Tuesday, May 31, 2011

A Penchant For Something Different: Weird Music: Part 2

Ok, more weird music that are unconventional to the typical mainstream music fan's ears that I want more people to enjoy! Most of the post below are tracks I just found or I just got hold of their albums.



Music: Imagine Black Sabbath got stuck into a hardcore punk mosh pit, then some psychedelia dude jumps in the fun, shreds the fuck out of everyone and had the sludge come pouring in with a dish dash of rock and roll. This is what you get.

Bonus Points: Did I mention that this band has two drummers, triple vocal attacks? The drummers playing contrasting beat at times, and the sound is enhanced by listening it on headphones. One drum, plays on the left speaker and the other on the right, giving it a thick contrasting feel.



Music: If Converge claimed that they're hardcore kids with leftover Slayer riffs, I proclaim Kvelertak as hardcore kids w/ left over Black Metal-tremolo riffs.

Bonus Points: It's not only that, they're an amalgam of all the good punk rock bands that you've listened in skate videos all melted down in a brew of black metal, good ol' American Southern Rock, bluesy solos and The White Stripes/The Hives-esque modern rock and roll.


Ok, I need to keep this short as I'm celebrating Gawai here in Malaysia but I hope more people would enjoy this kind of music. Will update more later tonight.

Black Metal, Tarantino and Orientation Week

Recently I just finished my internship at this place called PEB Consulting Sdn. Bhd. In between, I joined Borneo Cup in which I sucked as hell in, and Swinburne's World School Debate Championship as an adjudicator and got to the finals of both the junior and senior categories. Then right after my internship, I decided to make a bit of money and join the orientation crew, handling the new juniors entering UiTM. Met some cute chicks but left w/ none. Not my time for one yet I guess, or whatever plans the universe holds for me. For the orientation week, all of us PMs (Not PMS, but PMs or Pembantu Mahasiswa) had to put an image upright discipline and their definition of discipline is having short hair. So no more this:

Yep, a picture in front of the Agong's potrait. Haha. (Taken at University Malaysia Sabah's hall during the Borneo Cup Finals)



But good goody boy this:



Yep, I'm serious, that's me.

Now that I have week of holiday, I recently spent time kayaking aimlessly in circles at Sinar Serapi and soon I will (later actually) be celebrating Gawai at my Grandpa's place and most probably end up hearing his Anti-Japanese rants about WW2 (trust me, he once blabbered about how anime was Japanese propaganda to corrupt the young, ah, veterans.) I spent my worthless time on certain art here's some of the results. (Some cause others were too horrible for you to see)

I found an old cotton shirt so I decided to draw something onto it. I settled for the Annal Nathrakh logo. I was so excited when I was about to complete it until I realized I got the angle and scale wrong! Pfft. Fucked up my one and only chance!



Here's some other "art" I did. Here's a Pulp Fiction tribute I made based on some stencil I forgot where I derived from. I decided "to go medieval" on the paper (go watch the movie if you don't get the joke) and gave it a brown tinge. I used a bag of tea and coloured it as if you would on watercolor. I also did one on Clint Eastwood but I forgot where I left it.





Talking about Tarantino movies and Black Metal, Tarantino should use this music if he comes up with a Pulp Fiction esque movie again in the future.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

A Penchant For Something Different: Weird Music

Welcome to today's lesson of rock and roll! Many of my friends know that I have a weird taste in music. Even I have to admit is pretty weird and reflects my taste for movies (I can talk about ridiculous Grindhouse/exploitation flicks but that's a different story) . My taste of music basically took me to all sorts of places, from Post-Punk to Italy's Spaghetti Westerns, from the deep south's Rockabilly to Florida's Death Metal scene. However, those are solid genres. Genres of music that has their own scene. Now in this blogpost, I'm going to show you some of the weirdest of the weirdest I found all over the net. Crossing from the genre hoping to the absurd. Here's some I've discovered on my musical journey and I hope more people would actually enjoy this weird sense of music.

