Pandabear

ACID - Hanafubuki

Yeah I don't think they ever rejected input from any of the members. Their input in the albums just changed. For example, Hahn's sampling and programming shifted in Minutes to Midnight to composing. Though he wasn't completely absent in it either. There were great songs with his sampling like In Pieces or The Little things Give You Away, which were some of my favorite songs. While in A Thousand Suns, there was the notable absence of Brad's guitar playing, it didn't completely vanish, but took more of a back seat. It's the same thing with other members of the band. There part and contributions may change, but there still heavily involved in one way or another. And I'm eager to hear their new album since it's suppose to return to a more electronic direction like Meteora. Though I doubt it will be like Meteora part 2. At this point a return to their Nu metal sound like Hybrid Theory would be a step back for the band. It would just seem out of place and out dated. The band's progressed and matured into their current sound and if they tried to do another Hybrid theory it might just sound like a forced angry and dark album. They're not in the mindframe or place to do something like that again. Though I admit I do wanna hear some more guitar playing in their next disc.

Whirr and Anne were great. And is Airs your shoegaze project/band? It's sounds great. In others news, Yuck came out with a new single. It's amazing. The intro reminds me a bit of the smashing pumpkins. Yuck - Chew Can't have a thread like this and not post anything from this band. My Bloody Valentine - Sometimes Thread is also in need of some these guys. Ride - Dreams Burn Down Also I recently discovered Tokyo Shoegazers. A Japanese shoegaze band with female english vocals. What's really interesting are the members in the band which include people from 101A, Acid Android and Plastic Tree. They sound awesome. I think I just might purchase their debut through Itunes. Tokyo Shoegazer - Bright

I enjoyed their new single. It does sound like a mix of their newer material combined with their older style. Can't wait to hear the rest of the album.

- President Lincoln's mother was killed by a supernatural creature, which fuels his passion to crush vampires and their slave-owning helpers. MIi7qAD36Tk First time I heard about this movie I thought it was going to be another one of those awful vampire spoof movies. Then I found out Tim Burton is attached to it and I saw the trailer. Lincoln is pretty bad ass with that axe.

Yeah I found this to be a "meh" release. I didn't really like the title track. The experimentation felt way too forced and jagged, it was like they were forcing their metal sound with the electronica portion. I love electronica and I love metal, and I love bands who can successfully pull of the two, however -OZ- more or less awkwardly fumbled in that area. I would have been happier with a track that stuck to their style, but was more polished or that had been pushed further. Blast didn't really do it for me, Trusty was okay and the only track I actually enjoyed was Flash back. Natsu's improved vocals were one of the few redeeming quality of this release. 6/10

Don’t know if there is a topic like this, but I realized a good portion of some of my favorite bands and plenty of other great ones - are officially releasing albums this year. There were way too many to mentally keep track of so I wrote them down. The results are below and was the inspiration for the topic. So what are albums everyone else is looking forward to or interested in hearing? Jeff Loomis - Plains of Oblivion 4/10 Oblivion Dust - 9 Gates for Bipolar 4/11 DragonForce - The Power Within 4/15 Brendon Small - Galaktikon - 4/29 Marilyn Manson - Born Villain 4/30 Silversun Picksups - Neck Of The Woods 5/8 Slash - Apocalyptic Love 5/22 Exist trace - Virgin 5/23 The Smashing Pumpkins - Oceania 6/18 Fear Factory - The Industrialist N/A Periphery- Juggernaut N/A Linkin Park - New Album - Their 1st single is suppose to come out 4/16 Deftones - New Album SoundGarden - New Album Killswitch Engage - New Album The Offspring - New Album The Killers - New Album Scarling - New Album Asking Alexandria - New Album Bullet For My Valentine - New Album Brand New - New Album The Contortionist - New Album Greenday - New Album Kill Hannah - New Album Behemoth - New Album Kerli - New Album The Birthday Massacre - New Album Kamelot - New Album Late 2012/Early 2013 Raunchy - New Album Tool - New Album Alice In Chains - New Album

