Another groundbreaking remix of Mezo’s “Connected” by MICRO NYC
You may have already seen this track in a past post, but the beautiful track “Connected” by Mezo has just received a complete makeover by electronic artist, Micro NYC. This remix is extremely kick-ass and is steadily climbing the Beatport charts. The track begins as a regular house jam that forms into a very complex arrangement. The Deadmau5 sound is prominent, but he gets creative and only expands as the song progresses.
Mezo’s original is used very wisely throughout the song, and the killer vocals and steady beat are prime examples of the artistic 
merit in this track. I can’t get enough of the blips of silence that add to the effect of a drop. It only fires me up for what’s about to happen. The production is prime quality, and Micro NYC puts his best foot forward to keep listeners on their toes. The song creates a 3D effect in my head. It expands and compresses to build the rise and fall of energy. At just over 6 minutes, the song does build a lot, but it’s the falling action that grabbed my attention.
When the song separates itself for another build up, I wonder how much more it has in store to still be energetic and entertaining. About halfway through, Micro NYC pulls a rabbit out of a hat and adds a few twists and turns that would make anybody go wild. A little dubstep frills and bass drops are a great change to keep it fresh. Finally, the track ends with a straightforward, clean ending of 4/4 bass hits and the main rhythm repeats itself to it’s final stop. Loving what I hear, and just another great remix of Mezo’s “Connected”.
Be sure to check out the track below and let us know what you think!
Trailer for Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues, is an instant classic
The trailer for Anchorman 2 is here and it’s pretty funny. Sure as hell more funny than that INTERNS trailer, but I still haven’t seen “This is the End” yet and I’ve heard that shit’s ridiculous. Seems like the news team has been away for awhile in this trailer, when they or should I say Ron (Will Farrell), is giving the chance of a lifetime…to host a 24 Hour News Station. I can’t tell what the hell happens after that, but there is a cameo by Kristin Wig ) who incidentally looks like her SNL “just kidding”character). This trailer, towards the end, is like watching Coming To America and you’ll see what I’m talking about when you see it.
The film stars Will Ferrell, Christina Applegate, Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, David Koechner, Kristen Wiig, James Marsden, Dylan Baker, Meagan Good, Greg Kinnear, and Harrison Ford. Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues opens on December 20th.
With the 70′s behind him, San Diego’s top rated newsman, Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell), returns to the news desk in “Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.” Also back for more are Ron’s co-anchor and wife, Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate), weather man Brick Tamland (Steve Carell), man on the street Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) and sports guy Champ Kind (David Koechner) – All of whom won’t make it easy to stay classy…while taking New York’s first 24-hour news channel by storm.
Artist Alex Grey’s cosmic temple ENTHEON get’s Kickstarted
“It takes a miracle of creative imagination on the part of a community to envision a sacred space into existence and that is precisely what happened.”-Alex Grey
The best way to describe Alex Grey’s work is “transcendental art”, I think I just made that up, but if you Googled it, I’m pretty 
sure someone has a website dedicated to it and Alex’s work is on it. Alex strips away the annoying flesh of his subjects and shows you the soul…no not like Hellraiser, but like seeing the bio-luminescent spiritual components that make up who we are. I’ve told myself, while gazing at his art, that this must be what one sees when you crossover. Just Chakra’s and Raiki beaming from each individual, illuminating what would otherwise be hidden.
Here’s when I talk about my time in New York and when I visited Alex and his wife Allyson’s gallery COSM (Chapel Of Sacred Mirrors) that has been doing what it does since 1996. I always thought the local of his resident gallery was inappropriate for his work, especially when his place was a stone throw away from all the clubs near The Meatpacking District…ew.
So this news that his new gallery (pictured below) got kickstarted, is fantastic. Entheon will be nestled 65 miles north of Manhattan in the town of Warppinger, also home to the Hudson River School, a school that was the mecca of the first American art movement back in the mid 19th century.
Vice Magazine did an interview with Alex and is wife about the project and this is what they had to say…among other things.
(via. Vice)
You have found a location and a structure to build upon. Could you tell us where it will be in Hudson Valley?
Chapel of Sacred Mirrors is a wooded 40-acre center for visionary culture, an interfaith church where we practice creativity as a spiritual path. CoSM is located in the Town of Wappinger, 65 miles from Manhattan. We are within easy walking distance to the river. The Hudson Valley is a place of great beauty and spiritual history. And the home of the first American art movement, the Hudson River School.
