humilikemusic-blog

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So smooth

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Love this album

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drummer for this band blows my pants off holy moly

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Such a freakin good drummer!!!!

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I love this band

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I don’t like toe (math rock band)

I usually get nothing from listening to a toe song. To get it out of the way, I do like their song Goodbye.

The song has aspects that I feel like is missing from most of toe’s music: a sense of intent, direction, and intensity.

Their most recent release feels like soundtrack music, or music to play in the background in a lounge. They just ramble on about one musical idea and never throw any surprises.

I went to see them live, hoping that they were just a band that needed to be seen live; maybe the music would come to life in performance.

Lamentably, the ~1.5 hour set exacerbated the problems and I found myself zoning out at an exponential rate. I felt like each song was them painting one stroke on a wall followed by 3 to 10 minutes of the audience being expected to watch the paint drip down and dry, while the band sat on the stage and felt content with themselves. I ended up watching the sound guy turn the volume up for their buildups and add a ton of compression on the drums for about 45 minutes.

Sorry that I’m a bad math rock fan...

I’ll end the post with stuff that I think are in the same style as toe, but I like much more.

American football

How to count one to ten

雞蛋蒸肉餅 (GDJYB)

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Saying a band plays math rock doesn’t explain anything.

My colloquial definition of math rock is rock music that uses odd time signatures. I think that anything more specific can’t hope to capture all of the music that people consider “math rock”, and can even mislead first time listeners. I have to admit that I have reservations about using the term “odd time” as well. I’ll go into that later.

For now, let’s take a look at some definitions of math rock that a curious mind might run into online. I'll comment on them point by point and offer examples of songs that don’t fit the definition, but are commonly defined as “math rock”. Or vice versa.

The wikipedia definition is as follows:

Math rock is a style of indie rock[2] that emerged in the late 1980s in the United States, influenced by post-hardcore,[3]progressive rock bands such as King Crimson, and 20th century minimal music composers such as Steve Reich. Math rock is characterized by complex, atypical rhythmic structures (including irregular stopping and starting), counterpoint, odd time signatures, angular melodies, and extended, often dissonant, chords. It bears similarities to post-rock.[2] 

First of all, indie rock is also a poorly defined genre. Do I need to provide examples of this? As for the influences, I think its absurd to claim that a whole genre of music was influenced by one artist or genre. I view art as more a product of the cultural and social environment where they developed. Maybe a person feels compelled to write music in odd time because they feel that 4/4 is overdone. Maybe a person feels compelled to write music in odd time because they feel that its the only way to make rock music feel exciting anymore. I could list a multitude of reasons that have nothing to do with music in the first place, too. Consider a person that’s musically uneducated and has no concept of time signatures. They just feel “odd” time naturally. 

As a musical counterpoint, I present Monobody. Whether you believe it or not, they are actually classified as math rock by contemporary critics and fans. Their sound comes from a jazz background as much as it does from any rock. I really don’t see any case for a direct post-hardcore, indie, prog rock, or Steve Reich influence.

The second sentence is pretty funny to me. “complex, atypical rhythmic structures (including irregular stopping and starting), counterpoint, odd time signatures, angular melodies, and extended, often dissonant, chords.”

This Susana Baca song has rhythmically blown my mind more than most math rock songs. Except that this song is not harmonically complex, I think the sentence could easily describe this song. 

This song is also a good example of why the term “math rock” can mislead people’s perceptions of the genre. “Math” implies “complexity” and a lack of emotion and feel. Taken to extremes, the name seems to indicate that someone needs a bachelors degree in mathematics and some amount of genius to understand and play. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Math rock can be played by anybody and can be as much about feeling and expression as any other style of music. I sincerely doubt that Susana Baca and her band are doing any complex calculations in their heads to play this “complex” music.

Anyways, here is a math rock classic that doesn’t have complex rhythms, angular melodies, or dissonant chords. I’d even argue that the perceived rhythmic complexity in American Football’s “Never Meant” is not as complicated as some might perceive at first. The whole song fits comfortably in a 6/4 or 4/4 that a listener can bob his or her head to for most of the song, and the odd hits just sound like syncopated stabs.

In my next installment, I’ll take a look at the urban dictionary definition and also talk about why I think “odd time” is a silly concept.

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Two tracks called 52nd Street

I can’t explain it in technical terms, since most of the similarities appear to be melodic and chordal, but Toshiki Kadomatsu’s 52nd Street and Billy Joel’s 52nd Street feel very similar to me.

If you know about chords and music theory, please tell me why!

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Performance for the books by nnamdi :) This is a live performance I always get inspired by.

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p-vine is officially unblocked by youtube in the states! (screw youtube for forcing japanese music channels to enroll in youtube red to be shown here...)

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goin off

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Deerhoof and My Bloody Valentine

MBV’s song “Lose My Breath” is awesome! I’m glad that we have two great  versions, the original and the deerhoof cover to enjoy ^.^

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Musical Association - "Cosmik Debris” by Frank Zappa

I’ve heard a lot of people say that there isn’t anymore good music these days, and that the golden age of music has passed (90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s... ancient greek songs? caveman music?? mother nature herself???). I disagree wholeheartedly. There has been, is, and always will be good music, and I want to try and convince people that time is not a good way to categorize music in the first place! Now, you don’t need to have this mindset to enjoy the post. Maybe you’ll find some cool new music by checking out my associations too.

I’ll be trying to do what is a series of musical associations in this type of post. I’ll be taking an old song that has a tendency to be thought to be a lost art (nobody makes music like this anymore!!!) and suggest a few tracks to check out that I feel have some aspect of similarity. And since I don’t think that time is even a relevant difference, I might include artists from the same era hehehe. Basically, I’ll put the song in through my mess of a brain to get some songs out the other end, and I’ll try to explain why I feel they are similar. I wont think to hard about the choices rapid fire style and retroactively try to reason why they came to mind.

If anything, I hope you find some cool music while I satisfy my need to ramble on.

First, I’ll start with a few thoughts on the topic. I myself started my musical journey just listening to “good old” 60s and 70s rock. It took me 6 years to finally find the first modern band that really impressed me (Deerhoof). Even though the internet makes nearly all the information available to us, how useful is it if one can’t parse it all? I think its just as hard to find a good band today as it was all those years ago as the ratio of bands that you like to bands you don’t like in the world hasn’t changed. A benefit of living in the internet age is that we are no longer as limited by geography in our musical discoveries :). 

Of course, trends change. The types of music you see on the billboards, TV, and radio depend on what year you observe. But I imagine that somewhere in some dudes basement, some crazy guy in the 1500s was making something akin to metal music. It just wasn’t metal’s time in the spotlight. We’ll never see that stuff; nobody would care to preserve that stuff.

Alright, time to get to the first song!!! I had a big Frank Zappa phase in high school hehehe.

First thing that stands out to me about this song is the funky rhythm section. First song that came to mind:

I also hear a lot of musical effects seem to be talking back/responding to Frank. Sooper Swag Project has very detailed song production where each inflection of the voice is responded to by the song. Also the lyrics are pretty over the top in both cases and musical non-sequiturs abound.

He plays a pretty classic blues rock guitar solo. I like this performance of Larry Graham and Stanley Clarke playing an extended bass blues solo.

I’ll limit myself to three associations I guess. Thanks for reading!

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UH!!!

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:)

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yummy. The drum track here is so tasteful

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awww yeahhhhh