Stoked.

TDWP, The Kool Haus, Toronto Ontario, Saturday Dec 11th 2010, 3 tickets, in my hand. stoked.

Tuesday's Playlist (Aug 10/10)

Over the weekend i did a lot of searching. I've narrowed down all the crap i found to release the weekends biggest event and that is the posting of all of the songs on the Devil Wears Prada's new Zombie EP on Youtube. Thanks to the smart people on the internet I now have a bootleg copy of this album and I have to say... HOLY FUCKING CHRIST THIS IS INTENSE AS FUCK!!!!1

The first time i listened to the album in full it sent shivers down my spine. If you listen to it with good headphones at a very loud volume you will fully appreciate it. There are lots of subtle sound effects which help to tell the story of the Zombie Apocalypse the Devil Wears Prada has cooked up. With gun shots on big notes and shot gun shells hitting the floor behind you it paints a picture in your mind that in not comparable to anything. At one point in the 5 song EP I had to look behingd me because i swore there was a demon zombie from hell standing there waiting to remove my head from my shoulders, place it on a stick and eat my brains like a lollipop. This album is so intense that it kept me up for hours after listening to it before i went to sleep. Bravo TDWP, bravo.

That's all for now,

Noah

TGIF

Hmm..... What a long day. -.- I woke up late today, apparently the power went off and reset my alarm thus making me late for work. :/ Oh well, wadduhya gonna do. Scrambling out of bed and having to run to work to barely make it to be 30 minutes late I didn't have a lot of time to think of some good tunes. But stumbling through the Firefox add-ons at work for entertainment i discovered this application called Get Glue. What this does is recommend things to you such as Movies, Music, Video Games, Gadgets, Books, and TV Shows based on your interests and what you already own. This way I have found more incredible, unknown bands that i had yet to discover. So instead of me recommending bands to you today simply get the add on, oh yeah it's also a free app for iPhones.

That's all for now,

Noah

Tuesday's Playlist (Aug 3/10)

Things have been rather busy here in the middle of no where. I understand thats an oxymoron but living in the heart of cottage country and working in a community center can get a little bit hectic. I'll tell you a bit about my town, there's 200 people here in the winter. It's a long winter with 6+ feet of snow and temperatures as low as -35 degrees Celsius (or -31 Fahrenheit for you Americans) but in the summer there are 70 000+ people here.

My neighbor is the largest lake that is not a great lake in Canada; Georgian Bay. This is the hot bed of activity in the summer as people will drive upwards of 3 hours to spend a long weekend huddled up in their cottages on the bay or the surrounding lakes. For this reason it gives us locals a certain bragging right, a certain higher authority, or at least you would think. You would probably think that as people who are here all year round we would be able to dictate where these strangers stay and how they act and that they would have a certain respect for the locals and the environment.

If that was your guess then you would be sadly mistaken. These people invade the quiet tightly knit community and leave us nothing but complaints and crazy driving techniques that you would expect to see in a B lister action movie. I'm not saying that i dislike the cottagers because believe me they have made my town what it is today. We have a beach and a sports-plex and all the things that a big city has but what the cottagers don't realize is that all those great things are here all year and for that I thank you.

Now, on to the MUSIC, at the last band practice I was at we all decided to make an artistic decision and tune down. Instead of playing in the drop B we normally play in we have decided to take on a much heavier sound. We are now tuned to drop B. Being the singer this makes my life much more difficult as I now have to raise my voice an octave to keep the same feel of the music. That being said i have been listening to a lot of bands in a lower tuning than drop D. A prime example being Parkway Drive. Although they have no singing in them it gives me a feel for the type of music we want to showcase. The second band is Attack Attack!; their latest stuff that is. Songs like Sexual Man Chocolate and Smokahontas are prime examples of the two genres being clashed together. Not to mention the incredible synth work from this band.

Since i spent most of this blog ranting on about the cottagers i'll have to cut the music part short. Thursday's playlist will be about the music, don't worry haha.

That's all for now...

Noah

Tuesday's Playlist

As I'm sitting here in my government job at the library in my home town, I am listening to a crazy lady reading stories to kids. It's this whole reading program thing and if you were here and hungover you would rather have the jaws of life squeeze your head than listen to this lady. She's wearing a frog hat and showing more enthusiasm than a gay pride parade.

After listening to this I am practically forced to put my headphones in and the enthusiasm beaming off this lady got me to think about the enthusiastic Hardcore music. I'm talking about electronicore. Yes it's a word. Bands like

Abandon All Ships

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lg2wiyk40E) and

Attack Attack!

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFuUAeiSN4M)

These bands have carved their own style of music and listening to it makes me more enthusiastic. Sure Attack Attack is prone to tune to Drop A but the techno breaks in this song make me weak at the knees. Today it's this kind of music that gives me a feeling and shivers down my spine and music should always do that. Always. PERIOD!

Being keys and clean vocals in my band i have a certain respect for these guys. Especially Caleb Schomo from Attack Attack. This guy has learned to combine the 2 styles almost seamlessly and for that, I thank you.

One more song i would like to talk about is the new The word Alive song

The Hounds of Anubis

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0OR1rspGSE)

This is an epic of music in which i have no idea how they pulled this 4 minutes of insanity off. Great Tune.

That'a all for now,

Noah

New Keys

Hi,

So i recently bought a new set of keys. I bought the microkorg synthesizer and vocoder.

http://www.playderecord.com/images/P/microkorg.jpg

and i gotta say i love it. I brought it to practice for the first time yesterday and after the usual set we practice we sat down and discovered the sounds that we could unlock from this tiny piece of hardware.

