Pacmusic

Sorbet Rock.

You know how rock albums will sometimes have a short interlude section to split up sections of the album and cleanse your pallet to get you ready for the next onslaught of music. These sections are usually quite slow, bland and boring, but act as a breather for your ears. Like when you have a sorbet at a restraint between courses. This album is a collection of songs like that.

Usually these interludes last between 30 seconds and a minute, which is the perfect length for something like this. Sigur Ros make them last for between 3:33 and 9:23 which is far to long for something so dull. It’s like they are good at having the initial inspiration for music but then don’t know now to develop that into a song.

Sigur Ros are an Icelandic ambient, post rock outfit, made from four Icelandic people singing in Icelandic. Backed by boring musical notes.
The whining voice of the lead singer is pitiful and weak and while it may make young, loveless females swoon at his soul wrenching wailing, it makes me want to give him a slap.

I don’t speak Icelandian, so cannot understand what Jón is singing about, but frankly, I am not compelled to find out and can assume it’s something along the lines of ‘Oooh, I’m boring and nobody likes me, please someone like me, I’ll try to be less boring.’

If you are an open fan of boring music, then this might be for you, but if you think that boring music is boring then don’t listen to this cause you’ll find it boring.

If you cut each song down to 90 seconds, you would probably get a good album, of nice music but listening for longer than this length of time is, well, boring.

Listen to this album: To numb your mind of all sensation.

Rating: 58%

Extracts from ‘Inni mer syngur vitleysingur’, ‘Festival’, ‘Illgresi’ and ‘Straumnes’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/sigur_ros.mp3]

‘Gobbledigook’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=puC0UeWLjM8]

A smooth metal ball.

Disturbed’s first two albums were big metal balls with spikes protruding from all angles. These spikes were incredibly sharp and stuck into you, ripping your flesh from the bone, but as with any sharp metal object, with use, it gets blunt. Ten Thousand Fists was slightly blunt, the sharpness had gone, and so Disturbed went to the grinding block and began to sharpen themselves back up.

Indestructible is nearly as blunt as Ten Thousand Fists. It’s really smooth, flows around you, rather than sticking in to you and causing tissue damage. David Draiman’s vocals, seem quite effortless and not nearly as rugged as they have been previously. We all remember where we were when we first heard the infamous ‘ough agh agh agh agh’ in Down with the sickness, that punch, the aggression, the passion, the humanity has been lost and all we’re left with is ball bearings that roll around and the only way they would injur you is if you stood on one with bear feet, or slipped over them in a Hannah Barbara fashion.

There are a couple of tracks that capture the original vibes of the band. these are the more simple tracks on the album, the ones that are what they are and don’t try to be too clever or complex. Perfect Insanity and Criminal are the main tracks that achieve this. These are the more shouty, punchy tracks, so maybe it’s that which I like more and it’s the singing in the others that I feel is lacking, I certiately feel that they lack punch.
Another thing that slightly saves this album is the live bonus tracks, which I believe are only included on the online download version. These are live versions of a select number of great Disturbed songs…says it all really.

Sorry Disturbed, but you have failed me again.

Listen to this album: While feeling mildly annoyed with the world.

Rating: 70%

Extracts from ‘Perfect Insanity’, ‘Enough’, ‘Criminal’ and ‘Façade’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/Disturbed.mp3]

‘Inside the fire’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=AcRM6T-KBaI]

Blandness in it’s raw form.

It’s been a while since an album has been released that I feel completely indifferent about. This album succeeds at not making me hate it. While it’s another indie by numbers album that has no unique ideas or interesting development anywhere in it and thus should be condemning the band to a firey death and embarking on a quest to remove any trace of this band from the earth, but I couldn’t really care about the band or what they do. I feel absolutely nothing while hearing these songs. It’s as though I’m not listening to anything at all.

Is it worse to have a band that doesn’t even inspire you to hate them? Can they get any percentage mark at all?

Listen to this album: ?

Rating: -

Extracts from ‘The Glorified Collector’, ‘I’d be lying to you’, ‘People Watching’ and ‘How do I end this?’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/TheRascals.mp3]

‘Out Of Dreams’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=Mgl9TKy0yqU]

Would be better live.

You can tell by listening to this album that it would be so much better if you were experiencing it live. It has an energy and entertainment potentiality that is mainly lost on the recording.

I really fell like I’m missing out while I’m listening to the album, not to say that it isn’t a really fantastic album, but the feeling that I’m not getting everything I can, from a band that I know is great, leaves me feeling cheated. I don;t remember their previous albums having this same sense of live expectancy, and maybe it’s because they were more complete albums and this has something missing, or what.

I do feel myself wanting to dance while waiting for my train, while I listen to this album. The beats are really good, the lyrics are not the most profound of intellegent, but it’s all filled wiith fun, and you can tell that NERD really wanted to do this, and loved every minute of it.

The bass is heavy, the drums are big and the energy is fantastic. Go see them live and tell me if they are better live.

Listen to this album: While they perform it live.

Rating: 84%

Extracts from ‘Anti-Matter’, ‘Spaz’. ‘Kill Joy’ and ‘You know what’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/N.E.R.D.mp3]
‘

‘Everybody Noise’
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mYD7h0JZcJk]

Failed attempts to combine styles.

To begin with, the first track comes on and floods me with horrible repetition, bland beats and boring lyrics. Good start, I’m beginning to dread the next 78:17 of this Forever edition of the album. I think it’s called Forever, because that’s how long this album is feels like it takes to finish.

