Atlas Sound & Deerhunter, 2008-2012

I guess one could say I'm in my Bradford Cox phase.  Bradford Cox is Atlas Sound and the songwriter and lead vocalist for Deerhunter.  From 2006 to 2009, iTunes was my portal to finding new music.  And in 2008, Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel came up through a search and I liked the 30 seconds of each song I heard.  Thinking it was worth a $10 risk, I spent my money on it, and found that it was indeed worth more than every penny.

Because I was coming to the end of my most of my music phases at the time, I've become highly skeptical of following a band until one album offends me.  Air comes to mind with that trend.  Just because I enjoyed this Atlas Sound album--a lot--doesn't mean I'm going to suddenly blindly follow him and purchase his albums without the high standards I had in place for his first.

So a year later, I picked up Deerhunter's Microcastle/Weird Era Continued double CD at the local library.  Although the sound was much different from Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel, I liked it.  The double CD took a while to grow on me before I liked it a lot.  And then in 2010, I had to ask, "Who is this Bradford Cox?"  So I looked up his influences and found that my taste in music is not too different from his own.

First of all, he and Stereolab collaborated on a song on each of their albums.  Below is a video of their collaboration found on Atlas Sound's Logos album.

 

Secondly, he toured with Broadcast on what I believe was their last tour before Trish Keenan left all of us prematurely.  So I'm happy to see an American mingling with these British musicians that I regard so highly.  And at this point in my life, I like Atlas Sound and Deerhunter's music more.  I feel like it's a continuation or progression of a sound starting with Stereolab, continuing with Broadcast, and now the torch is in Bradford Cox's hand.

I got into Atlas Sound and Deerhunter around the time of my daughter's birth, so I may associate his music with my early father years.  Or I may associate the music with PhD studies.  Since I'm immersed in this stage still it's hard to tell.  I'll have to update this post once my daughter grows older and I'm doing something with my life besides study and prepare my dissertation.

Todd Rundgren, 1999-2003

In 1999, I bought a compilation CD for my wife called Music Futurists that included the first two tracks from the album, A Wizard, A True Star, pictured above.   I was captivated by those songs so much that I was compelled to seek out and purchase the CD.  I was aware that this was an impulse buy as I unsuccessfully tried to suppress the impulse for many months.

A Wizard, A True Star ended up being my favorite album during the rest of my time in Japan.  One of my best memories is going on a blissful bike ride all around the city of Takasaki while listening to it on my CD Walkman.  Those were the days.  My wife also like Todd Rundgren as she often listened to the Virgin Suicides soundtrack that included two Rundgren tracks.  Writing this and the post on Air, I can see how much influence Sophia Coppola had on my music as she directed both The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation.

When we returned to the United States, my sister-in-law got me Todd Rundgren's Something/Anything? for Christmas.  And this ended up being one of the albums I listened to most while living in Baltimore.  I clearly remember sitting down next to my stereo system, headphones on while I flipped around my CD carrying cases.  Those were the days.

Later on in Baltimore, I bought his Utopia album that really captures the rocking guitar sound of Rundgren that overstayed its welcome for me.  I quickly burned through my interest for that album, but it surely reminds me of living in Baltimore.

By the time we were in Korea, most of my Todd Rundgren days were over.  I had strongly associated both albums to previous places in our lives, and the feeling didn't seem to match our lives in Seoul.  However, I bought Runt to see if I could spark a Rundgren memory for Korea, but it failed.  Although I like Runt, it doesn't compare to the other albums.

These days, I don't listen to Todd Rundgren that much.  And the only album that lives up to how I used to feel about it is A Wizard, A True Star.  The feelings I had for the other albums have gone, and there only played to help me remember.

