All Entries Tagged With: "M.I.A."
New M.I.A. Song “Teqkilla”: Mixes Binge-Drinking and Annoying Computer Sounds
New M.I.A. track avoids controversy but still confuses. Will her July 13th release entitled /\/\Y/\ hold more of this experimentation?
Yeasayer, w/ Sleigh Bells, @ The Troc, 5/5/10
Now that you have some background, let me try to explain Sleigh Bells sound to you. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. Okay… so start with all of your conceptions of pop music. Alright. Now throw them out the window. Shatter the window. Now you’re one step closer to understanding Sleigh Bells. Go over to their Myspace and listen to “Infinity Guitars” or “Crown on the Ground” to see what I mean because I couldn’t find an mp3 to stream.
What you’re hearing is a production style in the same ballpark as the lo-fi movement that has been going on for a couple years now in indie music. M.I.A. exhibits this tendency but essentially what it comprises of is pushing down the overall mix of the vocals to the point where they seem to be drowning in the rest of the song. Instead of emphasizing the vocals the production works to emphasize the guitar, synths, and drums – something that is usually the first no-no you learn as a producer. Yet, despite sounding wrong and unorthodox, there is some undeniable beauty to this sound. And, no one does it better than Sleigh Bells.
M.I.A.’s Newest Controversy – Ginger Genocide in “Born Free”
M.I.A. sent out dozens of tweets to Pitchfork’s almost 1.5 million followers throughout the day, but nothing had quite as much of an impact as the release of the ten-minute long video for “Born Free”. I won’t get into much commentary in case you haven’t seen it, but I’m telling you that it is nothing short of classic. Controversial, bloody, gory – essentially the movie The Hurt Locker plus redheaded young men plus genocide. Consider this sentence my disclaimer though: you will be disturbed! I would advise against watching the video at work and against watching it at all if you do not respond well to gore.
Danger Danger! Dinosaur Feathers Go on Display This Friday!
After expressing my fan-boy appreciation for the band, I asked something that I couldn’t really get an answer for by the band’s Myspace or Facebook. In case you don’t follow indie rock as religiously as I do, in the last couple of years or so, there has been an amazing scene growing in Brooklyn. There’s really no better place to be right now if you’re a musician. Also, there are a lot of incredibly interesting musical trends going on in Brooklyn-based music right now – which include tendencies for African rhythms, noodly guitars, and Beach Boy-like harmonies. However, Dinosaur Feathers seems to put all of these elements together into a summery rock context that hasn’t really been done before.
Music Headlines – February 5th, 2010
Aside from being full of me acting like this snow storm is the apocalypse (I insisted on going to North and spending $20 to “make it through the weekend”), today was full of some really cool music news. On my old blog, which can be found at www.nclrmusic.blogspot.com, when I had days where there was just a lot of this really cool music news, I used to post it in bullet-point form for my readers to get through quickly. I think that’s the easiest way to share these things. So here it is, you’re music headlines for 2/5/10:
