Arianna Solare

Let me start off by saying that I predicted the sound of this artist’s music just based on her name. It seems like some musicians are born into their genres, just like everyone named Jeeves is doomed to a life of servitude and/or consulting. Just the sound of the name Arianna Solare made me think of indie folk-rock, which is exactly the kind of music you find on her debut EP Book of Us. But hey, maybe it was just dumb luck or post-hoc reasoning on my part.

Either way, Arianna Solare is a very engaging artist with a unique vocal style. Her singing has a rich deepness to it that is very alluring and also provides an emotional maturity to her compositions. There is also a distinctive quaver that wafts her voice across the soft instrumentation in the background. This is probably a technique she picked up during her time spent performing in temples in India, which, according to her biography on her webpage, is where her current singing style began to take shape.

Lyrically, Arianna Solare seems to remain focused on the subjects of love and her own life. Basically, the first four tracks can be dumbed down to songs about relationships, successful and not, represented in natural and spiritual metaphors. But they aren’t exactly the typical boy meets girl pop songs. For example, the first track “Lift Me Up” is at the same a song about hope for the future and regret for the past. Arianna Solare sings in the chorus, “Love ain’t gonna break me this time / It’s gonna lift me up / Love ain’t gonna leave me dry / It’s gonna lift me up,” which shows that in the past love hasn’t always been so kind to her, but this time it will be different. And I have to wonder whether the line “The gods they must be crazy” is an intentional reference to the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy. That could score a higher rating for this album in the minds of some reviewers who really dig obscure pop culture references.

The final track of the album “Are You Coming With Me” is an autobiographical song that describes some of the details of Arianna Solare’s life. Sometimes I wonder if these kinds of songs are just the artists being egotistical and saying, “Hey, look at me! I’m interesting!” But I can’t fault someone for finding some therapy in expressing themselves through music, especially if they’re a smalltime artist. There is also the potential for others with similar tales find a connection through a song like this, especially if the details aren’t particularly specific. It seems that verses like, “I was livin where the sun don’t shine / Survivin on whiskey and wine / And the teardrops they fell from the sky / I found god in those city lights,” could apply to any number of people who had similar experiences.

Purchase Book of Us by Arianna Solare at CD Baby, iTunes, or Amazon.

Arianna Solare - As I Walk to the Edge
Arianna Solare - Are You Coming With Me

For more information on Arianna Solare, visit her MySpace page.

By the way, I have a confession to make. Arianna has always been one of my favorite names that I’ve never actually heard in reference to a living person. However, the meat of the confession is that it’s always been a standard name that I have used when naming characters in fantasy or sci-fi role-playing games. Yes. It’s true. I’m a geek. I doubt that you would have been able to guess that by the fact that I write a music blog.

T.H. White

Now this may seem to be an irrelevant starting point, but I’ve been a huge fan of Adam Carolla since around 1996, which is when I first started listening to Loveline. I’ve always enjoyed his very blunt and irreverent sense of humor as well as his tendency to maintain a realistic view of the world. One of the topics he frequently covers on his morning show, The Adam Carolla Show, is music. And, finally coming around to the point of all this, he often makes fun of music from particular decades for not being particularly “timeless.” “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, for example, is clearly a song from the 80’s because of it’s incredibly simplistic, synthesized beats and keyboards. By the same token, I don’t think anyone would place “Fun, Fun, Fun” by The Beach Boys anywhere else besides the 60’s, even if they had never heard it before.

I say all this because T.H. White is an artist with a multi-decadal (Did I just invent a word? No, I looked it up. It exists.) sound. His new album The Private Spotlight includes elements of 70’s rock and funk, 80’s R&B and new wave, 90’s alternative rock and trip-hop, and contemporary electronica. As a result, you can’t pin his musical form down to a single decade and say, “This is where it belongs,” as you can with Soft Cell and The Beach Boys. Maybe you attribute individual songs with a particular decade, but overall T.H. White has a very expansive sound, which almost sounds like it wouldn’t work in concept just because there is such a drastic difference between the genres being combined. You wouldn’t imagine 70’s classic rock and 80’s new wave melding well togethering, yet it all works out in the same way that Beck’s genre-bending music somehow pulls so many conflicting elements together.

