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(02/27/09 12:00am)
The electric guitar has long been an instrument of social revolution. The rise of 1950s rock stars like Elvis Presley and Little Richard helped pave the way for the Civil Rights Movement by uniting fans across race and class boundaries with the youthful appeal of a new, blended sound, as blues had previously been largely African-American, and country music the domain of rural whites.A decade later, anti-war and anti-nuclear protest music from John Lennon spoke for the hippie subculture. Today, every band seems to have penned at least one anti-Bush ballad.
(02/20/09 12:00am)
The cover art of The Snowbringer Cult is a gorgeous pen-and-ink drawing of a giant hand emerging from the earth. Cupped in its palm is a tiny human figure who wears a mystical amulet and thrusts one arm, with a tribal drum clutched in his grasp, towards the sky. He seems to be trembling but staring resolutely into a heavy gust of wind. It calls to mind The Indian in the Cupboard, the children's book about a boy who has a pocket-sized Native American friend. The drawing is childlike and whimsical, with the miniature man grasping the huge index finger with a fuzzy mittened hand, yet it also has epic aspirations.The artwork accurately reflects the music it holds: ambient, innocent soundscapes that evolve into dense and otherworldly trances. The resulting sound falls somewhere between post-rock and psychedelic folk. If you like both the gentleness of Iron & Wine and the vaguely ethnic cacophony of Animal Collective, The Snowbringer Cult might be for you. Alternately, its subdued and meandering melodies would make an excellent soundtrack for anyone walking through a quiet snowy field. Too bad we live in Houston. I recommend at least snuggling up in a blanket with a cup of tea - preferably chai, to match the album's pseudo-Eastern vibe.
(02/13/09 12:00am)
I was driving with some friends recently when we suddenly heard a high-pitched screech punctuated by harsh thuds. "Do you hear that?" someone asked. "I think there might be a problem with the car." My friend laughed and pointed to the stereo, dialed to 91.7. "No, it's just KTRU."We were listening to a track from Matt Weston's album Not To Be Taken Away, released this past July on his label 7272music and currently in rotation on KTRU's playlist. Weston is a percussionist and electronic musician who is also a member of the experimental bands Barn Owl and Thrillpillow. This is his second full-length solo release after 2000's Vacuums.
(02/06/09 12:00am)
Today's musicians have a staggering array of advanced technologies at their fingertips, ranging from every flavor of synthesizer to Auto-Tune, the pitch correction software now used almost universally in recording studios to make vocals sound closer to perfect pitch. Although the creative opportunities unleashed by computer music are boundless - Girl Talk, anyone? - there is also a growing back-to-basics movement dedicated to making music from even the most banal sounds: everyday speech and all manner of ambient noise, such as whirring machinery and birdsong.Background noise is foregrounded, usually in a blend with more conventional instrumentation, and the result is neither organic nor artificial - but definitely musical. This technique has been applied in genres as diverse as acoustic folk-rock (The Books, who create catchy songs out of obscure spoken samples) and rap (Decomposure, who finds melodies even in the sound of matches striking together). Larkin Gifford's Harmonica, an environmental soundscape from composer Phillip Bimstein, adds classical music to that list.
(01/30/09 12:00am)
Every week at KTRU, eager DJs scribble out short reviews of music's cutting-edge albums. KTRU's Music Department uses these reviews to judge the quality of the albums it receives and to provide information for the DJs who play them. Each week, a DJ polishes one of these reviews so that KTRU's riches can shine for the larger Rice community.Desperate Man Blues is a compilation of 1920s and '30s American roots music released concurrently with a documentary of the same name. Both are based on the immense collection of Joe Bussard, a 72-year-old Maryland man who has spent his life amassing over 25,000 vintage 78-RPM early Americana records, many of which are the only known copies in existence.
(01/23/09 12:00am)
Every week at KTRU, eager DJs scribble out short reviews of music's cutting-edge albums. KTRU's Music Department uses these reviews to judge the quality of the albums it receives and to provide information for the DJs who play them. Each week, a DJ polishes one of these reviews so that KTRU's riches can shine for the larger Rice community.Where has singer-songwriter Antony Hegarty been since rocketing to indie stardom with 2005's I Am a Bird Now, an almost completely unknown record that beat out big names like Coldplay and Bloc Party to win the United Kingdom's prestigious Mercury Prize? One answer comes in a song title from his new release The Crying Light: "Another World." This album sounds as ghostly and distant as an alien transmission - but its emotional register feels entirely human.
