Posts Tagged ‘Songs’
CD Review: Stegosaurus Rex’s The Dino Soars
January 3rd, 2010 | 
Author: By Glenn Jackson
On The Dino Soars, Stegosaurus Rex presents an interesting collection of homemade electronica. Unlike most bedroom computer-made albums, The Dino Soars jumps across styles, touching on hip-hop and house beats, downbeat trip-hop, electro-pop, and even a bit of experimental, droney electronica.
Where the album really shines is with the more beat-oriented tracks. Opening song “East Bay Kickback” starts the album off strong with a great sample and a solid drum beat, making it the kind of song you would hear in your head while drinking a beer outside on a warm Oakland evening. Another standout track is “Six Sixteen.” A great sample and solid hip-hop beat drive this track as it steadily moves through the opening string loop to a chopped-up vocal chorus and back again to the string loop as it is filtered out.
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Single Review: Geographer’s “Can’t You Wait”/”Rushing In, Rushing Out”
By Glenn Jackson
The amount of indie rock groups in the Bay Area music scene can be overwhelming at times. For some reason there is an unbelievable amount of 20- and 30-somethings who somehow find their way to starting an indie rock band. With this in mind, I swallowed my prejudices towards the genre and gave Geographer an honest chance. Fortunately for me, Geographer is great.
Geographer delivers two wonderfully indie songs with a level of musicianship that is scarcely found in the Bay Area indie rock scene. The first track, “Can’t You Wait,” begins with a four-on-the-floor kick pattern and an unbelievably catchy guitar melody. Shortly into the song come the lyrics. A sweet, full voice begins to tell a story with an engaging personal tone. The track builds, adding cello, keys, and layers of vocals which lead up to an incredibly catchy synth line/disco beat chorus. In indie fashion the song builds up and down on this same theme returning at the end for one last disco beat chorus. “Rushing In, Rushing Out”, the second track on the single, slows down the tempo slightly but continues on the same general path laid out by the first song. A sweet synth melody leads you through another personal and powerful vocal, filled out nicely by a steady and lush cello performance.
CD Review: The Bad Hand’s This Is No Time for Modesty
By Julia Cooper
San Francisco experimental trio the Bad Hand seems like the kind of group that’ll try anything once. On This Is No Time for Modesty, the band’s staple rock instrumental base of guitar, Rhodes piano, and drums gets invaded by a gaggle of other genres and sounds, resulting in an ambitious mix of kitchen-sink sonic collages with varying degrees of success.
The band certainly offers enough surprises to satisfy anyone bored with the verse-chorus-verse same-old same-old, as the musicians follow a slew of paths within the album and on the songs themselves. Just when you begin to brace yourself for an all-instrumental record, “Hell Bent” drops in soft, girly vocals; or dirgy grunge falls into good ol’ Southern blues on “Then He Tried to Kiss Me”; or an interlude of fart-like kazoo sounds (“Short Door”) creeps into the batch.
CD Review: Mochipet’s Microphonepet
By Camden Andrews
Mochipet: Local favorite electro/glitch artist? Break-tastic beat master? Hip-hop producer? Some geek behind a laptop? Big purple dinosaur? This time he’s a general, leading an army of vocalists including Dubphonics, Jahcoozi, Hustle Heads, and members of the Hieroglyphics and Living Legends crews on a victorious, genre-defying march in his new album Microphonepet. If you’re familiar with the San Francisco club/party scene, you’ve probably already heard all about this album and the buzz surrounding it. If not, I would recommend getting your hands on it immediately.
It’s always been difficult to pigeonhole Mochipet (David Wang) into one particular style or genre, but he really covered all his bases on this one. Songs range from supersonic glitchy whirlwinds, groovy house tracks, funky hip-hop numbers, fat bass-heavy club beats, seductive duets, and even lyric-centered raps about life on the streets, each heavily influenced by the guest MCs. What’s most surprising about the versatility of this album is that none of Wang’s explorations are artificial or emulative. While each track is certainly unique, his remarkable creativity and refusal to adhere to any sort of conventional rhythm scream out a sound that is undeniably his own.