The Mars Volta - The Bedlam in Goliath (2008)

The Mars Volta is not for you. You wouldn't like it. Their rich layering of textures and sonic complexity is far too sophisticated for an unevolved musical taste like yours. You're likely to hear The Mars Volta, listen to them, maybe even think you like what you're hearing, but really you'll have no clue what's going on. Sure, the hardcore influence is there, but I doubt you've ever even heard a hardcore punk album. Simply put, their music will fly right over your simple head.



Their latest offering, The Bedlam in Goliath, is no exception. It's hard-hitting, dense, and lyrically complex--all things that wouldn't interest someone like you. Their new drummer provides the grooviest beats in any Mars Volta album, and you probably don't even know what "groove" means. The basic sound of it harkens back to De-Loused in the Comatorium, another album you wouldn't like.

The Mars Volta are proving themselves to be a modern-day King Crimson (King Crimson was a band people like you couldn't understand back in the 70s). They're evolving rock in a new direction, and you probably just want to listen to the same old stuff.

Trust me, you'd be better off listening to Britney Spears's latest offering, Blackout. I won't provide the link, but you can find it all over the place. You can listen to The Bedlam in Goliath if you want, but you won't enjoy it.

Search for The Mars Volta (whom you won't like) on Amazon.com

Search for Britney Spears on Amazon.com (this is more to your liking)

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain (1971)

The late 60s and early 70s were times when the face of music was changing. You've all heard this, and you all probably know this from the countless albums you own from that time. But if you don't own anything by Funkadelic, you don't know it yet.

I know what some of you are thinking: Maggot Brain, underrepresented? How so? The music reviewing "elite" loves this album; Pitchfork and Rolling Stone regularly rate this album as one of the top albums of all time. Yet whenever I mention Funkadelic to a friend of my age, it draws blank stares. It seems as if in this day and age, our generation is passing over some of the most influential and interesting albums from that time, in favor of the obvious bands: The Beatles. Led Zeppelin. The Rolling Stones. It's a shame, and I hope to change that in a few of us.



Funkadelic's Maggot Brain is one of the progenitors of the funk genre, but it's much more than just that. Maggot Brain is just as much a psychedelic album as a funk album, taking as much influence from the psychedelic scene of the time as soul and R&B music.

Let's take the eponymous opening track as an example. The song "Maggot Brain" mainly consists of an almost 10-minute guitar solo. Legend has it that George Clinton told Eddie Hazel to play the solo as if he had just found out he was dying. The result is possibly the most beautiful, soulful and heart-melting guitar solo of the 70s. The style of this solo was probably not lost on guitarists like David Gilmour, who at that time was just beginning to replace Syd Barrett as lead guitarist for Pink Floyd.

The rest of the album is just as musically interesting, while also managing to be fun, soulful and danceable. "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" is one of my favorites, taking influence from an old black spiritual song and turning it into a funky R&B number. "Super Stupid," on the other hand, sounds like the lovechild of Jimi Hendrix and Aerosmith (of course, long before Aerosmith ever existed), possibly one of the first heavy-riff-driven 70s rock songs. "Back In Our Minds" is laid-back enough to make Jimmy Buffett jealous. And the final track, "Wars of Armageddon," is the summation of the entire album: funky and so psychedelic it hurts.

This musically diverse, influential album doesn't get the credit it should get anymore, and I think anyone would be completely remiss not to hear it. So get on it folks! And enjoy.

Search for Funkadelic on Amazon.com

Asian Kung-fu Generation - World World World (2008)

My journey into Japanese music began fairly recently; like most people, I was turned off by the stereotypical "J-pop" that nerdy obsessed anime fans would play for me. Lucky for me, I got past this stereotype and began exploring artists such as Boris, Acid Mothers Temple, and most recently, a post-hardcore band known as Asian Kung-fu Generation.

Of course, "post-hardcore," like most of the "post-" genres, is a very broad, all-encompassing term applied to many different bands. Essentially, it means music derived from hardcore punk, but which takes it much further than the typical genre constraints that hardcore punk has. It can refer to bands as diverse as Coheed & Cambria and The Mars Volta, as well as the various "screamo" bands that have been coming out recently. So when I heard of a post-hardcore band called Asian Kung-fu Generation, I wasn't sure what to expect.




















What I found on this trip to the world of Japanese music wasn't as brilliant as Boris or as insane as Acid Mothers Temple, but was instead one of the catchiest, most interesting rock albums I've ever heard. World World World is what Weezer would sound like if they were a Japanese post-hardcore band. Like Weezer, they write straight-to-the-point rock songs, with maybe a little more room for diversion in Asian Kung-fu Generation. Like Weezer, their songs are incredibly catchy. Like Weezer, you're liable to start the album all over again when you finish it. Unlike Weezer, they have some relatively extreme elements to their music, and they didn't start sucking after the 2nd album.

So if you're a fan of great, catchy, interesting independent rock, or of post-hardcore music, you need to check this out. If it's your first experience with vocals sung in Japanese, it might take a bit of acclimation, but the music is good enough that it shouldn't be a large hindrance. Enjoy.

Shpongle - Tales of the Inexpressible (2001)

Part 1 of the Essential Psybient Albums Series

Psybient is an emerging genre, and while the foundations for it were laid in the mid-to-late 1990s, it can be described as one of the first great new forms of music of the 21st century. While psybient means "psychedelic ambient," it is much more than just ambient music--psybient music takes the listener on a musical journey with incredible highs and relaxing lows. Drawing influences from trance, ambient, dub, world music, trip-hop, rock, jazz, and classical, psybient brings together many different genres in a way that is beyond just "eclectic"--it actually manages to make what were previously seen as very separate types of music fit together into single, cohesive, organic pieces of music. While the genre is still new, there are a select few psybient albums that everyone should listen to. This will be the first part in a series of posts which will explore these albums.




















Shpongle's Tales of the Inexpressible, along with its predecessor Are You Shpongled, is the album that influenced much of the psybient music produced today. The flawless blending of live instrumental music and electronica, as well as the Terrence McKenna samples in "A New Way To Say Hooray" (which describes a DMT trip) all became staples of psybient music.

Tales is a true psychedelic trip through space, time, and consciousness. Sometimes it's the kind of trip where you lay on your back and gaze up at the sky, as in "Star Shpongled Banner." More often, as in "My Head Feels Like a Frisbee," it's the kind of trip where you're smiling, dancing, and seeing life as if through the eyes of a child experiencing the world for the first time.

From the Latin sound of "Dorset Perception," to the eery sound of flies buzzing in "A New Way to Say Hooray," to the blend of trance and Indian religious music in "Around the World in a Tea Daze," Tales explores more avenues of music than you typically listen to in a single day. And yet the beauty of it is this: it sounds like one group, one album, one general style of music.

In a sense, you could say that Shpongle has found the musical Theory of Everything. As we'll see in later posts, this theory was not lost on the musical world.

Enjoy.

Search for Shpongle on Amazon.com
Buy Tales of the Inexpressible from the Twisted Records store