Musicovery Series - #2 Massive Attack

And finally I get a chance to get back to this....

Musicovery #2 - February 2010 - Massive Attack

Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop & Trance,they are the four genres of music which have always stolen the lime light where modern day evolution of music is concerned. There is a fifth genre which is looked at only from the perspective of movie, television or gaming music. The long neglected "techno" or "electronica", very few names come to mind fatboyslim, prodigy and chemical brother. The "techno" fan inside of me has made me search quite a few dark corridors of stores,blogs, you tube and imdb to find out techno tracks at times heard in movies, games or trailers. One such search for the theme music from the t.v. show "House M.D" lead me to my second grand find for this year.

"Massive Attack" mounted a massive attack on my senses, they are not a pure band nor are they a pure techno track making studio. I can only describe them as group of talent musicians or djs who have come together to create some intense music. They work with various individual artists to produce stuff that sounds real good. My experiment with them started from the Album "Mezzanine", first being "Angel". "Angel" has a dark undertone to it and the angel word has definitely been used to signify a dark angel or the angel of death probably. The drumming on it is a real piece of work, with the top hat used very effectively, whereas the bass lends a sinister twist to the whole track. Honestly the kind of music you would want to listen to driving to anywhere at midnight or maybe to pump yourself up before a hard day. Next comes "Tear drop", for those who don't know this is the same track that gives you goosebumps when watching House M.D. Where 'Angel' is dark, 'Tear drop' is all about bright, right from the lyrics to the sitar like sound the music inspires and it literally gave me goosebumps. Inertia Creeps, Black Milk & Dissolved girl are the other three track that have become part of my favorite list. Black milk has a very jazz fusion, forlorn, lonely soul or candle light sex sound to it. After listening to this I could make out that Massive Attack is definitely not 100% pure techno and neither they are the kind of music which would have mass appeal however they are a must listen for people who are on the look out for that different sound.

The next two Massive Attack albums I dug into were 100th Window and Heligoland.
Compared to the first album which bordered on techno, these two albums sounded completely different. The nature of their music changed itself with each track, 100th Window featured two track that caught my fancy 'Butterfly Caught' & 'Special Cases'. 'Butterfly Caught' sounds straight out of an Enigma album only with a slight trance touch to it, Robert del naja sounds like the devil himself on this track and almost convinces you to dim your lights just to enhance the whole experience. 'Special Cases' is a track which retains some bit of the sound from Mezzanine, the track might be attributed as outright scary or creepy by some and I wouldn't disagree however it will go well with a glass of wine.

My hunt for other Massive Attack tracks ended with Paradise Circus from their album Heligoland and a single called 'Live with me'. Paradise Circus is a very soothing track and suited for some relaxed listening. As for 'Live with me', the best song to get drunk to. They have definitely come down the curve however Mezzanine and 100th Window are definitely albums worth exploring. I personally recommend the music video for Angel, you'll hate huge lonely parking lots from then on !

Musicovery Series - #1 Brother Cane

How many times have you heard a new beat, a new sound and found your spirits soaring, I have, around a million times. Music can have a deep impact on us and that's why I enjoy discovering new music or even re-discovering some at times. So here goes my musicovery series.

Musicovery #1 - January 2010 - Brother Cane

The new year started on a very positive note for me with my friend Metalhead introducing me to Brother Cane. Brother is an american hard rock band from 1990s, that is how wikipedia starts with their description. If you wan't the name of band members then please stop reading right now and look up wikipedia since that is the place for information seekers. Here's what I've got about them, they came out with their first album Brother Cane in 1993. The album has some amazingly fresh sound, the crescendos, the riffs and the transitions are definitely bad ass for 1993 standards and 2010 standards. The album has some very intense music, I personally liked "How long", "Woman", "Stone's Throw Away" & "Make your play". "How long" has an amazing riff dead center and the tempo of the song changes dramatically, similarly in "Woman" the tempo changes the whole mood, at times you can find a hit of metallica in their crescendo.

Seeds is the next album that they came out with, this album is rare to find. Metalhead and me spent quite some time hunting this down on the net however we could only find one song "Fools shine down". The song is actually the soundtrack from the 1995 moviel halloween and was a chart topper at that time, like #1. "Fools shine down" is a dark song and goes well with a dark night spent driving on the highway with your friends or a night spent camping around a born fire. I've been trying to trace the other songs from Seeds however I think Metalhead downloaded it and killed all the links.

