Music Exchange: Round One

Hello, everyone. Today's post is going to be heavy on recommendations, but relatively low on content. I'm not going to go into much depth about each artist on today's menu due to time constraints, but I may go back and do a separate feature for some of the artists I mention in this post. We'll see.

In case I wasn't particularly clear on the subject before, I'm currently in my senior year of college. This means that much of my time is occupied by reading about Plato, or researching Mexico's 19th century foreign debt, instead of discovering interesting bands to pass on to you folks. Thankfully, my roommate (who will go unnamed for now, since I haven't asked his permission) is a fellow musician, and a music major to boot. Since our schedules don't have too much overlap (I'm stuck being an early-riser this semester, while he burns the midnight oil), we've set up a whiteboard in our dorm room for sharing bands we think the other might be interested in. I've decided to start sharing the fruits of this exchange with my audience (such that it is) at this blog. This time, we both selected three albums from different artists, so I'll be sharing a total of six different bands with you today (in no particular order). Due to the sheer quantity of music this time around, I'll be fairly brief with each band. I think the music should speak for itself, anyways. Without further ado, let's get to the music.

Guitarman's recommendations:

#1: Haken - "Affinity"

My list of recommendations starts off with Haken's release from earlier this year, "Affinity." The album is modern progressive metal with an 80's pop-ish flair. Great stuff, and very much on the lighter end of the heaviness spectrum. I may do a more in-depth feature on it later, because it deserves more than just a little blurb here. Give it a listen, and you'll see what I mean.

#2: Gygax - "Critical Hits"

I think the best way to describe Gygax is to call them a nerdy Thin Lizzy. Actually, that's probably all the description that the band really needs. Their sound is straightforward classic rock/metal with focus on guitar harmonies (did I mention that they sound almost exactly like Thin Lizzy?), and their lyrical themes are about what you'd expect from a band named after the creator of Dungeons and Dragons. Their album "Critical Hits" doesn't ask for much of your time (it's about 30 minutes total), and is well worth it. We don't get enough of this stuff these days.

#3: The Dread Crew of Oddwood - "Lawful Evil"

There's some context behind this recommendation. See, I live on a themed hall on campus. Specifically, we're the pirate-themed substance-free hall. Kind of a strange combination, I know. My roommate is one of the hall captains, which is what we call our leaders. Anyways, The Dread Crew of Oddwood are similar to Alestorm (a band I previously featured) in that they write songs almost exclusively about pirates. Unlike Alestorm, however, they aren't a metal band. Dread Crew of Oddwood are an acoustic folk band that takes stylistic inspiration from metal groups. They're a quirky lot, and their latest album "Lawful Evil" is certainly worth a look if you're into folk and have a functioning sense of humor.

Roommate's recommendations:

#1: JJ Doom - "Key to the Kuffs"

For the record, no, rap isn't really my cup of tea. My roommate recommended JJ Doom for his lyrics, which are villain themed and, frankly, great. However, I'm probably not going to be seeking out this album that often. While this is some of the best rap I've ever heard, I tend to focus much more on the instrumentation than the vocals when I listen to music. As such, I gravitate towards rap-rock like Rage Against the Machine, Pre-Fight Hype or Southpaw Swagger when I want my rap fix. Still, I'll probably be coming back to JJ Doom, which isn't something I can say about most straightforward rap outfits. I imagine anyone who normally pursues rap music will absolutely love this.

#2: Danish String Quartet - "Wood Works"

And now for something completely different: traditional Nordic folk music. I'm not exactly qualified to assess the quality of a string quartet, but I must say that I'm enjoying what I'm hearing here. They're precise without sacrificing the inherent fun of the pieces they preform. If you enjoy folk half as much as I do, you'll enjoy them.

#3: Punch Brothers - "Phosphorescent Blues"

Full disclaimer: I'm still digging through their music, so this is more "first impressions" than "researched opinion." That being said, I'm really liking what I'm hearing from these folks. The Punch Brothers play progressive bluegrass, which is absolutely fantastic. I'm lacking in comparisons to draw from to describe their sound, but that's honestly a good thing in my opinion (just not when I'm trying to introduce them to you). They've managed to blend soulful bluegrass with classical inspirations, and it works bloody brilliantly. This is certainly my favorite of the groups my roommate recommended, and by a rather large margin. Definitely worth checking out!

So, there you have it: round one of the roommate music exchange. I'm clearing off the whiteboard to make way for more music, and I'll be sure to let you know what makes the list! Until next time, Guitarman out.

The Mighty Few

Things have been hectic over here. With grad school applications, job hunting, classes and persistent health issues, my plate has been fairly full as of late. Thankfully, I've finally found enough time to shine a spotlight on one of the more delightfully strange releases of last year. Introducing "The Mighty Few," by The Grand Astoria.

Hailing from Saint-Petersburg, The Grand Astoria is a Russian rock outfit that combines a stoner aesthetic with progressive fundamentals to great effect. Or was it a progressive aesthetic with stoner fundamentals? In either case, their opus The Mighty Few is a paradoxically easy and challenging listen. No, I'm not just speaking in riddles for the sake of pretentious pseudo-intellectualism. I get enough of that from college freshmen trying to debate continental philosophy. Allow me to explain what I mean.

