Celine Dion-Taking Chances World Tour (The_Concert)

Celine Dion-Taking Chances World Tour (The_Concert) (CD + DVD) 2010-pLAN9
Genre: Pop
Label: Sony
Quality: 191 kbps avg
Size: 108.32MB

Track List:

01. Opening
02. I Drove All Night
03. The Power Of Love
04. Taking Chances
05. It’s All Coming Back To Me Now
06. Because You Loved Me
07. To Love You More
08. New Mego’s Flamenco
09. Eyes On Me
10. All By Myself
11. Shadow Of Love
12. Alone
13. My Love
14. The Prayer
15. Soul Medley
16. It’s A Man’s Man’s Man’s Man’s World
17. Love Can Move Mountains
18. River Deep, Mountain High
19. My Heart Will Go On

Matt Darey – Nocturnal 247 (Guestmix Steve Haines) (01-05-2010)

Matt Darey – Nocturnal 247 (Guestmix Steve Haines) (01-05-2010)
MP3 320 kbps CBR | House, Progressive house, Tech House | Tracks: 22  | 276 mb

Track
Matt Darey [ Tech-House | Progressive ]
1. Timo Garcia ft. Amber Jolene – Lady Luck (Matt Lange remix)
02. Skylark (Nic Fanciulli & Andy Chatterley) – Movin (Joris Voorn Rejected Rave dub) [Saved Records]
03. Dresden & Johnston ft. John Debo & Mezo Riccio – Keep Faith (Christian Luke club remix)
04. Nalin & Kane – Beachball (Orli & Da Ragnio remix) [Superfly Records]
05. NSL & Sonifunk – Lifted Higher (Jerome Robins In Loving Memory mix) [Jetlag Digital]
06. Schodt – You And Me (original mix)
07. Shingo Nakamura – Alice In Wonderland (Kobana & Hatchet remix) [Silk Digital Records]
08. Nadia Ali – Fantasy (EDX remix)
09. Approaching Black & Jacob Henry – Yesterday’s Tears (Shingo Nakamura remix) [Silk Digital Records]
10. EDX – Hoover (original mix) [PinkStar Records]

Steve Haines [ Progressive House | Electro-House ]
01. Alex & Filip ft. Alec Sun Drae – Tell Me (Steve Haines remix) [Mirabilis]
02. Julian Marazuela – Metropolis (Steve Haines remix) [Whartone]
03. Chris Reece – Salvation (Jerome Isma-Ae & Daniel Portman remix) [Pinkstar]
04. Russell G & Maxi Valvona – Whippersnap (Steve Haines remix) [Baroque]
05. Plastic Angel – Try Walkiing In My World (Daniel Portman remix) [Afterglow]
06. Beat Factory – Roswell (Cid Inc. remix) [AlterImage recordings]
07. Cid Inc. – Refrost (Steve Haines remix) [Lowbit]
08. Sheildz & Nova (Ant Brooks & Steve Haines) [Fused (Baroque)]
09. H2at – Getaway (Magitman remix) [Movement Recordings]
10. Weekend Heroes – Fear Factor (Riktam & Bansi remix) [Plastic Park]
11. Filth & Splendour – Puerto Banus (original mix) [Berwick Street Records]
12. Antix Vs. XX vs. Fitzpatrick & Reset Robot – Shelter Circade Silicone (Alex & Filip bootleg) [CD-R]

Boys Like Girls – Love Drunk

For the better part of the last four years, it has been utterly impossible to escape the runaway single “The Great Escape,” from Boston power-poppers Boys like Girls (BLG). The song’s feel-good chorus and soaring vocals were undeniably convincing and that track, along with lead single “Hero/Heroine,” and yearning ballad “Thunder,” thrust the quartet into the national spotlight. Now they’re back with sophomore album Love Drunk.

The disc begins with the electro-inspired effort “Heart Heart Heartbreak,” which features muscle-tight guitar tones, crystalline vocals, a sizzling snare and air-tight production. It also sounds eerily reminiscent of Slippery When Wet-era Bon Jovi, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it just makes it less original. Title track and lead single, “Love Drunk,” follows and opens with a chiming guitar line, blistering drums and a wall of na-na-na’s. The exhilarating opening wastes no time and dives right into the chorus, “I used to be love drunk, but now I’m hung over.” The song’s shining moment is in the last 30 seconds, as a gorgeous key change and rousing final chorus kickstart this song to Billboard heaven.

