Communication Breakdown

UP THE IRONS !!!!!

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:38:00 +0000

Hailing from the land of magic, wizards and dragons, they sure know how to enthrall a crowd, only difference being, with their talent and mastery over music and its instruments. Iron Maiden, is not simply the best heavy metal band, but they are the only one to actually deserve that title, after being in this heavily competitive metal genre for the past 30 yrs, they still can belt out some amazing songs and can get a 35k crowd to sway to their tunes. And the recent show in Bangalore stands as a testament to all the praises that ive mentioned above. They came, they conquered and they left an everlasting impression on every metalheads heart, brain and neck(from the relentless headbanging). Bruce Dickenson is a fucking Monster. At 50 something, he can deliver more energy than any other 20 yr old band leader.He is simply superb and completely unbelievable. As he said 'Scream for me Bangalore', there was a not a single Eddie loving Maiden head, who dint scream his/her guts out. Such was the energy at Palace Grounds, Bangalore.

Apart from the amazing show, I met Sam Dunn, the movie maker(known for his documentary 'Metal : A HeadBangers Journey'). Spoke to him and headbanged with him for most of the Maiden's set. He took a lot of footage of me and my friends headbanging to maiden songs, we might jus land up in his next documentary. Whether i am there in it or not, I am eagerly awaiting his next documentary.

March 17th , 2007 ... The day i will never forget. Booze, smoke, dope and Iron Maiden.

UP THE IRONS !!!!

The Snake Trap

noreply@blogger.com (sridhar) — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 06:43:00 +0000

is a really cool instrumental rock band. The name describes their long convoluting, extremely pumping songs perfectly! I can't help but smile at their whacky and maybe silly song titles like "Redheaded Manual Festival", "Four Sores And Seven Beers Ago" (parts I, II and III) and "Untitled". Though I'd rather not label them as this genre or that, I'd suggest this band to people who are into post-rock/stoner-rock, especially bands like Pelican and Isis and to anyone who likes long pointless jams. You'd do good to check them out. I can't find even one decent review of their 2006 album "At Home in a Hostile World". They don't even seem to have a homepage! How lazy can a band get? So listen to these guys and spread the word. Their songs also have a loaded bass sound which can crush you to pulp, so go fucking get hold of the bloody album.

noreply@blogger.com (Pritam) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 22:17:00 +0000

Sometimes, I feel bad that there's so much good music in the world, and most if it is out of reach for me.

But right now, I'm bowing to the musical adventures and talents of Porcupine Tree!

In Absentia! :O

Sorry

noreply@blogger.com (Pritam) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 09:03:00 +0000

I had to post this. I know I'm not too good at describing music and so, here goes a review of Discography by the Pet Shop Boys I found on Amazon:

Actually I have to thank Kylie..I bought her greatest hits package "Ultimate" because I mildly like some of her songs...At the cash register, the cashgirl recommended that if I liked Kylie, I would definitely like this band and offered me Discography. I wouldn't buy- I vaguely remember them with their stomping disco number "New York City Boy" but it was nothing to write home about and this package seemed too old- 1991 c'mon...Just for the sake of not hurting the over-excited girl, I check the insert and saw Dusty Springfield's name..Dusty Springfield? With a synth-pop band from other side of Atlantic? What was she thinking? But enough is enough I eventually paid and drove home.

I first listened Kylie but it got thin after a couple of songs- same melodies, same ussh hissshh, same number over and over- very good for jumping on the disco floor but not so exciting to make you go on a dreamland and the lyrics are simply stupid.

Then I put Discography on the stereo...listened two first songs with amusing curiousity-lyrics and structure of the songs were quite interesting- but then the real stomper arrived knocking on all doors of my life: Opportunities...and the rest is just a story, as they say, and I simply fell in love with them.

There is not a single bad or insipid song in the album. Can you believe it?. From the first tunes of West End Girls until the end of Was it Worth it, it almost flows like a magic walk through clouds, through heaven, you laugh, you cry, you dance, you sing, you tap your feet, you think, you are depressed...God, you make everything that music should make you.

But what's more important is the band's striking intelligence...lyrics, structures, compositions, backvocals, production, small touches...are all very well calculated and sincere, just for the sake of making things more fun. Melodies are incredibly catchy and also very complex...miles better than anything Erasure (whom I listened afterwards upon Amazon recommendaton but not impressed) can achieve in their lifetime.

