Results tagged “Music Monday” from Fade Away Never

Natasha Khan and Bat For Lashes hit up "Late Night With David Letterman" last week and performed their amazing song, "Daniel", from the recent release, Two Suns. Letterman even gives a story about getting drunk on his way to Brighton, Khan's hometown -- and then after the performance clumsily fumbles around the stage. They must have been done early and had lots of time to burn before the end of the show. Oh, and, Natasha is my future wife, naturally. 

As for #musicmonday, as of 3:57pm today, that term was the #1 trended twitter term in the country. Pretty successful day. 

When you consider that there are an infinite amount of frequencies between 20Hz and 20kHz (the range of human hearing), the ammount of notes on a typical 88 key piano is kind of limited. In reality, the 8 tones from C to C, are the specific frequency ranges for not many better reasons than just convention. Thats why its realativly odd that rock 'n roll, with its tradition of counter-culture, would be so entrenched within the traditional major and minor scales.

Enter Micachu and the Shapes.

Headed by Mica Levi, a 21 year old girl who has already composed compositions for the London Philharmonic, however, the music which she creates with the Shapes has no business in a concert hall... Yet.

The first time you hear "Lips", it sounds completely dissonant. Thats because that is the exact definition as to what you're hearing. Chords which are unresolved being strummed without remorse. Levi's guitar riff is offputting at first, but with repeated listens it starts to make sense. I've read that pop music should be 70% familiar (conforming to conventional chord structures, scales, relevant pop references) and 30% new.

Micachu and the Shapes is pretty much 80% totally from left field, with only 20% taking mild influences from grime, indie, and, I don't know, some kind of circus on crack or something. There's also the crunchy melody controlled by some kind of pad which one of the Shapes punches to play, which reminds me of the melody screamed through a megaphone on TV on the Radio's "Let The Devil In".

Like the best music, the first time you hear this you will probably hate it. But the more you listen, the more it grows and opens up to you. This one minute and forty second (with 20 solid seconds of silence in the beginning) is no classical masterpiece, but it is definitely feritle ground for new bands to get ideas.

My first addition to #musicmonday is a band I've been playing on my show, White Rabbits. Fellow Say Hey labelmates of one of my favorites, Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson, this song's got a great hook and a very Radiohead-esque guitar riff.

I'm lucky enough to be interning at a refreshingly technologically forward-thinking recording studio; Broken Wave Music. Broken Wave is striving to package itself as everything an artist needs all under one roof -- artist branding, image, web design and creation, merchandising, and artist development -- that in addition to being a world class recording facility with multi-Grammy winning producers on staff. In fact, as I typed those words, Warren Riker, who has three Grammy's to his credit just walked in the door and mumbled something in my direction. It was probably something awesome.  

One of the more interesting projects that they have come up with is what they are calling Music Mondays (or #musicmonday to the Twitter savvy). Basically it works like this, you follow the key members on your Twitter account (and if you don't have one its time to make one -- get with it, man), you suggest new music, and they share it with the community of people following them. It's kind of like a giant free-form radio station, where there is not an individual DJ, but hundreds of well-informed DJ's.

At the very least, its a great way to spend a boring Monday at work. At the most, it is a very innovative idea that could possibly have some legs: last week, the first week they tried this, #musicmonday was the #8 trended Twitter query of the day. Today? It's currently the #2 trended term in the country...

Here's what you do, according to our Broken Wave Music website:

1. Follow @osandisays @ghettosavant @itshollis @killola & @brokenwavemusic on Twitter (in-return they follow you)

2. Every Monday suggest great new music on Twitter by adding #musicmonday to your post followed by a link to last.fm, youtube, iLike etc.

3. Enjoy the benefits of dope-ass music with new friends all Monday long.

4. Spread #musicmonday like wild fire!

I'll be participating in #musicmonday today throughout the day, so check back here for my new Twitter scroll, in the right hand column -- or participate in the fun yourself. As for myself, I'll be posting the following new song from Austin band, White Denim as soon as I finish this post. 

MP3: White Denim - Mirrored and Reverse.mp3