The rest of the album, I can see what he’s trying to do. He’s trying to make R&B less rubbish, by adding some of the more fashionable styles in hip-hop to his music, There’s flavours of every rap, hip-hop and R&B style in there all at once and it just sounds terrible.

It just sounds messy, like they’ve really tried too hard and the strain of doing the album made them really ill, but instead of taking time off, they rushed through it so that they could go to bed.
I really feel physically uncomfortable listening to this album and I really needed to struggle through it.It really wasn’t worth it

Listen to this album: Laying on marbles, it might make it a more comfrtable experience.

Rating:59%

Extracts from ‘Picture Perfect’, ‘Help Me’, ‘Nice’ and ‘Superhuman’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/chris_brown.mp3]

‘Kiss Kiss’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=4DC4Rb9quKk]

Producer’s lies.

Until hearing this album, I was on the ‘NOT’ side of the impressed scale for Death Cab for Cutie, I thought that they were bland and pointless and stupid. There are songs on this album, that still fall into this category. After an interesting start to the album, I do not want to turn it off and am being sucked into this album, like a pea in a black hole, they decide to turn the suction to reverse with the rest of the album. At first I was hopeful, and thought that I was going to get some interesting variation on the standard indie by numbers format, especially when reading that the producer of the album say ” “thus far it’s pretty weird and pretty spectacular; lots of blood. It’s creepy and heavy…” I was really expectant, but all I am now is thoroughly disappointed and think that producer, Chris Walla is a liar.

There are some interesting points to the album, ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’ and ‘Grapevine Fires’ are different and refreshing in a dessert of never-ending blandness. I must admit, this is better than a lot of the indie that is around at the moment.

Listen to this album: While eating sand.

Rating: 69%

Extracts from ‘Bixby Canyon Bridge’, ‘No Sunlight’, ‘Grapevine Fires’ and Long Division’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/DeathCabForCutie.mp3]

‘I Will Possess Your Heart’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=pq-yP7mb8UE]

Warbling screaming rock at it’s best.

Although nothing that 36CF have brought out since Bitterness the star has been as good as that début album, they have been a solid supply of good metal, but this album steps it up a notch. This album has a good selection of really heavy riffs and screaming fun along side a good slopping of wailing and wobbly long notes that we find so amusing.

My favourite songs on the album are the really heavy ones, ‘Clear the coast’ and  ‘We gave it hell’ are especially strong tracks.

The whole album is tight and strong and powerful and leaves no room for any of your nonsense.

Listen to this album: While carrying a hand-held video camera.

Rating: 77%

Extracts from ‘Clear the coast’, ‘Waiting on a war’, ‘Absent are the saints’ and ‘Northern November’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/36_crazyfists.mp3]

‘We gave it hell’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=Loxgz8-oQwc]

Hey guys.

After a long hiatus for work and festival time and just being plain lazy, I’m back and ready to tell you how rubbish music has been since last we spoke.

I’m going to do a quick round up of what’s been going on since I left.

Surprisingly fun, and also irritating.

The Ting Tings are a band that I had heard in passing and disregarded as annoying, but listening to the album it’s actually a lot of fun and I have totally rethunk my perception of them. Although they are still a bit annoying.

It’s simple, and nothing particularly new, but they are unashamed of doing something that’s fun and a bit stupid, but still has integrity.

Lead singer, Katie White sounds like she’s been educated to the age of 11, and then let loose in a theme park and made to write music. She also sounds like she can’t really form words properly and that the time she’s singing the words is the first time she’s seen them, but it’s an innocence you can’t really dislike, but at the same time, you don’t want to have to deal with it all the time.

It’s like when you’re looking after someone elses child and they’re chatting all the time and you humour the kid, and it’s okay, but if you actually had to deal with it all the time, it would get old, fast.

There is a sufficient level of diversity in the album, to keep your attention from one song to the next, and although the surface moves around throughout the album, it retains the foundations of the music throughout.

The best songs on the album are in the first half. They are catchy and fun and amusing, but ultimately annoying. Whereas the last part of the album is tedious and lazy, but not as annoying.

Listen to this album: Pogoing in quicksand.

Rating: 76%

Extracts from ‘That’s not my name’, ‘Fruit Machine’ and ‘We started nothing’
[audio http://bumchickens.googlepages.com/tingTings.mp3]

‘Great DJ’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=myJnsqGgxxM]

Swinging rock.

Green Day, under another name, attempt to play 60s American garage rock music, and in points succeed with their mission and at other points they fail. At points they sound like Green Day, at other points you can’t tell it’s them at all. At points it’s good, at points it’s rubs.

The thing is, I don’t know if I want them to sound like Green Day doing this style of music, or if I want them to sound completely different. It’s just a bit confusing.

The best songs, I think, are the ones where they succeed to put an image of 60s America in my brain, and I just see them all stood about in black and white.
The songs which succeed in this are songs like ‘Ruby Room’ and  She’s a Saint not a Celebrity’.

Overall, I think they have a winning album with this, and it’s an interesting concept. They even split the album into 2 sides to keep in with their 60s ideology which is an interesting touch, but seems a bit pointless when listening to the album on CD or on your mp3 player. Maybe putting it on 2 CDs would give it the authentic vinyl feel as you have to make that extra effort to change CDs.

It’s exciting, it’s interesting and it makes me want to boogie.

Listen to this album: In 60’s black and white with your mum’s old clothes on.

Rating 81%

Extracts from ‘Ruby Room’, ‘Red Tide’ and ‘27th Ave Shuffle’
[audio http://bumchops.googlepages.com/FoxboroHotTubs.mp3]

‘Mother Mary’
[youtube http://youtube.com/watch?v=aqozwE8i4wo&feature=related]