Album Study 2A (Cotey): DJ Shadow - Endtroducing....

Album: Endtroducing....
Artist: DJ Shadow

Submitted by: Cotey

Year: 1996 (debut studio album)

US Billboard Peak: 37th Top Heatseakers (17th in UK Album Chart)

I was completely caught off guard by Cotey's selection of DJ Shadow - Endtroducing.  I never heard of him, or even knew what he was.  I imagined it was some kind of techno or rap music just because the word DJ was in the artist title.  My first reaction was that I liked the title, and when I began looking at the cover art and track listing it had promise.  I find when they use repetitive track names it usually means that a theme will follow, i.e. Transmission #1, Transmission #2.  The part of this study is to see how the "album" is designed as a whole to convey a message.

Not knowing what to expect, I began listening.  The first track reminded me heavily of mid 90s Beastie Boys with a fast beat, dialogue audio samples and scratching.  As a fan of the Beastie Boys, I was looking forward to hearing more as I settled in to my preconceived notions of what was to come.  The second track instantly took a turn on my thought process of what was to come.  The sound was more familiar to a Moby style track with layered strings, heavy beats and what I call "found dialogue".  Still not disappointed with this change.

The songs played out ominously painting a mood more then a picture.  The layers of audio drew me in.  The added touches of depth from the beats, strings and dialogue gave you lots to take in.  The added touch of the faint sounds of an analog hiss in the background with pops of a needle spinning on vinyl added to an overall feel of the crafted sound.  As the tempo grows and power added to the repetition, DJ Shadow breaks up the pattern with erratic looping of recognized beats to bring you out of the trance of rhythm and into the "now" of the song.  Though a pure techno sound, a feeling of a free style jazz splashes you like cold water as the stuttering beat loop hits.  You mentally wake up trying to guess what the next beat would be, opening your ears to the layers of sound.

The album continues to play sharing common occurrences and patterns.  As an example, a organ is a regular character that its melody plays in the background of a few tracks for mere glimpses.  Later in the album it gets a more "solo" type performance in the track of its own.

This album has depth in its audible layers, but does a great job of not really playing out a defined story as I usually try to seek.  Instead it explores a emotional tie to the track at hand.  He also uses "found" dialogue to accompany many of the tracks.  I have always been a fan of not only "found footage" but the spoken word.  Intertwined with music, it adds another level.  Much how in a narrative film, you edit a scene and then add sound and music to it to enhance the emotion of a scene.  If a scene calls for a certain tension, one might lay down a heavier song to amplify that emotion.  If done too much, we would call that music choice to be "heavy handed" or "over dramatized".  The music is transcribing to the audience what the emotion should be oppose to the actors and dialogue.  If done correctly, the music can help enhance the work of the actor and story.  I found with DJ Shadow, he used dialogue to enhance the music (oppose to film where music enhances the dialogue).  By putting in splatter of found dialogue, it helped to enhance the emotion of the track.  Having an actor talk about being wrongfully incarcerated added to the tension of the beats.  Having a girl talk about her past and stories of rollerskating enhanced the sensuous tones of the track.

The added part was that it had a "found footage" quality to it.  Couldn't pin point the actors or the story and it made you question if they were orchestrated for the album or just randomly added to it.  With out a background knowledge of the dialogue source, you were free to paint your mental picture to add to the sound.  I had a friend who DJ'd in college and he too liked to mix in dialogue into his tracks.  As said before, always a huge fan of spoken words incorporated with music or image.  However, when he did it, I found it fell flat and didn't deliver.  Sure the crowd would cheer to the sounds of Optimus Prime or He-man (grabbed from children storybook albums he found at thrift stores).  I never knew why, to me, these snippets never incorporated well into it.  I originally thought it might just be he was an inexperienced DJ playing to a crowd of Gen X'rs.  However, after experiencing Endtroducing, I find it to be more of the association of sound to music.  The choice of dialogue enhanced the music and complemented the emotion.  A more recognizable source of dialogue I think would bring in all the emotional "excess baggage" of its source and deliver a heavy handed, over dramatized emotion.  Instead it draws you even more in to explore the sound.