Come 1998 all good things came to an end however not before these guys produced Wishpool, this wishpool had everything I had wished for. The album has twelve songs out of which six have caught my attention and kept it that way. The album opens with "Wishpool" which gives only a faint hint of what is to come, then it moves to "Where was I to know". Once you hear "Where was I to know" there is no turning back, the song has the best use of various instruments definitely unheard of in rock songs and simply convinces you to keep listening. For the main course we have "Look for something more","The crow flies" and "Come alive again". The guitar work in all the three are so entirely different that at times you feel you are hearing different bands, however the way they have played with different sounds is amazing. "Come alive again" is also a chart topper, no idea what number but definitely it sounds like one. By the time you are over with "Come alive again", your adrenaline would be pumping and one feels like the pheonix rising from the ashes, the music kicks ass. The album closes with "Lead my follow" and "Human after all", two mellow numbers to soothe those now wired nerves.

After 1998 these guys split up but did come back to play at some concerts, I seriously wish I could have been a part of the experience rather I wish they could have been a part of my growing up experience, like the oldies today have pink floyd as theirs. If anyone catches hold of Seeds from somewhere, just ping me on my gtalk.

Watering Hole Watergate

Beer, a man's second best friend, nothing beats a chilled beer at the end of the day with friends in your favorite watering hole.

Watering Hole #1: TGIF, C.P. - It was my b'day and we were all at TGIF, C.P. for a dinner outing. I had ordered one beer and rest of the people ordered mocktails. We sipped our drinks, munched our snacks, devoured our main course and skipped the desert. Upon asking for the cheque we were presented with a bill with quite an amount, I put my card down to pay without checking the bill too much. However one of my friends decided to investigate the bill and found out that we were being overcharge thousand bucks in the name of drink we never ordered. The matter was sorted out quickly and discreetly and we were on our way.

Watering Hole#2: BLUES,C.P. - It was a reunion of sorts and we were ready to party. The orders for tandoori chicken, beer and potato wedges kept repeating like an echo. Most of us were drunk except for me as I have to drive back home, therefore generally I stick to a beer and a half. When it was time for the bill, we were presented with a bloated bill which had couple of beers extra on them. The matter was sorted out quickly and discreetly and we were on our way.

Watering Hole#3: Drunken Duck,C.P. - The three of us were meeting after a long time and obviously it was an occasion for beer. After going through seven bottles amongs three of us we had enough and asked for the bill. This time again we were being charged couple of beers extra. We told the waiter to get it changed. Now here's the part I realized that the R & B's are actually trying to rip us off. The guy got the rectified bill from the counter, all the cashier had done was take off the beer cost and let the VAT and Tax calculated on it remain in the bill. We had to send the waiter back again to get it rectified.

Now these are three separate occasions in a space of about a year and a half and these R & B's do not belong to the same chain. I can safely eliminate "co-incidence" because in all three cases the overcharging was based on drinks and not the food. Carelessness can be ruled out because the waiters have a proper process(slotted tray with table numbers) to track consumption and cashiers are cashiers they are trained to calculate the right amount. Also, if it's carelessness then how come there hasn't ever been a case of undercharging ?

The only possible conclusion drawn from this is that these places rely on the fact that the customers will be too drunk to even notice the extra beer or remember how much liquor they've consumed. One will always remember the food they've eaten but who can keep a count on the number of beers, specially if six people order around nine beers and that too not in a single go. No matter how high brow the place is you can count upon the management to come down to these tricks to fatten the pockets.

At times I feel really disgusted with the fact that a person can't even enjoy a get together or a date at these so called "respectable" places without being at the risk of getting fleeced the "honest" staff. Please people, next time you get that bill go through it once in and if you see it there then make sure you call the manager and give your two cents worth, after all the service tax means you are ensured good quality of service !

At First Sight

Don't try to just "see", try to "look". The sound of our voice, sometimes it's just a sound we hear and sometimes it's a story we tell unknowingly. It is our eyes that see however it is our mind which perceives. Do we ever realize when we've stopped looking and our eyes are just seeing.

He kept staring at the screen without a flicker of emotion, I on the other hand was disgusted at what was being shown. A helmet full of nails snapping shut with someone's head inside, the blood and gore would have put slaughter houses to shame, but he kept on looking simply because his wasn't even trying to understand what he was watching. It's amazing what happens when your brain doesn't co-ordinate with your mind, your vision is reduced to merely a hole in the wall, it's as good as not being there with no one to see through it. I couldn't blame him for being like that, when a man realizes that his eyes have only been "seeing" and not "looking" it comes as quite a shock. Rectifying it isn't easy either, when you are used to being blind, vision is like sunlight after 100 years of darkness.

"It's hard when you realize some truths about yourself, your heart doesn't want to accept the fact that your mind works the way it does", that's what he had told me once. Only a few familiar faces left in his life, I wondered what made him give up the "family and friends" he had grown up with. Is this what happens when a persons mind starts comprehending what one sees ? Is this how one reacts when he reaches an understanding of the environment around him. Is abandonment a consequence of the realization that nothing ever lasts. We sat together going through albums of his childhood, his parents, his childhood friends, I was looking at the history of a person, the foundation of a being while he just stared at pictures with people in it.

