The Friendly Critics

Several friends with excellent and different tastes in music set out on a mission to find each other and the world more excellent music!

[thefriendlycritics]

burial — rival dealer EP

the year was bookended by its best music.

and not a beat off track, per usual for burial; his music is the dead of winter.

d'awww, rest of 2013—you're cute for showing up.

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

röyksopp feat. karin dreijer andersson — what else is there?

this song and video encapsulate pretty much all of my reasons for being fascinated by scandinavian, well, ANYTHING.

karin dreijer's steely blue-eyed glare alone. i could write a thousand descriptions of it, and that still wouldn't be enough.

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

julianna barwick — bob in your gait

she made my favorite album of 2011 (the magic place). not sorrowful whatsoever, but i think this song has inspired some waterworks (oh dear, gettin' personal 'n whatever) without any probe into its inspiration. i took it at face value (ok fine, i caved and did research later on), but sometimes that's all you need to do with art like this. dig too deep, and you may lose its affect. or maybe you'll love it more. i can't decide.

just discovered she'll be opening for sigur rós in north america. i was already so enraptured about the show; got my tickets a month ago. now i'm even more so. ready for euphoria come september 30th.

just listen;

nothing else.

[psst: her 2009 ep florine and new 2013 lp nepenthe are equally spectacular.]

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

bonobo feat. andreya triana — eyesdown

something about the pairing of the music with the video feels staggeringly natural. her motions are fluid, swirly, vibrant—just like the song, just like andreya's voice.

it finds me well.

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

fleet foxes — blue ridge mountains

i have to listen to this song every time i go home, likely because i'm in tennessee surrounded by the appalachians and such. it's weird eating momma bear's batata poha while drowning in ukulele-led hippie tunage, but it works for me.

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

Fun video. The dancing in HAPPY is far superior, but this song is quite the caffeinating.

[thefriendlycritics]

C2C's tribute to the great Mr. Armstrong

I have heard few things better than this. C2C, Chinese Man, Lupe Fiasco, Big K.R.I.T., & Aloe Blacc must record an album all together. That way I never have to listen to music again.

[thefriendlycritics]

shreya ghoshal — barso re [guru original soundtrack]

i remember, three years back while in germany, listening to this soundtrack and crying. i never really cry to music, but i did that time. it made me miss india so much that i was instilled with a trace of guilt for being in europe instead of the homeland.

damn you, aishwarya.

but anyway, yeah, deep roots with this one. it’s just lovely and beautiful and sweeps me away to that distant land of pungent masala and technicolor reverie. i’d be ecstatic to revisit in december to study bollywood itself. #fingerscrossed

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

azealia banks — yung rapunxel

YEAH LIPS FOR EYES. i wanna wax ecstatic about this vid for, like, 200 more words, but one of the comments says it best: "what drug is this?"

—divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

A$AP Rocky and Friends

[thefriendlycritics]

Gabriel Rios- Broad Day Light

I found this song on Spotify a few weeks ago and had yet to give it a whirl. It is an eery yet modernistic latinjazzpop. I don't much care for the music video and the sound quality is pretty lacking, that being said, I think it'll be on my regular shuffle list for at least a few days before it all reminds me too much of Lana Del Rey

[thefriendlycritics]

i'm so in love with this idea. thanks, josh, for initiating and actualizing it. since we're always wasting away finding music and videos and talking about it, why not share them and create an ongoing virtual dialogue? ...and indulge our pride as self-important critics with bombastic rhetoric? *cue smirk*

welp, as my inaugural post, i shall unabashedly self-promote and share with you a (rather amateur) music video i made for my final project in my editing course last quarter. i cut up single-take footage of a journey on the tokyo rail using key-framing and effects, set to a condensed mash-up of english dub artist burial's new bitchin' ep tunage.

on with the music itself. note to fans of american dubstep (read: skrillex and the like): this is not the dub you're used to. this is pure dub, the original minimalist mix that established the underground genre. when it comes to going back to roots, count on the brits to do it right: burial set the standard with his groundbreaking lps in the 2000s, and he continues to do so this decade but rather via the ep format featuring few yet mammoth-sized tracks. 

truant/rough sleeper ep is the latest example of this, and i think it may be his best yet. two tracks, each over ten minutes long (i was forced to abridge to three minutes of it for my video--t'was a tall order). this is music that cannot be rushed, challenging the instant gratification/ADD generation we find ourselves in. give the music time, and you'll be rewarded with building layers of euphoric reverb and emotional depth seldom experienced with what leaps out of the radio today.

check out the entire truant/rough sleeper ep as well as his other works on spotify. i've added my favorite burial tracks under my playlist in thefriendlycritics spotify account.

hope you enjoy it, friends.

--divesh

[thefriendlycritics]

I’ve been listening to the song’s Muse like American proud-rock and I enjoy it. The pace and energy can be a bit much for such a gloomy -ass day that normally calls for sad white people moping on their tightly wound accoustics, but the anarchist in me has been craving these rock vibrations more and more lately.

posted by Josh

[thefriendlycritics]

Welcome

We are The Friendly Critics. You see, many people think of music, film, theater, and art critics and kind of douchey yet articulate failures of a particular craft. We don't think of critics like that. We think of critics as important members in the artistic community. They critique to improve creations while their language models the beauty and horrors of the arts they love and abhor. They are art's professors of a post-academic career, not necessarily telling us what to or not to like, nor administering actual grades, but informing us of why we like what we do or don't, while developing a sophisticated rhetoric for this purpose, thus crafting criticism as an art in itself, as done with the late-greats,  Metzner, Hitchens, and Ebert and many more brilliant critics of various fields.

Our project is similar but different. It is meant for our group of friends to find and share new music we enjoy, exchange stories and memories. We hope to practice our various crafts and styles of writing, hunting for new music, wishing to entertain each other all the while. Most of us don't boast high degrees in the high arts, but we all love music and film and the arts in general. This blog will delve into music and the experiences/ memories we have surrounding the music we find or reminisce.

It is ok if there are no followers, it is basically just an excuse for me to get my friends who love finding new music to regularly share their excellent finds with me, and mine with them. So hopefully you enjoy our conversations, musings, stories, and tastes.

Have a great day, and enjoy our musical world.