The Hudson River Landscape painters like Cole, Church and Bierstadt visually paralleled transcendentalist sentiments expressed by Emerson and Thoreau that Nature is divine. The native Wappinger people called the Hudson River Mo-He-Kahn-I-Tuke, the “great flow that goes both ways.” The Hudson River is a Moon River, a tidal river that flows from the ocean up to just past CoSM and then back out to sea, changing directions every six hours. The river is a metaphor for community. Each of us is a small stream flowing into the great river with increasing speed and power toward the ocean of love bliss. In the case of the Hudson River, or the Mo-He-Kahn-I-Tuke, we have a spiritual ocean that is pulled within the community, even upstream, and the community is empowered with this special influx of holy energy from the greater body. This is one of the reasons we have always met on the Full Moon, in honor of the river, which we were the same distance from in the city. A number of spiritual movements have originated in the Hudson Valley and there is a pearl necklace of retreat centers up the river, like temples on the Nile. Within several hours of arguably the greatest art capital in the world, next to an exquisite river, artists are finding a place in nature to be creative. Who wouldn’t?
New Yorkers may remember the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, which ran from 2004 to 2009. How is Entheon different?
CoSM operated 12,000 square feet in the heart of the gallery and club district of NYC. A dance studio, CoSM Shop, the Chapel of Sacred Mirrors and MicroCoSM Gallery, our studio, office, merchandise and shipping were all on that floor. But we couldn’t build an enduring temple of the fourth floor of 542 W. 27th Street so we started looking for land again soon after CoSM NYC opened.
Entheon is a freestanding two-story building with a third ground floor at the back. Many of the works that were exhibited at CoSM in the city will be on view in this installation including all 21 Sacred Mirrors, Cosmic Christ, Net of Being, Theologue, Oversoul, and many others. Within Entheon, MicroCoSM Gallery will once again exhibit the works of excellent visionary artists. CoSM in the Hudson Valley is a tranquil yet very lush and alive natural setting. It is a very large “canvas” for art, creative projects and installations.
Alex and his wife foresee completion of Entheon, in about two years provided everything goes off without a hitch. Looking at the semantics for Entheon this place is not only going to be an amazing gallery, but potentially a place to come and fellowship or meditate. I know a few Burning Man fans who’ll make a pilgrimage to see this place and light a fire. Hope Warppinger is ready. I’ve provided links to Alex’s work below.
Chapel Of Sacred Mirrors Facebook
Win tickets to see A Band Called Death @ The Phoenix Filmbar June 28
Wanna see the Draft House Film: A Band Called Death at the Phoenix Filmbar on June 28th 2013? Let us know who these six Detroit based rock acts are and win a ticket to the premier. The first four people to answer correctly, will receive tickets to the premier.
“Your answers must be submitted through our homepage www.mitng.org (the event/contest is located in the right sidebar) or our Facebook in the comment section of the post.”
Before Bad Brains, the Sex Pistols or even the Ramones, there was a band called Death. Punk before punk existed, three teenage brothers in the early ’70s formed a band in their spare bedroom, began playing a few local gigs and even pressed a single in the hopes of getting signed. But this was the era of Motown and emerging disco. Record companies found Death’s music— and band name—too intimidating, and the group were never given a fair shot, disbanding before they even completed one album. Equal parts electrifying rockumentary and epic family love story, A Band Called Death chronicles the incredible fairy-tale journey of what happened almost three decades later, when a dusty 1974 demo tape made its way out of the attic and found an audience several generations younger. Playing music impossibly ahead of its time, Death is now being credited as the first black punk band (hell…the first punk band!), and are finally receiving their long overdue recognition as true rock pioneers.
Shaolin Cowboy is the craziest trade I’ve ever read, but not seen
I became a fan of Geof Darrow‘s work because it reminded of his mentor’s work Moebius, whom he gladly credits as being one of the inspirations behind his work. Geof’s career reads like a movie when you consider how many artist he’s had the opportunity to work with or meet. Artists like Jack Kirby, Tezuka Osamu and Frank Miller have all at one time worked with Geoff putting out such works as Hard Boiled (a collaboration between Geof and Frank Miller) and TRON (a film that Moebius brought Geof in on to give him a hand with concepts). Geof also paired up with The Wachowski’s to do concepts for all three Matrix films and Speed Racer.
