Weekend music round up-Part 1

Be it with one method or the other, all things adorned and loved should be paid tribute to. Slaying a mess of child lambs upon a bloody Crowley like altar while rolling in excrement and chanting the name of your beloved in some inferonic like tongue, is certainly the proffered of these methods. However, writing a short paragraph on the things you treasure and love can prove to be just as sufficient.

You see, over the last few days I seem to have accumulated a flock of good music. It's rare for me to actually find five (Actually, eight, ill explain that in a seconded) great CD's in such a short amount of time. Thus I feel it important to write short paragraphs on each of them.

Yes, I know. A blog post with pictures of me killing living live stock would be far more enjoyable. Maybe next time...



Medeski, Martin, & Wood-Lets go everywhere: Medeski, Martin, & Wood have been a source of influence and enjoyment for me since I herd end of the world party a year or two ago. Those that have yet to recognize these guys either just don't like grooving or are still worshiping the words of Ace Burpee and his sub-hippo following. The new album is a bit of a switch up though. You see, it was engineered for kids. It still manages to retain all the tasty organ jazz jams that we've come to love but this time with singing about pirates, airplanes, and trains. Theres a hip rendition of pat a cake, a doctor Seuss like song called "The Squab", and the sure to be classic,"Everyone poops". Fred Penner (who by the way is a huge Lenny Breau fan) would be more impressed.

Hopefully ill get to see them this summer.


Thrice-Alchemy Index: A concept album spanning four discs and based on the four classical elements. That's pretty much all I need to say except ill keep going anyway.

I had never listened to thrice up until this point which is apparently a good thing. As I've been told, they were one of the essential shit wrist cutt'n core bands, before they reformed and built themselves up as decent musicians. Volumes I and II came out last year and the final two parts we're just released in April.

Each album gives off a completely unique vibe. The fire album is comparable to Opeth with its acoustic break downs and tech metal time signatures. Water is loaded with aphex twin style break beats, air would sounds like Minus The Bear or Foals if the vocalist wasn't so recognizable (listen to the sky is falling). Earth is the most acoustic of the four, hell I can even argue that it sounds like Beethoven (The main piano riff of the lion and the wolf is the same as the main moonlight sonata melody).

Now, if we could only get them to sync up with the fifth element...


The Cinematic Orchestra-Live at the royal albert: The cinematic orchestra was one of the first bands that I truly discovered on my own. I remeber feeling like their music was wholly designed for me, that they we're my band. Their earliest record, motion was a strange mess of Coltrane like jazz dance music, the group went on to essentially invent the term,"Nu-Jazz" and had down tempo groups like zero 7 both covering and remixing their material. Their most recent album (mentioned here) took a strange walk down the road of Sufjan, folk revival like progressions with a complete abandonment of their Jazz roots.

Live at the royal albert is an amazing disc. Its sort of like a greatest hits CD except all the greatest hits are live and drag on for an extra five minutes or so. The height of the CD is a recorded encore. The band returns after a few minutes of cheering and begins to belt out the famous opening riff from man with a movie camera. The tune lasts thirteen minutes and every seconded of it is harmony.



Turns out theres too much stuff to put in one post. Assuming I'm still sick, Ill have two more disks to talk about tomorow.

-Chris with a sore throat and a headache