Vendor Xeno's Open Salon Blog

Whiteroom - Whiteroom

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 22:11:50 -0500

http://www.whiteroom.ca/

The first great upheaval in my musical tastes occurred when I escaped Redneck High and finally got some exposure to the sorts of things that rarely made top forty lists. Well, for a brief period of time they did, and then such music was called alternative, and then Clear Channel decided it didn't want us listening to decent music anymore, and so on. I digress. The second revolution in my musical tastes took place, predictably, when I signed on to be a college radio DJ.

The death of intelligent alternative and punk at the hands of the post-generation-X “X” movement in music had left me frankly bitter. When Radiohead and Smashing Pumpkins became the last holdout against the forces of Greenday and the gradual disintegration of coherent progressive music, I started a slow retreat back into the seventies. I was rescued, thankfully, by the emergence of the college independent scene, (or at least my discovery of it,) by which I mean music you weren't likely to hear outside of college radio at the time (thanks to things like Neutral Milk Hotel and The Postal Service, this has changed modestly.)

The band Godspeed You Black Emperor was nothing short of an epiphany for me. They spearheaded a larger overall advance of brooding post-rock into my life, including Olivia Tremor Control, Mogwai, Tortoise and The Sea and Cake, Dirty Three, and Low. It might sound strange, but this whole era/genre of music solved a conundrum I think we all suffer through at one time or another, which is, “where do I go to listen to more Jethro Tull once I get bored with Jethro Tull.” I'm not suggesting that Low is Jethro Tull, but rather that, in its own strange way, it fulfills a lot of the same musical and emotional cravings that Jethro Tull did (except for the one where you go up to hairy old men and scream AQUALUNG at them. I don't think they'll ever invent the pill for that one.)

One thing about so much of this style of music that really impressed me was the way these bands (Godspeed being the natural positive extreme here,) explored sound not simply through playing around with some structuring immediately adjacent to their regular arrangements, but the ease and regularity with which they introduced new instruments, musicians and styles. Collaboration at its finest, guest artists bringing their own overt signature to works ran amok through the music. And, now a good four paragraphs into the review, I finally mention the actual band I'm reviewing, Whiteroom, which does this sort of work fabulously.

Whiteroom is essentially two musicians, producers, whatever, who are Eddy Silva and Alex Dray, and I had to go to youtube to figure out just what the hell they do other than produce and compose. Guitar, piano and singing, with mixing by Rueben Ghose, these three alone produce an excellent, thoughtful, melancholy sound that imposes an insistent relevance into your day, seeming to impart vital philosophy into your routine even when its not. On this their first album they are accompanied by a cornucopia of guest artists throwing down a hail of various sound, and these seem to have been chosen very wisely. Whether due to competent mixing or excellent interaction, the orchestration of Whiteroom is one of the primary reasons to listen to it.

Whiteroom sits on your shelf comfortably next to your Looper or New Pornographers, your later era Beatles albums, perhaps even your Radiohead if you need it to. The album coherency is something I'm still contemplating. They play quite liberally with style and instrumentation, and so there's simply no guessing what the next song is going to be like, except that you can probably guess that it'll be on the intelligent indy side of the spectrum. There was a notable absence of people screaming into bled out microphones about how Cthulhu was about to spew forth from his watery grave and eat us all, or anything like that. Sometimes the whole work feels more like a compilation, a venue or vector for the guest artists to show off, but beneath it all there is a single signature style which I can only conclude is the word of our two stars.

Whiteroom is polite music for people who want to sit down and devote a little attention to what they're listening to. It leans closely to pop elements with, like I said, a typically brooding and somewhat melancholy sound, although not quite so down as Low or Godspeed tend to be. Think Nuetral Milk Hotel without the depressing Nazi war crime thematic elements and you're on the right track. The songs and lyrics are both complex and intelligent, but not excessive in their frivolity or post-modern experimentation. As a result, the album is easily accessible to virtually anyone and will appeal instantly, I think, to anyone who found themselves, however unwillingly, singing along to Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hands. I been downhearted baby. I been downhearted baby. Ever since the day we met...

Licensed!

Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:11:59 -0500

The Noise Ordinance by Michael B. Heaney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at open.salon.com.

You know it is! I figured I couldn't very well promote the CC if I weren't licensed under the CC, so here it is. This allows anyone to play or repost or even remix anything I create under the Noise Ordinance (I licensed both the podcast and the blog,) so long as its not for commercial purposes, they give me credit for the parts I create, and use a similar license for their own works.

Episode One of the Noise Ordinance Podcast Is Up!

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:10:41 -0400

The first hour long episode of the Noise Ordinance podcast is now up and available. The .rss feed for the podcast is here:

http://www.procyon.com/~froody/noise/no01.rss

or you can just download the mp3 directly from here:

http://www.procyon.com/~froody/noise/NO102808.mp3

I write each review to plug a specific album which I think, as a full album, stands out as quality. However, there are plenty of albums with songs I love which might, as a whole album, not be something I'd necessarily write a review on. There are also excellent songs that appear to be tied to no album or compelation, or simply artists that I haven't gotten around to reviewing yet. Finally, there's the simple fact that there's a lot of people with a lot of different tastes. The Noise Ordinance podcast is a weekly hour long show designed to explore the eclectic potential of Creative Commons a little more extensively. Hope you enjoy it!