With all that, it’s a tragedy that I’ve only now heard of him, but I know you guys won’t hold it against me, especially not after I’ve confessed my naivety.
There’s no denying his skills as an illustrator. There are very few artist that have the kind of understanding of movement and detail as Geoff. The only other artist I can think off with the same level of detail in his work is Korean artist Kim Jung Gi
However great art does not a story make. Let me start off by saying, Geof’s imagination knows no bounds in Shaolin Cowboy #1. The world is strange and very original, but for all the unique and fascinating characters and environment’s he presents there weren’t any illustrations for half of them. Some of the illustrations didn’t even pertain to the chapter at hand. They seemed like works Geof might’ve had in his arsenal and just decided “this is a cool one to put in the book”. Which is all fine and dandy, but these random images kept pulling me away from the storyline. There were amazingly written scenes in some of the chapters that I thought “man, I really wish I could see what this looked like” and for such a talented artist, I thought I might.
I wasn’t on the edge of my seat waiting for this book to come out, so if it had taken him another ten years, because of all the extensive artwork, I would’ve been non the wiser. When I think graphic novel, I tend to want more imagery than I got. That’s not to say it wasn’t an enjoyable read. The monk and his trusty mule are funny in that “Taoistic” way. I love how he dispenses justice “just like that”. His victims don’t ever seem to learn as they talk themselves into quick and gruesome deaths. I do have a bone to pick with Geof though and how he came at the hippies in this book. I don’t know if that’s how he truly feels regarding environmentalist, but if it is…me and him need to have a sit down. The Shaolin Cowboy’s face is creepy and sublime like that mask worn in those Chinese New Year Lion Dance’s. The huge eye brows and subtle smirk can be a tad strange, but it’s that face (which is exquisitely designed) that makes the monk and his world so oddly unique. He’s not your typical vigilante nor is his thugged-out horny donkey, who totes a sizable amount of weaponry on it’s back. Weapons that aren’t your typical scimitars and swords mind you, which again makes this meditation on violence and fantasy, a cult classic. I am excited about the next book and the new ways Geof thinks of how to kill people, but my only hope is that it’s a full panel to panel graphic novel this time.
Kanye West – Yeezus Review
There’s a lot to mention leading up to the sixth album released by the American rapper, Kanye West. The SNL performance, the birth of his first child, the world wide projections, the album artwork. West’s mind is all over the place. I’d also like to remind the public the importance of the album title itself; Yeezus. As a play on words with ‘Jesus’, he’s referring to himself as the holiest, the highest, the greatest, and the meaning to life. It seems his messiah effect has gotten hugely out of hand, but that also plays a large role in his musical success as well. This album is the formal follow-up to the amazing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, which I’d argue is one the greatest contemporary releases ever.
How do you start a review to an album that is rumored to not even be finished? That’s the difficulty with West’s music because there’s always a trick up his sleeve. The album opens with the hard-hitting “On Sight”, which sounds oddly enough like “Come Up and Get Me” by Death Grips. There’s an experimental side to Kanye’s music, and it’s showed here. The distorted bass lines and minimalist structure is signature Rick Rubin style, who stepped up last minute to give these songs that boost of sound. The renown style of minimalism can be found on the amazing track, “Black Skinhead”, and the unique “New Slaves”.
Both of these tracks were in the polarizing SNL performance, and the sound is remarkably different. “New Slaves” sounds the same, but the atmosphere is completely different. The SNL was quite darker and had more tension, while the album version is more prominent with the bass, and there is more of a dynamic shift when the chorus kicks in. “Black Skinhead” definitely feels toned down on the album, which disappointed me hugely. Nonetheless, both songs are highlights on the album thanks to the production by Daft Punk. Even the features by artists like Justin Vernon, Hudson Mohawke, Frank Ocean, and Chief Keef bring a new dynamic to these songs.
Tracks like “Hold My Liquor” and ‘Blood On The Leaves” feel like aggressive versions of songs on his 2008 album, 808′s & Heartbreak. These songs are remarkably better than 808′s, but compared to MBDTF, I feel cheated with them. They don’t have the same creativeness and watchful eye that was on the previous album. There isn’t amount of carefulness put into this album. It almost feels rushed, with a lot of the tracks jumping into one another without any sort of connections.
