Theophilus London

Theophilus London is a hip hop artist (though his music transverses several genres and sounds not limited to hip hop) that I came across a  while ago while looking through some Kid Cudi and had him cited a similar sound and at first just by hearing his voice you'd think he was a "carbon copy" as some described him but the more I listened to his various mixtapes and albums the more I saw the differences between the two and where Theophilus dare I say it, surpassed Cudi in some musical aspects and diversity.The first of his songs that I heard "I Stand Alone" caught me off guard from the way the song started off was composed in a way that completely shook my initial suspicion of just another rap song right away as I continued to listen to the lyrics and actual depth. While he is completely capable of creating straight rap (which he does from time to time) his variety is also what further deepened my interest as some songs wouldn't even feature a a distinct hip hop beat and instead featured a tropical-latin sound featuring various guitars and tropical style vocals. Theophilus could be described as a jack of all trades that was master of all.

Here's a few songs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WRuDAasz-8  - I Stand Alone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv-zE3QYkYI   - Lighthouse (the dude spelled his name wrong)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syt6TtRPIm4     - Mothertree

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g57DacvzU1Q  - Last Name London

In class we listened to The Band's album, Big Pink which its story behind its development and naming are interesting enough without even getting to how some of the songs were written.  The album itself was named after the house where a considerable amount of songs were written and recorded, the house was literally big and pink. I was amazed when I found out that some of the songs' lyrics were written by different people as a way to get into the house and how well they came together which without knowing you'd think it was one person that had written them. Each song sounded alike in some ways but also had its own distinct and unique sound such as "The Weight" which is a slower song yet the constant kick of the drums help maintain a steady rhythm and split vocals around the chorus gives it a good hook. Overall I enjoyed the album which was kept interesting by various changes to each song.

Last Tuesday as I was in class conversing with classmates (as it was stated the class wasn't going to listen to anything that day) when something caught my ear and I stopped to listen to what seemed to be a distinct rapper's voice mixed with good guitar and band, at that moment I pulled out my phone app to identify the artist so I could look more into it when I got home, it came up with Danger Mouse's December 4th. As I later looked on to the rest of the album I found an equal amount of great songs resulting from combination of The Black album and The White album (ergo it's name being The Grey Album). Though interesting, this isn't the first of it's kind I've heard though it does seem people enjoy mixing Jay-Z as there is the great Jigga Hendrix which mixes Jimmy Hendrix and Jay-Z (which was inspired by The Grey Album).

December 4th

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRWDuqzc5q0

Jigga Hendrix

http://soundcloud.com/fattyhezlop/jigga-hendrix-99-voodoo-problems

White Album

In class we listened to The Beatles' White album which is straightforward right off the bat- its cover featured a plain white "wall" devoid of any signs of a cover other than "The Beatles" printed in simple black font on the front cover.  The album overall was pretty good and enjoyable, it had a few slow moments, but only a few and other than those was defined by the simple and broken down use of an acoustic guitar which when played right is extremely hard to beat. One such instance of this being "Blackbird" which is features a light enjoyable guitar combined with their all too famous harmonies to create a great song that is stripped down to its core.

Gaining greater perspective

Throughout the week I've been going over different albums and songs from different bands to try to get even further in depth thinking about the music because personally, the more I listen to an album the more elements I notice that I may have previously missed or overlooked because I was focusing on  a different element that I hadn't yet noticed and results in the creation of a sort of  "layer" of knowledge/elements for that particular album, song, or even the overall sound of the artist and at times a finding can be so defining that it's as if you've found a new song in one you already knew . Also a new perspective is given when you watch the music video for a particular song because it often gives insight/reflects how the artist feels about the song not only musically but visually in terms of their videos and the different effects used to help further immerse you in the song and its mood that they try to pass on.

NCAA football 2006 Soundtrack

As I was pondering what to write about this time around I recalled Ann talking about the soundtrack for Heavy Rain which was notably a good one, this got me thinking about the best soundtrack I've heard on a video game which I sat thinking for about 5 seconds until I recalled the soundtrack on NCAA Football 2006, quite possibly one of the greatest soundtracks ever put together for one equally great game (yes I am extremely fond of this game half due to the soundtrack which even my brothers marvel at). The soundtrack consisted of mostly punk and post punk bands such as Bad Religion, The Clash, NOFX, Pixies and others that I'll list later on, the soundtrack also featured Pearl Jam's predecessor Mother Love Bone, the soundtrack however, did feature other acts that weren't exactly rock or punk such as The Pietasters and De La Soul, one of the greatest soundtracks in a video game I think.

                                                               Here's the complete soundtrack:

Artist	Song
Bad Religion	"Atomic Garden"
The Clash	" Train in Vain (Stand by Me)"
De La Soul	"Me Myself and I"
Guided by Voices	"Teenage FBI"
Jawbreaker	"Bad Scene, Everyone's Fault"
Lagwagon	"Know It All"
Lush	"Ladykillers"
Mother Love Bone	"This Is Shangri-La"
The Mr. T Experience	"More Than Toast"
Ned's Atomic Dustbin	"Kill Your Television"
NOFX	"Jeff Wears Birkenstocks?"
Pixies	"Debaser"
Superchunk	"Hyper Enough"
The Pietasters	"Out All Night"
Therapy?	"Nowhere"

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC63E8D3E7F59DECA - this guy's playlist includes almost every song on there but I'll link the ones that aren't, I suggest starting with Pixies' Debaser

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TUrz8xneV4 - Mother Love Bone, This is Shangri-La

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3PmyTTDxm0 - Bad Religion, Atomic Garden

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3kgjzUsDeg - De La Soul, Me, Myself and I

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw02oX3_uC8- same one but the music video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ9Wn3nCNg4 - Therapy?, nowhere

In class we listened to one of The Beatles' albums, Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which was essentially the first mainstream (there are concept albums from the 40's) concept album created in which throughout the album follows a storyline or theme, an example of a more recent concept album would be Kid Cudi's Man on The Moon: The End of Day which also follows a storyline throughout, but back to The Beatles, the album itself is composed of songs that technically speaking, were revolutionary in terms of recording and effects added  to the tracks themselves and added things unheard of in a music at all such as laugh track, the songs were also subject to heavy experimentation and sometimes it just seemed like they wanted to screw with people by creating the weirdest sounds imaginable.  Not so surprisingly, they still manged to make an album that I found extremely interesting to listen to as it developed and different sounds came into play.