Weekend Listening

Zombie, Fela Kuti: Funky. This song has a quick pace and builds quickly into a wall of sound. The sheer number of instruments used in this track are impressive and serve to create a complex sound thats fantastic to dance to. Reminds me of island music meets jazz meets funk.

Pagan Poetry, Bjork: The intro is mesmerizing and slightly ambient, the song jumps into vocals quickly. The lead signer's voice fits well with the mystical sounding music. This track definitely is meant to support the vocals in the piece. The clean bell, harp and violin sounds add a stark contrast to the wavy and sometimes rough vocals. All in all, it fits well together to create an impactful sound.

Idioteque, Radiohead: Like much of their music, this song features ambient background noises, which take a backseat to the rapid dance beat and quickly delivered vocals.

Led Zeppelin, Whole Lotta Love: Led Zeppelin is a classic band for a reason. This song is one of the reasons. The beginning guitar licks are reminiscent of a train, its sets the tone for the rest of the song; a constant pace that is matched with complimentary vocals. But just as the listener becomes accustomed to the repetitive guitar licks, they are cut off from any semblance of the song they were just listening to, and are thrust into an ambient arena where they must cling to the symbol being played if they are to remain with the beat. The ambience is like being thrown in and out of psychedelia, the in and out symbol and drum beat the only thing grounding the song. And just as one becomes accustomed to this strange new environment, they are forced once again to sober up with the original constant and musically predictable guitar licks.

Moonlight in Vermont, Captain Beefheart: This is a cool track. I like Captain Beefheart for their musically different style. Their music is meant to be asymmetrical and sound slightly off- slightly jumbled, like a cacophony of noise just passable as a song. Normally, all of the elements found in Captain Beefheart songs are avoided by musicians who are trying to convey intelligible music. However, the fact that Beefheart does this on purpose is superb. They create harmony through disharmony and force the listener to appreciate asymmetry.  Even the musical style is gritty- buzzing, heavily distorted electric guitar, heavy, scratchy vocals, and multiple drum beats- throws the listener off. The ear doesn't know what to focus on. This is impressive to me, because Beefheart effectively created a song that needs to be listened to- not heard- listened to, multiple times in order to be understood. It is a massive polyphony of noise that has multiple songs threaded throughout it. This and many other Captain Beefheart songs would be interesting to pull apart and listen to each individual instrument on their own.