The song that I enjoyed the most out of any other’s off Yeezus was “Bound 2″. The sample is grade-A typical Kanye, and he kills it lyrically, unlike a lot of songs off this album. What this song does is sum up the entire album up into 3 minutes and 49 seconds. It’s disjointed, melodic, odd, minimal, feels unfinished, and has the most abrupt ending to any album I’ve heard this year. Like the album cover, maybe that’s the point. All there is to the cover is a red rectangular sticker that keeps the album closed. Once broken to listen to the CD, there’s nothing but a blank cover. Kanye leaves it up to us to decide what we think of the music, but more importantly, it shows that he doesn’t care about any outsiders opinion on him. In an interview with The New York Times, he calls himself an outsider as well. I truly get that aspect on Yeezus.
At 40 minutes and 10 tracks, there is no filler found on this album. Before I knew it started, the album was already over. That’s what Kanye West was going for on Yeezus. He’s a man I’ll never understand, but I respect for his ability to stay on top of an industry that eats artists alive. Yeezus is no My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, but it’s an album that will definitely garner a large number of new listeners because of the change in sound compared to older releases. It’s darker, more aggressive, and it’s extremely minimal sound perfected by Rick Rubin is very enjoyable throughout the album. Sadly, tracks like “Hold My Liquor”, “Blood On The Leaves”, and “Guilt Trip” don’t hold up to the bar set by the early songs on the album. The unconventional structure can’t compete against the inconsistency of Yeezus. The highest amount of respect goes out to Kanye for pushing the boundaries, but sadly, the album falls short of the expectations I had. That being said, this is a follow up to the amazing My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. If another artist released this album, it be highly praised, but that means there must be another Kanye West, and we all know there’s only one in the world.
Here’s a link to the SNL performance of ‘Black Skinhead”:
Same for “New Slaves”:
If The Wachowski’s directed Man of Steel it might’ve looked just like Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel
I must preface this strange review with “I’m not sure where this review/analysis is headed, just bear with me”.
I watched Man of Steel last night starring Henry Cavill and directed by Zack Snyder and for the most part, was blown away. I think the first thing that struck me as awesome was the soundtrack by Hans Zimmer and although the “new” Superman theme did get a little repetitive (plugging it in at absolutely every single pivotal moment) I did enjoy it. The acting was all very solid and real, the characters didn’t have that Hollywood shimmer that most are used to seeing, not to say they weren’t pretty, but I think Zack was going for the whole package. People who we could believe and know weren’t just faces, but people with real stories that go on beyond the movie. I don’t know if this is the right word to use, but they looked “well-traveled”. Then there’s Michael Shannon as Superman’s foe in the film, General Zod, I don’t know what I was expecting from his performance, but I couldn’t help thinking, while I was watching him, that I needed more and when he gave me more I still wasn’t convinced. Almost, as if the role was too big for him or his dialogue just didn’t have the punch it needed. The highlights for me were Kevin Costner‘s performance as Clark’s father. Very natural and not forced, it aided the film in a level of credibility that would’ve been lost otherwise. Without young Clark’s confused and emotional relationship with his father, MOS would have gone the way of Green Lantern, just like that. It was the meat and potatoes of this film hands down.
Now the effects…
I watched it in 3D with my friend Richard Bodily. I think he felt in his heart we deserved a treat after a shitty day at work so he got 3D tickets, we then clocked da-fuck-out and headed off to the theater. As always I didn’t even notice the 3D after a few minutes. Man of Steel cinematographer Amir Mokri (Transformers), utilized the 3D as best as he could by exploring distances. There were a lot of hand held focus-pulls, giving some of the epic vessel shots that documentary look. It was a neat effect for a while then it got a little trite. Then there was the one shot were it appears as if fuel from one of the space ships is actually falling on the lens of the camera. An effect I’ve seen before and have always wondered “what does the director hope to achieve with this effect”?, then I realized that it kept in line with the docu-style of the film, tricking the viewer into believing they are seeing something that is really happening.
Quick note: I expect to see the use of this technique a whole lot in World War Z, which opens next week.
The world or worlds, Zack presented in this film is dark. From the ships, the costumes (that is except Superman’s, which strangely enough is the only Kryptonian garb with blues and golds in them…he’s special I guess). It’s not the 80′s or the Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster novel of 1933. Liberties were taken with the estate that quite frankly, I’m amazed that they allowed, but it was done respectfully.
