black star meets death grips
Discovering new music is one of the greatest joys in life for me and has been for many decades. Today I can lose myself for hours down a youtube rabbit hole listening to the avant wonders of the world. Way more convenient than the equally satisfying, and much more fun explorations of the bins at used record stores. Of course getting a recommendation from one of your favorite musicians has been a method used for as long as there’s been favorite musicians. This avenue of discovery has provided mostly duds for me in the past, but there have been a few reliable sources. No surprise that one is David Bowie.
Even in death David Bowie will continue to inspire people to discover music well outside of the Bowie catalogue for years to come. He did so for me (again) a couple of weeks ago. It was New Years Eve and my wife had gone to bed prior to the stroke of midnight, so it was just me and the dog left to ring in the new year. Anticipating the usual celebration of neighborhood fireworks which I now dread because it makes my poor dog shake uncontrollably with fear, I was searching for some calm music that I could play loudly as background to drown out the explosions without disturbing my sleeping wife. Ambient music was not doing the trick. I needed something with a beat, but not too much of a beat. Vocals would probably be good too. My searching quickly drew me to David Bowie’s Black Star album. As soon as I saw it I knew I had to play it. I was compelled to do so. I think that might be because the album was originally released around this time of year, the xmas and new year time of year, and I must have listened to it a lot then, so maybe I now associate Black Star with the holidays. Thankfully it seemed to do the trick for my dog and I soon found myself not worrying about him, but wondering about this music. Obviously it’s such a great album. The more I listened the more I wondered. How was this made? Who’s on it? All I really knew was that Bowie was dying while he made it and I wrongfully assumed that it was made like his other recent albums. Of course Tony Visconti was involved, but a quick trip to wikipedia land showed me that Bowie had recruited a jazz band that he never worked with before to work with him on this.
The jazz band was recommended to Bowie by an artist he happened to be working with prior to Black Star. These people working with him around this time have talked about the music he was listening to. Before I passed out along with the dog and my wife, I had assembled a list of several artists I was mostly unfamiliar with that I would listen to over the next couple of days. One would blow me away.
But first, I had to check out the jazz band. Their albums, thankfully, don’t sound anything like the Black Star band. The couple that I listened to were quite different, so I know I want to hear more just to help me figure out what this band is all about. I like them, and these albums are going to require repeated listens for me to really get into them, but that’s usually a good thing.
Next was Kendrick Lamar. I knew this name, but hip-hop is not really my thing, although there is some crossover stuff that I like. Mr. Lamar is no crossover artist. He is out there. In a good way. A unique way. It must be this latter quality that attracted Bowie. I listened to one fairly recent, very long album by Mr. Lamar and went back to a few songs for more. I like it. I will not forget it. But in the end it’s still really not my thing.
And now we get to my thing. The one that’s still blowing me away. Death Grips. The first album I listened to made me confused. I love it when that happens. Is this hip-hop? No it’s noise/punk. Wait, what’s that? Spoken word? Finally I just stopped thinking about it and simply went with the frenetic wave of energy that was coming out of my speakers. I have yet to take the opportunity to really crank this up, but man am I looking forward to that. These guys have several albums that I have not heard yet so I’ve got some happy days ahead of me. And of course I had to ask the next question …. Who are these guys? Turns out I was already familiar with one of them from his band in the early 2000’s. He was the drummer in Hella, a math-rock duo from Sacramento that I saw live at least once. I got their first couple of releases before I either lost interest or simply lost track of them. Nice to see that he’s still doing some very intense avant rock. In fact, these guys are taking it to another level by incorporating performance art in their shows. The whole band-as-art project is keeping many people a bit confused, including their fans. How great it is to discover a band that you know on each encounter will be another new discovery.
Thanks again David Bowie.