Cage

Cage (Chris Palko) is an artist I have only found in the past couple of days, and he is everything I have looked for in an artist in recent months or for the past year if I think about it actually, everything I have been searching for. He blends guitars with spoken word, or rap I guess, and he is so wonderfully dark. I thought songs I listened to by Scroobius Pip or Immortal Technique were dark, but Cage's songs are horror stories and I love it, as I may have mentioned in a previous post I like songs which tell stories or songs that you actually listen to and have to follow and keep you drawn in, as opposed to songs that play in the background of your mind.

I realize that paragraph may have seemed a bit too much or a bit over the top as I look back over it. I sincerely hope I don't over-listen to his songs, something I have a habit of doing with everything I love - I listen to it or eat it or watch it or whatever so much that I become sick of it and a song that I used to listen to again and again time after time becomes the song I know back to front and skip over it, and sure I may come back and have a brief relapse in a few months or so, but somehow I just don't see it happening with cage.

The Old Chris Palko - sometimes too high to record anything.

Part of what appeals to me about Chris Palko so much is his personality and what he grew up with and just who he is. Personal items like that about artists have never really intrigued me as much as this before, but I suppose it is because it is so easy to access Palko's thoughts and how he describes his life. I feel almost compelled to tell you about his personality now, and although I had never heard of him last week I feel like I have known him and his songs for as long as I can remember, I know more about him now than I know about artists that I have in fact been listening to for as long as I can remember. Going back to his personality and his origins, I can't for two reasons. I feel as if I'm almost disrespecting him by talking about him in the way that I am or would do by writing about things like that, and also because there is just so much, but I will try to dumb it down so painfully that I am seriously considering hitting the backspace now. It just doesn't give him enough credit, so actually I don't think I will. Look it up on his website: www.chrispalko.com

I have said so much, more than I've said on any artist, in a shorter time I've spent writing about anything else on this blog, yet I haven't actually really talked about his music.

Cage fits into the underground hip hop genre but with his recent albums it's slightly harder to still include him there, as he has moved to a more guitar-heavy orientated background for his lyrics, which always in any song he makes, remain the focal point of the piece. He started out with his first album being very much like that of say Immortal Technique, fitting, as he says, into a black stereotype. The album is called 'Movies for the Blind' and some of his songs are so explicit and brutal, Agent Orange remains to be my favourite on the album though. That reminds me: he also took on the name Alex, after the protagonist in A Clockwork Orange having left the mental institute, and there are some definite similarities between the two. I think he says that that first album was about his childhood and how angry he was, I'm being ignorant about this and I feel bad about it because I know he deserves more credit, its not exactly along those lines, but I'm pretty sure that album came out just after he tried getting off hard drugs and started trying to turn his life around.
His later album, 'Hell's Winter', comes from the idea that he didn't have to be the person he was and he didn't have to be that white guy going for the black guy stereotype (as he says) as it just wasn't him, and this too is so dark, with Subtle art of the breakup song being perhaps the most popular song on the album.
It's no surprise that his most recent album (released 2009) 'Depart From Me' remains dark, but its not as explicit, in the words of his good friend Shia Labeouf ( at first sighting it would seem that it's Cage who latches onto Shia, but actually from the youtube videos I've seen and stuff I've read its more as if Shia makes the effort with Cage, Shia said he had been listening to Cage since he was 12). Depart From Me contains my favourite Cage song I Never Knew You which I think is one of if not the only Cage song to be made into a music video, that music video was directed by Shia Labeouf, and he has a brief appearance at the beginning.

I feel like I've missed something and that's because I probably have (his involvement in groups, main one being The Weathermen though I think he prefers producing his own music with close friends instead of collaborating with strangers for the sake of appealing to a wider audience and to sell more tracks). If this post has intrigued you, then I would strongly recommend you go to his website, he even has published the notebook he kept during his time at 'The Lodge' (mental institute) which is pretty interesting.

The five main Cage songs I like are as follows:

• Subtle Art of the Breakup Song
• Grand Ol Party Crash
• Ballad of Worms
• I Never Knew You
• Agent Orange

I will link the Spotify tracks for these songs but the video for I Never Knew You will be down below as well.

                                            
                                           
                                            
                                           

Alt-J (∆)

Alt-J are a Cambridge bred band, and although they formed in 2007, they didn't come into contact with exposure until earlier this year (2012).

