#39: CJ's Addictions 7

Alright, let's get this shit going. I've got a lot to catch you up on.

I really want to play the song "Runaway (Yelle DJs rmx)" by Mr. Little Jeans, but there is no YouTube Link. I'll just say that it is markedly bouncier than the original and leave it at that. Instead, have these three:

We'll start with building a pyramid. This song fits in perfectly with the CJ Song Pattern - which means obviously that I love it without question. Having said that, there's a lot about it that works quite nicely. Key changes - perfect. Dancy rock - perfect. The only gripe I have is that the lyrics can get a bit incoherent at times, but I suppose that's half the point. And it's an interesting song too: "I'm counting crystals in my sleep while you're sitting there on that broken chair. I don't even know what colour it was. While we're still young, let's echo, echo..." gets a Gem Line award. Well played Nightbox, well played. Nothing wrong with this addiction. Now bring on the next one. Something even more incoherent.

Older. But Australian, and quite brilliant. Sampled from a bunch of different places, including an orchestra; fun music, including the word "rannygazoo"; visually funny, including a fucking coconut. CRAZY IN THE COCONUT. You can tell I love this song. A lot. I want that coconut. Who knew such an old(ish) song was so awesome. First came across it via a flash video which turned into an obsession to find the song which was actually satisfied rather quickly. And now I want to know how they made everyone look black and white with those spotlights. Suppose I'll find out one day. This is a lot of fun to listen to, despite being terrible to dance to. Triple J have gotten something right yet again. Winning!

Last one for now. Bit of cognitive dissonance (again).

"She mixed paint at Menard's". A freebie with WinAmp, and probably the best freebie I've come across, short of Evaporate by Rocket Empire (which was with my HTC). Despite the fact it's rap, it's also electronic and minimalistic. And it tells a lovely story about becoming friends - possibly even more than friends - with someone met in a hardware store. Ordinary, average love. Not fairytale stuff or mopey melodrama, just pure, unadulterated love. (Also I give props for "(mixing) the perfect black" because I love the colour black, but that's a different story y'know.) And I love the fact that the girls in the background are laughing. They're not laughing at him, they are genuinely laughing with him as he enjoys his new-found awesomeness with the girl who mixed paint. Your face when this song weaved its way into my collection, heavily laden with house and trance, but I love this song to bits. And that's pure, unadulterated love too.

#37: CJ's Best Addictions

My favourite numbered post deserves my favourite songs that I haven't yet posted. So, have these: three songs that have some kind of importance to me and have been my biggest addictions evar. First things first: the song that is most played in my playlist.

Should NOT be confused with the alarmingly similarly-titled "Sunday (The Day Before My Birthday)". This one is more upbeat and fun to listen to than the mopey (but no less artistic) "Day Before My Birthday" and my god, does it sound brilliant just before sunset. I love the way the background noise wobbles at a slightly faster rate than the beat of the song. No idea why it's a good thing, but it is. First time I heard this song, I honestly thought it was a fake song, but one Shazam later and it's confirmed that it's Sunday from Moby's B-sides. It deserves to be an A-side. Seriously, Moby, get on it. Unrecognised brilliance, right here. Unrecognised brilliance that is in at least three of my five major playlists and is the most-played individual song in my library. Time to turn to some brilliance a little more recognised (though I suggest not watching the video unless you are decidedly NOT a bigot):

I post this video merely because it's the radio edit and gets the point across quickly, not because of the hot chicks (although no complaints about the hot chicks!). The song is one hell of a reminder of summer, and in particular summer of 2010-11 (when things were amazing and I bought Wii Sports Resort, which this song constantly reminds me of and vice versa). And hell, the video has hot chicks. And one hell of a message. Note the flag that one girl drapes around her at ~0'23". That, there, is the message. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people exist and aren't going to stop existing, so get used to them and start giving them the same rights that OTHER normal people can take for granted. Yes, I said OTHER normal people, because those people are normal people too. ...ahem. On that note, finally:

It MUST be the Ampére remix, otherwise it is Simply Not Good Enough. This song has managed to get me through a million and one nights in Melbourne and out. And it has infected my brain for just as long. The best bit, of course, is the bit from ~3'0" to ~4'50. (Wow, it lasts nearly two minutes?! Amazing! Thought it was longer!) I love it to bits and I will never lose sight of this song. In fact, I will never lose sight of any of these songs. Big house, tropical house and microhouse were never better than these three songs. And I have many many more addictions... soon to come. Have a break from my rambling.