Particular highlights of highlights: Opportunities...Suburbia...What have I done (not surprised Dusty agreed to duet), It's A Sin, Always On My Mind (oh a tepid Elvis song becomes an unbelievably disco stomping piece but what an underlying sadness my friends), Heart, Left To My Own Devices, It's Alright, So Hard,DJ Culture...See, almost the entire album..

Well I have been missing a very important thing in my life and I am sure millions of Americans are still missing it. If only I had the chance to promote them through the Promised Land.

All in all, Discography is a must and Pet Shop Boys are true and clever wizards of Pop. Now back to backcatalogue- my first click on purchase items in Amazon: Please, the first album that started the ball to roll on.

Ahem...Pop

noreply@blogger.com (Pritam) — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 08:44:00 +0000

What would you say if I told you one of my favourite bands was the Pet Shop Boys? That I like their cover of Where the Streets Have No Name as much as the original?

Well they are and I do! Their songs are simple, have a catchy beat, have lyrics that vary from simple and stupid to simple and deep, have amazing music that you can sing along to anytime of the day and songs that stay in your head without any effort on your part.

If you have to listen to Pet Shop Boys, listen to Discography! This Pet Shop Boys album beats all other Greatest Hits of any artist hollow and means so much to me...probably the music that stayed me through the toughest times of my life, i.e. when I was learning Maths :)

More New Music

noreply@blogger.com (Pritam) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 01:40:00 +0000

Phish!!!

They're an amazing band! The songs sound simple and plain and remind you of Dave Matthews Band (should be the other way round actually, since Phish came first). Their lyrics are witty and a lot of fun to listen to, even the sad ones.

Marijuana, the government wants to test me when I pee,
Marijuana, the gift of God to my brothers and me

:)

Lynyrd Skynyrd!!

Wow! I heard a whole album (The Edge of Forever, one of their later ones) and it was really good! Classic rock rules, whatever you guys might say about death metal :P

Tool!!!!

Another amazing band! I was originally told by the recommender that only a few songs are good. I still have to get to listen to 10000 days that Sridhar talked about, but I did hear Aenima (I don't know how to join A and E, so excuse the error :P) and was blown away. Schism and Parabol and Parabola are what I'd heard before and of course, those are God songs!!

The drummer (Dany Carey?) rocks!

New Music

noreply@blogger.com (Pritam) — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 01:28:00 +0000

Hazaaron khwahishen aisi ki har khwahish pe dam nikle
Bahut nikle mere armaan lekin phir bhi kam nikale

God only knows why I hadn't paid attention to Ghazals before. They're slow and sometimes they're boring, but when they're written by Ghalib, they're divine.

Let the singer have his flourishes of pitch. Humour him as he plays with the beat. Get teased when he teases you with the poetry, giving you one word at a time, but in the end, drown yourself in the lyrics and the singer's voice and if you can identify with the song like I did with Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi, then all the best in trying to think about something else :)

Two ghazals, that's all it took for me to decide I'm embarking on a Ghalib discovery tour. Ankur (my roommate) prefers to look at the song as a performance by the singer, admiring all the nuances of the music and the "brilliant improvisations". Me, I'm listening and digesting, word by word, the lyrics. Translations are sometimes necessary since I don't even have a good grasp of Hindi, let alone Urdu, but it's all worth it.

So listen to these, for the lyrics, with everything else as decoration and you'll know what I'm talking about:

1. Jagjit Singh - Hazaaron Khwahishen Aisi.
2. Mehdi Hassan - Ranjish hi Sahi

Each is written by Ghalib, and...and...ouch! My heart hurts ;-)

Virulence Is What I've Got

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:46:00 +0000

How does that sound for a song title ? ..... ALLOOOO ... here i am, posting after a very very long time .... if u r wondering, wat the fuck was i doing ?, then the answer would be simple ... nothing .. i was jus being lazy and i dint post :D ..... anyways, so wats on my play list these days .... ohh lotsa new stuff ... would go into details in next post . But as of now, i am totally digging my head up to my arse into brutal death metal. ive always been a technical death metal freak and i still am, i need a fix of tech death daily, but now i am also addicted to brutal death :) ... some bands like decrepit birth, bane of existence, vomitory, beheaded, cenotaph, etc are insane . they put in so much musically in one song, never losing out the brutality. chugging riffs, hyperblasts, ripping solos and some really amazing growls .... all trademarks of brutal death metal. If we talk abt Brutal Death Metal then we have to talk abt Cannibal Corpse. Wat this one band has achieved over the years is truely amazing. Right from the time they started to their 2006 release, they have been true to wat they believe and have never sold out. This shows the passion for their music. and i must say that their new release is as brutal as their prev ones and if not even more technical. I love these guys.

anways i gotta get to my project guide now .... will catch up on particular albums in my next post.

tchao.

