Review – Page 4 – Sonaris Music

09/30/201303/25/2015

Sonaris Music Review: Free To Relax EP by Brandon Shaffer

Received a music review request today, from an emerging producer named Brandon Shaffer, out of New York – a place close to my heart. The EP, called Free To Relax, is a mix of ambient vibes, chill atmospheres, and distant beats and is available, independently, via Bandcamp.

While the mix could use some clarity, and the beats could use a bit more of the ambiance flare which is bestowed upon the other elements of any given track, it’s the creativity which shines on this release.

Something about this EP is very raw, but in a good way. It reminds me of the inspirations I felt when I first started writing music, having many ideas and trying to do something with them. Brandon manages to do this well. From the sweet chords of the Minimal Piano piece, to the melancholic atmosphere of Dark Cavern, to the funky vibe of Science & Spaceships, I enjoyed the variety of sound and the progressive structure of the pieces. Emotional Wreck surprises with a slathering of sounds, which all work well together, completing a pleasant listening experience. The release, to me, is a soundtrack to a dark, gritty, urban film.

While it may not be “polished” – what the release does offer is some fresh, untamed creativity from an unbridled talent, something of which I think we all feel we could use more.

Visit Brandon’s Soundcloud and Twitter for more.

09/23/201303/25/2015

What’s Up With the Music in GTA V?

In a big way, the Grand Theft Auto series – since GTA III – has been a lot about music, to me. A lot of my best memories are tied to playing the game and listening to the radio. Whether it was flying through the streets on the Infernus (sp?) jamming to Rise FM in GTA III (“Time has no meaning anymore!”) with trance and dance music, or driving through the country on a tractor in San Andreas while learning to appreciate classic Country music, or the wild synthy sounds of 80’s pop blaring in my Cheetah – music was always a huge part of what I enjoyed about the series.

It wasn’t even that the games had music I liked, which they did to some extent, but rather the music was clearly chosen very carefully, for each channel on the radio. To me, San Andreas had one of the best varieties of music available; from country, to rock, to rap to electronic, all the bases were covered. While I didn’t feel that the music in GTA IV was quite to my taste, it was still pretty relevant to the game – even featuring an Eastern European channel, for the atmosphere. So, why is it that the music in GTA V sounds so… I don’t know… generic?

Did Rockstar Games lose a brilliant music director? Did they lack time to carefully pick out some amazing tunes for one of their more ambitious titles? Was is cheaper to just pay a major label or two a blanket fee to use their songs?

I suppose any of the above might be true, or maybe music isn’t meant to be a focus point in this game? It seems like even the trailer for GTA V didn’t feature any wildly iconic, theme-setting song with which to associate the game. Is it Rockstar’s way of telling us that, perhaps, music is playing a smaller role in our modern society, producing less legendary sound and more uniform, cookie-cutter formula-driven fare – or is this a stretch?

Indeed, it feels like Rockstar didn’t try to go for that underground, indie sound which could be found so easily, even by spending a few hours on Soundcloud – at probably a much lower cost than licensing music from a major label. This time around, GTA wasn’t a place I found new artists I want to check out, or that new catchy song – in a genre I normally might brush off. I feel like I have been exposed to less new, fresh music content by GTA V than ever before in a GTA series. Judging by some of the discussions I’ve had with my peers, and comments I’ve read on reddit, it seems I am not the only one. Perhaps Rockstar can add the option to send in original music via the Rockstar Social Club, for consideration to be added to the radio as an update or free DLC?

In any case, GTA V, in my rather humble opinion already seems like the pinnacle of accomplishment in the series, through an amazing storyline, smooth-as-silk gameplay – Rockstar definitely crossed the t’s and dotten the i’s in this installment in the Grand Theft Auto series. Maybe it’s not about the music in this one, maybe the music took a step back to let the rest of the game really shine… which is does – brilliantly.

05/14/201303/25/2015

Random Access Memories Reviewed by a Random Amateur Musician — Sonaris

Random Access Memories Daft Punk Sonaris Review This is not a track-by-track review and is actually just a bunch of stuff I thought about while listening to the album. That said, read on…

I like to think I am a Daft Punk fan but I have some internal conflict with this concept. On the one hand I find that I admire quite a few of their productions, but some I really love and there are definitely some I hate. Calling myself a fan of anyone’s music is a tricky thing because there is so much good music out there, it’s hard to say I’m a fan of it all, I have to be picky. I could say I’m a fan of a certain album or a certain song, but to call myself a fan of any one artist is really putting a lot on the line.

Even the productions of theirs I hate, there is a lesson to be learned in all of them. As a producer, I probably listen to music differently than other — normal — people do. My word involves hours upon hours of listening to repeating loops, searching for an hour for the right kick and snare combo, and subtle variations of the same melody and/or bassline until I feel I got it right. When I listen to music, I can’t help but analyze it. This analysis, or maybe even over-analysis of music allows me the gift and curse of reviewing music in a unique way.

