#all hope is gone is moody *and groovy to me

[zagreusboon]

I understand why people really like Iowa but their other albums are more vibey yk

#ITS STILL A GOOD ALBUM THO ITS STILL A GOOD ALBUM #I REALLY LIKE IT #their self titled is messy and gross *in a good way #all hope is gone is moody *and groovy to me #we are not your kind is emotional and goth ish #the subliminal verses are more punk with the angry lyrics #the end so far is very refined slipknot in a grown way #Iowa is very quintessentially slipknot without the different types of frosting yk #like a really good cake with high quality ingredients #the gray chapter is also quintessentially slipknot but ina less personality overall way #both these gifs fit well so imma use both #just thinking #🚂💭💭💭

[harrylights]

ok maybe i’m just reading too much into this, but like even instrumentally too much sauce has a lot of metaphors going on. pretty much the only things that remain consistent are the bass and drums, the backbone of the song. i can’t help but draw a parallel to the “simple boy” he started out as and probably still feels connected to in some ways. no matter how much things have changed for him in the last 15 years, that doesn’t change who he was and how he grew up. as the song goes on, the guitar sounds are all over the place. going from simple strumming and what almost sounds like a ukulele to more distorted yet groovy riffs that sort of poke their heads out for a couple seconds at the start, and then that reverby almost surf rock sound closer to the end that remains more consistent. to me that feels like the way he’s gone through different phases musically, starting off with maybe what some would consider more basic, and gradually sounding more and more unique as the song goes on in a way that’s sort of hard to pin down. and at the end, things feel both groovy but also sort of melancholic, with some effects that on their own would lowkey sound a bit haunting even during the otherwise more upbeat chorus. and i can’t help but feel like that’s symbolic of the polarities he has to embody at all once. there’s his public image and then there’s his private life, whatever that looks like, but nobody is without some sort of struggle. and with love on tour being such an iconic and distinct era, the end of it can only bring change, probably in both positive and negative ways. lyrically of course there’s also a lot of polarity going on too, from more moody and almost self deprecating to leaning into the “good time” vibes. and that all just feels echoed so perfectly in the choices they made musically. this song is sort of a living contradiction to itself and it’s quickly becoming one of my favourite songs by him tbh and i rly hope we get to hear more stuff like this from him on hs4

#brought to u by someone who just listened to it on repeat during a half hour bus ride lmao #i’m def overthinking it but i just love this song so bad bro #too much sauce #rowyn rambles

[thevampsupdate]

The Vamps for TMRW Magazine

 Written by Tanyel Gumushan

         The Vamps are not the easiest band to interview. They're the kings of digression. Chatterboxes. They're like hyper-active school boys on the last day of term. They take zoomed in photographs of each other, and whisper random and strange words mid-sentence just to set off giggles. Sat in a dressing room with them, though, their boyish charm sort of takes over, and we end up talking about curry for much longer than we should have considering our allocated timeslot.

           Tristan is hunched up, hood down to the tip of his nose, complaining about last night's said curry. For most of the talk, he's a million miles away, "I'm just soaking up the energy, man." Maybe 12pm is early for the boys. It definitely is for Brad, who rushes in twenty minutes late, flashing that smile - you know the one - like a kid late to school: all apologies but knowing he's the teacher's pet. Connor bursts into song at random intervals. James restores calm amongst the chaos, he's like the dad of the band. He deserves a medal.

           But you've got to love The Vamps. They're not a cliché of a boyband, and they're not deliberately trying not to be. They're just, well, they're The Vamps. They blaze a trail of energy and excitement.

           "The thing is that we all act normal, and that's the natural beauty of it. We just do whatever we do." Says Connor, and I'll admit 'normal' is up for debate. But they haven't had a 'normal' life as such, so they're not doing bad for a band whose 'wild phase' peaked at 18 when Connor had one too many and made the pages of The Sun. They show me the image, "I didn't, erm, look my best." Beer bloat is never flattering, though, is it?

           The band have always held each other up, quite literally so in that photograph. James explains, "A lot of my friends have, like, finished uni, or have done a couple of years ago, and I think that we missed a lot of the experiences that are learnt from leaving home when you're like 17 or 18, finishing school and moving away for the first time and the things that happen there." Instead, they've lived their own version where moving away from home means being thrown into the limelight and across the world. "Kind of losing those years that are the normal teen years is strange because our perception of the world is different from the people who are our age. Consequently, we've had to deal with long distance relationships and friendships and family, earlier than perhaps people normally do. So we've learnt a lot of different things."

