Music I’ve been listening to recently:
Area 5/from the Rez soundtrack (PS2/DC game) – my favorite piece of music from a game that was full of pretty incredible music. I’ve played through Rez probably 25-30 times all the way through. Sure, it’s a relatively short game, and can probably be beaten in under an hour, but it’s a great experience, and this particular piece of music is set to a level that’s an abstract summation of the process of evolution. A great piece of synaethasia, which is basically what the designer was aiming for – a complete audio-visual-tactile experience. Great stuff.
Such Great Heights/The Postal Service – Reminds me in some sense of New Order, which is sort of weird. This particular song has some *fantastic* lyrics, and is apparently available for download from the band’s website. Google it, I’m sure it’s easy to find, and worth the time it’ll take.
Don’t Mug Yourself/The Streets – UK hip hop. This is from Original Pirate Material, Mike Skinner’s first album – but it’s his best song to date, and OPM’s much better than A Grand Don’t Come for Free, which is a bit too high-concept at the expense of the music. A Grand… has a couple excellent songs, like the one about the breakup of his relationship – can’t remember the name – but OPM has a lot of really good, laid back sort of day-to-day hip hop. Guy’s got a really wacky, off-kilter and apparently sloppy delivery that works really well with the garage feel of the music.
The Last Straw/The Flobots – maybe it’s on flobots.com, I don’t know. If it is, grab it. I’m amazed I know one of the guys in the band (housemate in college) – this song in particular is fucking fantastic, but they have another one, Simulacra, I like almost as well.
American Idiot/Green Day – I thought these guys forgot how to rock out, but I was clearly wrong. A great little bit of protest-y rock, and it’s classic Green Day. I was swimming at some point last year with my old housemate, and he knows Tre, the drummer for Green Day. We ended up swimming in his lane, which was really weird. Apparently recovering from some injury or another. It was weird. Middle of the day, and he’s there, kicking with big fucking gold Elvis glasses on. Gotta love it.
Inner Universe/ Origa/Yoko Kanno – the theme to Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. A weird mix of Russian/Latin/English, but it works really well. Show’s worth watching, too, if you like Shirow Masamune’s somewhat unconventional style of storytelling. The animation’s really well done, and the writing is *very* similar to the Ghost in the Shell comic book – NOT the movie, which I found to be overly pretentious and dull, despite being quite beautiful.
Right.