So interesting how comfort can be such a subjective, relative thing. Here I find myself tired and drained after a long, busy weekend, and thinking I may be listening to something ‘slow’, ‘calming’ and ‘relaxing’, I find myself slipping into some familiar, but fast upbeat electronic music that I’m sure many would find quite abrasive to say the least. Such is life. Beautiful.
Tonight I will start with the old and bring in the new. For some reason today I saw an image, of which I have now honestly forgotten, but it reminded me of the Goldie album, Ring Of Saturn. Like many albums I have loved over my life, when I sunk my teeth into this one it was heavy on the playlist for sometime. For drum and bass I found the sound easy enough for a novice of the genre to slip into, but with Goldie’s near pristine production work, also give the listener a solid footing into the heavier side of things. I often relate sounds of music to bodies or living organisms, and I often find myself really enjoying types of music where the music sounds like all its ‘parts’/instruments are being blended together to create one beautiful moving, fluctuating sound, for example the sound of a band like My Bloody Valentine, or the artist Fennesz. Tonight after revisiting the Goldie tracks I used to really enjoy I realized that the sound here is more like an orchestrated dance of the parts where each sound or instrument should be heard, recognized, and respected on its own.
Goldie could be considered the most prominent figure of the Drum and Bass scene for good reason. He has an extensive catalog of music, of which Ring Of Saturn was released in 1999, a decade ago.
Here is a track called ‘Kaiser Salsek’
Fast forward to today and if I had to tell you a few albums that have gotten the most airtime in my life over the last few years, I would definitely say two of them would have to be The Knife’s Silent Shout, and Burial’s Untrue. They were released in 2006, and 2007 respectively. I seem to continue to return to these albums time after time.
The Knife are a Swedish duo who formed in 1999, but only began to gain a wider audience within the last couple years, in part to a cover of one of their songs, Heartbeats, by Acoustic troubadour Jose Gonzalez, which was placed in a Sony Tv commercial. Silent Shout is a spectacular Album; digital, yet analog, rigid, yet soft, cold, yet warm.
Here is a sample of a live version of one of my favorites from the album entitled ‘Forest Families’
Burial is a one man production force out of the UK. He only has a few releases to date, and from what I have taken in I certainly feel that his newest released ‘Untrue’ is his best to date. The sound is most commonly categorized as Dub Step, and unlike most others in the genre, he incorporates a vocal element into the production making it very easy for newcomers to slip into an enjoyable initial listening session. For some reason I equate his music to something Moby would be making today, if Moby was still releasing relevant music worth listening to. Sorry Moby, I certainly loved your earlier stuff, back in the day!
Like the Knife there are soooo many good tracks on the album, but this one is definitely up there in my mind. The track is Homeless, and it is a certified show stopper.
Well two steps forward, one step back… I’ll leave you tonight with a bonus of one more from Goldie’s Ring Of Saturn, ‘What You Won’t Do For Love’. Has the late nineties housey soul-style vocal sound on it, a little cheesey, but a little goodness for all a y’all.
