Brett Davis - AsiaLIFE Magazine

soundfix
album review
ARCADE FIRE
THE SUBURBS
Win Butler and his enigmatic
troop have delivered what could
well be the album of the year.
Nine months into 2010 and
The Suburbs stands head and
shoulders above any other major
release so far. Why? Simple. The
chemistry of the album is right.
The number of songs and overall
duration (16 tracks, 60 minutes,)
bestows the record with an epic
grandeur, while the sequencing
of the songs (you will not
hear a stronger opening trio to
an album than “The Suburbs,”
“Ready To Start” and “Modern
Man”) is precisely mapped and
perfectly paced. It rises when it
needs to rise and falls when it
needs to fall. However, it’s the
concept that seals the deal.
The best albums are the ones
that manage to speak to you on
a personal level while remaining
universally relevant. Hence,
Arcade Fire’s ode to bittersweet,
suburban childhood memories,
modern anxieties and middleclass
dreams both realized and
unfulfilled, penetrates the soul
with an undeniable truism.
KLAXONS
SURFING THE
VOID
For all intents and purposes,
Surfing The Void isn’t exactly
the album Klaxons wanted to
make. The three-year gestation
period of the follow-up to the
2007 Mercury Prize-winning
Myths of the Near Future has
been frustrating for the (now)
quartet. Early efforts with Tony
Visconti and Simian Mobile
Disco’s James Ford were
rejected by the band’s label
for being “too experimental.”
Bizarrely, Nu-Metal production
guru Ross Robinson (Limp Bizkit,
Korn, Slipknot) was drafted
to oversee Klaxon’s transition
from uncontrollable prog-rock
experimentalists to space-pop
titans in a similar mould to Muse.
The result is a compromise as
intriguing and hypocritical as the
Tories and Lib Dems sharing the
reigns of power in the British
Government. Sometimes it actually
works (“Echoes,” “Surfing
The Void,” “Venusia”), other
times it doesn’t (“Cypherspeed,”
“Extra Astranomical”) and never
could. Overall, Surfing The Void
suffers from an identity crisis
that has Klaxons confusing their
strengths and weaknesses. As
they say, you can’t please everybody
all of the time.
INTERPOL
INTERPOL
The fourth album by the New
York-based post-punkers is
largely a massive disappointment.
Considering this is the
last Interpol record to feature
bassist and creative lynchpin
Carlos Dengler, a final and
grand gesture was expected.
Indeed, a return to the stylistics
of their benchmark debut was
even claimed by Paul Banks
in interviews anticipating the
release of this record. Apart from
Daniel Kessler’s reverb-drenched
guitar tone and Dengler’s throbbing
bass, there aren’t many
similarities to be found with the
spellbinding brilliance of Turn On
The Bright Lights. Much of Interpol
feels weighed down by a
sense of lethargy. Gone are the
moments of stark beauty and
frenetic blasts of rhythmic dynamism.
Too many tracks, such
as “Memory Serves” and “Safe
Without” plod along aimlessly.
There’s a lot of scene setting but
little in the way of pay off. Even
standout tracks, “Lights” and
“Barricade,” sound average in
comparison with former glories
like “NYC,” “Evil” and “The Heinrich
Maneuver.”
by John Thornton
DJ SHADOW
THE DJ SHADOW
REMIX PROJECT
The remix album, aka the last
chance saloon for once great
artists now bereft of inspiration
and looking to others to reignite
that old creative spark that
once burned so brightly. Funny
then that DJ Shadow should
release an album consisting
solely of fan-made remixes. On
the whole, most of the remixes
are pretty good, particularly
FUSO’s stuttering glitch-dub
take on “Midnight In A Perfect
World,” Economic’s smoked-out
version of “What Does Your Soul
Look Like? Part 2” and Tiger
Mendoza’s “Missing On The
Motorway,” which successfully
blends Shadow’s “Blood On The
Motorway” with “Missing” by
Everything But The Girl. However,
bearing in mind that DJ
Shadow had the final say on the
remixes that made it onto the
album, it’s mind boggling that
Ruby My Dear’s and NiT GriT’s
awful drum ‘n’ bass remixes of
“Building Steam With A Grain Of
Sand” are included. In any case,
let’s hope that these remixes
inspire DJ Shadow to rediscover
his mojo.
