A look at “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert.”
By 1966, Bob Dylan and his apostolic audience were at odds and that tension boiled to a head during one pivotal set at Manchester Free Trade Hall, not the misbilled Royal Albert Hall.
In 2022, Cat Power brought Dylan’s words back home, this time in the right venue.
Power, the notorious alternative folk songstress of ’90s acclaim, while known for being obtuse and inaccessible, feels remarkably accessible in this recording.
Released in 2023, as far as cover albums go – which she is no stranger to – this one is almost painfully straightforward.
Equal parts faithful reconstruction and self-aware reimagining of Dylan’s last supper, the album playfully tugs at the frayed edges of folk’s second death knell – Farcically, Dylan had already “killed” folk alongside Mike Bloomfield the year before at the 1965 Manchester Folk Festival.
Following the set song by song right down to the acoustic/electric split half-way through, Power effortlessly waltzes between her own delicate, ghost-like phrasing and Dylan’s nasally-spoken slide.
But as a listener, I’m not entirely sure what keeps Powers back from the precipice of empty pantomime she teeters on.
If anything, “Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” feels reverential to the point of becoming defanged.
Whether it be the mix or the crowd, there’s a heavy silence that hangs over both the acoustic and electric portions of the album, miles away from Dylan’s caustic bite and his audience’s simmering discontent.
Warning: This Clip Contains Explicit Content.
Bob Dylan’s 1966 “Judas” Incident from YouTube.
It’s a beautiful album and a wonderful showcase of both Power’s vocal stylings and Dylan’s lyricism but it feels empty above all else.
The moment is too self-aware, too self-referential.
Her audience sits in rapt attention, intimately acquainted with each dip and turn of the score, even attempting to recreate the “Judas” moment…only for it to be on the wrong song.
It’s Power’s response to the Judas heckle that says everything about the auspices this project was conceived under; “No, Jesus,” she responded dryly before launching into a haunted rendition of “Ballad of a Thin Man.”
We all know what that moment meant for the future of music, for the folk messiah to betray the movement he helmed…it changed everything – and that is the albatross that hangs around Power’s neck throughout the set.
Because we know now what that concert meant and what he means to music, we can’t possibly recreate it in earnest – it’s holy, now…it’s larger than us.
But it shouldn’t have been.
“Cat Power Sings Dylan: The 1966 Royal Albert Hall Concert” is a wonderfully accessible foray into Bob Dylan’s discography and the stylings of Cat Power. But beyond a well mixed, well arranged reproduction, Power doesn’t bring anything new or fresh into the conversation.
A good cover album, which, technically this is, should expand upon the material or revive the energy that captured audiences originally – and from where I stand, Power dropped the ball on both.
Alfred Hitchock directing actress Janet Leigh in the movie “Psycho.”
This image by Laura Loveday is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0
When I was younger, I would cower at the thought of silly campfire stories, checking under the bed and in closet corners before I went to sleep. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve sought out more and more scares.
Some of my favorite experiences with film have been in theaters — jumping so hard that I spill my popcorn — or with a friend, peeking out nervously through our fingertips. Further, some of my favorite music is from horror soundtracks.
Through the use of music, or the lack thereof, a director can build tension, anticipation and cue the audience as to what might be around the corner. They can also heighten the horror of the mundane, making empty hallways or creaking floorboards suddenly terrifying.
One of my most cherished horror soundtracks comes from the 2016 movie “Raw.” Its protagonist, Justine, is a vegetarian whose first year at veterinary school is interrupted by a new and insatiable craving for human flesh. The film utilizes the bloody terror of cannibalism as a metaphor for coming of age as a young woman.
In the background of each highly troubling scene is Jim William’s beautiful and sweet synth score. The music swells and sweeps, grand and dramatic and yet highly empathetic, filled with droning, repetitive sounds both low and high.
Williams spoke in an interview about how he tried to write a score that followed Justine’s journey as a character, starting out with “naive children’s music” and ending somewhere with “visceral rock.”
It’s clear in listening to the album how much depth is there in each song, with tracks like “Lust,” propelling themselves forwards with the energy of a ballerina’s crazed dance. Then, on “Finger Scene,” the piano is light and lighting before growing heavier and more urgent, conveying an escalation in mood.
Williams also mentioned how some of his inspirations included Ennio Morricone and Bernard Herrman, two extremely accomplished film composers. While Morricone created orchestral symphonies for films like “The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly” and “A Fistful of Dollars,” Herrman worked on projects like “Vertigo” and “Taxi Driver.”
William’s idols are particularly relevant to the history of horror, as before the advent of the synthesizer, most music made for films had to be orchestral and in the vein of Morricone. His work just happens to be a genius combination of the two.