#35: Contact High - Architecture In Helsinki

So this is 2012... Meh. First review of the year comes from not so much a challenge, but a Facebook status that turned into a thing. And we all like things.

I received a comment that this is a very bizarre song for me to like, simply because of the recurring themes of the mystical and magical, which counteracts my logical mind. Interestingly enough, some of the lines represent my mental state at certain points of my life (often multiple points, in fact). So I'm going to break it down for you. And after I'm done dancing, I'm going to rip the song to shreds, and the shreds reveal:

• my vision is gone and magic's to blame: the first example of the mystical, i.e. magic. Too easy. Next.
• you'll hold the thunder while I bring the rain: Caution: Gods At Work
• you've got a strange infatuation with elements in the air: science! Energy! Science! Energy!
• I'm done dreaming that we can fly: two in one here. Dreaming and flying. Flying is probably the ultimate motif of the mystical.
• mystical forces are circling me: like vultures?
• lost in the æther with no one to blame: well, you can't blame anybody but yourself for getting lost ANYwhere.

Why, then, do I like this mystical, magical song? Because it's not all about the (somewhat whiny-sounding) lyrics. I love the electronic experimentation of it all, and I loved the idea that, when they rocked up for Like A Version, Architecture In Helsinki were able to make an acoustic version of it. Mwah. Much love for acoustic versions. At any rate, I enjoy it simply because of that. Not much else. But, again, that's my tiny little logically-hardwired brain speaking, and I'd be inclined to say it's a ridiculously good song if I was a little more of an artsie. Or, less of a logician. Credit where credit's due, the video is also kinda fun. I wish I could be that guy. I'd be loving it.

#29: Children Of The Sky - Mike Batt

Please ignore the shitty quality here.

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care,
They pursued it with forks and hope,
They threatened its life with a railway-share,
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

So begins Children Of The Sky, by acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt. The poetry is borrowed stolen liberated from Lewis Carroll's The Hunting Of The Snark, a famed nonsense poem that was turned into a musical¹ in the mid-1980s by - you guessed it - acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt. A little history lesson: the musical originally included such names as Cliff Richard, Art Garfunkel, Deneice Williams, Captain Sensible, John Hurt, Billy Connolly and acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt. The album was twelve songs long, a huge part of my childhood, and I've suddenly come across Dancing Towards Disaster by acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt featuring the vocals of Deniece Williams. So I rediscovered Children Of The Sky, performed by acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt himself, and I thought I'd share it, and the fact that this is epic music, with you all. I say "epic" in this post to mean "heroic". Not that Children Of The Sky isn't awesome. I just mean "epic" a little differently here. In any case, I do have a soft spot for epic music. Movie music, if you will. I much prefer it with vocals, which is why I love Children Of The Sky. I also love it because of its disconnection with Snark, meaning it can work as a standalone song, as part of a concert, as part of a musical, or as just anything really. There are two other songs on the same album that don't have narration or mention the Snark at all - Dancing Towards Disaster and The Snooker Song - both of which are also pretty cool, just not epic. Okay, this one started off with narration, but hell, it bizarrely works. Also, it's not hard to Audacity out. My apologies to acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt for that, but again, it's purely in the interest of making the song completely standalone. Also, can someone PLEASE share a music video or MP3 of this song in better quality, without the thing skipping or fading out WAY too early? Quality notwithstanding, this is an amazing song, and full credit to acclaimed pop-rock artist Mike Batt for making it.

¹Yes, it's a musical. Yes, I like it. There are actually a few musicals I will willingly sit down and watch. Short of older Disney movies, the ones that come to mind are The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Cats, Avenue Q, The Blues Brothers, and this. If I think of any others, I'll post them.

#27: Trance

Time for something new, and time for something different. I'm going to jump into an area I haven't touched on much in this blog, and explore the world that is deep/progressive trance. First things first: the ultimate progressive trance anthem.

