Saturday night my roommate and another friend went to see Astronautalis. He was actually sandwiched between Valina and The Paper Chase. Valina was a generic rock band that I can’t imagine ever going to see just for them. They just didn’t seem to bring anything special to the table. The Paper Chase were Dissonant Rock and most of their songs sounded the same. We left after their fourth song I think.

But Astronautalis’ show was awesome. I’ve never been to a rap concert per se, so some of the things that I note are probably typical, but on the other hand, Astronautalis’ music isn’t like most rap (evidenced by the fact that I like it.) He first came on stage and greeted us all. He has a little routine he does around the songs, which isn’t that unusual, except for the fact that his routines turn into freestyle rap sometimes, which was pretty cool. He gave us advice that to survive in these tough economic times we should steal from people, or more specifically, family and friends, because unlike strangers, family and friends won’t ask questions. It was pretty hilarious. So then he went on to do various recorded songs, most of them from Pomegranate.

Basically he would play the track from his laptop and rap/sing the song. He had a ton of energy while he was performing. He looked like he was gonna get an aneurysm and moved his hands around a lot to symbolize the lyrics. It was awesome.

About halfway through the show he did a freestyle (and asked the audience for topics) and nailed it. I was surprised that his lyrical style (very much like that of Collin Melloy’s: almost mythical, with a moral to the story) came through loud and clear despite the fact that he was making up the lyrics on the spot. Again, this may be typical of rap music, but I was still surprised.

It was a really cheap show too, $14 at the door, so that was awesome. When we left The Paper Chase we went to talk to Astronautalis where he was selling merch. He seemed like a cool guy and we all got to shake his hand and buy a couple of his albums. Next time he is in Dallas I am definitely going to see him again. It was a great show.

I have had quite the love affair with prog-rock. One of the bands that led to this affair was The Flower Kings. I think the third album of theirs that I got was Space Revolver
. Space Revolver is very much prog and very much Flower Kings. For instance, the first song, I Am The Sun (part one) has lots of noise and even a weird (but awesome) sub-song that most bands certainly wouldn’t do.

It has a lot of the gorgeous guitar thanks to Roine Stolt head man as well as a lot of really amazing “soundscapes”, or very instrument driven sections of songs. I think that the soundscapes come from Tomas Bodin, who has had a few solo albums himself.

The album also has some of the standard FloKi’s Doom and Gloom in Monster Within. To expound upon that, despite their standard message of love (see band name,) they also have this interesting feeling of judgment in their lyrics. Here’s an example:

So you say that you cannot sleep, you’re not into counting sheep
All the monsters are for real, something out there, the way you feel
Grown up man, you’re still losing sleep, aliens hiding in the deep
Nights of terror and gates of hell, can’t get rid of that brimstone smell

They have a lot of other really great albums, but you have to start somewhere right Anyway, hopefully you will enjoy this album as much as I do.

Favorites: I Am The Sun (part one), Monster Within.

Colors: Red, Blue, Green.

I’ve decided that seeing a concert warrants a blog post, and that a concert blog post can fill in for an Album of the Week post. If I pay the money to see a concert (typically more than the cost of a CD) I probably like the band that much With that in mind I present to you my most recent concert: The Flight of the Conchords.

You’ve probably already heard of Flight of the Conchords. It was the biggest single concert I’ve ever been to by far. (The Flaming Lips was actually a festival so that doesn’t count.) According to the band there were somewhere between four thousand and six thousand people there. Wow. Most concerts I go to have somewhere between one hundred and five hundred people. FLOTC is a comedy band that has a show on HBO. Typically I prefer to see their live stuff on Youtube though, so a concert seemed perfect.

The tickets weren’t very expensive. Thirty five + ticketsuckster fee totaled to something like forty seven dollars. We actually arrived a little late so we hardly saw any of the opener, so I won’t comment on him at all. The transition from the opener to band was instant, which is excellent. The band came out in robot costumes and performed “Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor.” They changed into normal clothes while the lights were off and after that it was basically songs and between song chit-chat. The music was great and the talking between was also very good.

My only major complaint was the audience. I go to plenty of concerts, probably at least one, if not two, per month. The people at this concert just did not know how to behave! First off, it seemed that a large portion of the crowd felt obliged to get up and get a beer every 15-20 minutes, so of course we are standing up to let them pass or the people in front of us are or even the people behind us are knocking our heads with their largely shaped behinds as they squeeze out to the aisle to get one more carb packed alcoholic beverage. And then of course there was the people that had to yell to their bro five seats down that they really liked the current song. At first I thought I was just being uptight, but my two compatriots agreed that it was extremely obnoxious.

Anyway, I give the concert a four out of five rating. Everything was great except for the use of a certain ticket provider and certain audience members.

Ultravisitor, by SquarePusher, was one of the first experimental techno bands that I was introduced to. It has the distinction of being the only music I’ve ever listened to with my friend Fjord that he asked me to change. It is quite noisy, but it also has some very pretty parts.

Do you have friends who say, “Yeah, I’ll listen to pretty much anything except Country music,” or some variation of that? Well, show them this album. They might be down at first, but they’ll probably change their mind after a few tracks. I even had a friend who claimed that this album doesn’t count because “It’s not music!” That is certainly a falsehood, as I think this album is quite an interesting experience. You may not be able to listen to it all the time, but it’s still worth hearing at least twice.

An interesting fact to note about this album is that, while it is techno, SquarePusher plays at least one “real” instrument, the bass guitar, and it sounds very pretty. The bass is very environmental, which is probably true of most bass guitar, but this is much more in the foreground.

Favorites: Iambic 9, Ultravisitor, Circlewave.

Colors: Black and White and Pink and Cyan