Broadcast, 2001-2012

Broadcast has been my favorite music group for a good portion of the last decade.  I was impressed the first time I listened to their Work and Non-Work album, especially "The Book Lovers."  Their first full-length album, The Noise Made By People, impressed me even more.  And when Haha Sound came out in 2003, I started to like them more than Stereolab.  My preference for their sound hasn't wavered since, although the band has dissolved since the death of their lead singer, Trish Keenan, in January 2011.  Her death affected me just as much as Mary Hansen's about 8 years earlier.

The memory I associate most with The Noise Made By People is our (my wife and I) first road trip from  Wisconsin to Maryland with our friend Nicole in the winter of 2002/3.  It started snowing gently in rural Ohio as the song "Echo's Answer" started playing in the car's CD player.  I remember it was my wife who driving at the time and she thought the experience was very moving.  Since then, that album has given her nostalgia for that time.

Haha Sound was my favorite album during our time in Korea.  I first listened to it about an hour before my plane was to arrive at Incheon International Airport in January 2004.  Hearing that album raised my adrenaline and made me excited to start a new year teaching there.  To this today, I consider Haha Sound to be my favorite Broadcast album and is definitely in my top 20 favorite albums.

Although I liked their next album, Tender Buttons, almost as much as Haha Sound, it doesn't evoke any strong emotions or memories.  I got it during an unemployed period of my life, but I'm not sure if that's the reason why.  The following album, which was a compilation album of mostly previously unreleased songs, contains a few of my favorite Broadcast songs.  I probably listened to The Future Crayon more than any other album while I was in Russia, but no single memory jumps out at me except intensely listening to the album while sitting in my bed.

The group's last album, Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, was released just in time for Halloween in 2009.  And this has to be the best Halloween album I've ever heard.  It sounds like an album that the Beatles or Rolling Stones may have collaborated on during the Magical Mystery Tour and Their Satanic Majesty's Request era focusing on the mysticism of the occult.  I believe this was the pinnacle of Broadcast's musical experiments.  It's too bad that this was the last to be released to the public while Ms. Keenan was alive.

I just read that they are considering to release another Broadcast album with Trish Keenan's vocals, but I consider the band finished.  However, I listen to Broadcast just as often as I have for the past 5 years.  I'm sure it will taper off later, but no time soon.

Air, 2001-2012

I purchased Air's Moon Safari album when I visited Madison, Wisconsin after my return from Japan.  I remember how well the whole album matched my mood and the mid-spring weather, relaxed and breezy. Blissed out, I was listening to it while walking along Lake Mendota and State Street.  To this day, Moon Safari is still one of my top 20 albums of all time.  Incidentally, one of my friends who I met in Madison that day told me a few years later that the album was his all time favorite.

I read the reviews of their following album, 10,000 Hz. Legend, which was out at that time, and they were not so good.  I concluded that Moon Safari must have been their one-shot wonder, so I didn't buy or listen to any more Air albums until we moved to Korea.  The album that makes me most nostalgic about my time in Korea is their Talkie Walkie album, which includes a track used in the film, Lost in Translation, which make me most nostalgic about my time in Japan.  However, I overplayed Talkie Walkie in Korea, so it's difficult still to listen to the album without associating it with my many walks through Seoul and using one of the tracks in a few of my classes.

Another album makes me nostalgic about my time in Russia.  I purchased their Pocket Symphony album just before our long round trip to Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, and Yoshkar-Ola from Samara.  I reserved my listening time to our visit in Moscow and it perfectly matched my night view of the city from our hotel.  So, almost every Air album delivers nostalgia about a different place for me.

Although I really enjoyed Pocket Symphony, my most intense period of listening to Air was in Korea.  So for the most part, Air in general reminds me of my Korean years.  Since Korea and Russia, Air has released two more albums, which, on the whole, have been disappointing.  I believe the best of Air is behind them.  They just released an album last month, and I wasn't impressed.  At this moment, I am skeptical about any future releases, and I probably won't get their new album unless the reviews are very good.

