The Merrymaker’s Orchestrina - Act 3

FACEBOOK: https://mtouch.facebook.com/TheMerrymakersOrchestrina/?__tn__=%2AsH-R

It wasn’t but a few years ago when I believed the best music in our culture belonged to the past and even the most talented among younger, more modern generations lacked something I admired in their older, iconic counterparts. I theorized the lack existed because the frame of reference for aspiring musicians today is so much more limited than I experienced as a young man. We are drowning in media, inundated with choices, and our reeling brains satisfying shrinking attention spans with increasingly narrow selections. No one seemed to be in it for the long haul; everything sounded tailored towards the least common denominator, and fixated on familiar themes without any individuality or invention. New York City based songwriter Ryan Shivdasani and his band The Merrymaker’s Orchestrina, however, is evidence for me and any reasonable listener that there are extraordinarily talented musicians and songwriters working today with the ambition to spread their artistic wings as far as they like.

The Merrymaker’s Orchestrina’s Act 3 has thirteen songs with a potpourri of styles. Shivdasani and his musical partners are gifted with obvious chops, but they manage what a lot of top flight musicians can’t – subvert their inclination to exhibit the extent of their skills while still utilizing what they know to extend the song’s appeal. The songs “Particle Craze” and “Watched You Out My Window” lay strongest claim to traditional songwriting, but Shivdasani skewers our expectations with a sonic landscape all his own – rhythms seem slightly off, the vocals are treated with suggestive post production effects, and the latter song may reminds some of 60’s psychedelic pop, melodic, but slightly unsettled in a way you just can’t turn your attention from.

Some listeners may not initially know what to make of “Cowboys and Indians”. In some ways, it sounds like a glorious riff on classic Devo and spiked with a spastic amphetamine rush. Others may hear lightly demented surf music coming through and there’s definitely a punk rock influence bubbling through the song as well. It’s one of the album’s shorter songs, under three minutes, and bristles with kinetic energy from the outset, but listening to the lyrics reveals one of the more thoughtful pieces of Shivdasani writing on Act 3. There’s an aspect of the singer/songwriter to what Shivdasani is doing and the words aren’t afterthoughts in any way.

There are a couple of quiet interludes on the album and the first of them comes with the track “Slip Away”. It’s a folk influenced song, surely a style Shivdasani has thorough exposure to through his own listening and presence in the New York City area, and the recurring vocal harmonies are all the added gloss needed for this song.

“There’s No Such Thing as God” revisits the suggestion of punk influence heard with “Cowboys and Indians” but, this time out, makes no bones about it. It’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but even those uncomfortable with its message can concede it’s an effective tune. “Blood Country” is a wicked good track, but not particularly pleasant – what mitigates it, however, is the cracking musical performance that manages, while paring things back to the barest of essentials for a song, still manages to pack an enormous wallop. The album closes with “Wait Behind”, the second acoustic track, and it’s a little lusher than we heard with “Slip Away” with some melancholic instrumental breaks built in. One can scarcely imagine much better in modern music, at least for a listener like me – The Merrymaker’s Orchestrina Act 3 hits all the marks for me and whets my appetite for more.

I-TUNES: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/act-3/1375728072

Lloyd Bear

AV Super Sunshine drops explosive Single

URL: https://www.avsupersunshine.com/

 “Time Bomb” comes in two distinct mixes, the radio DJ and club cuts, and both pack one hell of a wallop in different ways. One characteristic distinguishing both versions is the five star production focusing the musical elements of each song in such a way that everything works in concert rather than listeners experiencing the feeling of different sounds and instruments pulling against each other or working at cross purposes. The club mix is very uptempo, but backs off the pace at a handful of points in a way generating tremendous momentum for the next passage and the effect is quite good for listeners. 

Electronic instruments dominate the club mix, certainly not unexpectedly, but they are always presented in such a way that it never feels overwrought – the mixes are very different from one another, but one common approach linking them is how muscular both takes are in approaching AV’s musical ideas. They come leaping to life in the club mix and it isn’t hard to hear how appreciative listeners and audiences across the world will be to hear this version.

Unlike many acts in this vein, there’s never any sense of Bradford attempting to bury the vocals in order to strengthen the sound of the electronica. Instead, he wisely keeps them equal throughout much of the performance and only restructures the singing in a major way during the club version’s second half. Guitar and melody take on important parts with this mix, although there isn’t as much emphasis during the club version as we hear with the radio DJ cut. The club mix is much longer, as well, running over five minutes long, but we never hear any sense of Bradford overreaching to make an impact on listeners

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The radio version of “Time Bomb” shares some of the same mounting quality we hear in the club mix, but it likewise never comes off overcooked in any way. The same muscularity makes this work as well, but it stresses traditional instruments much more than the synthesizer work in the club version. Despite the quality of the instrumental playing, the key for the radio version ends up being the strong vocals courtesy of AV’s lead singing coupled with some strong backing vocals. It’s a much shorter number than the club take, less than four minutes in comparison to its companion, but both songs share another quality – the laser-beam push of both versions never wastes your time and involves listeners from the very beginning. 

It’s a performance designed to have the widest possible appeal, but it’s equally appealing to fans who’ve been listening to music for years. I’m not even that much of a fan when it comes to electronic instruments, but this song made me a believer earlier on and it holds up under repeated listens.

CLUB MIX: https://www.reverbnation.com/play_now/29911618

RADIO DJ MIX: https://soundcloud.com/av-super-sunshine/time-bomb-radio-dj-mix

Richard Spradley

Conceptz drops new Single

URL: https://www.conceptzmusic.net/

There’s been a lot of debate over what’s going on with hip-hop right now. Everyone in the music media seems to be convinced that hip-hop is under siege from external influences who don’t have its best interests at heart. If you ask me, in addition to all of this pointless arguing, it’s the big egos tug-of-warring over stylistic and financial control over hip-hop as a commercial entity that is what’s really killing the scene right now. Indie rappers like New York twosome Conceptz often seem like the only ones swimming against the current when it comes to megalomania in hip-hop, and in my opinion their new song “Splash” is their greatest contribution to battle yet, embodying the true essence of what it means to be focused on making art for the sake of art.

“Splash” is an grand, anthemic call to push shyness to the side and get a little crazy, but it’s less of a party jam than it is a straight up missile fired point blank in the direction of the remaining northeast hip-hop elite who stand between Conceptz remaining underground heroes and becoming a world-wide smash. The damage is extensive; I haven’t heard anyone banging out this kind of red blooded thunder with nothing but a beat and a microphone in years, which is odd considering that this aggressive approach to rapping is probably what made the genre so appealing and addictive listening back in the 90’s.

Conceptz has mad attitude, but “Splash” isn’t as threatening or severe as what some college radio rappers often produce, making this song far more accessible to the casual hip-hop fan than the average track of its class. It’s possible that Conceptz decided that they needed to take things in a slightly more polished direction as this decade ends and the next one dawns, but I don’t think the decision was one that was solely based on a market strategy. In fact, I think that this refined addition to their discography is more characteristic of a band maturing and growing into their sound a little more, which is something that doesn’t always happen, even when a group has been together for as long as Conceptz has been.

I’d recommend “Splash” as an excellent starter track for anyone just getting into Conceptz huge collection of recorded works. It’s a great way to get a glimpse at the full scope of the pair’s almost limitless abilities both as producers and as songwriters, but most of all, it’s could get a lot more people previously disinterested in hip-hop to give the genre another chance to have the impact on their lives that it’s had on all of ours. It’s a commendable and quite honorable notion, and in my gut I can feel the pride that Conceptz takes in knowing that their music is having the effect on pop culture that it is at this present moment in time. Who knows what will come next for these two as their story continues to be told before our very eyes.

INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/darealconceptz/

Casey Logan