Now let's start off with:

Gloominous Doom - Portal Pottty



Music: Now, this from the surface may look as if it's just some death metal band but it's not just it. It's in no way some stupid deathcore band that tries to jumble up 1000 genres into their music. While the band plays real death metal and touch of grindcore, this band blends in all sorts of mixes from ska, to reggae and southern rock-esque guitar touch. The music makes you feel in the Caribbean swimming and moshing in the middle of DC at the same time. It is one part bong themed music and one part headbanging death metal tune and plus, they're singing about teleporting potties.

Bonus Points: The freaking video is totally insane and full of pop culture reference, delivered in a tongue in cheek fashion, all in a neck breaking death metal crisp. Below are just some of the weird fucked up moments in the video clip:

1) A toilet version of Doctor Who's Tardis
2) A pretty hot Marilyn Monroe that enter's this Death Metal Dr Who's Tardis.
3) A reggae guitarist smoking a pipe and wearing an Iron Maiden t-shirt
4) The Dude from The Coen Brother's "The Big Lebowski", joining Dr. Who for the ride while drinking his milk (Let's hope it's White Russian like in the movie)

Now I did not get all the pop culture references here but I know somebody who knows deeper about pop culture might spot the plethora of references in this video clip.


Le Scrawl "White Russian"




Music: I love jazz, I really do but what happens when that jazz is mixed up with a punk ish attitude, a warm funky feeling and to top it off, they got a grindcore vocalist to smash it into your face. This is the kind of music I would listen and stare at wall and hallucinate without the use of LSD. The music is so trippy and yet you want it to go on but it stops abruptly!

Bonus Points: THE WHOLE VIDEO CLIP IS LIKE A HALLUCINATION!





Music: Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong gets a death metal make over and still gets to keep their trumpets.

Bonus Points: When was the last time you saw someone as cool as this, "singing" death metal. It's like a noir movie with a metal soundtrack.


Reverend Horton Heat - Baddest of the Bad





Music: When you think of country or even rockabilly, you would think about some country hicks squaredancing. Now here's a country/rockabilly that you can mosh and headbang too. On the surface, it's rockabilly tune but underneath, it's layered with the fastest grindcore drumming and almost black metal esque tremolo picking, all done without a super thick distortion (You know, the ones those black metal guys use to do.) Now who says Country/Rockabilly can't be badass?

Bonus Points: If there's someone with the balls out there, somebody could actually combine this with metal and make something unique out of it. It would be some fucked up piece of metal.



Music: The reverend gets into the list twice! What starts off with a country tune that you can square dance to like in those country songs but when it reaches the chorus, death metal drums kick in and a light weight distortion playing a psudeo death metal riff smashes you. However, it is all done while making fun of death metal! Haha.

Bonus Points: The irony about this music is that the band's making fun of death metal but it sounds like they're making fun of Black Metal cause the lyrics are about the band Mayhem, how they add the vocalist's brain. (Yes they did, go google it.) To add up the irony, the genre/style they're playing is basically a country version of death metal.



Music: Remember when I said I wished there was a band that combined metal and country? Well, these guys did it, with harsh vocals. I say welcome to Desperadoz. These Germans thinks they're from Texas (they even have songs where they sing with a Southern accent) and decide to cover this classic cowboy theme song which Clint Eastwood popularized. Double bass drumming, country guitars with metal riffs, all with over the top throat vocals. One part Tarantino soundtrack potential, one part Wacken Open Air potential.

Bonus Points: The band is from Germany and this completes the Spaghetti Western circle. The Americans like John Ford make westerns, Akira Kurosawa then mimics their filming, then Sergio Leonne from Italy sets the whole Spaghetti Western genre in Italy and these German boys took the aesthetic and put it into music instead of movies. The bad also has Spaghetti Western like tracks that has the "Morricone Guitar Riff."


So now, kick back and take a twist in your music tastes. I will introduce weirder ones in the future and just get prepared as this is just level one of my weird taste in music.