Tuesday, March 30, 2010

ROOAARR!

the beast has awaken again. after like, one year.
it's ludacris, i know, oh indulgence, oh dismay.

well anyways, it's been a whole year of musical changes, releases, evolutions, enlightenments and, sometimes, endarkenments.

yep, you know this, it's medieval (a.k.a MED-EVIL) all over again.
this is the first time i'm posting about an instrumental-only band, but it's so evilicious i cannot possibly endure to deny sharing it onto the world.

i haven't quite found much about this act, i'm guessing it's still an unsigned act. a fucking entrancing unsigned (and maybe unsignable) act.

ladies and gentlemen: POWNY LAMB





classic magical unicorn+deer-god duo, nothing new here. the location is listed as Sad,Sad Town, Slovakia, but a lot of the comments are in Portuguese.

let's get down to business: about 10 tracks on their myspace, and surprisingly, an EP with downloadable tracks hosted on Last.fm are available. some of them run as short as 2 minutes, and basically suck and lack logic.

but when you listen to tracks as "Pegasus", you realize this is magic.

all the visual pollution available online, all the tacky, whack wannabe videos and images are replaced by such nihilistic lo-fi jpegs as of a magical (perhaps voodoey) lamb with MSPaint bangs drawn on it. and that's how you put people's imagination working.

you give them one final single dull, pixelated, still image, and a name, and the miracle of the human brain does the rest. Songs like "Super Stripper" may have you picturing a sad, widow-dressed stripper crying and dancing at the same time, something so tragic you could not ever begin to try to understand the reasons behind her crying stripper eyes (and stilettos)

other tracks may shock you if you are a person closely related to Soviet issues, like "King Vladimir", a matrioshka-like trance extravaganza who most likely will have you dancing like a Russian with a vampire face.

as far as comparisons go, on Last.fm the connected artists are: CocoRosie, Kap Bambino, Crystal Castles, Buraka Som Sistema (a.k.a BSS) and..

riffs:

Dead Can Dance.


enough said. you decide what it sounds like.

www.myspace.com/pownylamb

key tracks: "Pegasus", "Queen Yurislana", "Super Stripper", "Night/Mér"

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Fort Day: Telepathic Desert


Ola amigos!

Hey, today i'm kinda crooked so, i guess i'll go straight to the point

There's this songstress, Diane Cluck. She is so fond of fauna and flora, specially dogs. That totally passes through to us. Just a guitar and a few more stuff, but it's obvious to anyone who listens: it's Diane who paints the songs the most, with multi-layered voices, or just one, depending on how much company she wants in the songs. And many times "lonesome" is gold.


Telepathic Desert
on Oh Vanille/Ova Nille
by Diane Cluck

This song is visionary. The hazards of time-distance scarcely receive such good ilustrations.
You can, actually, see your Love, whatever shape you may design it to be, trying. Trying through the tired air, the static, the heat, the distances, the sun, the scorpions, the particles. And God and Diane surely must know how much we sent.

She firstly asks, almost outsidely, how bad the comunnication is going:
Did you recieve my love across the telepathic desert?
Switchboards are corroding in the micro-ranging waves

Says silence is punished (with heat):
Did you receive my love across the telepathic desert?
A million signals singe for every syllable that's saved


She then aproaches, like a Mediterranean damsel, when all the data is disabled. And she reminds you: she sent Love before, and is well conscient of what happens if it falls short of aim, for reasons unknown. Denote how she never blames a second person for the violent harshness inflicted to her Love.

Today I sent you love
I wonder if you will receive it
They shoot it down so often
I have watched it and believe
That if it never reached your mind
And it fell short of your heart
It's fallen to the desert floor where scorpions and sun torched and stung it all apart

She then softens things, trying to enhance the t-desert, but is not too sucessfull
Do not misunderstand me
I see the desert beauty
The cactus flower blooming
From the bleaching of the bones

And stiches, comparing the flow "this" had to the actual confusion of artificiality. The ambiguity of the theme leaves us wandering who's the bad guy here. Telephones or Phone Calls? Makers or Users? Senders or Recievers?

But this used to be a river
Till misappropriated
By electrical confusion
And the frying of the phones

Frequencys ranging through arcs of extra signal
Yardage and miles of interfering stuff
Invisible scribblings override the tired air


She ilustrates the roughness some more, and tries to certify the shippings of love, may it be received or not.

