A rare and direct attack back at the fully compromised news media which is filled with distortions, corruption, and devious attempts at deceptive propaganda. Fox News is at the top of the list for it's repeated and open, biased and brazen tactics. For the racist material alone, the lyrical skills of Nas speak for a lot of us out there..
I could fill the rest of the page with clips that outrage me from Fox News. Here is simply 14 seconds from one of their latest offenses:
In any case I appreciated this track as a return to form in a way, since I preferred his earlier east coast flavored material such as "It Ain't Hard To Tell."
I love Annie's perfect pop music. What is it about Annie that captures the ears and hearts of even the most jaded hipster? With such deliciously dense sugar-coated pop, from whence does she cull such credibility? So far I can't find anything bad out there that is written about her. In fact people seem to really be looking forward to her new and second album in October. I even signed up on her mailing list to get the free track and advance info..
Perhaps this song is similar enough to the last hit to be called "Chewing Gum Part 2" - but that matters not. That song is still going around in my head non-stop, being so self-referential and insanely catchy as it is. [Annie - "Chewing Gum"]
Part of her appeal for me is how she uses her layered background vocals to enhance the melodies, and if you listen closely you can hear it is mixed in to be part of the rhythm track as well. For these songs, I also appreciate the crisp and precise production skills of Richard X. Some of his production and writing I like are in these songs:
Electro-pop, but with a contrasting lighter touch, Annie's song "Heartbeat" benefits from the sweet touch of her airy vocals. The video is an appealing time-shifting collage of lights and Scandinavian night life, which she knows about, since she is as much of a DJ as she is a singer..
Emiliana Torrini reminds me of how this blog is now possible and subsequently reassures me it will be ok..
In this video she appears to be a woman that can cause spatial distortions as she walks the streets of London.. Despite the prospect of losing a job, she blissfully recounts the freedom of just being able to "stay awake till the morning" and "getting drunk on Saturday".. we're young, we don't need money, etc. She moves slowly out from the city and into the country, as the animals draw nearer and she is enveloped into nature.
This melodic Icelandic singer has several songs I already like. The song and music video for "Sunny Road" is particularly more serene.. Here she already lives in the remote country with the animals, and travels deeper in the forest and through the seasons.. to send a message in a bottle back to reality..
I was somewhat suprised to learn by way of wikipedia that she co-wrote an electropop Kylie Minogue single I like. [Kylie Minogue - "Slow"]
What did you dream? its alright we told you what to dream... in 1975, those who were alive, dropped the needle of their record players down on the highly anticipated new Pink Floyd album after the staggering success of Dark Side Of The Moon. At the end of side 1 of Wish You Were Here was an even darker prophecy of what was to come..
The industrial noises of the factory, locking the track into electronic pulses. Artistic into mainstream success into commercial lockstep. Co-opting rebellion and selling it back as a commodity. Draining analog warmth into the digital coldness of code. bringing in personal computers in your home, in your bedroom, connected together across the world, caught in the web of wires and electromagnetic energy. Manufacturing music into impossible perfection that never existed. The cold steel of cityscapes replacing every memory of place. Pervasive surveillance and no place to think.
"When you're playing with desire, don't come running to my place when it burns like fire.."
Gabriella Cilmi is a fantastic new singer I have only recently discovered. I have acquired her debut album "Lessons To Be Learned" and it is rapidly becoming one of my favorites of 2008..
She is sixteen and Australian, performing in this video brimming with brash confidence, in full command of bluesy vocal glissandos. This particular song would seem to place her style in the jazzy pop realm of Amy Winehouse or Aimee Duffy. However a completely different impression could be made if “Save The Lies” was her lead off single instead, bringing to mind more of a contemporary eurocentric pop mode like Anastasia [I'm Outta Love].. It’s a completely different sound for these first two tracks on her debut album.
But “Sweet About Me” builds in two catchy sections that seem to linger just a little too long each time.. then an overlap pickup jumps into the chorus, making each part of the song captivating, leading into the next one.
The video seem to take place in the ultimate practice space. Unlike most music video productions, this gives the impression of a real singer singing in front of a real band. Although her seemingly jazzy backup band is prone to the standard melodramatic spine-twisting type of playing - You can tell the hint of jazz is there by the way the guitar player’s guitar has violin holes, how the drummer holds one stick backwards, the bass player is playing one of those big violin things..