I’ll have to admit that I’m indulging in a little exaggeration in the description of T.H. White’s style by making it sound a little stranger or more groundbreaking than it really is. I just want to get the point across that he produces high quality tunes that are not easily pigeonholed into a particular genre. In fact, The Private Spotlight reminds me a lot of Simple Things by Zero 7, another stylistically far-reaching album by a band that is primarily labeled as “electronica.” I would also include T.H. White in that very broad category, but the infusion of rock and funk into his compositions can really increase the energy levels beyond what is characteristic of Zero 7 and other, mellower artists.

There are few songs on The Private Spotlight that stand out either for reasons of quality or uniqueness. “Private People” and “The Loft” stand out because of their more funk and R&B oriented sound. Both tracks make extensive use of the rhythmic, almost the percussive guitar playing technique that is typical of classic funk as well as catchy, pulsating beats. The vocals found on “Private People,” provided by Meghan Wolf, are very reminiscent of early 80’s R&B while “The Loft” uses vocal samples that exemplify traditional funk and R&B. In fact, I could imagine driving around in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City listening to “Private People” on the same radio station that played “Juicy Fruit” by Mtume. Sorry for isolating those of you who aren’t gamers or who haven’t played Vice City, but it provides a good context for those who are in the know.

Anyway, “Katie Starr of Silver” also stands out for being a little more heavy on the rock elements than any other song on the album. T.H. White’s singing on this track reminds me of Damon Albarn of the Gorillaz and Blur. In fact, I bet you that I could convince someone that this song is a rare, unreleased track by the Gorillaz that was recorded in the 90’s. It has that kind of alternative rock meets electronica vibe that the Gorillaz have. And it’s also pretty fun and catchy. I think I’m going to have stop writing right now and spend the rest of my time scheming.

Purchase The Private Spotlight by T.H. White

T.H. White - Private People
T.H. White - Katie Starr of Silver
T.H. White - The Loft

The Ginger Ninjas

In these times of pollution and global warming, it’s hard not to like a band like The Ginger Ninjas. Not necessarily because of what they say in their songs, but because of what they do on tour. They’re the first rock and roll band to tour on bicycles without the use of any gas-powered vehicles. Not only that, but they also use bicycles on stage to provide power for their speakers. This originally started as a one-time tour concept, but it is now standard practice for the band and they let audience members take turns on the bikes when they play concerts. Not only is that an interesting way of going green, but it promotes exercise in the process. Unfortunately, all the aerosol deodorant and air freshener that gets sprayed around all these sweaty concert goers negates all the pollution they’re trying to prevent.

Ignoring my tangential wisecracking, the band not only sets a good example, but they also have a really stellar sound. The Ginger Ninjas could most accurately be described as a folksy, funky, psychedelic band (seems like more and more psychedelia has been coming our way these days). There is also a definite influence of Latino culture, most notable in the occasional Spanish lyrics and the guitar playing. Their album The Pleasant Revolution only has about five full-length songs out of a total of eight tracks, but they are so strong collectively that you still feel satisfied after everything is all said and done.

Although, of all the tracks, “Dick Cheney” sticks out as being quite… unique. Not better or worse, just unique. It’s quite an experience just in itself since it’s so strange and over the top. The constant repetition of Dick Cheney’s name as the chorus and then slowly altering “Cheney” to “chain me” strikes me as being super cheesy. That and the theme of the song being that Dick Cheney needs more love. I guess maybe to get that puss off of his face? The line “I wanna love him like only a mother can love him. I wanna say coochie coochie coochie coo, my little Dicky poo,” makes me think that The Ginger Ninjas intended this song to be at least somewhat ridiculous. Especially since during the music video, the vocalist, a hippie-looking guy, is wearing a black and white dress and cuddling a baby with Dick Cheney’s head plastered onto it. Oh man, I can look forward to some strange nightmares when I go to sleep tonight. But the track still makes for a fun listen and you can’t help but smile if not laugh at how the subject matter is so weirdly treated.