As this being DJ Shadows debut album, I really look forward to hearing some of his later stuff and exploring more into this genre.  I have listened to this album several times and love it.  I feel if I owned a martini lounge, this would be the first album I would play on a Friday night before opening to set the mood for the evening.

Album Study 2 (Cotey)

Subject:     Cotey
Albums:     DJ Shadow - Endtroducing, Paul Simon - Graceland, The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots

Cotey has been a long time friend of mine who has an interest in all medias in all mediums.  Over the years he introduced me to musicians like Moby and Daft Punk before they were even a thing.  Incredibly savy with technology, he has always been a beacon of what is cutting edge.  He was definitely someone I wanted in this study, and I knew I would purposely get something outside of the norm.

I will be posting a short review of each album throughout the week.

Album Study 1D (B.C): Willie Nelson - 'Red Headed Stranger'

Album: Red Headed Stranger
Artist: Willie Nelson

Submitted by: B.C.

Year: 1975 (18th studio album)

US Billboard Peak: 28th (1st in US Country Albums)
Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums: 183rd

What I know of Willie Nelson is more of the contemporary media potrayl of him.  The tax evading, pot smoking, living off the land outlaw who wrote classic songs like "On the Road Again" and the one about how he can't wait to get on the road again.  He also stars in one of my personal top 10 movies, "Wag the Dog" as basically, himself, or what we are led to believe.

I was very surprised by B.C. selection for this seeing that he has never mentioned Willie Nelson to me before.  Granted though, our talks on music are far and few due to my lack of knowledge on the subject, or as B.C. says "Matt hates music".  A false hood I may never live down that was spawned from a drunken diatribe where I mention that "live concerts tend to bore me and I hate how they go on and on".  This is where B.C. formulated that I "hate" music.  When he submitted this album he did say that this is not one of his top 3, but a bonus B.C. addition that cannot go unmentioned.

As soon as I saw the cover I instantly got a feeling that we would be taken back to the outlaw days of cowboys and such.  The track listing also peeked my interest as it showed a pattern of repeating themes in the track names, calling back to a track called "The Time of the Preacher".  I began listening to the album and was instantly drawn in by the smooth western country style ballad that Willie Nelson belts out along side the classic instruments of the genre. With a heavy feeling of traditional folk music with a western sound, Willie Nelson immediately begins to tell the story of our main character known to us as the Preacher and his love who left him for another.  Through the ballads we see the transformation from a man torn apart by his lost love into a man with rage as he becomes a mysteries ruthless gunslinger only known as the Red Headed Stranger.

Side A tells the tale of this western ballad in a traditional folk style.  Its music style paints a picture of a western scene sitting around the camp fire on a desert evening as our singing cowboy tells the tale.  The majority of the music is the sound of western twang produced with traditional "country western" instruments.  Interwoven  with these classic sounds are contemporary guitar riffs and grand piano chords, but blend in with the simple western style.  Side A tells the story arc of our red headed stranger, Side B continues the style of folk music.  Ranging from love ballads to the classic rinky dink upright piano songs pictured in many western film saloons.

I equate this album and summarize it as a western lullaby.  Willie Nelson grabs my attention with the bizzare story of lost love and croons me to sleep underneath the western stars.  The sounds of his guitar and stories of years past fill me with emotions that are still familiar and meaningful today.  I truly enjoyed this album and continue to listen to it frequently.  I look forward to hearing more Willie Nelson music and how diverse it is from this great album.

Album Study 1C (B.C): The Beatles - 'Abbey Road'

Album: Abbey Road
Artist: The Beatles

Submitted by: B.C.

Year: 1975 (11th studio album)

US Billboard Peak: 28th (1st in UK)
Rolling Stone Top 500 Albums: 14th

I think almost everyone knows of or has heard a Beatles song.  As John Lennon once said, "We're more popular then Jesus now".  Growing up listening to the oldies radio station and the traditional Sunday Beatles Brunch programming, I am very familiar with much of their catalog.  The old pop culture question, "Elvis or Beatles" was a true statement growing up as my mom is a loyal Elvis Presley fan and never cared for the fab 4 from across the pond.  There for, I have never heard a Beatles album from start to finish.

