Yakuza "way of the dead"

Yakuza sounds rather like what you would get if you crossed Meshuggah, God Forbid and the Dillinger Escape Plan with a jazz band. If it’s hard to get your head around what that would sound like, their second album Way of the Dead doesn’t really make it any easier!Unique and challenging are words that are bandied about a lot by bands and labels in an effort to get their acts to stand out, but in this case there’s really no better description, because Yakuza really is like no other band. With all that said, Yakuza may not appeal to the average listener. Way of the Dead has far too many twists and turns, subtle surprises, tempo changes and even style and mood changes that anyone who just wants to rock out will most likely flee in confusion. It is, in fact, quite difficult to listen to for the first (or even second) time with off-kilter melodies, strange drum patterns and bizarre saxophone intrusions, but the more art-minded prog and avant-garde audience will warm to Yakuza very quickly.

Capped off with an incredible (and perhaps a little pretentious) 43-minute ambient jazz jam, Way of the Dead is a truly challenging musical achievement.

about Led-Zeppelin

There was plenty of good stuff on the first three Led Zeppelin albums, but the fourth is where all the elements of their sound finally coalesed properly. Unadorned, with a non-descript cover, no title and not even a track listing, this album was intended to be judged purely on its contents alone. After only their second full year as a band, no other group in history would have had the temerity to attempt such an unconventional experiment, but Led Zeppelin were already massive superstars by the time of this release, so anything with their name on it was going to be pre-judged even before it had been heard.

Dominated by the epic masterpiece of "Stairway to Heaven", this album was the culmination of all the band's eclectic aspirations, leanings and inspirations from bombastic heavy rock to psychedelic stomps, folk rock to enormous blues work-outs. No matter what the guise, Led Zeppelin managed to wear it with consummate ease here, as they would for the rest of their career. It was the perfect amalgam of excess and subtlety that set them apart from every other band of their era, and most others to follow.

With its curious "backwards" riff, "Black Dog" got things underway, showing Led Zeppelin at their most primal: Robert Plant's remarkable shriek, Jimmy Page's urgent guitar splats and John Bonham's huge, booming drums. Bonham's immense sound is an integral part of what made this band so special, and here they were recorded with him playing at the bottom of a stairwell and the mikes at the top for maximum echo and reverb. On top of that, on "Four Sticks" he plays with two sticks in each hand! There's more than one reason why Bonzo is still revered as a drum monster, and many of them are on display on this album.

This also marked the full flowering of Plant's lyrical mysticism, marrying mythological elements with Tolkienesque themes and characters in the mandolin-driven folk tune "The Battle of Evermore". Also featuring his vocals intertwining with those of Fairport Convention's Sandy Denny, this is a rare moment of rock magic that is another gem in the crown of an album already spilling over with them.

The centrepiece of course is "Stairway To Heaven", a classic so insurmountable that it lingers to this day as one of the greatest rock songs of all. There's no need for an elaborate description; this song is a microcosm of everything Led Zeppelin was about, and this album is sheer genius from beginning to end.

about Bon Jovi

I'm not sure what "the Circle" is, but it could be something to do with the direction that Bon Jovi has been travelling for a while now. Despite some odd excursions into country-rock and deconstructive acoustic experiments (which, it must be said, was actually a pretty interesting thing for this band to do), most of the Jovis output has been pretty formulaic and predictable since These Days (and how many of us can remember a single song off that?). Have a Nice Day was their best album in a long time even if most of the songs sounded surprisingly alike, probably because the emphasis was on the good-time rocking out that made Bon Jovi so huge in the first place. The Circle isn't as successful at recapturing that vibe, instead trammeling a path of laidback contemporary pop-rock along similar lines to that of Bounce.The Circle is very typical modern Bon Jovi, a safe, formulaic collection of straight-forward radio rock and heart-string tuggers that broach the usual Joviesque subjects: love, yearning and heartbreak, and workaday tales of ordinary people. The first two tracks are standard Bon Jovi, a sure-fire upbeat lightweight rocker in "We Weren't Born to Follow" and then "When We Were Beautiful" the usual balladic workout that is also from the soundtrack to the somewhat self-indulgent DVD of the same name that comes with the limited edition version of the album. In "Work for the Working Man", Bon Jovi revisits "Livin' on a Prayer" briefly (even stealing his own song's bassline) as he courts his Springsteen muse, but in the end he winds up a little off-target. The anti-war song "Bullet" is something of a surprise with its liberal use of heavy (for Bon Jovi) and distorted guitar and one of the most explosive solos Richie Sambora has pulled off in a very, very long time. For the most part however, it's all pretty innocuous and predictable fare: midpaced light rockers offset with wistful ballads, little in the way of musical interludes to distract the attention from Jon's voice and lyrics that are either corny ("Fast Cars") or direct steals from the Beatles ("I had a girl we fell in love/Or should I say she had me") or dozens of his other songs.Bon Jovi freaks will love this because they'll be getting exactly what they want (and being married to one, I know this to be true), but most others probably won't find The Circle to be that exciting. I do quite like "Bullet" though. -Produced by John Shanks with Jon Bon Jovi and Richie Sambora

Music.

