listen

Tortoise, Star Trek, and Orbital (with more Star Trek): Song of the Day Triple Feature

I spent a good seven+plus hours burning through some iTunes today to make up for yesterday’s somewhat disappointing performance a shortened day at the office will do that. With about 100 songs to choose from, I had a very hard time narrowing down the song of the day, so lucky you, here’s three songs to choose from. Choose wisely.

Orbital: Time Becomes

[audio:061021OrbitalTimeBecomes.mp3]

Constructed from a single line spoken by Worf from the 2nd season Star Trek: The Next Generation episode Time Squared which I happened to see just the other day—it’s almost unwatchably bad, this song is more of an experiment in recording technique than actual music. But it’s fun to have your own personal Moebius.

Time Squared of course, is not to be confused with the 5th season episode Cause and Effect, where the Enterprise is destroyed every 11 minutes or so.

Tortoise: Swung From The Gutters

[audio:061021TortoiseSwungfromtheGutters.mp3]

From TNT, this song is just great; not quite as good as The Equator, but still one of my faves from the band.
tortoise at iTunes.

Boston Pops conducted by John Williams performing the theme to Star Trek

[audio:061021BostonPopsStarTrek.mp3]

A very unusual and extended take on the classic and well-known theme to the original Star Trek television program, performed live in concert by the Boston Pops.

Nobukazu Takemura – sign acappella

Nobukazu Takemura - Sign

Today’s song is the unaccompanied robot/computer vocalist for Nobukazu Takemura’s single Sign (vinyl 12″ version) from his 2001 album Hoshi no Koe.

I first heard the original version of this song at a show in New Orleans in 2001. That show was my first real exposure to glitch music (a form of electronic music that has intentional “errors” in it or is entirely composed of error-like sounds, such as a CD skipping) and it completely blew my mind. I still get chills listening to the vocal part of Sign that starts at the 1:09 mark.

Takemura has since become a kind of legendary figure as far as my iTunes is concerned. And while Sign is a fantastic track, without its attendant beeps and boops, however, it suffers from some unpleasant and awkwardly-long breaks of silence, which cost it some of its gravitas. Still, these artificial vocals manage to convey a kind of staccato emotion, like a robot throwing down some slam poetry.

[audio:061020sign_acappella.mp3]

New Tunequest Feature: Song of the Day

I probably should have thought of this sooner, but I didn’t have this nifty new WordPress plugin that let’s me easily embed audio files into my posts until the other day. Of course, the primary premise of Tunequest is that I’m spending the year listening to all 14,000+ songs in my iTunes library. Until recently, I didn’t really have a way to share some of that music.

So, starting today I will be including a song from each day’s playlist in a post to the site. There’s 73 days left in the year, so expect about 73 songs (though probably fewer; there are some days where I don’t get the chance to listen to anything).

The debut song is Kind Hearted Woman Blues by Robert Johnson.

[audio:061018kindhearted-woman-blues.mp3]

I’m not much of a blues fan. Nothing against it; in fact I respect the blues and blues musicians a great deal. I just can’t listen to much of it at a time the exception being blues bars. Live blues is something to behold.

It’s probably fitting then, that I’ve gone to the source with Johnson’s Complete Recordings. It’s undeniably classic and quite moving. And come to think of it, I probably don’t need any other blues records. It’s all right here.

Find it on Robert Johnson - Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings - Kind Hearted Woman Blues

The Nine Beats of Ratatat

ratatat - 9 beats

It’s a bit of a cosmic coincidence that I happen to be on a huge Ratatat kick right now and a new Ratatat bootleg has happened to suddenly surface around the net. It’s titled 9 Beats and is apparently a rare look at the band’s early/demo work. How early? It doesn’t say, but it probably pre-dates their 2004 debut.

The tracks on the album aren’t songs per se. They’re mostly extended loops of beats and melodies that last between one and two minutes. Then, just as you’re starting to really get into them, they just stop. Most of the unnamed tracks don’t even get a fade out. Banagale has more info.

It’s pretty interesting stuff.

Here’s a taste for you. It’s track “two.”

[audio:061019RatatatTwo.mp3]

::

Update 3/29: Some tracks from 9 Beats have turned up as the backing music on Ratatat Remixes Vol 2. Specifically:

  • Beat #1 is used for Memphis Bleek’s Alright.
  • Beat #2 is used for Young Buck’s Shorty Wanna Ride.
  • Beat #3 is used for Notorious B.I.G.’s Dead Wrong.
  • Beat #4 is used for Young Buck, T.I. & Ludacris’s Stomp.
  • Beat #6 is used for Slim Thug, Bun B, and T.I.’s 3 Kings.

