I'm happy to announce Stereo Delay's inauguration of guest writer Jay Ziegler. Ziegler, one of the founding writers for Consequence of Sound, is the ripping soloist in Top Shelf Lickers and also fellow mellow axe wielder in Wooden Wing. Here's his take on the elusive electric music that soundtracked the motion of hips at the height of the pill popping era. I think because it ushered in the birth of my favorite console music, Italo Disco will always have an unfair advantage when fighting for king of the mountain in my ears. Take her away Mr. Ziegler:
T.Ark - Under Cover Lover (Germany)
Throughout the cosmos of time, music has always possessed the amazing ability to crossbreed and assimilate multiple genres, in essence creating newer ones. One genre that came out as a sense of discovery during my final year of college at Florida State was the long lost form known as Italo Disco. Found by sheer accident one day during a routine trip to and from the campus, Italo Disco struck a raw nerve deep within me. Split between my classical training, my love for rock music and keeping up with the college Joneses in regards to the newer breeds of music, Italo Disco had that rare combination of approachable dance rhythms, pulsating electronic basslines and an over-the-top 80s sense of not taking itself too seriously. More and more I listened, this specific genre held more than meets the ears.
After finding about ten Italo Disco "Best Of" compilations on numerous websites, it was definitely apparent by this point that there was a whole world stuck in the underground. Even the term itself, "Italo Disco" referred to the European landscape as well as alluding to the off-putting nature of the music. Throughout the 70's and up until the early 80's, most popular dance music came from the U.S., UK and Australia. Bear with me as I'm paraphrasing. The term Italo Disco, while it started as an Italian phrase, came to encompass all dance music and early house/disco music that was purely not from the UK or the US (which later proved to have some exceptions from these nations respectfully). In the midst of all this craze, you have changing time periods from the 70's to the 80's. As a result, nations such as Poland, Italy, Germany, Russia, Canada, France and even the Scandinavian countries came together and created their own musical subterranean metropolis.
The elements of Italo Disco are purely 80's, purely tongue-in-cheek, and purely science fiction. Put it to you this way, Rick Deckard in "Blade Runner" could pop this in his car while looking for "replicants" and you'd think nothing of it. So sleek and natural, yet highly refined. What makes the elements of this particular brand of dance music lie in the arrangements. While most disco employed a good amount of horn sections (Santa Esmerelda, The Trammps) as well as string sections via synthesizer (Donna Summer, The Bee Gees), Italo Disco contained a much more minimalist approach. Artists such as Chris Luis, who's 1983 single "The Heart Of The City" employed a thick drum & bass straight beat with heavy saw synthesizers. No guitars, a minimal bassline and dueling synth and keys set the stage for Luis' soulful and controlled vocals. What makes this song tick is not just in Luis' limited vocal range, but the synthesizers give the song much more dynamic and allude to imagery of a lonely single man looking for love in the heart of a gigantic city (think from Chicago to Cairo).
Chris Luis - The Heart Of The City (Italy)
Another example of Italo Disco's enigmatic mastery of genre mashups is "Man To Man" by Italy based band Scotch. Implying multiple poly-rhythmic electronic percussion, Scotch also use the futuristic synthesized wave sounds to create an upbeat and almost impossible beat to escape from. The robotic quality of the drumming as well as the vocoders used by the singers add more drips of eastern Europe's influence over the genre. By taking the spacy elements found in rock, dabbling much more rhythmic inflection and adding dashes of quality synthesizer, Scotch also have a great knack for creating intense loops of bass driven riffs. In "Man To Man", the bass takes over and has it's own quarrel war with the keys while the drumming picks up and chugs away like a Sherman tank. I don't want to give the whole thing away, but needless to say, it's a treat you'll loop for the next twenty minutes.
