I’m a bit obsessive-compulsive about music, just in case you have managed to been reading my posts for a long time and haven’t figured that out yet (actually since this is a blog and I don’t know anyone who reads this thing regularly, I doubt much about me is obvious at this point). Nevertheless, when I like a band, I tend to collect their entire catalog of music and sample a cross-section. But rarely do I really analyze the band’s changes from one album to the next (of course, ignoring that I just did that in the last post; I suck tonight). Let me skip to my point: I listened to Hanzel und Gretyl’s newest album and had some thoughts.
Hanzel und Gretyl – 2012: Zwanzig Zwolf
I saw this band in Detroit. I’ve known them for a while, through a few album releases. How can you be on the goth scene and not know them? Still, I was listening to this and i thought that it was actually an improvement on their sound and style. It would seem my opinions happen upon “more of the same = bad” or “more of the same = good” so I’m going with the latter this time. Yet there was growth, the songs sounded more structured. Maybe I’m just talking out of my ass. But one thing I noted, the girl wasn’t growling on this one. I remember that was one of the distinctive things about this band, that both a male and female singer growling along the industrial metal riffs made for a distinctive sound. But it seems like she’s missing from this album. Or maybe she’s been singing like this for so long that it’s just dropped a few registers.
The Knife – Silent Shout
This is what music sharing is all about! My friend comes into work and before he’s even sitting all the way down, he says, “ok new band of the day – The Knife,” and shares their album. And it’s SO GOOD. I believe I am hooked because it’s electronic stuff but just on the side of goth/industrial. I may no longer paint my nails and wear black lipstick but I still dig the stuff. It’s a duo from Sveden and the vocals are haunted and distorted but the beat is there. I swear I’ve heard some of these songs before but I’m not sure where. I then proceeded to their website to check tour dates (since, you know, I’ve had luck with that recently). Wouldn’t you know it, they were here in 2006. By “here” I mean in the US since they didn’t seem to want to go anywhere away from the ocean (New York, San Francisco, LA… I don’t think there are any other cities in this nation anymore). Still, should some miricle occur and they come back, I may have to think about trying to see them.
iHave an iPod, therefore iUse iTunes. I read about this “visualizer” addon called iConcertCal that scans your music library and checks for any activity with the bands you have. It took me a bit to realize that it meant music library and not “on your iPod” because I’m trying to fill up a 160gb iPod from a 80gb hard drive, so I keep my music library pretty empty and control the transfer of songs tightly. My point being, I load up this iConcertCal and check out the calendar to see what’s going on in the world of Music That Derek Likes. Turns out jack shit! But no wait, maybe I did something wrong, so I fiddle with the settings, set the radius really large so it picks up Chicago and Detroit instead of middle of nowhere Grand Rapids. Then I realize the bit about the library and load it up. POW holy crap there’s a lot going on with the bands I enjoy. But all of it is going on in Chicago. Lame… It makes me sort of wonder what it would be like to live somewhere where the music comes to you instead of me having to go to the music.