I wasn't surprised that B.C. had a Beatles album on his list, I was more surprised it was only 1.  I put this in not knowing what to expect.  I knew Abbey Road was a prolific album and probably one of the most recreated iconic album covers ever, but I didn't know where it fit in in the world of historical albums.  I didn't know where in the Beatles career this was.  I knew it was past their "pop" British invasion years and closer to the more prolific time where they redefined music.

As I started to play the album several songs from my past popped up.  "Come Together", "Something", "Octopuses Garden".   I wasn't overly impressed as a whole, wondering "who am I to judge the Beatles?"  It just seemed to be a collection of great songs.  The lyrics are solid, the songs have a heavy Blues guitar influence with the heavy riffs, picking and slides, but I questioned what makes Abbey Road so great.  And then Side B hit.

"You Never Give Me Your Money", a classic song on its own, ends with the sounds of crickets and my ears tune in to the unique sound addition to a music album, this cricket transitions us into "Sun King".  I begin to get lured into this stream of medleys as the the next 14 minute are tied together like an audible stage performance changing sets and scenes before my ears.  By the 3rd song I'm over whelmed with audible joy.  THIS IS WHY I DID THE STUDY!  The concept of an album formed through the parts (the songs), building onto each other to tell the story and emotion as a whole.  By the time the 6th song was in, I was completely emotionally pulled in, almost to tears of joy listening and feeling the music.

This 14 minute sequence of intertwined songs bring us through the 3 acts of a play in my mind, introducing the characters of the world, the challenges and triumphs of our adventure.  It even ends with an orchestrated fan faire, as you would hear during the closing credits.  Like a curtain call, many of the lyrics and melodies of earlier moments in the story take another bow during the conclussion.  As the curtain goes down and the lights come up, they tack on one last joke track just to lighten what to me was an emotional roller coaster of sound.  A near perfect ending in the same vein as the usher cleaning the last of the crowded theatre or Porky Pig saying "That's all folks".  The performance has ended.

I really want to listen to this on original LP as I listened to it as a CD rip so I got track skips between many of the tracks.  As I said earlier, this album is why I did this study.  To really learn what music has become and appreciate the work of "the album" and what it means too so many others.  Abbey Road is definitely in a special place in my heart and will remember as I drove through Illinois that memorial day in 2016.

Album Study 1B (B.C): R.E.M. - 'Fables of Reconstruction'

Album: Fables of Reconstruction
Artist: R.E.M.

Submitted by: B.C.

Year: 1985 (3rd studio album)

US Billboard Peak: 28th (35th in UK)

R.E.M. is a band I've known about for years.  One of my good friends growing up worships this band and when I ask him for his 3 favorite albums, I will be shocked if there is less then 2 R.E.M. albums on it.

What I personally know of R.E.M. is mostly through my good friend, but it is that Monster was their big commercial album just short of  when they performed with the muppets of Sesame Street singing Shiny Happy Monsters.

The first time I listened to the album I found the monotonous tone of Michael Stipe to carry on with little inflection and tone.  From track to track the lyrics seemed muddled and over whelmed by heavy guitar riffs and crashing drum cymbals.  I trudged through it, feeling as if I heard the same song again and again with little change.  The song Wendell Gee was a breath of fresh air until I found out it was the last on the list.  I felt robbed.  Not only of the value of the album, but of the huge pedestal my friends have put R.E.M. on.  Even after my second consecutive listening, I saw no real difference in my thoughts.

I took a step back and waited a few days to give it a third listening.  After being rested and clear minded I gave it a 3rd listening and focused on the lyrics.  Listening to and then later reading through the lyrics, you find the theme of lethargic anguish of the individual and of the stories of their travel.  The lyrics paint a tapestry of the individuals our traveler has observed.  

The feeling and images I see as I listen keep pointing towards a train (many references to engineers, trains, engines on various songs).  The beats give me a visual as a country side passing as the traveler writes the lyrics of his travels.  The music, which I found sounded quite contemporary for a 1985 album, keeps the momentum going and only eleganty changes pace.  This too reminded me of the movement of rail travel.

I don't know if I truly fully embraced this album, but I do believe that the more R.E.M. I hear, I will look to this album as a reference point to when the band diversified their sound.  Though this album didn't 'knock my socks' off as being great during the first few listenings, I enjoyed and look forward to hearing more of this band.