           Meet the Vamps, their introductory album, was filled with euphoric songs about puppy love. It was written with zero expectation of what was to come. The following album Wake Up came about "during the hysteria of everything." Having lived and toured with those songs for the past couple of years, The Vamps have hit their prime. Right now. Explaining how they've grown up, essentially, and "now we're at a stage where we can really think about what we want to say in the music." Their latest record, Night and Day (Night Edition), is their best year. The first half of a concept album, made to reflect two sides of The Vamps and as a whole, bring them together. Night rides the very emotional whirlwind of a break-up. "I think, like, we're in our early to mid-twenties now so we're not the sixteen-year-old boys who made the first album anymore. We've been through relationships and we're just more honest and less scared to be vocal about how we actually feel," they explain.

           'Sad Song' is a quirky number ripped straight from the warm summer tones of a coming-of-age movie, it talks through the regrets of the aftermath. On the flipside, the calypso-kissed 'It's A Lie' teases with temptation, smooth as anything.

           "When we were writing the album, especially the first part of the album, we were in a different head space, we didn't know where we were going to go with it sonically," Brad explains. It was only when they got lead single 'Middle of the Night', a slinky lil electro ballad, that they knew what they had to do. "It was a bit more sultry and a bit more moody and l think that's where the idea of doing a 'Night' album that was a bit more catered to those songs and then a 'Day' album that was a bit more organic [came from]." 'Night' is reflected best through sensuous synth and lyrics with a bite. The lyrics are lip-bite saucy, gleaming cherry red. Brooding an underlying storm 'Same To You', asks 'does he touch like I do?', whilst 'Hands' leads a rosy trail to a bedroom with a rousing chorus. 'Shades On' is automatically an irresistible holiday anthem, lifting of moods and moving bodies harmoniously. Inspired by the likes of The Chainsmokers and Justin Bieber, The Vamps have gone mad for EDM - "It's just bare drops, isn't it? We love a drop." But, ultimately, the third album hints back at the first, they say. It's like an evolution of The Vamps: same heart but different headspace.

Cheeky mannerisms flutter throughout the frocks; Brad's distinctively cool vocal, and choruses made to be sung aloud. The full cycle is fitting for the fact that they've recently been revisiting the venues that they had cut their teeth in. There's something particularly humbling about the boys, who still show admiration for McFly, who took them under their wing, and they reminisce on smaller gigs despite filling out arenas twice over.

           It ultimately comes down to the brotherly connection that they share. 'Stay' is gorgeous with their natural harmonies and intertwining riffs. Connor and Brad wrote 'Paper Hearts' together, and the collaboration makes it a firm favourite. "We'd finished a long day writing a song that never actually made the album,' Connor explains, "and then I just played the guitar part and Brad sang over it and then we finished that song in like ten minutes, and that made the album and the other one didn't." Just ten songs made the cut, and they're placed in an order purposely. "Each song has its own meaning that you can take away,' and they were picked out very specifically. think that reflects the journey that The Vamps has had," says James. 'Paper Heart' stands out on the album for this exact reason, it instantly grabs your attention as a gentle, heartfelt confession. The Vamps' approach to song-writing cradles this very delicate imagery, making the song wistful, yet hopeful. Honestly, it's angelic and moving, you know that it just had to be written.

           So they've played with futuristic EDM, and pulled it off as "a band doing EDM, but with, like, guitars leading it." Solid. Injected some funk and groovy clapping rhythms, and bared their souls with acoustic moments that drag you back down to earth. In the ultimate bearpit of pop, The Vamps have sharpened their claws without even intending to. Do they care about the pressure of boybands? Do they hell. They don't even acknowledge that it exists. "We just do our thing and the outside perspective, we don't take it into account. For us it doesn't become a thing, though other bands may worry about it," they say with a shrug, keen to get back to talking about conspiracy theories - Tristan would have loved to be a fly-on-the-wail with Winston Churchill, James with JFK during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Connor just wanted to watch Nirvana play live, and Brad would have been massively involved in Beatlemania.

           Fans have grown up with The Vamps, we've moved through the motions of life with them. These changes, the experimentation, the lyrics: they're real and they're in the moment. They're The Vamps, and boy are they good.

