Song of the Day

Archive for December, 2010

Greg Laswell’s Sing, Theresa Sing off his album “Through Toledo” has been a beautiful ballad of love and waiting that’s captured my mind and imagination for several years now. I’ve been waiting for the music video to this song to become available on YouTube and it is now so I can finally post it here confidently for you to watch.

The music video doesn’t really do my imagination justice, but that’s no consolation. The song is amazing and is even more enveloping and has a deeper fullness of sound that you can only experience when you listen to the higher quality Mp3 track. For some reason the YouTube version does not seem to have the Hight Quality of the audio track that I downloaded off of iTunes several years ago.

Nothing special, I just like this band, and thought you might not have heard of them before. Not super chipper right now, because my grandma just died and it’s just not an uplifting experience. I hope you enjoy this upcoming New York based band.

UGK’s hit song “One Day” of their 1996 album Rid’n Dirty. Enjoy!

Please welcome, Faded Paper Figures. This song New Medium comes off their latest album “New Medium”. Enjoy!

Faded Paper Figures comes from Los Angeles California and is one of those bands that you and your friends might throw together because you all love making music and want to get something started. It doesn’t take much, just the right equipment and a little bit of encouragement and oomph. They started in 2007 and their story could be yours too! Take a look at their Wikipedia description below.

Faded Paper Figures formed in early 2007. The genesis was at a party in Irvine, California, where John Williams and Kael Alden were discussing music. Kael was composing music for TV and film with his older brother’s company, Robot Repair. John already had some experience as a musician and songwriter. Both full of ideas for a new sound, they decided to record some material together. After a few days the music they were able to create surpassed their own expectations. Over the next few months they wrote and composed a number of songs, experimenting with blending traditional guitar with electronica. The songs went up on a new MySpace page under the name of Machine Discourse. Heather Alden joined in as a harmony vocalist, rounding out and softening the band’s sound. Not long after the band’s name changed to Faded Paper Figures, and with a growing song list and a mounting audience, the band’s sound solidified.

Hhehehehehe, you see! This could be you!!!

UPDATE: I had to change the video out because American West was removed from YouTube due to copyright infringement. But you can still listen to it with this SoundCloud track. hehehe

This song as you can see comes from the album Nocturne of Exploded Crystal Chandelier by the mysty indie synth pop duo Sun Airway comprised of Patrick Marsceill and Jon Bathmus. The album has only been available since the end of October which would put it in the brand-spank’n new category. Somebody brought them to my attention in the last two weeks, but I totally forget who, so please add your comment to this blog post if it was you.

I’d place this band in the non-traditional category, all the more reason to share their musical talent here with you. Any 5 second excerpt from this song would sound somehow familiar to the average listen, I could name a bunch of synonymic bands that come to mind, but the point is not to find what other musical acts they are similar to, I’d rather discuss what’s unique about them.

Although I wish they had a music video, the lack of one is nice because it leaves my imagination to do the directing. The elements that pop out to me in the song are the constant soft static background synthesizer hum and the way the drums and instrumentals seem to fade into my ears gently like a soft music playing in the not too far distance asking me to stay right where I am and soak it in. The aggregation of all of the songs into the soft cloud of radio static noise is comforting like the sound of an old LP or cassette recording.

All of it produces a sort of dreamy effect that makes me want to go back to my 80′s childhood and listen to song from the future while watching a movie where the characters from Star Trek are stranded in an old black and white western movie.

If you like my Song of the Day music blog, please post a link to it somewhere for your friends to find and follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

To listen to older Song of the Day blog posts check out the Playlist that I created on a free music playlist that I added recently.

HA this song is great! It comes off the band’s self-titled album “Friendly Fires”! I just love this video, but at first was a bit thrown off. The lack of visuals and slow energy in the beginning made me hesitate, but the more you watch, the more you love it! The song is awesome too. It’s like the name of one of my favorite ski runs, “Sheer Bliss”! This band, if I venture to call them indie, or punkpop, or poppunk is from England and released their latest album through a record label in Berlin.

The high emotive and energetic nature of Passion Pit come to mind and the playfulness and originality of the music video remind me of Does it offend you? Yeah!‘s Epic Last Song. I love the feeling these kinds of songs bring me. It’s encouraging, not self deprecating, inspirational in it’s attitude, and is the kind of music that lets you do and be whatever you want. Music is truly a force in this world, and has such an enormous power to affect.

