by Keith Savage on December 26, 2011 · 1 comment
Trackpacking is a recurring series highlighting musicians that inspire me to travel.
I still have all of the equipment: The acoustic guitar, the Novation Remote and M-Audio Trigger Finger MIDI controllers, Ableton Live and Logic software, the purpose-bought MacBook Pro that I now use to blog. There was a time not long ago when I threw myself into making music without a lick of musical training. If my Trackpacking choices are any indication, you’ll know what kind of music I sought to create – glitchy, ambient, electronic pieces suffused with emotion. I hacked together a couple dozen tracks over the span of five years. Read more...
It all started with “Yellow” back in 2000, a song far from my favorite and one I don’t really understand. But that’s fine, Coldplay’s been misunderstood for as long as they’ve been making music. When their debut album, Parachutes, dropped in July of 2000, music critics compared their sound to another British rock band: Radiohead. High praise indeed, but to my amateur eyes the comparison seemed tenuous (both bands have English frontmen who play the piano and guitar and sing in falsetto, but…). Playing in the shadow of Radiohead haunted Coldplay’s early career, but these days you’re more likely to hear them compared to U2.
All this is to say that Coldplay is a dynamic band with musical moods to soundtrack any trip. Read more...
As with many of my favorite musicians, Aphex Twin was first seeded to me by my brother. Sometime in my late teens he gave me Selected Ambient Works 85-92 as a birthday present, and there was no looking back. My subsequent foray into ambient and electronic music led me to some of my all-time favorite musicians, groups like Boards of Canada, Underworld, and Orbital. For me, it would be fair to say it all started with Aphex Twin, one Richard D. James.
He’s a bit of an odd duck. Read more...
For the last year and a half, the Trackpacking series has focused on musicians that inspire me to travel. Today, I’m highlighting an artist who reminds me of home, whose sounds somehow conjure the ice-limned window panes and silent white pine forests of Wisconsin winters.
Bon Iver, a purposeful misspelling of “good winter” in French, is the project of Justin Vernon, a man the same age as me who went to high school in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, just 90 minutes north of where I went to high school. Living in western Wisconsin during my adolescence was a difficult time, all country music and shining and chewing tobacco at the gas station. It wasn’t my scene – I didn’t do those things – and listening to Bon Iver, I suspect Justin didn’t either. Read more...
by Keith Savage on April 20, 2011 · 1 comment
Thievery Corporation has introduced me to entire genres of music I would have never found a way to enjoy on my own. From Bhangra to Afrobeat and Cumbia to Arabic hip hop, the guys of Thievery have a masterful way of curating talent and finding musicians to slot into their songs and remixes. They’re not shy about looking in their own backyard, either. Enter Nickodemus, a Brooklyn-area DJ/producer with world-spanning musical tastes that make him right at home on Thievery’s ESL Music label.
Let me put it simply: this is feel-good house music. Read more...
A hunter, oft-stubbled and bleary-eyed, driven by an insatiable hunger for exploration and experience - and perhaps a chance to thin the herd of caffeinated and alcoholic beverages. From the highlands and islands to Edinburgh, Glasgow, and the Borders, I explore Scotland with a pen in hand and a fire in the belly (which could be partly from the whisky). 