Scotch - Man To Man (Italy)
There are literally hundreds of these similar artists that make the whole treasure hunting experience so worthwhile. Some recommended artists to check out include:
Ken Laszlo - 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 (Italy)
Linda Jo Rizzo - Heartflash (Tonight) (Germany)
Chester - Hold The Line (Italy)
Dust Man - King Of The Ghetto (Italy)
Cleo - Go Go Dynamo (Italy)
Fake - Frogs In Spain (Sweden)
Laserdance - Humanoid Devotion (Netherlands)
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Dismantle Slash Build
I just read a J.G. Ballard story about a man who lives in a psychiatric complex by a hospital. He quits his job and begins to lie to his wife so that he can spend more and more time sitting on the veranda separating things that he sees from space and time. He does this so that he can no longer identify them as anything more than shapes and colors, a psychedelic and introspective break from reality. Eventually even the distinction of shape and color fade away and he disappears into his mind. (Actually, he walks into a lake after "dismantling" his wife.) It's beautiful to hear Ballard describe the process of dislocation, but as you read, you begin to realize the destruction that comes with absolute commitment to dissolution. A little bit of dislocation gives you perspective, but, as the man's friend tells him "by any degree to which you devalue the external world so you devalue yourself."
I think this battle between destruction and construction is explored with a sometimes sad but always beautiful elegance in Phosphorecent's songs. I'm including a couple here because of the breadth of his work and because they're so good. When I hear them, I get that feeling of Friday afternoon dissolution of the universe, hip-up to a wooden bar. Stepping away from the sometimes tightening screws of day to day life feels so good, but in time you can disconnect completely.
Algebro steps away into a land where Algebro is king, to the dreamland where he's perfect. The song itself hints at the beginning at what it will become, delicately transporting you on the steady disarming platform of Thom Cathcart's voice. It's interesting that Algebro and Phosphorescent both lament rhyming in their songs.
In the Civil Wars' video, John Paul White's loose bow tie says it all. That visual should be the centerpiece of this mix, a stepping away from formalism, crossing the border. The Civil Wars go down into Barton Hollow, a mythical space where the devil lingers and a baptismal river runs through.
These songs examine the idea that to cross over to another place or another way, you must release your old definitions while building new ones. The risk and the gamble is that you could lose your grip on the world as you know it but you could also grow into a whole new sphere of better experiences more integral with who you are.
Buke and Gass dismantle listeners expectations on a visceral level, turning the song structures inside out and exploding sonic expectations so that we leave with a different perception of how songs can twist and turn. Heavy and lithe at the same time, Buke and Gass perfectly illustrate the concept of dismantling and relocation so that their spinning melodies leave listeners standing at ninety degrees to the world they knew before the song.
All this heady talk about breaking away from reality and gripping back, I had to end on a joy note. There's something about the solos in Delicate Steve that playfully jibe with the borderlands. There's no vocals for definition but colorful sound shapes lurching and shifting in myraid prismatic combinations. "Go ahead," they say, "toy with reality."
The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow
Phosphorescent - The Mermaid Parade
Phosphorescent - Reasons To Quit
Algebro - Algebro is King
Buke and Gass - Your Face Left Before You
Delicate Steve - Wondervisions
I think this battle between destruction and construction is explored with a sometimes sad but always beautiful elegance in Phosphorecent's songs. I'm including a couple here because of the breadth of his work and because they're so good. When I hear them, I get that feeling of Friday afternoon dissolution of the universe, hip-up to a wooden bar. Stepping away from the sometimes tightening screws of day to day life feels so good, but in time you can disconnect completely.
Algebro steps away into a land where Algebro is king, to the dreamland where he's perfect. The song itself hints at the beginning at what it will become, delicately transporting you on the steady disarming platform of Thom Cathcart's voice. It's interesting that Algebro and Phosphorescent both lament rhyming in their songs.
In the Civil Wars' video, John Paul White's loose bow tie says it all. That visual should be the centerpiece of this mix, a stepping away from formalism, crossing the border. The Civil Wars go down into Barton Hollow, a mythical space where the devil lingers and a baptismal river runs through.
These songs examine the idea that to cross over to another place or another way, you must release your old definitions while building new ones. The risk and the gamble is that you could lose your grip on the world as you know it but you could also grow into a whole new sphere of better experiences more integral with who you are.