Album Study 1A (B.C): Squeeze - 'Singles - 45's and Under'

Album: Singles, 45's and Under
Artist: Squeeze

Submitted by: B.C.

Year: 1982 (compilation)

US Billboard Peak: 47th (3rd in UK)

I knew very little of Squeeze going into this album.  I even saw them live once at Summerfest with B.C.  What I knew about Squeeze is that they were a diverse 80s pop band from the UK who had a few chart toppers.  The other thing I knew was Jools Holland was a member.  I found out from B.C. when I was telling him about this show I saw called 'Later......with Jools Holland'.  B.C. replied, "he was a member of Squeeze".  This conlcudes my background knowledge of the band.

The album 'Singles, 45's and Under' is a compilation album released by Squeeze in 1982.  I wanted to avoid compliation albums in my research, but I asked my subjects to give me their 3 favorite albums, not to give me the 3 best albums that fit into my strict rules.  This compilation is an album of all their singles from the late 70s to early 80s, hence the title 'Singles, 45's and Under'.

The album starts out with heavily synthesized tracks.  The heavy beats and poppy synthesized riffs, started to wear on me.  The songs seem to keep with the same theme of unequated love and nonchalant courting intertwined with the repetitive synthesized back beat.  As the album progresses you see a shift.   By 4th track, the edge of the synthesizer is not as prevalent.  Though the songs underlining theme stays the same, the vocals and musicians start to take the forefront.

Though it is a compilation album of previous singles, I found the way that the tracks were selected showed a solid progression of the sound of the band over the half decade that these tracks were taken from.  Even during the second listening, many of the songs where I originally questioned B.C.'s choice in music, I found myself singing many of the lyrics later on in the day.

Album Study 1 (B.C.)

Subject:     BC
Albums:     Squeeze - Singles, 45's and Under, REM - Fables of Reconstruction, Beatles - Abbey
Extras:       Road, Willie Nelson - Red Headed Stranger, Bach - Brandenburg Concertos

BC is a friend of mine who has an incredibly diverse music palette.  A free lance critic, he has always been one to point out much needed improvements and vocalize the unsolicited suggestions.  It was no surprise that when I asked him to give me his 3 favorite albums, he came back with 5.

I will be posting a short review of each album throughout the week.

Music Album Study: Summer of 2016

I decided to fire up the old blog this year to document my summer study. My study is based on what peoples favorite music albums are and my thoughts on them. I came up with the study earlier this spring after I transferred all of my CDs to MP3s. During this time, I realized my CD collection is abysmal. The reason for this, I never really got into music, so I never knew what was good.

My History:
I never really listened to music growing up. My parents listened to 95.7 FM "The Oldies" and mixed tapes consisting of Elvis, Moody Blues and usually that one rare new one hit wonder they thought was catchy. My first cassette tape was "The Best of the Monkees" as I enjoyed their comedy hijinx from their pop culture rebirth in the mid eighties when their shows hit syndication again. As I grew up I began to watch more an more movies and television, that was my medium of choice growing up.

In the 90s, when I purchased a CD player, I began purchasing movie Soundtracks. With my ongoing love of cinema and film, the listening of their soundtracks painted a picture in my head and brought up the memories of the said movies.

By the mid 90s I began to purchase random CDs of what ever was popular at the time. Purchased because I heard them on the radio or my group of friends liked them. I never really listened to the full albums and mostly just cued up the radio hit and nothing more. By then I was in my late teens, I really hadn't heard much diverse music and really hadn't even attended a real concert. To many, this is unheard of, but again my passion was movies. I had attended several festivals, unique screenings and countless midnight shows of classic movies at local independent cinemas.

In the late 90s Napster had come out and I just began to download the popular singles and "classic" oldies that I grew up with. I then focused my attention to comedians and started to purchase their CDs at whatever store had them. There was no real cohesion to my collection but just a random spattering of songs. I pretty much listened to movie soundtracks, comedy CDs and the occasional jazz/blues CD.

For the first 10 years of the new millennium, I drove more for work so I listened to talk radio and occasionally the top 40 stations. This was what kept me away while driving and kept me mentally engaged.

