A Call for your Brief Thoughts on a Recent Listen

edited January 2012 in General
If you don't think of yourself as a writer for the Mig blog please keep reading this anyway. You can help us put a blog post together that will be useful to others, give artists a little exposure, and help bring in traffic.

Check the music that you have purchased or downloaded or streamed enough to pay attention in the last month or two. Are there any titles in there that meet the following two criteria?

(1) you liked them
(2) they were released relatively recently (not necessarily last week, but, say, the last 4-6 months. (If they are not at all well known that could even stretch further)).

Write a couple of sentences that say what the release is called, who it is by, what the genre is, and simply why you liked it. Post them here. We'll gather them into a collection of mini reviews every time we have enough. No worries about grammar, we can edit. Don't worry about code, urls etc if you're not comfortable with that - just your text and where to find the album will do fine.

Include a note regarding whether you would like to be credited, and if so under what name (or nickname or initials). If not, it will just go under "MiG staff" with no credit next to the individual review.

Thank you!!

Comments

  • Okay, here's mine. Whoever compiles the article, I included a url for the artist & label, as well as the html language for the embedded player (which will need to be added on the html "side"). Also, I uploaded an album cover, file peterbroderick_float. Whatever album image size you want to use is good with me. I like the idea of the entire article being from "MiG Staff", but with our individual names scrunched in with our respective reviews. That way if artists and labels want to contact us, they have a name. Or not... I'm not married to the idea of having our names in there.

    Peter Broderick - "Float" (url = http://www.peterbroderick.net/?page_id=2)

    Multi-instrumentalist Peter Broderick's debut album. Adds to a growing list of Indie-Hush recordings... Peaceful ambient music drowning in melody while rejecting most formalized percussion strategies. Piano joined by violins, cello, drums, banjo, guitar, and some occasional vocals. A stunningly beautiful album.

    Released on the Type Records label. (url = http://typerecords.com/releases/float)

    Embed player:
    <object height="81" width="100%"> <param name="movie" value="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F306608&show_comments=false&auto_play=false&color=ff7700"></param> <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param> <embed allowscriptaccess="always" height="81" src="https://player.soundcloud.com/player.swf?url=http%3A%2F%2Fapi.soundcloud.com%2Ftracks%2F306608&show_comments=false&auto_play=false&color=ff7700" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="100%"></embed> </object> <span><a href="http://soundcloud.com/_type/a-snowflake">A Snowflake</a> by <a href="http://soundcloud.com/_type">_type</a></span>
  • kezkez
    edited January 2012
    Is anybody familiar with the new indie rock album by Radical Face (aka Ben Cooper) that was released last fall called "The Roots"? I just discovered it and am hugely impressed with the whole concept. "The Roots" will be the first of a trilogy of albums following the genealogical roots of one fictional family beginning in the 1800's and going up to the 1950's by the trilogy's end. The 2nd album in the trilogy will be "The Branches," and the 3rd will be "The Relatives".

    Many (or most?) of the tracks are songs set to short stories that he has written. You can read a few of the short stories on his website. This is an absolutely brilliant project that MiG needs to do an extensive review of. I can't write it and do it justice since it's outside of the sort of music I usually listen to (but I'm very much drawn to it and will have to download it), but even so, it would take me a loooong time to write a review of it and somebody needs to do one now!).

    I'm just as impressed with Cooper himself as I am with his ambitious recording project. Take a look at his website! This is a very ambitious independent artist you just gotta love. He may have bitten off more than he'll find he's able to chew with all his projects, but you have to admire a guy who connects with his listeners the way he does. (He apologizes repeatedly on his website to fans who haven't yet got a reply from him to their emails. He evidently intends to answer each one.) He badly wants to connect with and keep in touch with his audience. He invites people to send him their short stories (preferably true ones), which he may use as a springboard for writing a song. He also makes videos of guitar tutorials so people can learn to play his songs. Also, prior to the release of each of the trilogy's albums, he's releasing a free EP that is connected to the album, but does not contain any tracks of the album itself. The free EP to "The Roots" is available now and is called "The Bastards: Vol. 1." Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 free EPs will be released near the release of the full albums "The Branches" and "The Relatives."

    This is a genuinely sincere, open and honest guy who deserves all the free publicity he can get, as he is doing everything himself.

    I got quite caught up in reading about all his projects on his website:
    http://www.radicalface.com/

    You can stream his new album "The Roots" here:
    http://www.electricmariachi.com/album-streams/indierock/radical-face-the-family-tree-the-roots-full-album-stream

    Somebody please write an article on this guy!
  • I'm certainly not the person to write such an article, Kez, but I'll definitely follow him up, thanks
  • kezkez
    edited January 2012
    Yeah, I'm definitely checking him out, too. I'm listening to some samples of his previous album, "Ghost," which I think is also very impressive.
  • @kez, on the one hand I understand your hesitation about reviewing outside your genres - I feel the same way about some genres (how would I know what is good about this?). On the other hand, it seems as if in this case first, a chunk of the review would be describing what is interesting/unique about the project and why you find it interesting (which you have started to do already above) and, second, you have a good dose of enthusiasm for it. I would suggest you went ahead and drafted something along those lines, with most of the focus on how interesting the project is, and if you need input on a section describing the actual musical nuances, then maybe someone else here can help out with that part. Just a suggestion. A spiriti of reckless abandon is probably not a terribly bad thing for MiG, especially of rooted in excitement for something.
  • @Kez (cc: @GP)

    Yeah, I thought we were just doing some tiny recs for this article. A couple sentences (or more) of what intrigued us and/or made us love a particular recording. Based on what you've already written, I say edit what you've got and include it. If this thing becomes a regular MiG feature, I plan to include a few things from time to time that I may not be particularly crazy about, but I either love the concept or the level of difficulty and want to mention it.

    I mean, Kez, you've already intrigued me with what you've written on this thread... you should bundle it up into something to use in the article... seems like a waste not to.

    Cheers.
  • @K+J yes, at least a three-line review; seems to me you might have enough momentum for a full piece here also. (No reason why it couldn't be both - Tiny Reviews can blossom into full reviews if merited.)
  • Yes, I knew this thread wasn't the ideal place to post for this, but it seemed the best place to throw out the suggestion.

    The reason I hesitated to try my hand at writing an article about "The Roots" is because I'm not sure I can get into this music enough - it sounds like it is a little more of a "downer" than I like my music to be, but strangely at the same time I can't seem to leave it alone (kind of like having to look at an awful accident that you really don't want to see, but you look anyway).

    But the more I read about this project and the artist, the more I am drawn to them. I'm going to download the album, give it some good full listens, and go ahead and write something up - it will be a full article cause I don't think a three-liner will be adequate.
Sign In or Register to comment.