Vansen's Music Blog

Discussion in 'SBAF Blogs' started by Vansen, Sep 21, 2018.

  1. Vansen

    Vansen Gear Master (retiring)

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    TL;DR: Click on some music links below; listen to them. I might start posting more often, but will be shorter than this.

    Last September, @jacq and I took a one day road trip touring the beer of Northern Vermont. Even as someone who gives his heart completely to the West Coast, Vermont has a firm grip on me when it comes to beer. There's Hill Farmstead, Foam Brewers, and some of the best bars in Waterbury. But I digress, this is about Music…

    With friends like @jacq, you can sit and share music back a forth all day long; the perfect road trip partner. Ever since then, I've been wanting start an infrequent blog where I post about music that piques my interest. We aren't talking about audio quality here and we certainly aren't talking about gear.

    In this first post I want to share an album that I discovered on Record Store Day in 2017 completely on accident, which is the self-titled album from a band called Men I Trust. On this weekend, I was in Montreal and had no clue that that RSD was coming up until I saw an SBAF status the night before. Come record store, I checked out a couple of stores in downtown with my brother and struck out.

    After coming out empty handed from some early morning record browsing, my brother and I went about our day. Later on, we wondered into Aux33Tours on whim because it was close by. This is where you should go if you want to find a record in Montreal. The have a high volume of records coming in and out, with a great selection of high quality stuff, including a penchant for Japanese pressings. As an example, I found a NM pressing of Van Halen's 5150 for $5 CAD, as well as some odd Yello 12" singles for about the same price.

    But the real find was a record released that day - the self titled album from a band called Men I Trust. I recalled hearing one of their tracks on Indie Shuffle once upon a time and grabbed the record on a whim. The record was a limited run of 333 and it looked like all 333 were in that store. Some asking around, and it turns out that this store owns a label called Return to Analog, which is the label that recorded this album.

    Let's get to some music!





    This self titled Album of theirs is an amalgamation of their new stuff and old stuff. In simplest form, It's a fresh take on dream pop with some funky bass lines and a bit of reverb on the vocals. At the core, they stick to this recipe well and sometimes venture a bit out. And the more I think about it, the more I start seeing new and interesting bands of the same style pop up in Montreal. Dizzy is another Montreal band that comes to mind here (ableit they're brand new).

    Their most popular song on the album seems to be 'Lauren' (first video), but my favorite tracks from the album are 'Stay True' (second video) and 'Again' (look it up).

    I own the a copy of this on vinyl and brought it to @Dr. Higgs house once upon a time. I think it became the most listened to album of that day, with @thegunner100 and @SteelCannon giving it praises. I later sent a copy to @JoshMorr , who says it's still in regular rotation. @Dr. Higgs and @thegunner100 even went to see them perform in NYC with me. I think we walked out with ten copies of their album.

    I've been wanting to share this album for a while now, but it was extremely difficult to get a hold of - digital or otherwise - until the end of July. They've finally started stocking CDs and are able to keep records in stock now on Bandcamp, but the band states that they will not release a streaming or a download only version of this album. You can find all of their other music on all of the common platforms.

    Check them out on Bandcamp:
    https://menitrust.bandcamp.com/merch
     
  2. thegunner100

    thegunner100 Hentai Master Chief

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    Yep, excellent music! They'll be back in NYC this November (I think) but I'm not sure if i'll be going out to see them.

    The record/cd is just a collection of some of the tracks for their singles and other albums, so you COULD just make a digital version on your own by putting the tracks together in a playlist and/or burning it onto a cd.
     
  3. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Can you update your music blog? I like it that you don't recommend trendy hipster shit like the crap I've heard on SiriusXMU in the car or Bowie's Blackstar. Just because he's dying / dead, and it's his last album, doesn't mean the album is any good. Well, I guess there was worse. Bowie's released a lot of shit in his career.
     
  4. Vansen

    Vansen Gear Master (retiring)

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    @captkirk and I were just talking about this in a PM this week. I’m planning to update it this weekend.

    I actually prewrote a few posts at once, but didn’t want them to be my second post.
     
  5. DigMe

    DigMe Friend

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    Could not understand the hype on Blackstar. Didn’t like it at all.
     
  6. Skyline

    Skyline Double-blindly done with this hobby

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    I enjoyed it, actually, and I'm not a Bowie fan. *shrug*
     
  7. Vansen

    Vansen Gear Master (retiring)

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    As I was writing another (future) post for this this blog, I took a moment to reflect on the past decade of music. With the final year of the decade just around the corner, a clear front runner for my favorite album of the decade is apparent. This honor goes to Rhye's debut album, Woman.

    wolfmother_woman_5nxj.jpg

    With this album, it's just best to hop straight into a song:



    Overall, I'd call this album's feel as Sade's Love Deluxe meets Smoky Robinson with perfect execution. And while there are portions of the recordings that are hit-or-miss, it has decent dynamic range and you can tell the band really cared about how it sounds. All digital versions of this album sounds great, but vinyl copies can be questionable. It's difficult to find a record that's not warped. Even so, the pressing quality sounds subpar on about half of the tracks and is simply decent on the other half. The pressings of their sophomore album, Blood, are great though. I keep wishing they'll release another pressing of Woman using the same scrutiny.
     

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