Mr. Bungle/Secret Chiefs 3, 1996-2008

This is the first post since I wrote about the Monkees in which an influential group was American.  Around the turn of the millennium, I realized that my British music outnumbered my American music by nearly a factor of two.  When I first heard Mr. Bungle in 1996, I was blown away.   At that period in my life, I was really into experimental music, but most of it was from the 1960s and 70s.  When I heard some of my colleagues in my dorm listening to Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante, I thought that this was what John Lennon predicted as music of the future.  I was thinking about something I may have read when he was referring to The Beatles' "Revolution 9."

I was really intrigued by Mr. Bungle because it mixed so many genres and the band was very professional.  The music sounded chaotic yet controlled at the same time, and perhaps that's the type of music I like best.  I guess that's how some people describe jazz, but this controlled chaos was also done using techniques beyond improvisation.  I like innovation in the mixing room as well.

Mr. Bungle also hit the nail on the head for me with providing music that seemed to be the something a conservative Christian and patriotic American would think was evil or anti-American as there is a lot of Middle Eastern music mixed in with death metal among a lot of other genres.  But the Middle Eastern sounds hooked me the most.

When Mr. Bungle came out with their last album, California, I was a bit disappointed that they were a lot less experimental with a lot less Middle Eastern influence.  However, this album carries strong memories of my solo vacation to Kyoto.  I bought the album about a week before my 4 days and 3 nights in Kyoto, so I listened it on the way there.  And I listened it when I was done touring the city.  I thought it wasn't appropriate to listen to that type of music while admiring the cultural capital of Japan.

My Mr. Bungle phase soon ended when I returned to the States in 2001 as California reminded me too much of that 3-4 month period where I intensely listened to the album in Japan and Disco Volante just reminded me of my college years.  Fortunately, I discovered the Secret Chiefs 3, who were a side band to Mr. Bungle.  I bought their first album before I left Japan, but they quickly became one of my favorite groups during my years in Baltimore and Korea.

One of my favorite albums to this day is the Secret Chiefs 3's Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws as it provides my ideal Middle Eastern music that would anger most jingoistic Americans following 9/11, which was around the time I bought the album.  At first I liked it as an antithesis to the Bush Administration's rhetoric of the day, but now I like it because it's musically well done.

When their fourth album, Book of Horizons, came out in 2004, I declared it one of my favorite albums of all time.  And it was probably so for about two years, but it got old quickly.  I still like a few songs from that album, but it's not as creative or experimental as Mr. Bungle's Disco Volante and the Middle Eastern music isn't as fun as that on Second Grand Constitution and Bylaws.  I think the sound quality was superior to their previous albums.  And they seemed to be heading towards more authenticity than the exotic cliche of their previous albums, but I'm fascinated by American exotica.

The appeal to both Mr. Bungle and the Secret Chiefs 3 wore out when I got to know more people from the Middle East.  At first, I felt embarrassed that I was listening to this fake (mis)representation of their culture.  I'm more comfortable now as I understand it as an American interpretation of Middle Eastern mysticism, but it's rare now for me to need an emotional catharsis to America's foreign policies toward the Middle East through music.  

Stereolab, 1996-2012

In the fall of 1996, a friend of mine handed me Stereolab's Transient Random Noise-Bursts with Announcements CD.  He was confident that I would like the music as it had elements of music I liked at that time, a mix of easy listening lounge and 1960s pop/rock.  At first, I was skeptical, but by winter break, I was listening to the album nearly everyday.  I couldn't believe that I was liking a contemporary band.

In the spring of 1997, I learned that a closer friend of mine was a bigger fan of Stereolab and she lent me a few of her CDs, which I promptly recorded on cassettes.  I think they were Emperor Tomato Ketchup and Refried Ectoplasm.  The former of these became one of my favorite albums for a while, even though I was in the midst of my obsession with and collection of music from 1967.

