ShockOne - Lazerbeam (feat. Metrik & Kyza)

Throwing in my 2 cents on some new D&B

Being honest here, I'm still quite a recent convert to drum and bass (and by extension, to the probable chagrin of some fanboys, dubstep) having only heard my first full-on D&B track somewhere around the end of 2005/start of 2006, and then only really diving into the music about two or three years ago. So yeah, cards on the table, noob points established.
But one of the artists who really helped kickstart my love for drum and bass is the now London-based Aussie expat Karl Thomas a.k.a. ShockOne.

A member of the biggest and (arguably) best of the Australian D&B scenes, ShockOne had his musical origins playing drums in a Perth metal band with Rob Swire and Gareth McGrillen of Knife Party fame, but who had previously gained more notoriety as founding members of drum and bass superstars Pendulum.

Having been so musically intertwined with the Pendulum lads, it really is quite hard to not hear the similarities between the sounds of ShockOne and his former band members, as both follow pretty much the same formula in creating driving, metal-tinged D&B; chock-full of mid-range, angular synth riffs (in Pendulum's case, also full of actual metal guitar riffs, check their collaboration with Swedish melodic death metal titans In Flames on "Self Vs Self" off of their final album Immersion), groovy 90's thrash slam-pit breakdows and modern vocal vocoder box production trickeries, whilst still having throwbacks to oldskool jungle 

This leads us neatly into the subject of today's review: 

ShockOne (finally) is dropping his first full length album in a couple of weeks, and "Lazerbeam" fronts up as the 4th single (the first single "Crucify Me" being released way back in mid 2011).
Billed as a collaboration with Metrik and featuring vocals from Kyza, "Lazerbeam" is a perfect example of where modern D&B is at in 2013, and quite frankly, is fucking massive.

ShockOne's more electronic-oriented Perth-style D&B sound is all over this track (frankly I can't really hear much of Metrik more heavy/ethereal stuff here); the swaggering halftime intro with Kyza effortlessly switching from a modern D&B/dubstep-styled grimey hip-hop flow to oldskool jungle rudeboy toasting and vocals that bring to mind Benji Webbe from Skindred (and an-80's hip-hop throwback descending 808 kick line in the background), the dancefloor destroying build-up and subsequent drop, the massive mid-range "rhythm guitar" backing genre-typical bleepy leads and the ubiquitous (but actually pretty gnarly, at least in this case) "half-time-drumstep-moshpit" breakdown at around 2:30, and to be honest there really isn't much more I can say about this absolutely monstrous piece of music except for you all (again, assuming people actually read this) to listen to it, and listen to it now. Big speakers with big bass will do the trick.

Massive!

"Lazerbeam" is out April 14th on Viper Recordings with remixes from Au5 and Skism, with the LP Universus dropping in Australia & New Zealand April 26th, with a global release April 29th.

Bring Me The Horizon & Draper - The Chill Out Sessions

Underlying electronic tendencies writ large.

 Now, I'm fully aware that as an emerging member of the blogosphere (citizen of the blogiverse? blogizen? something like that) the slightest faux-pas, even one that is unintentional, could completely torpedo my chances of increasing readership. Having said that I think I'm about to make one. Here goes:


I enjoy listening to, and actively endorse, the music that Bring Me The Horizon make.

I like Bring Me The Horizon. 

There, I said it. I'll give the holier-than-thou types a few seconds to leave (as if there was anyone reading this anyway).

Right, now we're nice and intimate:
So I read about this release potentially coming out somewhere around January 2012 (as it turns out it dropped in November, shows how much attention I've been paying, then again half the stuff I'm talking about here isn't current so no biggie) as another BMTH remix album, which made me think of something along the lines of Suicide Season: Cut Up! As the title would hopefully indicate, this couldn't be any further from the truth. The EP is a collaboration with UK ambient electronica/liquid/something-step producer Draper (check him out over on the Soundclouds), and rather than having a bunch of different DJs and producers cut up their tracks to be re-done in multiple different styles as they'd previously done on Suicide Season, this time BMTH have let Draper bring out the underlying ambient electronic currents and post-rock allusions that had wound their way through their previous full-length release There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret (and there is no way I'm typing that fucking album title again in this post), and in my (not so) humble opinion, he's succeeded admirably.

Before we dive into checking out The Chill Out Sessions in more detail, let's have a quick run through of the source material.
As previously mentioned, There Is A Hell... is full of bits of electronica (as has been the in thing with modern metalcore over the last few years for better or worse) and art-y/post-rock vibes, while still being heavy-as-fuck, whether it be snippets of ethereal strings and bleeps as found in the intro and outro to album openers "Crucify Me" and "Anthem" or a complete instrumental detour like the synth-organ and infinitely sustained guitar laced "Memorial". "Blessed with a Curse" neatly encapsulates what the album is about, putting a bit of a twist on the classic soft/loud dynamic trope. Also scope the guitar solo at 3:36, Slash in "November Rain" would be proud.

Now that we've covered what Draper started with, let's have a little look at the end result.

