tunesmithery

AlSaadi’s prominent, romping bass lines recall those of, well, of Montreal circa Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? to begin with but in terms of genre categorisation-cum-compartmentalisation, TEEN are nigh on impossible to pigeonhole or stereotype. Their records have tired many a determined hack when desperately, and with that deplorably attempting to do so, so we’ll spare ourselves the trouble.

Turning from genre to gender a moment, another of the more intriguing differences between tonight and however-many afternoons ago concerns something of a sexual imbalance: maybe it’s merely due to the fact that, generalising, there tend to be more men than women at most London dates. (This far from revolutionary finding might not directly apply to your every-way-average O2, or Wembley Arena pop spectacular, although in those more independent venues, the generalisation largely rings perturbingly true.)

Skirting gingerly around the rather sizeable Latitude perimeter at the heart of Suffolk’s Henham Park, the ‘Friends of Latitude’, charity-geared minibus shuttle driver deems the event “a good, honest festival.”

So irreproachable is the momentarily, overly processed vocal of SOHN, that it sounds as though its beholder has yet to hold a lit cigarette between index and middle phalanges. Returning to the scene of his first UK show, if he was then “under the trees”, then he now enthrals a vast audience underneath the tarpaulin of the BBC Radio 6 Music Stage.

wow this guy is horrific

"Sherman" is great because (A) it's a cracking slice of danceable anger-funk and (B) the video is reminiscent of the best TV show that never was ...

A cracking slice of genre filmmaking that nods to vintage Michael Mann and Martin Scorsese as well as the new generation of Latin American filmmakers

That's a cracking slice of smooth r&b. The guitar playing is great. I really both the tones you've used for the solos, but I thought you could have ...

Truth Lies Bleeding is another cracking slice of the dark side of life from Tony Black and proof that he's got plenty of tricks up his sleeve

A cracking slice of deep-sea unease., 23 April 2004. By. Brian Flange "qflestrin". This review is from: The Kraken Wakes (Paperback).

4.0 out of 5 stars ...a cracking slice of pop r'n'b... The PR bumph is at pains to point out that 2 years have passed since JoJo had her break out hit with "Leave ...

Another cracking slice of original disco music by Drop Out Orchestra. This track is also included on the up and coming 'Original & Unreleased' vinyl...

Here's a cracking slice of nu-disco from the on-form Cosmonauts. Free DL here. If you enjoy this check out Default and Picassio - More Order (although I...

Gan to the secret pizza shop in the cosmo, cracking slice of pizza and then hookers and toot.

omg dying at "Russian-American quirkstrel"

only 2 ilx occurrences of cracking slice:

mark e wrote this on thread Bloc Party Go Dance on board I Love Music on Apr 29, 2010

I like it, more than anything on Intimacy anyway. Especially when he launches into that higher melody to ride out the end.

agree.
once it gets going its a cracking slice of old fashioned rave pop.
bring on the beatmasters radio edit.

mark e wrote this on thread move over mr fopp, there is a new player in your broken town. on board I Love Music on Dec 30, 2013

i am biassed re delakota as most of that crew became the backing band/studio gurus for gorillaz, and had been the senseless things.

so, it was all part of the joining dots process.

that said, its a cracking slice of laid back sample heavy indie dance pop.

Obama Girl came back to help her candidate win Iowa. This is the worst viral campaign of the noughties, wethinks.

Bolshie Russian-American quirkstrel Regina Spektor is, and always ought to be regarded as something of a fringe player. Sure, much of latest and sixth full-length What We Saw From The Cheap Seats is trimmed with powdery pop propensities that in the wrong, racketeering hands could be sprinkled into a Miley Cyrus record or if tinkled out of the commensurately wrong fingers could be construed as stuff saccharine extracted from some rightfully neglected gobbet of Vanessa Carlton’s discography (A Thousand Miles lamentably, inevitably excluded). But in an era of artificiality in which ears mutilated under the knife are further maimed by unlistenability, we ought to regard Spektor as something of a pop mutineer; a saviour of sorts as those dorky ringlets of hers flounce whilst she hops the fences of convention, flouting contemporary praxis.

― Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (nakhchivan), Thursday, 24 July 2014 00:28 (1 month ago)

that is literally a capital offence

Victoria Aitken, the New York and London-based socialite songstress, has teamed up with the Scumfrog, a New York-based D.J., on her recent single “Sunshine,” which is currently No. 7 on the British dance charts. The light-spirited house track was inspired by a Latin loffer she met on holiday in Spain. “He was very charming, funny and interesting,” she says. “The only problem was that others thought so too, and they were girls who dressed up to the nines in diamonds and couture.” According to Aitken, the song is also a hit with her father, Jonathan Aitken, the disgraced former Tory cabinet minister. (Dad wasn’t a big fan of her last video, “I’ll Be Your Bitch,” in which she danced suggestively while brandishing a whip and in preparation for which she took pole-dancing classes.)

High octane no frills bluesicianship - a solid testament to the enduring power and influence of blues inflected rock - especially the variety in which a wailing Fender Strat comes front and centre.

Very much his own man musically, it's readily apparent from the expanse of his regal tone and his inherent bluesicality that Houston was passed the baton by none other than sax-griot Gene Ammons when he died in 1974.

Q. Why Should Londonist Readers Go And See You?

A. Because for better or worse there is no other band that plays live in the way we play live – it actually is ambientertainment, plus we have a special ghost star

lol I actually recognised that last & have seen the "band" in question

As an artist he believes strongly that art itself should be questioning and bewildering as opposed to patronizing and restricting. As opposed to the current fashion he does not want to dictate a way to the understanding of his art, but rather indicate a path to understanding a story.

His work resonates with the kind of quirkmanship that is very much liked in at the House of Worshipful!

Les Mouches - You're Worth More to Me Than 100 Christians

Clever Cactumus'd from Ish. It's solid quirkoustic most of the way through, with some inexplicable freaking out toward the beginning.

Described as “quirky” and “eclectic” he has logically positioned himself smack in the middle of the Quirklectic genre. “You never know what to expect,” is a ...

blissblog

Thursday, September 27, 2007

In 1978 NME writer Miles wrote about a New Wave sub-style he dubbed "geometric, jerky quickstep"--exponents included XTC, Devo, Ultravox, with tinges in Talking Heads and Pere Ubu. The herky-jerkiness overlaps with Quirk ("geometric jerky quirkstep" perhaps) but with Quirk as Kid Shirt defined the ancestry's more in Genesis than in the cooler things Miles sources his thing in (Eno, Kraftwerk, Cluster).

Oh My God Guys I Think I May Have Hit The Jackpot

http://www.geocities.ws/genresound/week/11-3-8-04.htm

The herky-jerkiness overlaps with Quirk

Andrew St James is an 19 year old singer songwriter from San Francisco's foggy west side.

With a beyond-his-years lyrical vision and a unique gift for melody-making, St James's music lands firmly in the alternative folk world. His timeless songwriting skills will make you second guess his age.

ugh, the Chicago radio station WXRT (which, if it still exists in anything resembling its 1990s form, would be catgeorized as "Adult Album Alternative") had a particular fondness for middle-aged singer-songwriters that were precisely the type to be described as "songsmiths" or "craftsmen." that included pretty great (yet still kind of boring, in a certain view) folks like Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson, but also people like Freedy Johnston and a million others either more obscure or too dull to recall.

the whole tunesmith/songsmith/craftsman meme always bugged me because the range of music described as such was always so circumscribed, and therefore the whole notion had a reactionary flavor, like this certain type (and only this certain type) of temperate rock music with punning lyrics and self-consciously twisty melodies was some kind of pinnacle of aesthetic achievement. like I said, I actually don't mind much of the music made in this vein (see also Aimee Mann) but the attitudes that circulate around it--and the word/concepts of tunesmithery/songsmithery/craftsmanship as they are applied to it--make my stomach churn.

guy clark, whose music i like but don't love, seems to have :ahem: "crafted" a persona that is all about this. in fact at least two of his albums refer to his status as a songwriter/craftsman. now some of that is just marketing, some of it is just plain true... but a lot of it seems like a weird (and unnecessary?) defensive gesture against accusations/anxieties (on his part? labels?) that his music is too even-keeled, too plain, too samey, or just too dull. it's pointing critics and audiences toward a certain kind of appreciation, suggesting that they are smart, mature, etc. for appreciating the modest but true virtues of sincere and patient craftsmanship. again, not sure there is anything wrong with this per se but when this stuff becomes a kind of credo it's hard to take.

