Category Archives: Music

Music

My Favorite Music of 2011 (1 of 2)

My music habits last year were … conventional.

Some graphical observations:

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Click to enlarge

Some non-graphical observations:

  • 10640 plays: an average of 200.75 songs per week and 10439.25 per year (thanks to Last.fm tools).
  • My 2011 folder (i.e all the music that I stumbled onto this year) comes to 20.6 GB. That’s not counting saved Spotify playlists.
  • Definite skew towards electronic music. Ok, who am I kidding? It’s all electronic music.
  • Female vocalists/songwriters/musicians dominate the list, like always.
  • Very less Indian Film Music. Only two albums make the cut, but just because I did not find most of the new releases adventurous enough. Entertaining, yes, but not adventurous.
  • I was introduced to a bunch of new artistes that I had not heard before, which made me very happy.
  • Most of the music last year was legal, and I also hit up a lot of concerts – 24 in all. Good times.
  • There was a definite Scandinavian bias to my listening, which got all the more obvious the second half of the year. This list does not reflect this, though.

The list below features  albums released in 2011, including two that are not officially out so far.

 tUnE-yArDs – W H O K I L L

Merrill Garbus kicked my teeth in when I first heard her album this year, and later on went on to knock me half-dead when I saw her live. Whokill is pure aggression at times, whimsical vocal calisthenics at others, a mind-melting package of stunning originality. You won’t find a single filler song on this album. Every track forced me to pay complete attention to what I was listening, and that is primarily what I look for in an artist – the ability to grab me by the scruff of my neck and not letting me budge for the duration of their album. I am hard to please. This album is harder to resist.

Oh Land – Oh Land

Too little, too late. I wish I knew of Nanna Øland Fabricius’s music a little early this year. She came up in a chance conversation during a Feist concert, when a friend and I were talking about our musical tastes and I mentioned Bat For Lashes and Lykke Li. She was a little surprised that I hadn’t heard of Oh Land, and once I checked out this album, I figured out why. An ethereal voice, and a musical sensibility that makes you think of moonlit nights and wide open spaces. Oh Land was making this album for me, I can tell.

Muchuu – On Beyond

I would sell my soul to this brother-sister duo if I could. They’re immensely talented, Millie’s vocals and lyrics shimmering and gliding over George’s breathtaking arrangements. This is their second album, and I loved that the band stayed clear of repeating the formula of 2010’s whimsical Adventure We Go. Their music reminds me of reading Enid Blyton novels in the winter sun, of finding magic in the shape of random rocks on the ground, of wanting to run away from school and spend the afternoon exploring. It’s hard to categorize this band – the closest I can get to describing them is ‘pure’. Pure magic.

James Blake – James Blake

The first time I listened to James Blake, I nearly got arrested. I had bought new speakers – the splendiferous Audio Engine A5, and was..umm…test-driving them. At 11 PM in the night. My neighbors called the police, just when the epic build-up to ‘The Wilhelm Scream’ was on, and it is to Blake’s credit that despite being scarred by this incident, I still adore this album. It’s creepy and comforting at the same time.

Dev – The Night the Sun Came Up

Before you dismiss Dev as another dance-floor-happy Lady Gaga-wannabe, I suggest you take a good look at yourself in the mirror. There’s nothing wrong with being dance-floor-happy. Dev’s music is catchy, sassy and with the right kind of crunchiness. Funnily, the album hasn’t been released in the US yet, except for the singles ‘Dancing in the Dark’ and ‘Bass Down Low’, both of which kick maximum ass. But what surprises the most are the understated, low-key ones – ‘Dancing Shoes’, for example, and ‘Shadows’. You have my complete attention, madam.

Justice – Audio,Video, Disco

These guys made me wait a long while – I heard Cross in 2009, cruising through the mountains of Romania with a Finn. This album is like a demented electro-prog-rock mashup that is confused about its eighties-ish existence in a non-eighties world – and I do not mean this in a bad way at all. Robotic voices croon in falsetto ; phased synth leads play hide-and-seek with orchestral violins simmering with suppressed fury. And ‘Canon’, the highpoint of the album is an anthemic riff-fest that makes my heart pound just as madly as D.A.N.C.E did. This is how you live up to expectations.