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 03:44:00 +0000

Psycroptic - Lacertine Forest

my fav band :)

Primushead!

noreply@blogger.com (sridhar) — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 19:11:00 +0000

Thats a new term I invented! Tommy the Cat and Antipop were the only Primus songs I knew. That was until I heard Jerry the Race Car Driver, Wynona's Big Brown Beaver and DMV. Turned out to be some of the heaviest stuff I ever heard. And now, I'm a Primushead. This has to be the funkiest stuff ever played. I'm also listening to a lot of Les' side projects like Les Claypool's Frog Brigade, Oysterhead and the stuff he did with Buckethead. Primus toured with RHCP in the early late 80s. Those gigs must have been explosive. Interestingly, I'm listening to a lot of 3 member bands these days.. like Hendrix, Primus (of course!), Cream (Jack Bruce, the bassist has to get a double thumbs up). I'm also listening to loads of Nine Inch Nails which is quite good to listen to occasionally. I've listened to a few songs from Mastodon's latest Blood Mountain. It hasn't hit the spot yet, but I can't expect anything short of brilliant from these guys. I've downloaded a few albums of Today is the Day, an other crazy band who used to play stoner rock/metal and are now playing grindcore. Fans of Mastodon should take note because Brann Dailor has played with this band on a couple of albums. And ofcourse, Radiohead has been constantly growing on me. I'm addicted to their BBC live concert. Ah, while I'm on the Primus topic, according to me, Wynona's Big Brown Beaver and The Devil went to Georgia have to be some of the best animated videos ever. That'd be a good place for non Primusheads to start off.

PS: why aren't the other contributors writing anything? where the fuck are u all. And I just finished listening to Bladecatcher (on Blood Mountain). Fuck! Its got to be the weirdest Mastodon composition till date. They are sounding like Obscura era Gorguts. Hehe. exaggerations aside, fuck that track is weird!

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:36:00 +0000

Atheist - Piece of Time (Wacken 2006)

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:36:00 +0000

Atheist - An Incarnations Dream (Wacken 2006)

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:35:00 +0000

Atheist - And the Psychic Saw (Wacken 2006)

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:34:00 +0000

Atheist - An Incarnation's Dream at Wacken 2006

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:34:00 +0000

Atheist - On They Slay at Wacken 2006

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:20:00 +0000

Atheist - Mother Man (Wacken 2006'

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 05:07:00 +0000

Atheist - Retribution at Wacken 2006

Atheist is back :D

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:50:00 +0000

Fantomas - Pages 3, 4 & 5 (live)

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:49:00 +0000

Fantomas - Pages 6, 8, 9, 10 & 12 (live)

for ppl in IIT .. try to watch it through some anonymiser or something

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:48:00 +0000

Fantomas - Page 14 + Simply Beautiful (live)

noreply@blogger.com (db freak) — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 12:46:00 +0000

Fantomas - Slayer Medley (live)

Chk this shit out

Arbit Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Pritam) — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 05:49:00 +0000

I haven't posted here for a long time now, and no one else seems to have either :P

I finally get what off-beat means! I mean, I knew what it meant before, but now I finally understood what's so 'off-beat' about it.

Also, lots of Hindi songs (both old and new) have impressed me with their beat patterns. Rehman (or is it Rahman?) seems to have a lot of fun with his beats. Of course, lots of songs don't really use real drums. But whatever the instrument (tabla, weird sounds, etc.), there are many interesting things to look out for!

Oh, the nonsense I have to do when I don't have drums to play :P

New Music :

.1. Hip-hop is for the most part nonsense. The lyrics and the grunts are disgusting! But some songs, as usual, stand out. And the beats are what seem to give the USP to most songs. So that's good. Some good songs : Where did you go (don't know singer :P), Sergio Mendes and Black Peas (Don't know songname :P)....there's good music everywhere :D

.2. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy...Nice song with very unusual sound to it. Cool :)

.3. Sandi Thom - Wish I was a punk rocker : Very cool song! Nothing special about it in terms of music and all. But the lyrics are nice, and true too.