I hope when you listen to any of the songs I post on here that you find what you can love about then, that they meet you like a stranger who feels like an old friend and brings only brightness and enjoyment to your day. I love this stuff and I hope you do too! I just want to help others discover new music and in my time keeping this blog up over the last few months I’ve noticed that because of it, I’ve been keeping up on finding new music and am feeling great positive energy through doing something I’m passionate about. Combining two things I’m good at and love, listening to music and making websites. hehehehe

If you like my Song of the Day blog, please share it with others and follow me on Facebook or Twitter.

Also, check out the new Song of the Day Playlist music player that I added recently.

I like this band, love the music video, and could listen to this all day long. I love San Francisco, and that’s one thing I’ve got in common with this indie garage pop band. Their sound was described really well on Last.fm’s review of the band. Psychedelic, eerie, hallucinogenic, reminiscent, nostalgic, and reverent are all words that I would agree describe this band quite well. The sound of this song is accidentally divine and intentionally benign. The band isn’t throwing stones, building a statue of themselves, showing off, or demanding anything. The music video is playful and floats in a philosophical mist that more accurately reflects the reality of our acoustically stimulated minds than anything else I’ve seen recently. The way the musicians fill their instrumental parts in the band with the projected images on their bodies very astutely makes transparent the idea that, although they are the band that created the song, in this music video they are not producing the sound that you hear but rather are simply acting as a visual representation for that sound to help us understand its orgins better, and likewise, the video itself is simply a projection of an image on our computers, and by the time we see it, the band will have long moved on to doing other things with their bodies like making music and going about their lives. Film, in a way gives us a false impression that the things we are seeing at that moment are real and happening “right now“, but this is never the case unless we’re watching some live event, and even then there is some delay.

I give this band lots of props and respect and hope the rest of their music is this good!!! Check out the album this song is from called Play It Strange.

This indie group came to my attention from a friend who makes a yearly music compilation mix. The content of the music video and the feel of the song remind me of Radiohead although I’m sure like any band, Kashmir would prefer to not be labeled as similar to another band. Kashmir has been around since the early 90′s, but probably haven’t been heard much in the United States music scene because they are from Denmark.

The guitar riffs in this song actually remind me the most of some Sonic Youth tracks, although their songs seems to be more accessible.

The music video for this song is definitely intriguing, but you’ll have to watch it completely through to the end to know why. Watch it twice and it will make total sense. You will end up watching the video in two different ways with at least two different stories. I think both of these stories are similar in a way. And both bear a strong resemblance to an animated video I saw for another Radiohead song Creep Acoustic produced with Adobe Flash. All three videos remind us of the evils of corporate culture and the need to change or abolish these institutions, and even in some cases give up our lives in a singular act to destroy large alienating corporations that destroy people’s lives. I’m getting away from the topic of music here, but then again, music is simply a form of artistic expression and a means for us to communicate messages that are sometimes lost or difficult to fully communicate through words. Sometimes, the emotional power of songs and the visual impact of videos and stories is the best way to get these messages across.

I don’t think corporations are necessarily evil by their nature, however, like anything, if it is allowed to satisfy all of its excessive wants and desires, just like anything, it can become a force of evil, just like a child that is not raised in a healthy environment can become a murderer or drug dealer. If you disagree with me, please take a look at the following website where you’ll find plenty of information defining the history and role of Corporations in our society and the negative impact these institutions have had on our society due to lack of restrictions and controls.

GlobalIssues.Org

Sorry to end this on a sad note, but obviously, I’m not the only one here that feels like there’s a message that needs to be communicated.

Sleigh Bells is a new band that hit things hard this year and are cruising with their buzz. Their music instills confidence and occasionally has the effect of downloading Kung-Fu into the brain of the listener as they go about their day suddenly thinking they can kick everyone’s ass around them. Their songs have the boldness and aggressive pop of MIA’s Paper Airplanes single with it’s guitars and electro pop sounds hitting the speakers so hard that you wouldn’t know if bombs were going off in the street. This song is one of their tamer ones. Take a listen to these and see what you think.

Discover new music by Sleigh Bells off their new album Treats.
Tell ‘em – Sleigh Bells
Treats – Sleigh Bells
Riot Rhythm – Sleigh Bells
Run the Heart – Sleigh Bells