The meat…. What’s so special about the super-hyped-up new Daft Punk album Random Access Memories then? Well, it’s pretty f*cking different, that’s for sure. Is it EDM? Not really, but kind of. Does it sound good? Yeah, it sounds amazing. It sounds like DP sat for days picking out every single sound, meticulously — well, that’s actually exactly what they did — and it shows. The dynamics are some of the most interesting I’ve heard in an EDM album in a while. That is not to say that there aren’t some other awesome producers who get how panning and EQing works, but DP doesn’t just pan and EQ well but they do it in such a way that the sounds play together in a nice, friends-at-first-sight kind of way. Is the album flawless? No, but I think that’s the point here. It’s something different and certainly a new, bold direction for DP.

Now, I’m no expert on putting together a full-length LP, I’ve only done it twice, and I probably could have done a better job. But, from a layman’s perspective, RAM flows well, each track a natural progression from the last. I found some interesting themes present, fluctuations in emotion, if you will. At times I found myself calm and relaxed, just taking the journey, other times I aggressively rewound to listen to the same hook a few times just to let it sink it. Listening to the album is interactive. Some tracks shine more than others, a lot more. But, it’s certainly a journey. I can’t wait to play this at full volume in my car with the windows open, on the highway, and get lost in retro daydreams. That’s the kind of album this is.

One of my producer friends asked why are people so adamant that this is going to change EDM in a major way? I’m not sure that it will, but it might. Here’s why I think so… I thought the album might have some harder-hitting tracks, but it looks like DP gave away the secret weapon, which is definitely Get Lucky, on this album. But… this album is just the beginning. Soon the EDM scene will be flooded with bootleg remixes, and ripped samples.

What makes this album different than what’s out there? For one, it’s the lack of overused percussion loops, melodic hooks and samples. This album is the original real deal in EDM, something which happens rarely now-a-days, maybe because most of us lack the resources to record live music and make it sound so f*cking good, maybe it’s laziness, maybe it’s a lack of inspiration in the face of over-compressed cookie-cutter beats which is what it seems like everyone is listening to right now. For once, DP didn’t sample a lot of other people’s music. This is sort of their answer to critics who threw stones every time a new sampled piece was discovered in their older projects. In any case, DP does it right, very very right with this album. Not everyone is going to get it, at first, and some are never going to get it — but I feel like I do.

I am a fan of Daft Punk, and — in my opinion — this is their best album, yet.

Stream the album on iTunes if you’ve got it. Album out in most stores on May 22nd.

02/28/201303/28/2018

Dred Scott (Rapper): Breakin’ Combs — One of The Best 90’s Rap Albums You’ve NEVER Heard

2018 Update: This album is now on Spotify!

Sometimes it so happens that I run accross a track that completely blows me away, and this happens less and less lately. I’d say this is less because music is “getting worse” but more because I’ve probably heard quite a bit of it already. The rap scene lately hasn’t been getting a lot of my attention. That’s why it’s mind-blowing when I find an entire album that’s just this crazy journey of smooth beats, flawless delivery and witty rhymes. That album is Dred Scott’s “Breakin’ Combs”.

I’ll begin the story by saying that I found the first track I heard from this album by typing something completely random into YouTube and just happened to click on the video for “Back In the Day”. Immediately I went from the surroundings of my office to a day in the park in the Bronx after I first moved to New York in the early 90’s. Memories of after school basketball, pump-up high-tops, Looney Toons, fruit punch, JanSport backpacks, Super Nintendo, breakdancers in Central Park, all this came rushing in. The thing is, Dred Scott was an L.A.-based rapper, but the vibe is so strongly, distinctively 90’s that I couldn’t help but get lost in my own world of the time period with a sound so distinctively 90’s rap.

An entire day worth of play-on-repeat later I realized I need to know if there is more of this out there. As it turns out, Dred Scott only released one rap album, in ’94. (He also released a jazz album a year later). So, I quickly tracked down a few more tracks on YouTube, and all of them are bangin’ beat gold! Practically every beat I found is a grandiose percussive tribute to the boombox, screaming to be played in my car with the windows down. For a 90’s rap album the fidelity of sound is quite good, even in digital recordings on YouTube and a couple I found on this post by Jeff Leon on KevinNottingham.com

Well, now I definitely want a copy of the album. Over to Amazon, but alas there is no MP3 version. Luckily, a few used copies were still available for a reasonable price. Needless to say I grabbed a copy and now eagerly await to get these jams in my possession to listen to at my whim. It kind of feels like I’d been waiting to find this album and, as if by fate, I have. One of my favorite feelings is when I find new music which I want to enjoy over and over and over, music which makes me feel something, takes me to a different place.