The microkorg has tonnes of interesting sounds and effects with the ability to create and save your own right onto the layout buttons. After demoing this to the rest of the band it sparked a round of "unreeaaalllllsss" and "this makes me physically attracted to you". After the usual laughter we then got to the music and wrote a 1 minute 30 second hardcore breakdown with synth intro and overlay and i gotta say that it sounded incredible. i will be posting a demo video of this amazing little device

That's all for now,

Noah

My contribution

Some might ask what exactly i know about hardcore music and the like and i fully understand the skepticism. I'm part of a 6 piece hardcore group called Hilcrest. (http://www.myspace.com/hilcrest)

I play keys and do clean vocals as well as the sound FX on my computer. Our sound is metalcore with a bit of hardstyle thrown in there. If you want to hear some of it check out the myspace for contact info and free streaming MP3's. We are in the midst of recording an EP or something, idfk haha.

That's all for now,

Noah

Thursday's playlist

Today as I was walking to work i felt a certain craving for music that i rarely experience. I felt the need to listen to music that can barely be described as music at all. I'm talking that kind of music that barely makes sense with dissonant chords and heavy heavy break downs. After sifting through the usual stuff i went on a hunt through my iPod to find these songs and this is what I've come up with.

The first band i'd like to talk about is The Irish Front. (http://www.myspace.com/theirishfront).

The Irish Front are a 5 piece metal core/experimental band from Avondale, Arizona. Their style is full of insane drums and unbelievably destroyed guitar riffs. When listening to The Irish Front you can't help but be surprised when through all this noise a sudden hit of free-form jazz breaks out. The clearest representation of this is in the song Monsterbation.(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yr-hJeYnV3g)

(p.s. ignore the annotations.)

This is my favorite song by them because it combines the 2 genres almost seamlessly.

The second band i'd like to talk about is The Devil Wears Prada.

(http://www.tdwpband.com/)

Now I know that The Devil Wears Prada dont really have the same sound as the Irish Front but they can implement some of the strangest riffs and the heaviest breakdowns to date. In 'Dogs Can Grow Beards All Over' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmZ1IyKOXE0) it seams to be an unbelievably clean transition from the opening chords the the all around falling apart of the song. Through dissonant chords and pinch harmonics and absolutely insane drum fills comes a song that you want to listen to over and over again. This is why The Devil Wears Prada are one of my favorite bands because they can make a song fall apart in the eyes of standard key signatures and tempo yet keep it entertaining and addictive to listen too. Another key example of this from the Devil Wears Prada is in the song 'Rosemary Had An Accident'. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--6gWwJxfpo) After a perfectly executed song they chose to end the song in the heaviest and strangest way possible with no tempo at all and barely any audible notes they still manage to keep it all together and for that, I thank you.

The third and final band i would like to talk about is The Fall Of Troy.

(http://thefalloftroy.com/)

The fall of troy are an experimental trio and for the life of me i cannot understand how they make the nose they do with only 3 people. Their guitar player/lead vocalist Thomas Erak has his work cut out for him as he is one of the most creative guitarists alive. His riffs are strange yet very powerful. They contain plenty of jumps from low to high notes with dissonant chords out the AV jack. In the song 'sledgehammer' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FdaB3_1qscU) they (like The Devil Wears Prada) chose to absolutely destroy the ending of the song which becomes one of the heaviest and lowest breakdowns I've ever heard with small noise breaks in between the breakdowns. This is one of my all time favorite songs just because it sounds like you're listening to 3 or 4 songs at the same time. The second song like this is 'Ex-Creations'. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Esw42RpchPI) This song combines the clean guitar playing with plenty of time changes and rough noises from the guitar as any other fall of troy song but with a breakdown so brutal it would make the devil beg for mercy. With absolute precision in the notes and the incredible dexterity in the drummer to deal with all the time changes it makes it some of the best music I've ever heard.

I NEED A SIGN OFF!!!!! D:

Noah

Introduction

Hi fellow bloggers,

My name is Noah Van Nest and i am addicted to music. What kind of music you might ask? Not the mainstream stuff but the kind of music that makes you reflect on past times, the music that creates felling and sparks emotion from note to note. For me this music isn't classical, jazz, blues, or any of that emo crap. For me it's the vast genre of Hardcore.

My point is exactly this. You could be into classical, or jazz, or even that emo crap and fell the same way i do about hardcore music. Bands like The Devil Wears Prada (http://www.tdwpband.com/) and Every Time I Die (http://everytimeidie.net/) have the same effect on me and my thoughts and feelings as Johan Sebastian Bach might have on yours. The point is that music is the drive in my life and it doesn't matter what kind we each individually listen to, just as long as it makes us feel.

I bring up this point because growing up my parents harbored my taste in music. They made sure i wasn't listening to the same old talentless shit that every one else did. My dad being an 80's kid ran away from mainstream pop acts because like me, it scares the shit out of me. How putting on a bit of makeup and learn how to use auto-tune makes you famous is beyond me. It also makes me wonder why I haven't done it?

There are only 2 real answers to that question. 1. I don't want to look like KISS, and 2. I have talent. What I don't understand is why Brittany Spears can sing into a computer like a Donkey and have (in someone's eyes) beautiful music come out the other end. It's frustrating for struggling musicians like my self to create music that takes talent whilst Miss Spears makes millions after shaving her head and checking in and out of re-hab. I saw her performance after those events at the MTV awards and let me say... sub-par Miss Spears... sub-par.

That's my rant for this blog, but it's not quite done yet.

The main focus of this blog is to talk about the music. I want you to share music with me, i'll do album reviews, post links, and find out about the new hardcore music scene. Tell me stories and ask me questions, i'll answer them in the most suiting and sarcastic way possible!

I need an interesting sign off..... -.-

Noah Van Nest