The Birth of my Study:
The Fall of 2015, my trustee steed (a 2006 Dodge Grand Caravan that drove me over 250,000 miles for work) was rear ended by a service van and "totaled". This wonderful machine had an internal hard drive that you could copy all of your CDs to. There was no need to carry them around or plug in a Ipod. With the purchase of a new vehicle I had to go through the process of transferring all my CDs to MP3, a procedure that most of the 1st World did 10 years ago.

As mentioned before, during this process, I noticed, "My collection is abysmal and I don't even know what to do". I could open an ITunes account and just start downloading random stuff, read Amazon reviews and just start getting stuff, continue to listen to top 40 and just start buy albums. None of these options appealed to me.  I wanted to learn to love music like many of my friends do and that's how I came up with my summer study.

The Study:
Not only do I want to learn about music and start to love it.  I want to engage with people to discuss what the album means to them, the music world and others. I would look to my friends and family that love music. Part 1 of the study: Ask my friends what their top 3 albums are and borrow them to listen to.

My study will be on how the album is made. How the artist(s), producers and those involved made and formed their album. I don't have much of a music background or vocabulary, I grew up in film. I watched movies as a kid and studied films as a student. That is my vocabulary. The structure, story and flow of a film is my vocabulary, my background, my knowledge. The story arc of a film is intriguing and the way it is crafted by an auteur is what I like. Does that structure carry over in the production of an album. What albums are "solid" or "tight" in conveying their message. I can enjoy a movie and say "as a movie, that was bad but I enjoyed it, it was fun". I can see a movie and go, "not my thing, but followed a good structure." Is this true with an album? Part 2 of Study: How is this an album in its entirety. What message do they convey. As mentioned, with my limited vocabulary on music and albums,

I don't want to pre-saturate myself with knowledge. This is a learning exercise, but the learning will be through the music. Part 3 of my Study: Is to take the album for what it is. A collection of songs by an artist or group that was produced as an "album".

Pre-research:
-Members of the band during album
-Year of album

-Basically everything you would find on the jacket of the album.

Extra research (but not necessary):
-Where it was on the Billboard Rankings
-Where Rolling Stone ranks the album on their all time list (only the number, I will not read the review)

-Where this album is in relation to their bands other albums (first album, last album, reunion album, new drummer, etc). 

I want to avoid reading official reviews so as to form my own ideas.  I will go in with only that I know my friend likes this album, and what cumulative knowledge I've  absorbed on my own (I know who the Beatles are, I can't change that.  I've not listened to a lot of music growing up, I didn't just come out of a comma).  The only ancillary research I may do is if I see an outstanding theme in an album,  I may want to do a little research to confirm it (i.e. there seems to be a lot of synthesizer on this album, when was that invented?)

So to recap:

Part 1: Ask my Friend/subject what their 3 favorite albums are and borrow them, and listen to them

Part 2: How is this an album in its entirety?  What are its themes.

Part 3: Is this a great album?

Use these to help find my own ear for music and branch off.

The Process of the Study:

I will listen to the suggested 3 CDs.  I will try to listen to them in their entirety.  No breaks or listening in sections.  I will listen to the albums at least twice and then post my findings.

I will leave my subjects relatively anonymous.  I won't go into detail on who they are, but maybe just give personality traits that our pertinent in their selections.  I will most likely use their nick names that only people in our circle will know them by.

I'm posting my findings for basically myself.  They are so I can see what I like and what I don't like and maybe just log my findings.  This is why I don't have comments turned on.  I don't care about your input, if you hate my thoughts, buy me a drink and tell me in person so we can talk about music.  Another option is to start a "Matt is dumb blog".  Don't post your "Mat is dumb" thoughts on my blog. The only hope is that my test subject don't read this and influenced by what previous people listened to.

After listening to the test subjects albums, I will delete the files if I don't like the music and if I like them, I will buy them and add them to my collection.  I have great respect for copy write laws and the business side of artistry.  We can debate the pros and cons of it for another day.

If a test subject picks a album I already listened to, I will simply just talk to them about my thoughts on that album.  The point of this exercise is find out from others what they like to help me decide what I like.  I want to like music and I want to enjoy music.  Lets see if I can learn that with this study.