Neal, oddly enough, was my first semester ensemble teacher at Berklee, so it’s kinda bizarre to be on the bandstand with him, but he’s a killer guitarist, and definitely helps keep things together on the bandstand.

Along with that, my buddy Andy hit me up to start a rock cover band, and, while I was tired of the cover scene a few years ago, I’ve recharged enough by now to give it a shot. We had some mutual friends lined up for the guitar & drum spots, but they had to pull out after realizing they were over committed. So if anyone out there wants to play some rock music, say the word!

As for work, that’s been going well! Still doing things exclusively with Elative Marketing, my friend Kyung Min’s company, and that’s worked out really well. Money is still tough though, since it comes in spurts (for example, I’m waiting on two big checks this week, which will be my first paychecks since mid-February), so that’s a bit hard, but I’m definitely learning greater discipline, which is really good for me. I’ll be posting some follow-up posts about some of the sites I’ve completed recently, and discussing them in greater depth on the Elative blog.

I’m still not fully adjusted back to being single, but then again the last time I was single for more than about a month was in 2005 (Amber & I got together February 2006). I still see her, and there’s a part of me that still feels a twinge, and I sometimes find myself wondering “what if it had worked out?” But I made my decision, and as painful as it was, I still think it was the best one for both of us.

The weather has finally turned warm this week (after a monsoon-like three day rainstorm), and that’s kinda what prompted this post. A little “spring cleaning” as it were. Oh, and so far, I’ve made good on my Project 52 commitment, so that’s almost one quarter down. We’ll see how I do after another few months.

Oh, and those of you lurking, reading my posts, come on now, you can comment you know! I even enabled the ability to log in using your Twitter account if you want to. I’m still working on the Facebook Connect thing, that’s a little tougher, but I’ll get it.

The album kicks off with “Uprising”, a pulsing dance/rock tune driven by an overdriven/distorted octave bass figure. Handclaps are used to great effect, with unison distorted guitar/falsetto vocals punctuating each statement of the verse. The whole song is, according to Matt Bellamy (the group’s lead vocalist/guitarist/pianist), “…expresses a general mistrust of bankers, global corporations and politicians.”

Things move on from there to the love anthem “Resistance”, which is glued together by a floating piano figure, and again, pushed along by the bass, but this time a driving sixteenth-note figure in the verse, which is then passed on to the hi-hats in the pre-chorus. Really a cool way to hand off the rhythmic duties, and the chorus breaks it up nicely by dropping into an eighth-note groove. The Matt Bellamy’s liner notes from the iTunes LP state that the song is based on the love story from George Orwell’s 1984, but more generally is “…also about any love which crosses boundaries such as religion or strong political beliefs and the subsequent recognition of the unimportance and divisiveness of such beliefs.”

“Undisclosed Desires”, the next track, is an abrupt shift in groove for the group, with a very dance/R&B feel to it, with the pizzicato strings & broken up drum beat. The whole song has a cool texture to it, and is fun to listen to.

“United States of Eurasia” is musically very fascinating; it’s heavily influenced by Ravel & Tchaikovsky, and also features some obvious “eastern” sounds throughout, utilizing the harmonic minor scale. It segues into “Collateral Damage”, a solo piano piece featuring Chopin’s “Nocturne, Op. 9 No. 2” with sound effects. Bellamy’s liner notes state “The song is from an imaginary musical about a ‘United States of Eurasia’, the search for peace and the accidental creation of a new super power challenging American primacy.”

The whole album seems to bounce back and forth between heavily political tracks followed by love songs. Easily exemplified by the next tune, “Guiding Light”, which is another love song and is definitely straight-up stadium rock.

“Unnatural Selection” is probably my second favorite track, starting off with church organ and Matt singing through a filter, then kicking into high gear with a pounding guitar & drum bit before the bass joins up for a unison guitar/bass/drums figure. The song is reminiscent of the group’s earlier song “Hysteria”, although it’s more varied in its rhythmic and harmonic content. The song itself is about the “winner take all” world we live in, and that “if you can’t beat them, join them.”

“MK Ultra” is probably the only track I could take or leave. It’s good, but doesn’t quite stand up against the rest of the album. The pre-chorus and chorus are definitely the better parts of the song, but it’s still the weak point of the album.

“I Belong to You / Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” is definitely my personal favorite. The groovy piano bit, and the envelope filtered bass track, it’s got a really cool funky groove to it, and the second part of the title refers to the fact that the middle section is from the aria of the same name from Camille Saint-Saens’ opera Samson and Delilah. This is followed by, of all things, a bass clarinet solo. Bellamy describes this as being something they “…wanted to sound like a theme tune from a children’s TV program featuring teddy bears in a garden.” Like I said, the inspirations are varied & sometimes bizarre.

The last three tracks on the album are actually three movements of a larger work called “Exogenesis”. Definitely a reach for the group, I think it shows just how large their vision and scope can be, and I hope to see more like this from the group. Here I’ll just quote Bellamy from the iTunes LP liner notes regarding this work, as I definitely cannot explain it any better:

This is influenced by Rachmaninov, Richard Strauss, Chopin and Pink Floyd. It looks at the concept of ‘panspermia’. It is a story of humanity coming to an end and everyone pinning their hopes on a group of astronauts who go out to explore space and spread humanity to another planet. Part 1 is a jaded acceptance that civilisation will end. Part 2 is a desparate hope that sending the astronauts to find and populate other planets will be successful alongside the recognition that this is the last hope. Finally, part 3 is when the astronauts realise that it is just one big cycle, and recognise that unless humanity can change it will happen all over again.

So yeah, deep subject matter there, but I expect nothing less from Muse. The first movement seems to have the larger of the Floyd influence, with the second movement beginning like a mix of Rachmaninov/Chopin, then diminuendoing into something more Chopin before the rock kicks back in. The last lines of the second movement is quite eloquent:

Tell us, what is your final wish?
Now we know you can never return
Tell us, what is your final wish?
We will tell it to the world

The last movement I read as more than just the realization that we need to change, but the determination that we will change, because we must. It begins very quietly, slowly building into an earnest promise to get it right, before ending with a quiet piano/strings coda.

You can snag it at iTunes or Amazon & help me out.

Spot the difference:

What a week. From the moment Radiohead announced their plans for latest release ‘In Rainbows’ we’ve been itching to see how you, the listeners, would respond. We let our friends over at Drowned In Sound in on some early data after just 12 hours. Now that our weekly charts are compiled there’s not much else to say apart from ‘Wowzer’. Below you can see the Last.fm global tracks chart for last week, and below that the official UK downloads chart for the same period. Spot the difference?

Last.fm global tracks chart for week ending October 14th

Official UK downloads chart — Week Starting October 15th

(Via Last.fm – the Blog.)

So come on out & enjoy some of my shows!

On another note (hah!) I have the weekend off musically, & will be renting a car & heading down to Connecticut to see my mom & sis, as they’ll be there to inquire about an internship/job for Morgan this summer. As much as I love playing, and getting paid, it’s nice to have some time off from that. Anyway, that’s all for now

As for other things, just finished the second week of classes; gonna be one hell of a semester, but I’ll get it done. Ready to finish up Berklee, have my degree, and make a move on some things I’ve had in mind for a while. Putting together a working jazz band (probably piano/bass/drums, with a trumpeter & vocalist) is something I’ve wanted to do for a long while, and I’ve had some folks in mind for some time for it…