A new Silversun Pickups song came out. They ditched their rocker sound and seem to have gone into a more old school shoegaze direction. I've already pre-ordered their new album. Can't wait for the 8th of May. Bloody Mary (Nerve Endings)

Caz - Angel Bullet

Yeah video's great, but the song is still pretty awful. By far it's the weakest single the band has ever put out. It wouldn't haven't been so bad if they hadn't attempted to put a catchy hook in there with those ah ahs. It' just fails and makes the song fall flat. Though it does have an old mason type of vibe.

@fitear1590 Slowdive sounds amazing. And I really liked Rose Elinor Dougall. I enjoyed The Pain of Being Pure at Heart too. They sound pretty shoegazey, but that could also be because they have a indie/noise rock sound going on. Sort of like Yuck. There are a lot similarities between shoegaze, dream pop, and noise rock since they pretty much evolved from one another. So it's not that uncommon to not be able to tell them apart. Also you should check out Tamaryn's debut, The Waves. It's become one my favorite shoegaze albums. It's absolutely speculator. This is one my favorite songs off of The Waves. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQ8GWu6mbH8 Some more shoegaze/dreampop worth checking out. I saw these guys open for Interpol last year at Radio City Music Hall and they were awesome. They had a beautiful seizure inducing lightshow. School of Seven Bells - ILU http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZQmnF_jWqE Got into this band thanks to PRISM> Lark's Tongue - Tucson, Arizona Probably best know for having Chino Moreno of the Deftones as one of the vocalists. They lean more toward a dreampop/Trip-hop sound. They still sound amazing. Team Sleep - Ever(foreign Flag) A Sunnyday In Glasgow - Passionate Introverts(Dinosaurs) I wouldn't mind if there was more instrumental shoegaze tracks. Violen's - Generational Loss Medicine - Live It Down

I believe there is already a similar thread like this, but it's only for Japanese bands, while this one is more encompassing. And the bands/artist don't have to strictly be shoegaze or dreampop, but can employ other styles as long as the shoegaze/dreampop sound is still present in the music. And for anybody who isn't familiar with the genres.. Shoegaze Dreampop So yeah...you can see both genres have similar sound. I have recently really been really getting into the genre(along with Trip-Hop). I think two of the bands responsible for exposing me to the whole shoegaze thing were The Smashing Pumpkins and Plastic Tree. They're not full on shoegaze, but incorporated the sound into their music. From there I discovered a whole bunch of other bands from My Bloody Valentine to the recent wave of Nu-Gaze . One of the Nu-Gaze bands who are releasing a new album this year that I'm really excited about is Scarling. I've been waiting 7 years for this. Check them out if you don't them. They're amazing. Another Nu-gaze band whose new album I'm looking forward to is the Silver-sun Pickups. They're pretty mainstream compared to scarling, but are still worth listening to. Some other bands I've been loving at the moment... A Shoreline Dream - Saturday Morning Tamaryn - The Waves Engineers - Sometimes I realise Drop Nineteens - Winona http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT_EEj8Iglo Galaxie 500 - Flowers Yuck - stutter

Anybody know of some good computer hard drives? External or Internal? My current internal drive is down to it's last 5 gigs so I'll be needing a new one fairly soon. I'll probably end up buying two internal drives since the current one I have can only hold 180GB. I was thinking of a Solid State Drive for my main drive, but then I looked at the price to gigabyte ratio and I was a bit scared off. I'm also looking for a good reliable external drive. For me, speed isn't so important as reliability is for an external drive. I had an Iomega 500GB external drive for about 4 years, but it recently suffered a 4 foot fall and it crapped out me. I lost a lot of data that I had moved from my main drive to that external drive. It really sucks since I can't get it back. Apparently the external drive had a seagate drive inside and seagate drives can't take falls.

