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MUSIC!!!
Well, I figured since I love music so much that I'd throw a music page on here as well. I'm going to try and throw up reviews of cd's I've recently purchased as often as I can. Those of you who know me know that I buy more music than is probably healthy (I just hit 450 cd's this summer), so this page should probably be updated pretty frequently.
NOTE: Everything I said in the previous paragraph has turned out to be totally inaccurate. Since writing it, I spent 3 years working at Tower Records and amassed nearly 3,000 albums. Everything I thought I knew about music has since flown skyward out the opinionated window of my mind. If by "updated frequently" I meant "updated this one time", then I was completely accurate... I'm such a tool. I've also realized that much of the music I believed to be cool was, in fact, utter poo-poo. Henceforth, all commentary on this page written in this color is NEW updated material.
NINE INCH NAILS: The Fragile - What can I say? For those of you who know me relatively well, then you have some idea of how excited I am that this CD is finally out. It's been a long five years and it's pretty obvious, even the first time you listen to it, that Trent has been a very busy man. Frankly, after being sorely disappointed by the Manson CD... actually, it's probably some kind of mortal sin to even refer to Mechanical Animals as a CD... but anyway, after that fiasco, I was a little apprehensive of what The Fragile had in store for me. But, on Monday night when my friends and I drove half an hour into Columbus we weren't disappointed. I think that this is easily one of the best CD's to be released this decade and if it has even half the impact that I think it's going to, then it will be Reznor's crowning achievement. The big hype surrounding this CD was, "Can he compete with The Downward Sprial?" Surely that put him under a great deal of pressure. Not only does he compete with his last release, but he manages to maintain the crunchy drums, awkward guitar riffs and stirringly beautiful melodies that have come to define Nine Inch Nails for me. I think that this CD, although full of some of the same self-loathing that was found on The Downward Spiral, has some optimistic and even happy places on it. So, whether you hate NIN or whether you've got umpteen million bootlegs and a thousand NIN shirts, it is impossible to deny that Trent put forth a valiant effort into making these discs. Parts of it are textbook Nine Inch Nails: hard guitars, hard vocals and flawless complexity in the mixing. There are definitely head banging, moshing parts to it, but at the same time, there are also instrumental tracks including pianos and cellos, jazz beats and soul.
Despite my hardcore NIN fan status, I do find some of the lyrics to be a little weak and recycled... at some points it's almost like, "Hey, haven't we covered this ground before?", but even then, what the CD lacks lyrically, it makes up for musically. This CD is going to be huge, so go get a copy while they're still out there (who am I kidding? They'll be around forever).
Below, I've included some NIN links, etc. for your further enjoyment... NIN fans are some of the most dedicated people I've ever met and there are vastly superior webpages out there if you're looking for NINfo... enjoy. Oh, and if the links are confusing to you, then it's because I intended for them to be that way. It is in no way related to the fact that HTML is a foreign language to me.
KORN: Follow the Leader - I love this cd. This is one of the best cd's I bought all summer. If you're into this sort of hardcore stuff, then I'm sure you'd like it too. It's one of those cd's that just can't disappoint any KoRn fans, I don't think. There's all sorts of new grunting and screaming from Jonathan Davis that will make your skin crawl. Plus, Cheech Marin makes an appearance on the bonus track "Earache My Eye" and Ice Cube is featured on the track "Children of the Korn". This is an excellent cd and is done in true KoRn fashion. The bass guitars sound incredible, with all sorts of distorted riffs and such (sorry for the lack of technical lingo here... I don't play musical instruments, I just know what I like to listen to). So, if you're a KoRn fan and you don't have this cd yet, then you need to get on the ball.
Jesus Christ... who in the hell was I kidding? KoRn?!?! Crap Rock?!?! I'm almost embarassed to call myself a member of the human race. Granted, they're not as bad as your N'Sync or ... *shudder* ... Saliva (click, click, SHITE!!!), but they're damn close. These pathetic panty-wastes haven't had the priveledge of access to my compact disc player for a LONG, long time and I don't expect that to change anytime soon. I can see why they appealed to me at a certain point, and perhaps their penultimate crappiness is not entirely of their own doing. A great deal of it has to do with the utter saturation of the market with THAT kind of music... over and over... rehash after rehash until it's music that's been reprocessed more than a can of SPAM or Vienna Sausage. By the way, I apologize if you actually like Vienna Sausage.
