Separated at Musical Birth?

Below are two men whose work and music I truly admire: Kram (Mark Maher of Spiderbait) and Donovan Frankenreiter. I've reviewed Kram's album here before and will soon work my way through Frankenreiter's three albums. But could these two have been separated at birth, or what!?

Phrase - Clockwork

Melbourne-based Phrase came back this summer with his new album, Clockwork. No, it's not an homage to Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (but you will get those hits if you're searching the internet for Phrase's work).

I'm going to go out on a limb and declare Clockwork possibly the most Australian hip-hop album I've heard to date. The albums opens with and is punctuated at times with the sounds of some swagman telling stories by an open fire and more than one track opens with a huge Coooeee!! (Ahem, Americans, "Cooee" is what you yell when you're lost in the outback...not the restaurant...the actual wilderness.)

The album opens very strong with tracks like "Burn It Down" (throwing off the shackles of the hip-hop stereotype where every artist wants to be rich), "Clockwork" (addictive track!), "Spaceship", and "Skylight" (which not only features Kram, but also has the most awesome video tribute to Journey to the West).

Then the album slows down for a few tracks. Things get kinda deep, dark, and introspective. Songs to lost love, passed friends, and times of trial rule the middle of the album. But the album comes back strong in the end with some good energy tracks and some great guest stars (like my personal faves Bliss N Eso!).

Clockwork really is a good album. If you can dig some tracks and slow down and mellow the mood for about 15-20 minutes before getting back to the energy, you'll love the album!

Download This: "Clockwork"

Here's his video for "Skylight":

My Picks for the Hottest 100 of All Time

So my favorite radio station on the planet, Triple J, is celebrating 20 years of their Hottest 100 Songs of the Year by having everyone vote on the Hottest 100 Songs of All Time. Now, by “all time” I suspect you could technically vote for Mozart, Beethoven, and those cavemen who first smacked rocks together rhythmically. I’m not going to vote…mostly because I’m not in Australia and because my few votes won’t amount to a hill of refried beans (mmmm, beans!) in the end. I am, however, going to torture you with my list of ten (you’re supposed to submit ten songs and then all the submissions generate the top 100) and hope you reply with what your top ten songs of ALL TIME are!

1. Bob Marley – Redemption Song
2. Midnight Oil – River Runs Red
3. Crowded House – Weather With You
4. Pearl Jam - Alive
5. R.E.M. - Stand
6. Public Enemy – Fight the Power
7. The Clash – London Calling
8. The Cure – Lullaby
9. Information Society – What’s On Your Mind?
10. Joe Strummer & The New Mescaleros – Johnny Appleseed

Granted, if I spent a week going through everything in my iTunes and 30+ discs of mp3s, I might have a different list, but based on taking ten minutes to wheel through my iPod…here’s my list. Some of these were no-brainers for me, some changed as I went through the list. Regardless, here they are!

Hilltop Hoods - State of the Art

It's been three years since Adelaide-based Hilltop Hoods released The Hard Road Restrung. It's been three years that's allowed me to collect the entire Hoods catalogue and actually learn quite a few songs by heart, but late last year the Hilltop Hoods announced they would release their long-awaited new album (and first album under their own label, Golden Era Records) in mid-2009. In November 2008, the only hint we received of the new album, already titled State of the Art, was the track "Here Come the Girls".

Fast forward to late May 2009 and the first official single, "Chase that Feeling" hits the air. The excitement for State of the Art's release was palpable. For me, my favorite Aussie hip-hop group was about to put out new material and I was stoked! I wasn't sure what it would sound like, but the only thing I knew was that it wasn't going to have the jazzy lounge sound found in "Here Come the Girls".

State of the Art doesn't have "Here Come the Girls" on it at all, actually! And having listened to the whole album non-stop for about a week now as I drive from job to job and home again, I've come to the conclusion that State of the Art is possibly the most hard-hitting, intense, and tightly-written album the Hoods have ever done! They've created a darker album with themes of death and elements of the state the world's in today permeate a majority of the tracks. The album still has upbeat groove tracks, but those stars tend to glitter early in the album and the whole second half just gets darker and more introspective.

Is that bad? God, no! They're still great tracks and they certainly set a powerful mood leading up to the album's "whimper not a bang" ending in "Fifty in Five" where Suffa MC belts out fifty years of human history only to ask over a waning piano rhythm "And as we walk into the sun/Can you believe what we have become?". The ending of this album is so powerful and so intense that you get the sense something has impacted these guys enough to shift how they view the world.

What I find really impressive about State of the Art is that they've worked references to other parts of the album into many of the songs. Nearly every song mentions the term State of the Art in one form or another. Lyrics in one song become the title of the next song ("Chase that Feeling"/"She's So Ugly"). Elements in an early song on the album play out completely as its own song later in the album ("She's So Ugly"/"Hillatoppa"). The album is still chock full of great R&B samples and hooks and features guest appearances from Trials (of the Funkoars) and New York's own Pharoahe Monch. The Hoods even go so far as to sample themselves on "Chris Farley"; a sort of "What a Great Night" but with a little more death imagery.