Ram Sampath – Delhi Belly (OST)

Sure, weaving a song around a sophomoric swear-word gets your attention, but it’s the unpredictability of Delhi Belly that sucker-punched me. Laugh-out-loud funny, brash and dripping with wicked satire, Sampath’s  musical chutzpah can easily induce nightmares in genre purists. And in the middle of all the attitude and oomph, there’s ‘Tere Sivaa’, a tender little gem of a love song that makes me all warm and fuzzy. Now when’s this guy’s next release?

AR Rahman – Rock Star (OST)

Every time I convince myself that Rahman is done with surprises, that his music is familiar enough for me to casually dismiss any new release, the man goes and proves me wrong with stunning aplomb. The soundtrack to Rock Star deserves a post in itself, and I have allowed sufficient time to pass, to distance myself from the emotional reaction and allow an objective, balanced look at the album. But my knees still go weak when ‘Tum Ho’ plays, and ‘Phir Se Ud Chalaa’ still makes me fly. Fuck. This. Album.

Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (OST)

Reznor and Ross collaborated for the first time on the soundtrack of The Social Network, three years ago. They won an Oscar. While the two have been keeping busy (check out their side-project How to Destroy Angels), it took David Fincher to bring the two to film scoring again, and the three-hour long soundtrack was my work-soundtrack for most of December. Grim, dark, pulsating with tension, perfectly conveying the psychotic dread of snowy Swedish expanses, and the disturbed mindscape of our heroine.

Various Artistes – The Dewarists

The Dewarists was an exciting concept in a year when every music channel in India seemed to discover the wonders of unplugged music. Most of them, like the rehash of Pakistan’s Coke Studio Sessions, crashed and burned under the weight of their not-quite-and-yet-there Bollywood hangover. But this show combined the visual splendor of a travel show (throaty voiceover included) with unlikely musical collaborations and managed to do justice to its own concept. Imogen Heap with Pentagram front-man Vishal Dadlani, folk-rockers Indian Ocean with Silk Route’s Mohit Chauhan, veteran rock bands Agnee and Parikrama collaborating with singer Shilpa Rao were some of the acts that showed the magic of good old-fashioned jam sessions, free of vacuous market-oriented pap.

Honorable Mentions: Lamb – 5,  Metronomy – The English Riviera, Cliff Martinez – Contagion OST, Bjork – Biophilia, Feist – Metals.

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Music

Covering Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

This made me so so happy. Jeff Buckley, when singing and mispronouncing nearly every word in the song, stands for every music lover enamored by an artiste singing in an alien language. On one hand, it’s almost frightening how close he gets to the feel of a Nusrat song – the impassioned wails, the improvisations, the fact that he is singing the part of Rahmat Ali, the high-pitched backing singer that you hear on every one of Nusrat’s live shows. On the other, it’s hard not to be swayed by the the earnest appeal to the crowd to “do it like they do it in Pakistan”, urging them to clap in time with the song.

Sadly, there are not many Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Sure, almost every high-pitched singer on every talent show in India tries to sing Nusrat songs, but they are mostly insipid rehashes, sans personality or individuality. Bally Sagoo, the British DJ who, at some point, was remixing every Indian song in existence, got North Carolina-based singer Gunjan to sing ‘Kinna Sona’, on the Bend It Like Beckham OST. I find Gunjan’s voice too tinny for my taste, and the version itself does not break any new ground  – just a straightforward beat added to the basic structure of the song.

Remixes abound, of course. In addition to the familiar names – Michael Brook, Peter Gabriel, Massive Attack, there’s Italian electronica composer Gaudi, who came up with an entire album dedicated to Nusrat remixes, called Dub Qawwali. That one’s quite an earful, featuring a guest appearance by MK Gandhi even.

Two AR Rahman songs pay tribute to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. ‘Varaagha Nadikarai’ from Sangamam is inspired by the Punjabi folk song ‘Lal Meri Pat’, which is technically not a Nusrat song per se, but Rahman based it on his version of it. Then there’s ‘Tere Bina’ from Guru – a lovely song that was due to be sung by Murtaza and Qadir Khan, but was rerecorded in Rahman’s voice at director Mani Ratnam’s insistence. (the brothers can still be heard in the opening strains of the track) I love the song, but hate the visuals – the cheesy dance routines do not fit the semi-spiritual vibe.

