You Are Not An Airplane!

"Young Hearts Spark Fire" - Japandroids

Part I

We Use to Dream/ Now We Worry About Dying
We Use To Dream/ Now We Worry About Dying
I Don't Want To Worry About Dying
I Just Want To Worry About those Sunshine Girls

Part II
Unbridled longing for something more in life.

Part III
Everyone at some point in their life probably wakes up one morning and realizes that they are worrying about the wrong things. What you should be worrying about is figuring out how you are going to be an airplane. Seriously. Get on that.

This song is about that. It totally beats.

Part IV

I'm as Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg

"You Don't Know What Love Is" - 2000F & J Kamata

So, the seminal dub-step/techno/bad shit crazy label Hyperdub just released a compilation in celebration of their five year anniversary. Bat shit crazy doesn't even start to describe what these tracks are like. Sometimes when I try to explain to people what electronic music is like I throw around themes like music for robots or beats you would hear in space but this Hyperdub compilation pretty much blows those descriptions to pieces. Over the course of twenty some banging tracks Hyperdub once again asks listeners to rethink what electronic/dance/techno music is. These tracks are from a place in time that is impossible to comprehend. Apocalyptic it is not, but dark, for sure. And with more computer animated whistles and swirly sounds then you can shack a stick at this album is well worth the time and investment. God damn the future is going to be awesome. We are all going to be listening to these tracks in our flying cars in no time. Fuck. Yes. Not only are we going to be jamming to this in the future but this track, "You Don't Know What Love Is" will be the song you get down to in your bedroom with your significant other. This is music for robots to make love to.

End of the Month Jams Vol. 1

Here at The One That Beats we are lazy. Not like, pot head lazy, like, we sit around all day with no jobs and just eat potato chips on the couch all day. It's just we got a lot on our respective plates. So, sometimes we don't get to post all of the songs we really want to so periodically we will be posting these dumps of songs we really like. Someday we will actually turn this into one mix you can download and or add some kind of player right on the site so visitors can stream these tunes. Hope you enjoy

"People" - J Dilla (Donuts)
"Airworks" - J Dilla (Donuts)
Yea, ok, so sue me. I must be the last music fan on earth to have picked up Donuts. Sometimes, for no real good reason, I refuse to listen to albums because either people I don't like are really into them or I'm just tired of being told how good it is so I stay away. I fucked up on this one for doing that. I could just put the entire album on here but lets just start with these two.

"Ground for Divorce" - Big Business (Here Comes The Waterworks)
Quick review of Where The Wild Things Are - not all that good. Little bit of a let down. Here is the problem; zero plot. I mean, absolutely zero. And it didn't help that every piece of dialogue for the Wild Things made them sound like total fucking stoners. It made my head hurt after awhile.

"VCR" - The Xx (S/T)
HYPE HYPE HYPE HYPE. I read the other day that they had to cancel a couple up-coming shows because of exhaustion. Really? There is no way you guys are older than 22 years old. How the fuck are you guys canceling shows because of exhaustion? You have any idea how many 22 year-olds would give their left fucking foot to be in you position and you guys are too fucking tired to go on stage and play the 10 god damn songs you know? Pussies.

"Flight of the Feathered Serpent" - Fuck Buttons
Easily a top contender for song title of the year, from arguably, the best named band of the year. The last album was good, but this one is leaps and bounds better. Also, no one can tell me that you couldn't put this song on and it doesn't make you want to run through a god damn wall.

"One Beat" - Sleater-Kinney (One Beat)
"Far Away" - Sleater -Kinney (One Beat)
I'm going to start a girl riot band. It is going to happen. I'm still throwing around names for the band though, I think it might be something like No Cocks Allowed or Ben Peyton and the La La Las...I don't know yet. Either way it will be me, with an all girl band singing songs about how we hate/love girls. It is going to be great.

"Take My Breath Away" - Gui Borrato (Take My Breath Away)
God damn this one beats. I'm going to call it now, but this album has been totally slept on this year and all those ass holes are going to be pissed when they go back and listen to this again because this is a pretty amazing album. Icy Icy Icy beats.

7" in Heaven

Bless your hearts, New Order. A 7" edit to one of the best songs ever, conjuring up images of Scottish heroin addicts and a lanky Irishman suffering in a hospital bed.

Just different enough from the original to become my new favorite song of '09.

http://www.zshare.net/audio/67760025ceeb42aa/

I Bought a Bowling Pin Today for Decoration and Self Defense

"Gas V" - Gas - Nad Und Fern (2008)
http://www.mediafire.com/?ywowt0n0mth






I demand to know where these sounds came from. These are not human sounds. These are not sounds made by a machine somewhere either. What the hell are these sounds?

I hear something spinning in the background. Like someone is taking a plastic tube and spinning it around in the air really fast. I hear something like a sucking sound every once and awhile too. Or is it a blowing sound? Who knows! All I know is that these are not sounds ever heard on earth before. Prior to this song being produced these sounds didn't exist. Wolfgang Voigt, who works under the moniker Gas, is simply playing God here. He is reaching down and turning nobs and creating sounds that this world has never heard before. He is layering them on top of each other to form a song (edit: I'm still not certain we can call this a song but because we haven't found a better word to explain what exactly this is, I guess we will have to do with the word song for now) that had never existed before, and to be more exact, probably could not have existed fifteen years ago.

