Enter Shikari - Common Dreads (2009)

I have been asked by Ben to post his recommendation for The Chief this week as his not-so-lovable landlord has sold his house and therefore he has no internet.

Ben is recommending Enter Shikari's second album 'Common Dreads' for The Chief. The reason that he chose this album is that The Chief enjoyed their debut album 'Take to the Skies' and will be going to see them live in December. His personal highlights are Step Up, Solidarity and Step Up. I, too, will vouch that these are all good songs.

Enjoy, sorry for the delay.

Dan/Ben

Jeff Buckley - Grace (1994)

I don't think Ben has listened to this album, although I know Elliott loves it so he may well have done. If so Ben, then contact me on Facebook and I'll switch it to another one.
Anyway Grace is one of my favourite albums ever and I think its safe to say that Buckley is the greatest vocalist I've ever heard. This album shows his broad skill in many different styles of music from blues, to rock, to sombre piano pieces. This album also contains Hallelujah, originally by Leonard Cohen, which I'm sure you all know well from the pitiful x-factor cover. Buckley's version is the best I've heard as he puts such emotion in to the lyrics like the original and other covers such as John Cale's can't do.
The music on the album isn't really amazing but thats not the point, it could be the best music in the world and still be overshadowed by these vocals, Buckley is that good.

http://rapidshare.com/files/143449324/Jeff_Buckley_-_Grace.rar - disc 1
http://rapidshare.com/files/124156665/Jeff_Buckley_-_Grace__Legacy_Edition__CD2_Part2__320.rar - disc 2

The Strokes - Is This It (2001)

So, Mr Nevill, I see we are trading this week. After seeing what you've offered me, I decided that I too would go for something a bit different and unexpected. I know you want me to give you Immortal Technique, but just listen to it yourself. You shall be listening to an album that the NME recently described as the best of the decade, and is included in every sort of 'You must listen to these albums before you die!' list you will find. Despite reaching somewhere around 40 in its homeland's billboard, the album was huge in the UK and in particular 'Last Nite' is a song you should have heard before, because it's awesome.
For me this album is a precursor to the overwhelming rise in popularity of indie music in recent years, and what's more its a personal favourite. Enjoy.

GZA - Liquid Swords (Review: Matt)

I quite enjoyed the prospect of this album, until I read that it was going to be 'grimey'. After chuckling at the Wiley reference and wondering how the term 'grime' can mean two quite different things within the hip-hop genre, I started to worry. I don't have much experience with listening grimey sounding hip-hop, and this is for a very good reason. It's just not good. I'll admit, I'm a bit of a production whore on Hip-Hop, and often I find that albums with bad production stand out as unlistenable. The only artists I've ever really enjoyed with this sort of sound are Q-Unique and Ill Bill, but they have shit production because they are poor. Whats GZA's excuse?

After listening to the album once, I suspected my initial thoughts were correct. However its clear to me after a few more listens that the production isn't poorly done at all, and in fact sounds nothing like I expected to. While I see the similarities between the production on this and on other grimey albums, I think RZA has made it his goal here to provide mesmerising and hypnotic beats, and these beats allow the pure brilliance of GZA stand out. I don't know who gave him the name Genius, but it was certainly earned in this album. His lyrics are astounding and whilst I could pretty much pick lines from any song to show you and prove it, I'd rather leave it to you to listen for yourself. He writes magical metaphors and wonderful wordplay with astounding alliteration, and carries it off with fantastic flow.

GZA is clearly a very talented artist, yet I still find it strange it sold so unbelievably well, selling over a million in America and peaking at 9th in the Billboard 200. The album sounds, by todays standards, far too intelligent and underground to possibly have been a chart success. Perhaps in 10 years time people will say the same about Lil' Wayne, but I personally can't see it. Before this album I had listened to the solo efforts of ODB, Method Man, Raekwon and Ghostface, and with the exception of Raekwon's 'Only Built 4 Cuban Linx', they pale in comparison.

This has been an amazingly short review I now realise, but that is because I really can not pick out any stand out tracks to talk about in particular. Once the music takes you in, the delivery of GZA's wordplay and punchlines does the rest, and there is not a point in the album when his skills aren't evident. The many guest appearances also add a lot to the album, and in particular Inspectah Deck's verses on DOTIM and Cold War are fantastic.

However I have, as previously mentioned, always been partial to a decent bit of production to go along with a decent MC, and for that reason I can't rank this album along side my favourites from the genre. I will, however, grant it a very well deserved 90%.