I was never a huge Atif Aslam fan – despite some of the songs from his band Jal being ear-wormy enough. Until I heard his Coke Studio songs – two of which stand out. ‘Wasta Pyaar Da’, a mash-up of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ with a traditional Punjabi song, and ‘Jal Pari’. The second song’s from Aslam’s own solo album. At 4:39 of the performance, he segues into Nusrat’s ‘Tu Mera Dil’. The transition is done without drawing too much attention towards itself, a smart little homage that makes this Nusrat fan feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

One of the most interesting things you will hear is the Brooklyn Qawwali Party, a tribute band formed by percussionist Brooke Martinez specifically to cover Nusrat Fateh Ali songs. This 9-minute version of Musst Musst, complete with claps, a wind section, a double bass, an electric guitar – and even a harmonium – is sublime, especially when the guys sing the main chorus of the song.

And then there’s Pakistani-American band Kominas’ completely irreverent take on ‘Pooja Karoonga’. I’ll reserve all comment.

 

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Concerts, Music

Concert Diaries: Ariana Hall, Live At The Hotel Cafe

The Hotel Cafe, located on Cahuenga and Hollywood Boulevard, is an odd little place. You’re supposed to enter around the back, and they don’t card you when going in – or maybe I just looked over 21. You walk inside, pass through a corridor – a door to the side says “Performers only” –  and enter the main hall. There is a stage inside, and six tables close to it, a bunch of chairs clustered around them. That’s it, six tables.  And a bar. And you ponder why this place is considered one of the best music venues in the US, popular enough to warrant its own nationwide tour. A look at previous lineups reveals names like KT Tunstall, Imogen Heap, John Mayer, Weezer and Badly Drawn Boy have played there before.

Oh, and they have a really funny FAQ page.

I was there last evening because pals Amy and Andrew told me about Ariana Hall performing there. Both of them knew Ariana personally, and I had met her before through them. We had a nice dinner together, all four of us, at her place last November, one night before she was due to leave for a tour. While I had heard her CD before, I had never seen her perform. Andrew wasn’t able to make it last evening, but Amy and I decided to go. We bus-ed it to Hollywood. Reached early, strolled along Hollywood Boulevard to the venue.

It’s nearly a year since I’ve been in LA, but going down the the Walk of Fame, seeing the bronze stars engraved in the sidewalk below my feet – known and unknown names on them – still feels surreal. I subconsciously try to avoid walking on the stars themselves, it feels kind of disrespectful. I think the day I begin walking on them is the day I stop making a big deal of being in LA. Don’t want that to happen.

We decided to pop into Umami Burgers, where I ordered an Earth burger. Yes, vegetarian, don’t ask. On the patio outside, they were screening ‘Back to the Future II’ for a bunch of fans – the lovely LA weather made it a beautiful night. The food, though meat-deprived, was delicious.

Done with dinner, we arrived at Hotel Cafe to find all the tables taken, just as the reviewer on Yelp had said (“get there early. Or be prepared to stand around holding your beer”). I tried scouting for a strategic location to do just that, but Amy miraculously managed two chairs around a table where a single lady was sitting. A pretty waitress came by – I liked the way she asked “you guys ok?”, instead of “what can I get you?” We were, but I ordered a Corona anyway.

There was someone already on stage – a pretty lady with a guitar, singing sad love songs, with the right amount of humor in between (“That was supposed to be a downer”, she quipped, when the audience whooped in appreciation after a song). Her name, I found out later when looking up the calendar, was Brooke Northrop. She’s pretty darn good – listen to ‘Room to Breathe’ on her page. “Just wait till Ariana starts”, Amy whispered, noticing my reactions.  Hmm, talk about expectation-buildup. Brooke finished her set with a Ben Folds cover, and the crowd suddenly began to swell. In about 4 minutes, there were four taps on my shoulder, people asking if I was staying for the next show. Oh yes, I was, thank you.

Amy was right. Ariana live knocked my socks off. She started with ‘Mmm(I Like You)’. I had heard the song before on her website, and it did not do much for me. But live, stripped of the violin and the bells and with just a voice and a guitar, the song bubbled with delicious passion. For the next bunch of songs, a bunch of musicians joined her – a guitarist and occasional banjo/ukulele player, a drummer and a bassist switching between a double bass and an electric bass guitar. Ariana herself switched between the guitar and the piano. Most of the songs she sang were original compositions, some of them were co-written, and nearly all of them were like gut-punches that made me grin like an idiot.