#connor ball #bradley simpson #brad simpson #james mcvey #tristan evans #the vamps band #the vamps brad #the vamps connor #the vamps james #the vamps tristan #the vamps tris #the vamps con #the vamps james mcvey #the vamps bradley #the vamps #tmrw magazine

[rockandrollportlandor]

SHANNON ENTROPY - “Out There Ideas”

There aren’t many local rock albums that start with a string quartet, but that’s how Shannon Entropy’s “Out There Ideas” begins, jagged and mournful, before the sudden, bashing opening of the real first track, “I Miss My Monkey”. It’s a fantastic moment that sets up an ambitious, complex and panoramic record. Shannon Entropy sounds like little else I know of in Portland. Moody, layered, effect-laden, and full of unexpected mid-song shifts. It isn’t prog rock exactly—it’s not quite that obsessed with blowing your mind with wack time signatures or instrumental acrobatics. Nonetheless, these are more than mere pop songs—they’re compositions, as if part of a soundtrack for some sci-fi romance, where love is the only thing that can save us from the robots, or Mark Zuckerberg, whoever it turns out to be. There’s just a stronger sense of narrative than on many bands’ albums, where songs are just expressions of a particular feeling. These tracks are long, between 4 and 5 minutes—not long by the standards of Yes or King Crimson, I admit, but still pretty long, and they’re stuffed with ideas—not overstuffed, just dense, as if not a moment of empty space has gone unaccounted for. Each of these tracks is its own meal, even as they flow together easily. The band’s taste for effects and songwriting style often reminds me of the Sigur Ros, and also Caspian, but with vocals. Still, the vocals don’t seem meant to be the main focus of attention here. Singer/keyboardist David Hickey’s voice shares top billing with the guitars of married couple Jesse and Libby Hamlin. Hickey's romantic, daydreamy, faintly nervous croon remains a constant in this swirling, dark indigo mass of sounds, while the Hamlins’ guitars shred with fury, faintly pluck out reverb-drenched, slightly sickened melodies, or chime like churchbells in the rare but crucial moments of euphoria sprinkled throughout the band’s anxious, melancholic tunes. “Womanifesto” is one tune where the Hamlins’ guitars are doing some especially wonderful interlocking stuff, but it’s really all over the place. I’ve described the band as anxious, moody, etc., but the funny thing about them, maybe their secret weapon, is the frequent use of groovy, trip-hop beats. “Swordstorm”, which incidentally sounds like a sickass Magic card, has a particularly cool one of these beats. Shannon Entropy have all sorts of beats, but they often return to the kind of big beat you can bob your head to pretty readily. It’s not really sad music exactly, at least not how Elliott Smith is sad, or something, or even how Radiohead is often sad. It just seems to be about the dark corners of life, places of fascination, obsession, frustrated longing, the existential mysteries. If anything, it’s pensive, but passionately, at times explosively pensive. This is a terribly impressive record from a young band with a strongly intellectual approach to indie music. I hope Shannon Entropy will get to perform on bigger, more badass stages with full lighting effects and enormous sound, to fit the grandness of these songs.

#shannon entropy #portland music #music reviews #music writing #music

[kmusiclog-blog]

Kirara-Sarah(2018)

Kirara, a Korean electronic music artist has released her second full-length album, Sara, in the summer. She is definitely my one of the most favorite musician right now. Her music is powerful, strong and beautiful.

I was anticipating her album very much. Her first album, Moves, awarded best electronic music from Korean Music Awards in 2017. Moves was so good. It was music that I was finding but couldn’t find. But at the same time, I was worried that her style might change. She had released a remix album, KM, and it was good, but quite not my style. Finally, her second album released, and my worries were all gone.

As you can hear in the video, she pursuits (what I call) clear electronic music. It’s neither moody nor funky. The song’s rhythm is not groovy but straight. But when I listen to Kirara’s songs, I could experience some unique feelings from them. Her music makes me feel exciting, but in a very different way from other electronic music such as Justice or Soulwax. BTW, I think her music is somewhat in the similar with Soulwax. However, Kirara’s music has its uniqueness.

Her music gives me a feeling of warmth and humaneness. I didn’t know that electronic music could deliver such a feeling, before listening to Kirara. When I read her interview and her SNS feeds, I could see that she is trying to put such feelings into the songs. Moreover, as you can see in the video, she cares a lot about visuals. I couldn’t see her live yet, but I hope I could see her live one day.

The album, Sarah, is a very good album overall. The songs that I like particularly are Blink, Water, and Prank.  If you are new to here music, try those songs first. There are some songs that are moodier than others such as Rain Dance and Stay. These songs teach us that warmth is not only in the classic instruments but also in electronics and computer. Warmth and humaneness are not about an instrument or a genre, but who the artist is and what s/he is thinking.

Anyone want to know about the current Korean electronic music scene, you should listen to Kirara’s music. She is one of the most active artists who expand and lead Korean indie electronic music.

#korean #electronic #indie #kpop