Buke and Gass dismantle listeners expectations on a visceral level, turning the song structures inside out and exploding sonic expectations so that we leave with a different perception of how songs can twist and turn. Heavy and lithe at the same time, Buke and Gass perfectly illustrate the concept of dismantling and relocation so that their spinning melodies leave listeners standing at ninety degrees to the world they knew before the song.
All this heady talk about breaking away from reality and gripping back, I had to end on a joy note. There's something about the solos in Delicate Steve that playfully jibe with the borderlands. There's no vocals for definition but colorful sound shapes lurching and shifting in myraid prismatic combinations. "Go ahead," they say, "toy with reality."
The Civil Wars - Barton Hollow
Phosphorescent - The Mermaid Parade
Phosphorescent - Reasons To Quit
Algebro - Algebro is King
Buke and Gass - Your Face Left Before You
Delicate Steve - Wondervisions
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Fist Pump v. Soft Touch
What separates the most recent waves of folk from sixties and seventies folk and even revivals of that folk are that new acoustic musicians are responding to now classic rock forms that have developed in the years between –not even revolting against them in most cases, but stylistically stripping song forms down to their bones, making them more supple, versatile and sometimes more expressive.
Madi Diaz, I find striking not for the particularly unique instrumentation, but for the vulnerability and straighforwardness of her songs. The lyrics and chords have a midnight FM directness to them, a song built from the open chord DNA of the last thirty years of American songwriting that could sneak into the back of your mind while your eyes have you locked in the dashed rhythm of the road.
This duo, Madi Diaz and guitarist Kyle Ryan, met while honing their chops at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Their style is quiet and simple by deliberate direction, make no mistake, and Ryan’s emotive accentuation highlights this.
Turn back the dial, probably ten years ago or so, I remember when a gaggle of punk bands started releasing acoustic albums. I don’t want to debate the meaning of punk here, regardless these were bands that were getting a lot of juice out of chunky electric distortion and noise. Many of them started covering older songs, still playing traditional punk bar chord down strum style. While some of these compilations may not stand the test of years (and sometimes months), they sometimes hit the alleyway joy of raw busking, and the musicians were on to something they liked, something in the punk ethos, the idea that songs could be reduced to the simplest elements and gain a new shimmering, raw and delicate power.
I like Madi Diaz’s songwriting because, with a couple more players and a few practice sessions, it could easily be blown out into a four piece radio rock band, but, thankfully, this is not the direction the band chooses. They appear, instead, to be searching for something much rarer, something that must be captured with boldness and finesses. Sometimes a soft touch says so much more than a fist pump.
Madi Diaz, I find striking not for the particularly unique instrumentation, but for the vulnerability and straighforwardness of her songs. The lyrics and chords have a midnight FM directness to them, a song built from the open chord DNA of the last thirty years of American songwriting that could sneak into the back of your mind while your eyes have you locked in the dashed rhythm of the road.
This duo, Madi Diaz and guitarist Kyle Ryan, met while honing their chops at Boston’s Berklee College of Music. Their style is quiet and simple by deliberate direction, make no mistake, and Ryan’s emotive accentuation highlights this.
Turn back the dial, probably ten years ago or so, I remember when a gaggle of punk bands started releasing acoustic albums. I don’t want to debate the meaning of punk here, regardless these were bands that were getting a lot of juice out of chunky electric distortion and noise. Many of them started covering older songs, still playing traditional punk bar chord down strum style. While some of these compilations may not stand the test of years (and sometimes months), they sometimes hit the alleyway joy of raw busking, and the musicians were on to something they liked, something in the punk ethos, the idea that songs could be reduced to the simplest elements and gain a new shimmering, raw and delicate power.
I like Madi Diaz’s songwriting because, with a couple more players and a few practice sessions, it could easily be blown out into a four piece radio rock band, but, thankfully, this is not the direction the band chooses. They appear, instead, to be searching for something much rarer, something that must be captured with boldness and finesses. Sometimes a soft touch says so much more than a fist pump.
Madi Diaz // Part 3 from The Parlor on Vimeo.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)