The mere sight of Kim Wilde's luscious, simmering smouldering (I could go on and on) pout is enough to reduce the Ed to a puddle of quivering 501s. Her effect on men is more than enough reason for us chicks to resent her, one would think, but it's impossible to dislike either the songstrel or her pert electro-pop dance numbers.

Kate Bush's Babooshka storyline as follows - wife wants to test husband so pretends to be younger foxtrel named Babooshka and seduces him via snail-interweb (i.e. letters). Husband likes Babooshka because she reminds him of his wife. They then meet and he still doesn't twig and falls for wife-in-disguise. This is all meant to be very bad according to KB but she doesn't explain why.
― Tom, Friday, 16 November 2001 01:00 (12 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A passionate beatsmith from the start, Roman Flügel’s thirst for inspiration always drives him to where the party is happening

http://crackmagazine.net/music/roman-flugel/

this is written by an ilxor afaik, hope this is a 'shout out' to this thread mb

Solar Motel was received as a singular work of guitarroristic finesse, turning up across many year ends lists (Uncut, New Yorker, etc) and provoking ecstatic comparisons to psychedelic visionaries and the countless champions of guitar-based music who tend to outlive the trends.

https://twitter.com/normalfootyguy/status/560175187879284736

✓

Solar Motel was received as a singular work of guitarroristic finesse, turning up across many year ends lists (Uncut, New Yorker, etc) and provoking ecstatic comparisons to psychedelic visionaries and the countless champions of guitar-based music who tend to outlive the trends.

― Enterprise Lesotho (nakhchivan), Friday, December 26, 2014 12:37 AM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know someone in this band. Not gonna engage in name-droppery though.

very good album but they could do with a better press release writer

they are not skilled in the art of publicitry

press releasemanship

http://i.imgur.com/r2ltRx8.jpg

It is bands like Embers that blow us away by the mere fact that they are willing to take a risk, which a lot of people never do during their entire lifetimes, and that through doing so we’re reminded of the reasons we love working with bands like them in the first place. Isn’t it just fucking brilliant how things change when you least expect them to? We’re now overjoyed that they’ve allowed us to release their next offering, Part Of The Echoes, via Killing Moon which will be out on Monday 8th July at a limited edition 7″ vinyl and digital download. Now check out the press releasery bit…

'Part Of The Echoes' is another wonderful piece of songwriting, with Embers managing to match those widescreen, Sigur Ros style moments to something approaching a pop song.

oof

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqhDF7KfSio

Don't think she's got an ILX mention, but as pedal-steel dreamballadry goes, this is truly astounding. Listen if you like widescreen melancholia (which I often don't, hence the surprising extent to which this has gotten under my skin)

― imago, Friday, 18 April 2014 21:30 (9 months ago)

^obvs tongue-in-cheek, but well played

Equal parts jagged street swagger, frayed country ballads and boozed-up blues, the third record from this NYC quartet seems torn largely from the Rolling Stones playbook, circa 1971. Album opener "The Madman Sleeps” and the rough-hewn "Dead Man” are driven by Keith’n’Ronnie-style interplay between singer (and sole songwriter) Mike Storey and fellow guitarist Steve Strohmeier, while "Slow Drag” finds the two trading ragged, grabbed-at harmonies. The album’s highlight is traditional blues number "Real Cocaine Blues,” given a live-off-the-floor treatment here to gloriously ramshackle effect. That said, The Violent Bear It Away is not simply a collection of Stones-ian riffsmithery. The oddly named "Drinking Who Hit John,” as well as the title track, bears witness to the band’s artier ambitions, while poetic closer "Gone (Like Fighting Fire)” suggests less conventional possibilities for the future.

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