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Owl City

December 11th 2011 01:10

Rural Minnesota's got themselves some great easy listening.

The star of this show.

Owl City is an electronica music project by Adam Young. Young, singer-songwriter, and master of several different instruments, is the creative body behind the project. Young's music is a completely electronic creation, and the hooks, lyrics, beats, and melodies will have the stuff sticking in your head for weeks. No Joke

Owl City grabbed it's first bit of fame through myspace. Young himself advocated himself as an active and accomodating online personality, and he earned himself a following.

The first EP "Of June" was released in 2007. Click the links below to hear some favourites from this album.

Hello Seattle - This one was actually remixed again on Ocean Eyes, but the old one's are still on youtube.

Designer Skyline

The Airway

In 2008, Owl City quickly followed up with "Maybe I'm Dreaming." Click the links below to hear the favourites from this one.

On The Wing - This has got to be the all time Owl City favourite for me

I'll meet you there

West Coast Friendship

Ocean eyes, owl city, adam young, fireflies, umbrella beach, vanilla twilight

Ocean Eyes (2009)

In the beginning of 2009, Owl City signed to the major label Universal Republic. After an EP and one studio album, Adam Young is on a major label. Owl City's second studio album Ocean Eyes was released in July of 2009, and this is when Adam Young hit it big. You know that fireflies song?

Click the links below to hear the singles from "Ocean Eyes."

Fireflies

Umbrella Beach

Vanilla Twilight

Hello Seattle(Remix) - A house/techno remix of the song, it's a great beat.

At the beginning of 2011, Owl City released it's latest album "All Things Bright and Beautiful." With the best production yet, the upbeat and soulful tracks on this record make it sit comfortably among Adam Young's other work. Observing the progression between albums is an aboslute pleasure. Young develops as both a musician, a songwriter, and a producer.

Click the links below for the favourites from "All Things Bright and Beautiful."

Galaxies

Deer In The Headlights

Alligator Sky ft. Sean Christopher
Check out this song without the rapper in the verses.
Alligator Sky

Adam Young has done some work in other projects as well. Sky Sailing, one of those projects which contains more piano/acoustic arrangements, is captivating. Here's my favourite from Ski Sailing.

The acoustic guitar in this song is fantastic.

Brielle

All in all, Adam Young is a talented dude, and I wrote this because I want to expose more people to his music. Go to Owl City's website below.
http://www.owlcitymusic.com/

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Artist Review

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Dubstep

December 10th 2011 01:00

There's a certain reaction when something new and different hits the mainstream, it's a reaction of uncertainty. One might ask themselves whether or not this reaction is due to the novelty of a new idea, or whether or not that idea is truely and genuinely revolutionary.

Have you ever heard of dubstep?

If you haven't before, don't get too excited. I've come to the realization that most people don't enjoy this stuff the first time they hear it. I've played a few friends their first dubstep tracks, and I usually end up getting some lip about how awful it is.

So it's kind of scotch for your ears, it's pretty harsh at first, but once you try a few different kinds and get some experience under your belt, it's all smooth sailing.

SO....

Let's talk about it.

Personally I would describe it as a fusion of house and techno, with a darker, minor tonality woven into it. Dubstep's trademark might very well be a synth instrument that shows up in most, but not all dubstep tracks. I couldn't even tell you what it's called, I've really just identified it as the sine wave sound. It's a synth that uses an effect to make the instrument sound out bursts in a specified rhythm. The rhythm usually changes quickly, and several times through each song/melody. There are usually sounds in there that aren't instruments, sometimes lasers, sometimes screeching, whatever you could think to put into it. But the randomness of the whole thing is almost why it's so great. In conclusion, dubstep is an unorthadox kind of house music.

The association with house comes from the fact that dubstep usually only exists as remixes of other songs, or samples, etc. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and there are definitely dubstep songs that are completely original. But alot of them have taken a chorus, or melody from some other song, whether it be top 40, rock, rap etc. If anything I find it gives most of the songs something familiar to come back to.

What inspired my personal interest, is the minor tonality of it. In fact, some dubstep songs remind me of my favourite metal tracks. And my favourite part of metal, is just how epic it is. And dubstep bass drops are pretty damn epic. I cannot get over listening to techno that makes me want to headbang. These guys are making songs that are dark and emotional, but still melodic.

Sometimes it's slow, sometimes it's really dark. These parts strike me as similar to those pig-squeeling metal breakdowns you find in the really dark stuff.

If you listen to techno, it's repetitive, it is, it's a part of the genre. Not liking techno because it's repetitive is like not liking gangster rap because of it's lyrical content. In other words, you can't use the prided traits of a genre as justification for not liking the genre itself.

Alright, so now that's off my chest, let's put on some beats.

Skrillex - My favourite artist of this genre so far. Some would argue this isn't even dubstep, and I would encourage them to.
First of the Year

Rock n Roll

With you Friends

Nero, totally legitimate.