All of these references and cross-references help give the album this incredible feeling of coherence. At times, the shift in mood (namely from "She's So Ugly"'s downbeat aggro vibe to "Still Standing"'s lilting reggae feel) is awkward, but the ease with which you can get into any track on the album quickly erases any awkwardness. And probably my favorite track on the album is "Parade of the Dead" in which a zombie invasion plagues the city of Adelaide. Yes, if you ever wondered if people can rap about anything, they can! The power with which the Hoods paint this dark night in which all normalcy goes straight to hell speaks to every jarring and disconcerting zombie flick in recent memory. God, how I hope they make a video for this track (and how I seriously feel it ought to be animated instead of live action)!

Download This: "Fifty in Five".

And here's a track-by-track breakdown from the boys themselves:

Comic #1

School is keeping me busy enough that I haven't had time to review any albums, but I kept kicking around the idea of starting a web comic. Sadly, I can't really draw worth a darn. But I love dingbats...so with much love and thanks to the Geek Bats font, here's my first web comic. I have other fonts and other ideas in the pipeline, so expect more than these two guys.

Heck, I have to give these two names, don't I? And I have to give the comic a name, too! I'm open to suggestions in case anyone's reading this!

Office Life and Vintage Computing in Music Videos

So I realise it has been a few weeks since I've posted a review. A couple reasons exist for that sad state of affairs: one, school has me busier than a bee in Spring; two, my rattle trap of a laptop died this week and I'm only now getting back on my feet with a new system (and getting used to Vista); three, work has been keeping me unusually busy, too.

The good news is that I do have some really good albums to review in the near future. I'm excited to bring those to you! But this week, while I wait for a few things to load on my work laptop, I wanted to bring to light a trend I'm finding in music videos: that of office life.

Now, this trend pertains specifically to Aussie bands (do I really review other bands lately?) and more specifically to Aussie hip-hop. There is some fascination going on not only with the perceived boring duldrums of working all day in a cubicle before a glowing screen (very Orwellian, that image), but also with vintage computing! In the examples I'm going to show below, watch for the early Macs and even earlier 5.25" floppy drive-era computers! I mean, I knew other parts of the world were a little behind the states when it comes to computers, but I didn't suspect Australia of that problem.

First up, Muph + Plutonic's video for "Heaps Good". Not only office life, but the white shirts, skinny black ties, and overusage of post-it notes.


Next is TZU's video for "Computer Love". Does anyone else remember when we even used floppy disks? It wasn't that long ago, was it? Anyway, dig the ASCII animation. C'mon guys, to the ROFLcopter!!


I'll be reviewing Phrase's full album Clockwork soon, but here's his video for the single "Spaceship" and again with the white shirt, skinny black tie, and early Macs!


Lastly, the Hilltop Hoods have a new single "Chase that Feeling" which I wouldn't have expected the video to be set in an office, but they made it happen! Odd choice of the mime look, but I'll run with it.
Darn those Hoods! They've disabled embedding, but check out the link and enjoy the new track!

Ash Grunwald - Fish Out of Water

I’ve a confession to make: I really rather enjoy blues music. I’m not sure where that love came from. I don’t specifically recall being brought up on it as a kid (it was more a Beatles and Beach Boys house). I do know that my brother is some kind of vintage blues aficionado who has gone out of his way to locate rare recordings of completely unheard-of artists and burn them to CD (sadly, that book of CDs was stolen out of his car last year). I also know that there’s something about a gravelly voice, slide guitar, sinful bass line, and harmonica that draws me like a moth to flame!

Enter Ash Grunwald (above) who, apart from being a mere 11 days older than me, sounds nothing like he looks! And that’s just one of the awesome things about him. His most recent album Fish Out of Water is full of that rich, classic blues sound! I bet if I played this album for someone who didn’t know he’s a dreadlocked white kid from Australia, that listener would think I was laying down some Muddy Waters-era artist. And maybe that’s what makes the blues enjoyable, there’s an earthy quality to the music and an easy relate-ability to the topic. Much in the same way that Blue King Brown (see previous review) is all about activism and social justice, Ash Grunwald’s blues are full of down-on-their-luck characters and men who’ve been vexed by crafty women out to steal their mojo (listen to the completely enjoyable “Mojo”).

Grunwald also manages to mix a bit of good solid rock into some of his tracks. Most notably, “Breakout” carries that terrific slide guitar feel but still just makes you want to thrash your head and sing along throughout the chorus. Truthfully, I fell so in love with that song that I found a way to make it my ringtone! If you like the blues or if you really just need something new and different from what you’ve been listening to, check out Ash!

Download This: "The Devil Called Me a Liar"

Here’s the video for “Breakout”: