Monday, March 2, 2009
Monday Music #9 (Ivan Birthistle, Ella Blame)
Generally, on Mondays, I write about what stood out the most during the week (or, more often, the weekend.) A few days ago I was raring to feature a few folk-ish acoustic artists I'd heard, but I have this bad habit of losing interest in them within weeks. Not always, mind you, but it's a risk I don't like taking.
Fortunately, they weren't the only ones I heard. So here's a last-minute change. Today's artists both make electronic music, of the great variety.
(Also, yes, that first one is a guy. It took me nine weeks to feature a male artist, but reverse the genders and few people would bat an eye.)
Ivan Birthistle is the keyboardist for Nina Hynes, part of The Husbands. Turns out he also makes music himself, of the completely electronic variety. They're soundtracks looking for activities or days. That could be a laughable description - after all, there are as many genres here as there are songs, and depending on the hour of the day, more - but it works for me and for my activities and days.
Which ones would I choose? "Ledden," first, to pick out the lovely notes from the antsy, beset-upon-by-creeping-pixel-monsters ones, which are pretty good in their own right. And then "Whingdung," with its tumbling-through-the-scales background part that's ten times more hypnotic than it has any right to be, and all sorts of crazy stuff going on in the foreground.
Maybe you prefer soundtracks to vocals. Nina Hynes does sing on "Blob." Ignore the first few seconds - I mean, I do - and it could be a Madonna song yanked into the future and tossed into the blender until the beats stutter and bits of a few other songs get into the mix somehow. (That's a compliment, by the way. The Immaculate Collection is one of my favorite compilations ever - well, by "ever" I mean "of what I've heard - but still!")
Listen here.
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Ella Blame comes from a different place entirely. She's one of the most original musicians I've ever heard. Honestly, listening to her CD Baby clips will give you a better impression than I can explain in words, but I'll try: weird and wonderful, usually electronic music with depth. That's a terrible description, but seriously, go listen.
Her performance on "Bitter Tears" (from her 2008 album of the same name) sounds like Sarah Brightman on two different kinds of acid, and when Sarah announced that her next record was going to piss off her record label, I hoped it'd sound a lot more like this. You've got drama already from the title and strings, and then those vocals come in, processed into the uncanny valley, operatic and brassy and commanding. The music has plenty of twists, of course, but this song's all about the singing.
For those of you who prefer things a bit more accessible at first, "Last Emotion" (not on either album, I checked) is more of a traditional dance song, although not without its quirks - the various vocals, whispered and otherwise, are like Enigma stripped of everything annoying.
These don't even begin to sum her music up, though, so again, just go to CD Baby and listen. I sound like a shill and I guess, in this case, I am. This is worth it though.
Listen here. Or go to CD Baby already.
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