Spooky Action at a Distance

Some sonic adventures and some old interests retrieved.
1- Joe Satriani's "The Extremist" (1992). Soulful and technically gifted virtuoso which truly inspires.  
2-An Autumn For Crippled Children "Lost" (2010):  I'd read a number of favorable reviews on this belgian black metal band and i have to say it met my expectations.
3-"Spooky Action at a Distance" (2012) by Lotus Plaza:An indie rock band which is the solo project of Lockett Pundt.
4-Ghastly City Sleep "Moondrifts" (2010): Post-rock music
5-Saturnus "The Saturn Is Rising" (2012): Long anticipated album by death/doom metal giants. I still find them innovative, emotive and loyal to elements of the genre. Guitar riffs are still so catchy...so killing.
6-Richard Edward Horner: I found this artist through his websites. He's a composer and guitar virtuoso.
7-Tim Brady: canadian composer and electric guitarist.  

My Album Of The Month (December 2011)

My Bloody Valentine (Loveless 1991)

Landmark in the history of Shoegazing genre. I like the dynamism spread in this album. The rhythm and tempo is splendid and the vocals are catchy. It’s interesting to know what a huge sound engineering process has been behind this project, at cost of approximately 250,000 $. 

Some New Stuff

I added 4 new albums to my music archive:
Canaan : A Calling To Weakness 2002
Evadne : The 13th Condition 2007
Orestea : Love Lines and Blood Ties 2010
Future of Forrestery : Travel III EP 2010

Damien Jurado's Night

This song is really breathtaking,cuts so deep and i like all the intellect and vivid sentiment woven into Damien Jurado's music;Just fantastic...

first came the screams and blood on the floor

the alcohol & magazines

in my flashlight, you're a star

razorblade that cuts you clean

smile for the camera

take off that dress

twenty dollars for a kiss

it's me who made you

it's me who will take you

i am not an evil man

i just have a habit i can't kick

it starts with an urge and ends with this

hang up the phone, i ain't finished yet 

song : Amateur Night
by : Damien Jurado 

My Trip Playlist

I listened to 4 albums on the tarin and it was so enjoyable,It wasn't exactly killing time:
1-Jose Gonzalez : In our Nature 2007 
2-Long Distance Calling : Satellite Bay 2007
3-Augustana : All The Stars and Boulevards 2005
4-Damien Jurado : Where Shall You Take Me 2003

Appealing Tunes

These are some newly-detected or more-elaborately observed bands ,musicians of different genres.I read about them ,tried some samples and found them pretty promising:i'm trying expand the circle of my musical exploration,in order to discover worthy high quality tunes.

1-Conor Oberst (Indie Rock,Folk)


2-British Sea Power (Indie)

3-Audio Adrenaline (Gospel/Alternative Rock/Christian Rock)
4-Joy Division (Post-Punk)
5-Insomnium (Melodic Death Metal)
6-Iron and Wine (Folk, Indie Rock)
7-Edie Brickell (Folk/Alternative Rock)

8-Richard and Linda Thompson (Rock ,Progressive Rock ,Folk)

9-Deb Talan (Indie Folk/Indie Pop)

10-Tasmin Archer (Pop/Rock)
11-Deviant Species ( Minimal/Trance)

12-Scott Landers /Blue Collars ( Instrumental Guitarist/Rock)

13-Brian Eno (Ambient)

13-Lydia (Indie Rock)

14-The Birthday Massacre (Synthrock/Alternative Rock)

15-Elastic ( Psychedelic)


16-David Berkeley (Indie /Acoustic/folk)

17-Into Eternity (Progressive Metal/Melodic Death Metal)
18-National Product (Pop/Post-Hardcore/Alternative Rock)
19-Joy Williams (Pop/Indie)
20-Switchfoot (Alternative Rock/Post-grunge)

