The Quixotic Engineer

It’s been a while! I stealthily skipped last month’s Musical Box, so newer readers might not know that I usually do a monthly post full of listening suggestions. The holidays are a busy time, especially for students, so here’s some music to cram to.

December is also a great time to be a music fan. All the music journalists are coming out with their top 10 album lists and you get to discover all the cool stuff you missed that year. This is how I discovered Janelle Monáe‘s debut EP Metropolis: The Chase. It caught my eye for exploring science fiction themes with a quirky Blade Runner inspired android love story. Her sound is a wonderful experimental blend of R&B, funk and spoken word, reminding me quite a bit of Outkast (she was featured on two songs off Idlewild.) Altogether a terrific start, I look forward to her first full length album.

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Volume 12… I suppose The Musical Box is now one year old! Here are some fab tunes to celebrate.

Many thanks to Chris Dahlen for linking me to TV on the Radio‘s latest album Dear Science, because it’s one of the loudest, freshest, funkiest records I’ve heard this year. His review over at Pitchfork says it better than I ever could, but it you like to think and dance (possibly at the same time) I wholeheartedly recommend checking it out. You can stream high quality versions of the album’s singles on their website.

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September certainly snuck up on us, didn’t it? Where the heck did summer go? To those of you starting classes again this week, here are a trio of debut albums (and one from a duo of veterans) to rock your commute / Labour Day / first day of Ramadan.

Straight out of Springfield, Missouri, Ha Ha Tonka‘s Buckle In The Bible Belt is full of foot-stompin’ roots rock about hardships in the Ozarks. While the rest of the album is great highway driving music, the track “Falling In” (embedded above) really stands out for its indie rock ballad sensibilities, strong vocal harmonies and overall catchiness. The bluegrass inspired “St. Nick on the Fourth in a Fervor” is also worth a listen.

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It’s time once again for a Musical Box post, where I condense a month’s worth of personal recommended listening. However, this month I’ve handed the reigns over to my friend Navneet “Nav” Alang. Nav writes about technology, identity, pop culture and the Internet at Scrawled In Wax. I’ve been a big fan of his blog for quite a while now, and am thrilled that he graciously agreed to guest-blog.

Here are his top picks for this month:

As a regular reader of The Quixotic Engineer, I always look forward to the monthly Musical Box posts – so it’s quite the honour to get to do one myself! My thanks to Matthew. Without further ado, here are some of my recent musical faves.

Mark Kozelek has been making music for over twenty years, first with Red House Painters and most recently with Sun Kil Moon. I loved Sun Kil’s first disc, Ghosts of the Great Highway, and looked forward to their most recent release, April, with a great deal of anticipation. It was worth it. “Moorestown” (above) does a lot to showcase the bittersweet ache at the core of Kozelek’s work, which is littered with tales of love and loss, elation and pain. Fun fact: Kozelek played the bassist of fictional band Stillwater in the film Almost Famous.

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Jazz is a fascinating genre of music. Born out of slavery in the Mississippi Delta along with its sister the blues and defined by complex melodies and improvisation, it became the framework for some of the greatest musical minds of the 20th century.

To those of us raised on three chord rock and 2:50 pop songs, however, jazz can seem a tad impenetrable. The songs often lack a traditional structure, and change rhythm and melody on the fly. Lacking a paradigm within which to understand the music, it can be difficult to pursue the active, focused listening required to properly grok it.

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