If you're interested, there's also a vocal version made by Miro here. I prefer the vocal version IMO but the original version also has massive amounts of charm, and so it should. This was a 1998 release, and while it didn't kickstart the progressive trance scene (which was some five years earlier) it sure as hell epitomised it. Why? The beat is hypnotic, if you listen to it in the right way. The bassline is hypnotic, if you listen to it in the right way. The vocals are delicious, no matter how you listen to them. Finally, the song has been mixed, remixed, re-released, covered, and practically everything else under the sun ever since it was released. The most famous cover was by Those Usual Suspects a few years back, and while I wasn't exactly a fan of it, I could tell fom that just how influential this song has been on the trance music circuit. It's good as background music because of its minimalistic approach, but because of the hypnotic beats, it's also good for house parties. I love it as a late-night listen, especially the Moonwatcher remix. I see it as a party-starter if you're sick to death of LMFAO and David Guetta, and I see it as a classic that will still be listened to in 2045. Also I totally love the video. To me it says the guy's life is flashing before his eyes, but also that stuff makes sense when it's backwards. Gah, listen to me waffling out philosophy like a beatnik.

From a prog-trance classic to a deep classic:

Someone (I think it was Ishkur) said that without deep house, house wouldn't exist. Or something along those lines. I'm going to say that without deep trance, there is nothing. This is the kind of music that should be listened to when you're trying to escape from the world because it just oozes emotion. Not necessarily bad emotion either. Solar Coaster reeks of beaches and sand and sun and a rollercoaster in the sun. OK, maybe not, but it always brings to my mind that semi-euphoric state where you're happy and almost in tears because of that happiness but not quite all the way to true euphoria. That feeling is absolutely delicious and I get it all the time thanks to sleep dep. That feeling where half the time you almost feel like jumping around yelling "neeeeeeeen" in a high-pitched voice for absolutely no reason, or you start laughing hysterically at absolutely nothing. I get that a lot. And Solar Coaster drips that exact feeling from its sweeping synths.

Two classics, now I'm going to show what has become of trance since the glory days of the 1990s and early 2000s.

Oh I love it. OH BOY do I love it. The compilation album that this came off is pretty damn sweet, too. Eight songs in a row in this style but all still different enough so that they're kickass in their own way, then they let loose with TAURINE. (See below.) Winter. In My Heart. Wait For Me. Venice Dawn. Solace. Swing 2 Harmony. No One On Earth. Out Of Asia. TAURINE. See? Again, the emotions contained in this song (coupled with the beautiful use of tension-and-release - see below) send a person who knows what they're doing to a state beyond euphoria (if you'll pardon the pun). Yes, I play this at the start of every winter. No, I have no shame in admitting this. The sweeping synths contribute to a sound saturation that isn't a cacophony. The sweeping strings help. Oh boy oh boy, get me a broom, I need to make some sweeping strings myself. Of course, trance isn't always sweeping strings, though they do help.

What have they done with my song? They've funktafied it! Alright, confession time, before now I never heard the original mix of Taurine but my God they're both amazing. I guess the Super8 remix makes it more hard-trance than the original while retaining the amazing progressiveness. Beautiful. It's not too bad condensed into three and a half minutes, either. I love how very little was changed but Super8 got rid of that really annoying audience-cheer bit that tries to make it sound like live music. Which is good. Because it failed. Miserably. Apart from that the song's brilliant and every time it comes onto my iPod I wet myself a little with anticipation of awesomeness because I know the tension-and-release bit is coming. This concept - foreign to most non-trance listeners is essentially just that: tension (building up a tune just after a breakdown) and release (a sound explosion just afterwards). Theme, breakdown, buildup, anthem. Good music producers should know exactly how to handle tension and release and good DJs should use it, instead of fucking us around with dubstep and LMFAO. Seriously. Those champagne showers are getting old and ridiculous.

Finally, my face when Taurine crops up somewhere.

#17: Tanz der Moleküle - Mia.