Back to the effects, it’s heavy…very very heavy and I down right hated a lot of the fighting sequences. Just G-d awful CGI and this is about the time you ask me “Hey Jeff, you said something earlier about this film and The Wachowski’s?” Indeed I did….voice in my head…indeed I did.
WARNING SPOILERS
I guess it started and those of you who have seen the film will have to agree with me, when Jor-El (Russell Crowe) swam to these Kryptonian incubation chambers (one of the liberties). It cuts to a sea of kelp-like plants with pink embryo’s with babies in them, hanging off the plant like leaves and then being harvested by these crab/spider-like creatures. Not unlike the scene in The Matrix when Neo sees his “real” world for the first time. It even went as far as giving us the moment, frame for frame, when Neo’s unplugged and looking down on the host of cocoons containing bodies. I can’t remember the scene right now in MOS, but the pods all looked the same and were extending from a large trunk base, again, just like in The Matrix. I sure wish I had some photos to show you, but Google has nothing. My apologies.
Next, they casts Lawrence Fishburne as Perry White (Lois Lane‘s boss at The Daily Planet) and Henry Lennix as General Sanwick. These two actors were also in The Matrix…coincidence? Let’s look at their roles in The Matrix. In The Matrix Henry Lennix played Commander Lock, a man who was all military and didn’t play in to Morpheus’s ideas of Neo being Earth’s savior. In MOS he’s still the hard nose military guy who isn’t sure he can trust Superman/Neo.
Then you have Lawrence who for all intents and purposes, kinda reprises his role as Morpheus in The Matrix by being Lois Lane’s mentor/boss. He knows she’s a good reporter, but also knows she’s hiding something, but he trust her enough to know that whatever it is she’s hiding was for the good of the planet…planet Earth that is, not The Daily Planet. With me so far? It’s a stretch…I know, but I’m not going to be able to sleep til I say this shit, so keep reading.
Let’s talk about Superman’s launch sequences. If you watched MOS and didn’t see how they ripped his take-off’s from The Matrix, your hopeless. I get that it would’ve been cheesy to have him do the 80′s running starts and lands, but come on. Every time “Supe” flew, he started by taking a knee and placing his right fist to the ground, the Earth shook and boom! Straight up. I kept waiting to see if he was going to ripple land. Thank G-d that didn’t happen.
Now, the fighting sequences. All of the fighting sequences looked like those in The Matrix minus the Kung Fu. All of them had so much high speed randomness and poor cgi bodies it really distracted me. Everyone started looking like Crispin Glover’s character in Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland…very rubbery. My mind kept going back to the epic fight scene in The Matrix Reloaded when Neo is up against thousands of Agent Smith’s in the park. It didn’t look real then, it doesn’t look real now. Especially when you consider Zod and his armies bodies, were cgi for the most part. This analysis came to an amazing climax when I finally saw Zod’s terra-forming weapons the “World Machines” and their defense mechanisms. These weapons looked like “Sentinals”, complete with Doc. Oc tentacles. Another Matrix reference I couldn’t pull my eyes from. Mind you, non of this bothered me, I just couldn’t help but to see the irony in it all.
Last, but not least, the final battle between Zod and Superman was as close to the final battle between Neo and Agent Smith as you could possibly get. Metropolis is reduced to rubble in the wake of the World Machines and Zod and Superman’s rumble in the concrete jungle. You can’t have two super beings flying around a city slugging it out without referencing The Matrix:Revolutions. The scope was just too damn big for us or at least me, to not notice.
I don’t know if whether Zack had the Wachowski’s over for hummus and pita one night and asked them for ideas on MOS and as a joke they spit out everything they did in The Matrix Trilogy hoping that Zack would catch on, but he never did and he wound up putting everything they said in the film, but it sure seems like he did.
This sentence is to let you know that that’s all I have right now regarding the Wachoski/Snyder contingency.
There were of course other things about the film that bothered me like how the government could detect Zods ship orbiting our atmosphere, but wasn’t able to spot Clark’s baby pod when it arrived. Did they care? Or why this Kryptonian Codex looked like prehistoric human remains or how Zod’s rebellion was the shortest and apparently, not so thought out, rebellion I’ve ever seen or why the Krytonian’s didn’t bother shooting down Clark’s baby pod along with Zod’s missile that tried to take it down. Did they know what was inside? They couldn’t cause Jor El was just about to let them in on his whole baby thing, just before Zod slaughtered the council…how could they have known?
