eashfa
Head is alive. Hence the sound of music.Archive for australia
Forever Thursday
I just love my readers, especially those that obsess about songs and then obsess about finding the song when you can’t remember anything except a couple of lyrics. Paul, that means you. I felt quite silly not knowing who Paul was asking about in the mail he sent me, but that feeling of music-know-it-all supremo comes and flows or goes. Speaking of flow, before I digress, the song Paul eventually found is this:
Get it while it’s hot and JC Penney don’t slap my file hosts with a stick. And before you hear it all over the airwaves inducing that can-someone-cut-my-head-off syndrome.
Triosk - the cereal of the future
Triosk are three guys from Australia with a taste for sounds derivative of jazz, but with a more compound style attached. Don’t get me wrong, this music might seem layered to the point of all absurdity at times, but it simply takes the beauty of jazz - improvization (they do improvise during their live sets) and an array of electronic artillery to craft waves of floaty+crackly music. Like a bowl of milk and cereal.
Triosk have been around since 2001 and sound like they know what they’re doing but they’re still fooling around: like on 20,000 Dollar Handshake there’s a fidgety piano in the background that has no logical reason for being there in light of the totally different beat from the rhythm section..
Also, in jazz as you might know, you basically play the piano backwards compared to classical music - you have to re-hash what you think you know about making the piano talk. Triosk have that backwards approach down, and I can’t figure what exactly sets the ambiance in my favourite track - Lost Broadcast, they have so many things going at once. That specific track suffers (pretty well I might add) from the ‘is it a bird is it a plane” syndrome. Chaos that isn’t random, that might strike you as oh-so Prefuse 73.
Intensives Leben certainly had that effect on me, but no one song determines the big picture of what Triosk sound like. You have to check them out for yourselves. Oh and another thing I love - no vocals, a sign of a superior breed of noise.
howling bells and synaesthesia
They smear their music gently using rectangular vocals (synaesthetically speaking) and the frilly distorted harmonies I'm so keen on. If I mention Coldplay, will you leave? Oh bother. Well don't because Setting Sun is the track that reminds me of Coldplay before they went all U2 on us. Beautifully eroded by country-inspired sounds, it's amplified by the guitar distort - rhythm section relationship that made Coldplay so mesmerizing at first. That being the musical backdrop, I couldn't picture the song without Juanita Stein's vocals. Think PJ Harvey on downers. I don't even have to hear the lyrics and her voice tells me a story. Howling Bells are an Australian band, I maybe should have started with that.
Recorded with renowned Coldplay (sic) producer Ken Nelson.
Musical influences include the likes of Johnny Cash, Tom Waits, Kate Bush, Loretta Lynn, Mazzy Star and My Bloody Valentine…
Films have also been a big influence on the sound and style of Howling
Bells and their music has a widescreen, cinematic quality. One writer
recently coined the term "indie noir" to describe their sound.
Alongside the work of David Lynch, films such as "Amelie", " Paris ,
Texas ", "Rumblefish"," and "Gadjo Dilo" have helped shape the bands
aesthetic.
I generally associate music with colours. For Amy Beach it was like a mnemotechnique for "complex harmonizations". Here's how she saw the notes, literally:
- Blue - Ab
- Green - A
- Pink - Eb
- Violet - Db
- White - C
- Red - G
- Yelllow - E
- Black - F# minor or G# minor
I see Guillemots as swirly and sandy white, for instance. Howling Bells are some kind of red, maybe crimson.
Howling Bells - This City's Burning mp3
Howling Bells - Low Happening mp3
Howling Bells - Setting Sun mp3 (*swoon)
Howling Bells - Velvet Girl mp3
For the guy who googled his way onto this blog, with the search string "what should i call my band" or something in the like, it depends what you're going for with your music but I personally like the sound of Phantom Limbs. I'd review a band named Phantom Limb, I would.
Further reading: synaesthesia
Howling Bells official site
MySpace
Buy Howling Bells Digipack (whatever that is)