Is it a shame that Dred Scott only put out one album? Should he have gotten more exposure? Would he still be around rhyming right now? I’m not sure, but maybe this is meant to be a treasure to be discovered by a few, the lucky ones.

02/17/201203/25/2015

Paying Homage… Soulwig – “Parallel”

In my 10+ years of producing music, I’ve come across a lot of interesting people. Even though I credit myself as being self-taught in everything from the basics to more advanced techniques, I did get some (a lot) of help along the way, from my peers. Some of them went on to do amazing things, and some remain hidden secrets of the deep underground music world. (TL;DR)

One person, in particular, who taught me quite a bit about mixing sound, compression and how to derive quality out of my productions was a guy named Phoakis. He doesn’t go by this alias anymore, clearly he has closed that chapter (as I once did too, when I felt I had matured enough, musically). One day, hanging out on Internet DJ, like we used to “back in the day”, he posted an amazing track which I still have a hard time getting out of my head. Then, he disappeared… musically anyway, he was still around on MySpace and Facebook but decided to delete all of his projects, much to my dismay.

For several years I prodded him to keep writing music, come up with something new, release on our new label (AVR) which we were just starting to grow. He kept saying he is busy with this and that and I had all but thought he was done with music for good. Then, out of nowhere, two weeks ago I get a message in my inbox, it’s from Soulwig and it’s asking me to check out a new project he just finished, and “check on the mix”. I could barely believe it, so I rushed to check it out and–to say I was not disappointed would be quite an understatement.

What I found was a near perfect deep house track, much in the same vein as his previous projects but a more refined, mature version. From compression to atmosphere to vocal effect usage, this track is embodies the underground deep house vibe. Since I’d first listened to it, I have been totally addicted, playing it on repeat (if fact I listen to it now as I write this up), analyzing it trying to capture the secret of what it means to make a good dance track, what it takes to create something which inspires.

This track is not released anywhere, and you’d be hard-pressed to stumble upon it yourself, so I present it to you, as a gift. You now have the chance to listen to this track for the first time. Savor the experience: turn off the lights, turn it up on your system or in your headphones, let your imagination take you where it will and… just enjoy.

TL;DR My friend and mentor writes amazing music and you should listen to it.

06/18/201106/18/2011

Music You Probably Haven’t Heard Yet: DJ Seduce – Sambossica

I don’t sit down to write about other people’s music a whole lot but, in this case, I couldn’t resist. I ran into DJ Seduce last year on The Sixty One and was impressed by the compilation he had posted there. I played Sambossica Vol. 2 on repeat for a few days, and thought about finding it somewhere to purchase. Somehow I wasn’t able to do it then but, today – on a beautiful Summer day – I decided to see what he’s been up to and track down his music once and for all. After scouring Amazon and not finding it there, I decided to go the easy route and visited his website. Turns out he sells his compilations through Bandcamp which I’ve heard of before but never used. Luckily, all of his compilations were available there, in high quality MP3 digital versions. A couple of clicks on PayPal and I had them downloaded, along with the satisfaction of supporting a fellow independent artist.

About the compilations: There are three compilations available for digital download: Sambossica 1, 2 & 3, all of which are awesome. Lately I’ve been trying to find some good bossa nova / samba compilations and haven’t been all that successful. But, these compilations are all you need to fuel your light “summer sounds” craving. I won’t go into too much detail on specific tracks but pretty much all of them are artfully chosen and the flow of the compilations is very smooth. The compilations are inspired by Brazilian, afro beat, latin dance, world jazz, reggae, world groove, funky soul, deep house, broken beat, downtempo, electronica. In other words, whatever you’re into, these compilations have it, and more. Lively beats, smooth vocals and an awesome summer vibe describe the sort of sound you can expect.

About DJ Seduce: DJ Seduce is based in Arizona, and according to his website: “Over the course of 10 years, DJ Seduce has shared the stage with legendary icons, played to crowds of more than 14,000, released critically acclaimed albums and launched the “Award Winning” Afro:Baile world music event & record label. His continued strive to bring a cultural groove to the forefront, has allowed him to push his way to new heights. Some of his recent & notable accolade’s include: 4 consecutive nominations for “Best DJ” by the “Arizona Republic” & “Best Jazz” by the “Phoenix Newtimes. He’s also been a featured guest on FOX-10, and performed live on Good Morning Arizona (3TV). DJ Seduce has an extensive list of featured articles & reviews in over 15 magazine publications, including Global Rhythm Magazine & Spin Magazine.”

I try to encourage people to occasionally step back from the mainstream and explore something new, be inspired by something different. This is a great opportunity to do just that. Check out the compilation and let me know your thoughts. Salud!