zengar

Unfortunately, I find that I don't care for the rest of the album this is from, so the artist will get minimal benefit from my enjoyment of this song, but maybe some of you folks might like it. This is a very simple video, but quite effective just the same, and it says where you can find more at the end.

Why couldn't THIS SHOW have happened while I was living less than a mile away? Yeah, I know, the bands involved didn't yet have the renown necessary for such touring at that time, but still....

Okay, I hate Beyonce's song Single Ladies, but this cover isn't half bad. Admittedly it got bonus points from me at around 2:00 when the singer complains about the poorly written lyrics and skips ahead :)

I'm not sure if I care for the other songs from Pomplamoose I've tried from the related video list on that one, but maybe I'm just not in the mood for this sort of music today. I'll try it again tomorrow and see if it strikes me any differently.

It's been a while since I posted about a new band to catch my fancy. So here's the latest one: Beats Antique. Like many bands I like, their musical style is eclectic in and of itself. Middle Eastern traditions, Electronica, and circus music (among other things) blended together to make something new. I found them through a link to the video for their song Beauty Beats, but I like some of the other songs in the audio section of their website better. (I can't really link to them without doing some code diving, their page uses active content generation through javascript so every page is still "www.beatsantique.com") (hmm, they have a different selection of songs at their MySpace page, four that aren't on their site, but only three of the ones that are on it)

Hmm, the video for MIA's song Paper Planes makes a good companion for David Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans. They both explore the same disconnect between fear based perception and reality. In Bowies's video the theme is shown explicitly in the altered appearances/behaviors that Bowie's character apparently sees. In MIA's video, the visuals merely reinforce the fact that the lyrics are supposed to be a satire of society’s fear of immigrants (this reviewer has a noticeable agenda, but despite that has the most readable version of the relevant info)

That being said, I suspect that these two videos are the closetst these two artests are ever going to get musically :)


Unrelated: this Nine Inch Nails video has a pretty neat concept (warning: audio contains profanity. Video, on the other hand, has nothing objectionable in it.)



Edit: having looked up some of MIA's other stuff, I find that I generally don't care for it. On the other hand, I have to respect someone who does things as varied as this and this. If you didn't like any of the songs earlier in the post, there's still a decent chance that you'd like one or the other of these. Also, if you like her music better than I do and want to find more, be aware that there is apparently a German pop group going by that name as well.

Bands whose normal work I find eminently forgettable but whose one-off side projects I greatly enjoy count = 2. Actually, it might be more than that but mostly I'm remembering individual songs from artists whose other work I don't care for, rather than whole albums. And there are also bands that I do like in general, but whose oddball albums I like even more, but I seem to be wandering...

Anyway, the first one was Black Aria from Glen Danzig and the new one is The Score - An Epic Journey from Epica. In both cases, these are ordinarily metal bands doing non-metal albums, and in both cases the albums are somewhat hard to find because their normal fan base didn't know what to make of them. In both cases it took careful choice of search terms to get results from the album, and in neither case was I able to get the particular track I wanted to link to. Oh well, that's why I don't go to YouTube when I just want to listen to music.

I really don't like their music, but I may have to see this new Radiohead video when the finally release it. Of course part of that is wanting to see if they thought up anything "interesting" to do with the technology, or whether it's just "Hey, look at us! We made a video without using any cameras!" The later kind of loses its impact when you consider the entirely computer generated videos that already exist.

I just ordered tickets for a concert that's going to be happening near here next month, and the only option to do so turned out to be through Ticketmaster. I double and triple checked. The band, the location, the organizers, nobody had anything more than a link to Ticketmaster. By the time all their fees had been added in, I ended up paying almost double the alleged ticket price. Admittedly, I was surprised by how cheap the listed "price" was and wouldn't have balked if the final price had been offered up front, but still... And if I was ordering just in time, rather than a month in advance like this, they would have raked in still more profit. Having worked at a place where sending small packages by next day or 2nd day UPS was a common occurrence, I can almost guarantee that they were charging double what it costs them for those services.

When you divide up the actual ticket price between the facilities costs, the organizers' cut, the headliners and the opening act, Ticket master gets by far the biggest slice of the pie, even assuming unheard of levels of overhead in "print out ticket, mail ticket, repeat until venue reaches maximum capacity."

Looking back through my music posts, there seems to be a degree of commonality that belies my claims of eclecticism, but that's just an illusion. I have no need to post links to the likes of Beethoven, Dave Brubeck, Pink Floyd, and Nine Inch Nails. Those who would like their music can find it easily enough on their own.

Now that I've said that, here's more celtic influenced music: Omnia - Wytches' Brew
And their home page, where one can download several of their songs for free: http://www.omnia-neocelt.com/


Edit: I just realized that I never mentioned on here the band Abney Park. (that's an unofficial, fan made video, but nifty in it's own right) Steampunk/industrial dance/goth according to wikipedia, they also have several songs available on their homepage. I mean, how can you complain about a group that sings about airship pirates?

You know, I had somehow managed to forget that the hammered dulcimer is one of my favorite instruments to listen to. I don't know how one forgets about something that is a favorite of theirs, but I somehow managed it until this video reminded me.