I thought my interest in Stereolab was a passing fad, but when my wife bought Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night when we lived in Japan, I couldn't stop listening to that album.  In fact, I have associated many memories of my time in Japan with this album.  I clearly remember hanging out in Yokohama with friends of ours when my wife bought the album, and I also remember listening to a song ("Blue Milk") that sounded like the Japanese railroad crossing alarm while I was riding on the shinkansen to Takasaki.

But it wasn't until we left Japan that I actively started collecting the rest of the Stereolab albums.  The first of these, Sound-Dust, was a therapeutic purchase as it was released around the time of 9/11.  I still associate the album's title with the dusty debris in Manhattan of that day.  Fortunately, most of my memories associated with this album are less terrifying.  I often listened to Sound-Dust on my way to and from my graduate school, UMBC.  So when I listen to the album today, I'm often transported to that campus or to our apartment in Baltimore.

While we were in Korea, I quickly collected the remaining Stereolab albums.  And one of the reasons I don't listen to Stereolab as much these days is that it reminds me of days that are becoming more and more distant.  I don't feel like the same person I was in Korea, which is now almost 7 years ago.  I only recently felt a disconnect from that person who was/is me.

After Korea, Stereolab was still releasing new albums, but unfortunately one of their members, Mary Hansen, died in a bicycle accident.  I felt that the band was finished as their strongest albums were behind them.  The only time I went to a Stereolab concert was shortly after her death, and although I enjoyed the music, I felt uncomfortable because I believe the band up on stage probably had moments where they suddenly missed Ms. Hansen tremendously.  I know I would.

Since her death, it's been difficult to listen to their newer albums as they feel haunted by her absence.  However, one of the newer albums, Chemical Chords, is now just beginning to grow on me.  Perhaps I needed the four years since its release to come to terms with the haunting absence of Ms. Hansen.  Nonetheless, I feel that my Stereolab days are waning.  Perhaps they will end once my PhD studies are completed.  I'm noticing, through this blog, that many music periods in my life end during a dramatic life change.  Only time will tell.  For now, I still enjoy Stereolab, and their music hasn't grown old on me yet.

Jethro Tull, 1995-2003

My father was really into Jethro Tull.  When I was in high school, he bought the band's greatest hits on CD, but I didn't care much for them at the time, except that the opening sequence from "Bungle in the Jungle" perked the ears of our dog, Megan.

I didn't get into Jethro Tull until I listened to the second LP of Living in the Past on a long brisk autumn walk up and down the Rock River in Beloit, Wisconsin.  I went on a lot of long walks while I was a college student in Beloit, and Jethro Tull became my favorite band to listen to, especially on long autumn walks.

The Living in the Past LP was the only Jethro Tull album I had during my first year in Beloit.  This was during my Pink Floyd phase, so I didn't collect as many Tull albums as quickly as I did Floyd.  Once my Pink Floyd phase waned, I started collecting a lot more through 2003.  However, I'd say the heyday of my Jethro Tull listening days was at Beloit College.

I actually became good friends with a classmate in my creative writing class when I named one of my characters Ms. Bogenboom, a slight variation from Tull's "Dr. Bogenbroom" song.  Although Jethro Tull helped initiate our friendship, it wasn't the basis of it, but listening to his music often reminds me of the start of our friendship.

My biggest problem with Jethro Tull is that my wife cannot stand him, so the longer we've been married the fewer opportunities I listen to their music.  It's difficult to enjoy when it's disturbing someone in your vicinity, so these days I have to reserve Jethro Tull for times when my wife is away or out of earshot for a while.
I collected most of my Jethro Tull albums up to Songs from the Wood before we got married, so the sad thing was not being able to fully enjoy the collection once it was complete.

Jethro Tull's music was my favorite companion during walks through wooded areas, but for the past few years I've had little opportunity or desire to take walk through the woods alone.  For these two reasons, my Jethro Tull listening days have waned.  When I get the chance, I'll listen to the group, but I feel like it is a guilty pleasure as I usually have to listen to it alone.  Perhaps my Jethro Tull days are fading away.