The positive response from the audience was tremendous. At one point, it felt like Ariana knew everyone in there; knowing her, it wouldn’t be that far-fetched. One of the songs that stood out for me was  a musical interpretation of a Tony Barnstone poem called ‘The War is Over’, because of the playful way it began, and the words. Umm, not that I knew who Tony Barnstone was before Ariana mentioned the source, his book Tongue of War, a collection of poems on World War II. Another song had the musicians step away from the microphones to go totally unplugged, made possible only because of the intimacy the venue offered. Every note, every strum rang clearly through the hall, and the applause at the end of it was impressive. Amy’s whoops, for the record, put everyone else’s to shame. I tried matching up, but a recent cold had soaked away my vocal chords. Ariana went on to play one of her songs from the movie Au Pair Kansas, and ended her set with a two-song medley, one of which was from an upcoming Judd Apatow movie. (Where she sings. And plays herself. This woman is unstoppable.)

At the end of it all, Ariana sang out her thank-you’s, but we did not let her go that easy. She wrapped it up with a single-song encore – which I found a bit of a downer, but hey, you can’t have it all. I’ve decided I like Hotel Cafe a lot, and apparently the Pierces are playing there on January 17th. For the $15 admission fee and the kind of vibe about the place, it’s totally worth the price of admission. I am so there.

Then I got back home and ironed clothes until 2 AM, with ‘Mmm (I Like You) playing in my head.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxR2bisGQ20[/youtube]

(Not from yesterday, but a good live performance of the song by her. Ignore the noise of the crowd.)

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Concerts, Events, Music

Concert Diaries: Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer at the Wilshire Ebell Theater

I had not bought a CD since 2008. In a few months, I get CDs of Amanda Palmer and Neil Gaiman’s recent tour, which I backed through Kickstarter. Also attended their LA show, which was a blast. It happened on All Hallows Eve. In addition to Amanda covering songs from Rocky Horror Picture Show and Neil reading out horror stories that made all of us in the audience sit lower in our chairs and try not to let tendrils of terror tickle our tummies (fuck yeah, alliteration!), we also had fans wearing Halloween costumes. Who were judged by the Dynamic Duo and then given access to luscious swag. The show also featured guest appearances by The Jane Austen Argument, a lovely Australian band. They’ve just released their first single, which has lyrics by The Gaiman himself, and their album is due for release in February.

Neil and Amanda totally behaved like newlyweds, or at least like teenagers out on a voyeuristic date. There was much public display of affection on stage between the two, and a completely aww-moment when Palmer scribbled down lyrics to the song “I Google You”, which was written by Gaiman once upon a time as a post-modern Sinatra-ish love song, and was supposed to be sung by him onstage, at which point he claimed to have forgotten the words. She then scampered up to him, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and then slipped him the scrap of paper with a dramatic “let’s-do-this-secretly-so-no-one-notices” gesture. Total heart-melt. And Gaiman singing “I Google You” turned out to be completely adorable too.

But anyway, I got myself a Christmas thank-you card from them, which was technically not a Christmas card because they sent it way back in November, but became a Christmas card just because I got it around Christmas. So yeah, Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer sent me a Christmas card. How cool is that, huh?

The other thing I got today in the mail was a download code to a preview of the release. And what a preview! Two hours of music, storytelling and much hilarity. I am half-way through the 25 minute narration of ‘Shoggoth’s Old Peculiar’, a Lovecraft-meets-the-British-Countryside short story by Gaiman, and it drives away every bit of lugubriousness brought about a long and weary working day. It has the songs ‘Blake Says’ and ‘Runs in the Family’ by Amanda Palmer, and also a bunch of excerpts from question-and-answer sessions that the two had. It features great verbal interplay between the two, Palmer’s American drawl contrasting quaintly with Gaiman’s British accent, as the two speak of mixtapes, hobbies, dating and how the audience should behave in order to come off well in the recordings, for posterity’s sake. (“Scream during the singing bits, like you would in a rock concert. And be quiet and inhale sharply in the right bits when Neil reads.”)

That evening was full of fun, laughter, singing, reading, gasping, kissing, premature birthday wishes (Gaiman’s) and a whole lot of ukelele jamming. And, as AFP put it in one of her blog posts, it was a perfect post-wedding reception for two fan-families.

