[Malankazooie]

Discovered this band playing on a 'alternative' station in my area. Really enjoyed the song so looked them up. Also, per the introduction they hail from the UK. Any you tea tea-totalers familiar?



Great song to close out a Friday.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Chose this new virtual instrument as 'free with any purchase' selection today (for the free MNDLA player):

'Introducing Huracan, a gateway into a new world of winds and percussion inspired by Meosoamerican and Andean cultures. [...] 11 rare and unique wind instruments are accompanied by 5 textural percussion sounds, giving you a complete, curated palette, ready to create breathtaking music.

Huracan (A.K.A; U Kʼux Kaj, Heart of Sky) is a Kʼicheʼ Maya god of wind, storm, and fire. Here MNTRA imagined a hidden cenote deep in the jungle where a lone traveller stumbles upon the ancient deity, incidentally awakening it from a deep slumber and activating a portal into an alternate timeline where pre-hispanic cultures continued to thrive unaffected by colonisation. Over time they developed their own distinctive version of synthesisers and electronic instruments.

Central to Huracan is MNTRA's founder Brian D'Oliveira's (Composer of Shadow of the Tomb Raider, The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf ) deep connection with South and Central American cultures and their unique instruments. Originally raised in the Venezuelan Andes mountains, he began a lifelong pursuit of learning and researching ancient musical cultures, starting with these unique instruments. Here, MNTRA have deeply sampled a curated collection of sources from his personal arsenal'



MNTRA's other virtual instruments are on sale for 50% off at Plugin Boutique until September 4th.

MNTRA Instruments

MNTRA also has some free virtual instruments for MNDLA (no purchase required for these):

'Drawing from four of Mntra's Sound Sculpture Instruments, Rasa features [...] the large Tibetan Horn (Orakle), the Morin khuur (Arca), Pitched Volcanic Rocks (Atma), and the "Viper" Death Whistle (UDW)'

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Tomorrow's Forgotten Relics EP released today + additional album art based on AI generated images (Midjourney):

Tomorrow's Forgotten Relics EP | Tomorrows Forgotten Relics (bandcamp.com)






'TFR combines a hauntingly cinematic vibe with bass-driven prog-rock aggression.

While drawing from a diverse range of inspirations from the soundtrack of David Lynch's Lost Highways, Bowie's various forays into experimentalism, and bands like Faith No More, Secret Chiefs 3, Mars Volta and Queens of the Stone Age'

The Solution




Walk Backwards Into Hell




Tomorrow's Forgotten Relics [Title Track]

[Malankazooie]

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'The Painful Mediocrity of White Boy Rap

From "Blue Slide Park" to Jack Harlow, rap fans can't shake their enchantment with inoffensive, uninspired whiteness

Every five years, a white rapper that wouldn’t survive on a Wu-Tang song[...] reaches stratospheric levels of popularity. White fans are comfortable with white rappers because they’re wallpaper for expensive production, studio intuitiveness, and work ethic, not because they’re saying anything more heartbreaking or hard-hitting than the Black rappers these listeners tend to ignore. White rappers take advantage of the vulturous incentive structure of music streaming services by riding waves that their Black and more dynamic counterparts already made. Amid all the posturing and confusion as to why a grating mediocrity like Jack Harlow is now a superstar, we forget that his massive commercial success has been made possible by the look-alikes of the past, and that Harlow-type characters are a timeless feature of the grift that is American fame.

Rap fans of every color always seem to fall for people like Harlow: a guy whose whiteness makes him easy to sell to the masses and who also has good enough rap etiquette for Black people to accept him. [...]

The continuing popularity and high critical status of Mac Miller comes from rap fandom’s lasting relationship with [...] the kind of whiteness that is inoffensive and cheerful. [...]

Early in his career, Mac Miller was known as a frat rapper. [...] He made an album for the frat boys that get bullied by the more dominant frat boys[...] white male mediocrity in especially miniature form. It also wasn’t believable because it didn’t go deep enough.

Rap listeners want to hear the darkest thoughts that the well-meaning side of your brain doesn’t want you to say. [...]

[...] Miller was Jewish too, but that’s an identity that’s more a part of Drake’s work than his. Drake has rapped about whether he went astray by not going to yeshiva and got bar mitzvahed in a hit music video. At the same time, he’s talked about Jewish kids calling him a “schvartze,” a derogatory Yiddish term for Black kids. Drake’s Blackness and Jewishness operates as a pressure cooker, or as two gravitational poles of his being. [...]

