Moby’s been feeling inspired lately, and we’re about to benefit from it — his ninth studio album, Wait For Me, hits stores June 30, and we have the video for his first single “Shot In The Back Of The Head” right here, right now.
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Sigur Ros frontman Jon Por Birgisson, along with partner Alex Somers, will be releasing Riceboy Sleeps via Parlophone Records on July 20. The duo recorded the album in their native home of Iceland, using only used acoustic instruments and no vocals during the process.
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In my estimation, Balmorhea are named after Balmorhea, TX (population: 500) or the town’s adjacent lake. Both capture the band’s essence: the minute town suggesting the band’s intimacy, and the lake conveying its natural purity. Almost entirely instrumental, Balmorhea’s third release All Is Wild, All Is Silent continues where its predecessors left off. However, this record maintains an incredible closeness to the listener. Its melodies are patient and calm and its delivery exact and effective. Balmorhea’s main members, Rob Lowe and Michael Muller, harness the expertise of four accomplished musicians to produce an extremely precise sound. Comparisons to a more subtle Sigur Ros are apt indeed; but as are comparisons to Ludvig van Beethoven and John Cage. Are their roots in classical, rock, or experimental? A case could be made for all.
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For every wanna-be hippie band that 2008 produced, no one even came close to the free love on display in the video for Sigur Ros‘ “Gobbledigook” [Warning: NSFW]
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Maybe I’ve been listening to too much bedroom electro these days, or maybe it’s all that’s released anymore. You know the kind: dude or gal wears cool sneakers, has a MIDI controller or maybe a synth modulator, sits on his/her Macbook sampling programmed drums and software synths and creates various sounds until something resembling a song emerges. Now this isn’t always a bad thing. Independent recording is often unfettered and honestly inspired. But it’s hard not to think that this particular sound is becoming a dime a dozen. Honestly, I don’t even know how to describe it anymore. Half of the problem is that the instrumentation is not produced by instruments, but by midi controllers synthetically conveying quasi-instrumental sounds. And I can only think of so many synonyms for “synth line” and “driving bass.”
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