Nineteen ninety eight
You should have gone back to this
riff noun \ˈrif\ music : a short and usually repeated pattern of notes in a song : a short set of comments on a particular subject
Showing posts with label Noise Rock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Noise Rock. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 10, 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Swans - Mother of the World
Riff mark: 0:00
Praise be to Michael Gira, whose name slant rhymes with “my
hero.” The only musician sane enough to mug madness in its maw as the world around
him rots with sophomoric protocol. His lack of compromise through thirty years
of determined incubation now hatches the penultimate climax of every Swans
paragon, The Seer, an album with
both patience and inevitability not unlike steamrollers. There are extracts:
the grinding steel-mill repetitions of Filth
and Children of God, the
face-to-mirror self-scolding of White
Light, and the scattered banging of haunted fireworks that is Soundtracks for the Blind, all of which
are swallowed by the hulking prominence of The
Seer and its ambitious, majestic two-hour span, seeming to forget names and
meanings, operating through cores rather than itemizations (I see it all). Songs
are secondary to ideas here, peculiar percussion jackhammering waypoints for
strummed and slaughtered strings, vocals not of a foreign tongue, but of a
foreign life, everything totaling into lumbering, freakish mammoths for tracks:
three of which combine for 70 minutes. Deceptively NOT boring, but passionate and demanding, as each punctuation note in the minimalism that is
the bursting middle of the title track (the only 32-minute thing I’ll ever like)
is a necessary tally mark. The orchestration in each explosion is tremendous,
quantities of drums accompanied by woodwinds, cellos, pipes, chimes, harmonicas,
orchestras of dissonance finding singularity in existence. Utterly
indescribable with words, labels, or tonality, yet ardently recommended for its unchartered
prose, which Gira narrates with courage amidst age (late 50’s at time of
release), frustration, and sobering recall: pained wisdom expressed by an
individualist in universal concepts, older than earth, known by anything green
or with pulse.
Wednesday, March 11, 2015
Helmet - Give It
0:14 mark.
If there was ever a record packed front to back with beefcake riffs, it is the lumbering behemoth that is Meantime. Former Band of Susans guitarist Page Hamilton formed Helmet in 1989 and after several 7" singles and debut LP, Strap It On released through Amphetamine Reptile Records, they unleashed this crusher as their Interscope Records debut in 1992.
Fortunately, I am the one doing this write up instead of my counterpart, otherwise you would be reading a review of Just Another Victim feat. House of Pain from the oh so wonderful Judgement Night soundtrack. Anyway, I digress, these riffs hit like a sledgehammer, either used for the demolition of a building or to cave in your skull. It might be hard to believe based on the fuzz laced noise coming through the speakers, but Page Hamilton has a masters degree in jazz guitar and has composed scores for a number of movies such as Heat and Titus.
Back to the matter at hand, which is the ringing left in your ears by the sonic force of this record. It is the audio equivalent of that gum commercial from a few years ago with the guy laying on the ball bearings with speakers vibrating them. Except in this instance the ball bearings have been replaced by live grenades. Not quite as relaxing as the commercial, but an accurate representation of the aural repercussions. Play this through some good headphones and put a cochlear implant on layaway.
Fortunately, I am the one doing this write up instead of my counterpart, otherwise you would be reading a review of Just Another Victim feat. House of Pain from the oh so wonderful Judgement Night soundtrack. Anyway, I digress, these riffs hit like a sledgehammer, either used for the demolition of a building or to cave in your skull. It might be hard to believe based on the fuzz laced noise coming through the speakers, but Page Hamilton has a masters degree in jazz guitar and has composed scores for a number of movies such as Heat and Titus.
Back to the matter at hand, which is the ringing left in your ears by the sonic force of this record. It is the audio equivalent of that gum commercial from a few years ago with the guy laying on the ball bearings with speakers vibrating them. Except in this instance the ball bearings have been replaced by live grenades. Not quite as relaxing as the commercial, but an accurate representation of the aural repercussions. Play this through some good headphones and put a cochlear implant on layaway.
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