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Music/Music Reviews
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Sleeper Cell
12301 days
by Pete
in Music/Music Reviews
I just ended up downloading Two Episodes of Showtime’s 24 knockoff titled ‘Sleeper Cell’ as well as a track from the soundtrack. I don’t know what it is with me lately and downloading soundtracks along buying movies but I did the same thing with ‘Crash’.
I’m a huge fan of Michael Mann’s movies (and TV shows) and Sleeper Cell’s director came in a very similar style as movies such as Collateral and Heat; it’s very fun too look at. Along with the style, the content is a bit more gritty than 24 and takes on a much darker, human tone; individual characters are allowed a little bit more time to breathe and be fleshed out during the hour than getting glimpses of them weekly during a season of 24.
One of the comments that came up on the itunes music store wondered if this was a propoganda piece that favored Muslims; I really don’t know. The reviews on imdb, from Muslims, point to the accuracy at which it portrays their faith. But, one of my biggest issues, and being a Christian – this should be obvious, is that from my angle I just don’t see grace. I just struggle with the idea that you ‘earn’ your way to God; that somehow there’s a rigorus methodology to faith; that my behavior at any given point can just God unbelievably pissed off at me. I believe God lovingly cares for us, offers us free salvation, and once accpted, aggressively prunes away the darker parts of our hearts and renews us from the inside.
Musically, it throws it’s hat in the all-to-hip techo beat category. It’s not that I don’t like it; it’s interesting and o.k. to listen to, but not really innovative.
At the end of the day, I think I’ll stick with 24. The Characters a bit thinner, but it’s a bit more fun to watch.
P.O.D. Testify
02311 days
by Pete
in Music/Music Reviews
One word: yawn.
This week P.O.D. released their new CD ‘Testify’. I’d already checked on Revolver as I was in Barnes and Noble for their take on the disc and I knew it was going to be an interesting take when the darlings of the metal world’s review started with ‘If nu-metal is dead, someone forgot to tell P.O.D.’.
No joke. From a Christian angle, the disc is largely devoid of any of the challenging lyrics of Snuff the Punk through The Fundamental Elements of Southtown. Satelite was nice and strangely prophetic for the day it came out (9/11/01), but even it had its weak areas.
Testify really has two problems: too many guests and sonny singing. At my last time at Cornerstone Music Festival, he commented from the stage that he couldn’t sing…why is he doing it on this disc? There are also just too many guests on this disc ranging from rap to reggae all of which water down P.O.D.’s signature sound.
ehh…I’ll pass on this one and keep the warriors e.p. instead. Somebody wake me up when they do a ‘we’re Christians and we’re going to knock yer heads in if you mess with us’ disc.
Original of the species
12330 days
U2′s new video for ‘Original of the species’ is up on aol music.
mad love to all parents of babies that are on their way (especially baby oun…); this one definately is for you.
–pete
New Reviews
02347 days
by Pete
in Music/Music Reviews
MJ gave me a wonderful gift. ‘A Record of Woship’ by Greenlake PCA. It’s a stellar collection of old-school hymns did up in an Enter the Worship circle style. Expect a review soon.
Also, I tried out an e-music subscription recently. I’m highly impressed, my buying is so variable though that it is a bit of a mismanagement of money to do a subscription service. If I did do one, I would definately use emusic.com. When I subscibe to a new service or check them out, usually I do searches for the following:
Over The Rhine
The Echoing Green
Bill Mallonee
Vigilantes of Love
And usually I rank the service based on what I get. The only one that didn’t get a match was Over The Rhine. Stellar selection too, of mostly independent stuff. And they give you mp3s. I’m really liking it, but like I said, it’s a bit too expensive for me…
I grabbed a Kim Taylor CD, a couple of others, and a compilation called ‘Dark Trance vs. Neo Goth’…expect review of those too.
But, hey, if you want a decent onlie ‘local indie recordstore’…it’s emusic.com.
The Darkest Night of the Year
02354 days
by Pete
in Music/Music Reviews
This week marks a unique occasion. It will be the darkest night of the year, again; it’s the night that will be the longest of all 365 days that we have in 2005. From this point on, days will get longer, warmth will again blow its breath on our land and things will grow from this point on. Nine years ago this week, I brought my girlfriend to Cinncinati, OH to an annual Christmas concert put on by Over The Rhine at the Emery Theater. I proposed to her and she became my bride a few months later.
This weekend marked an anniversary of that decision. Nine years change things. The concert is now held at the Taft theater to accomodate a bigger crowd, the restaurant we went to before the show no longer exists, the hotel we stayed at originally was in the middle of a field and now stands in a ebb in the sprawl of Northern Kentucky. We have a baby. Our friends we went with were, then, unaware of each other and now are expecting their own baby.
Some things do not. Over the Rhine is a band that will leave you at the end of a concert feeling refreshed and ‘full’. The literary pictures that are painted with the lyric writing and the instrumentation of an OTR song is unparalleled. I’ve since reviewed their new CD, ‘Drunkard’s Prayer’, but with this show the power and emotion of the relationship described in these songs was emphasized a bit more by the live performance.
A strength of this current tour definately is Kim Taylor going to bat as the backup singer for Karen this year and with a equally stunning recording under her belt, really added harmony with a similarly matched voice as Karen’s.
There were several weak moments of the show, mainly revolving around some sound issues. A feedback issue plauged the sound several times during the *recorded* performance. Also a distraction was the sound engineer who was yapping so incredibly loudly during one of Linford’s piano solos. I wanted to go back and discuss the idea of whispering…but that didn’t even damper what was a fun evening.
It’d been a while since we’d seen OtR on tour (October of 2003 was our last one). It’s definately, definately, definately good to be back and it was such an appropriate venue to mark our first post-baby OtR show and a wonderful opportunity to revisit our anniversary of that dark night nine years ago when the relationship that I am in started.