.4. RHCP - It's already been reviewed here, but I would like add my one paisa by saying "Tell Me Baby"'s a very nice song, but unusually ordinary-sounding for RHCP.

.5. Umm...That's it :P

Question for debate : Has the age of rock come to an end? Of course, hip-hop has taken over, but what I mean to say is, have good rock songs and bands that don't sound like something already done before stopped coming out? :(

Stadium Arcadium

noreply@blogger.com (sridhar) — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 18:03:00 +0000

Well, here is it, the double disc epic that I have been waiting for! Sadly, thats where the excitement ends. This album has simply failed to surprise me. There are freaking 28 tracks on the album! Unfortunately, a sizeable number of them sound like filler. The playing of both Frusciante and Flea sadly comes across as lazy. I miss those freak-out bass gallops of Flea which are nowhere to be found on this album. That said, a few songs are actually good, the kind of stuff you'd expect from RHCP, although as already said, a majority of the songs simply pass by. The sound is too bland for my taste and to add to it, all the songs are either mid-tempo (by rhcp standards) or beloew mid-tempo! I don't know if its just me, but a few songs on this "epic" sound like rip offs of earlier RHCP material. OMFG, I should stop typing now before I get depressed.. I just wanted to love this album :((

I'm going to keep listening to it though, hoping that it'd get me going at some point.

Goodbye To Romance:Standards For A New Generation

noreply@blogger.com (sridhar) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:36:00 +0000

That's the name of Alex Skolnick Trio's first recording. For those you who don't know Alex Skolnick, he was the guitarist in Testament during The Legacy/The New Order era. This on the other hand is a total guitar driven jazz/funk record! It'd be a shame not to mention the amazing rhythm section, which completes the trio. I guess, this could well be an introductory jazz lesson for most newbies (and I am one). Its interesting to see a metalhead, who has played in one of the thrash monsters play jazz. We also get to hear an amazingly funky jazz rendition of the great War Pigs (by Sabbath, you dumbass!) and also a beautiful version of Dream On (Aero-fuckin-Smith :) The other songs could also be renditions of other artists, but I'm not familiar with them. Give these guys a try!

Apart from Goodbye to Romance, I've been listening to Usfret (by Trilok Gurtu) atleast a couple of times daily. This is the first time I've heard Gurtu's work and man, its just out of this world. This is a funk meets indian classical meets jazz album. Shobha Gurtu's hindustani vocals are intense. There are lots of awesome intstrumental interludes, lots of jams with saxophones, guitars, bass, tabla, drums, flute etc. So, those of you who want to take a break from teh hedbanging can go ahead and listen to these bands.

An other band that has been blowing my mind is Mahavishnu Orchestra.. but more on them later. Until then, meh.

Textures - Polars

noreply@blogger.com (sridhar) — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 10:00:00 +0000

Very few albums leave you mind-fucked after just the first listen. This is one such album. The band is called Textures and the album, Polars. It is very difficult to put into words what we have here. It won't take too long before you realize the quality of the musicians in question. At first Textures might seem like a Meshuggah clone. But according to me, this band is everything Meshuggah can and can't be, and more! Meshuggah albums are never so easily appreciated. This is not to take anything away from the Swedish metal gods, but its just that one has to spend a lot of time listening to the albums again and again to get a hang of the music. I couldn't imagine falling in love with a Meshuggah album after just the first listen. Anyway, coming back to Polars, there are a lot of ambient sections in the album, which perfectly compliment the heavier sections. The album infact ends with a 14 mins long ambient track, which is probably one of the best "calm" endings ever composed.

The talent of the band shines through in the extremely awesome title track which is 19 mins long. Its definitely not an album for everyone, but those of you into bands like Meshuggah, Tool, Strapping Young Lad and the various side projects of Devin Townsend will immediately identify with the music. This 8 track, almost an hour long mammoth of an album is like a dream come true for me and thousands of extreme-metalheads. Such refreshing and exciting metal is very rare to come by and please please listen to this! I have read comments and reviews on the net which claim Polars to be the best album to have ever come out of The Netherlands. I really cannot back that up, but I agree that this is one of the most beautiful albums I've heard in a while.