Amiina - KurrListen here.
Another band from Iceland...These four ladies are properly a string quartet who opened for and are part of Sigur Ros's backing band, but they are not tied down to any instruments. They'll play the strings along with the saw, goblets, music boxes, electronics, guitars, the glocks, anything and everything from what I can gather. What they produce is a real sweet and delicate sound. The album is mostly instrumentals with a few vocal "awe's and oh's" scattered about. This is the perfect album to wake me up. I prefer coming to on my own verses the harshness of the alarm clock.
Joy Electric - Their Variables e.p.Listen here.
This album is basically a remix album of The Otherly Opus with 2 new Joy Electric tracks. A different artist remixed each of the tracks for TOO. It's fun and interesting, but The Otherly Opus is such an amazing album that the remixes don't quite measure up to the original.
(not actual cover)The Foxglove Hunt - Demo E.P.
Listen here.
This 2 song demo came free with my Joy Electric order. The Foxglove Hunt is comprised of Rob Withem (Fine China) and Ronnie Martin (Joy Electric.) Rob sings and writes the songs and Ronnie does all the programming. If these 2 songs are any indication, their full length album is gonna be great.
St. Vincent - Marry Me
Listen here.
Annie Clark writes all the songs and plays all the music. She opened for and played with Sufjan Steven's band. The music is innovative, weird, familiar yet original sounding. This album reminds me of Alternative music before '92 when Alternative became a label and mainstream at the same time.
4 comments:
This is the first time you and BB posted a list with completely different music in recent memory. :)
Joy Electric is always a good pick.
Also, technically, what is "Alternative" music? I used to equate it to the softer end of Grunge/Modern Rock in the 90s, but it seems like everything not sung on American Idol is considered Alternative today.
Sounds like good stuff. Haven't heard any that I am aware of, unless BB plays in car and I don't know it.
I got that Foxglove ep when I saw them with Joy Electric. Rob told me that the full album would be out by Sept. I guess he missed that deadline. Haven't picked up the JE yet. Is it worth it? I'll have to try Amiina. I liked them when we saw them with Sigur Ros.
Dust,
What is alternative music?
Yeah, I'm not good with labels and I am sure this is debatable, but my take on it is this:
Let's just generalize a decade, the 80's brought about a lot of bands that were post-punk from the late '70s punk movement. These band were not popular by mainstream radio standards. Mainstream top 40 radio in the '80s and early '90s was all about pop and hair metal/glam rock. These post-punk band were many different styles of music ranging from witty smart to electronic dance rock to goth to dreampop to folk to grunge to jangle pop to americana. Many of the labels at the time that I heard for this kind of music were new wave, modern rock, college rock (because the college stations would play this music), progressive.
Where could one here these new sounds that were different from mainstream radio? Really cool friends with older siblings (in college) or MTV 120 minutes on Sunday nights from 10-midnight, or college rock stations, or public radio stations between the raggae hour and the latin music show, etc. Sometime in the year of 1990 one of our pop stations (Q104)started a half hour show at 10:30 every night called Liquid Radio that was devoted to this music. Also, somewhere around this time Kennedy and MTV VJ had a nightly show called Alternative Nation. Soon the word "Alternative" was used to describe all these different styles of music that didn't fit into the pop music or hair metal category.
Then Nirvana released smells like teen spirit on video to MTV and the rest is history. Alternative became mainstream. Every Major record label wanted to sign the next Nirvana. Radio stations became Alternative Rock stations. The alternative rock sound is now the mainstream sound. The popularity of Alternative rock basically killed it. The quality of music went down due to the need to feed it quickly to its demanding listening audience.
What do people call it these days? I don't know and I don't think bands know either. Not that they ever wanted to label thier music. It is interesting to look at a bands myspace page. At the top their is an area for them to categorize their music. Their you will find words like "other/indie/electronic/minimal/etc."
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