Monday, April 26, 2010

The Silent Ballet; My Education - Sunrise


I'd thought about beginning this blog with a manifesto of sorts, but it strikes me that such posts are usually far too self-referential and usually end up not quite describing things accurately after a couple of weeks or months. So I thought instead that I would just jump straight in with a link to my latest album review on The Silent Ballet. With luck, this paragraph will be about as self-referential and "meta" as this blog gets.

The Silent Ballet, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, is an internet music magazine devoted to instrumental and experimental music. The site started out dealing primarily with post-rock styles of music (Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Mogwai, Tortoise, etc.), but it's since moved past that base to also include ambient, electronica, instrumental metal, and generally anything that plays up the "experimental" half of our self-imposed description. If you find the sort of stuff that we cover interesting, then our yearly Top 50 Lists and quarterly compilation series (free to download!) are a good place to start. Links to all of those can be found on the right side of TSB's homepage.

I've been writing for TSB for almost three years now, and I've been editing for the site for just about two years exactly. In that time I've had the privilege of reviewing quite a number of excellent albums. The highest score I've given out is an 8.5/10, which is quite high when you consider that in more than four years, the site has never given out anything higher than a 9/10. The scoring system might seem a bit harsh, but that's another subject for another day.

Anyway, I've given out five 8.5s in the past: first, to No. 9's Usual Revolution and Nine; second, to Paniyolo's I'm Home; third, to The Autumn Project's This We Take with Us; fourth, to Tyondai Braxton's Central Market; and fifth, to My Education's Sunrise, the most recent review I've had published on the site. In other words, if ever there were a review with which to begin my blog, this is it.


I'll spare most of the details since you can read them in the review, but suffice to say that My Education is a post-rock band out of Austin, Texas which plays in a style somewhat similar to that of Japancakes and Six Parts Seven. The group's latest album is a score which they wrote to accompany the silent film Sunrise, a seminal work in the history of existentialist cinema.

I hope you enjoy the review and the music too. My colleague Rich Allen also informs me that the Irish group 3epkano also have a soundtrack for Sunrise, and that it's somehow even better than My Education's. I'm not quite sure if I believe him, having heard the selections from their version on their myspace, but 3epkano is certainly a band which can do little wrong in my book.

1 comment:

  1. Dear Tom,

    I love you, but this could be the most pretentious thing I've ever seen. Your about me on the side combined with that douchy picture made me want to hit you in a way I thought I only had reserved for people that write for snobby music blogs and English majors.

    ...Oh. Nevermind. You win.

    Treatment: Go drink a schlitz, play some beer pong, and pass out in a retention pond. Possibly go to the lake. Repeat as Necessary.

    With Love,
    Jack

    P.S. FIrST!!!11!1!!1!11!!1!!!
    P.P.S. I had to use my AIM to post this. make it open so I can just put my name. I know you can do it, so don't pretend like you don't know how.
    P.P.P.S. Hee hee I said P.P.
    P.P.P.P.S. When do you go home again?

    ReplyDelete