Act like you know

Innocence

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Music Rant

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LIGHTS

December 30th 2010 09:36

Synthpop has never been so bubbly. It's also never been strikingly beautiful.

lights, The Listening, Toronto, synthpop, hot girls

Apparently she loves video games, maybe she'll be my wife.

But change is good, and the 23 year old Lights Anne Poxleitner (Yeah, her name is actually Lights) is riding that wave into the intergalactic spotlight.

The Canadian singer-songwriter released a self-titled EP and started touring the Great lakes region in 2008, quickly moving onto to the rest of Canada and the United States. In 2009, she released her debut full-length album "The Listening," which contained a number of tracks from the Lights EP. In July of 2010 she released an acoustic EP and is now busy working on a second full length, expected to be released in early 2011.

This girl has had a busy few years.

For lack of a better word to describe it, LIGHTS music is just so cute. MIDI instruments, sampled beats, science fiction, and sex appeal are really keeping the crowds coming. The dynamic of the songs, and that voice keep the simplicity of it from becoming too repetitive, because let's be honest here, a synth and a little auto-tune aren't exactly hard to come by in this day and age. Notably satisfying tracks include:

Drive My Soul

Ice

The Listening

Pretend

What makes LIGHTS really unique though, is the personality. She's very openly a science-fiction, fantasy, and comic book fan, which adds another marketable dimension to this songstress. Interviewed, LIGHTS mentions that her love of fiction transcends into the musical realm. The synth, for example, she described as a tool for bringing any sound she can dream up into reality.

Her exploits have covered more than just musical media. During the promotion of The Listening, LIGHTS worked with Tom Kocher of Marvel Comics to create the motion comic series Audio Quest, featuring, you guessed it, Captain Lights. She does all the voiceovers...

She's not just a rock star, she's a superhero.

And she seems so humble, very full of energy. The link below illustrates what I'm talking about a little better. And she publishes acoustic covers of her music on youtube, score.

Ice (Acoustic ska version)

Here are a few other solid acoustic videos, tell me what you think.

Saviour (Acoustic)

Drive My Soul (Acoustic)

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Artist Review

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The Pop Revolution

August 31st 2010 23:01

It's funny how entire decades are often represented by the music that was the most popular in that time. Maybe music is such a huge business that those artists are the biggest celebrities of that era, and by remembering those decades we naturally remember the icons of pop cultures, and thus, their music. But it's such a fluid concept, it would be very difficult to quantify the popularity or fame of a person. So it would be hard to say who takes the cake for the most famous artist of a particular time.

Everybody knows, the 90's was grunge, but since then it becomes a little more difficult to say which is the dominate genre of the decade, in fact it's probably ridiculous to look at it by decades, because realistically, it's not like the trends change on New Years Day

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Music Rant

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The Fall of Troy

August 13th 2010 23:15

Ever heard the expression “scream like a banshee?” There are few people who possess a voice that lives up to such an idiom, but they are out there. Here’s a band that employs one of these guys as lead singer. TFOT is a progressive-rock/mathcore/pos t-hardcore group from Mukilteo, Washington. The three founding members started off as The 30 Years War, and when they later disbanded and formed TFOT, the members were only 17 years old.

The electrifying vocals, highly complex rhythmic changes and sporadic instrumentation make this band the most exciting group you’ll hear all year

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Artist Review

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Coheed and Cambria

August 9th 2010 03:41

Coheed and Cambria has been one of my favourite groups for many years running because they've grown from being simply a rock band to a platform for different types of media. Their music is interesting, it's intriguing, and it's very different.

Claudio Sanchez - Lead Vocals, Guitar

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Artist Review

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Protest The Hero

August 8th 2010 07:49

The world of metal music will never be the same...
Brutality, passion, intensity and speed have been the defining characteristics of this genre for a number of generations. But in 1999, five kids from Whitby, Ontario raised the seriously raised the bar.

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Posted By: dbltrouble - Category: Artist Review

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Getting into the game...

August 2nd 2010 07:20

Hello there my soon-to-be friends and critics,

I must confess, this is the very first blog I've ever had the pleasure of writing. I've come to join such a widely known institution with the purpose of sharing my own knowledge with the world, and hopefully picking up a great deal along the way.
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Sorry for the long wait

July 25th 2008 19:19

Sorry everyone for the long wait between posts. I have been on vacation for the last month or so and then have spent a lot of time deciding which blogs I want to really focus my time on to keep my work informative and more than just skin deep. After really spending time in thought on this I decided to keep drinksound a live but let my other blogs go.

I can't always guarantee that I'll be able to post daily, but I will try my best

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Posted By: Chris Beazer - Category: Music Rant

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Music Memories

June 11th 2008 00:34

So Im sitting here in my favorite coffee house (which happens to be attached to a concert haul) and am waiting for the doors to open for a concert I've been looking forward to for awhile (Emery with The Almost), and it's flooding back all my memories of working in the music industry. I actually worked with a promoter on one of Emery's first concerts so seeing them now after they have gotten so huge is just like a time warp just with more lighting and better quality sound system.
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Posted By: Chris Beazer - Category: Music Rant

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December 2011

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