∆ were properly heard by many when their album came out in around May 2012, and were almost an immediate success. So many people had heard Breezeblocks or Matilda thinking they were the first and had discovered a great new band, but now their novelty has worn off some of us. The band reminds me a bit of The xx although I know they have a different sound, I just think they are headed down the same route as The xx were. To clear it up, lots of people had heard songs like Crystalised or VCR and they were played to death by some radio stations, similar to the way that Breezeblocks and Tessellate have been played a lot. In the same way that the novelty of The xx had worn out by the release of their second album, I predict the same will happen to Alt-J, but perhaps I may be wrong, however I do not have very high expectations for their second album and don't expect it to quite live up to their first.

So far it seems as though I rather dislike Alt-J, I don't, in fact I went through a phase where I really did like them (but as I have said earlier, the novelty has sort of worn off now). What I first noticed about AlT-J was the singer's voice, unique as far as I know, and I think that's the best aspect of the band, or rather the aspect that makes them stand out from any other, I may even go as far to say that its the reason for their recent success. But when he does sing, and especially in Matilda, it just really flows and fits together so well.

Contrary to a few people, Matilda is my favourite ∆ song, but here are three of perhaps their most well known songs off the album An Awesome Wave.

Yuck

Yuck are a surprisingly good band, unlike most new bands today. They come from London and two of the members used to go to my school...

Anyway,

I really like them because like Oasis, their guitars have that rough sound that makes it seem raw and more pure, but they also have some really catchy solos. "Get Away", probably their most famous one is also my favourite they are really good considering how young they are and I think they have done well for themselves.

Please bear in mind that this was written a long time ago, and with retrospect I can see what rubbish this is (my writing, not the music), and I promise there are better things to come.

Kasabian

Hailed at one point as "Britain's hottest band" Kasabian are and always have been one of my favourites. Partly because they are one of the better British bands, but also because they remind me of a modern day Oasis - they're from Manchester, they like football, they both appear to be arrogant twats, they have the same sort of sound to their music, they're amazing.

In my opinion Oasis's albums have got worse as the years progressed with an odd exception, but there is no doubt thatDig Out Your Soul is an absolute pile of crap compared to Definitely Maybe whereas with Kasabian, its sort of the opposite... I think their most recent album - Velociraptor is incredible and has some of my favourite songs. La Fee Verte is brilliant, and I genuinely hope they continue to create more songs with that almost melancholic and dreary tone that they manage to pull of so well, and then at the complete opposite end of the spectrum comes Switchblade Smiles which has a taunting start and you can just 'feel it coming' which I love hearing just before the heavy drum beat and Serge's screaming voice followed by the penetrating bass line. 

Anyway... as long as Kasabian keep making songs close to the likes of Club Foot, and La Fee Verte, then I'll be happy.

Here they are:

Mumford and Sons

Mumford and Sons are extremely popular and were hailed as the hottest band alive at one point. I don't like them. I think they are another one of those bands that a lot of people like because others do, when they haven't listened closely to their music at all.

There's something about their music that just seems contrived and forced, not raw or soulful, just processed. I guess its because most of their songs have got the same repetitive tune and rhythm with the annoying country guitars and riffs starring in every song I have heard by them, they always sound the same. Boring to be honest. I'm probably being slightly biased against them as my Dad feels the same way, but its their look and arrogance that gets me the most, but its probably just me being a pompous twat.

Anyway... here's one song by them that I'm sure you would have heard if you know Mumford and Sons.

The Rolling Stones

Although this band have pretty much died out now and rubbed out by all the shit going round, I still kind of like them, but just a couple of their songs at the most. Probably because I want to be a rock star and dream about playing the incredible solos in front of thousands of screaming people. But its not just the solos, the whole mood of the band just seems really cool and their tone just sounds really special, especially the singers voice and the inevitable solo in every song. One of my favourites is 'Sympathy for the Devil' and I just love how he sings it and the lyrics, especially when he's talking about the Russian Revolution and how he thought it was time for a change as Anastasia screamed in vain and all these other infamous events that happen throughout the course of history, and how he almost seems proud of his accomplishments, but also there are a couple of incredible solos in there that I wish I could play.

Here are a couple of their songs: