Home»Archive for August, 2011

Screamadelica

Aug 24th, 2011 1 Comment


One of the albums I’ve been consistently playing over the last year has been Primal Scream’s 1991 release Screamadelica. It is a timeless piece of music that is widely acclaimed as one of the best albums of the 1990s, yet I’ve found that not very many people in and around Gen Y are familiar with it.

Its originality came from merging dub, gospel and experimental sounds with big house drums and rhythms. This often resulted in a very trippy, spaced-out sound, which was probably in no small part an affect of their heavy drug intake at the time. There’s an infamous tour-story about the bandmates arguing with one another over whether to get Vietnamese, Chinese or Indian: a journalist asked them if they’d settle for a burger and the band informed him, “It’s heroin we’re discussing, not food!”

Loaded is my favourite track and probably the best place to begin to get a feel for the album. Inner Flight would make a good soundtrack to a movie scene where a junkie feels the first affects of a heroin hit and Slip Inside This House is a more conventionally styled house track that is actually a cover of highly influential American psych-rock band 13th Floor Elevators from 1967. 

I strongly recommend you get the album and listen to it from start to finish even if these tracks don’t grab you straight away.

Primal Scream – Loaded

Primal Scream – Inner Flight

Primal Scream – Slip Inside This House

13th Floor Elevators – Slip Inside This House

Primal Scream – Screamadelica (Open link in new tab – Filesonic.com link)

 

Cheers,

Adso

Unknown Sun

Aug 23rd, 2011 Leave a comment

Like Jimps said in the last post, my musical taste has broadened dramatically in the time since I last shared music with you all. Not only has it broadened, but it has shifted focus away from remixes and electronic productions and more so to guitars and psychedelia. But these aren’t mutually exclusive and often my favourite music exhibits a little from column A and a little from column B.

A band who I think exemplify the convergence of these two ideas and is also my favourite new band is Unknown Mortal Orchestra. While borrowing psychedelic sounds from the heydays of the late 60s and early 70s, UMO’s sound has still got something quirky and original enough to sound somewhat modern. Add to that that Ruban Nielson, the New Zealander behind the project, made most of the debut album in his bedroom and you have a sound distinctly rooted in the past but born through modern technology. Thought Ballune is my favourite of his songs, the guitar riff in it reminds me of something Jimi Hendrix would do. The other track I’ve posted, Little Blue House, is a bit poppier and loaded with vocal hooks.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Thought Ballune

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Little Blue House

Unknown Mortal Orchestra – Unknown Mortal Orchestra (Open in a new tab – I’m now going to post external download links where I can to the albums the tracks are on. I’ll try use Mediafire.com links whenever I can ’cause they are the easiest, but whenever it is another hosting site just look for the ‘slow’, ‘regular’ or ‘free’ download button and it should work. These links quite often get taken down so let me know if one’s down and I’ll have a look for another one for you.)


Suuns are another band who blur the line between psychedelic jamming and tight electronic arrangements. They are a relatively new band from Montreal who late last year released their debut album Zeroes QC on Secretly Canadian (also home of Yeasayer, jj and Antony and The Johnsons). Album opener Armed For Peace begins with just heavy drums and slowly builds until you’re just about to get bored with it and think a horrible dubstep wobble might burst out at you, but instead the lead guitar overpowers the drums and the track turns into more of a rock song than a ridiculous dubstep banger. PVC is a more traditionally structured track, but still has thick distorted guitar and bass

Suuns – Armed For Peace

Suuns – PVC

Suuns – Zeroes QC (Open in new tab – Mediafire link to the album)

 

That’s it for the moment. I’ve got lots more different stuff I want to share with you soon, so be sure to ‘Like’ our Facebook page for updates and stay in touch!

Cheers,

Adso