What are you listening to on your cd player/ mp san??

A while back the band Dengue Fever made some stir on here. Certainly did with me...I downloaded Venus On Earth  and went apeshit over it...and still doing so.

But, some updates and corrections...
They are not, strictly speaking, a Cambodian band.
They're from the USA...LA, specifically.

The amazing woman doing those amazing lead vocals IS Cambodian, she DOES sing primarily in Khmer, and the band DOES emulate the sounds of Cambodian pop music.

But other than the lead singer, the rest of the band is 'Merkin. They found Chhom Nimol while combing LA's Little Phnom Penh looking for a female singer who could complete the authentic sound they wanted. Turns out she had been a major pop star in Cambodia, from a family regarded there as musical royalty.

The band got its name- and its start- from one of the founders' trip to Phnom Penh with a friend. The founder (now their organist) came home with a pile of cheap bootleg cassette tapes that formed the band's kernel of inspiration, and the friend came home with- you guessed it- dengue fever contracted via mosquito bite.

And there we have it. If you haven't found this album yet...keep lookin'.

Duffy 

Jill Scott - Beautifully Human
Erykah Badu - Baduizm

Perfect for the unusually sunny whether we had here in 'du over the past week or so.

Tom Waits!

funny Cass my son has been trying to get me into Tom Waits for some time now. I had one album by him years ago which I seem to have lost,other stuff by him I love and some I can't stand. But have you seen him act? he is one weird dude!

Ahh that's half the fun!

Kate Bush's new album, Director's Cut.
Ok; it's not exactly new. It's new versions of songs from 'Red Shoes' and 'Sensual World' but hey, the woman's released one album of new music in the last 18 years. I'll take what I can get.
The album is interesting . I can see that the sound on those 2 albums hasn't stood the test of time, but it's going to take me a little while to get used to them. In fact at this exact moment I'm actually listening to the original version of 'This Woman's Work' and I still prefer it.
There's a new version of 'Sensual World' which now has permission to use the original James Joyce lyrics which she was initially refused permission to use.  Even though I'm not a fan of the Ulysses source material, I can see how they're an improvement poetically, but some of the other songs are re-jigging absolute classics.
Nick Hornby's last novel was about a rock star who retired suddenly and after a long absence releases an album of the demo versions of his classic 'Blood on the Tracks' legendary work, which inevitably some of his obsessive fans hate.

At the moment, the one and only curious and celebrated Leon Redbone. Specifically, his wonderful Double Time  album.

Marilyn Manson...the Greatest Hits collection.
Love him or hate him, the brutha do lay down some seriously hard rock. Not quite as satisfyingly brutal as Dethklok, you understand, but definitely getting into the ballpark.

His originals are amazing enough, but a couple of covers warrant mention.
His cover of the classic Tainted Love is better than the original...it strips away the pretty gay delivery of Soft Cell's version (of the class Frank Zappa referred to as "snotty boys with lipstick on") and connects it directly to the electrified third rail where it's always belonged.

He does interesting things with the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) . If you can get to something like YouTube, check out his video on this one.   However, the cut stands up just fine on its own, without the video.

Marilyn Manson...the Greatest Hits collection.
Love him or hate him, the brutha do lay down some seriously hard rock. Not quite as satisfyingly brutal as Dethklok, you understand, but definitely getting into the ballpark.

His originals are amazing enough, but a couple of covers warrant mention.
His cover of the classic Tainted Love is better than the original...it strips away the pretty gay delivery of Soft Cell's version (of the class Frank Zappa referred to as "snotty boys with lipstick on") and connects it directly to the electrified third rail where it's always belonged.

He does interesting things with the Eurythmics' Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This) . If you can get to something like YouTube, check out his video on this one.   However, the cut stands up just fine on its own, without the video.

Dethklok!!! wow that brings back memories of semi-conscious chuckles and a thick smog of "special" smoke! How universities should be people!

Well, maybe you at least heard lead singer Nathan Explosion's graduation speech given to the graduating class at Harvard, the one summarized (or maybe more like expanded upon; Nathan tends to be a man of few words) in the song Go Forth and Die ?

But Dethklok is hardly a memory. New episodes of Metalocalypse  are still coming out, hopefully leading to more albums, and I personally had the honor of being blown clean out of my chair by them in concert, a bit over a year ago.

I simply can't imagine anyone NOT liking Dethklok's music. Sure, it IS brutal and heavy, but it's done to such total perfection that it actually transcends its own genre. Dethklok has brought deathmetal music to its apotheosis, and set the bar so high I fear no one else may ever clear it. The first three songs of Dethklok's first album, Murmaider  and Go Into The Water  and Awaken , when heard consecutively leave me totally spent. And I want the song Thunderhorse  as continuous soundtrack to my life.

Why, I'm listening to it right now.

Well raoul i think I am going to reawaken my love of Dethklok. I havent watched it in years but maybe now is the time.

Excellent.
The show is good, but the albums (especially the first Dethalbum  ) are excellent...you get the full-length uncut songs.

Noisia, Machine Gun (16Bit remix)

Take's a while, grows on ya, but.



Better version, more sound definition.

Too techno for me. I'm bugged by most music that never...coalesces around anything.

Want music that evokes machines? Try Ministry's Jesus Built My Hotrod, seen here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXCh9OhDiCI&ob=av2e