Atreyu - Lead Sails Paper Anchor 2.0 (2008)

This album is for Matt this week. I actually picked this completely on a whim when I saw it on my iTunes. However, it's a shockingly good album and something I used to listen to a lot. I also know that Matt enjoyed Atreyu at Reading this year whilst The Prodigy were busy being shit. Atreyu aren't particularly popular but they have a few well known songs and a Greatest Hits album...They've recently released a new album and I have not heard anything about it.
I'm pretty sure Matt will be hooked from the very second opening track 'Doomsday' starts. They also have a singing drummer so that's a plus. Hope you like it, I'm listening to it now aswell. And it has a cover of Epic by Faith No More. What more could you want? Hopefully this was a pleasant surprise.

Track Listing:
[1]Doomsday
[2]Honor
[3]Falling Down
[4]Becoming the Bull
[5]When Two Are One
[6]Lose It
[7]No One Cares
[8]Can't Happen Here
[9]Slow Burn
[10]Blow
[11]Lead Sails (and a Paper Anchor)
[12]The Squeeze
[13]Epic
[14]Clean Sheets

and you can download it from here: http://rapidshare.com/files/117092520/PnL_Atreyu_-_LeadSailsPaAn.rar

Nov 23 - 30 Albums

Here is the cycle for next weeks album swaps.

This weeks cycle will be:

Dan recommends to Matt (Lead Sails Paper Anchor 2.0 by Atreyu)
The Chief recommends to Ben (Grace by Jeff Buckley)
Matt recommends to Dan (Is This It by The Strokes)
Ben recommends to The Chief (Common Dreads by Enter Shikari)

2 albums reviewed from last week, Matt's review on GZA/Genius will be up tomorrow. Haven't heard from Ben regarding Tonedeff today, but I'm sure it will get sorted out.

Enjoy

Dan

Coheed and Cambria - In Keeping Secrets of Silent Earth: 3 (Review: The Chief)

I seem to have noticed that on every Prog Rock album I have listened to in the past, there has been a section where we hear a phone being dialled or ringing. Prog Rockers clearly find this an exciting sound...Sadly, I dont.

It was a cold and rainy summer evening at Sonisphere when I first experienced Coheed and Cambria without laughing at the high pitchedness of Claudio Sanchez's voice. The second they stepped onto the stage they had me entranced, I thought this couldn't be the same band that I brushed off simply because I thought the vocals were a bit funny? Anyway, I'm glad I didn't decide to see Heaven & Hell in the rain instead otherwise. After this I pretty much only listened to Welcome Home and Ten Speed so I'm really glad that Dan decided to put them up.

The album starts with a nice little instrumental that makes a kind of epic orchestral sound, this initial epicness is certainly something that is kept up throughout the album. I have found that sounding epic is a very integral part of Coheed's sound especially as all of their albums essentially is the epic of two people called Coheed and Cambria. But what I especially like about 'Heed is that the listener doesn't need to understand the story line to enjoy the album, to be honest I have no idea what's going on in terms of plot, and this is something that other concept album bands like Maiden can not seem to do. With many Maiden songs I can't really enjoy them if I don't like the concept Dickinson is whining about. I feel that Heebria manage to do this successfully because of a combination of two things: Claudio's voice (which I know thoroughly enjoy) and the brilliant musicianship of the band as a whole, not to mention the pretty tight production. All this allows the band to really show emotion in their songs that can get the audience really into the music (as I witnessed first hand at Sonisphere).

Another aspect of the album and the band as a whole that I enjoy is the combination of genres. Pinning down a band to a genre is always something I (quite sadly) enjoy doing and while its simple enough to call 'Bria a prog rock band it is clear that they are influenced by many other genres. As I've already implied there is a clear Iron Maiden influence (and honestly they do what Maiden do better than Maiden do) but also some punk-popish influences, even some mid-west nineties emo (which is a huge plus) and they manage this while still being able to be very catchy. Overall I just find this band fascinating, from the weirdness of their frontman to the interesting sound they make to the general concept of their albums.

What I've found with In Keeping Secrets is that it is generally much faster paced than Good Apollo which I like because on the latter I found a few of the tracks to be somewhat boring. This is something that Co-Cam have completely avoided on this album and frankly I like every single track it has to offer. I believe this album to be the second best release of the year 2003, second only to Radiohead's Hail to the Thief. 5/5