The rest of the album is a little more normal than that. “Total Believer,” for example, is a really interesting song that is a mish mash of all sorts of mellow, groovy, psychedelic styles that make for a nice, pleasant tune. I already mentioned the funk and the Latino influences, but there is also a definite reggae vibe that you can feel in the rhythmic pacing of the song and the simplistic, almost percussive strum of the guitars. “Stuck on Earth” has much more folk and roots music in its sound and has an alternative rock kinda sound going for it as well. It reminds me of Wilco to a certain degree.

In fact, those of you who are fans of Wilco will most definitely enjoy the Ginger Ninjas. I suggest you support them if not for their excellent music then for their innovative approach to environmental conservation. Even if it does not seem that physical copies of The Pleasant Revolution are available, at least as far as I can tell, a downloadable copy is available via at their MySpace page. Additionally, you can purchase their other albums at CD Baby or iTunes.

The Ginger Ninjas - Total Believer
The Ginger Ninjas - Dick Cheney

I figured that I would try to get one last post in before the end of May. This is just something really quick that Celldweller, an artist I’ve mentioned before, made available through his MySpace account. More accurately, this is something made available through a music service called TrueAnthem. You should check out their webpage, they offer an interesting service.

Anyway, Celldweller is providing a free compilation album of original songs and remixes that also includes the music video for “Switchback,” which makes for a pretty interesting viewing experience. Unfortunately, each song includes a quick introduction by Klayton, the mastermind behind Celldweller, giving a really quick plug for Haze. It’s a very minor distraction that doesn’t really cut into the song and could easily be edited out by those of you with the means.

Enjoy.

Jamie Leonhart

There’s been a recent trend in pop music of resurrecting a more evocative and more intellectually creative kind of diva, the likes of which we saw in artists of the early to mid-20th Century, such as Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. Currently, Norah Jones and Feist are the most popular examples of this renewed musical artist, but there are also lesser known names that deserve just as much attention. One of these is Jamie Leonhart, a multi-talented musician from New York City whose debut album The Truth About Suffering shows why modern pop music doesn’t have to be built upon the foundations of hip-hop or rock.

In fact, it’s very reassuring to hear catchy pop tunes with a strong jazz influence. Jamie Leonhart shows that the so-called “old school” way of doing things is not as out of touch as one might assume it is. She crafts songs that are just as catchy as any tune you might hear on the radio, yet they sound much more unique due to the jazz blueprint from which they are crafted. I would also argue that this touch of jazz allows The Truth About Suffering to have a much wider range of creativity than many other pop albums.

The album’s title track is a perfect example of why Jamie Leonhart and her album stand out amongst their contemporaries. It is typical pop in its structure, but the implementation of that structure is unique. The song starts off with very gentle piano playing until it slowly builds towards the peak of the chorus where it adds the beginnings of an orchestra. The brass and woodwind instruments in the background create a more symphonic ambience that in turn produces a more moving listening experience. This wide variety of atypical instrumentation provides a very fresh perspective on the pop format and makes the song that is much more engaging in this regard.

In fact, the whole album can be viewed in the terms I previously described: typical pop structure with a unique implementation. The technique varies from song to song. For example, there is a cover of “Rainbow Connection,” which we all remember being sung by Kermit the Frog (I could never figure out how a fake frog could be the voice behind such a great song). Anyway, Jamie Leonhart takes a very innovative approach to the tune. It has a very 60’s vibe to it as well as a semi-psychedelic quality evoked by the waltzy rhythm of the organ mixed with the rattling tambourine and the dreamy brass section. It certainly is an unexpected take on the song, one that I had to listen to a few times before I could admit to liking it due to stubborn devotion to habit. But this song does what a good cover should do in my opinion: it takes a great song that everyone knows and completely reinvents it into a completely different yet equally great song.

I highly suggest checking out The Truth About Suffering if you enjoy some variety in your pop music and if you want to support divas with a little more to offer in the talent department. Jamie Leonhart is not only a talented lyricist and a soulful vocalist, but she also plays the glockenspeil, the harmonium, the violin, the drums, and the melodica on this album. Shouldn’t someone like that be a lot more interesting than Paris Hilton?

Purchase The Truth About Suffering by Jamie Leonhart

Jamie Leonhart - Area
Jamie Leonhart - Rainbow Connection
Jamie Leonhart - The Truth About Suffering

To find out more about Jamie Leonhart, visit her YouTube page, her her MySpace page, and her record label, Sunnyside Records.