The contrived and uninspiring should-be second single “She’s Got a Boyfriend Now,” spins a tale about the one that got away, and aside from a supremely catchy chorus, there’s nothing substantial about the song at all. Johnson settles things down on the acoustic “Two is Better than One,” a string-backed ballad about a broken relationship that’s rousing, reflective and passionate. Pop-country superstar Taylor Swift lends her vocal talents on the chorus, but her contributions aren’t as promising as one would expect. Regardless, of the album’s first half, no song is stronger than this one. The album dips even lower on “Real Thing,” a song heavily indebted to 80s darlings Duran Duran, that works well if that’s its purpose, but flops altogether if it is indeed going for something different.

Johnson returns to playing the pensive, heart-on-the-sleeve crooner with the soaring, arena ballad “Someone like You,” a touching lament to the prospect of newfound love. The song’s structure and movement reflects the sort of maturity one would expect from a sophomore album, and aside from “Two is Better Than One,” this is the first time BLG has displayed any profound sense of deep maturation, and even that term is a bit of a stretch. The kitschy, uncomplicated, boon “Shot Heard Round The World,” follows and Lord love a duck it is painful. Boring, predictable and wholly analogous to the album’s five other sugar-coated rockers, “Shot Heard Round the World,” are the sound of a band being lazy and not testing their creative boundaries.

After the mildly appealing “The First One,” Love Drunk ends with two of its best tracks: “Chemicals Collide,” and “Go.” The former is a hard-charging, top-down, fist-pumping fireball that explodes out of the gate with energy, charisma and confidence. By the album’s conclusion it’s utterly obvious that Boys like Girls know how to write a pop-hook. But that’s nothing we didn’t already know. That being said, eight of eleven Love Drunk‘s songs are sealed with danceable beats, hummable melodies and a bevy of gearshifts, dropouts and chorus chants. Additionally, Johnson is a surefire vocal talent, and knows how to throw his voice around a verse and a chorus. He dips his tenor into falsetto more than a couple times and the results are worthy of libations. There’s a good chance that these songs when melted down to their brittle, acoustic base are probably more engaging, more earnest and more welcoming. Instead though, the disc is eleven commercially viable tracks that scream radio airplay and Disney channel specials. But is this really what the radio needs right now?

It seems unconscionable that Martin Johnson can sit back in his Boston futon and smile at this body of work. Is this really what his few years in the business have created? These are trite, unconvincing, generic rock songs, tailor-made for Hannah Montana-loving tweens and pre-pubescent. There is little merit or integrity here. Moreover, Johnson’s fleeting glimpses of lyrical acumen seem to have dissipated in the time in between albums, making for some of the most unoriginal lyrics since N’Sync’s No Strings Attached. And yet, despite all this, it seems almost assured that these sugary, processed slices of radio-rock are going to find their way on the charts and remain there for days to come. Which poses the quintessential question, in an era of digital downloads and pay-what-you-want schemes, can radio-rock be taken seriously anymore? Is Love Drunk what high school freshmen in their parent’s basements are trying to ascend to? Is this utterly uneventful album the future of music? Perhaps it’s best these questions remain unanswered. After all, Willy Wonka once said, “We are the music makers and we are the dreamers of the dream.”

Official site

Saosin – In Search of Solid Ground

I have always loved Saosin. When I was in high school, translating the Name came out. I was blown away. I said, “How can this band be among my top ten favorite bands with only five songs?” Then, when the self titled album dropped, it cemented them as pretty much my favorite band. Their style just clicked so well and encompassed some many different types of music I liked. Saosin does have a habit of making their fans wait for new material, and I have been eagerly awaiting this album, which brings me to the review. I have to look at In Search of Solid Ground from two perspectives: First, as a diehard Saosin fan and second, as someone with a new album coming across his desk.

Up first: the diehard fan. Needless to say, I’m disappointed. I’ve read a few reviews and one of the biggest complaints is that they are not producing the riffs and edge of past efforts (the verse riff for “Collapse” is still one of my favorites) and have gone soft. Now, I can’t complain too much, because I have seen so many bands fluctuate their sound over the years (e.g. Avenged Sevenfold, Thrice, etc.), and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, I do feel that the songs here aren’t the strongest in Saosin’s catalog, regardless of style. There wasn’t any wow factor to these songs. On the self titled album, I seemed to have a new favorite track every few weeks. I must have listened to the vocal harmony and drum fill on “Follow and Feel” about fifteen times in a row because I was just so blown away. Instead I feel that half the songs have a radio airplay gloss over them, a rhythm based on straight up chord strumming and less creative riffs.

