Tag Archives: fantasy

Sounds of the Underground #20

New music for the people! A batch from the underground with Khemmis, For Giants, Les Attitudes Spectrales and Benoît Pioulard. Good music for your ears, this is.

Khemmis – Absolution

source: bandcamp

Though the name is not ringing any bells yet, the cover of the new record by these doom lovers reminds me of 70’s fantasy and immediatly attracted my attention. A big sounding band with a classic influence. Towering riffs and majestic solo work. The Colorado band has only been around for a short while, releasing their debut on 20 Buck Spin. Production was in hands of Dave Otero (Cobalt, Nightbringer). This promises much for the future of these young men, since their sound is that kind which has a quality that doesn’t tie itself to certain decades.

Six monumental tracks of clean vocal doom, sounding mournful but still keeping an energetic pace that works pretty well from your lazy chair. It has pretty much everything going for it. A fancy cover, good production and the sound of earthy catacombs. Lyrically the band is in love with grandeur and dark themes. How else would you like to have it? There’s a certain pop sensibility to the sound of this band, that makes the music very accesible. I would argue that this is a good thing for what they are aiming to do. Doom traditionally has that element and these guys put it to their best use.

For Giants – You Are The Universe 

Source: Bandcamp

Nothing beats a good bit of atmospheric, instrumental rock music. Specially if it masterfully sets down a mood and tells a story on its own without using words. This continent spanning American project has produced a couple of releases over the last few years and this is the most recent album, number two if we were counting. The sound is a clean, sharp and spacious. It feels a bit like an outer space adventure sonically.

The feeling this music gives can be described as a bit of Ayreons grandeur (call me crazy if you will) and The Mars Volta’s experimental zoning out. Add a bit of that good old Devin Townsend weirdness and I guess you got a bit of the vibe these guys offer.  The clean, soaring guitar parts take over where you’d expect vocals and do so rather succesfully. The band themselves put their sound between progressive, djent and metalcore and that seems pretty much fine as well. It’s a good listen, thats for sure though.

Les Attitudes Spectrales – Floral Wreck

Source: Bandcamp

Maybe its a personal thing, but a noisy/experimental French/Latvian duo that is being compared to the White Stripes is for me reason enough to check some music out. The result is a psyched out, primitive, jangling series of pop tunes featuring drums and guitars from the duo. There’s a certain weary drag to the sound that is slightly remniscent of the more dreamy and hypnotic psych bands of these days.

The unpolished, raw sound of the band is in fact the greatest charm of their sound, which is natural and free in shaping itself. Labelling it as compost rock or ghost punk seems rather fitting. The lo-fi sound only adds to the charm of the band, which has been performing in the Baltics mainly. Truth be told, I feel this is a worthy candidate for next years Eindhoven Psych Lab. The sound is much more adventurous, daring and yet minimal to the almost primitive with a good dose of weird.

Benoît Pioulard – Stanza 

source: Bandcamp

Thomas Meluch decided to take up an artist name with Benoît Pioulard for his organic work. It’s music and photography, and the two seem to have become intertwined somehow. The soothing, fuzzy sounds are like the nature pictures accompanying them. Free of human intervention, clean and pure. Meluch is extremely productive and every other month another record appears to be released on his bandcamp. A good thing, if you ask me.

The seven songs of this record are not action packed tracks. They embrace a sense of tranquility, calm and atmosphere like the sunrays through a forest on a summer morning. Life is slowly awakening and things are still quiet. Slow droning sounds quiver in the air, sounding a bit distant as if its a concious lo-fi recording to create more ambience. The record is intended as a companion piece for the LP ‘Sonnet’, but I’m fairly sure it stands strong enough on its own as a soothing piece of ambient.

Game of Thrones: Is this real or is this just fantasy?

You know what, Game of Thrones fans shouldn’t complain so much. The show is about life and actually deals everyone the hand that they deserve at some point during the show. Sure, death is cruel and all, but so is life.

I admit to be in the habit of escaping my daily life by playing video games and rolling the scifi shows. I also read books, which sometimes heavily disappoint me when the protagonist doesn’t get the girl (like in the Mountain Ararat by Kemal) or when reality seems better than a story (Gordie Howe vs. pretty all books with a bit of realism in them). I shuddered when Ned Stark lost his head (yeah, I know that given he was played by Sean Bean it was a bit of a give away) and was stunned when Roose Bolton killed Catelyn Stark, Robb Stark and his attractive, young and pregnant wife… When Jon Snow drew his last breath I just sighed…

source: hollywoodreporter.com And yes, this one put the most satanic smile on my face.
George R.R. Martin is not killing of characters for reasons of cruelty, he is writing a bit of fantasy that comes closer to reality than most stuff you probably have read over the years. In a way he’s pulling of the biggest history rip-off in years, like demonstrated in this Huff Post article. You don’t necesarily need to look for these literal equivalents, a brief browse through classic history will soon help you get the picture of the bloody, debauched and brutal universe that you find in the series. Everyone dies, like in the histories of Plutarch of the Roman Empire. Seriously, find me one person in there that died peacefully in his sleep instead of the brutal shit like being devoured by worms from within (like Sulla). Or just killing people at random (again, like Sulla and pretty much every other person in power ever) Yeah, reality is more brutal I suppose.

Source: izquotes.com Like this couldn’t be Cersei Lannisters words?

I’ve always been a sucker for the unlikely victories, acts of bravery and clear divide between good and evil, but that’s not the history of true historians like Plutarch, Tacitus or current day ones (though they sometimes are a bit too Hegelian). That sort of fantasy is the realm of the likes of Geoffrey of Monmouth, who wrote an epic history of England, which made virtually no sense and was filled with all those things that you’d find in a classic fantasy story.

Do you remember that scene from Clerks, where they discuss Star Wars? Dante answers Randall that his favorite film is ‘The Empire Strikes Back’, because it’s realistic with all the crap happening to the rebels.

Empire” had the better ending. I mean, Luke gets his hand cut off, finds out Vader’s his father, Han gets frozen and taken away by Boba Fett. It ends on such a down note. I mean, that’s what life is, a series of down endings. All “Jedi” had was a bunch of Muppets. – Dante in Clerks

 

Everything goes wrong and the oppressing empire wins. Now, that makes a lot of sense. Reality is what we have and maybe even fantasy is trying to help us deal with it. Think about it, how big is the chance that the evil, omnipotent empire builds a planet-destroying supermachine, that has one little hole and one dude manages to blow it up? Zero, which is the more realistic take on a nuclear threat if you ask me.

Ned Stark may be an upfront and noble guy, but he’s also dead. That’s how politics worked back in the day and still do in a more public shaming way. Life is harsh and so are the seven kingdoms. It’s much easier to relate to fantasy with a sense of reality, for that very reason I think.

source: imoviequotes.com

This is also why I think Harry Potter sucks in many ways…