I was very late to appreciating The Beatles. Their music being so ubiquitous - in advertisements, movies, grocery stores, elevators, and even in the bathroom. It can be sort of like AD blindness.
Of course I already knew a lot of their tunes, and understood that they were classics. I just didn't know much about them. At some point though when I realized how many great artists have been influenced by them, I felt a bit embarrassed I hadn't taken the deep dive yet.
I devoured their full catalog. Analyzing, deconstructing, and simply appreciating how insanely good all of it is. As an album though, Revolver is my jam. A masterpiece, a magic trick that leaves you in awe and keeps you wondering how they pulled it off. Showcasing the range of musical styles and eclecticism in their songwriting...
The punk guitar solo in Taxman, the staccato strings in Eleanor Rigby, the spacey sitar in Love You To, the odd time bridge in She Said She Said, the dissonant piano in I Want to Tell You, and the groundbreaking hypnotic looped drums and bird squawks in Tomorrow Never Knows. Way ahead of it's time, it straight up sounds like Beck to me sometimes.
This record must have felt like it was from the future when it came out. Not one song exceeding 3 minutes, some as short as 2 minutes. Each one so captivating you lose all sense of time, making them feel twice as long. Fourteen songs and still only a total time of 35 minutes. Incredible.
I remember the first time I heard Nick Drake. I was living in Austin, Texas. Driving home from work, listening to college radio. When this voice captured me. I was so moved by it, I had to pull over to give it my full attention. I listened to the next few songs, waiting for the DJ to say what they had just played. I didn't have a pen, so I just kept saying his name over and over, until I got to Waterloo Records.
A very original approach as a singer songwriter, his finger style guitar playing and rhythms created a dense fabric of interwoven lines - a tundra for his voice to glide over. Such a short music career and tragically passing at just 26 years old, he did manage to leave us with 3 albums.
The odd time signature of the opening track (Time Has Told Me) immediately grabs your attention. The way the supporting band comes in so slowly behind Nick, it's like the tide coming in. Before you know it, you're knee deep in sound. Richard Thompson's slide guitar is so good, it's like a second voice responding, adding intricate ornamentation, surrounding and lifting Nick's voice.
Just when you think it can't get any better, River Man limps in like an old man with a bad knee. Then the established opening major chord suddenly shifts to minor and has you tilting your head wondering what just happened. The stuttered pause on the second beat of the 5/8 time signature is so cleverly placed, it takes 8 bars before you realize that waltzy feeling isn't 6/8 at all - and when the hauntingly beautiful strings are in full crescendo it's melancholic bliss. This song is so beautifully crafted that everything that follows is overshadowed by it.
I have an appreciation for Radiohead's music. Considering they were instantly famous with Creep, they weren't satisfied with just maintaining commercial success. They grew artistically with each album. It's fair to say they got weirder too, but I see it more like they got better at deconstructing sound and songs. Sort of like how Picasso's earlier work was more realism, and then he explored isolated color palettes, and finally peaking with the abstract and bent styles of cubism and surrealism.
I became a fan with OK Computer. Seemed so futuristic at the time - little did I know what was coming next.
Kid A came out right as I was on my way to NYC to visit a friend who was living in the lower east side - I was thinking of moving there to pursue music. His apartment was tiny! Two very small bedrooms and an even smaller kitchen/dining/shower/toilet space he shared with his roommates. I slept on his floor in a sleeping bag. The door to his room had a 3 inch gap at the bottom, giving me a perfect view of the possum-sized rats patrolling the kitchen floor.
I walked the length of Manhattan back and forth exploring the subway system, districts, parks, museums, venues, and cheap restaurants. All the while, listening to Kid A on Discman.
I read somewhere that Thom really got into electronic music during the OK Computer tour, and you can definitely hear the influence it had on Kid A.
My favorite album is In Rainbows, it's great dinner music.
The Smile is not Radiohead, but Thom and Jonny are the core of both bands. The Smile being just 3 people (Skinner on drums) their sound is more stripped back, but the intimacy of that sound really grabs your attention like a spotlight. Everything played is economical, nothing wasted.
I chose to highlight this song (Zero Sum) because of the lyrics. I love Thom's lyrics - explicit or abstract, they are memorable and roll off the tongue.
The most impressive talent of Robert Smith and his band is their alchemy of making lyrically sappy love songs somehow sound both celebratory and sad at the same time. Just Like Heaven, In Between Days, Pictures of You, Friday I'm In Love.. Great songs, classics - how do they do it?
In high school Disintegration was the jam. Wearing all black, driving around in my Jetta with the Alpine deck and a full Case Logic of CDs and tapes.
These days I find myself more drawn to A Forest. It starts with such patience, building up in the intro, by the time the bass comes in you are hypnotized. So minimal you hear every instrument clearly, but the overall effect is a massive vast space that drips with somber. Still somehow uplifting.
I'm with Jack White when he says, "“Well, I sort of don't trust anybody who doesn't like Led Zeppelin".
When I was a kid growing up in the Pacific Northwest, classic rock filled the airwaves, and there were stations that dedicated 1 hour blocks for "getting the Led out". At that age though, it might as well have been muzak to me.
