Artist tribute- Peter Hook

Bass players are always the underdogs of the band, but I made sure that I was never viewed as one. I went out of my way to steal as much limelight as I could

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If there was ever one bass player who has influenced me in playing bass guitar, it’s been Peter Hook. At the beginning of learning to play bass guitar, you learn the usually simple stuff like “Seven Nation Army” by The Whitestripes. Really basic stuff.

But it’s usually a question of what’s next? I couldn’t play slap bass and was quickly losing favour with playing the traditional low parts on the bass guitar.

It hit me though when I saw a video of the band New Order performing a very early form of their  song Temptation. It hit after watching that video that whoever was playing the bass guitar had left an everlasting impact on me.

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It sounded nothing like what a bass guitar should sound to me, at least at that time. It played the role of the lead, melodic and rhythm instrument all in one while driving the song as well.

Hook was above and beyond what bass playing was to me at the time. I hadn’t really heard anyone basing their style on playing on the high end of the bass. They usually play as holding the rhythm on the low end of the bass.

I was a changed player and Peter Hook had left a lasting effect on me and now I had to try and learn how he played.

The starting point for me was his bass playing on Joy Division’s debut album Unknown Pleasures.

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From listening to songs like “Disorder” and “She’s Lost Control really emphasized that punk notion to me of less is more. You can be the anchor for the music but also be a bit flashy as well. Especially on “She’s Lost Control” Hook played really high up on the bass which made the bass have a bit more power to it and caught my eye in terms of playing the bass differently.

By Joy Division’s next album, Hook had already started incorporating the six string bass guitar more into his repertoire.

By using the six string bass guitar, it further pushed Hook’s notion of playing high and melodic. It was an important music development for Hook. When the Joy Division ended after singer Ian Curtis’s suicide, the remaining members regrouped as New Order.

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By the time New Order had begun, it was here where another important step in Hook’s playing began.

As New Order began incorporating more synthesisers and becoming more dance, it allowed for Hook to allow the synthesisers to handle the bass notes while he fitted his high bass playing around the music.

The key example of this can be seen in “Bizare Love Triangle”. While it’s a great dance track, Hook’s high melodic bass playing provides a strong anchor that isn’t really heard a lot in dance music. A great New Order song.

What I also love about Hook’s bass playing is that it’s easy to hear which makes it a little bit easier to try and learn on bass. Compared when trying to listen to normal bass guitar in rock songs, it can be difficult to hear it obviously due to the volume of the guitar and drums.

I learned to play bass guitar by mainly listening by ear. So it taught me to try and have a good ear when trying to learn it.

An album that really helped in this regard was New Order’s 1986 album Brotherhood. Not only are the songs great, but the bass is placed right up front. It’s also not complex playing, it’s just simple and takes a bit of time to try and learn it. Songs like “Weirdo”, “All Day Long” and “Every Little Counts” really helped me in developing an ear for trying to learn and playing music.

What also struck me was when I saw Peter Hook and The Light in the Academy in April performing the New Order albums Low-Life and Brotherhood with a mate. It was when I saw him live I was amazed was the volume of his bass playing. Holy shit was it loud!

It kind of reminded painfully how much New Order are hurting without him in the band. When they released Music Complete in 2015 I did like it (especially ‘Restless’) but it was kind of like with Hook gone, the power was taken out of their music.

The gig was great and the old feeling kicked that I was trying to concentrate on what he was playing just so when I was home I could at least try and replicate what he was playing, awfully at least anyway!

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Key songs of Peter Hook’s bass playing

 

Artist Tribute- Daft Punk

When listening to dance music, the only really absolute crucial thing that it should have is a great groove. If it hasn’t got that then you’re fucked.

There is also this notion that I don’t really get with some people when it comes to some dance music or electronic music is that it isn’t real music just because of the instruments they used. Music is music, end of, now matter how you make it, it doesn’t matter to me.

Having seen their new song with the Weeknd, it has made me feel all nostalgic for one of my favourite dance groups ever, Daft Punk.

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What is so great about them is that if they have a great groove, they don’t mess with it. They just leave it just the way it is which shows their punk/minimalistic attitude.

Great songs “One More Time” and “Robot Rock” really show how minimalistic they could be but they still making a song that you’d want to listen to about 30 times in a row. Like these songs were all I listened to when I was just developing musical tastes when I was 10.

The band that I instantly think about that I could say really sound similar to Daft Punk is Chic, a funk band formed back in the 70’s.

What makes Daft Punk sound similar to Chic (main inspiration coming from the guitarist of the band Nile Rodgers), at least to me anyway, is in their musical DNA.

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What Daft Punk would learn from Funk is the importance of the groove. If you have a great groove, just let it be. Songs like “Le Freak” and “Everybody Dance” show almost a musical blueprint for the band to follow.

It’s interesting that the Nile Rodgers and Chic influence is huge on their last album Random Access Memories. Rodgers plays on two of the best tracks from the album “Get Lucky” and “Lose Yourself to Dance” show how strong this influence is.

Daft Punk always to me captured that absolute catchiness of funk, the great rhythms and the great repetitiveness. Obviously as well the great bass lines of funk, that gave songs like “Get Lucky” a solid backbone.

To me also, Daft Punk always symbolized a night out. Much like the Arctic Monkeys album “Whatever People Say I am, That’s What I’m Not” their songs almost have that structure of what a night out feels like, although they never released an album that had that clear structure of the night out unlike the Arctic Monkeys.

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Songs to me like “Da Funk” and “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger” would highlight to me the high point of a night. However, quieter songs like “Something About Us” would highlight the low parts of the night during a drunken stupor.

