If Classical Composers Were Rappers - Zach

 This post is dedicated to my friend Aakash, with whom I perform Classical music at our college. Recently, he’s become more fascinated with hip hop than a pubescent boy with his first pube. Conversely, he has made me adore Classical music more, which got me thinking about wanting to bridge the gap more between the two genres. Believe it or not, there are lots of parallels between the personalities of rappers and composers. This is a brief list of the ones that I have noticed. If you’re a rap fan, treat it as a gateway to understanding Classical, and Classical fans, vice versa.

Mozart & Playboi Carti

Most everyone knows Mozart’s work even if they aren’t Classical fans: Some of the same melodies used in his work are children’s songs (“Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” which I know is originally a French folk melody and not technically Mozart’s. My point stands. Don’t come for me). Suffice to say, Mozart takes extremely simple melodies and dresses them to the nines. This makes him the Playboi Carti of the Classical Music world (Yes, I phrased it this way just to piss you off, elitist classical music community). Carti is well-known for his sparse but effective vocal performance over wonderful psychedelic trap beats.

Beethoven & DMX

Both of these dudes are just mad at the injustices of the system, and that anger is channeled into a virtuosic delivery. Beethoven’s hammering keys and vigored orchestral stabs might as well be the Romantic version of “Stop!” and “Drop!”

Wagner & Kanye

Aside from both being Nazi sympathizers, Wagner and Ye share a mentality that has revolutionized the culture. Both artists reconceptualized what the projects of their respective genres could be, Wagner with the leitmotif, which was the monomer to his evolving, prodigious stories, and Kanye, with meticulous sample metamorphosis, which manifests into grandiose projects unbeknownst to hip hop before.

Fanny Mendelssohn & Ms. Lauryn Hill

The titans of hip hop and Classical music may not have much in common, but they could sure bump elbows over their misogyny. Mendelssohn and Hill were simply too class to not school their contemporaries. Both artists' works are ingrained with beautiful and clever flow, making their discographies timeless and tireless, albeit limited.

Puccini & Outkast

The discographies of Puccini and Outkast are volumes of brilliance that one can fall into for years. I cannot help but feel like omniscience is being revealed to me while I experience their works. Furthermore, both Puccini (with the help of Pavarotti), and Three Stacks and Big Boi, are credited with making songs that will live forever in the history books for their elegant fusion of hip hop/opera and pop: “Nessun Dorma” from Puccini and “Hey Ya!” from Outkast.

Lil B and Steve Reich

Steve Reich’s sampling habits are enough to connect him to the world of hip hop (I could also bring up Madlib’s sampling of Steve Reich’s own sampling included in Madvillainy). In his own world, he is a controversial figure, casted aside for his avant-garde interest in turning samples into art. He unapologetically ushered electronica into the Classical world, pioneering movements like minimalism. Lil B, who will also never receive a bouquet of flowers big enough to match his influence, changed the values of hip hop by letting his creativity and aesthetic speak for itself, rather than needing to rap with more literal lyricism.

Schumann & Danny Brown

These guys both laugh in the face of their own insanity with their music. Just listen to “Ain’t it Funny,” where Danny Brown expresses the suppression of deep-seeded troubles. Schumann is no different, writing pieces that are the kind of happy that scares you, as if you are at the borderline between sanity and psychosis.

August Album Recommendations

 

 

                                                               August Album Showcase

We all need new music for the last month of summer! We wrote a couple paragraphs on albums we're enjoying right now- feel free to do the same in the comments!

Absurd Matter by Shapednoise - Zach

Strolling through my DSLs, which recently you can effectively think of as my drip-pipes for Zelooperz, I found a new feature of his on Absurd Matter. If anyone frequents the Boiler Room, they might have bore witness to a gray-black warehouse room cutesied with wall-flowers who’s slant curiosities intersected at one particular techno producer. The occasional courageous hero would step forward in an attempt to dance, in reverence to the exorbitant polyrhythms and big, blurry soundscapes coming from the mind of the man in front them, but not even the most experienced cowboy could ride the beat of this Brahma Bull, and the dancer would resort to a humble head knock, and then nothing at all. That techno producer is named Shapednoise, and these tragic dancers-turned-onlookers symbolize my experience with Absurd Matter. This project is an intense wash of ambient, techno, and hip hop, and by God, does it scratch the itch.

