Review - Erase This

It's been a while since I reviewed anything, and here we are - a DFTBA Records album called Erase This. The album is a projected by founder Alan Lastufka and one of DFTBA's prominent artists Luke Conard, with some cameo appearances from some other singers, including Kristina Horner. I happened to be lucky enough to see Lastufka announcing a give-away of the album on Thanksgivings Day last Thursday, so I swooped in and got a free download.

So what did you think of it?
In short - brilliant. Some of the tracks don't work alone, simply for the fact that there's a radio theme running through the album, but the songs within the tracks are still fantastic. Other tracks hold their own and really blew me away!

Wait, radio theme?
You read that right. The album has a DJ speaking every three or four tracks to introduce a song, making them seem like a radio track-list. It really was a great way of doing things, even if it's been done before (Queens of the Stone Age did it, right?).

Oh right... so, did any tracks stand out then?
A few; I have a weakness for Kristina Horner, so when she and Luke Conard sang  Mirror Song I fell in love with the song. Beforehand, I'd only been able to hear that version on YouTube. There's a solo version of the song, too, which is good but not my favourite of the two. Without making my list of Favourite Songs from the album too long, I'll just give one other song a mention - Forgiven. I'd heard a cover of this song on the EP Taking Leave (Alan Lastukfa and Tom Milsom), and the two versions are so different! I mean, they're barely recognisable as the same song. I'm still not sure which one I prefer!

Is the album recommended?
Well I liked it! If I had the money, I'd have bought it a long while ago, but my online purchases have been restricted to cheap books and birthday presents. The album is really catchy, though, works great a whole piece of music and it's full of great songs! Buy it and love it!

Review - The World is Mine (I Don't Know Anything)

I think a lot of people will look at this and think ‘What?’ Okay, crash course in Alex Day. He’s this guy on YouTube called nerimon, or Alex, or ‘Hey you from London, yeah you, singing boy reading Twilight.’ Alex is part of a generation of Super Nerds. I mean that in the nice way. Super Nerds are awesome.

Okay, so Alex plays music. You with me so far? He plays music on YouTube. Okay, I know what you’re thinking – lots of people do that. Except, and here’s the fun part, these two Super Nerds, Alan Lastufka and Hank Green, set up a record company called DFTBA Records, and they signed Alex and many other cool people. This is Alex’s second album with them, The World is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything). So, now that you have the crash course in Alex Day and how he came to be on my blog, let’s begin!

What’s so special about this album?

In short? I think it’s how it came about. And the songs are ridiculously catchy, especially Georgia, The Time of Your Life and the title track The World is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything). And many others... or all of them. And, like Elbow, Alex Day sings with his own accent. He tried, before, to sing in the sort of American-commercial way, but he didn’t like it. He could do it, but he chose not to.

What’s it most like?

I would say his first album, but that’s not true. He did what Muse and many other bands do and created a new type of sound for his next album than what his listeners were used to. However, there’s common ground between this and his first album, Parrot Stories – the songs are pretty much all about love. Bless. He doesn’t claim for the idea of singing about girls to be original, but I like how he does it. Sort of a melancholy in some songs, but an enormous amount of energy in others (like Georgia).

Is this album really recommended?

If you can get past the fact that it’s not a commercial act, that it’s not made in the same way commercial albums are, and therefore doesn’t have the same sort of sound as commercial albums by much better known bands, then yes, this album is recommended. But if you have an attitude about music that restricts the growth of indie artists (not Indie the genre, but indie as in without a massive company behind them), then you may not be able to see The World is Mine (I Don’t Know Anything) as an album worth your time, because you’ll have attached a distaste to it before you’ve given it a shot. In short: your prejudice will get the better of you.

If you can get past your prejudices about certain types of music, then you will like this album. You’ll at least like it. As in, you might not love it like I do. But that’s okay, if you give it a shot first. I can almost promise you’ll find something you like on the album. Almost. I have to take into account that different people have different tastes. This is what Alex Day calls his “dance” album – really it’s called that because it has a lot of electrically produced sounds in it, it’s generally fast and it’s very much the sort of album you want to move about to. It’s a fun album to listen to, and I never get sick of it.

What next, then?

Well, Alex Day has another album and an EP that I’ve listened to a number of times, and he’s in two bands – Chameleon Circuit and Sons of Admirals, whose work I’ll be reviewing soon, too. Watch this space, because the DFTBA artists need backing to help them keep doing what they do best.