[...] Miller could never get to the level of the superior artists he’d worked with. The shadow of Earl Sweatshirt, a rapper whose angst and sophistication widely outpaces Miller’s, was hovering over every album Miller ever made.




Now, guys like Earl and Vince wouldn’t ever complain that Miller couldn’t hang with them skillwise. Miller was their friend and collaborator. Miller paid his dues and put the two LA trailblazers in a position where they could succeed off of the former frat rapper’s growing fame. Miller’s production, the best aspect of his work, was honed through hours of studio time with those two gentlemen. This proximity explains Miller’s legitimacy in hip-hop circles better than his actual music does. In the same way that Jack Harlow has respect from noteworthy street rapper EST Gee—and might not even have reached chart-topper status if the embattled Charlotte superstar DaBaby hadn’t endorsed him—Miller is someone that rappers have respect for because of the way he carried himself around them. In a lot of ways, he is our token white emcee, someone who Jay-Z can say “he nice, too” about after listing off the Black rappers who the Brooklyn legend thinks of as influential.

[...] Yeat is not a strong writer[...] his music is just a version of Playboi Carti and the Young Stoner Life records trap sound, except without their engaging personalities, and without their sense of caginess that often functions as its own new language. When Carti’s rapping, it’s subversive and challenging, and his use of negative space is unnerving. If Yeat sounds like a white kid that wanted to rap after hearing Whole Lotta Red or Back From the Dead, it’s because that’s exactly who he is. [...]




[...] In a sign of real progress, Jack Harlow’s latest album, Come Home the Kids Miss You, was widely considered a flop. Critics panned it. Harlow’s careerism is hollow and cynical. The now-infamous anecdote about him wanting to be the “biggest rapper in the world” as a teenager shows the calculated self-promotion you need to become a star. That’s all Jack Harlow has. The only thing he is good at is wanting to become a star. After that burning desire wanes into actual stardom, listeners typically discover an emptiness that has doubters giving “I told you so” looks to everyone.

[...] Mac Miller or Jack Harlow is not to be blamed for this American habit of elevating mediocrity, but they are the ones to benefit from it. The cheerful-faced alabaster rapper never adds anything. They lack the deep pain and complexity that characterized the work of less-famous Black artists.'

The Painful Mediocrity of White Boy Rap

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

New virtual instrument library ('Prehistoric Drumkit') I'm thinking of getting while it's on sale (requires full Kontakt):

https://vimeo.com/74...&owner=31591112

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Thinking of buying this while it's on sale for $12.95 (requires full Kontakt):



Love that it (apparently) has 5D patches designed to play with the Seaboard....




Generally I'd prefer Synthesizer V (since I can input phonemes and have fine-grained (or AI generated) control over pitch, timbre, timing, etc.)... but I do like the timbre. And as a Seaboard player having 5D Seaboard patches already set up may be convenient... though the description actually doesn't specify 5D, so they might not incorporate Release velocity. Pretty sure they'll at least have Pressure, Strike, Glide, and Slide (so: 4D).

[Serenity]

Trying to get my head around the new BRATS single, Spiderweb. It's their first new song in two years and so completely different from anything they've done before.

[Malankazooie]

You guys ever feel like a numb little bug?



I read along with the lyrics as the song played. Pretty depressing and gloomy/dark. Seems to be the trend in music of late. Guess there is intersectionality going on with pandemic<>social media<>societal pressures? And so will take some time for this trend to work through popular culture and peppier/happy themes will return? Or is this the new baseline from which new stuff is launched?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

 Malankazooie, on 22 September 2022 - 10:49 PM, said:

You guys ever feel like a numb little bug?



I read along with the lyrics as the song played. Pretty depressing and gloomy/dark. Seems to be the trend in music of late. Guess there is intersectionality going on with pandemic<>social media<>societal pressures? And so will take some time for this trend to work through popular culture and peppier/happy themes will return? Or is this the new baseline from which new stuff is launched?

... maybe after all the humans are dead (or enslaved by AI)?...