"He had been in love once, but he didn't know it. They had been together for six years but all he saw in her was everything he wanted to hate. It had been an off limit topic for me however the day he saw her pictures of getting engaged, he talked about her and all the things he loved about her. It was like his eyes had seen her a million years back and now his brain was registering all that he had felt.", his wife seemed to have a tremendous understanding of his emotions and a different kind of respect for him.

The experience of visiting a "long time no see" friend should always be one filled with joy however this was one visit which turned out to be something more. He hardly spoke to me but his wife told me that his acceptance of my "foreign" presence at his home is sign enough that he's happy to see me. When it was time for me to leave, he shook hands with a warm smile on his face and a gentle "do visit again".

As I drove back home I was filled with the dark realization that we are all blind at some level. Our perception of things around us are at times limited to the dimension of our vision and understanding. We see people, things & life as we can see them and we seem them with the best possible understanding we have developed. How do we know that the relation established between the vision before our eyes and the emotions evoked by our mind are right. We continue to live in this blindness, at times our entire life and at times we are shocked by a sudden connection that our brain makes, then we are jolted into a different reality one that has been overshadowed by the reality that runs in our minds. After 20 years of blindness this vision of reality can be an adjustment impossible to make however some survive and some just close their eyes.

Next time I heard myself say the words "Hi, it's good to see you !" the only question in my mind was "Can I really see you ?".

Urban Decay

The Stigmata, The Tourniquet, Years of Urban Decay, Where Was I to know ?
"Mars is high, this will give your relationship lot of trouble, you'll fight with your spouse a lot.", well the astrologer did get it spot on. Then again the question is, where was i to know ?

We've all at one point or another been witness to public spats, just when you are about to dig into a pizza full of cheese peacefully, you over hear "Please don't make a scene here". At times you stare at people with the most sour faces sitting at a Coffee shop pondering how much of silence will it take to make the other person kill himself with a caffeine overdose. However there are the people who walk away silently from each other, people who have spent the best times with each other and now know that things have gone turtle.

I've known two such people personally, the best of friends, people who finished off each others sentences and if necessary food as well. I saw each of them initially believe that they are blessed, then think that they are not blessed but like every other couple and then finally I saw them make an unspoken sacrifice unlike any I've seen before. As I was thinking about the day they walked away from each other, someone spoke up "God, the way they fought, such horrible stuff ! And you should've seen the way they ended things". "Would've put cats and dogs to shame", said another one, I could only smile and ponder.

I pondered at what was unfolding in front of me, two people who knew that the "good" part was behind them and what ever was left, couldn't turn into something more. The guy wearing a cloak of cold aloofness to hide his helplessness, he didn't let his eyes speak nor let his words betray his plight. The girl torn inbetween between truths about herself, on her knees not knowing which truth to accept and which to shun, she killed her passion bit by bit only to convince herself that there is no more in her. They chose not to speak, not to see, not to hear each other and let the world around call it "ego","anger","insecurity","two people with ego's bigger than there feelings".

I stood helpless while the two people were castigated because they were outcasts,now suffering because they hadn't listened, the "i told you so" and "if i were you" chanted in unison.

I asked the guy, "how do you do it ? remain so unaffected by it all."

"The moments we have spent together are like a pitcher full of water for the thirsty man dying in a desert. Ask me not, to pay heed to this world, I can give up my life, I can give her up but ask me not to give up her memories", came his reply. A day later, I was about to ask her the same question, She kept on looking blankly at her work screen only to smile for the most infinitesimal moment. Obviously she was reminiscing about a bright moment, In the very next second her face returned to that blank look as she scribbled "I CAN'T" on her notepad.

As I pictured them both laughing together somewhere in the past, I realized that I may want to know, what happened, what helps them survive, how can they be so selfish and yet selfless, however maybe I can never know, not unless one day I learn to scribble "I CAN'T".

The Nomadic Wanderlust

Kishore da once sang "Kagazon ki kashtiyon ka kahin kinara hota nahi",his choice of words to describe certain people and their fate is worth pondering a life time away. Similary the song "aye dil-e-nadaan" has the most haunting lyrics - "hum bhatakte hai, kyon bhatakte hai
dasht-o-sehra main, aisa lagta hai mauj pyasi hai, apni dariya mein".

Recently both the songs caught my thoughts in mid flight, both the songs talk about the most primitive instinct of us human beings. Wanderlust - a strong or innate desire to rove about.
What is that one things that makes us miss our childhood so much, what is that makes us feel so refreshed when we visit a new place even if for a day, why do we feel stagnated of our "settled" lives all of a sudden when we hit a random age beyond 30.