The first time I "heard" Led Zeppelin was at this lock-in at a local church in Lahaina, Maui. Something to keep kids in the area from getting into trouble after dark, they would lock us in behind a 10ft fence and let us skateboard off launch ramps in the parking lot all night. Drinking soda and copious amounts of junk food, we were wired all night. This kid was rocking out to something on his Walkman, and I asked him what it was. He pulled off his headphones and rewound the tape. After a loud click sound he hands me the headphones, maxes out the volume and presses play.
After this whirling sound, I hear someone screaming "Hey hey mama..." and then this huge explosion of sound. Stopping and starting again until it just all out starts rocking. I was stunned. A deer in the headlights. The kid left me alone to listen to the entire tape. Pretty sure he turned me on to Sabbath too.
The Zeppelin album I listen to most is probably Houses of the Holy. The opening track (The Song Remains the Same) goes so hard and gets you fired up you're exhausted by the end of it. So, the follow up of The Rain Song is brilliant. It goes against all intuition, but works perfectly. Rain Song is a tune I have learned and forgotten how to play several times. I spent so much time playing that song, I always had a guitar sitting around in that tuning. Resulting in at least an albums worth of material using that tuning - except I tune the low D to C, making it more open C sus2.
I could go on and on about every track, but it all simply rocks. Where is that confounded bridge?
This album was on continuous play for us when it came out in 94. It was part of the soundtrack of our lives, basking in the sun in San Diego, catching waves, in an endless party.
As much as I love this album, I wanted to highlight this track because it's the one song I keep coming back to. I find myself thinking "what do I want to listen to...", and this song often pops into my head.
The slightly overdriven rhythm guitar patiently comes in melancholically hard panned right, shortly followed by a melodic slide part hard panned left. Setting the mood for what to expect, when all of a sudden the bass and drums come stomping into the room with purpose. When the guitars join in you realize how dope the riff is. The vocal is so dry and right up in your face, nothing to hide behind. That's how beautiful his voice is/was. His ability to go in and out of pure voice, edge of break up, full scream, and falsetto on command was the gift he was given. I love his voice.
Matt's drumming is so brilliant in this song. Instead of exaggerating the odd time of the verses, he chooses to disguise the differences between the first two bars (7/8) and the responding two bars of the verse (4/4) by placing the prominent snare for both sections on the 3rd and 7th beats. Projecting a continuity, until that tension resolves with the comfortable 4/4 chorus.
Definitely a major influence on me, Jeff's talent as a singer and guitar player was like Page and Plant in one body. His range of musical knowledge and taste was immense. From Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to Nina Simone to Bob Dylan to The Smiths to Leonard Cohen to Bad Brains, and on and on. He was a walking, talking, performing encyclopedia of everything music. Sadly passing away at the young age of 30, he left us with just 2 albums.
Jeff was a musician's musician. His ability and vulnerability was both inspiring and unnerving at the same time. I was obsessed with him for years. It was just like how Zeppelin impacted me, and I was just starting to get better as a musician. So learning how to play the songs on this record and the next sort of altered my DNA forever. His music taught me how to get lost in sound and feel it deeply - being overwhelmed with so many emotions simultaneously, it brings you to tears. I was an addict, I had to detox from him.
For years I intentionally avoided writing anything that sounded even remotely similar to his sound, trying to wash myself clean. I think that did help me sort of find my own voice/style/isms, but sometimes when I listen back to something I just wrote, I can still hear a bit of him and I'm fine with that. I embrace it now, and even lean in to it sometimes.
If you haven't heard this record or never gave it your full attention, please give it a listen.
A fantastic documentary by Amy Berg was just released about Jeff called, "It's Never Over, Jeff Buckley". Check it out here.
FAQ
Hello there, my name is Kalani Kordus. I am The Eliza Effect. I write the songs, record all the parts, produce, mix and master them.
I also have other projects I am working on, and I'm always looking for folks to collaborate with.
The Eliza Effect is the human tendency to unconsciously attribute human-like intelligence, empathy, and understanding to a computer program or other non-human entity. This phenomenon occurs even when users are aware they are interacting with a machine.
The effect is named after ELIZA, a pioneering chatbot developed at MIT in 1966 by Joseph Weizenbaum. Joseph chose the name ELIZA in reference to Eliza Doolittle, the character from My Fair Lady.
Yes, but availability will be a little later than the digital release date. The album will need to be additionally mixed specifically for the vinyl format.
Sure thing. Looking forward to working with local screen printers in the Louisville area.
Art and design has been a life long passion for me, along with the music.
Never.
The artwork was created in 2010 using Photoshop. Overlaying several photos captured by me in a mixed media style. Using different blend modes, arranged, and masked to create a composition that has surrealistic qualities.
Someone spilled beer on my DSLR at a party, leaving a dried up sticky residue on the SD card. While importing the images to the laptop, the residue somehow corrupted some of the data leaving behind these glitched out effects. That was the catalyst for the idea of creating a series of mixed media art pieces. The diagonal lines you see on the cover are those digitally corrupted artifacts.
The top section is a photo of the horizon of the Pacific Ocean taken from Ocean Beach in SF. Also some macro photos of flora taken in the Redwood National and State Parks. The center section are lights across the BART platform, probably Powell St station. The bottom section is a combination of time exposed taillight streaks taken somewhere in Boston, and foam built up on the shores of a beach somewhere on the north shore of Oahu. The subject is my wife, and I'm using her image as the proxy representing "ELIZA". I mean, If I fell for a chatbot, of course she would look like my wife.
I created 5 pieces using this mixed media style in 2010. That's 4 more album covers.
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