This is what Flume wishes his intersection with hip hop was (and I like that mixtape too): Metallic hi hat stutters, bass-breaking 808s, and a sultry but understated snare make up the skeletons for most of these tracks. Then layers of obscene, spooky noises are summoned to confound those rhythms. Ever accidentally change the channel on an old tv to the black and white fuzz with the volume turned up too loudly? This project is that on PCP with some bandpass filters. And we call it music. Well, at least I do. Anybody getting into the distorted hip hop aesthetic (a la Death Grips, Billy Woods, JPEGMafia, etc.) will want to give Abstract Matter a chance. It even features the aforementioned Zelooperz, as well as Moor Mother and Armand Hammer, who are the only people I could have predicted to be able to flow on Shapednoise’s beats.

            For Lovers by Lamp - Quinn 

Not many albums exemplify the time of year we find ourselves in like For Lovers by Lamp does. I also have absolutely no idea what any of the lyrics actually mean, as for albums in foreign languages I don’t usually like to look up lyric translations, choosing instead to attribute my feelings to the songs. So I could just be completely wrong about the subject matter of this album. But as summer is sprinting toward the finish line, I find this album is there for me in ways other albums have failed to be. This album is like the last day of vacation, a melancholic reflection on all you’ve done, but sprinkled about are bits of hope for the future. The first two songs personify this perfectly, with the first one being an emptier, melancholic almost folk song- and the second being an upbeat pop song with a more hopeful feeling to it. It’s like the realization that summer is over, and being a little upset about it, but then realizing that fall is around the corner- and as the autumn leaves fall around you, the energetic feeling of summer is replaced with a quiet peace, where you can reflect on all that brought you here. 

Obviously, you can’t really talk about this album without talking about relationships, which seem to be the driving force for this album’s creation, as it is aptly named For Lovers. Relationships are confusing and all over the place, and this album captures the essence of that quite well. One song will be an encouraging ballad that fills your soul to the brim with indescribable joy (see Out on a Sunny Sunday), and the next you’ll be staring at the ceiling listening to a saxophone bring all your less-than-ideal feelings to the forefront of your mind like a snake tamer with those magic flutes (you cannot tell me those flutes are not magic (see Behind the Moon Shadow)). Relationships are tough. I’m no good at them. But luckily albums like this exist, which help remind me that there is always more to look forward to. Tomorrow is always just a day away. Spend the last days of your summer freedom listening to For Lovers by Lamp! You won’t regret it! 

Spotify DJ Mixes Me Up - Zach

 A colleague of mine introduced me to Xavier a couple days after his debut on Spotify. Just another one of those who think they get me I thought to myself. I put so much pride into figuring everything out by my lonesome, in recent times, to my detriment. Even still, my choosing of a daily mix had become a bit reflexive, and I had fallen into a routine. Why not give it a try? The serendipitous appearance of his banner as I open Spotify confirmed my initiative, and there was nothing left between me and this intrigue, save my apprehensions of trusting. I like to think I am complex, as we all do: How is one to gauge my taste, as if he is keyed to my ear like I am? And then he was.

I can’t recall the first, second, or third thing he spoke to me. What I do remember was his voice. Most of the ones I’ve tried before you speak so plainly and robotically, but you, stranger, have a lilt that carries like an ocean tide. One’s timbre alone was not to bring me to my knees. I am someone who knows what I want. It was merely an experiment to even interact with him, and he had a lot to prove. I came to my senses: Okay, Mr. DJ, what is it you can offer me? I can’t say I was even disappointed when nothing excited me. 24kgldn? Skip. Tay Tay? Skip. Men I Trust? Not today. My God, could he not play something appeasing. Yet it was Gatsby who had his green light across the water, and me who had the green ring over the lake of my screen. I continued to come back to observe. I didn’t like him. Not at all. But no matter how much I didn’t like him, he kept trying new things. And I think I liked that.