Still bored as fuck with the music industry

Downliners Sekt is officially the most talked about band on this site, seeing as I have already written two posts about their previous releases. There’s a good reason why I mention them whenever they come out with something new. They ask me to for one. But it mostly has to do with the sheer quality of their music and the philosophy that backs it up. As I have always mentioned before, Downliners Sekt are crafting music and releasing it all for free on their website as a symbol of rebellion against the music industry. I, not being a great fan of how the major record labels handle their business nowadays, respect artists like this who try to make a difference or at least show that great music can be found without great cost, if any, to fans.

However, I promised myself I wouldn’t talk too much about the philosophy behind the band because I wanted to save that for whenever Glenn and I manage to successfully set up a podcast so that I can weave that into to talk of In Rainbows, which Downliners Sekt seems to have strong feelings about, as well as Trent Reznor’s recent activities. But for the rest of the post let’s just talk about the music itself while keeping it in our heads that the band is not doing this for a living. I hesitate to call what they do a hobby. Community service might be a good word. But they do not make much of a profit off of what they do I would assume.

Anyway, The Saltire Wave is Downliners Sekt’s second studio album to date. It definitely has that same industrial/breakbeat/ambient quality that Statement of Purpose had, but it possesses a much more distinct sound all the same. One of the key difference is that the previous album had stronger roots in traditional electronic-based industrial sounds whereas The Saltire Wave branches out a little bit more. There are definitely tracks that make heavy use of that distorted, grinding, guitar-driven sound found in music by the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Skinny Puppy. “Point Omega” is one of those tracks on The Saltire Wave, but it is unique in that it doesn’t have quite as repetitive a structure as the verse-chorus format of typical pop music, which can even be found in instrumentals. “Just Like You Imagined” by Nine Inch Nails is a great example of an industrial instrumental that is repetitive in this fashion, without detriment mind you.

Another key aspect of this album that sets it apart from its predecessor is its reliance on much more conventional instrumentation, which is not to say that Downliners Sekt is sounding clichéd. I’m referring to the fact that there is a much more obvious rock presence in the form of guitars as opposed to the stronger presence of synth keyboards in Statement of Purpose. This stylistic departure is noticeable as soon as the very first track, “Scope Creep,” kicks in with the solitary electronic twangs of a guitar.

The Saltire Wave also makes much more use of distortion and white noise. Sometimes I feel like I might as well be crumpling paper next to my ears while listening to this album for how staticky things can get. Actually, all that distortion doesn’t bother me at all, I just felt like cracking wise. In fact, it adds to the album’s ambience in a shoegazing kind of way in that it makes everything kind of blend together all the more. There’s a strange unity that distortion provides despite it’s turbulent nature. It is almost a form of percussion in this sense.

However, this album does have one weak point: it’s too good. This is one of those incredible albums where there are no particularly weak tracks, so I have a hard time playing favorites, which plays hell on me as an editorial writer. But if I had to choose a couple of songs beyond those I already mentioned, I would have to go with “Panic! Sonic Monk” and “Shulgin (Part II).”

“Panic! Sonic Monk” stands out in my mind for its ability to shift around in tone and style throughout while still smoothly transitioning from one segment of the song to the next and keeping consistent with itself. It’s hard to do that in an instrumental, especially one that lasts over nine minutes, while keeping the listener’s attention. “Panic! Sonic Monk” makes me think of classical music as I idealize it, which is a form of music that generally does not have very specific imagery attached to it through lyrics; therefore, the listener is allowed to let their imagination flow with whatever the sound of the music evokes within their mind’s eye. “Panic! Sonic Monk” is one of the better examples on The Saltire Wave of that evocative yet non-specific kind of song that sends one’s mind ablaze with creative thought.

“Shulgin (Part II)” is a slower and more somber track that starts of sounding like it’s going to be an acoustic number, until the high-pitched screams of electric guitars slowly creep into the track and remain as an aggressively chaotic overtone to an otherwise subdued song. As may be inevitable, I probably tend to show trends on this site in my tastes and in my writing style, and one of those trends is for me to enjoy any song that can pull off any sort of sonic paradox. The dichotomous relationship between the smooth and the chaotic sounds in “Shulgin (Part II)” is that kind of paradox that I enjoy so much. It is a very interesting technique that always manages to draw attention and keep the listener tuned in.