The group also took that notion of dance music of cold and unrealistic to their image. By showing themselves as robotic like, a key theme throughout a lot of their music in their career.

By mixing funk music with dance and electronic, Daft Punk are for me the best and most enjoyable dance group of all time.

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Album Review- Kendrick Lamar-To Pimp a Butterfly

Having not really listened to much hip-hop in my lifetime, my thoughts of it are the only stuff I have listened to MTV out of pure boredom. It seems very limited musically. Obviously people like N.W.A and Kanye West are the only ones I’ve listened to that have ever really had their own sound. The rest I’ve listened to anyway just sounds like one big continual sound that is used by everyone.

It’s upon hearing To Pimp a Butterfly for me that it shows how much musical ground Kendrick Lamar covers.

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Upon hearing the album it sounds like a mad mix of free jazz, funk, doo-wop and rock. Apart from a couple of tracks, the album doesn’t really rely on samples which helps to really retain a free and loose sense of the album.

From opening track “Wesley’s Theory”, is certainly setting the scene for probably the oddest mish-mash of music ever, which features a contribution by jazz bassist Thundercat, but it shows how inventive Lamar can and how his openness to accepting other forms of music which places him out as a unique artist.

The highlight for me is the track “These Walls” which shows Lamar revealing himself out to the listener in a very vulnerable way. Lines like “These walls want to cry tears, These walls happier when I’m here, These walls never could hold up, Every time I come around demolition might crush” could be a metaphor for Lamar seeing himself as an object struggling to hold itself together and trying to exist during the sudden onslaught of fame.

To Pimp a Butterfly is certainly the most politically and socially conscious album that has been released in a long time. The album provides Lamar with a commentary on the racial treatment of the African-Americans in America and just a black man trying to exist in a country that certainly has experienced its phases of racial prejudice.

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It certainly raises the comparisons in my opinion to Bob Dylan. On first inspection, it looks odd, but the more you look it becomes much clearer, at least to me anyway!

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While certainly being different sides of the same coin, both their basics are the same. Dylan certainly had the same way of writing like Lamar, evaluating all that was around him in socially and introspective terms.

While Dylan always claimed he never wrote political songs, he always showed an eye for change, seen in such songs as “The Times They Are a-Changin'” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall”. He also had an eye for introspective senses like in “Most of the Time”.

Kendrick Lamar certainly already showed his introspective on the album but he lets loose  on the another high point of the album “The Blacker the Berry”. Vicious lines like I’m African-American, I’m African,I’m black as the moon, heritage of a small village, Pardon my residence, Came from the bottom of mankind” and “you hate me don’t you?” shows Lamar angrily tackling racism in a way that hasn’t been done before.

The idea of trying to get along where Lamar knows that that is an idea that is far too late and destroys lyrically the system that has been created for the black man that still exists for  in 21st Century America.

On final inspection To Pimp a Butterfly shows an artist that is not afraid to go outside the rap and hip-hop cliches that exist and is determined to forge his own path. The album is definitely a genre-crossing album that can entice any music fan.

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To quote Bob Dylan “All I can do is be me, whoever that is”

Album highlights: “King Kunta”, “These Walls”, “The Blacker the Berry” and “i”

 

Album Review- Arctic Monkeys- Humbug

Arguably now the biggest rock band in the world today, the Arctic Monkeys have always had an air of reinvention of themselves. Having changed from teenage indie darlings writing about nights out, to the now sharp dressed greased back hair hard rockers, reinvention has always been crucial to the image of the Arctic Monkeys.

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One period that I feel is unfairly ignored is the period when they made the album Humbug in 2009. Having not had the critical success of such albums like the recent AM, the band have always been determined to never be defined by one sound. Even the title of their debut album pressed this view.

Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Having come up with two very strong albums, the Arctic Monkeys for their third album decided to reinvent themselves. By the third album, they had now become long haired, bearded Queens of the Stone Age rockers.

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With the involvement of Queens of the Stone Age front man Josh Homme, the music had now taken a drastic turn, with the songs starting to become a bit more abstract in their meaning compared to how easily their other songs were able to be understood previously.

The opening song “My Propeller” as an opener absolutely blasts out, signifying the change of direction. With heavy riffs and thumping drums, it is obvious to band looked to Homme to try and implement the heavy sound that they were looking for.

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Lyrically, the band became more abstract in how they were telling a story. The lyrics previously had been upbeat but had now started to turn towards a more mature and introspective side.

Songs like “Crying Lightning” and “Dance Little Liar” had now shown front man Alex Turner was changing his method of trying create the lyrics. From lines like “And your past-times, consisted of the strange, And twisted and deranged” had shown that he was now trying to shed the skin of his teenage self in terms of writing.

This is probably the moment where the album does tend to loose fans. On first listen it feels lyrically that the album could be their worst ever, it’s one of their albums where constant plays are needed for it to fully grip you.

Songs like “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” are far more relate able on a first listen basis, rather than songs like “My Propeller”.

Their two famous albums Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not and AM had the benefit of hitting you first time with their meanings and music. But some of the non-single tracks on AM sound very much weaker to the non-single album tracks on Humbug.

The band’s music had come on leaps and bounds by the time Humbug had come around. “Potion Approaching” had shown the band could develop ordinary songs to an even higher level with the band jumping from a fast paced song into a blues jam in the middle of the song.

This period is absolutely crucial in the Arctic Monkey’s evolution. They had dropped this style of Humbug when they made Suck It and See. By the time that band had made AM, it was clear that the experiences of Humbug still loomed large. The most obvious where the influences can be seen “R U Mine?” and “Arabella”.

Humbug brought us a big, deep, dark and brooding Arctic Monkeys. What’s not to love about that?