Have you ever thought that maybe our cavemen ancestors had thought of these sounds but because they hadn't invited, well, anything yet, they were unable to reproduce them and were simply left to banging rocks against things? What if I'm wrong and these sounds did exist prior to this song. What if they existed in some poor caveman's head some where thousands of years ago? What if there was a caveman that while trying to fall asleep one night on the ground had these sounds in his head and couldn't get them out? Is that not impossible? Lets just lay in on the table here; we don't know what the caveman world sounded like. We can take an educated guess, but, we can not be absolutely certain what it did or did not sound like. What I'm trying to say is that you can not tell me, with absolute certainty that there wasn't a caveman one day walking across the plains of fucking Africa and while looking out over a field full of god knows what sort of animals this song was bumping from high heaven. You can not tell me that isn't at least some what plausible. Nope.

So, to review: Wolfgang Voigt is a living God from whose hands travel the life giving power to create these sounds or the stone age had the most bad ass soundtrack of all the ages. I don't see why both of these things can not be true.

A Whole Different Type of Homicide

"Virginia" - The Clipse - Lord Willin' (2002)

http://www.mediafire.com/?wt4myjdkmxn









Rapping about where you are from is not a new thing in hip-hop but on "Virginia" The Clipse raise the bar once more and put other rappers on notice that VA is on the map for good. Love them or hate them The Neptunes always seem to step their game up when it comes time to producing a track for The Clipse and once again they don't disappoint. Like other Clipse songs The Neptunes understand that the rhymes and lyrics that Clipse have need to be front and center so what to do if you are a production team that thrives on putting their beats front and center? Well, you take a deep breath, you self edit a little, you produce a banging beat that rolls by like the boys in that car above. Dark, moody, and ominous, "Virginia" is not only The Clipse at their best but proves once again that The Neptunes are not a one trick pony either.

One complaint commonly voiced about hip-hop is that the subjects of the songs never change. Drugs. Violence. Pimping. Repeat. And, you know what, once can not really argue with that argument. Complaining about the repetition of these subjects is a fools game though. The reason the vast majority of rappers cover these subjects is because their life experiences are probably rather similar. Whether you live on the east coast, west coast, or in the south, growing up in the hood is probably remarkably similar no matter where you are. I don't hear anyone complaining that country music songs all cover the same subjects, because they do and it is for the same reason as above; growing up in Montana is most likely very similar to growing up in bum-fuck Alabama.

All this is to say that location is a very large and encompassing subject in hip-hop. Home is not only where you are from, it is who you are and will likely end up defining you as an artist. Unlike, say, in indie rock where the location of your existence means almost nothing, location for a hip-hop group can mean everything. So when The Clipse reps Virginia by making it the third song on their first album, this is not an accident. This is a bullet fired to the rest of the hip hop world that not only is The Clipse here to stay, but think twice about messing with any player from VA.

Break open your glass doors and let the world in

"Praise Your Name" - The Angels of Light - New Mother (1999)

http://www.mediafire.com/?nyozm40d1vg


"Kill idiot, violence, punish greed, punish me
Run naked through the streets, stab blood eyes and scream"

Michael Gira has always had a violent nature about himself it seems. Through his work with Swans which was equal part sonic exploration and the unveiling of violence in a musical medium. The difference between Swans and Angles of Light though is accessibility. Gone are the indsturial screams, grinding, and thrashing and it its place stand softly plucked acoustic guitars, strings, pianos and hushed voices. Oh by galley the violence and exhibition is still existent, it is just in a much more easier to swallow pill form. In Angles of Light Gira still focuses on the part of the human condition that hides in the corner of everyone. Violence, exhibition, godlessness, loss and despair are all reoccurring topics, but on the first track from their first album, "Praise Your Name" gives fans a taste of what is to come. Gira is not only shinning a bright light on the darker parts of the human psyche but he is praising it at the same time. What Gira is doing is far different from mere indifference in ones persons action and emotions. He is praising those scars, demons, and violent emotions and putting them on a pedestal. When Gira sings over top of strummed acoustic guitar, "rise about the garbage/kill anything that walks" this is a call to arms for all who feel their thoughts and emotions don't fit with their peers. Few descriptors are more accurate that Gothic folk.

The one where we start the whole shabang

"The Wind and the Sea" - Shumi - Total 10 (2009)
http://www.mediafire.com/?xgmizmt2mmz








The sun rises, the sun sets. The earth floats through space following a preordained path. All this is to say that some things just never change. Over the last decade one of the things that just seems like it will never change is the ability of Kompakt, based in Cologne, Germany, to put out hautingly brilliant minimalistic house music. Kompakt's undisputed sill of hunting down the best artists and tracks in minimalistic house music is not only a rarity this day and age but music fans across the globe owe them a debt of gratitude for their efforts. "The Wind and The Sea" is no exception to the rule either. Beginning with just a few plucked chords that hint at none of the dark, encompassing beats to come, and backed by synth waves layered one on top of another, each helping to create a mood and feel similar to standing in a dark field late at night and staring up into the sky. Like the best songs in the Kompakt catalog "The Wind and The Sea" beats like it is its F'ing job. Ariel synths and strings layered on top of a solid four-by-four beat foundation go a far way in creating the sound scape of what one would assume the sea feels like at night, in the dark, with a strong cold wind at your back. Accessible and comforting, like a blanket at night, "The Wind and The Sea" succeeds because like the ocean you just are not exactly certain what lies underneath the surface.