rescomp-radio - Tumblr blog

[rescomp-radio]

Sorry I stopped posting! I've been swamped with work and now I'm sick... Posts will resume when I've recovered (or if y'all submit things instead of me writing up about songs every day).

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

Life Happens, by Ester Rada

This is an awesome song. I love the video work, and the artistry of the whole piece.

-Mina

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Electronic Dream, by Araabmusik

It's kind of soothing, but has a good beat and movement to it as well. I feel it's appropriate as I write this at 2am.

-Mina

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Yesterday around 4 am, I thought about you.

- How come your arms are not around me,  City and Colour

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VCR - The xx

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Clutter, by Ronald Jenkees

This has a really whimsical feel to it at the beginning - I could imagine this as part of a soundtrack to video game during an exploration/discovery sequence. It's kind of mysterious and tense, but at the same time, light and airy in sound quality.

It moves into a more electronic sound about halfway through the song, but still maintains a certain lightness and easy movement.

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

1940, by The Submarines (Amplive remix)

This is a great remix of an awesome song by The Submarines. I like what they added to it because it gives it different kind of feel, while still holding to the original song.

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

Bird's Lament, by Moondog

I love this piece. It's mellow, with basic piano chords, with the brass playing over it, but it has a lot of movement to it at the same time. It's hard to put it into words exactly - just have a listen!

(The artist, Moondog, or Louis Thomas Harden, is a really interesting character too; check out his Wiki page for more information.)

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

All For You, by RJD2

Fun instrumental piece; it's kind of jazzy with enough of a beat to get my head nodding, but mellow enough so that I don't upright get up and dance at the same time. Good for working!

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

City Boy, by Donkeyboy

It's kind of catchy... I'm not totally sure how I feel about the music video, but it's somewhat of a commentary on how we often become machines and mindlessly doing what society asks of us.

There's a small sequence that is a little graphic, where I think there's some blood and blood splatter, so trigger warning for that, but I think the idea is that the brains that these people are connected to are controlling them instead of them using their own brains.

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

Nightcall || Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx

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Skin of the Night (Of Porcelain Remix), M83

I really just enjoy this remix and M83. I feel like I could listen to it and get lost in myself whenever I'm traveling. 

- Tari 

[rescomp-radio]

Coco, by Parov Stelar, featuring Lilja Bloom

I think this is such a beautiful and haunting song, in part because of the piano echoing in the back, but also because of the lyrics and the singer's voice.

This video is somewhat NSFW in some parts (no nudity but implications of rape), where we see and hear about a young woman trying to find herself and ending up in bad company and while it is work, she gets taken advantage of as she becomes more and more intoxicated.

It is a sad tale of what happens to young women sometimes as they become desperate in life and people take advantage of their troubled states.

The video reminds me somewhat of Niña, which I did a posting on previously, in that it tells the same kind of story, just with a different context and music style.

Walking through dark streets, The cold is looking for some way to stroke my skin.

It's really a gorgeous song, just very sad.

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

Ready for the Weekend, by Icona Pop

I love what they did; it's such an interesting mix of styles, where they open with a kind of traditional choral sound, and then transition into electronic effects, and it's just an awesomely unexpected song.

-Mina

[rescomp-radio]

Illmerica, by Wolfgang Gartner

The song is a lot of fun; it's got a nice bass line, a good beat and cool electronic effects. It's on the dubstep side of things, which I know is not everyone's favorite style, but it's super upbeat and fun to listen to, in my opinion. It's been featured in a couple places, such as Forza Horizon and Teen Wolf.

But what I really want to talk about is the video.

This video is rather trippy and kind of creepy, and there's a good amount of blood periodically as it goes through war sequences, but says a lot about American history. It's called "Illmerica" for a reason. Before I go into talking about the content of the video, I just want to talk about how smoothly everything is done - it's some of a collage of different mediums, from what I think are old photographs to paintings that they've taken portions of and animated, as well as various effects like blood splatter, explosions, and electricity. From just a purely compositional perspective, I think it's really awesome.

Now onto the content.

Basically, the video highlights the kind of destruction we've caused, flashing through scenes of Columbus arriving in America and offering food (and what seems to be a radioactive substance, which I think is supposed to suggest how they somewhat poisoned the Native Americans through their goods and diseases), and the use of guns and slaughter of the native people.

It flashes very briefly to a sign that says "Jamestown" too, and then also points out the use of Christianity to condemn people. Or just a criticism of religion in general, how it can be twisted to be used for evil. I think it's a scene mocking the Salem witch trials around 1:09 before it goes forward to the Revolutionary War.

The White House is put up, but right after, a line of what I assume are supposed to be slaves runs across the scene, highlighting this part of our history, where we still believed it okay to buy, sell, and own other people. There are a couple more scenes of slaves and the Underground Railroad, before returning to the wanton slaughter of Native American peoples again.

There is more war again, this time, I believe it is the Civil War, with the North and South battling against each other; Abraham Lincoln makes an appearance, and he is assassinated at the end of that sequence.

Now we move into pollution, and how as development continues and cities are erected, we create toxic waste that pours into the land and water. There are two signs that are particular important in this sequence, which are "Ellis Island" and "Help Wanted, No Irish Need Apply". There was a lot of immigration during this period of time, but there was still so much discrimination. It's interesting because now, the Irish are more or less considered part of the general white population and don't face all that much discrimination now, but at that time, they faced a lot of challenges in America.

We see WWII flash by, too, with the Holocaust and Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombs. (Admittedly, they kind of skip over WWI, and the stock market crash seems to be out of order?) Space exploration makes its appearance as well, and then the advent of video games and then the modern day, with Obama making an appearance at 5:14.

Overall, despite some flaws, I think this video did an awesome job with doing a really quick overview of U.S. history in an artistic and cheeky way while being critical at various points and showing how awful we were at times. My only complaint would be that there isn't much representation of a couple other minority groups like Asians and Latin Americans in the context of U.S. history.

-Mina