My favorite new album at WRCT has been coldwave band Black Marble’s A Different Arrangement. Like much of Black Marble’s other source material, the album’s vocals are reminiscent of a low-key Ian Curtis, further developing the sound of their earlier Weight Against the Door EP. Here, the typically subdued tension between the angular synthesizers and human melancholia is at its zenith.

A Different Arrangement surveys a wide variety of sounds, from the radiant, bouncing ebullience of “A Great Design” to the haunted-playground bop of “Limitations,” juxtaposing sampled rim-drum tracks with layers of sentimental synth melodies. Warm basslines shapeshift across the album’s runtime and vintage synthesizer arrangements are airy and, at times, so distinctly sculpted they seem otherworldly.

“A certain handmade feeling is what we’re after,” Stewart explained in an interview with Hardly Art, the record label. “The music doesn’t have to be complex, but it’s more important to carry some residue of the process, especially when working with what [can sometimes] be construed as cold-sounding electronics. It’s humanizing.”

Black Marble’s latest album certainly embodies an analog quality that brings life to otherwise unfeeling electronic music. The textural complexities to which Stewart refers can only be fully appreciated after multiple listens, allowing the soundscapes to sink in further, quietly addictive.

If Weight Against the Door constituted a long, cold night, then A Different Arrangement heralds the moment when the radiator finally sputters to life, flooding the room with heat as the sun rises over a horizon of Brutalist tower blocks. The homemade soundtrack to a still, uncertain dawn, A Different Arrangement is a striking evolution in Black Marble’s sound.

(Originally published in The Tartan)

If you have the misfortune of living near me, you’ve probably heard me blasting Radiohead’s Amnesiac over the past couple of days. Earlier this week a friend recommended I read a review of the album by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats on his blog, Last Plane to Jakarta. After reading the review, I couldn’t help but listen to the album on repeat.

What I found most striking about his review was its presentation. Unlike most, Darnielle’s review was posted in 10 segments released over the course 2001 and 2002, with each song considered individually. Furthermore, he did not consider Amnesiac in terms of OK Computer or Kid A, the band’s two most critically acclaimed albums.

I often find myself reading — and occasionally writing — music reviews that insist on looking at albums from a very fixed perspective. These reviews subsequently evaluate albums in terms of a band’s legacy and aesthetic, as opposed to looking at an album for what it is: a self-contained collection of songs. Darnielle’s review makes a point of showing how this former method obfuscates the gravity of an album and can end up portraying a masterpiece like Amnesiac as a castaway B-side collection.

Even though Darnielle’s review is over a decade old, it remains relevant to the current state of music journalism. Much of today’s writing is stale, hackneyed, and more concerned with legacy than with legitimate journalism. Darnielle’s particular style of in-depth musical analysis is not the most conventional model for how music journalism should be. However, it models critical, independent thought — a trait that all music reviewers should aim to reflect. While the legacy and cultural relevance of a band is important in its own right, music journalists should not allow these aspects to overshadow their evaluation of an album’s quality.

(Originally published in The Tartan)

Over winter break, one of my friends downloaded a bunch of one-hit wonders. It did not take long, however, to find that someone decided that gems such as “Who Let the Dogs Out?” and “Cotton-Eyed Joe” needed remixes.

These remixes were not just bad — there was also no new perspective gained from listening to them. There was barely anything about the songs that was altered; hi-hats, bass, and synths were simply added on top of the songs with some minor equalizer manipulation. It was the musical equivalent of using Microsoft Paint to do photo manipulation.

Good remixes have a lot in common with good song covers: They maintain the most essential aspects of the song, provide a new perspective, and show an appreciation of the source material. For example, I was never a fan of Lady Gaga’s “Yoü and I.” However, after hearing Wild Beasts’ remix of it, I changed my opinion.

Wild Beasts’ remix stripped away almost every element of the song, leaving a vocal loop of Lady Gaga singing, “This time we made love / This time baby you and I,” over sampled loops taken directly from the song. The only addition the band makes is singer Hayden Thorpe moaning over parts of the song. The two layers of the song could not sound any more different. Wild Beasts stripped away the theatricality, the radio-pop polish, and the schmaltzy country-rock ballad feel. They left listeners with the soul of the song: sexual longing and the torture of being separated from a loved one.

It’s easy to discredit remixes as a legitimate art form because it’s not terribly difficult to make one. But artistic vision is necessary to make a remix worth listening to. Although there are enough mediocre dubstep remixes of pop songs to make one lose faith in remix culture, it’s important to remember that if you just keep looking hard enough, you’ll probably find a remix that will remind you why you started looking for them in the first place.

(Originally published in The Tartan)