Speaking of keeping tuned in, I look back upon my initial reaction to Statement of Purpose and remember getting the e-mail request from Downliners Sekt to talk about their album. I was skeptical of how good an entirely free album released on the Internet could be. It was refreshingly shocking to hear just the first track and how incredible it sounded, much less the album as a whole. It was a necessary reminder that quality does not necessarily come from the top of music chain and that it need not come at a high price. And then Downliners Sekt expanded their musical horizons and outdid themselves on The Saltire Wave, which again provides the previously mentioned reminder. I’m already looking forward to their next album to see what they produce next and how their sound will continue to differ and, hopefully, improve. I’ll stay tuned in. I hope you will too.

Download The Saltire Wave by Downliners Sekt FOR FREE!

Downliners Sekt - Scope Creep
Downliners Sekt - Panic! Sonic Monk
Downliners Sekt - Shulgin (Part II)
Downliners Sekt - Point Omega

For more information on Downliners Sekt, visit their MySpace page or their record label… oh wait… nevermind.

So. There’s five days until Mother’s Day, and you still haven’t purchased your Mom a gift. Maybe you don’t know what she wants, or maybe you like to procrastinate - don’t worry, I won’t rat you out. I’m here to help!

See, if your Mom is anything like my Mom, she’s a Clay Aiken fan. She also might not know that this American Idol alum released his latest album yesterday – this is his first album of original work since “Measure of a Man” was released in 2003.

No sample tracks for download here, but you can listen to a few select tracks at his MySpace page before you go buy the album for Mom. There’s also a special video email greeting card you can have sent to Mom, but at the time of this writing it comes back with an error message after you’ve clicked “Send”… hopefully that’ll be fixed by Sunday.

A sample of I/O\I’s artwork

I really dig experimental, cacophonous music that makes use of wall-of-sound techniques to overwhelm listeners with waves of dissonance. That’s why I/O\I (a.k.a. Stafford Davis) first appealed to me. But I discovered that there isn’t just sonic chaos to be found on his self-titled album. In fact, that’s a very small portion of the album. It also derives a lot of its appeal from softer, more ambient songs and other tracks that are strange derivations of more traditional musical styles. All in all, I/O\I is less of a musical endeavor than it is modern art exhibit of sound that is stored on CD, so it covers a fair amount of ground, sometimes literally on tracks such as “Dirt and Dark,” which is 25 seconds of footsteps crunching on a dirt path.

Let me get through the intensely weird and the most unusual material first since that’s what sticks out the most in my head and we don’t normally deal with this kind of stuff on Radio KRUD. The track that is playing as I write this paragraph is “Footprints from the Day Before.” You would have to do some serious arguing to convince me that this is music as opposed to poetry. I’m not trying to be uptight or condescending or anything like that. This track is more post-modern, performance poetry altered by electronic effects than it is a song in my opinion. Granted, there are similarities between poetry and music, but they are not the same thing. The track starts out with what sounds like the common noises you might hear from any suburban neighborhood, then a chorus of voices altered in post-production comes in reciting lines of poetic prose. It’s a mix of male and female voices, but they have been altered to the point where they sound like demonic Transformers chanting a prayer to summon their dark overlord who will bring pain and suffering to the peaceful suburban community we were introduced to in the first minute of the track. There’s something disquieting about it, but isn’t really scary. It just makes you stop, take a listen, and think.

There are other unusual tracks that aren’t quite as interesting as “Footprints from the Day Before.” The problem with them is that they have no substance. It just sounds like there were times during the creation of this album where I/O\I accidentally left his mic on and upon discovering that he had used up some tape on what I’m assuming are the sounds of a vacuum cleaner (”Cyclical Feedback Loop”) and an air conditioning unit (”Cardboard Dinner Night Owl”), he decided to include them on the album so as not to completely waste that tape. Of course that’s not the truth behind reason. It’s probably more of a John Cage scenario where I/O\I is attempting to capture the music inherent in the environment. Something else to compare it to would be DuChamp’s ready-made art. The focus of this kind of art is less on the product, which is never very interesting, but more on the concept. It was revolutionary for DuChamp to claim that a toilet was art or for Cage to say that four minutes and 33 seconds of audience reaction to a piano player’s inaction was also art, but I/O\I is providing us with something that has been done to death. Though I suppose it does help to have someone still throwing wrenches in the system and making people take notice when something is out of whack.