Last year on my birthday I was in pune all alone, I hadn't ever been to the city so the only choice I had was to explore it on my own. I chose to do something I had done often before, I packed a backpack with a couple of sandwiches from subway, cans of coke and headed towards the city. After a windy autoride, I was at mall road, the market had shades of old and new. Reminded me of CP in a way, there were some places that looked as old as they could be and some looked fresh out of a bursting economy, there were the chachas in the market and the mr.showroom owners. Some selling bags, some jwellery, some shoes, some snobbery.
However this was obviously the heart, the families which believed in the good old times headed to mall road on all occasions, it was something they could relate to more as compared to the urbanized glass cages called "malls".

Time was running out, I headed for deccan, the honest automan chose not to rip me off and I was thankful for the cheap ride. The deccan is the college crowd area, lots of open air cafes where young students plan everything from fresher parties to wedding dates once they complete their graduation. I roamed around like the primitive man just enjoying the "roam", at times I nibbled on the sandwich and gulped some coke. The deccan is different, it was youth city, if mall road was the heart then deccan was the spirit of youth.

I finished the day with a movie at a nearby mall, pizza from dominoes and vada-pau at a thela. I had missed visiting a couple of places from what my friends tell me, however that didn't matter much, my wanderlust was satisfied. Last year was filled with four to five trips, a number of friends showed the same patterns of wanting to wander, whether wandering between places, people or situations all of them wanted to wander.

Humans wander, there is no other truth. Our strife and struggle begins when we want that illusive "stability" just to feel a certain kind of "happy". And then when 35 happens, we have that "crisis" about when, what, where all this is going not realising that we are just like a small kid running around in a DTC bus. The kid thinks he's moving or just sitting, but the bus is taking it's own route.

Sure we've evolved, and sure we've come a long way, sure we roam a lot less only because there's less to roam about but we still secretly prefer being a explorer, a nomad, an adventurer.

The Midnight Hour

Nishachar, Nightcrawler or a Nocturnal Adventurer, how shall I describe you ?

Night, that certain period of time that symbolizes the unknown and mysterious, often co-related with darkness, occult, sub-conscious, depression, sleep, endings and of course death. As a kid I used to be scared of the dark and to a certain degree scared of night time as well. It involved giving up of your consciousness, a period of time when you let your sense sleep, undoubtedly making you the most vulnerable for those eight nine hours of slumber. The sharpest of minds and strongest of muscles rendered useless leaving only your instinct awake.

Last night as I sat with a couple of my friends on the side walks of a metropolitan lifestyle,I was back to my thoughts of childhood. I looked at the sky above to be sure it was dark, dark enough to bring back that scary feeling that night has fallen and it's time to rush home. I stared for a complete minute only to realize that it is only a shade lighter than bottle full of chelpark ink.

The month of march blew a cool breeze, while we talked about the funniest nonsensical things we ever could. We saw people walking in a hurried manner to be at places they feel they need to be when night falls, some catching autos and some heading to the hottest nightclubs or just for a quite dinner in a "family" restaurant.

Amongst the sprinkles of humanity we three sat there staring at the amazing amount of activity which was so continuous that it almost seemed stagnant, sitting there I felt more a part of the city rather than the bustling crowd that lives in it. I felt like a brick in the wall watching people pass by in the darkness of the night, the same night which now evoked thoughts so different from my childhood. I could feel that I had embraced the silence of the night, the deep purple blue of the sky, the stillness of our shadows cast by night lights, the cool wind like a small kid wanting to be friends with us since we wouldn't run away. All I wanted to do was sit under that open sky and stare into the empty nothing, the quietness of the night filled me with life unlike the lifelessness that reigns supreme during the so called "day time" filled with "bustling activity".

Around 10 years back I crossed a certain age barrier that signed off my immaturity as a personality trait and thus turned a complete blind eye to the fact that the age barrier itself might be misplaced. Having crossed the barrier of being a "grown up", the limits of my nocturnal ventures have uniformly increased over time which I believe is the case with everyone. Driving back home late in the night and strolling through the darkness has become a part of me, a part of me that this night accepts unconditionally, like a generous stranger it offers shelter from the trivial trials and tribulations of day to day life.

I drove back home last night and then walked from the parking to my house and all of a sudden I found myself staring into the sky again just to spend a few seconds more in ironically what seemed like the most lively and yet the most peaceful hours of the whole day.

We will all strive for it one day, to spend the night awake and the day sleeping, call it human nature or biological evolution, one day we'll have had enough with the consciousness of day light and then we'll choose to live in the sub-conscious of a dark night.

One day closed eyes will reveal to us more than our eyes have for the last millions years.