Music

There are only few tracks that can be so immensly philosophical and still be modern and classy. Ofcourse, there are no vocals.

BNL certainly has some scientific lyrics. The “Pavlov’s dog” mentioned in Brian Wilson is about the classic experiment conducted by Pavlov in 1900s to show that dogs can learn to associate ringing of bell to the arrival of food and keep salivate even if you stop giving food. On another note, “Nine-point-eight straight down” in When I Fall is the Earth’s gravitational constant g when an object freely falls. There aren’t possibly better ways writing about science experiments in more artistic ways in mainstream songs 😉

If you are like me and constantly run out of fresh new music to listen, here’s something that might help. The best way to discover new music is to find new/fresh/weird genres. I’ll try to put here a list of very interesting select genres that I came across recently. I would highly recommend services like Rhapsody if you want to explore these. What’s more important is the way they provide navigation and ability to discover more.

In my recent quest to find new music, I bumped in to brand new DVD-A format on which many new demanding music albums are being delivered. It appears that this is definitely the next generation of music quality but there is very little or no information on many of its aspects. Here I’ll try to summarize what I found so far: This format is capable of delivering very high quality multi-channel surround sound on your home theater system.

[Artists - Album] Blue Man Group - Audio My short review of this album would be “Insanely creative”. This amazing Niagara of energy is probably very different than anything you have heard so far. Some of the tracks were composed with 15 different instruments including PVC pipes and homebrewed hybrid instruments! If you have seen their off-Broadway show, you will probably appreciate this music even more. This show is definitely one of the most creative, energetic, artistic and amusing I’ve ever been too.

Okay… found that! That song in the movie American Beauty with rain falling in one of the last scenes is Don’t Let It Bring You Down By Neil Young. Though one by Annie Lennox is much better. It was buzzing in my head since quite some time now.

I thought I’d nothing new to listen to but then just brewed up this triplet which nicely works out on these winter days. A Winter’s Solstice VI: A Windham Hill Sampler - A nice classical album. Just by look at the track names like Northern Lights, January Stars, Snow Dance, This Clearness Of Light - you know it’s gonna be good :). The Very Best Of Yanni: Yet another good (if not as great) keyboard fiesta.

Barenaked Ladies will be performing live at New York on 22nd Oct. These guys concerts (there’s no female members in the band - for the unawares) are among the most fun live events, so don’t delay in getting tickets! Even more, these are the few of rare artists who prefer to perform live and then put the song in a album rather then other way around. I didn’t thought they would be doing any tours.

Evanescence will be performing live at Webster Hall on 16th Sep in New York City as part of their tour. This is little unusual because even the Webster Hall is kind of the top dance club in the City, I never heard any concerts happening there. But probably thats what makes this cool. Check for tickets and other tour locations. But beaware, tickets are being distributed by the worst ticketing site in the world.

Before I go to bed, few more bits… This is to announce that this year’s VMA sucked. I used to see this show for it being totally different from other award functions (i.e. freaky, weird, explicit and eye-popping). It seems to be the general opinion that if it hadn’t been for Britney-Madonna’s kiss, this would have been the worse so far.

Here’s some from shopping list of past few months: [Artist - Album] Linkin Park - Meteora Evanescence - Fallen Audioslave - Audioslave Macy Gray - On How Life Is Barenaked Ladies - Rock Spectacle 4 Strings - Take me away (into the night) Evanescence’s Fallen is probably the best thing came out this year. Audioslave is raw, hard and grungy. How Macy Gray came in to my list? I don’t know… I’d written bad things about Meteora previously but when you are in real need for extreme screaming, lots of hatred and hard hard hard stuff these guys seems to fit the bill.

My favorite online music service Rhapsody is not working for me these days. They removed entire Linkin Park collection, few albums from Kid Rock and God knows what more. So I’m back to my old favorite Yahoo! Launch. They have gotten better with more selection, many more videos and more features. The best thing is, ofcourse, you can tell it what you liked and it will select more your kinda music rather then purely random songs.

Central Park summer stage schedule is out. Mark your dates from their official home page. On 311, this is a new number you can dial in New York and ask any question or make any complaints - literally! This is due to effort of new mayor Bloomberg to combine several agency to one spot through one number! Want to know how to dispose refrigerator? or complain about that loud car alarm?

On one fine spring morning, a beautiful lady with the sweetest voice decided to walk in a gorgeous park and sing for whoever cared. It was Saturday morning, one of the least busy time of the week when rest of the world prefers to sleep after long Friday night. It was one of the most invisibly promoted concert - even a professional certified guide at Central Park just 200 feet away from the stage didn’t knew about it!

[Many of these albums are also available at Rhapsody.] Suddenly all of my top 3 favorite artists have relased their new music albums during last few months. Unfortunetely all of these albums sucks. But anyway, because they are my favorite they will get metion here :). First, Matchbox Twenty has came up with new album More Than You Think You Are. Yes, they continue in tradition of weired names for their albums (oh well… who can make sense of name Matchbox Twenty itself?

Three movies that you shouldn’t miss this season: 1. Chicago - A total classic. Very different. Nice screen play. Cool lightings and photography. These guys got nominated for 13 acadami awards and I wasn’t surprised. 2. About Schmidt - A movie that gonna move you. Shatter you. Only for hard core reality fans. 3. The Guru - A cool hilarious flick on an Indina emigrant. Neat. Concerts: 1. Matchbox Twenty is on roll.

One of my favorite “soul test” for a song had been to make someone listen to it who doesn’t understand the language and see if they can still figure out the meaning from rhythm and vocal emotions. All of the following tracks are “remixed” versions of original tracks (if there were any), have sweet vocals and certainly has a different style. [artist - album - song] Deep Forest - Pure Moods - Sweet Lullaby.

I missed Central Park visit this Sunday. So now this is happening 3 years in row. Anyway, this blog is about the new cool music artists/albums I found in past few months. It’s starts with Linkin Park’s Hybrid Theory. To say the least, this is the one we call it “a land mark”. Very artsy compositions, meaningful smart lyrics and the best part: hybrid of melody and metal. You can’t possibly miss this one.

This is my first blog… wonder why didn’t started this already! First what’s Astrila? I can’t tell for sure but it probably means “sparkling snow in star light” in Eskimo’s language. Well some don’t agree however. I’ve my personal web site at http://www.ShitalShah.com - that’s my name Shital Shah. This blog I’ll be using for jotting down quick unbacked findings and here’s few samples. I’m always on look out for new music.