Music in lieu of content

[drwex]

Writing actual content stuff is too much these days, so have some really wildly different music tracks. I'll do the singles first and save the sets for another post.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ysFgElQtjI
This is conceptually brilliant and a great implementation of the idea: mix hip-hop and country. Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus have a track that is breaking all kinds of popularity records, for good reason. It's got rap sensibilities (that's some classic rap flow there) and country lyrics ("hat down, cross-town, ... spendin' lots of money on a new guitar"). The production is also fantastic, with Billy Ray Cyrus doing rap bits and Lil Nas X singing country bits. Then they join in a nice duo harmony. The track is kept spare and it's short, which I think actually increases its impact. I hope someone is making big book off this because it's going to see a thousand imitators in short order.

https://soundcloud.com/markknight/the-mystery-of-old-ma-clifton
Despite its title (The Mystery of Old Ma Clifton) this is not even a little a country song. This is Mark Knight with a fun tech house dance track. Normally I complain about tracks being too short; my one complaint here is that this track needs to be trimmed. There are just too many repetitions of phrases between the interesting gospel bits.

https://soundcloud.com/westwood-x/bel-air
Westwood X recommended this one to me: "Bel Air" by someone calling themselves RUMPUS. It's a pretty bouncy hip-hop dance track. It's got a fun deep-house bass undercurrent that makes this the kind of music I enjoy driving to. Not too fast, not too repetitve.

https://soundcloud.com/westwoodrecordings/dont-fight
Another find via Westwood's recommendations. The Nice Guy's "Don't Fight" is a jazzy, funky, upbeat track featuring Kali Phoenix, whose own work is often a kind of soft vocal set to big band-style orchestration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvd4ZzxUANY
This - Cosmic Cowboys & Lazarusman doing "If You Leave Tonight" - is the first track on a set list by Roy Miller that I might blog later. But I wanted to find this track and play it for you to see what you all thought. It is very spoken-word in away that reminds me a little of Soul Coughing but it's softer and more romantic and more fantastical. Listening to it feels very intense, as though the writer was struggling to get emotions out into words and the words are there but the meaning isn't - it's in what the words conjure in your head. Or in mine, at least.

Comments

[intuition_ist]

i love your music posts but target="_blank" on the links would keep the link target from replacing my dreamwidth reading page. I can never remember to right-click/control-click/whatever to keep it from doing that.

Re: Comment Catcher: A Dollar a Question

[drwex]

Not wrong. I'm still used to LJ which did that by default.

[mizarchivist]

Old Town Road-
The kids LOOOOVE this song right now. It gets stuck in my head easily, which I find irritating, but your POV has reminded me that it's not all bad.

Mark Knight-
You sent me this link earlier this month and I listened to it about five million times before I lost track of it. It is such a good track. I don't even care that it's repetitive. ^_^

Bel Air-
Mmm. good chill.

Don't Fight-
It moves, you know? Like I want to ride a bike or take an unstopped car trip to just keep it going.

If You Leave Tonight-
The musical quality reminds me of the chill/ambient music that was piped into the resort I went to in Cancun back in '08. Which I liked. It was nice, but definitely had an other-worldly quality.
It is like if the brain-child of M Doughty and Lords of Acid decided to talk about feelz. I backtracked an listened to what he was saying, because it was playing quietly enough it was just vague noises and some words coming through and the dream-like music in the background. Then I backtracked. And I was all... HELL NAH. The sun will come up. If she wants to leave, it's probably for a good reason. Let's not play it this way, OK?

[drwex]

like if the brain-child of M Doughty and Lords of Acid decided to talk about feelz

Yeah, that.

The sun will come up. If she wants to leave, it's probably for a good reason. Let's not play it this way, OK?

I hear ya. I thought this veered in the direction of stalker-y sometimes but how can someone talk about the emotional impact of losing someone, or ask them to stay, without that? I hear it as saying "If you leave tonight, it will have tremendous emotional impact".

"The sea will crawl out my eyes" is a hell of a way to talk about how much one would cry, yanno?

[mizarchivist]

Right, how do you say that this loss will hurt without diving into emotional blackmail or veering into threats.

And I get wishing to convince someone to stay, too. The human condition, yo. It's kind of a lot. Much of a muchness.

[jducoeur]

This is conceptually brilliant and a great implementation of the idea: mix hip-hop and country.

Okay, gotta ask: have you heard Vance Gilbert's "Country Western Rap"? The musical references are a bit dated by now (the track is 25 years old), but it's still one of my favorite ever bits of musical humor...

[drwex]

I... see. No, I was not familiar with that previously.

Thanks... ?

[chhotii]

I love "Old Town Road" with an insane passion. Vic was flabbergast to find out that I'm cool enough to like it.

[drwex]

That's cool. Our kids have picked up on enough of our musical tastes that we often go to shows together (when they're not 18+)