It seems like production and vocals were given too much time compared to the real song writing. I hear a lot of these songs and think they have some nugget of hope in them, but they just seem to be produced to match up with just standard radio rock. Take “Fireflies”; I keep hearing the chorus and I can imagine live it can turn out to be pretty cool and a crowd pleaser, but for some reason the track just seems weak, just passing through my ears. I really did like the three demos that were released on the Grey EP and felt they were pretty solid but when it came to making the actual album, the same songs (Why Can’t You See, I Keep My Secrets Safe, and The Worst of Me) sound over-produced and the change in vocal arrangement just seems to take away from the songs. I feel that the production of the album is its greatest downfall, followed by half an album of generic filler tracks and the distortion on the rhythm guitar just doesn’t cut it for me. It just stays the same between many tracks and seems too “dirty” compared to the over production on most tracks. I remember an interview with Saosin where they said on Translating the Name, there was one distortion, and that was Saosin’s sound. And on Saosin, they really experimented with the sound to make the distortion that was the best for each song. In Search of Solid Groundseems to just pick one irritating, crunchy sound and roll with it. There are a few good and strong songs on here, don’t get me wrong. But the album as a whole is a letdown, especially if you want to hear something awesome out of Mr. Rodriguez.

If I were a newcomer to Saosin, I would probably think it was a decent debut effort. Not something that I would keep coming back to, but if songs came up on my shuffle, I would probably take notice. The songs do feel like some good old-fashioned rock radio tracks with their booming choruses like on “Nothing Is What It Seems” and “Deep Down.” However the sound of this album brings too many other bands to mind and doesn’t separate Saosin from the pack. I feel a lot of these songs could have been from The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus and their Lonely Road sessions (except slightly better). The single “Changing” feels like it was written by The Used. The beginning of “Deep Down” could be at home on an Incubus album. While Saosin can be lumped in with a lot of these bands, they need to have something to set them apart and that is missing on this album. Especially after hearing the song “You Never Noticed Me,” meant for the Japanese release, you start to think that the sound of what made the album was dictated by suits. Some fresh ears might take the album better but only to a certain point.

Saosin unfortunately may have fallen victim to the music industry game. Having the recording process on display at Hurley studios and all the tie-ins with Hurley and Pacific Sunwear surrounding this album only conjures up memories of Cartel and their “Band in a Bubble” experience with Dr. Pepper and their dismal sophomore LP. I have hope that some of these songs may have some legs in a live set and can only hope that this is the case, or that the band breaks tradition and heads back to the studio sometime before 2012.

John Oswald – Plunderphonic

Reviewers tend to liken their subjected album and artist to the famous pioneers of the sound, or on the other side of the spectrum, superannuated music that nobody, probably not even the artist, knew. Either way, reviewers do this to show how well-informed they are with the genre, telling the world that reviewers such as them shouldn’t be messed with. That’s a good thing, though.

John Oswald is a particular asset to such music assessors. Whilst being one of the most atmospheric spearheads to the experimental electronic, he remains relatively unheard of by the masses. Enter Plunderphonic, the album that “started it all.” A tiring 25-song mix tape that stays true to Oswald’s idea of Plunderphonics, where the sample of a song is its singular source. Alliterations elsewhere, it simply means that a musical piece is created from just one song, only served shaken.

The album starts off with an interesting take on Michael Jackson’s “Bad”, tentatively titled “Dab”. “Bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad,” the repeated word opens up a closet full of schizophrenic homosexuals. The song generates an overview of the whole album: Ridiculously familiar sounds in a ridiculously unfamiliar arrangement. Before thoughts on the mish-mashedness could carry on any further, “Dab” strains into a never-ending fall of ambient sounds based on Jacko’s voice, bringing up a moot point: “Is Plunderphonic the madness it truly showboats itself to be, or does it also have a mysterious, repressed soul amongst the clatter?“

As your ideas on musicality delve, the track list trudges down Elvis Presley, James Brown, and like an unwanted child you secretly love, in comes Metallica. The Metallica-based piece is “Net,” a cantankerous glitch-metal noise that sets itself out to wake you up from your train of thought. It also serves as a signal, informant that Plunderphonic is far from over. The next song is “Birth,” based from Birthday from the Beatles, a five-minute smorgasbord of nonsensical guitar riffs put together as if they made sense. The songs after “Birth” indicate a change in Oswald’s style, a more relaxed, saccharine approach to his own style, less restrictive and more rhythmic.

