Wednesday, May 30, 2018

Cassette Review:
Conductor
"/mixed_media/"
(3 Nines Compact Cassettes)


$6 CAD //
Edition of 30 //
https://999tapes.bandcamp.com/album/mixed-media //

Every so often, an artist will come along and take what you know to be music, flip it, switch it and make it their own.   There is this band I'm thinking of specifically but don't want to name them because once people see their name they might think "I'm out", but Conductor doesn't sound like them so much as that I remember listening to "alternative rock" and "modern rock" back in the 1990's and their sound was similar yet so different (and they were also all over the radio)

To describe this music as electronic rock would be a vast understatement.   There are drum machine beats, claps, melodies for days and the vocals also can get manipulated in that autotune way.    As much as I say I don't listen to the radio (And I don't) I still have this weird thing where for some reason I'm able to identify all the songs on the radio.  I think it's because I hear them in ads or television shows or movies or something.   But if you listen to current rock radio and hear artists like Neon Trees, Owl City and even a little bit of Twenty One Pilots then you'll hear Conductor and be like "Wha??"

Parts of this also remind me of Gorillaz and as "Small minds!" is given that shout out I also think of Sun Hammer.    It's kind of like if you took that music from the movie "Trolls" and switched it up the way that Elvis Presley changed rock n roll for the masses or, you know, if you just picture that scene from "Back to the Future" where Michael J. Fox's character plays the guitar and wows everyone.   This is that same idea of "Here is what y'all have been doing, and that's great, but what if someone went through and did it like this instead?"

The end result is something which you could hear on the radio (even though we already discussed my radio habits) and yet at the same time it doesn't have an overly annoying sense of pop that I try to avoid, which is of much importance to me.    I imagine Conductor playing sold out shows in front of stadium level crowds, as I feel like this has such a huge sound to it overall, but yet, you must leave room to move to it as well.   If I don't hear these songs coming out of car windows this summer I'm going to be rather disappointed in society.









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