On the other hand, there are other tracks where I/O\I uses environmental noise quite differently and incorporates it into a song as opposed to using it as a standalone piece. “Grocery Store Checkout = Cultural Toxic Waste Dump” springs instantly to mind, a song that makes three dramatic shifts in tone. First, it starts off with a semi-mellow world music/jazz kind of sound altered by I/O\I’s own particular brand of sonic chaos. Then it shifts into a deep, grinding industrial beat mixed with electronic scratches. Finally, the sound of what I’m assuming is a grocery store checkout line is worked in and then is left to play on its own. The message behind this track should be pretty obvious from the title, but the key thing about “Grocery Store Checkout = Cultural Toxic Waste Dump” is that the background noise is included as basically another instrument in the song and is not just the song itself. That sound sample has a unique beat of its own, the rhythm of which may have been added in later by I/O\I or it could just be something from the moment of the recording, but either way it is successfully woven into the rest of the track and creates a flow of thought while still maintaining a fair amount of musical chaos caused by the sheer diversity of sound.

There are also a number of tracks that are simply short instrumental snippets, which seem to be brief dabblings into different styles of music as opposed to full-fledged songs. They are very brief and simple, but there is something intriguing in their lack of complexity. It’s as if I/O\I extracted one element from a longer song with more layers to it and just isolated this one part to draw more attention to it. “Green,” for example, sounds like the lute part of a Medieval dance song, as strange a concept as that sounds in the context of the rest of the album. Then there’s “Sykels,” which sounds like a basic guitar riff separated from the rest of it’s instrumental brethren in a rock song. It’s a strange form of sonic experimentation that allows you to appreciate the more basic building blocks of larger song structures. Though perhaps I’ve drawn some overly complicated interpretation from these tracks that wasn’t even there, which is often the case with modern art.

I could say plenty more about I/O\I, but my fingers and eyes are starting to wear out. I guess that’s part of, if not the entire, point of experimental music: it gets people to think and talk a lot. It creates a stir. I guess in closing I will be honest and say that I will probably not listen to this album very often because it’s so weird that it will start to get very tiresome after too much exposure. I can only take so much modernism before it just starts to drive me nuts. But if you’re a real artsy type and/or you want to really challenge your mind on a creative level, which is always a good character building exercise, then I/O\I will be worth your time. Although, I wouldn’t recommend playing this at any parties, unless it’s a super trendy one where everyone is wearing skin-tight, black outfits and berets.

Purchase I/O\I’s self-titled album

I/O\I - Exit 286
I/O\I - Green
I/O\I - Footprints from the Day Before
I/O\I - Grocery Store Checkout = Cultural Toxic Waste Dump

For more information on I/O\I, visit his MySpace page.

Kuwahara

There’s not much guesswork involved in the figuring out the origins of this band’s name. If you Google it, the first thing that comes up is a company called Kuwahara BMX. One of the later results little is the band’s MySpace page, which uses Kuwahara BMX’s logo as their profile picture. I’m thinking of three possible reasons for this: these guys are huge bike enthusiasts, they just thought the company’s name and logo were really cool, or they’re some sort of marketing ploy used by the company. That last option is pretty unlikely, so I’m betting on the first one.

Either way, this is a pretty solid rock band. Nothing really earth shattering or particularly innovative about their sound, just really fun and catchy songs. In fact, one of the major draws of their album Roam Arrow is just how back-to-basics it really feels. It sounds like it was recorded by a bunch of fans of classic rock who decided to get together and jam out some tunes in their buddy’s makeshift recording studio. Maybe I’m romanticizing this kind of sound too much, but there is some charm in hearing a collection of catchy lo-fi songs that don’t have the most tight instrumentation in world. I do enjoy hearing the occasional drum beat miss its mark by just a nanosecond and that lack of really high quality sound recording makes the music seem more “real” somehow. But then again, this is coming from someone who thinks that preferring vinyls over CD’s because they sound “warmer” is ridiculous. I guess the difference is that any band will have that warm sound on a vinyl record, but lo-fi recordings don’t get much better no matter what format you transfer them to.