In fact, it was Herrman who composed one of the most famous early horror soundtracks for Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho.”
The movie, which came out in 1960, was revolutionary because of its use of music. At first the score starts out as very subtle, suggestive of a possible catastrophe, before peaking at the infamous shower scene with shocking harsh string tones that come across as fingernails scratching down a chalkboard.
Herrman’s score in this scene serves as the catalyst of the jumpscare, electrifying viewers through its violent orchestration.
One of the next revolutionary film scores in horror came from John Carpenter’s “Halloween.” The iconic, yet simple, repetitive track only took three days to compose and record. Its heavy use of the synthesizer marked a huge departure in the music of horror, more like the screeching and uncomfortable “Psycho,” soundtrack and less like classical Hollywood instrumentation.
The “Halloween” score is heavily credited in transforming an otherwise anticlimactic slasher with high amounts of tension. Empty suburban streets were suddenly full of murderous potential, back to the idea of turning the mundane into the horrible.
In an interview, Professor Neil Lerner of Davidson College discussed how “Halloween” did not come out of a void. He directly cites “Psycho” as an influence, noting the shower scene that utilizes only two pitches in comparison to the repetitive sounds of “Halloween.”
Further, this innovation was partly motivated by budget. Lerner discusses how the “Psycho” budget was so low that Hermann did not have the money to pay for a full orchestra, only the strings. Similarly, Carpenter only had a 300,000 dollar budget for “Halloween,” motivating the director himself to sit down and compose the piece.
The theme of limited budgets continued throughout the 1970’s and 80s with the next great horror movie, “Jaws,” also focusing around two uncomfortable and repeating tones. Composer John Williams recalls how Steven Speilburg thought he was pranking him when he proposed just E, F, E, F, E, F, D, F for the theme of the shark.
So, what makes these soundtracks so scary? How do they work? And why do they continue to persist throughout pop culture? As someone who loves music but struggles to understand a songs’ complicated inner-workings, these questions fascinate me.
Firstly, it seems there is the principle of dissonance, or an overall lack of harmony in music. There are typically major and minor chords which comprise any given track, with the former being associated with positive emotions and the latter conveying sadness or darkness.
This is where dissonance comes into play. In each of these tracks above, there are two or more minor notes combined together at once, which simultaneously sounds unpleasant and works to elevate feelings of fear and natural discomfort. This is highly present in the “Halloween” theme.
Building on this, the combination of sounds in any given musical landscape helps in creating an overall mood or feeling. It’s like a garden of several plants and flowers, growing together, intertwining and sustaining from the same soil.
In the “Halloween” theme, dark, shattering notes thrum together at lower pitch. In the “Psycho” theme, high-pitched strings are paired not only to build that dissonance, but every note is accented at a higher pitch, making it almost feel like it’s imitating the stabbing knife.
Going back to the work of Jim Williams, what stands out about his soundtracks is that he seems to combine all aspects of dissonance and an uncomfortable musical landscape with a complex instrumentation that builds a sense of security before delving into the uncanny. His fusion of Morricone-style orchestral scores with the preceding horror legacy of droning notes and underlying fear makes for a highly effective and intense listening and viewing experience.
Another fantastic modern horror score is that of Disasterpeace, aka Rich Vreeland, a well-known video game composer who worked on the movie “It Follows.”
The track “Title” is tense and somehow lush. It feels like you’re walking home late and night, looking over your shoulder, feeling a cold breath on your neck and back as the music intensifies.
When the stronger instrumentation kicks in around the one minute mark, it so perfectly captures that horrific, striking moment of fear in your heart during a jumpscare. Maybe there was someone there following you all along.
In a Pitchfork review of the score, author Jeremy Gordon writes that Disasterpeace’s “’Title’ sounds like an update of Carpenter’s Halloween theme, as a lonely piano line is slowly enveloped by gothic dread.”
And clearly, the inspiration is there. There are the same dual, pulsing notes.
In this way, horror music seems to build on top of each other, like stray seeds that have blown in and settled in the already-grown garden, populating the old landscape with new vines and fruits and flora.
The landscape of horror soundtracks now is ripe with influence and integration of old and new, growing scares with two-tone dissonance and homages to the past. I look forward to all the scares to come.
An original Sony Walkman device.
"Original 1979 Sony TPS-L2 Walkman Teardown" by eevblog is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
In his article “The Walkman Effect,” researcher and musicologist Shūhei Hosokawa outlines the innovation and the inner and outer effects of the new listening device. He claims that the Walkman was the beginning of the personalizable listening experience that created the personal autonomy of choice.
Rather than alienation from the world, the Walkman was solid as a sort of self-enclosure for people. To Hosokawa, the Walkman represents a symbiotic self that affects the transformation of the outer urban environment and the inner environment as both a strategy and device.