 Music. I think it's interesting how sounds affect people so much. A lot of times I hear people ask other people whether they would rather lose their sight or their hearing. Usually they say sight. I guess this is because our world is so based off of what everything looks like, and so we use sight to figure out where things are and how they work. If we decided to go back in history, and instead of focusing on building a world where sight is so necessary, we decided to build one based on sound, we would be like bats.
We would read books by speaking and hearing our voice hit the page and reverberate off the words. And then people would have iPods for portable art. We'd just plug the eyephones into our eyes and we'd buy all kinds of scenery for RM6 off of iTunes and it would be like we were transported somewhere else for as long as we were plugged in. That's what happens with music, right? We listen to it and it feels like it means something, and when you close your eyes you don't have to be anywhere. If you do it long enough and forget that you're sitting in a chair in front of your computer, doing homework at 3 in the morning, you can convince yourself that you're floating. It's like those times in the morning when I know I need to get up, but it's just so much more comfortable to be snug in my bed, so I imagine that I'm getting up and turning off the alarm. Then, since I'm kind of half asleep and half awake, I start believing it, and I'm so proud of myself for forcing myself to wake up. And then I suddenly realize that I imagined that entire thing and I still need to actually get up. It's kind of funny. At the time, it's actually kind of disappointing, but at least it's one of those weird things that everyone experiences and it's just funny because it's such a random experience for people to share.
Anyway, back to the subject. For some reason, I'm trying to monopolize the world into a tiny little city. So I'm just going to continue with my city analogy since it's already rooted in my head. And hearing-city sounds silly, so that's why it's bat-city. Anyway, we have a sight-city, where sight is the most important part of our everyday lives. In bat-city, however, hearing is everything. So logically, every situation involving sight and hearing is reversed. iPods blast art, galleries showcase music, cinemas are for symphonies, etc. I think it would make sense that iPods blast scenery too, not just art, like gallery art. Music moves people, so in this city, art should move people too right? A change of scenery would obviously make you feel like you were somewhere different. And musicians and singers would no longer be the big celebrities; instead, traditional artists would enjoy the fame and fortune.There are the other senses too. Ghosts always wish they could taste food. Animals/vampires/creepy villains use their sense of smell to find their victims. And then there's touch, which always seems like an afterthought to me because it's the only sense that's represented by something that is not directly attached to my head.Touch is actually pretty vital. If I lost my sense of touch, would I lose the ability to feel too? Like, I wouldn't be able to feel papercuts or velvet, but would I be able to tell if I bent my elbow or turned my head? Without touch, you can feel pressure, but not surfaces, which is kind of scary. If I couldn't feel anything, I wouldn't know whether I was standing or sitting or falling. If I closed my eyes and fell off a ladder, I would think, "Hmm, there's this strange pressure all around me," and then I would hit the ground and be like, "Oh, I must have hit something." My organs would probably feel like they were dislocated or something. And maybe I'd accidentally put my hand over the stove without realizing it and it would only be when I turned around that I'd see the damage and freak out.Ok, since I've been talking about music(or was), I think I shall conclude with a song! I've been wanting to share this song for a while anyway. Don't listen to it on Youtube. Really. It doesn't sound as good on Youtube because it hasn't been amplified and it was recorded outside and has not been cleared by computer technology and there is just no magic. Listen to it on Grooveshark! The link is below, so just click on it. Demons by On The Rocks - So... This entire song is voices only, without instruments. As far as I know, OTR does this with all their songs. It's kind of a sad song, but it's nice to listen to anyway. At first, when I saw the title, I was like, "Hey, demons. That sounds like a song that might be a rock song that I don't feel like listening to at the moment." But just in case it turned out to be incredible, I listened to it anyway. And it was totally incredible. So listen to it.

About EVANESCENCE.

After much anticipation, Evanescence front woman, Amy Lee confirmed today that Evanescence is in fact going into the studio this week to work on their third studio album with Grammy Award Winning producer Steve Lillywhite. The band’s new album is scheduled for a late Fall 2010 release date.“I can’t explain how excited I am to make this record,” said Amy Lee. “Over the past year and a half these songs have become the center of my life, and I can't wait to hear what they grow into in the studio. I think our sound is evolving into something that will surprise people, in a very good way. I feel, as always, that growth can be an incredible, limitless thing if you let it. I never want to make the same album twice.” -REPORTER