My New albums

i tried to expand my music circulation by testing some novel prospects.I pursue this purpose in september and the result  was a handful of admirable albums . I think the most immense pleasure of it is due to the dynamism of art,particularly in music. There's a pessimist view to modern music ,considering the facts about financial aspect of record companies and the input/outcome imbalance which i understand. I believe free downloads will  ruin the industry and thats so heart-breaking . Yet  the free music streaming has a produce an unbelievable penetration which perfectly suites some amateur or underground musicians. i agree the current situation is desperate for those who are professionally involved in the context. It reminds me of a porcupine tree song "sound of muzak. Yeah,it's true one of the wonders of the world is going down .
After this preface it's time to introduce my new albums,actually i haven't focused on the new ones yet.My recent adventure mostly follows two distinct directions; slowcore/indie rock and doom metal less recognized subgenres.
1- Low : The Great Destroyer2005 : slowcore/indie trio from Minnesota


2-Land of Talk : Some Are Lakes2008: Indie rock band from Quebec,Canada


3-Soul Whirling Somewhere : Eating The Sea This is probably the most promising among my new album,a beautiful music by a one man project ;it's not easy to describe the sound of SWS it's a prestigious dreamy ambient with wide range of  influence from modern dark-wave to jazz music.


4-Pandors.box : Barriers2009 This is so exciting german rock band Archive.org describes the band :made up of five like-minded, old friends from the sticks of Lower Bavaria. The close ties between the eclectic personalities in this group have given rise to a totally different musical slant – a sound in perpetual search of the perfect equilibrium between a collective consciousness, personal gratification and the expression of higher emotions and ineffable common ideals. Their remarkable, sometimes even evasive space-rock sound has a sober tone which fabricates a feeling of a radically romantic aura that sets pandoras.box apart from the norm in today's indie landscape. It's no wonder that the band currently has a strong underground following of enthusiastic fans. Aggressive, gentle, depressive, sanguine, negative, positive, harmonious, cynical and always with a dash of irony: this band is full of contrasts. pandoras.box expresses a range of different moods and emotions in its chameleonic performances, yet in the end, a compelling, coherent ensemble is created which draws audiences in. 
5-The Fall of Every Season :Neglected's Motif  Norwegian death/doom metal band


6-Thy Sinister Bloom : Excellent doom metal band. i highly enjoyed  1996 EP Serein Falls. alas TSB disbanded in 1998 

My Album of The Month(September)

Since last october Jose Gonzalez' "In Our Nature" has been on my playlist.Actually i've been tracking the artist since 2007;based on his decent quality of sound,innovation in melodies and paradoxical presence of bleak and heartfelt tones in unison.
In Our Nature" is a mix of Folk and Indie genres,with simple catchy melodies and low-voiced music.
Lyrics highly indicate a thoughtful well-developed symbolism underlying the genuine music.
My favorite tracks are "Down the line " and "Teardrop"  .

My New Albums

My New Albums:
1- Woods ------------ I was gone 2010
2- Broadway Project ----------The Vessel 2004
3- Colosseum ----------- Chapter I:Delirium 2007
4- Remembrance -----------Fall,Obsidian Night 2010
5- Aldebaran -------------Dwellers in Twilight 2007
6- Arco ----------------Transparency 2002
7-Audrey ---------------- The Fierce and The Longing 2009
8-Early Day Miners ------------- The Treatment 2009


image : Colosseum 

Aim : Spirits Of Your Tide 2008

An Indie/Alternative Rock,Post-Rock band so underrated; their album "Spirits of Your Tide" is absolutely loveable with clean.melancholic vocals and powerful song structures;

I could find information about the band @ cdbaby.com :

"Marco Fiorello and the brothers Luca, Marco and Matteo Camisasca give birth to Aim in 2003. Aim’s members come from other bands of the Milan scene like On the blue, Halway, Molecricket and Scothc Woodcock."

Their debut album"Limit Of Sight" including 9 intense tracks which call in mind bands like Funeral For A Friend,Brand New,Thursday,...

but as cdbaby mentions Aim make itself a recognizable band slowly and mostly by its high level live activity.

By releasing their 2008 album "Spirits Of Your Tide" they reach to the point of maturity in their sound and style.

The album is a "emotionally provocative and cathartic rock"[cdbaby.com] album ;explosions of noise mixed with oneiric vocals.

