Music Recommendations/What are you listening to?

So, time for some otaku/weeb anime-YouTube nostalgia throwbacks, with a story to boot!

This AMV has haunted me for most of my adult life, and that is no exaggeration. I remember watching it a ton back in the early days of YouTube, along with a Gaara/Lee vs Kimimaro AMV (that I later found was set to Breaking Benjamin's "Polyamorous") a different Naruto AMV using Sum 41's "The H3ll Song".* But once I got into anime and Naruto properly, the AMV seemed to have disappeared. I could remember bits and pieces of it and the main cords, but every song identifier software I used came up blank. YouTube was no help either, since at the time there was no "search from oldest" button and thousands of AMVs had been uploaded since. (As I learned today, it wouldn't have helped much anyways.) The closest I was to finding it once before was listening to the end part of this song in an airport restaurant, somewhere between eight and ten years ago.

So tonight, feeling a tad nostalgic, I tried all of my old methods again; as expected they failed. But then I decided to look up "Naruto oldest AMV," and lo-and-behold, there was a clue! Someone had been asking about a similar AMV on Reddit about five years ago. Another user was able to point them in the right direction, but by the time I got there, the link was dead. However, there was another link to a repost on YouTube, holding the music video linked above. And with it, the name of the song proper. "Explosive" by Bond.

And so, as of tonight, my quest for over a decade comes to an end. While I'm happy and fully complete, a part of me feels ambivalent. I should be ecstatic about this! I have information that I've wanted for years, and can enjoy it until my heart's content! Yet...ambivalence. Is it because I've outgrown the AMV? Is it because I'd given up hope for so long I don't know how to handle receiving it? Is it because, at the end of the day, it's just another song? Or is it because it's a relic and a memory - something I can forever chase but will never measure to what the nostalgia holds it to be?

Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the song as it is. It's a great song and I'm happy I found it. And the AMV is just as great as I remember it, if not a little blurry. Maybe I'm confusing at peace with ambivalence. Hmm...I'll have to give this some thought...

Here's the full version.

*This kicked off my teenage love for Sum 41, who I probably liked more than Linkin Park for a time in the mid-2000s.
Both of these other AMVs are seemingly still on YouTube. The Gaara fight one is apparently still linked to the original uploader (maybe) while the Sum 41 AMV uploader admits it's a repost of the original, which had been taken down. There were also a few more AMVs for those interested:
One had Three Day's Grace "Animal I Have Become." (Still up)
One had Linkin Park's "Dedicated" (Not up from what I've seen, but I could be wrong.)

EDIT: The original AMV didn't have the name of the song in the title.

 

Man...that is too bad you couldn't communicate your question to me (music with intense violins and EDM style drums).
I could have told you Bond was probably it in 2 seconds. Their sound is extremely unique...and I think among the first to blow up with such a mix.

I think my favorite of theirs is Fuego.

Though...Lindsey Stirling kind of took over my attention when she threw her hat in the ring.

Glad you found it.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Ha, if only we knew. Although honestly, I thought it was a far older song that it really is. And yeah, Lindsey Stirling is great! I haven't listened to most of her post-2017 songs, but she's been a favorite of mine for a while. (Vitamin String Quartet and Yellowcard were my first forays into violin-focused music.)

 

Hey guys,

I’m slowly working my way through all y’alls’ recommendations, and I had to stop by and say, thank you all! Today my thanks go especially to @Jayson (and also @Lazarus Dei & @Darth Snow) who have now officially gotten me hooked on The Black Keys

I didn’t know them, and I suspect that I might have confused The Black Keys with The Black Eyed Peas… but this was VERY MUCH up my alley Thanks!

 

I still haven't seen what I thought violin rock music would be back when I was a kid in high school 25 years ago.
And it's really weird that it hasn't caught on, because electric violins have become pretty common, but when I first saw one all the way back then all I could think about was what I was doing on the electric guitar, but...well...on an electric violin.

Most notably, it's like the electric guitar was invented and a pedal for distortion exists and yet no one really used it. It would be weird.
Just the complete absence in quantity of anyone using effects on electric violins is mind boggling to me.

Distortion, phasers, flangers, chorus, wah, compressor, delays, reverb, filters, slicers, modulators, pitch shifters, noise gates, fuzz boxes, boost, overdrive...

My mind exploded with the possibilities of what a Jimmy Hendrix or Kurt Cobain of the violin would sound like, and then... Bond.
Don't get me wrong, they make amazing music. But nearly every time you hear a violin in a rock/metal/etc...modern set up, it's clean.
If it is effected, it's only mildly, or the most simplest of forms - the violinist isn't really pushing the definition of the instrument's sound and the definition of how it's played. The most common is a reverb and/or a looper.

Even when someone throws it into punk setup...it's...clean. The guitar's dirty, the violin's clean.
WHY?

You just don't see the typical electric rock violinist tossing an electric violin around and just beating the crap out of it to make its guts squeal, and just generally purposefully playing the thing "wrong", making all violinists in the world turn their noses up at them and just giving them a middle finger while doing it.

