It's really hard for me to articulate my taste in music. If you were listening to my iTunes on shuffle, you could hear anything from Fleetwood Mac to Waka Flocka to John Talabot. The best way to describe it is that I take an eclectic approach to music; I seek out artists in multiple genres that I can connect to.
One thing I thoroughly enjoy in a song is when unrelated qualities are combined to make something new. The mixture of an aggressive beat, gospel piano, and opera singer in HAM, as well as the end product of a Gil Scott-Heron and Jamie XX collaboration, are examples of the juxtaposition I seek out in music.
The following videos are great representations of what can result from the combination of two entirely different things. You wouldn't think rap and Wes Anderson/Woody Allen movies could work together, yet both videos prove they can.
Converse's successful 3 Artists, 1 Song series has new entry, a collaboration between Blur and Gorillaz' Damon Albarn, Outkast's Andre 3000, and LCD Soundsystem's James Murphy. The resulting electro-funk blast "DoYaThing" sounds about exactly how one would expect. The song is available for download here at the Converse web site with a video to follow on February 29 and an assumedly more interesting twelve minute version of the track to debut on the Gorrilaz website in the coming weeks.
UPDATE: The extended version is available to listen to here.
Leyland James Kirby has been making electronic music under The Caretaker guise since 1999, slowly evolving from slightly difficult early ambient work to the more accessible 2011 and 2012 albums' An Empty Bliss Beyond this World and Patience (After Sebald). Naming his project The Caretaker in homage to Jack Nicholson's character in the Shining, Kirby creates music inspired by the films' elegant prewar parlor-tunes and wide open spaces. Samples from 1920's and 30's phonograph recordings crackle and hiss before being manipulated into loops and layered with vocal snippets. After the parlor based tunes of An Empty Bliss Beyond this World, Patience (After Sebald) takes on the more subdued tone of it's source material, Austrian composer Franz Schubert's 1927 piano piece, Winterreise.
Any discussion of The Caretaker's music tends to initially focus on Kirby's preoccupation with memory loss and the role of music in the reconstruction and recollection of memories. Though such an academic topic is undoubtedly the inspiration for Kirby's music and an interesting point of exploration, such talk often obscures how enjoyable The Caretaker's music actually is. The Caretaker's reserved experimental ambient pieces are exceptionally well done and immediately enjoyable, with each listen revealing new layers of music.
Kirby has released an album of free outtakes, Extra Patience (After Sebald), available for a limited time here on his Bandcamp page.
The Shining Ballroom Scene:
Similar to: William Basinski, Tim Hecker, Max Richter
This new remix of SBTRKT’s Hold On by the mysterious Sisi BakBak, rumored to be Thom York. You know what they say, if it looks like Thom York, sounds like Thom York, tastes like Thom York, and feels like Thom York...then it must be Thom York.
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