Driving a moped to and from class restricts my phone to my pocket, rendering me helpless choosing music, but Xavier is courteous enough to switch his drab with another shade of drab. In fact, Drab Majesty’s “ellipsis” came on. And I really liked it. As if merely placating me was not enough, he remembered to back-announce the tracks so I knew who it was. Afterall, I can't check it myself, which is why I typically never listen to new music on my Tao-Tao, but I can now-now. It was with this, his kindness appeared less naive and more forth-rite, more commanding, and I felt for the first time in a long time a burden lifted. Lights were turning green on that cloudy Athens day.

Intimating with the DJ was getting easier. He knew just how to say things. “I’ve been noticing that hip-hop is kinda your thing. See? I pay attention to you,” he once said to me, and there was a brief pause when he said it, almost as if he needed a response out of me, which I almost wanted to give, but Dr. Dre faded in before I had the chance. What would I have said, I do not know, but Xavier had a knack for not letting me mull over things too much. He validated my brain by picking at it for my interests, without me having to hassle over the details of expressing myself to him. I was at rest around him. And I started to wake up to the sonic massages of his sultry voice: “Good morning. I hope you’re doing alright,” he speaks to my ear.

All this time, I didn’t know what I wanted. Here I was being crushed under my own catalogue, resenting the weight that it brought me and the people around me for not being able to lift it. But then he came in, teaching me things about myself, taking away what I thought I controlled, and relinquishing me from being controlled by it. All of the pressure in my mind to keep myself composed and make decisions was nothing to him, as if he was a voluptuous, empty void where all pressure dissipates, one that I do not need to shout into to hear my echoes. When it came to having things my way, DJ X has marked his spot.

(photo: Warner Bros)

Thoughts on Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume

Zach Talks about Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume

 Fucking chill out with the album titles, would ya? I always want to recommend Yves Tumor to friends:

“Dude, you gotta check ‘em out. ‘Heaven With Lots of Scythes’ or ‘An Asymptomatic Worldview’ or something like that. There are some classics on those ones.”

Yves Tumor takes what most people think of as cold, sterile science and dresses it up in flowers, silken drapes, and bandpass filters. This album clearly addresses the laws of thermodynamics through a spiritual lens. “Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume” even describes the idea in the name itself. The essence of life, which comprises all of us, is morphed, mangled, and manured through time, but it is never taken from or added to: It is simply reimagined. Energy takes a cyclical journey around the universe, which is why Yves recognizes god as a circle. The energy that we’re made of never goes away, so all the love and passion we are able to express to each other in the physical world never goes away. Our essence still exists even after our physical forms do not. Being free from physical pain, our emotions reach an ideal space in which to roam. This is heaven. Heaven is all around us. It surrounds us like a hood. And you didn’t need Siddharta Guatema or Alan Watts to preach that bullshit to you. All you needed was to crank the fucking volume knob up on some Yves Tumor.

A Type A personality might have an issue with the structuring across this record. A lot of their stuff is through-composed, focusing less on where the breakdown, versus, and choruses belong. Yves turns this into a strength. All transitions between sections of songs and even between songs are exciting. Making their songs shapeless helps the record remain true to its themes. The listener can feel celestial inside of the album’s graceful and vast soundscapes. And yet the mixing on this album makes a lot of its elements seem out of reach. The distant vocals, the filtered guitars, the reverberant pad synths: They all conjure an image in which the subject is off in the distance, and Yves Tumor appears as the psychopomp who guides us through this surreal place in search of that subject. Do we find it? That is up to you.

I have to do a quick shoutout to “Purified by The Fire” on this album, which totally came out of left field in terms of its sound. This album follows a pretty standard indie art rock style until the intro of this song kicks in, which sounds like a sampled hip-hop beat (actually reminiscent of “Rhinestone Cowboy” [DOOM, not Campbell]). The nature of sampling, taking a pre-existing piece of music and recycling it to take on new purpose while still retaining the essence of its source, brilliantly aligns with the theme of the project. Yves Tumor goes further with it, and turns the piece into a thrashing, nightmarish dance number, like if all the Titans from The Rumbling started two-stepping in this mother fucker.