Another memory: On the way back from the concert, I met someone at the bus stop who happened to play the bassoon for Frank Sinatra. He had pictures of himself with Muhammad Ali and Fidel Castro. I talked with him until the bus came, and then I took his card and waved goodbye.

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Music, Weirdness

Download Blues

Today morning, I was on the bus playing one of my Spotify playlists, and suddenly I had this urge to listen to ‘Masakali’. One of the cool things about Spotify is its extensive library, and sure enough, ‘Masakali’ came up in the search. But not the original version, this was from Mohit Chauhan’s unplugged sessions, and a brilliant live rendition it was. I began playing the complete Unplugged – Mohit Chauhan album, and by the time the acoustic version of ‘Dooba Dooba’ was underway, I thought I should tell people about it. Spotify, like any self-respecting application nowadays, allows you to tweet about what you’re listening to and I did, accompanying it with a handy link. Of course, none of the people in India could access it. And then I had to google for “mohit chauhan unplugged 320” which brought me to a handy download link that I could share. (That’s a hint for you, in case you want to listen to something and torrents are not handy at the moment)

And they wonder why people pirate. Seriously, what does a guy have to do in order to share music? Send Youtube links, sure. And if I can do that, why not anything else? What, in this day and age, explains the stupidity of disallowing applications from working in certain countries? Fuck you, music companies, I am not asking for free music. All I need is a way to painlessly recommend music and listen to music others are recommending without having to jump through hoops. You are not “restricting” anything, you are just adding an extra step to whatever it is I have to do. The logic and economics of this escapes me.

Paying for Spotify has removed the need to (illegally) download – and manage – a huge library of music. I do not need to carry my external HD around. The app really has everything, or close to it. Sure, not all of Rahman, but I am discovering a shitload of new music every day and I don’t need to worry about storage. Or even being on a network all the time, because the handy “offline” feature just downloads the songs to the phone. Something like this was long over-due, because I am still not happy with 99 cent downloads. I do not need to own or store all of the music I have, just be able to listen to it where and when I want.

Which brings me, in a roundabout way, to another of these questions that do not really matter to anyone but me. You see, I use Last.fm fairly extensively. Not the radio station, but the site’s excellent mechanism of storing scrobbles. It gives me a neat way to keep a record of what I am listening to and to track this data historically. I therefore get a little anal about tagging tracks properly. [aside: Fucking piracy sites. Every one of these sites have serious ego issues about proving ownership. So the artiste-name becomes “www.downloadmeh.com” or whatever the site is, so does the album-name. WHY? Isn’t it enough to just sign the comments section of the ID3 tag, fellas? This means I have to spend time cleaning up the tags before I listen to the songs, because I really do not want to know that I am listening to a track called ‘songs.pk – songs.pk – Hawa Hawa(songs.pk)’.]

With Indian film music, however, we have a problem.

Take any film track. You have the composer, the artiste and the lyricist. Whose name should go onto the <Artiste> field? Sure, I put in the name of the singers, but I lose the information that this is an AR Rahman song I am listening to, unless Rahman is singing the song himself. This also adds a peculiar kind of chaos, where we have no fixed way of noting different artistes in a track. For example:

  • Sukhwindara Singh/Sapna Awasthi – Chaiyya Chaiyya
  • Sukhwindara Singh, Sapna Awasthi – Chaiyya Chaiyya
  • Sukhwindara Singh & Sapna Awasthi – Chaiyya Chaiyya

Which one of the above do you use? Currently, last.fm treats all of these as different artistes and not as individual artistes separated by a symbol. Like I said, this screws up the historical scrobble data in a bad way. Not only are every one of these differently worded artiste names treated differently, there’s no correlation between this track and one sung by Sukhwindara Singh by himself, or with some other singer. Sure, I could just replace the singer name with AR Rahman, but what happens if I want to know who the singer is? The only solution I could come up with is to rename the track as – AR Rahman – Chaiyya Chaiyya (feat Sukhwindara Singh & Sapna Awasthi), but that adds to the title of the song, which is pretty stupid once we get into songs involving 4 singers or more. Let’s not even get into the confusion that arises from Indian singers changing names every other year for numerological efficiency. As of right now, I have no idea if Sonu Nigam is called Sonu, Sonuu, Nigam or Nigamm. Or if he has dropped a vowel or two.

You know what we need? Standards, that’s what we need.

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