With an ever-present static so the traveling is rough
It stumbles over distances but I have sent enough
The atmosphere unraveling till you receive my love


The song is notable for the melody pad. It's a thick but not-intrusive melody that will keep you imagining strange, unrequited movement. A platypus may come to your mind too. A pre-civilization tone art also comes to me. This reminds me of a recurrent dream i used to have, all in black and tile-color, a rusty orange that painted the figures (generally me and other two kids running from a geometrical deity, very reminescent of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dioskouroi_Herakles_BM_E224.jpg) It also helps to write something Diane did not put explicitly out: the unconditional reason to keep shipping her love. The continuous, naive and phsycho-organic shippings. Damn the naughty desert.


FEATURES:

Mood: Sit Down, Mid-closed Hands, Closed Eyes. Calm, Evasive Call for Attention. Peek-a-boo. Snaky, Eastern.
Punchline: Today i sent you love/ I wonder if you will recieve it
Mental JPEG: Out-of-Body Experience through yellow area. Being a green toy-snake. Wasting your energy away through space.

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Third Day: the West Side


So, you must know how important is the third day in a life. Well.. at least in "The Little Mermaid" it is.
Today i bring you a simple song, but you will HAVE TO search it over there in the "STFS" box. It's a very very important song to humanity, i swear. The Casady Sisters a.k.a Bianca & Sierra a.k.a CocoRosie are Rainbowarriors, and as so, they teach love and beauty. In this song, they (specially Sierra) will try to raise LoveScent enough to teach you that true love must be as present as yourself, and that lives as long as you and she/he/it feel it, and sometimes beyond. Sometimes to the End of Times (really near kids, pep up).

West Side
on Le Maison de Mon Rêve
by CocoRosie

As in your ears, sounds of a medieval 8-bit game will raise, alongside spiritual projections of Sierra given voice to. This is the sound of an infancy movie from the 30's that you never saw. People that are easily startled by loving memories of childhood and 80's/90's life be advised towards crying.

This is simple: reserve and faith
I'll wait for you until the streets become sand
Destroyed definitions of modernity, quality and society (in the West Side)
And all the cellings in new york have come down
Waiting until the artificial lights are so few, that by night, stars will be visible again, and will reign.
I'll wait for you until the stars dominate the skies again

Thou brief, this song DOES sting. This song DOES change people's mind. Whether you're a Capitalist or a Hype-kid, it will mess with your brain.
Thank God.
Long Live RW, to The Afterlife.

FEATURES:
Mood: Two-Spirit Adoring, Accepting of Fates, Grace, Consumate Truth, Afterlife Wishing, Near-Death Experiences.
PUNCHLINE: "And all the cellings in new york have come down"
Mental Jpeg: Sand, Desert NY, Light Revolution, Leaving human form, Meeting with the long Dead, Crystals, Aknowledging of Flora and Fauna's Spirits.

Monday, April 6, 2009

Day of Two: Diamond Heart


Yo'how sea biscuits!

Here in Song-Day-Doc-Away we (Me,Myself and I) have loads to do with folk and nature, so i guess you imagine you'll have to be braced for a lot of Diamonds, Birds and Trees. Ahh the flora and the fauna. And a laptop. With battery.

Diamond Heart
on Songs III: Bird on the Water
by Marissa Nadler

Marissa is a meso-soprano, but the falsetto sting in the chorus adds extra smoothness to the song, specially on the chorus. She has a very simple, yet intricate of playing guitar. Well i guess y'all smarty-pants will recognize it as fingerpicking but hey, i'm teaching the kids here.And so she starts alongside the 4 notes melody pad.

Though lines, a rampage of knowledge to start with. 1: a jezebel crown; see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jezebel_(Bible) for more info, Jezebel was a though bone. 2: reliquary: a shrine, somewhere where pieces of valuable historic and/or religious are kept. 3: diadem frown: a diadem is a kind of crown/tiara, so you get the picture; a moody queen mistress of times of old.

So do you know I’m a dancer now
With red painted lips, and a jezebel crown(1)
So have you heard, I’m a singer now
With reliquary eyes, and a diadem frown(2)(3)


Even thou, she states, and gives you a hint of this side of her emotional behaviour:
But I look for youIn the diamond trees
And the highway divine
Deliver me
Your father died
A month ago
And he scattered his ashes
In the snow

And the chorus, an egotist and sorry state engulfed in delicious mandolin
But oh my lonely diamond heart
It misses you so well
Oh my lonely diamond heart
It misses you oh well


She then states firmly where she recently was and is as of now, bounded by the grace of visual memory erasure (wich always comes very handy when apart or in feuds with a loved one)
I had a man in every town
And I thought of you each timeI tore off my gown
Changes have come
And I cannot recall
The shape of your face
Through the winters and falls