Plunderphonic lasts an hour and ten minutes. It is simply insurmountable by the first listen, and it would take years of listening before one could even break down the whole cadence of “Brown,” a Public Enemy-derived track full of gunshots, screams and insane patterns. But as far as musicianship goes, is this style of music truly difficult to make? It probably was back in the 1980s. Computers could only do so much back then and it would require a lot of them in an orchestrated free jazz to compose such tunes. Yet, in the modern age, a Garageband and a persistent refusal to sleep for a night is all that is required to produce something akin to Plunderphonic. Why should Oswald be known for his micro-sampling when it’s currently as simple as ABC in a layman’s eyes to replicate?

David Bazan – Curse Your Branches

After more than ten years fronting the critically lauded Pedro the Lion, Seattle-based songwriter David Bazan decided to jump the shark and make music under his given name. Following on the heels of 2006’s EP Fewer Moving Parts is his highly anticipated, first full-length debut solo effort, Curse Your Branches. Despite the fact that the first half of the disc is a marked departure from his typical repertoire, it may arguably be his best release to date, and may even be one of the year’s best releases.  Hailed by Paste Magazine as a “Dostoevsky of our time,” Bazan is as consistent and original as Iron and Wine’s Sam Beam, The Mountain Goat’s John Darnielle, Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and The Decemberist’s Colin Meloy. Others have compared him to the vaulted likes of Nick Cave, Merle Haggard, Sly Stone, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Randy Newman and John Prine, to name but a few.  An on-again, off-again Christian, Bazan has spent the good part of the last 12 years writing songs that detail depression, self-doubt, death, faith, lack of faith, salvation, and an armful of other engaging concepts. His main bent is how to live a life of profanity and sin despite a religious upbringing, and he’s been known to wag a finger at gun-waving Christians and skewed foreign policy.  Those themes, most notably the struggle with faith, and his battle with alcoholism dot the landscape of Curse Your Branches. Opening with enticing Death Cab-like piano, “Hard to be,” is a placid six-and-a-half-minute tour-de-force in which he sings about the pangs of growing up and taking responsibility. Vocally the song finds Bazan at strong as ever and it is arguably as confident an album opener as any released this year.  His battle with faith and alcoholism is documented in mid-tempo second track “Bless This Mess,” which features a good dose of synths, calling to mind his Headphone days. He continues with his war against alcoholism on the desperate “Please, Baby, Please,” and though the chorus gets a bit repetitive, it’s hard to find flaws with someone this gifted. The album’s first real dip is in fifth track “Harmless Sparks,” but with Bazan nothing is ever a wash because his lyrical work is so engaging. That sentiment is entirely true on this one, as he sings, “Then some grown men might be tempted to question their birthright, in front of their kids and devout wives, causing the doubt to begin, to spread like original sin.”  The rockabilly strut of “When We Fall,” follows and lyrically its as strong as anything released this year. A calculated meditation on waning faith, the album dips and swirls in a way that mirrors the song’s chilly sentiment. On seventh track “Lost my Shape,” the album reaches its peak, as Bazan unravels a yarn about the emptiness and desperation of his struggle with alcoholism. Incredibly poignant, poetic and personal, “Lost My Shape,” is easily one of the year’s best songs and stands firm as one of Bazan’s best songs to date. Aided by a rousing organ, and a heavy alt. country bent, it’s gorgeously sung and features one of the disc’s best choruses.  On the heels of that is the toe-tapping shuffle of “Bearing Witness,” as he sings, “I’m so sick and tired of trying to make the pieces fit, because that’s not what bearing witness is.” The album finishes with the Beach Boys-inspired “Heavy Breath,” which starts off strong but falters at the end, and the plodding “In Stitches,” which seems to collapse under the weight of the album’s earlier home runs.  Through the course of his career, Bazan’s dry, woody baritone has never been much of a pick-me-up and often times it borders on monotonous, but on Curse Your Branches he seems to inject a newfound life into his timbre, and as an end result, these songs. Working with longtime collaborator and Headphones co-founder T.W Walsh, the album is a masterwork in navigating the depths of misery and the pangs of desperation. Being that it’s his most personal album, it makes sense that his surname appears on the title. Which ponders the question, if this is what his music sounds like as Bazan, why didn’t he make music under his surname, more often?