Anyway, if I’m making Kuwahara sound like an amateurish, cookie cutter rock band, then let me clarify my sentiments on the matter. These guys have a lot of range within their genre and have carved out some really distinctive tunes from their medium of choice. They can really rock out hard on numbers such as “Pill Song,” get a little brit-poppy in tracks like “Romero,” and then take it down a notch and delve into a more bluesy and country inspired sound in songs like “Lady Noises.” In a way, Roam Arrow is like a good history lesson in rock ‘n roll just because it shows a wide range of influences that have affected rock.

If I may get a little personal, listening to Kuwahara kinda reminds me of when I was a little kid and my uncle would play me albums that his band had recorded and show me some videos of live concerts. He was a little younger than I am now when he was a guitarist in a local band in the Maryland area and he was a seriously talented guitarist. While heavy metal and punk were the big genres of the day (he still refers to his a lot of friends who were into that stuff as “knuckle heads”), he was more interested in playing more classic rock and keeping up with Pete Townshend’s latest endeavors. I guess his inspiration is why I always appreciate bands like Kuwahara who like to kick it old school.

Purchase Roam Arrow by Kuwahara

Kuwahara - Romero
Kuwahara - Pill Song
Kuwahara - Lady Noises

Hate Camels: Paul McDaniel (Bass), Mike Whited, Jr. (Drums), Geoff Cleveland (Composer, Keyboards, Theremin), Dave Devine (Guitar)

More often than not here at Radio KRUD, we write about bands that derive their sound from multiple musical discourses. It’s hard to pin them down to one single musical style and say, “Now their sound is defined and there’s not much else that needs to be said.” Well, today’s band is particularly genre defying. In fact, before I even continue with this post, I challenge you to predict the sound of a jazz band who lists Meshuggah and Mastodon as their primary influences. Well, that kind of eccentric mixture is what you get from the Hate Camels, and I guarantee that their music will go way beyond whatever insane sound you have concocted in your head based on what I’ve already said about them.

You just have listen to their album Death Comedy Jams…and one piece of life metal. The title is pretty self-explanatory when you see the track listing:

1. Mitch Hedberg
2. Richard Pryor
3. Sam Kinison
4. Lenny Bruce
5. Bill Hicks
6. Andy Kaufman
7. Peaceful Queen

That last track is the “one piece of life metal.” In case you were wondering, yes, it’s a concept album. Each song basically acts as a tribute/theme song for its respective comedian, so keep in mind the person and their work when listening to the music. If you’re familiar with any of these comedians, then these songs are that much better because of how intricate a portrait they paint. For example, “Mitch Hedberg” has kind of an easy-going and trippy quality to it while “Sam Kinison” is the most aggressive track on the album and “Andy Kaufman” gets very weird in some parts.

Even if you’re not a fan of most or any of these comedians, this is still some incredibly well-crafted jazz that you can enjoy listening to. This album is quite experimental, which is kind of a “no duh” statement seeing as it melds elements of classic jazz and heavy metal. And it’s all instrumental, so there aren’t any deep growls or throaty howls to be found for those of you who find heavy metal vocals to be a bit overbearing. I think most of the metal influence comes from the more aggressive delivery and some of the crunchiness found in the tunes. Geoff Cleveland, the composer, must be some sort of musical genius to combine such bipolar styles and make the end result work as well as it does.

If you’re still not certain whether this is something you would be into, then let me tell you what Mitch Hedberg’s wife, Lynn Shawcroft, had to say after hearing the track named after her late husband, “I just checked out the song. It’s amazing… Mitch would be sooo flattered. Mitch was inspired by music. And he loved musicians. He would be happy to know that a great musician like Geoff Cleveland was inspired by comedy in the same way.” Let me echo her sentiments by saying that this is great, innovative music and is doubly entertaining if you’re a fan of any of these comedic icons. Get this album.

Purchase Death Comedy Jams…and one piece of life metal by the Hate Camels

Hate Camels - Mitch Hedberg
Hate Camels - Sam Kinison