Jammin' Inc. - Mit Anlauf

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 04:10:48 -0400

http://jammin-inc.de/

Genres: Ska, Reggae, Punk, Rap

In your ongoing quest to find a good reggae ska punk rap fusion musical act to enjoy, you and so many like you might foolishly waltz right past the Federal Republic of Germany, and in doing so commit grave disservice against yourself, because they have just what you've fought so hard for all this time.

If the energy and passion of my little monologue here seems to fail to reflect or empathize with the verve of Jammin' Inc.'s music, then this could only be because I'm at a bit of a loss as to how to express myself when it comes to ska love. Its just never been a genre I've dabbled too heavily in. And I don't filter my creative commons music. I simply download albums and let them play as background music. If one is so audacious as to intrude on my evening's activities, then I'll open one slow, lazy eye in its direction and, in a very low tone, double dare it to explain itself.

And Mit Anlauf didn't just explain, it took control. These words don't merely fail to capture the spirit or pacing of the album, but also my wild abandon the first five times I listened to it closely, upending bottles of whiskey into my mouth, screaming lyrics and passerby from my window, hollering and throwing things in joy until my downstairs neighbors were calling, screaming, “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?!”

The first track of a first release, Da Roots is an autobiographical piece, structuring lyrically and musically an explanation of who you're listening to and why. This segues into We Fear No Evil, where some of the R&B influences creep in to create an almost Supreme Beings of Leisure trip-hop vocal track layered on top of a strong Latin beat, which creates this deliciously hot and sour contrast. Each track moves in this direction, taking sounds traditional caddy-corner to one another and seamlessly combining them into a marvelously coherent and already fairly popular album.

Indeed, Jammin' Inc. is a compelling argument for what is possible with free music licensing. With over 30,000 live audience members since the release of Mit Anlauf, the artists prove that quality music can be distributed for free, relying on their fan base and talent to generate a worthwhile response, especially if they are willing to devote time and energy to high energy live performances. I am reminded in a sense of The Red Elvises, who I am fairly convinced made far more from live performances than they ever did from record sales.

The band is made up of something like fourteen people, at least as of their last Myspace update. Nine instrumental musicians back up five singers representing five different vocal styles. To me, the sound of the album seems to draw its clearest influences from 2 tone ska, but these other genres play heavily into creating a sound that sports one of the rare instances of fusion art that I'd actually applaud. People looking for traditional reggae or ska to pad out their collection might find room to complain, what with the strange mixture of regimented beats and punk abandon, but anyone looking for some progressive ska to sharpen the edges of their libraries could, I think, do no better, even were they to wade miserably through the jungles of commercial sound. And all you genre monkeys out there who just love good music, here you go. You're done. Go enjoy!

The Noise Ordinance Manifesto

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:10:02 -0400

As the information age hits its stride, the old gatekeepers of creative licensing and distribution are suddenly subject to some stern evaluation. With the rapid increase in both the internet's power and popularity, it became less and less difficult for the creators of information to distribute it, for the seekers to find it. In the case of the music recording industry, this has seriously undermined their regular business model, allowing their traditional sources of income to slip through their slimy clutches.

Naturally, the industry has handled this challenge to its dominance with all the grace of an epileptic rhino, launching what amounts to an all out attack against society itself. The RIAA, in response to the notion that it must sink or swim in an evolving market has done everything in its power to stifle that evolution, from treating its consumer base as de-facto criminals to attempting to entirely abort the development of information sharing. This only serves to further the divide, encouraging the viewpoint that avoiding entities like Sony or Virgin is preferable, even ethical. I fall into this category, contending that as the Creative Commons explodes into the mainstream, there is very little reason to continue pandering to assholes like the RIAA membership, that people should instead be devoting their attentions to the artists directly. Its better for us, its better for them.

Its almost universally accepted that the demise of the old guard, if it really is coming to pass, is nothing but a good thing. Greedy, dishonest, hostile entities who have screwed both artist and consumer over in every conceivable manner outside of simply having us all rounded up and shot, they will not be missed. Alas, there is one service they provide that can't simply be dismissed or replaced. They're good at building a true fan base. The recording industry made it possible for an artist to actually make a real living from their art, to make the production of music their profession. Without the recording industry, the prospects of being able to commit oneself entirely to music and not starve to death become considerably more risky.

The idea has been proposed that any musician could realistically manage to survive on art alone, without the help of dicks like the members of the RIAA, if they could accumulate the “1000 True Fans”. But, as many have pointed out, that is no mean feat. One of the problems with such an amazing and vast system of information sharing is that there is now a ton of information out there. Merely convincing one thousand people to even listen to your music is a trick in and of itself. Impressing a thousand people enough that they'll pay to hear more means you need a lot of exposure. Just dropping an album onto the internet isn't enough. Its just one of hundreds people release for free every day. So artists need a way to draw attention to their works.

I would love to be one of the 1000 true fans for every artist who I think deserves it. But I can't. I'm far too poor and frankly too lazy. What I can do, though, is try and help provide some of the services people loose when they don't deal with the recording industry, most notably good word of mouth. By writing positive reviews of artists that deserve it, I might be able to help funnel more listeners, and more true fans their way. And in this way, perhaps, critics can continue to make the creation of quality music a profession that pays, while still being able to bypass the vile, inhuman dicks who now dominate the highest levels of the recording industry!