Showing all posts about music
Voting open for Triple J’s Hottest 100
15 December 2021
Voting is open for Australian radio station Triple J’s annual Hottest 100 listener’s poll. I don’t hear too much radio format and have come to regard the Hottest 100 in the same way I do the long and short lists of literary awards, a great place to seek out quality music listening inspiration. Voting closes on 17 January 2022, and the countdown can be heard a few days later on 22 January.
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The two hundred greatest Australian albums of all time
10 December 2021
Keeping it all Australian today, not the plan, just the way it turned out: Rolling Stone’s list of the top two hundred albums of all time. While the top twenty titles include household names, only the work of two artists, Tame Impala, and 5 Seconds of Summer, is less than ten years old. Many of the top albums were released in the latter part of last century, and I’ll be curious to see how they’ve fared in terms of chart position, in say twenty years’ time.
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Searching for the definition of Vapor Soul music
4 December 2021
I’ve spent the last few days, since my Spotify Wrapped compilation for 2021 landed earlier this week, finding out what I can about a music genre called vapor soul; or, as I prefer to spell it: vapour soul. According to Spotify Wrapped, vapour soul was the genre I listened to the most over the last twelve months.
That’s fascinating because I had no idea the majority of the music I consumed during 2021 was vapour soul. In point of fact, I didn’t even know vapour soul existed until this week. Yet when I went looking, I found references to vapour soul that were almost four years old. Brilliant. Vapour soul has been a thing for years, but I only find out about it in the closing days of 2021.
But while vapour soul has a history, I still didn’t have a definition. To that end I went straight to the source, Spotify, or more precisely, the Spotify Community Blog. A search yielded a few results for vapour soul, but they were mainly the playlists of members, whose selections included vapour soul tracks. So I cast the net a little further out, where I found an in-depth article at Phases which summarises vapour soul thusly:
From what I can tell, vapor + soul = mellow-sounding/ear-pleasing music featuring fluid sounds, life-giving production and lyrics based in an uncertain or somewhat sad state of mind.
That might describe some of the music I listen to, but glancing at my top five listened-to tracks of 2021, which include The Sound of Violence by Dennis De Laat, I Follow Rivers by Lykke Li, and Everybody Rise by Amy Shark, I couldn’t say they are tracks “based in an uncertain or somewhat sad state of mind.” I decided to keep searching. That took me to an article by Cara Houlton at The Focus, where I discovered there is an apparently related genre known as vapour twitch:
Whilst some Spotify users might only just be seeing the genre vapor twitch for the first time on their Wrapped in 2021, the genre has been appearing since 2019. A micro-genre of electronic music, ‘vapor’ can be best described as having a foggy, ethereal sound, whilst ‘twitch’ adds post-futuristic EDM beats.
There’s another useful definition of vapour. If twitch refers more to post-futuristic EDM beats, then the soul in vapour soul derives – maybe – from soul music, defined here by dictionary.com:
A fervent type of popular music developed in the late 1950s by Black Americans as a secularized form of gospel music, with rhythm-and-blues influences, and distinctive for its earthy expressiveness, variously plaintive or raucous vocals, and often passionate romanticism or sensuality.
I guess I could see a “passionate romanticism or sensuality” in some of the music I’ve listened to in the last year. So far though, I’ve not found a simple, five to ten word, definition of vapour soul that gives me the succinct clarify I crave. Next I tried that veritable favourite stand-by of many, Urban Dictionary:
BS edgy genre made up by an international media services provider of Swedish origin. Artists: unknown.
“Artists unknown” sounds about right, as does BS. I’ll defer to Wikipedia again, where Spotify Wrapped is described as “a viral marketing campaign.” If the goal is to get people talking, then the marketing campaign succeeded. In the end then I still may not fully understand what vapour soul is, but it is kind of cool to be listening to a genre of music that seems to flummox even its adherents.
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Darren Hanlon’s literature inspired music playlist
2 December 2021
Last week Australian musician Darren Hanlon put together a music playlist inspired by works of literature for radio station Double J. Included is a cover of the old Dire Straits hit Romeo and Juliet, based of course on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare, by Lisa Mitchell.
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Darren Hanlon, literature, music
The retro themed artwork of the soundtrack cover for Licorice Pizza
20 November 2021
Retro themed artwork for the soundtrack cover for Paul Thomas Anderson’s retro themed movie Licorice Pizza. The title track is credited to Radiohead’s Jonny Greenwood. I couldn’t find out who the cover designer is, does anyone know? You can hear most of the soundtrack here on Spotify, sans, at the moment, Greenwood’s contribution.
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film, Jonny Greenwood, music, Paul Thomas Anderson
Genesis Owusu wins Triple J/RAGE music video of the year 2021
18 November 2021
Australian musician Genesis Owusu has been named winner of the J Award for both best album and music video of 2021. The Other Black Dog took out the music video award, being a track lifted from his debut long-player Smiling with No Teeth, winner of the album of the year gong. The J Award is presented by radio station Triple J, and late night weekend music TV show RAGE, every November as part of Ausmusic Month.
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River, a documentary by Jennifer Peedom and Joseph Nizeti
17 November 2021
The spectacular trailer for River, a documentary by Australian film producer Jennifer Peedom, and musician and composer Joseph Nizeti. The soundtrack includes music by the Australian Chamber Orchestra, and Radiohead.
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film, Jennifer Peedom, Joseph Nizeti, music, trailer
Waves of Change, music by Juhi Bansal
16 November 2021
An ethereal soundtrack composed by Juhi Bansal accompanies the video clip for Waves of Change.
Waves of Change takes inspiration from the story of the Bangladesh Girls Surf Club, a group started years ago in the Cox Bazaar region of Bangladesh. In a place where girls are forbidden from even entering the water, kept from an education and typically married away at 11-12 years of age, a group of young girls learned to surf and imagined a world for themselves full of freedom and choices.
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Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black enhanced by Spotify
30 October 2021
It’s been fifteen years since the release of late English singer Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album. Holy moly, fifteen years. To mark the occasion Spotify have accorded the defining release the enhanced treatment:
Spotify worked with Winehouse’s label and estate to create a bunch of content for the playlist: video clips but also new ‘canvas’ looping videos, ‘storylines’ lyrics analysis snippets, and video of other artists talking about how they’ve been influenced by Winehouse and the album.
Check it out here on Spotify.
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Silverchair will not be reforming: Daniel Johns
23 October 2021
Daniel Johns, lead singer of the defunct NSW Central Coast based indie rock act Silverchair, speaking on Channel Ten’s The Project, said the band will not be reforming, and he has no intention of performing live again. For anyone not around at the time, Silverchair was a defining act in Australian music.
He said he had struggled to shut down the persistent rumours that Silverchair, who split in 2011, would one day reform. “I was like, ‘This is really starting to effect my mental health’. Because I am saying ‘that’s it’, and every time I try to tell the truth, someone told a lie,” he told The Project. “So I was like, ‘I wouldn’t get Silverchair back together with a gun to my head for $1 million’. Maybe that was too harsh in hindsight.”
Hope springs eternal I think. In a note posted to Silverchair’s Facebook page in May 2011, the band said they were going into “indefinite hibernation.” It might have suggested to some fans a return was on the cards at some point. John’s conversation with The Project can be streamed here until about 20 January 2022.
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