Then my attention turned to ‘Dancehall Queen’ – a bouncy Jamaica-tinged song that has its share of quirks – in particular, the main chorus line where Robyn hammers the line ‘Now what | Your jaw has dropped | Until the music stops | You know I run this thing | like a Dancehall Queen | I really don’t want no hassle’ in a single breathless refrain. That was my next earworm, until I listened to ‘Dancing On My Own’ closely again, and it….well, you must have figured it out already, but Body Talk vol 1 became a playlist staple for a few weeks. Not many albums that do that.

That’s when things got interesting. I decided to download Robyn’s self-titled 2007 album, the one that won her a pile of Swedish Grammies. That was also the album with which she showed her record label the finger, started her own company to release the album, called Konichiwa records, and came up with a stunner of a single to kick things off. The problem with ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ is this – it lasts two minutes and forty five seconds. One of the most glorious pop songs in the history of pop music, and it’s less than 3 fucking minutes long. This should go into a textbook definition of ‘injustice’, in my opinion. ‘Konichiwa Bitches’ is alarmingly catchy, the lyrics insane, the video completely cuckoo. In short, totally my kind of music.

‘Cobrastyle’ is the second song from the album, and while I thought the main chorus, which went ‘bom-diddi-bom di-dang di-dang diggi-diggi’  was a riff on Las Ketchup’s ‘Asereje’, it turned out that  the song is a Teddybears cover. The Teddybears being a Swedish band that’s so anti-scene that they came up with their band-name  just to keep themselves apart from the <insert_dark_and_gory_name_here> Scandinavian metal  scene. As it turns out, Klas Åhlund from the band not only produced Robyn, but also co-produced Coco Sumner’s debut album. The Teddybears song itself samples the Bomdigi chorus from a song by rapper Erick Sermon, who in turn was inspired by The Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’. Now, what’s the Las Ketchup song all about? It narrates the story of a guy named Diego who walks into a nightclub, and asks the DJ to play his favorite song – which happens to be Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’. The chorus of the Spanish song is a phonetic reinterpretation of the hip-hop classic!

It’s all connected, I tell you. But if I asked a question about this in any quiz, I would get lynched, no?

Standard
AR Rahman, Music

Two songs

Two songs by two of my favourite Indian composers –  AR Rahman’s ‘Dilli 6’, from the movie of the same name was released in 2009 and Amit Trivedi’s ‘Dilli’, from No One Killed Jessica came out last month. I haven’t heard the first in about a year, due to a self-imposed hiatus. The other’s been on my playlist the past few days. Both songs are written and composed around the same city – Delhi. (d-uh!) Both of them feature a melange of vibrant sounds that one would not really associate with the idea of a song about the capital of India. Rahman goes in for a chill-out/club-music vibe (French lyrics! an analog synth groove!), while Trivedi layers his track with screaming distortion guitars that occasionally meander into Indian classical/prog-rock territory.

Female voices begin each song. Tanvi Shah’s velvet vocals, heavily processed, introduce us to ‘Dilli 6’. Her inflection of the words has a distinct accent, “yeh Dilli” comes out as ‘E Delhi’. The languorous vibe of the song is broken by Benny Dayal and Blaaze’s chanting, and from then on, the song gives us a series of pleasant musical surprises – syncopated rap in French, a very effective use of the beat and a scratchy fill that punctuates key phrases.

‘Dilli 6’ is about the city, or rather, an introduction to the city. Come hither, the city is great. ‘Bas ishq mohabbat pyaar.’ Right, the city is just perfect for the lover, for the artist, it embraces you tight and scolds you soundly. But obviously, if you are practical enough, you should make sure you have your seat-belts fastened, there is enough cash in your wallet and the air-conditioner is switched on.

‘Dilli’ is from the point of view of one who lives in Delhi. Sure, he loves the city, but it’s love-tinged-with-irony, the casual cruelty reserved for the lover without whom you cannot do with, but resent her presence and her effect on you all the same. ‘Mera kaat kalejaa Dilli, mui Dilli le gayi’  – ‘it has cut my liver out, Delhi has’ goes the main refrain. Trivedi’s musical aesthetic, as I have noted before, seeks to bring out a raw scruffiness that is usually missing from mainstream Indian cinema, and ‘Dilli’, head-banger of a song though it may be, is a perfect example of this. It aims for the gut. From the scraping, echoey intro guitar loop that warns you of yet another day in a city that sucks the blood out of you, the song, once it starts, is breathless – the female voice ( Aditi Singh Sharma, a Trivedi regular) rat-a-tats the word ‘Dilli’, the drums and the male voices – Toshi Raina and Shriram Iyer sing the bulk of the song in unison. All three singers get their Delhi vibe just right – no pan-Indian song, this one.

On a side, there is this new wave of Delhi-centric movies that get the city. I am not really sure I am qualified enough to say this myself – I have passed through Delhi every now and then, and all my interactions have been through the filter of close friends. Remember Sarfarosh and Dil Se, which were  set in the city? The only time you recognized Delhi as an entity was the morning shots in the fog at Connaught Place. Not so the post-Dibakar Bannerjee era, where the city becomes real – its inhabitants are the inhabitants of the capital, speaking the vernacular, not pretenders from Film City. Which reminds me – go watch Band Baaja Baarat. It has its flaws, but I had fun. End aside.

I could be wrong – but is the Dilli in the Rahman song addressed as a male (I know most of the lyrics just refer to it as a city, but the lines ‘badaa kaske gale lagaata hai’ personify it, I thought), while the one in Trivedi’s song is the bitch-from-hell lover?

Rahman’s song has an epic build-up moment. At a point, as the male voices chant the ‘yeh Delhi hai’ refrain, the bassline throbs, Rahman makes his way through ear-friendly chords,  heavily-processed French horns and timpanis pronounce euphoria and grandeur. No such moments in Trivedi’s composition – the only ear-friendly portion comes when all three voices come together in magnificent harmony.

I played ‘Dilli 6’ again just now, and I notice that this song, as well, has a subtly recurring guitar riff. Nice.

All that said, I am really impressed by the way Trivedi’s been carving his own path, refusing to stick to a single style – for all my talk of his rawness, the soundtrack of Aisha was the only IFM soundtrack that has been consistently on the iPod all year, and the polish of it gives me a quick kick to the rear my trying-to-find-patterns inner critic. Right now, I am fixated on ‘Shaam’, the under-rated song of the album, shot in the film in a style that fits its stoner roots. I have not heard Udaan properly yet, (and haven’t seen the film, either) apparently No One Killed Jessica has usurped its place on the Trivedi queue.

Read: Aadisht’s lovely examination and deconstruction of what makes the Dilli 6 song tick, where I am also mentioned.

Standard