You’d think that after 13 years without releasing new music, System of a Down would start to show their age, maybe even slow down. With only five-six dates on this year’s “tour,” and by only playing sparse one-off shows in recent years, one would think their heyday has past.
What’s to say about them? Honestly, there’s not too much to say. Not traditionally a “band,” but they operate in the same way as one – each member bringing something to the table, approaching the content from a different angle with a different viewpoint. But what about them that sets them apart? Well, the best way to become an object of obsession, is to give yourself some shade of mystery. Not knowing too much about an artist is key to feeding this fire. You look at Aphex Twin who people say owns a tank and a submarine and used to live in a bank vault. Whatever you don’t know about an artist, your mind somehow magically fills in the missing spaces. And that’s where Boards of Canada’s image comes in.
There was once a German experimentalist composer by the name of Karlheinz Stockhausen in the mid-20th century. He believed that man harnessed an inner power to reach the next phase of human existence through off-beat, arrhythmic music. He refrained from dabbling in symmetric, accessible 4/4 beats in favor of more complicated time signatures and melodies in order to explore this phenomenon, revealing that once humans wrapped their heads around complex rhythms, we’d be able to adapt and hear different rhythmic patterns in nature, thus bringing us to a new level of heightened awareness in hopes to make contact with the higher beings who created us.
Radiohead have always had a knack for capturing the intangible, whether it’s the over-looming mysticism of Ok Computer or the ever-fleeting regrets in their latest work A Moon Shaped Pool. And when they translate it into live form, their soundscapes conjure up a transcendental feeling that far overcomes any live environment, whether it be main stage at Coachella, an arena like Madison Square Garden, or a small club in Hollywood like the Fonda. Once you enter the venue, or even the vicinity of it, the excitement becomes palpable.
John Maus is….
It seems like every year for the past 12 years, the same thought runs across the minds of every rock music fan: will we be getting a new Tool record? Every year since 2008, two years after they released their last record 10,000 Days, the band has teased in one form or another that they’re working on new material, despite these rumors being shot down by their own band mates (Rolling Stone even released a timeline of the new record’s progress). However, 12 years on, Tool fanatics are still barking up the same tree, starving for a glimpse of something new and ready to devour anything tossed to them.
Heartbreak. Disappointment. Broken promises. Fallen dignities…. just a few words to sum up this year in review. Whatever optimism we once had going into this year slowly diminished following suits of sexual harassment, a false Best Picture announcement, take-a-knee protests, hurricanes, an opioid epidemic, and a total solar eclipse, all in a span of 12 months. But like I’ve said for a while, it’s only going to get worse before it gets better. The good thing is: we have nowhere else to go but up. Here are the best albums we have to associate this year with of fond memories:
As every year, there’s an influx of tours, festivals, and one-off reunion shows that come along with the fear of missing out. Some offer more than others, some are disappointments. And then there are some that change your life in ways you never could’ve imagined. And in a year full of protest attitudes and resistance, 2017 provided a fertile breeding ground ripe for new, original live shows. Here are the best that came from the most volatile year in recent memory.
The early 2000s was a ripe time for the music industry, with physical record sales plummeting and piracy and trading websites like Napster on the rise, it was an unprecedented time for music. One where no one really had an answer to, forcing record companies to scramble and close up any loopholes they could find. However, the joke was on them, because soon enough those file sharing and streaming services would eventually become the preeminent way of consuming music.