What about Clark’s mysterious existence? I mean for a man who never wore a mask and was always in public, Clark seemed to be such an anomaly to Lois and how about the U.S.’s seemingly lack of concern for the residents of Smallville when they leveled that whole town or how Clark’s mom is on mega doses of Zanax and completely numb to all the shit that’s has happened and is happening all around her and how did Clark become so adjusted to being the savior of the universe so quick? My man changed his whole tone on his shitty life as soon as he put on the suit. Okay, so maybe I did have a couple of issues with the film, but it wasn’t anything that I harped on while watching, but it did make me laugh a little.
Let’s be honest, how do you tackle Superman without it being prone to misinterpretations or gratuitous spectacle? Well you stay true to the story…right? That may have been where Zack and Chris could’ve gone wrong. Although clever, does Superman need to be so re-imagined as to create plots that never existed? Is not the simple story of a man from Krypton not enough? I can’t answer that question, we live in blown out times. Times filled with over stimulus. Even if Chris and Zack wanted to present a less stylized Superman they wouldn’t have gotten a cent from Warner Brothers to produce it. Perhaps that was what Steven Spielberg meant when he was recently quoted in an interview saying “an implosion in Hollywood is imminent”. Simple story telling in big budget Hollywood is a thing of the past. But here we have a case of big budget with all the frills and good director, actor and writers and I’m still left with an enormous hole. Maybe Steven just meant summer films. He’s probably jaded cause his name isn’t attached to anything this summer, cause I think most of the world waits until the fall/winter for the good stuff anyway. Don’t we?
Man of Steel is still an achievement, but I unfortunately can’t say a must see. I can’t keep saying that it’s “fun” anymore, so I’ll just say you’ll have to take what you want from it and leave the rest.
MITNG’S Videos of the Week
Deerhoof-Breakup Songs
Looking like outtakes from M. Knight Shyamalan’s The Village ,this strange group of images does nothing to reinforce the songs message, but instead takes you on a primeval journey to the 1700′s for some plague-like goings on. It’s an interesting song that needed an interesting video and boy did we get one.
Mykki Blanco-The Initiation
I wouldn’t expect anything less from the hip hop diva Mykki Blanco. This time he went full throttle on the weird and introduced ideas of a society of misfits being hunted down by “the man”. I must admit, I’m getting the Aphex Twins vibe while watching, but this might’ve just been me.
Cloud Control-Dojo Rising
Obviously a play on Jim Morrison‘s famous anagram, the Aussie folk band Cloud Control, traveled to Bolivia for their latest video that features a Quincenera that has gone pear shape. One question, who the hell would hire a clown that looked like John Wayne Gacy? Are you mad?
G FrSH-Never Can I
This tuff track has that Mad Decent feel to it, but with way better lyrics than those coming from the MD camp, as of late. I kept waiting to see or hear Santigold pop out of this video, but she never did 
. Still an outstanding video from this Nigerian born stylee.
Deafheaven – Sunbather Review
I wasn’t going to do it. The need for me to bring up this album was huge, but I felt so cliché and predictable doing it. I know even attempting to stand apart from others and mentioning this album was impossible. I don’t know if it was the fact that it’s hugely anticipated, or that it’s been labelled “hipster-metal”, but all these aspects are thrown aside when I finally gave this an honest listen. Now to any metal-heads out there who live and breath bands like Burzum, Mayhem, Dissection and the true black metal, this is old news to you.
Sunbather, by the West-Coast California metal outfit, Deafheaven, is the sophomore album to be released by this band. They attempt to improve and grow the sounds of traditional black-metal with a shoegazing vibe and a post-rock structure. I’ve seen critics call this album a ‘post-metal’ record, and that makes perfect sense, but I’m unclear if it’s actually correct to do so. What caught my eye with this record is how accessible it is. Much like the 2011 album, Aesthethica, by the self-described “transcendental black-metal” band, Litrugy, they really push the post-rock structure. From the beginning of this hour long album, it opens with the hard hitting track, “Dream House”. Now how cute is that title! Even the pink cover (designed Nick Steinhardt of Touché Amoré) gives away a little of edginess compared to traditional black metal artists. The song has everything that’s found in regular music of this genre; blast-beats, screaming and snarls, tremolo picking, and insanely heavy build ups. What separates the sound from first listen is the atmosphere and emotion found in this track. The way the musicians play is digestible, even if it’s considerably the heaviest sounds found in music.
