| Classic Material |
| To conclude the music portion, I've decide to simply list the rest of the albums I planned on profiling with brief write-ups: |
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| Caetano Veloso: |
| Livros (1997; Nonesuch) |
| Upon discovering my prediliction for releases from the Elektra/Nonesuch label while exploring new music via my local library, I took to picking up everything in sight |
| released by that label. This was one of my first search and finds, and possibly the most crucial of them all.Ever since the ambush of percussion dropped on "Os Passistas," I knew this Brazilian gentleman's golden-hued voice would be providing a sizable chunk of my life's soundtrack. |
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| Steve Reich |
| The minimalist work of Steve Reich, another Nonesuch mainstay, initially constituted my total experience with classical music. From New York Counterpoint, to |
| Drumming, to Early Works to my personal favorite City Life, Reich most easily indulged my familiarity with the easily-begotten sonic freedom I found so alluring in Hip-Hop. His pioneering work in an arena of serious music veiwed by some as too negligible spoke well enough of itself to banish the constraints of credibility ascribed to whatever the cognoscenti were currently calling what he was doing and presents some of the most accessible work of any experimental composer's career. After all, in all honesty, would you want to remix Kontakte? |
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| Igor Stravinsky |
| ...Conducts Stravinsky (1988; CBS) |
| One of the most consistently challenging voices of the chamber body politic first reached me with the Symphony in C. Although most would cast either his Firebird Suite or Rites of Spring ballet as his tour-de-force, any of the three works on this CD would make for a better choice in easing the novice listener into the brazen new world of 20th Century classical music. |
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| Tool |
| (pictured here is the Works anthology; 1997 Nonesuch) |
| �nima (1996; Volcano Entertainment) |
| 1996 saw the commercial breakthrough of two metal bands that would prove to be incredibly influential over the cours of the next decade, give or take (most likely TAKE) a couple of years; Marilyn Manson and KoRn. 1996 also brought us the great artistic triumph of a band whose importance outlasted those two, the progressive metal group Tool's third release, �nima. Following an overall destroy and rebuild theme--with the emphasis falling on the necessity of the destroy stage--�nima may not have set the industry trends Antichrist Superstar and Life is Peachy did, but it outstripped both of those albums in its scope, consummation of ambition and lasting replay value and enjoyability, all in a quieter but much more forceful and convincing fashion. Kind of like the band's longtime muse, the late comedian Bill Hicks. |
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| M.O.P |
| First Family 4 Life (1998; Relativity) |
| Thug Life: What Does it Mean? Perhaps M.O.P wouldn't seem the most legitimate source for a remotely sane answer to this question, not with their deliberately over the top shotgun serenades, but their most well-balanced LP to date actually aspired fantastically to the task without being expected to. The deaths of Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace lead Hip-Hop into its most self-conscious about face yet, but these guys still didn't care what you had to say about shit. However, they did have the capacity to care about something, which they bravely unveiled in a number of introspective tracks and slightly personal self-revelations atop DJ Premier's ever-idiosyncratic production, aided and abbetted by Lil Fame's earliest forays into sonic assault. Preceded by Mash Out Posse's prequel EP, Handle Ur Business, M.O.P did just that, as always, but harder. And realer. |
| FUCK YOU!!!!! We all know what that means, but what does it sound like? |
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| Thanks, Miles. Again. |
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