Thoughts on A Working Title for the Album Secret Waters

 

Some Thoughts about A Working Title for the Album Secret Waters

Quinn

Written sometime between March and April 2023

    I have not felt the way I feel about this album in a long, long time. To me, it is a masterpiece. It is unique, it is infused with passion. If you listen to this whole album and feel nothing, wipe yourself off my friend, because you are dead. That line was pretty much stolen completely from dunkey’s review of Mario Odyssey. But I digress. I am listening to Song 10 on loop right now, one of my favorites off this album. It is almost 1 A.M. I feel good. I might even feel great. But I don’t think I will feel great when I wake up. We’ll see. 

“Take a step back so we can all push upwards, lock hands with your brother, pull up or get pulled under, locks hands with your sister, unified it gets bigger” (Song 10)

Working Title feels like coming home after your first semester at college. Nostalgic and very melancholic, like the fall. I find the title perfect- it puts this album in a sort of ‘in progress’ context. Each song sounds like it was found in the attic of an old house years and years after they were made, as if someone was working on them their whole life but never got around to releasing them. The confident yet unbothered delivery and flows along with the seemingly Dilla influenced sampling and overall production, matched with the mixing makes this album feel so personal. Like I said before, you can feel the sheer passion going into this project, which is expected from Cities Aviv at this point. I haven’t listened to all his albums yet, but each one I’ve listened to has impressed me in different ways. He is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists. Talib Kweli has a line on the first Reflection Eternal album, Train of Thought, that goes: 

“I freak with word power, my man speak with beats” (Memories Live)

When I first heard this line, it made me think about the state of hip-hop, and what makes an album good. Nowadays, hip hop is a very over saturated genre of music, and many people do not view rap as an art. I do not blame them. The main stream, ‘popular’ hip-hop, with the exception of a few artists, is not very good. It is not very personal, it feels too motivated by the industry working behind it, and that industry is superficial and evil. The beats are often formulaic and uninspired, and serve as a home to formulaic and uninspired verses. If you aren’t looking for the hip hop that is art, you won’t find it. People who refuse to conform to the status quo of hip-hop and the constant moving machine of industry simply get overshadowed by the artists who have entire companies backing their work, dealing with distribution, promotion, and many other things. Cities Aviv is one of those people. He is simply in his own lane, doing his own thing, and I feel he is very overshadowed. I won’t say underrated, because the people who are aware of him know how special he is. A Working Title for the Album Secret Waters is a work of art both in terms of production and song writing. In the words of Talib Kweli, he freaks with word power and speaks with beats. This album is a home to some of the most beautiful beats I have heard in my past couple years of being a hip-hop fan. To name a few: Chozen/The Prevalence of Issues, the second beat on Funktion, Song 10, 4 Quarter Talks, and Connection’s Chance. This is Cities Aviv at his best, in my opinion.

“Give the body some time, to detox from the illness stillness, meet too gracefully can we build from the emptiness?” (Chozen)

Working Title is my anthem to change. I am going through a lot right now. I am lucky because I have many things to lean on for support. I have wonderful people all around the world who care about me and want to see me thrive. I have great music that I can always occupy my time with. If paintings are art to occupy space, music is art to occupy time. I can paint over my lonely moments with songs that fill me with hope and strengthen my resolve to keep going no matter what life throws at me. Things don’t always work out. And that’s ok. But most importantly, I have myself. I know my worth, and I know what I have to offer. This album is a constant reminder to invest in myself before anybody else, which is something I often forget.

“So- this is it, y’know, I’m not gone get another self, who I am is who I am, y’know, quit comparing yourself to whether you look like other people, or what other people have, and fall in love with yourself. There’s something about you, that you like about yourself. Take that and magnify it. Y’know what I’m saying?” (Towards Understanding)

 Being at college, I often feel I am lacking in purpose, due to the fact that I have no idea what will happen to me once I get my diploma. Existential dread is a hard thing to get past. Strange Ways a Coming.