PI: Music for the Motion Picture - This is definitely a different cd. Clint Mansell does the score for this movie (former lead singer of Pop Will Eat Itself... another of Matty's favorites) and it's unbelievable. There's Aphex Twin, Roni Size, Orbital, David Holmes... and various others. This is an exerpt from the liner notes:
"The progressive electronic sounds of [Pi], and in fact this entire evolutionary trend in music, is the edgy and highly cerebral soundtrack to our lives. The artists that produce these landscapes of sound are the prophets that have come along to indentify the bigger picture - to provide evidence of the soul in the machine."
Well... I dunno if I'd go that far, but I really liked the soundtrack. The selection of works from the various artists can only really be appreciated once you go and see the movie itself. Here's what the liner notes to my cd had to say about the movie: (sorry... they just sum it up better than I could)
"The natural world is full of different shapes and patterns, but the beauty of the perfect circle has always held a special intrigue for man. In his effort to define the form that he saw in the iris' of his loved one's eyes and in the glowing globes of the sun and moon, he divided the circumference of each circle by its diameter and discvered [Pi]. In the continuing struggle to isolate an exact measure of this magic ratio, mystical meaning was attached to this omnipresent, infinite string of numbers that couldn't be defined by mankind's tools.
In [Pi], the movie, the pursuit of the infinite takes on a deeper meaning. Max Cohen is a number theorist living in New York obsessed with the pursuit of this potentially unsolvable problem. Yet, what the story and the age-old problem uncovers is the deeper link between the mysteries of life and other topics of consciousness as seemingly disparate as the stock market, the Kaballah, technology, our DNA, and the stars in the sky."
Anyway, if you're heavy into the electronic scene, then this soundtrack is for you. It's got all sorts of obscure techno on it and it's great if you're in one of those "moods".
Yes... absolutely true, %100 of it... Unfortunately if you slept on this one, then it's too late because it's OUTTA PRINT!! Check for it on eBay if you're looking for a copy... may be a bit pricey.
MARILYN MANSON: Mechanical Animals - Words cannot express how much this cd sucks. It is the worst piece of drivel I've ever had the misfortune of listening to. The guy is washed up... a phony. He just straight up sucks. The cd's lyrics and guitar riffs are as recycled as a Nelson song... it's the same old stuff with Mr. Manson, just "god is in the tv" or "I don't like the drugs but the drugs like me". I'm sorry, but you can only write SO MANY songs about god or drugs before they get really really repetitive and boring. And MAN... for an atheist, he sure does talk about god a whole lot. He's not scary anymore and perhaps the singlemost disappointing thing about this cd is that I realized he never really was. It's bad music shrouded in white makeup, scary contacts, hairspray, and prosthetic boobs. All his music that I liked before is still good for one simple reason; that is Trent Reznor. If you look at the new cd's liner notes, you'll notice that Reznor's name appears nowhere on it. It's really obvious to me now who the musical brains behind Marilyn Manson used to be. I was never really into Manson because I like listening to songs about sodomy or anything like that, it was just really cool music to listen to. I love hard stuff, and his stuff was hard and just fun to sit around and headbang to. I also used to think that Manson had some semblance of a purpose in the music industry, but I was wrong. He's there just to make money and sell his crap to the masses. Well, I bought it folks and it sucks. My copy's a dartboard now, so at least I got something out of it.
METHOD MAN: Tical 2000: Judgement Day - Well, I must say I like this cd. It's kind of mediocre and I don't think that it's nearly as good as his first one, but it's definitely worth a listen. I think that my favorite track is probably #10 - Suspect Chin Music, featuring Street Life... the cut with Redman on it is also good, #24 - Big Dogs. It's full of celebrity cameos as well played as if they're leaving messages on Meth's answering machine. No matter what the content, the members of the Wu Tang Clan seem to always come through. They have a style all their own and for that reason alone, I think that any of their cd's are worthy of checking out. You may not like Method Man or the Wu Tang Clan at all, but if you like rap, you have to admit that these guys are original.
BECK: Mutations - Beck comes through again as far as I'm concerned. The cd is completely different from "Odelay", but I like it. It's much more mellow and folkish. A friend and I even had a debate over one of the songs because he thought a country station would consider playing it while I didn't; although a few of the tracks sound very country if you take away the very strange lyrics and replace them with some about a dead dog and some liquor. This is a great cd and anyone who likes older Beck stuff would love it. It goes a completely different direction from Odelay although there are some synthesized elements towards the end of some of the songs. It's definitely worth checking out at least.
More to come... unless I decide to drop the page for another 6 months like I've been doing.