My favorite tracks are "Too Wild" , Hubis II" and "Salige"

School of Rock: D is for Depression

Blues and country, two of the genres most associated with the misery of the human condition, still speak to us today. In the beginning the Lead Bellys and Robert Johnsons had their reasons to fight and be blue; to rail against the world and deal out murder and suicide like just another hand of cards. But does it make me depressed? Not really. In fact, there is little more thrilling than the misery of other people.

Even though I doubt they are singing from personal experience, when the Violent Femmes busk their way briskly through Country Death Song, and reach the moment where the depression has gnawed away at the protagonist's mind so much that he chucks his daughter down a well, it's such a thrill I almost want to burst out laughing.

And although George Jones tugs the misery-cord after his wife has left him in the Grand Tour "taking nothing but our baby and my heart", it's still a singalong moment when he bawls one of my favourite couplets "As you leave you'll see the nurs'ry/Oh she left me without mercy". It's too engaging to be truly depressing.

Elsewhere, the music of those who have committed suicide becomes unfortunately sealed in a bubble of retrospective analysis. Thom Yorke and Robert Smith have written lyrics as bleak as Ian Curtis or Nick Drake, and yet portentous lyrics tend to obscure the real issues behind suicide, which are surely far more complex or banal than lyrics ever make out, and all the more tragic for it. Somewhere in between is the work of Silver Jews' David Berman, who attempted suicide in 2003 but is now (I sincerely hope) feeling much better having recently announced his retirement from music. The album that followed this episode speaks of the "place past the blues I never want to see again". I remember seeing the song in question, There Is a Place, being played live with Berman repeating over and over "I saw God's shadow on this world", and feeling genuinely chilled.

Case Studies

Gloomy Sunday: The Hungarian suicide songThe infamous Gloomy Sunday has the official reputation of being the most depressing song ever. Allegedly (though likely to be urban myth), this song has inspired hundreds of suicides, and one of the original Hungarian composers indeed took his own life. This is less surprising when you learn that Hungary held the record for the highest suicide rate for most of the last century. That said, Billy MacKenzie of the Associates, who recorded the song in 1982, also committed suicide – though as this took place 17 years later it's perhaps a bit of a stretch to link the two events explicitly.

But why do people ascribe such emotions to the song? Billie Holiday recorded the best-known version, and it is a strange little song. The opening sequence of clarinet sighs stumbles through irregular bar lengths (3/4 then 2/4 then 3/4) before coming to rest on a sustained G minor chord. This disorienting intro sets the tone, the rhythm section dropping away to leave us suspended over a chasm for the opening line: "Gloomy Sunday, my hours are slumberless". This beginning is genuinely unusual: dislocated and hazy. Then the long G minor melts through a diminished chord into the rest of the song. What comes next I find more drab: the chord sequence is wandering and rootless, the melody relatively formless. However, this only reinforces the gloom.

Radiohead – How to Disappear CompletelyRadiohead's cheery little number from Kid A again goes beyond mere misfortune or sadness into dislocation and denial. Beginning with a cloud of strings, the chord sounds as if it is is built from intervals of fourths and fifths (thirds being most common), which is similar to Debussy's intervals in pieces like The Submerged Cathedral. From here on, the arrangement is built on dislocation, the instruments seemingly ignoring each other, while the guitar and voice could be a song drifting along in their own maudlin fashion. But it is more than this: the strings wander in and out, often unrelated to the simple strummed guitar, while the bass plays the same eight notes repeatedly, oblivious to anything else. Like in a film where someone dies but the radio keeps on, or the water carries on circling down the plughole in Psycho, the insistent bass mirrors the detachment in the lyrics – "I'm not here" – until the strings build into a glissando that buries Thom. Is it depressing, though? I find it too beautiful to really be so. A spiritual sister to this, without the sweeteners, is Nick Drake's

Know. The entire lyrics are: Know that I love you Know I don't care Know that I see you Know I'm not there

Throughout, the same guitar figure plays relentlessly like an uncontrollable spasm. The riff isn't inherently miserable, but the mechanical nature of the guitar and the singing certainly makes for desperate listening. So let's reach past the merely sad and dredge up the truly depressing.

From : Guardian Music Blog

Image : Nick Drake