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 23 September 2022 - 02:04 AM

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

[Serenity]

After three loooong years waiting, and after the concert was postponed in both 2020 and 2021, I finally, finally got to see my favourite band, SCANDAL, in London on Saturday, and my first Japanese band at that. Also got to meet them briefly beforehand and have a photo taken with them. We were down near the front, dead centre, and it was pure joy. These are not my videos, but I can see my arms waving around in the first one, and the second one was shot by my friend who was standing just to my left.

A.M.D.K.J.



Take Me Out

[worry]

Coolio has passed away at age 59. Fantastic Voyage is one of the best feel good tunes of the 90s imo, talk about a ‘summer jam’!

[Malankazooie]

The name Ian is getting a lot of hate now, for obvious reasons. So here's some Ian(s) shown in a better light.

The powerful Ian Gillan and the powerfully underrated drummer Ian Paice.



If reaction videos are your jam, there's a ton for this particular performance. Just be careful, if you are logged into your YouTube account and watch one, the algorithm will bring a bunch of them onto your landing feed the next time.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

'As demonstrations against the death of Mahsa Amini enter their third week in Iran, a protest song by one of Iran’s most popular musicians has become the soundtrack to the biggest civil uprising for decades, channelling the rage of Iranians at home and abroad.

The lyrics to Baraye by Shervin Hajipour are taken entirely from messages that Iranians have posted online about why they are protesting. Each begins with the word Baraye – meaning “For …” or “Because of …” in Farsi.

[...] viewed millions of times across various platforms. Videos show the song being sung by schoolgirls in Iran, blared from car windows in Tehran and played at solidarity protests in Washington, Strasbourg and London this weekend.

[...] Hajipour [...] was [...] arrested [...] days after the song was released. [...] It has since been registered as having been written by someone else, allowing copyright infringement complaints to be made, resulting in the song being removed by platforms it had been uploaded to. However, the song has already been widely shared and continues to be uploaded by users on YouTube.'


Iran arrests musician as anthem for protests goes viral

[QuickTidal]

The 10th Bjork album FOSSORA just dropped...and it's as much of a lush adventure as any of her other recent work, but almost a little more dreamy.

Fair warning, you NEED to be into her weirder sonic offerings like Utopia and Vulnicura to get into it....half of it sounds like incidental music from a Legend of Zelda game as you search for mushrooms...as has been the case since about Vespertine, it's an acquired taste, and nothing here could ever be a radio-play worthy single...Bjork is not making music for the radio anymore.

But if you are into that as I can be...it's possibly her most exquisite album in a decade.

My fave track so far:

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Just discovered Iron Maiden are on tour in the UK next summer. YES

[Abyss]

 QuickTidal, on 05 October 2022 - 05:15 PM, said:

The 10th Bjork album FOSSORA just dropped...and it's as much of a lush adventure as any of her other recent work, but almost a little more dreamy.

Fair warning, you NEED to be into her weirder sonic offerings like Utopia and Vulnicura to get into it....half of it sounds like incidental music from a Legend of Zelda game as you search for mushrooms...as has been the case since about Vespertine, it's an acquired taste, and nothing here could ever be a radio-play worthy single...Bjork is not making music for the radio anymore.

But if you are into that as I can be...it's possibly her most exquisite album in a decade.

My fave track so far:

That was like Enya and Loreena McKennit were genetically spliced together and forced to watch every season of Outlander with Braveheart on the little corner screen.


Also, drugs.

[QuickTidal]

 Abyss, on 06 October 2022 - 03:19 PM, said:

 QuickTidal, on 05 October 2022 - 05:15 PM, said:

The 10th Bjork album FOSSORA just dropped...and it's as much of a lush adventure as any of her other recent work, but almost a little more dreamy.

Fair warning, you NEED to be into her weirder sonic offerings like Utopia and Vulnicura to get into it....half of it sounds like incidental music from a Legend of Zelda game as you search for mushrooms...as has been the case since about Vespertine, it's an acquired taste, and nothing here could ever be a radio-play worthy single...Bjork is not making music for the radio anymore.

But if you are into that as I can be...it's possibly her most exquisite album in a decade.

My fave track so far:

That was like Enya and Loreena McKennit were genetically spliced together and forced to watch every season of Outlander with Braveheart on the little corner screen.


Also, drugs.

She's always been this. Like even Sugarcubes-era Bjork is weird progressive sounds VS radio-friendly music.

[Malankazooie]