Author:
rohit
Date: 01/25/2010
A few months back, I saw this Ted talk by Glennie. It doesn't matter if you're a musician or not, giving this talk
an honest listen will open your mind.
The fact is that listening is a learned skill. Everyone is born with the sense of hearing, but we learn how to listen.
Listening is a key component to playing music in a group, but it's also a key component to understanding the world we
live in, and the people around us. Glennie is evidence that you don't need to hear to be able to listen.
You do, however, need to feel, and more specifically, feel sound.
There are times when we're jamming to a new song, or playing an existing one, and it just works. I feel like I'm in a sea
of sound and am not separate from the sound, but rather, part of it somehow.
It's those times that I feel most in sync with my mates. We are all listening to the each other, and more importantly,
to the combined sound that we're creating as a group. That's when our individual musical atoms come together
to form the molecule that is Tigertronic.
It's an amazing thing.
-rohit
Bias alert: I am a Flaming Lips fan, and ironically, I’ve never been to one of their signature-spectacle live performances, aside from the live footage I’ve seen on the InterWeb and via Bradley Beesley’s 2005 Lips documentary, Fearless Freaks (one of the best rockumentaries I’ve seen before and since). And let’s face it, Wayne Coyne, artistically, can make some rather eccentric, genre-bending, odd decisions, circa the tepid launch of At War With the Mystics (2006) and, later, Christmas on Mars (2008, a psychotropic 86-minute sci-fi headtrip concerning a cadre of galactic colonists settling on Mars that Coyne first conceived a year after the debut of the aughts, featuring a sonically irreverent score by The Lips’ multifaceted, indispensable sound-innovator, Steven Drozd—and, yes, um, I recall an aborted fetus and a vulva-headed marching band on full display in this film). In short, I have to confess that I can’t find myself consistently agreeing with The Lips’ unpredictable instincts.
However, what can’t be denied of Coyne’s everyman, down-to-earthy, terrestrial existence on this planet of ours is the raw passion inherent to every decision he and his coterie of openly freakish misfits have made. Because of this, there is always an earnestness and honesty to the artistic leaps of faith they make, notwithstanding the reaction of the anonymous masses in cyberspace and amidst the viscous crème de la crème of the critical elite. At this juncture, you (that being either an impersonal you) will always find your svelte narrator, in a kneejerk reaction, defending The Lips against curmudgeonly textual-and/or-verbalized assaults and chucked stones.
As an intermission, this briefly brings your humble narrator to Embryonic (might they have a fixation on embryos, fetuses, and vulvas?), the Lips’ bombastic 2009 double album release, the most daredevil, ungoverned and brazen orgasm of anti-insouciant, disestablishmentarian, atomic, dark, furious, tender, vignette-slaphappy, fragmented collection of tracks since 1997’s Zaireeka. Perhaps it was an audacious reaction to the tepidity they experienced (or even endured) during their work on the thematically piecemeal Mystics, and that album’s equally lukewarm reception amidst fans and critics. Embryonic isn’t any less dismembered or compartmental, but with it we witness a renaissance of their heart and joy for either freaking you the fuck out, or uplifting you into a stratosphere of helium-headed hope coupled to a pinch of existential resignation and cyberpunk melancholy.
In PasteMagazine.com’s interview with the Lips’ grizzled frontman, Coyne elaborates on Embryonic and the atypical darkness of this album vis-à-vis its more saccharine predecessors:
I don’t know if it’s pessimism. I try to be realistic. As much as anybody would say that we’re optimistic, I always say we’re not even optimistic. I think we’re realistic. “Realistic” meaning that, yeah, we’re aware of the pain and suffering, in the end, will defeat us. We can’t just over come that because we have a good attitude […] A lot of things in life, you change it just by your perception of what it is. But we’re not ever going to pretend that it’s all that way (Source: http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/01/flaming-lips-frontman-wayne-coyne-talks-dark-side.html)
This in turn ushers your bespectacled narrator to the raison d’être of this post: The Lips’ interpretation of Pink Floyd’s phenomenal album, Dark Side of the Moon, with their nephew’s band, Stardeath and White Dwarfs. Floyd-wise, you purists know what I’m talking about: you’ve smoked up to it, you’ve paired it with a synchronous viewing of The Wizard of Oz and wondered if “it” was actually working—you’ve even been tempted to buy a Pink Floyd T-shirt at Hot Topic, despite the fact that you’re in your 30s or 40s.
This is not a review, mind you, this is a brute opinion … a piece of commentary on some of the more cantankerous customer reviews I’ve seen trickling into iTunes, the App Store, online forums, etcetera. Some of this anonymous verbiage includes:
Author:
mario
Date: 01/03/2010
I started off the new decade just like it should: watching T2: Judgement Day,
sleeping for 3-4 hours, having a solo dance party to the likes of "U Can't Touch This" and "Informer"
and other great hits from the 90s, and having a magnificent brunch of homefries and a cup of hot chocolate.
I decided to also check out a lot of the music that's been with me for the past 20 years or so, and happened
upon one of my favorite tracks by a good old Mexican band by the name of Maná (Listening to old songs--made
easy at www.lala.com)
So then, I thought to share one of the plethora of songs that especially moved me back in my high
school/college years. This song was originally released in 1995, which only seems like a very long
time ago. This video is an MTV Unplugged version of that song which was released in 1999. Hope you enjoy.
-mario
Author:
rohit
Date: 12/31/2009
Here's wishing you all a very happy new year. We hope your 2010 is filled with love.
I caught this Austin City Limits a couple of weeks ago and it was amazing.
The picture quality on Google Video isn't that great, but it's still worth the watch, or even just the listen.
Things are slow here in Samsaville as people are scattered all over the place for the holidays... I spoke with Mario a couple
of days ago and we're shooting for an early/mid February release for the Potomac Winter Sessions. I'll be posting the
confirmed release date here in the next couple of days.
Until then, enjoy Explosions in the Sky!
-rohit
Author:
rohit
Date: 12/05/2009
This is how Richard cheers us up from Tigertronic on Vimeo.
Happy Holidays to all from Tigertronic. Wish you guys a safe holiday and a very happy 2010!
Live and let live, everyone!
-rohit