Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. [320][MP3]

Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. 

Label: Sub Pop Records
Format: CD, Album

Country: US

Released: Feb 2011

Genre: Rock

Style: Post Rock

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Mogwai never seemed like a particularly good bet to age well. They came out of the gate as a band that Meant Something to many people, namely fans of heavy guitar music and rock critics. They established a clear, identifiable, and exciting new sound, but their latest LP-- Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will-- doesn't change the pattern Mogwai have set for themselves on recent, often middling, releases: There are some anthemic guitar blasts, some prettily drifting comedowns, and one or two vocal tracks.

The band has regained none of its prior fierceness, but Hardcore is, importantly, the band's least self-conscious album in ages. There are no attempts to be really heavy, man. There are no stale electronics. The songs that wander out of the band's comfort zone-- most notably the Neu!-indebted "Mexican Grand Prix"-- are the types of genre exercises a veteran rock band of Mogwai's stature should probably undertake. Hardcore feels comfy and lived-in, backhanded compliments only to those who didn't slog through The Hawk Is Howling and Happy Songs For Happy People.

The price for all this hominess is basically any lingering sense of mystery. Mogwai can chime away pleasantly during "Death Rays"-- featuring the band's best guitar lick in years-- but it can't turn "Rano Pano" into "Stanley Kubrick". This is fine, as long as we're willing to admit that we get different things out of Mogwai albums these days. This is a record of savvy rock vets kicking at distortion pedals until something frothy emerges. I'm on board if the results are going to be as page-turning-ly melodic as "How to Be a Werewolf" or as playful as the pitch-shifted "George Square Thatcher Death Party". The mistakes are easy to forgive: "White Noise" is the band's most vanilla opening track ever. The slide-guitar panorama of "Letters to the Metro" will still your blood just as surely as "Like Herod" once boiled it, but it's merely the type of innocuous doodling the band has long padded its albums with.

Mogwai's prior output and general demeanor has made it difficult for them to be a group that fans simply enjoy. The band built its reputation on sonic extremes, and that purview has infected their reputation: deliver a masterpiece-- I don't think they have it in them-- or suffer indifference. On Hardcore Mogwai sound like they're enjoying being Mogwai again. I'm ready to enjoy them being Mogwai again too.

Review by Pitchfork [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15100-hardcore-will-never-die-but-you-will/]

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Grouper - A I A : Alien Observer [MP3][320]

A I A : Alien Observer

Label: Yellow Records

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album

Country: US

Released: April 2011

Genre: Rock

Style: Experimental, Drone, Ambient

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The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. These short LPs, released at the same time and that share an overall aesthetic, sound beamed in from another realm, and they also sound like they could have come from no one else.

Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. Particularly on Alien Observer, she layers her voice in a way that occasionally brings to mind Julianna Barwick, but Harris sounds comparatively distant and less immersive. Her voice haunts these songs instead of leading them; it's a presence and not a personality, and the voice and instruments are in balance, serving each other without any one element becoming more prominent.

The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era. David Pearce's music as Flying Saucer Attack, recorded mostly during the 1990s, was often referred to as "rural psychedelia," and that description would fit this pair of records. This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them. The sophistication comes from the care in presentation. This music doesn't sound like it was built from mistakes or thrown together, it seems precisely ordered and arranged even while it's often muffled and warbly and distorted. Every sound exists for a reason.

Full review and more please follow this link [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15332-a-i-a-alien-observer-a-i-a-dream-loss/].

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Various Artists - Drive [MP3][320]

Drive

Label: Lakeshore Records

Format: CD

Country: US

Released: Sep 2011

Genre: Most Electronic

Style: Movie Soundtrack

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Most of its ethereal electronic-pop score was composed by Cliff Martinez, past drummer of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, whose ambient work on the Sex, Lies, and Videotape soundtrack Refn was a particular fan of. The score contains tracks with vintage keyboards and bluntly descriptive titles. Refn wanted electronic music for the film and to have the music occasionally be abstract so viewers can see things from The Driver's perspective. He gave composer Martinez a sampling of songs he liked and asked Martinez to emulate the sound, resulting in "a kind of retro, 80ish, synthesizer europop". Editor Matt Newman suggested Drive's opening credits song – "Nightcall" by French electronic musician Kavinsky.