The Chill Out Sessions is a  6-track drop, and although it's been called an album, it plays more like an extended play, even at almost half an hour in length. Something about the flow of it seems kind of abridged. Opener "Crucify Me" starts out almost exactly the same as the non-remixed version, but we're immediately thrown straight into mellow acoustic guitar and female vocals (provided by Canadian songstress/goddess Lights), which remain the focus of the track.
 Something I found interesting (but not surprising given the nature of this album) was the focus that Draper put onto Lights' vocals on this release, with her featuring on two out of the six songs on this release, which is exactly twice as many tracks that feature the vocals of BMTH's lead vocalist Oli Sykes. He's also done an excellent job of keeping the soul and feel of the tracks intact, utilising lots of original backing instrumentation (vocals, keys, strings etc) and samples that did get somewhat buried under immense guitar riffs. Second set "It Never Ends" shows this perfectly, being pretty much composed of an extended loop of the original instrumental intro, layered with an amazing strings melody, delay-drenched guitars, previously background-dwelling choral "oooohs" and a vocal sample, again from the intro. To me, this track perfectly defines a "chillout" piece, I would have absolutely no qualms about listening to it for hours on end, and it is one of my two standouts on the album, with my top pick being Draper's reworking of "Fuck". Again, completely instrumental, "Fuck" starts out with the plaintive strings and ringing guitars that originally featured in the breakdown of the song before being broken up by orchestral hits straight out of Hans Zimmer's Inception soundtrack. The strings then play forwards, backwards and sideways over a distorted bass guitar line and some prototypical "-step" skittering percussion. It doesn't sound like all these elements a chillout song would make, but it works.

Speaking of -step though, in my eyes (and ears) this album does have one glaring misstep. "Blessed with a Curse" appears twice here, the first time preceded by and melded with "Memorial" (as one follows the other on There Is A Hell...) in another classic chillout piece. It's all light synth-drum beats, guitars and organs drowning in reverb and delay, and plucked strings. Standard, fits well in the album, great. However, "Memorial/Blessed with a Curse" is followed by a redux of "Blessed with a Curse" which starts out fairly similarly to the rest of the album, albeit with a quicker tempo, which quickly gets a bit too messy and heavy for a chillout release. It lurches along with a sidechained kick and snare for a bit before bringing in some theremin-sounding synths and some bro-step bleeps. All-in-all it sounds like someone's done a bad Ed Banger Records impersonation, it's completely out of character with the rest of the album, and pretty much just sucks. Cut this one out of the playlist however and you've got yourself five cuts of fried-gold chillout tunes that are perfect for a lazy day on the couch or a late night end of shift with a smoke and a drink to mellow out. Fans of BMTH's heavy side should definitely give this a look to see the glimpses they got on There Is A Hell... completely fleshed out, and lovers of ambient electronica should look past the fact that this is a remixed metal release, as I feel they'll be pleasantly surprised. 

Bring Me The Horizon & Draper - The Chillout Sessions was released as a free download in November 2012 and is easily located in the usual spots online. Get amongst it.

Sheppard - Let Me Down Easy

So, first post, NERVES!!

I scoped this one in the cab home from work last night/this morning, pleasantly surprised to hear a song that didn't make me reach for the headphones on the exceedingly brief ride from work to den.

Haven't heard of these guys before, according to our friendly neighbourhood 4:30AM radio presenter they're outta Brisbane, and for me it's pretty damn awesome to hear such amazingly crafted + talented Aussie tunage.
Sheppard are six-piece act with three siblings (the Sheppard siblings, natch) on vox, piano and bass. They've listed influences along the lines of Coldplay, Fleetwood Mac, John Mayer and Radiohead; to be honest I can't really hear that much of any of these guys on this track, except for a John Mayer-ish pop sensibility and there are some Radiohead-y production cues. Listening to this for somewhere around the 20th time while I'm writing this the lead vocal does have a bit of Chris Martin to it. But just a little bit. I don't like Chris Martin.
The thing that got me about this track was the vocals and harmonies. Straight away you're hit by big + lush "Wooooaaaaaaahss" that could've come straight out of an AFI track. The whole thing is catchy as the common cold and I was singing along by the end of the first chorus. Make sure you get a load of the sounds-suspiciously-looped acoustic guitar beat too.Another thing that really sings to me (pun completely intended) about this track is that, especially in the verses, the whole song is so damn happy, even though it is without a doubt a break-up/imminent break-up song, something that always got me about Go Your Own Way by Fleetwood Mac, so I guess their influence isn't too much of a stretch either.

(Something’s faded inside of your heart/So you’re crusadin’ to tear us apart/It’s clear now, I know you’re gonna leave me)

Check these guys out, I reckon they're gonna get massive within the next 12 months.

http://wearesheppard.com/
http://www.youtube.com/wearesheppard
http://www.facebook.com/wearesheppard

O Muse! Sing in Me!

Opening Ramblings

So for what seems like years but has probably only been a month or so I've been entertaining the idea of starting a music reviews blog, mainly because I (obviously, for those who know me) like sharing/imposing my opinions on things, and I have many MANY opinions on music, but also because I have neither the time nor the motivation to get into music journalism through the normal channels. Ergo, blogging. And here we are! (Also I'm currently spamming the hell out of my Facebook page with YouTube clips, and I do actually care about not irritating folks from time to time).

The vast majority of tunes that I'll be posting/rambling about on here will be linked from YouTube/VEVO/the usual major online music outlets.
Everything I post is the full property of any and all respective copyright holders, and if anyone reading this (if people read this) has any issues with me sharing their work it'll be taken down quicker than the time it takes for a Justin Beiber fangirl to do something...quick. I lost where I was going with that. Suffice to say I'll take down anything infringing on copyrights. That shit is serious.

Tunes-wise; I have the most eclectic music taste out of everyone I know (with maybe one or two exceptions) and so I'm going to be posting + review whatever takes my fancy at the time, old or new, ranging from tech-y metal to bubblegum pop and any + everything in between. I'm not biased, I'll review it all. Having said that, I'll usually be posting stuff that I like, but if I hear something that deserves a textual shredding then that'll get a whirl too.

Having said that, enjoy the tunes.

Peace and/or love

Hookey.