You may have noticed that the embedded track is a full twenty-eight minutes and nineteen seconds in length. No, your eyes aren't deceiving you. Yes, that's the first track of the album. The Mighty Few is a full-length album (actually a fairly long one at nearly fifty minutes), but has a mere two tracks. Furthermore, these tracks are repetitive enough that listening to them all the way through isn't an easy task for the ADHD music fan. It's also somewhat difficult to just allot twenty-plus minutes of your time to listening to a single song. That's what I mean by The Mighty Few being a challenging listen.

On the other hand, the actual music being played here is extremely accessible (despite its format). The Grand Astoria play a hypnotic blend of stoner rock, jazz, progressive rock and classic metal. To quote the blog Heavy Metal Textbooks, "if Pink Floyd and The Mars Volta had a baby, and that baby grew up listening to heavy metal and punk, and then formed a rock band, that band would be The Grand Astoria​." It's a bit of a roundabout description, but roundabout descriptions seem oddly apt when talking about music of this sort. My advice would be to listen to the first few minutes of the second track, The Siege, to see if this album is right for you. Opener Curse of the Ninth takes a good two minutes of tease and build before the distortion kicks in, while The Siege fires on all cylinders right out of the gate. Either way, they're both great songs. You have excellent vocal harmonies and glorious walls of fuzz juxtaposed with subdued psychedelia and restrained classical elements, and the end product is a quite compelling (if arguably overlong) slab of music.  Give it a spin; for twenty-plus minute songs, they're quite addictive.

Guitarman out.

A health update

Sadly, health problems kept me from being able to get a blog post up this weekend. As I mentioned last post, I was kind of a wreck this weekend thanks to an allergic reaction to some antibiotics. Things got much worse when I woke up Saturday. I wasn't really able to move my hands much at all, and had difficulty standing let alone walking. I ended up having to go to the emergency room Saturday and stayed there until Sunday morning. The swelling is mostly gone, as are the hives. However, this ordeal consumed a large chunk of my weekend, and I had to dedicate the remainder to schoolwork. I'm still alive, though, and frankly that's enough for me right now. Had I delayed going to the emergency room, I'm not sure I'd be alive to type this right now (judging by the swelling on my neck that started during my stint in the ER waiting room). It's a bit of a stretch to say that "all's well that ends well," but there you have it. Hopefully next time I'll have a chance to post about music instead of some new medical ordeal. Guitarman out.

Health issues

This story starts some time in last July. I noticed that my large toes on both feet were quite a bit more sensitive than usual. Upon examining them, I found them to both have fairly nasty ingrown toenails. They both became infected, and I went on antibiotics. The antibiotics were mostly effective at eliminating the infection in my left big toe, while my right big toe remained infected. Since I couldn't get an appointment with a podiatrist before my planned trip to Ireland in early August, I went to urgent care and had part of the nail removed on my right large toe. My hope was that this would remove the ingrown portion, allow the infection to drain, and get all this resolved before my flight to Ireland. My left big toe was, at this point, merely ingrown.

Unfortunately, my trip to urgent care left me noticeably worse off than I started. They managed to take part of the nail off on my large right toe, but there were complications. The person actually removing the nail (let's call them Tim) turned out to be extremely inexperienced, and the nail itself turned out to be quite brittle. Instead of cutting cleanly, my nail came apart in narrow splinters. Tim saw this and decided to stop the procedure early, repeatedly telling me that he did not know what he was supposed to be doing in this situation. His superior responded to his questions by telling him to use his own discretion, a comment which appeared to fluster and confuse Tim. Keep in mind that all this is happening in front of me, so I'm not exactly feeling confident about Tim's competence. He had also not succeeded in actually numbing me (largely due to the level of infected tissue), so I felt every tear he made with his knife and tweezers, as well as every time his hand shook while injecting me with nerve blockers (which was quite a bit). At the end of the day, the nail was in worse shape than before the procedure. Instead of being ingrown, the edge of the nail was now in a serrated pattern that was sharp to the touch. Furthermore, the toe is still infected a month later.

After getting back to school (and having the infection return to my left large toe), I went to the school medical staff for antibiotics. They prescribed me a generic version of Augmentin, an antibiotic which helped somewhat with the infection. Coincidentally, they also found that the one of the numbing agent injection sites from my surgery had itself become infected. Thanks again, Tim.

Everything started looking up after I started the Augmentin. I felt itchy sometimes, but thought nothing of it. My feet were recovering. Today, however, I woke up to find myself covered in hives from head to toe. I have hives on my neck, behind my knee, all over both arms, all around my waist, on both of my inner thighs, and basically everywhere else I've checked so far. My hands are so swollen that I have difficulty moving about half of my fingers (making this somewhat difficult to type), and my skin feels like it's on fire. Apparently (according to my school physician) I'm allergic to Augmentin.

So there you have it. My health is a bit of a comedy of errors at the moment, and I'm kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'll try and get a music post out this weekend, but I'll probably wait for the hives to clear up.

Hope your day went better than mine did, and I'll see you next time. Until then, Guitarman out.