Category: Soundbooth

Your Autumn Soundtrack

Autumn campfire

It’s that time again. There’s a chill in the air and the scarves are coming out. It’s time for crisp days at the winery. Crackly bonfires for toasting marshmellows. Hikes through autumn leaves. And pumpkin flavored everything.

You hear a lot about the perfect summer playlist, but I think creating one for fall is much more interesting. For me, this season brings an ingrained feeling of gearing up for the new school year, and even though I won’t be in a classroom, I always feel a sense of contemplation of the past and new beginnings. Autumn means a moodier and more complex soundtrack. Take a listen!

The Weight of Love, The Black Keys

My Silver Lining, First Aid Kit

Turn it Up, Robert Plant

Bad Habit, The Kooks

The Mountain, Heartless Bastards

Left Hand Free, alt-j

Cigarette Daydreams, Cage the Elephant

Uncatena, Sylvan Esso

 

Photo taken by Paul Schlemmer. Purchased from Stocksy.com.

Not Feeling an ‘Invincible Summer’? Reggae for Winter Blues

I’m definitely feeling the East Coast winter blues. Even my excitement for boots and chunky knits is gone — I’m ready for maxi sundresses and aviators.

In the last few days I discovered Ziggy Marley’s Love is My Religion album, which is pretty fantastic, and while it’s not a replacement for a beach trip, it’s certainly a nice reminder of warmer weather.

It also reminded me of an Albert Camus quote I’ve always loved, “In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” But I didn’t realize there was a second part to the quote until I went looking for it the other day.

It continues, “And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”

Daft Punk — Light Years Away from the Rest of EDM

“Once you free your mind about a concept of harmony and music being correct, you can do whatever you want. So, nobody told me what to do, and there was no preconception of what to do.” -Giovanni Giorgio Moroder

Everything that’s old is new again — especially when it comes to music.

Daft Punk, the French duo consisting of Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, cleaned up at the Grammy’s this year with four wins, including Album of the Year. If you haven’t listened to their 2013 album, Random Access Memories, you should stop reading this post, download the album, and continue reading with you’ve finished listening.

“Today, electronic music is like an audio energy drink,” Thomas Bang­alter told Rolling Stone in May 2013. “Artists are overcompensating with this aggressive, energetic, hyperstimulating music – it’s like someone shaking you. But it can’t move people on an emotional level.”

It’s immediately apparent on Random Access Memories that the duo wanted to create electronic music with feeling (the first song is titled, “Give Life Back to Music”) — to do so they took inspiration from the music of the late 70s and the early 80s. You probably couldn’t escape the single “Get Lucky,” the catchy, bubbly song of last summer. While it is a good sample of the tone of the album, its not my favorite song of the collection.

Topping my favorites is, “Giorgio by Moroder,” which features synth disco pioneer Giovanni Giorgio Moroder (think Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love”) talking about how he unwittingly changed the sound of pop by introducing a synthesizer into his music.

Dazed Digital described the song as “an arpeggiated Italo synth line [that] segues into a free-jazz section before climaxing with an epic drum-break befitting of Wembley Stadium.”

When Moroder did the recording, there were multiple microphones that dated from the 60s to current day. When Moroder asked why their were so many microphones, he was told that the mic they would use would depend on the decade of his life he was speaking about. Moroder recounted to Rolling Stone, “I asked the engineer, ‘Who will ever hear the difference between these microphones?’ He told me, ‘Nobody. But the boys will.'”

Moroder said of the album as a whole: “Daft Punk wanted to do something and do it in a way that’s not done by just pushing a note or a chord. You definitely hear that it’s nice and full; the drums and the bass have that warm, that full sound… This is like a step forward.”