#stackeology

[rockshownu]

Stackeology 101-2: Sweet Trip - Velocity ; Design : Comfort

The main creative force behind Sweet Trip is Roberto Burgos, a semi-professional music producer who seems to spend most of his time these days as a Silicon Valley software engineer, according to his LinkedIn.  The album he created along with band members Valerie Reyes, Viet Le, and guest artists Aaron Porter and Sue Mee, released in 2003, is the second of three LPs in Sweet Trip's run.  It's a great first listen.  It's one of those albums that simply doesn't sound like anything else.  The album takes shoegaze, IDM, dream pop and glitch and smashes them all together to create a sound equal parts analog and synthetic.  Indeed, this is a concept album specifically addressing such matters.  It purports to be the sound of a human and a computer gradually beginning to understand each other.  The first two tracks "Tekka" and "Dsco", can be interpreted as establishing these two characters.  "Tekka" overwhelms with its torrid, razor-sharp glitchy blasts, while "Dsco" is a syrupy, poppy, shoegaze-y tune where we first encounter Valerie Reyes' delicate vocals.  From then on, these two sounds begin to intertwine, until they each become essential components of the whole.  It's a really cool concept on paper.  

As for the execution?  Despite a 73-minute run-time, there's little in the way of filler or ideas played out too long.  That being said, I can definitely see this album being criticized for going too far in the other direction -- for moving too quickly from one idea to the next.  There are many times on this record where a delicate melody and or groovy progression will emerge, only to be smashed into oblivion by a wave of glitch electronics, never to return.  This would be a problem, if Sweet Trip weren't so good at one-upping themselves with each successive section.  Repetitive, structured songs don't much emerge as much as wonderful, poppy, technicolor soundscapes.  

Most importantly, I really, really love this record.  It's just gorgeous.  It can evoke emotion with metallic electronics, catchy melodies, walls of guitar noise, or all three at once.  It's at times very danceable, and it is always buoyantly cheerful. If Velocity : Design : Comfort is about the growing interrelations of man and machine, it is thoroughly optimistic about the outcome.  I hope you find it in the stacks and give it a listen.  I think it'll be worth your time.

Noah Stafford

Note: I recommend against listening to this with cheap earbuds. Some of the glitchy parts of this album can be nearly painful to listen to if you're listening through speakers with very tinny high-end.  

[rockshownu]

WNUR Stackeology 101-1

So how much music is in WNUR’s collection?

Hmmm maybe like a couple thousand CDs and just as many records.

Wow, that’s pretty impressive.

Yeah, it’s pretty great. Definitely humbling to walk into every show and know you’ve probably never heard at least 75% of the music you’ll pull.  Some people use their laptops and Spotify, but I think that’s a little bit narcissistic.

Why do you say that?

Well, that’s a little harsh, maybe their just having a rough day or feeling a certain laxity.  But, no, what the laptop and Spotify say to me is “I already know enough music to fill this show, I don’t need to go to the stacks.”  And maybe you’ll put on a more cohesive show because of it, but this being college and college being a supposed place of learning, did you encounter any new musical experiences in your iTunes library?  Besides sharing your broad and impressive music collection with your listeners, the plug and play radio show is really not much different than the plug and play homework session you had the night before.  Take interest in the music you play, take advantage of the stacks, take some serious ownership of the show and the music you present.  It’s probably the last time you will have access to a library of such well curated music, get in there, you might even find some good music.  

Sounds like someones on a mission?

Haha I guess you could call it that, I’m out here trying to preach the WNUR gospel, it just makes sense.  I think our shows in general are declining in quality and DJ engagement and to me a big part of that seems to be a shift away from the stacks. The most valuable thing for me so far about having a show without a doubt, has been the musical knowledge I’ve gained.  And sometimes you are going to play some shitty music.  The stacks are not flawless.  But I keep going back for the gems, the songs that knock me out, that I come back the next day to burn to my computer.  There’s so many of them in there, trust me.

And so why are we here, on the laptop?

Very funny.  I wanted to create a column to show case the gems, prove to people we do have great stuff in the stacks. One album a week, let’s go.

Under Byen - Samme Stof Som Stof

Hailing from Denmark, Under Byen (translation: Below The City) create unorthodox rock, that in the modern scope of rock music in 2015, is a little orthodox.  The band commits themselves to an eclectic lineup of instruments, often employing cello, electric saw, various percussion and acoustic piano to create a unique and consistent sound throughout the album.  In this territory of eclectic instrumentation there tend to be bands who let their instrumentation act on their composition and those who fit their instrumental limitations into preconceived compositional structures.  Under Byen, leans toward the latter of these two tendencies on Samme Stof Som Stof to contrast rock music rather than some determined brand of orchestral pop.  Track 2,“Den her sang handler om at få det bedste ud af det" demonstrates this concept as the instruments themselves nearly cloak the repetetive and slightly sludgy compositional concept.  Katrine Stochholm’s vocals center themselves in the often eclectic mix of sounds and seem to ground floatier compositions like “Tindrer.”  She sings in her native Dannish tongue throughout the album, often accompanied by back up vocalizations (whether those are actual voices or instruments emulating the human voice), and maybe because of the language barrier I tend to hear a vocal timbre rather than lyric.  The timbre is dark, cloudy, sometimes growling, and flowing in a way that reminds me of Joanna Newsome one second and Björk the next.  Under Byen dismisses typical song structures throughout the album, though some songs sit in a more “popular” soundscape, particularly “Af Stof Som Stof” and the industrial sounding “Palads.”  But in between these are instrumental interludes of contemporary classical composition and 9 minute monsters devolving into harsh noise, its varied but subtly so, and not so much the album looses focus.  And in my opinion, that’s what good albums eat for breakfast, focus, at their most basic core, focus, along with intention and execution.  #6 LP of 2006?  That’s what our respected WNUR forefathers claim. Listen for yourself, a gem from our Scandinavian kin, found in the stacks and brought to you.

DJ Broccoli