After giving the new album a listen, I consider Koloss to be one my favorite meshuggah albums. It maybe less schizophrenic then some of more their other material, but it’s still very much controlled chaos. And of course there is the exception like The Demon’s Name Is Surveillance and The Hurt That Finds You First which are complete beasts. There are other moments in songs where that controlled heaviness bursts into technical fury. The album is heavy, dark and brooding and employ’s the techniques that meshuggah has become known for. The heavily palm muted power chords and chugging, the use of syncopation and dissonance. I imagine songs like I am Colossus and Break Those Bones Whose Sinews Gave it Motion is the type of music one would use to hypnotize dragons. So yeah, it's a great release. Favorite songs have to be Behind the Sun and The Hurt That Finds You First.

Yeah, it's surprising to see a Vk band not putting out an album that consists of like 90-95% of material they had already released. Also hoping none of those new songs are intro's or short instrumentals that serve as segues.

Band's been busy lately. They reissued their self titled debut along with an all instrumental version. They've got a new song titled Passenger. It's pretty melodic and gets very messugahy towards the end. And they released a cover of slipknots' Heretic Anthem. Loving Spencer's improved vocals on both the new song and the slipknot cover. Now I just want that new double concept album.

I don't have a mac or use EZdrummer, but as far as the noise is concerned start with the simple stuff. Check your cables. They might be faulty and be producing the noise. Or perhaps it's the way you chained your boss EQ. Try it without and see what happens. It could be your mac if it doesn't have shielding, or if you got a whole bunch of electronics around it. Of course it could also be the POD. Most likely the usb connection if that's the case. You should also make sure you have the aux in's on your laptop muted. Once I got a fuzzy noise when recording through an interface until I realized I had left a cable in my computer's soundcard and had also forgotten to mute the channel. It's also worth mentioning that you should make sure you have all the proper drivers installed.

Music has to have some form of structure. From the melody's, harmonies and chord progressions to the way verses, choruses etc are placed. There has to be some form of repetition and structure otherwise the music would just be all over the place and not sound very good at all. And the structure you mentioned is pretty common. Like other similar ones intro verse chorus verse chorus bridge chorus/end I don’t necessarily think it makes bands lazy. Some bands just choose those structures because their simple and straightforward. It makes it accessible. I personally don’t really care if a band uses simple common music structures as long as the music they make is good. Sure there are bands who makes subpar, generic music with common music structure, but there are a lot of bands who use those some structures and have amazing songs. It’s more about the effort the band puts into the music that really matters. And usually bands that are just starting out use those common structures because like I mentioned, they’re pretty simple and easy. As bands grow and progressive as musicians, they’ll tend to incorporate more complex and original compositions. Also if you want to listen to bands and songs with interesting structures then you should probably just try to listen to as much music as possible and be open to trying other genres. You’ll find a lot of bands that use more diverse structures like interludes, pre-chorus- pre-verses, post choruses-post-verses, double bridges, trolls etc to make their music more interesting. Along with more advanced music theory like counterpoint, syncopation, varied cadences and grooves. All that good junk.

The official release date has been confirmed to be June 12th for North America, and June 13th for Europe. Can't wait XD.

The National - Sorrow

Born Of Osiris - Follow The Signs

Finally finished all 116 episodes of yu yu hakusho. Started on Escaflowne.

Yeah, that new single is disappointing. It sounds like some filler track from the High End Of Low. I really hope the rest of the album isn't like this. I love bands that put effort into their artwork, lyrics, music videos and everything to do with their music, but none of that really matters when the music itself is lacking.

So I bought a pair of Panasonic RP-DJS400-K DJ style headphones about 3 months ago for cyber Monday. These turned out to be some of the best headphones I've bought for $20. They're clear, have good mids and highs and actually have good bass. I originally bought them for practicing my guitar, but I ended up using them more and more for listening to music. Slapped on some cool skull graphics to their sides - - And I got a pair of awesome sounding and awesome looking headphones. To hell with skullcandy.

Solar Fields - Shard