Despite all this truth of facts, she chants almost counter-clockwise, and only here we find contact between "her" and a 2nd person
But I look for youIn the traffic seas
And the bars I’m always frequenting
Your father died
Some months ago
And we scattered his ashes
In the snow


This break in the song is quite significant. Many fans like it, and the reasons may be variable. First, the segment has a different tone from the whole song, maybe with the purpose of providing a mild reviveness of love memories, moaning and loss of all that rocambolesque mistress confidence.
Thou brief, it ilustrates well the significancy of a time problem.
Holidays are the hardest hours of the year
Holidays are the hardest hours of the year
Holidays are the hardest hours of the year

Some people switch Holidays with "Oh the days" wich adds other significance to the statements.

But oh my lonely diamond heart
It misses you my dear

She here calls out to offers she received when she left (maybe on her trail to be a singing mistress)
She gave me a bird
Made out of clay
So I never will forget her
And he gave me a book
Made out of wood
To fasten all
The emblems
She gave me a bird
Made out of clay
So I never will forget her
But oh my lonely diamond heart
It misses you so well
And oh my lonely diamond heart
It misses you oh well


This segment is not found on the original album. Instead, it's an extra segment on the Daytrotter Session's rendition of the song; she here liquifies and certifies the eternity of the space someone has in her heart. She also sings something i cannot fully understand because of extreme echo and low voice volume.
Days passing me ago
But i'll remember you
through the darkness
So what are you gonna do
She don't love you
and you know it's true baby
"My mom told me you ain't know
when men know,run as fast as you can baby."
I'll remember you
Through the darkness and the day.


FEATURES
Mood: Sparkling misery, uncertain fate, haunting memories, wandering about, longing, long-lost-love, icy heart, beyond heartbreak.
Punchline:Changes have come/And I cannot recall/The shape of your face/Through the winters and falls (BABOOM!)
Mental JPEG: Marissa's identity in this is too obvious to imagine other things other than her, doing all the things she's singing about. Maybe train trips in winter too.

Sunday, April 5, 2009

First Day : Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)





Howdy kids. First Day, First Song.
Keep that lousy A+ grading Medicine Techician away from you, will ya?

Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
on the album: Funeral
by: Arcade Fire


Well this sordid piece of sound is a true winter hymn. To put it simply, there are about two major ways to feel this song:

1#: It's the end of times ( Modern Ice Age) and you're alone with your loved one out in the snow, cold on the outside but warm-hearted.
2#: Blizzard is going within you family circle, your leady heart is sore and you'd like to escape now, please.


(The songs starts out with the key melody being played on the piano and electric guitar, with a sinth behind)

And if the snow buries my
My neighborhood

this depicts the emotional disconnection of the first person with the family
And if my parents are crying
Then I'll dig a tunnel from my window to yours
Yeah, a tunnel from my window to yours


(Drums kick in)

here we can find 1st person's independancy towards comunity values (long hair, forgetfulness); a reset on identity
You climb out the chimney
And meet me in the middle
The middle of the town
And since there's no one else around
We let our hair grow long and forget all we used to know
Then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow


the chorus is about capacity of action by the 2nd person within the 1st person's core; still not on an emotional level
You change all the lead
sleeping in my head
As the day grows dim
hear you sing a golden hymn


the fourth verse focus on daily-life lack of memories and carefreeness to the deepest level; total emotional evasiveness
Then, we tried to name our babies
But we forgot all the names that
The names we used to know!
But sometimes,
We remember our bedrooms
and our parent's bedrooms
and the bedrooms of our friends


(Orchestral environment starts to build up)
Then we think of our parents
Well, whatever happened to them?!


on the second chorus, John Doe declares total romantic 1st-2nd awareness ; this is the only part where we can find 1st person emotion, when it's finally revealed the emotional truth, desire of transforming lead ( hard feelings, cold, greyness, ashes) onto gold and colors, and spreading it on the "heart".
You change all the lead
sleeping in my head to gold
As the day grows dim,
I hear you sing a golden hymn
It's the song I've been trying to sing
Purify the colors,
purify my mind
Purify the colors,
purify my mind
And spread the ashes of the colors over this heart of mine!

(Regine kills it with the falsetto backvocals)

FEATURES

mood:
serene, harsh, stormy, non-grudgy, brave, naive
punchline: "Then, we tried to name our babies/But we forgot all the names that/The names we used to know!"
mental image: An old town burried in snow; photographs, mild sunlight, rooftops, chimneys, brown clothes, leather boots, dirt, dry skin, blondness.