Kaleidoscope by Tiesto
Mar. 15th, 2011 11:10 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretTiesto is strange and hard for me to interpret, in that on a lot of songs, it's not Tiesto's contribution to these songs that seems to matter. But let's back up a moment.
Tiesto, fka DJ Tiesto, is an electronic musician. Er... he is a musician who makes electronic music, not a musician who is electronic. I think. He might be a robot. Who can really say, these days? My past exposure to Tiesto's music came primarily through the thin and sometimes nonexistent walls of my college apartment. My roommate often listened to his music while studying. So my first response, on the first listen, was nostalgic as I looked back on those times and mused. As I listened, other reactions pushed the nostalgia away.
The album consists of a dozen and a half dance songs, the majority featuring a guest vocalist or vocalists. And the few songs that are purely 'instrumental' were unmemorable, worth ignoring and eventually worth skipping as the week proceeded. The thing that makes this album worthwhile to listen to are the guest vocalists.
It's a varied crew. Jonsi from Sigur Ros. Tegan and Sara. Nelly Furtado. Kele Okereke of Bloc Party. A bunch of others. They're all smart choices for the album. They're interesting voices and intelligent, expressive singers. Every one of them takes the song they sing on and makes it their own. And the music is carefully structured to bring out what makes their voice interesting. These are really, really effective partnerships of DJ and singer.
Still, it's funny. I have no interest in Tiesto as Tiesto, per se. I find his music fundamentally boring. But he's really good at making these singers sound better and I really liked quite a lot of this album. So I must concede his talent, though I question his ambition.
Standouts included Jonsi's song "Kaleidoscope", ethereal and post-rocky yet still danceable, in a way that strongly reminded me of Sigur Ros's fantastic album "With a Buzz in our Ears We Play Endlessly" from a few years back. And Priscilla Ahn's "Strong", with a forceful female voice whose playfulness kept surprising me. And Tegan and Sara's "Feel It In My Bones", probably the best dance song on the album.
Something worth noting is that the songs I liked best were the ones that found some sort of accommodation between acoustic and electronic music. Real and/or synth pianos and strings dueling it out with a drum machine, for example. Autotuned and non-autotuned voices duetting. Intelligent gestures in this direction are the future of music, not some sort of extreme push to one side.
Also, thumbs up for the umlaut in Tiesto's name, though I've been too lazy to type it out.
Tiesto, fka DJ Tiesto, is an electronic musician. Er... he is a musician who makes electronic music, not a musician who is electronic. I think. He might be a robot. Who can really say, these days? My past exposure to Tiesto's music came primarily through the thin and sometimes nonexistent walls of my college apartment. My roommate often listened to his music while studying. So my first response, on the first listen, was nostalgic as I looked back on those times and mused. As I listened, other reactions pushed the nostalgia away.
The album consists of a dozen and a half dance songs, the majority featuring a guest vocalist or vocalists. And the few songs that are purely 'instrumental' were unmemorable, worth ignoring and eventually worth skipping as the week proceeded. The thing that makes this album worthwhile to listen to are the guest vocalists.
It's a varied crew. Jonsi from Sigur Ros. Tegan and Sara. Nelly Furtado. Kele Okereke of Bloc Party. A bunch of others. They're all smart choices for the album. They're interesting voices and intelligent, expressive singers. Every one of them takes the song they sing on and makes it their own. And the music is carefully structured to bring out what makes their voice interesting. These are really, really effective partnerships of DJ and singer.
Still, it's funny. I have no interest in Tiesto as Tiesto, per se. I find his music fundamentally boring. But he's really good at making these singers sound better and I really liked quite a lot of this album. So I must concede his talent, though I question his ambition.
Standouts included Jonsi's song "Kaleidoscope", ethereal and post-rocky yet still danceable, in a way that strongly reminded me of Sigur Ros's fantastic album "With a Buzz in our Ears We Play Endlessly" from a few years back. And Priscilla Ahn's "Strong", with a forceful female voice whose playfulness kept surprising me. And Tegan and Sara's "Feel It In My Bones", probably the best dance song on the album.
Something worth noting is that the songs I liked best were the ones that found some sort of accommodation between acoustic and electronic music. Real and/or synth pianos and strings dueling it out with a drum machine, for example. Autotuned and non-autotuned voices duetting. Intelligent gestures in this direction are the future of music, not some sort of extreme push to one side.
Also, thumbs up for the umlaut in Tiesto's name, though I've been too lazy to type it out.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-19 06:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 05:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 04:35 pm (UTC)My favorite song of 2010 was... well, that was the Arcade Fire's year, in my opinion. "Deep Blue", "Half Light II", "We Used to Wait", all among my favorite songs of the year. Also, Renee Fleming's cover of the Arcade Fire's "Intervention" and Peter Gabriel's cover of their "My Body Is a Cage".
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 04:37 pm (UTC)That Peter Gabriel cover sounds awesome. Any idea where I can hear it, before I go google?
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-21 06:05 pm (UTC)