I have not been updating this thing as often as I would like. That is largely because I've begun to play music again and, consequently, have allocated a lot of time I don't have towards that pursuit. Unfortunately, things like declaring my gushing love for Fall Out Boy or how I don't think I can finish an entire dancehall album have gone by the wayside. I think that's probably wise.

I stopped playing music in any capacity when I came to law school. That eventually drove me nuts and I started this blog, which in turn taught me to really question why I like certain songs and, even more specifically, certain sounds. A great example is all those fucking "eh"s in Rihanna's "Umbrella." Those little vocal snippets, on paper, would seem so colossally stupid that I doubt anyone would take the trouble to record them. But they are the one of the defining sounds in the entire song, which, as we are all aware, was a massive hit. Rihanna's voice is smooth and the song is constructed around her tone. She isn't just the singer, she is the lead instrument and, to that extent, those "eh"s are the vocal equivalent of a synth stab and here, because of the construction, it's brilliant. Much of the chorus plays out this way. If the mixing and eq had been different, if she were just a singer and not an instrument here, we would call this pop music gibberish (see: "dancer" in The Killer's "Human"), but that is not the case and the result is this:


Umbrella (feat. Jay-Z) -


Before I came to law school, I spent a lot of time playing with Mac's Garageband. I would slap together beats and try to record over them. I love Le Tigre and I wanted to do something in that vein. Le Tigre did a tremendous job of bringing riot grrl aggression into indie dance music. It was also a brilliantly low fi and catchy. I read a while ago (maybe on their website) that their sound was largely dictated by the equipment they had access to at the time. But, for that scene at that time, the sparkly perfection of modern rock-influenced dance music wasn't nearly as prevalent and expected. Le Tigre, and specifically Kathleen Hanna, wrote great songs, but early on, they could have been sloppy rock songs. They kind of sneaked it into the dance genre by appropriating some of the more obvious signifiers of that style: claps; an active snare; electronic drums. What Le Tigre illustrated really well is that genres are more fluid than we realize and that you can effectively evoke a style or scene by adopting some of the strongest aesthetics of that genre. A great example is how a double-pedal kick drum with a click pad will always be a metal signifier. Same for dual guitar solos. When we hear either in a different context, we know that is what the artist is trying to refer us back to; those are the associated emotions and feelings the artist is trying to borrow by bringing that influence in.

I had Garageband and only a cursory knowledge of how to produce a song, so I figured I could kind of "own" the whole low fi sound that Le Tigre had. I wanted to do something dancey, dark, and aggressive. The results were less than inspiring, but the process was a lot of fun and I learned a lot with each attempt. It is very easy to slap some drum hits together and put an instrument or two over it, but making it interesting and engaging is brutally difficult.


Shred A - Le Tigre

Long story short, I'm back to where I started, except more committed, smarter, and with better equipment. The sound I wanted to work on in '07 is the same one I am working on now and have been, almost every day, since September of '08. There is a steep learning curve, but it's helped me think about music differently and even if the whole project blows up, at least I'll have gained that knowledge and appreciation. I want to know how fluid genres really are and I want to adopt the aesthetics of southern rap, metal, and house and see if there is any one place on my musical Venn diagram where these genres overlap. It sounds weird, but then again, so does a riot grrl dance party.