Official xoneFM Vietnam Top 10
this last title artist
week week
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If I had You
Doi yeu
Chay theo anh mat troi
The Mirror
Suy nghi trong anh
5:00 pm
Bang Bang Bang (Radio
Edit)
Billionaire
Dynamite
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Love The Way You Lie
Dynamite
California Gurls
I Like It
Teenage Dream
Cooler than Me
Dj Got Us Fallin In
Love
Mine
Airplanes
Ridin Solo
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xoneFM top ten
NEW
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Airplanes
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David Archuleta
Adam Lambert
My Tam
Lan Trinh
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Mark Ronson & The
Business Intl.
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Dog
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Katy Perry
Mike Posner
Usher Feat Pittbull
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Guetta
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Cup
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Travie Mc Coy feat
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Wanted
endorsed
The Radio Dept.
By Tom DiChristopher
I was first exposed to The
Radio Dept. in 2006 while
watching Sofia Coppola’s
Marie Antoinette. The use of
New Order’s “Age of Consent”
in the teaser trailer had roped
me in, and I left the theatre
eager to explore the rest of the
film’s soundtrack. The Radio
Dept. track I recalled (“Keen
on Boys”) fit squarely among
the mélange of 80s post-punk
and New Wave bands. Having
heard just a clip, I assumed
they were lesser-known contemporaries
of Coppola’s other
muses: The Cure, Bow Wow
Wow, Siouxsie and the Banshees,
New Order, Adam and
the Ants and Gang of Four.
Turns out they weren’t. The
Radio Dept. first formed in
Lund, Sweden in their current
incarnation in 2001 with Johan
Duncanson on guitar/vocals,
Martin Larsson on guitar and
Daniel Tjader on keyboards.
The trio self-released their first
EP and a couple of 7 inches
in 2002, before Labrador Records
backed their acclaimed
first LP, Lesser Matters, in
2003.
By now, some reviewers
have written off the too-easy
nu-gaze label and denounced
comparisons to Pet Shop
Boys and My Bloody Valentine
as lazy. While Duncanson’s
ethereal vocals were submerged
beneath the fuzz of
instrumentation, The Radio
Dept. weren’t just rehashing
the lo-fi indie pop of the early
90s shoegazers. Tracks like
“1995” wedded sparse form
and content to produce ambiguous,
dreamy songs that
resonate like forgotten memories
recalled (“1995 is cutting
classes / It’s sitting over
coffee talking indie treats”).
What Duncanson, Larsson
and Tjader were doing was
sublimating their reminiscence
of post-punk subgenres into
songs so convincing, they
seem of the time.
A three-year gap between LPs
would set the pace for the
band’s output, but they kept
fans happy with two satisfying
five-track EPs that played like
companion pieces to Lesser
Matters. Coppola plucked
two songs from these for her
soundtrack: “I Don’t Like It
Like This” from This Past Week
and the title track from Pulling
Our Own Weight.
Synths and guitars emerged
out of second LP Pet Grief,
particularly on the tracks
“What Will Give?” and “Tell.”
These are spacious songs out
of which Duncanson’s vocals
emerged with more fidelity.
Still, there was some backlash;
The Radio Dept. is at their
best when lyrics are abstract
rather than playfully trite (“Betrayal
is always sad / Needless
to say what you could have
had”).
Fans waited four years
before the next LP, Clinging
to a Scheme, came out this
spring. “Heaven’s On Fire” and
“This Time Around” are almost
disarmingly up tempo, though
tracks like “Video Dept”
root the album to The Radio
Dept.’s early work. It’s a logical
progression—and a improvement
upon—Pet Grief, but it
also taps into the resonance of
Lesser Matters and its satellite
EPs. Hopefully it won’t be
another four years before the
follow up.
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