Review - I Made You a CD But I Eated It

First thing’s first – what a great title for an album! This is an EP by the wonderful Molly Lewis, I Made You A CD But I Eated It. In summary: it’s short, but it’s sweet and it’s very funny. From the first song on the track listing you’re filled in on what you’re letting yourself in for: Molly sings (and plays her ukulele) about MySpace, an astronaut, Mr T, Peeps (whatever they are... American’s, please fill me in), Wikipedia and the president in her EP, with much hilarity guaranteed. There’s also the added bonus of Molly being a Super Nerd, one of few female Super Nerds.

So, why this strange CD?

Okay, so when I first got introduced to the idea of DFTBA – Molly is one of their artists – I got a compilation CD that had Molly Lewis on it – I Pity The Fool. Very hilarious, I have to say. After that, I decided I had to hear what else Molly could get up to, and I couldn’t resist the price, either. So I got the EP and I loved it. It’s strange, but funny, and well worth it.

What’s your favourite song? All of them isn’t an option.

You know me too well, vicious Review Alter-Ego. Okay, not all of them. Simply because I don’t understand it, Peep Fight is my least favourite song on the EP. But that’s it. The rest are all brilliant in their own ways, and they’re all hilarious. I especially love the two website songs (those about MySpace and Wikipedia), because they show off a couple of the best known sites on the Internet – one a social network that none of my friends are on, possibly bar one, and the other a mass-contribution encyclopaedia that colleges disagree with because anyone can change it, and so anyone can make it wrong (or funny). It’s also not complete, which Molly makes a point of. Why is there no page about her?

Is it recommended?
Oh very much so. It’s still one of my favourite things from DFTBA Records, because it’s so funny and so easy to listen to, and I fall in love with the nerdiness of it all every time I start to play MyHope, the first song. I can’t claim to know any/many funnier artists that Molly Lewis – a few have some funny songs, but Molly Lewis takes the biscuit (ew, a cliché!) with these six songs (plus one live version of a song) as they’re all funny in some way or another (okay, I might not get Peep Fight, but I’m fairly sure that the joke she makes about them is both right, and funny because it’s right! Definitely get it. You will laugh your pants off! (Warning: if you’re going to laugh your pants off, don’t do it in public, because that will get you locked up.)

I Gave You My Music...

I'm a big fan of music; I tend to find new types that I like every year; when I was fifteen, it was rock, sixteen was the soul year, seventeen was when I started getting into R&B and Pop and eighteen was when I discovered DFTBA Records. I believe it was also when I fell in love with Phantom of the Opera... or maybe that was when I was seventeen. Whatever... That's where the title of this blog comes from - "I gave you my music, let your song take wing.." Lovely stuff.

I'm here to talk to you about DFTBA Records, though. I'm currently listening to one of their hit songs, Can't, played in six different ways. It's from their new Can't Remixed CD. Very awesome. It's a great way to discover new sound in DFTBA; I'd never listened to MC Lars, Eddplant, Dr Noise, ALL CAPS or Alan and Paige... or Hank, really. I'd heard a couple of songs from Dr Noise, ALL CAPS and Hank, and Alan, I believe, from another EP, but I hadn't heard much of the sound they were capable of. Well worth the buy.

My first taste of DFTBA was through the Trock (Time Lord Rock) band Chameleon Circuit, with their album of the same name. If I remember correctly, I purchased their Volume 1 Compilation album and Taking Leave from Alan Kastufka and Tom Milsom, next. They are awesome! Chameleon Circuit is filled with songs about Doctor Who, and is actually why I was bothered watching an episode of it. The Volume 1 Compilation got me into a number of different sounds from DFTBA, including Molly Lewis and Tom Milsom's own work.

Somewhere along the line I purchased Alex Day's album Parrot Stories. It's a fantastic collection of love songs, and well worth the listen!

I bit the bullet and bought Trock On! and I Made You A CD But I Eated It (the latter from Molly Lewis) a while later. I didn't like Molly's CD until recently... the problem was that I listened to only two songs on it - I Pity the Fu and Peep Fight; I already knew the former, and I didn't like the latter. But I listened to the whole thing and loved it! Trock On! is an amazing compilation of Trock music. Good for Doctor Who fans!

Most recently I've come into possession of the aforementioned Can't Remixed and Tom Milsom's album Painfully Mainstream. Next in line for purchase is Be Mine from ALL CAPS. I can't wait for that one. And I believe Charlie McDonnell is releasing an album at some undefined stage in the future - can't wait!

I have to say, I love Painfully Mainstream. Especially Indigo, which I understand you can listen to online for free! Just go to http://www.dftba.com/ and you'll find all the albums and artists I've mentioned here. When you click on an album, you get a chance to preview the album with a sample track. Made up my mind about Tom Milsom's album, to be honest!

And with that, I bid you adieu. It's time for me to get Lost... okay, bad pun. Lost is on in five minutes! I need tea!