Like...dude...if ever there was an excuse to reintroduce the ridiculous lead shredding of the 70's rock and 80's hair bands, a dirty electric violin is it.
World?
*silence*
*sigh*

Seriously...it's not a normal thing. It's a "that guy on youtube" thing.
Like...this is all I'm saying...like....get shredding the crap out of it and making them scream and howl - get in there! It's friggen electric!

For instance...check out what this guy can do with the da*n thing.

He does a great talk of where I look at it all and go...yeah...what the f- man?

But he's done all this work and....pfff
Mainstream rock never went anywhere with it.

Cheers,
Jayson

 

A few Japanese rock bands I like FINALLY have some of their latest music uploaded to iTunes, so I bought that as soon as possible. It's annoying that iTunes admits that the music came out anywhere from two weeks to a year ago, but it's only appearing now. But hey, it's here and I have it. (Sadly Aimer's new album doesn't drop until March, and Udata's until April.)

Nothing's Carved In Stone's latest album By Your Side as at the center of this. One of the songs, "The Savoir" I listened to last year via a guitar cover on YouTube. Listening to it without the extra guitar makes the song feel a little foreign to me, but I also get to hear some of the subtle aspects of the song now, so that's good. Overall the album is middle of the road for me. Strangers In Heaven, PARALLEL LIVES, REVOLT, and even MAZE are easily my favorite three, but every album has its bangers. I'm still discovering them here, but "Alive," "Still," "The Savoir" and "Blow It Up" are the four that stick out to me right now.

Next up is Band-Maid's new single, "About Us." This song is very much a pop rock ballad of sorts, something that was missing from the album proper. At the same time, this song does NOT fit the theme or tone of the latest album, so releasing it as a single was a very smart choice. This song is amazingly heartfelt and intimate. This is the band's message to the rest of the world in a way, and it's great. AND THAT BASS during the breakdown in the middle!

From the album proper, here's a lyric translation of the song "Black Hole." I've talked about how great it is before (and how hard the drummer goes), but here it is for all to listen to.

I still need to listen to Red's latest album...and Coldrain's...

I may have watched this just for the Rock lookalike dude.

 

@Angelman you might also like Greta Van Fleet

 

That was definitelly interesting. They want very much to be Led Zepplin & Queen, it seems, and there's nothing wrong with that!

 

This is some of the most on-point and melodically locked drumming I've ever seen!
There's not one spot I don't just absolutely love in this!
This is the drumming I dream about existing!
El Estepario Siberiano!

Cheers,
Jayson

 

Listening to Lil Uzi Vert's "Sanguine Paradise" (clean of course!) this week for some reason.

 

Deftones & A Perfect Circle

 

Utada Hikaru's new album/EP comes out tomorrow in conjunction with the new Neon Genesis Evangelion movie. I'm not a fan of Evangelion, but I am a fan of Utada, so I'll be picking it up when the full thing drops. But not even an hour ago she dropped the music video for the titular song, "One Last Kiss." More coy than sultry, bittersweet with a little bit of pop on the side, and filled to the brim with love, this song is another home run for the veteran singer. It's not my favorite song by her, but I can see it working its way to my repeat list for her very easily.

Speaking of Udata and her works, here's an awesome cover for "Simple and Clean." Covers of this song are definitely a dime a dozen, but the quality ones always bring something unique to the singers to the table, and that's definitely the case here. (Other ones I recommend are Amalee's cover of "Dearly Beloved" and Mree's cover of "Simple and Clean.")

I've talked a little about Atarashii Gakkou in the YouTube recommendation thread, so I'll just leave some of the new songs I'm enjoying by them here. "Toumei Girl" has the same feeling in the intro as "Bokura Hikari" from the Persona 5 Royal soundtrack, and "zzz" feels like something straight out of Persona 4. The intro of "Toumei Boy" reminds me of Pink's song "So What," which makes it feel like a nice little throwback. The lyrics of all three are completely different than the songs they remind me of, but that's part of the fun.

On the more chill side, we have some calming beats. Seiho's song "Double Bed" feels like a nice mix of Drake's "Girls Like Beyonce" and TastyTreat's "Up Late" in its speed and beats. Sans' "Why Don't We Come" is a great blend of urban chill and what me and my parents call "space lounge" music.

MONDO GROSSO has a nice song called False Sympathy. I'm not sure how much I'll like her - and the music video isn't one I'd call Safe For Work just to be on the cautious side, but it's not a bad song at all.

And a nice throwback to last year, the band Gesu no Kiwami Otome has a translanguaged version of their song "Jinsei no Hari." It's has a woman singing the lead vocals this time, so maybe calling it a cover would technically be more accurate, but I can't say for sure right now. It's not as good as the original, but it does keep the spirit of the song.

 

I picked this up just before Christmas but things were hectic and I just got around to listening to it the past few days.


It's the farewell tour so it isn't really them at their best, there was too much fighting and Clapton's heart wasn't in it anymore but it's still Cream so it's awesome. It has 4 concerts: Oakland, L.A., San Diego and the final show at Royal Albert Hall. Unfortunately the latter doesn't exist in very good quality apparently and sounds like a below average bootleg but the three California shows sound great.