The second track, “Irresistible”, is an interlude to the metal-core influenced track, “Sunbather”. The two tracks together are likened to the amazing 2012 album, Les Voyages De L’Âme, by the metal group Alcest (Which was in MITNG’s top 30 album list of 2012!). The songs on this album are considerably long as well. For black-metal standards, they aren’t, but this album does present itself to more of a mainstream crowd, and that’s a great thing for a genre that’s generally hidden under the rug from the music community. “Sunbather” is an incredible track. It plays like a post-rock song that never seems to ever have a beginning. Every note is a crescendo and it’s difficult to ever think the song can build anymore. The blast beats are tights, the vocals are intense, but never scooped my insides out with a spoon. Instead, it was like steel wool rubbing on a pillow. The album for the most part drones on, and it was easy to find myself lost in the build ups. I do love the classic Dissection album, The Storm Of The Light’s Bane, but Sunbather fills a different niche to my music needs.
What I’ve noticed from this album is that there isn’t a lot of filler. It has it’s moments of commentary, like a Godspeed You! Black Emperor album, but it fits the album’s overall style. Sunbather grabs all the accessible and generally enjoyable sections of traditional black metal, and then expands it over a 7-12 minute track. That’s not to say it’s 100% amazing because the track, “Please Remember” has an experimental middle section that sounds like the band forgot to stop recording, but it jumps into a great slow section. Unsurprisingly though, it builds up again. What did you think would happen?! Deafheaven have their sound and they do an amazing job running with it.
To say the least, Deafheaven does play more like a post-rock band structurally than a black-metal band musically. Their sound is unique to an extent. It’s nothing metal fans have heard before, but to a lot of listeners who aren’t interested in the genre, it’s probably the freshest and hippest sound today. It’s more accessible than any Liturgy music, but it’s also extremely credible. The songs, like “Vertigo”, don’t require any virtuoso to play these tracks, but that’s what makes this band so interesting. They have a genre that gets such a bad rep for the culture behind it, and they twist it to a point where it’s more about the music. Even the album’s Wikipedia page has ‘black-metal’ as the third genre this album is. Maybe it was written by an arrogant music snob, but to clear the airs of this, the album is black-metal.
The final three songs are the true crescendos of this album, and I love it. “Vertigo”, “Windows”, and “The Pecan Tree” define the album. Much like Liturgy’s “Glory Bronze”, the entire listening and anticipation fall on these tracks, and the band steps it up. The energy and flow of the songs are great. Super creative playing, while also quite simple. Amazing atmosphere and emotional through the rise and fall of the songs. Deafheaven bring to the table their tools and put them to great use.
True black-metal fans are shaking their heads right now. They cannot believe what they’re reading. How can this “hipster” piece-of-shit be good? The fact of the matter is that it is. I’ve been reading forums on how this is a disgrace to ‘trve kvlt’ metal, but who the fuck cares if it’s this or that. What makes an album good is by how it sounds. The labels surrounding it shouldn’t have any impact. I was a skeptic as well before putting Sunbather on, but after multiple listens and taking it for strictly the music, I was shocked about how great it was. Although not the most intense, heaviest, or brutal album out there by a long shot, this can easily be a guilty pleasure for metal fans, and even a great stepping stone into an extremely dense genre of music. I had a great time listening to this album, and it’ll be on my iPod for a long time to come.
Listen to the full album here off Youtube here:
Animated short “How to train your Robot” does in two minutes what “Real Steel” couldn’t do in an hour
This is an exquisitely crafted short by the Platige Academy that demonstrates, first hand, what simple story telling is about. It’s starts with a well thought out idea and solid concept, then you find those whose vision fits the one your trying to create and then hope to God you guys get along and luckily for them they did or didn’t…who knows? What I know is that this is one solid short with one hell of a pay off. Your gonna love this!
Quick shout out to Geek Tyrant for posting this.
To learn more about the PLATIGE ACADEMY checkout their website HERE.
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR ROBOT from Platige Image on Vimeo.
