What's your favorite new album that came out in the last 5 months?
I'm not going to lie, I haven't been on the music ball lately, so I'm not sure what's going on now musically. All I know is that no one I really care for is coming to Columbus, and none of my favorite bands have released albums within the past 3 months. This is why I have to change the topic a bit. The last time I made a trip to a music store for a specific new release was in September when the latest the Sounds of Animals Fighting CD was dropped. Therefore, I choose
The Ocean And The Sun by the Sound of Animals Fighting
This band is an experiment that tries to unite several art forms into one entity. Their live shows consisted not only of live music, but also artists making paintings on stage, poetry reading, and performances by masked and costumed individuals. None of their albums sound alike, and neither do any of their songs.
This is TSOAF's third studio release, and you can definitely tell they've had experience in the recording process. In this album, they continue to pay attention to the detail of the music by way of interlocking different time measures and instruments, but they also produced the hell out of it, making it sound a lot smoother than their previous releases.
They do plenty of odd things that really make this a unique album. The album starts of with the reading of a poem, but the poem is not in English. I had to look up the lyrics for the English translation (and the poem itself is both beautiful in its original form and in the English translation). You can listen to a song 5 times and still not understand the timing structure because they tend to change the tempo and measure counts frequently. Just pay attention to the drum beats in "The Heraldic Beak of the Manufacturer's Medallion" and it becomes painfully obvious that they are in a level all their own. The album should not be labeled underneath one genre category because within each song you can find clear influences from several different types of music (including music foreign to English-speaking music fans). Listening to "Uzbekistan" proves this because the vocals in this song sound reminiscent of old-fashioned music our grandparents listen to. However, pay attention to the rest of the song and you notice the modern use of the synthesizer and drum beats, and the guitars are pure distorted and layered 80's rock. Sprinkled in the middle of the song are whispers and the sounds of pages turning. Extra sound clips, whispers and speeches such as these are common throughout the album, making the listener realize that this is a different league of band whose goal is not to be on Billboard's Top 100, but rather to make beautiful and unique music.
The album as a whole is a piece of art. I hope people give this album a chance because it is special.
Listening to: The Sound of Animals Fighting
This is TSOAF's third studio release, and you can definitely tell they've had experience in the recording process. In this album, they continue to pay attention to the detail of the music by way of interlocking different time measures and instruments, but they also produced the hell out of it, making it sound a lot smoother than their previous releases.
They do plenty of odd things that really make this a unique album. The album starts of with the reading of a poem, but the poem is not in English. I had to look up the lyrics for the English translation (and the poem itself is both beautiful in its original form and in the English translation). You can listen to a song 5 times and still not understand the timing structure because they tend to change the tempo and measure counts frequently. Just pay attention to the drum beats in "The Heraldic Beak of the Manufacturer's Medallion" and it becomes painfully obvious that they are in a level all their own. The album should not be labeled underneath one genre category because within each song you can find clear influences from several different types of music (including music foreign to English-speaking music fans). Listening to "Uzbekistan" proves this because the vocals in this song sound reminiscent of old-fashioned music our grandparents listen to. However, pay attention to the rest of the song and you notice the modern use of the synthesizer and drum beats, and the guitars are pure distorted and layered 80's rock. Sprinkled in the middle of the song are whispers and the sounds of pages turning. Extra sound clips, whispers and speeches such as these are common throughout the album, making the listener realize that this is a different league of band whose goal is not to be on Billboard's Top 100, but rather to make beautiful and unique music.
The album as a whole is a piece of art. I hope people give this album a chance because it is special.
Listening to: The Sound of Animals Fighting
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