If the camera stayed pointed in that one direction, it would remain a decent and realistic looking performance video, complete with the middle break where the singer takes a swig of bottled water. However off in the other direction is a common indie band video conceit, where expectations get subverted. It turns out that in the other end of the room there are a variety of men who are being held against their will and tortured in some mild or extreme ways. I could not help but make a connection to the ear cutting scene in the film “Reservoir Dogs..”
But no.. I am sure it is just a script to give the young girl an edgy and ‘indie’ appeal. Perhaps the men who are tied up, caged, shredded, duct taped,and hung upside down are her would-be pop band and she is asserting the type of music she really ought to be doing...
First up for this new site is the song of the summer.. A song I had a chance to read about, before actually choosing to play for the first time..
This was the week I was researching music blogs to see if I wanted to make a blog of my own. (for all the music prior to this blog, see my “previous favorites” playlist on YouTube..) I had already seen and liked the Katy Perry video for Ur So Gay with funny lyrics and video about a metrosexual man. But in this song there was a buzz everywhere and a mild fuss about how she herself had “kissed a girl..”
In this day and age and culture I was a little surprised there was any controversy about such a song topic. After all 13 years ago, I used to see a song with the same title on MTV’s 120 Minutes every week. [Jill Sobule – “I Kissed A Girl”]
Playing the song for the very first time, I was drawn in by the gaze of her pretty eyes and the seductive and familiar Gary Glitter drum rhythm. [Gary Glitter – “Rock N’ Roll Part 2”] But it wasn’t until the throbbing electro bass groove of the chorus came in, that I was hooked..
In fact, that chorus reminded me of what I liked about a certain song.. [Goldfrapp – “Train” *adult advisory!*] There seems to be an equal amount of girls surrounding the singers in a sexy, fun all-female party vibe, although Katy’s video looks almost PG-13 in comparison to Alison’s.. Katy’s video has as many obvious trappings of naughty/sexy that can fit into one video - Including petting a pussy-cat and eating cherries..
Since the song is getting a lot of attention, she has been called homophobic or exposed for her previous career as a christian singer. Beyond all that, however overexposed this song gets, I love this song as a prime example of a modern pop song. I will never get sick of it and will enjoy it for what it is - even taking into account it may have been artificially created in the pop labs, co-written as it was with the infamous musical chemists of Dr Luke, Max Martin, and the fabulous Cathy Dennis.
When I added my Red Hector Electronic Music to MySpace in late 2006, it was a return to the web after an earlier period during the Napster days of 1999-2001. Back then mp3.com was the epicenter of unsigned artists sharing their music to the wider world.
In recent years with MySpace and YouTube online music had expanded into the realm of shared videos and a move towards social networking. On MySpace there was a link that said “Post New Blog..”which I tried and discovered how you could embed a video from YouTube with a few comments. I was completely uninterested in the fad of “blogging” but I did like how I could arrange some music videos for online viewing and then share them with others..
The reason is because I am a collector of music videos, and CD’s, and mp3’s, movies and magazines..the full range of alternative to popular pop culture - eclectic and no barriers bound by notions of pretentious coolness or overexposed mainstream pop. I just like a lot of stuff.
Since before the days of the Internet I used to share music with my friends. First by having them over and playing records and tapes for each other. Later I would host music video parties, which were open ended evenings where I would play selections from my vast collection of video tapes..
Then the internet came along, with ever increasingly high quality video files.. with such a variety from around the world. Just as my tastes and experience of the width and depth of the world’s music was expanding, people around me were growing increasingly sequestered in their own self contained separate worlds. No longer were people sharing music or interested in listening. Maybe it was just too much stuff out there for them to sort though? Not me, I enjoy spending sometimes whole evenings exploring the music that is out there and rediscovering and listening to what I already know.
This blog will be a reflection of what I find and literally the songs that are going through my head. Think of it as my ongoing-online-always-there music video party. It is just my own personal site but all are invited to listen and read along, and perhaps let me know your thoughts as well - Red Hector