Forgive my lack of German-speaking-ness, but I actually had to Google-translate this. When I realised the idea was stupid, I gave up and started looking further afield. But my German-speaking friends were all unavailable. Besides which, I just remembered this song for a very bizarre reason that I can't quite put my finger on. Regardless. Loosely translated, I believe the title "Tanz der Moleküle" comes into English as "Dance of the Molecule" and the song is about (correct me if I'm wrong) two atomic physicists in love. Now, you'll have to bear with me as I'd only ever heard the BeeLow remix - which isn't really that different - until today, and this was the first version I heard (live recordings are pretty damned good IMO). So I'm basing this on the only two versions I've heard.

If ever there were a quirkier EDM song, it could only be Fix Your Accent by Fake Blood (which I may be reviewing soon). It's quirky. Whatever instrument they use to get their effects works (possibly the keyboard, because I'm not talking about the xylophone effects) and works well. It really does sound like molecules dancing. Question is: exactly which molecules? Is it a metaphor? Actually, no, I'm going to leave that one alone, because I like this song and I don't want it (along with so many of my other favourite songs) somehow connected with sex. Simply because some songs are better off just as they are, and without any imagery to go with it. Good or bad. Either way, it's a pretty cool song. The only problem with this version of the song is that it starts with the drummer tapping his sticks together. I don't like that (though I accept that it's unavoidable in live recordings). Otherwise it really does put me in mind of one sunny winter day when I went to open days and I visited Chisholm not knowing that it'd be my home within a few short years and... I'll shut up because I understand that some of you out there are allergic to flashbacks. Either way, please enjoy the song because I do like it simply because of its bubbly quirkiness.

Now, can I get someone German to make any sense of the song itself? Comment below if you can. Cheers.

#6: I Feel Something (Two Fresh rmx) - Q45 & Kato ft. Miss Purple

First of all, what the hell is "clubstep"? Sounds like a big attempt to justify the existence of dubstep by making it sound clubby and housy and making it look like the stuff actually belongs somewhere. That's not to say that this song isn't cool, in its own way. In fact, I fell in love with it because of its really really unique sound starting at ~1'13" and the fact that it sounds like a rainy day from ~3'12" to ~3'26". OK, so it doesn't. But to me it does. I enjoy it because it puts me in a rainy mood and hell, why not. Especially if you associate it with a rainy day. It's a well-known fact that rain accentuates music and... well, hell, just makes it so much more awesome. If you're short on tracks for rainy moods grab this one. Or Love On A Real Train. I'll have a looksee at Love On A Real Train real soon.

Back to this one: it's cute. Maybe not good for dubstep but it's good in its own right and I'll give it points for that. In fact, I hereby decree that every song featured here in this blog - past, present and future - nets the artists and behind-the-scenes guys 100 CJ-points. (One hundred CJ-points, by the way, are worth one Zimbabwe dollar. One old Zimbabwe dollar, that is. They're collector's items these days, I hear. Or not.)

#4: A Community Service Announcement - Jonathan Boulet

According to YouTube, this song has only really achieved a status somewhere between "quietly brilliant" (sorry HTC) and "cult favourite". YouTube commenters (in an extremely rare display of intelligence) beg to differ, saying that the song has been played to bits in the UK. I'd like to think that it's more "quietly brilliant" than anything, because it's such a simple riff (as a lot of songs are, but this is perhaps more simplistic than most) and the lyrics - oh, the lyrics! - such as "living in your dreams and influence speech" reek of metaphors unknown to most, and perhaps a hint of a political message. It's not an obvious one, otherwise it's likely to end up in the same boat as a whole bunch of Lennon-esque music that is probably far too obvious to listen to with any sort of recreation. Or, to put it another way, you wouldn't listen to the music of two of the biggest Dicks in the world, Stallman and Dawkins, if all they had to say was "be left-wing". Not even if it was semi-catchy. Boulet's message is more subtle than that - so subtle that I can't quite pick it up. YMMV.

I love the idea that the video is not Boulet himself singing (bands and artists singing in their videos is poor form, and the entire video being just the band and nothing else is even worse) but it's got a plot, a message, an idea. Dehumanising people who act like they're the Ku Klux Klan or something... or maybe putting a human face on victims? Or both? Either way, quiet brilliance like this should not go unpunished - so to speak - so I'm plugging it. Dig.