The Breeders – Fortunately Gone: A Short Case of Sublime Perfection

the breeders - pod

One minute and 44 seconds worth to be precise.

And the subject of this perfection is The Breeders’ Fortunately Gone from their 1990 debut record, Pod. The song is a paragon of simplicity, with a gentle, upbeat, bobbing rhythm and seductively playful singing that doesn’t hesitate to draw you in.

My only complaint is its length. It is so perfect, yet so tantalizingly short, that I can’t help but want to hear more. So, for the one time since the tunequest began this year, I made an exception and listened to a song twice. In fact, I think I blew out a car speaker on the drive home doing just that.

It won’t help though; this song will be stuck in my head for days.

It would be impolite of me to not share such a wonderful song, so here it is in all its glory:

[audio:060815FortunatelyGone.mp3]

pod at amazon

Velocity Girl: Anatomy of a Gutless Wonder

velocity girl anatomy of a gutless wonder

Free Listen: Anatomy of a Gutless Wonder
[audio:http://www.tunequest.org/download/VelocityGirl-AnatomyofaGutlessWonder.mp3]

Anatomy of a Gutless Wonder was one of the last songs released by Velocity Girl before the group’s break up in late 1996. It’s only available as the b-side to the 7" single Nothing from the group’s final album gilded stars and zealous hearts. I picked it up (along with the Your Smiling Face single) directly from subpop.com in my early college days (summer of ’97), when I was flush with dispensable cash. Surprisingly, a quick visit to the site reveals that the record is still available.

Despite owning a turntable and several LPs, I’ve never really been set up for vinyl–not quite portable enough. Thus, the song made its way from vinyl to cassette (and later mp3) in short order and in the 9 years since, it’s never been out of favor. I’d love to be able to make a fresh rip, but my equipment is scattered across three states. It is a crisp, dreamy gem of a ballad featuring haunting melodies and Sarah Shannon’s sweet sweet vocals.

It is among my favorite tracks in the band’s catalog and, if this is indicative of the direction Velocity Girl were moving, it disappoints me further that the group broke up because the results surely would have been fantastic.

::

For the latter part of high school, Velocity Girl was easily my favorite band. I was introduced to them back in the good ol’ days of late night MTV by either Alternative Nation or the venerable 120 minutes sometime in the spring of 1995. ¡Simpatico! must have been newly released because Sorry Again was the lead video on a night I happened to be watching in my darkened den.

I was quickly hooked, by both the song’s jangly pop flavors and, every 90s indie boy’s crush, chanteuse Sarah Shannon, making a mental note that night to remember to further investigate the band. Then, just as quickly as I was hooked, mister follow-through here forgot all about the song, video and band.

And so my love affair would have ended there, had I not been drifting through Cordova Mall some three months later. Friends and I wandered into a now-defunct record chain and did the usual bin-sifting and note comparing, since we had varied tastes in music. Finding nothing of interest after about 20 minutes, we prepared to exit the store.

simpatico

As we walked toward the front register, I noticed the colorful cover of the now playing disc. I dredged up the months-old memory of the video and began paying attention to the in-store music. I think the song that was playing was ‘labrador’ and in an instant I made the second-rashest record purchase of my life.

And it was all downhill from there. I absolutely fell in love with the record and the band, going so far as to join an email list dedicated to them, which is a really uncommon thing from me to do, and set out to acquire their previous releases. For christmas of ’95 in Pittsburgh I received Copacetic as a gift and the next day found the Sorry Again single at a local record store, something that would never happen in my hometown. The b-side to that, Marzipan remains one of my favorite songs of all time.

I kept up with the band via a small network of fan sites, including the Cyberpad (archive.org version), which stayed up, nearly unchanged for 8 and a half years after the band’s demise. So devoted I was, that I also engaged in a little bootleg tape trading of some live shows, some of my first instances of doing so

In January of ’96, I even exchanged a couple emails with Jim Spellman, Vgirl’s drummer, imploring the group to play a show in Pensacola, to which he humorously replied:

We played in florida for the first time last year and really liked it. I am afraid we had a bad prejudice against Fl before that trip. We thought it was going to
be rednecks and death metal but the showa were great. A very pleasant
surprise. W e will definitly be back. You can check our web site in
march when our new album comes ou for specific dates. [sic]

Alas, it was not to be. The Gilded Stars Tour came nowhere near Florida and the group disbanded shortly thereafter.

Even though the group parted company those many years ago, their music lives on. And as long as I have it, I will keep listening.