Two modified songs from The Social Network soundtrack, written and produced by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross are used in the movie. They are not credited in the movie and not included on the released soundtrack. One is a piano-less version of "Hand Covers Bruise". The other is "3:14 Every Night". Brian Eno's "Ascent (An Ending)" is also used periodically during scenes between Ryan Gosling and Carey Muligan.

As Winding Refn was going through mixer Johnny Jewel's catalog, he picked out "Under Your Spell" and "A Real Hero" because he thought of Drive being a fairytale. During Drive's climax, "A Real Hero"'s keynote melody, about becoming "a real human being, and a real hero", refrains because that is when The Driver changes into both those statuses'. At first, Jewel worried that the latter might be too literal but soon realized it is used in Drive "in the exact same way that I was feeling it when I wrote it. He definitely got the nuance of the song, and understood what it was supposed to mean, and he wanted to give that emotion to the viewer, that same feeling."

Thinking of music in terms of basic elements, Jewel would tell the director that for certain scenes, it should not have bass since, as an earth tone, it usually is used for a more emotional or ominous part. Jewel thought the music should be upper register and relaxing for the "dreamlike" scene. To help himself with the writing process and conjure up melodies, the mixer would perform a procedure where he highlighted many phrases from the novel, then printed those words in large font and hung them on his walls or drew pictures during viewings of Drive.

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Grouper - A I A : Dream Loss [MP3][320]

A I A : Dream Loss

Label: Yellow Records

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album

Country: US

Released: 2011

Genre: Rock

Style: Experimental, Drone, Ambient

-

The tools Liz Harris uses to make music as Grouper tend to be pretty basic: piano, guitar, synths, drones, hiss, and lots of reverb. If you've been following along with the twists and turns of noisy ambient music these last few years, this collection of elements may sound familiar, possibly bordering on cliché. But it's all in how you fit the pieces together. Despite sharing characteristics with a lot of other current music, Harris' has a distinctive sound that she pretty much owns. These short LPs, released at the same time and that share an overall aesthetic, sound beamed in from another realm, and they also sound like they could have come from no one else.

Part of the distinctiveness can be traced to Harris' voice, which floats above the music and can sound delicate and shrouded and mist and can also evince an approachable earthiness. Particularly on Alien Observer, she layers her voice in a way that occasionally brings to mind Julianna Barwick, but Harris sounds comparatively distant and less immersive. Her voice haunts these songs instead of leading them; it's a presence and not a personality, and the voice and instruments are in balance, serving each other without any one element becoming more prominent.

The other aspect that sets Grouper apart is an approach to sound that feels somehow both cruder and more sophisticated than the majority of the lo-fi crop. It's crude in the sense that it seems to hearken back to the dark, home-recorded songs of an earlier era. David Pearce's music as Flying Saucer Attack, recorded mostly during the 1990s, was often referred to as "rural psychedelia," and that description would fit this pair of records. This music feels both spacey and expansive and also oddly intimate and grounded, the work of someone who has mastered her tools and knows how to get the most out of them. The sophistication comes from the care in presentation. This music doesn't sound like it was built from mistakes or thrown together, it seems precisely ordered and arranged even while it's often muffled and warbly and distorted. Every sound exists for a reason.

Full review and more please follow this link [http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/15332-a-i-a-alien-observer-a-i-a-dream-loss/].

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Nintendo - The Legend Of Zelda 25th Anniversary Soundtrack [320][MP3]

The Legend Of Zelda 25th Anniversary Soundtrack

Label: Nintendo of Europe

Format: CD

Country: Europe

Released: 2011

Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen

Style: Soundtrack, Contemporary

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I love Zelda. It's my favorite game ever. I purchased Zelda Skyward Sword and got this awesome Soundtrack CD included in the game case. I ripped it to MP3 320Kbps and now it's here. Enjoy!

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