I'm writing music reviews. So far, I've written four that have been submitted to a local (free) weekly publication, and one will be published with the album's release in three weeks. I've been asked to submit some more, but quite frankly, I'm a bit limited on what I listen to. My main areas of influence are jazz, funk, classic rock, and some modern jam bands (Dave Matthews, Phish, Gov't Mule, Mantras). I need to expand a bit, and thus would like you guys' help. I need you to suggest for me some new albums that have come out in the last month or so, or will be coming out soon, that you would like to hear a review on. This is simply practice for me, and I want to try to work on developing my own voice.
There are a few things you should know, though. There are two types of music that I just don't get, and they are "Heavy Metal" (or any of the metal-core, horror-core, grunge-metal, etc sub-categories) and "Rap." It's not that I don't - or can't - appreciate the talent in these genres, it's simply that I just don't understand them, and will probably have an extremely hard time reviewing them on anything other than the musicianship within. However, with that being said, I will certainly try my hardest to give them a fair review if you want me to.
The other thing is, I will send you private messages of my reviews instead of posting them in public at first. Once again, this is because I'm a little self-conscious of my "voice" at the moment, and want to try to develop some things. Secondly, it would hopefully give you an chance to respond to me and tell me how you think I did interpreting and critiquing the music you like. If I was too overly negative - especially about things that maybe I just don't understand - I would love to hear about that.
Anyway, so that's it. Please start sending me bands and albums to listen to.
Cheers!
-Ish
A Hawk and a Hacksaw has a new album called Deliverance. I'd be interested in a review of that.
Vitamin String Quarter covers of various bands (seriously, tons and tons of bands).
That's the first that comes to mind.
VNV NATION: The new VNV Nation album 'Of Faith, Power and Glory' will be released on June 19th in Europe and on June 23rd in North America. The album cover was designed by Michal Karcz, who also created the artwork for the album 'Judgement'. It is undoubtedly one of his finest works. The image of a momument, in the middle of a wasteland, is a metaphor for all our greatest hopes and solemn intentions and the brutal extremes that we're capable of, our schizophrenic nature as humans and the eternal struggle to move forward. In sound, the album moves on from where Judgement left off, taking the VNV Nation sound a firm step forward. It is an album that is, at times, soulful and anthemic while, at other times, it is raw and uncompromising. European and North American Tours have also been announced. Check the link below.
NINE INCH NAILS: Jane's Addiction, Nine Inch Nails, and Street Sweeper have released free studio tracks online this weekend at the cleverly named Ninja2009.com website. This is the tour site for the forthcoming co-headlining run with Nine Inch Nails and Jane's Addiction. The free downloads from Jane's Addiction are Chip Away and Whores, both songs that fans will recognize from 1987's self-titled live release. Both have been redone and remastered. Perry Farrell said, "Just to get some creative juice flowing- we went into the studio for about two weeks. We had the idea to re-record two tunes, just because they'd never been done officially in the studio. And we had some fun writing some new things. A handful that are close to finished, but not quite done. But there's no rush to put anything out at this point." The EP is available in the following formats: High-quality MP3s (45 mb), FLAC lossless (160 mb), M4A apple lossless (163 mb), and High definition WAVE 24/96 (223 mb
http://www.musicfolio.com/index.html
Not an album, so I am not certain if it would help... but:
http://sxsw.com/music/shows/schedule
has a list of many good bands that you can listen to one full free song for.
My favorites from there are mainly alt/pop:
(Artist First)
The Seedy Seeds... The Push
Pong... Killer Lifestyle (Amusing)
The Guggenheim Grotto (Sweet sound)
The Features... The Drawing Board
These United States... Honor Amongst Thieves (Odd)
Micachu... Golden Phone (Famous)
Can you work with individual songs like that?
They may or may not be coming out with albums.
Thanks guys, I'm going to give a couple of these a pretty serious listen tomorrow (Sunday) and Tuesday, and then go from there.
Light Dragon, full albums would definitely be better, but I'll see if I can do anything with singles.
I would just like to say, the VitaminStringQuartet have their own youtube channel, they upload full albums. Its kinda hard to get to but the account name is VitaminStringQuartet I believe.
Here we go (http://www.youtube.com/user/VitaminStringQuartet)
It's seriously good listening. Its only like 10-15% of their material though.
Just a warning, if you really like this stuff, avoiding their site is a good idea unless you can control your spending habits :P