Music is generally both public and involved with noise, including street musicians, the cacophony of cars and construction, portable speakers and open car windows. But the Walkman is private. Walkman owners listen to music in a hidden mental sphere, removed from outer sounds. The Walkman is not a technological revolution, but a social one.
Cover for the compilation release "Welcome To Zamrock! How Zambia’s Liberation Led To a Rock Revolution, Vol. 1 (1972-1977)" produced by Eothen Alapatt
The country of Zambia saw it’s population’s culture shift in a such drastic way more than one could imagine at the time and big reason for this was the birth and rise of Zamrock. But what exactly is Zamrock?
Well, the short answer to that question is a genre of music that originated in Zambia during the early 1970s that combines the sounds of local music, psychedelic, and garage rock sounds into the mainstream of the country’s music scene at the time. However, to truly understand the reason for Zamrock’s creation its important to know the history of Zambia during this time.
The official flag of Zambia
From Liberation to Creation
In 1964, Zambia gained its independence from British colonial rule and was fortunate enough to gain full control of the copper mining industry in the country which led to an economic boom. The first elected president of Zambia was Kenneth Kaunda and in an effort to create a national identity to further itself from its past colonial rule, Kaunda decided to invest heavily into the entertainment industry, specifically, the music industry.
As a result many young Zambians at the time became more and more musically inclined while taking influence from popular bands at the time like Black Sabbath, The Rolling Stones, Deep Purple, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles.
Also, its worthy to note that during this time, all Zambian radio stations were required to play at least 90% Zambian music as this was an order given by Kaunda himself.
This gave many musicians an incentive to create music as making a song or an album essentially meant getting airtime on the radio. Thus, Zamrock was born with its first ever release in 1972 being “Introduction” by W.I.T.C.H.
Zambian rock band W.I.T.C.H in concert (2021)
Notable Bands/Musicians
Salty Dog
W.I.T.C.H (We Intend To Cause Havoc)
The Boyfriends
Paul Ngozi & and The Ngozi Family
Amanaz
Rikki Ililonga
Musi O Tunya
Keith Mlevhu
The Decline of Zamrock
Unfortunately, Zamrock did not last long after its creation as the country went into a decline in many ways. First, it was the global decrease of the copper industry at the end of the decade which was 95% of Zambia’s export at the time. This was a major blow to the economic state of the country and sadly this wasn’t the only problem Zambia faced.
In 1984, an HIV/AIDS epidemic took place in Zambia. This event killed a significant amount of the adult population and this included many musicians. This not only was a huge loss for the general population of Zambia, but it ultimately was a large reason for the end of Zamrock.
Zamrock From Today’s Perspective
The music from Zamrock did not gain much traction outside of the country until much later on. Recently, thanks to the likes of Eothen “Egon” Alapatt and Now-Again Records, many bands and songs have been rediscovered by many all across the world through re-released and compilation albums of many Zamrock bands.
Zamrock has even managed to influence recent artists such as: Yasiin Bey (fka. Mos Def), Travis Scott, Yves Tumor, and Madlib through the use of samples.
On a Final Note
Looking back, The story of Zamrock is certainly a special one as this is something many people today not knowledgeable about it wouldn’t believe after first hearing about it. Seeing as how Zambia is a South Central African country who had not gained it’s independence up until relatively recently.
A picture of Victoria Falls, one of the 7 natural wonders of the world located on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe
Nonetheless, Zamrock is an event that deserves to be remembered and seen as more of a movement than a genre as it served as a great part of Zambia’s liberation story.
Cover for "Violence Unimagined" by Cannibal Corpse
Do you hear it? Just over the horizon, clanging and rattling like a thousand empty soup cans?
It’s the Metal Minute. Last time, we discussed doom metal, a slow and more articulate version of metal. For this installment, things are getting grotesque and growly as we explore the world’s most brutal musical genre: death metal.
What is it?
Death metal can trace its roots to the 80’s, with major stylistic influences derived from early black metal bands like Venom and thrash bands like Slayer and Hellhammer.
Cover for “Realm of Chaos” by Bolt Thrower
Early death metal bands were inspired by these sounds, but wanted to create something harsher — more deathlike — and began to experiment with heavier instrumentation, more abrasive vocals and increasingly grotesque subject matter (see: “Frantic Disembowelment” by Cannibal Corpse).
The genre features fast-paced tempos, overdriven guitar, blast beats on double-bass drums and abrupt changes to tempo and time signature. The resulting sound is heavy, distorted and aggressive. Combined with guttural, often inhuman-sounding vocals, the genre presents an intense and expansive listening experience.
Subgenres Within Subgenres
Like many other subgenres, death metal has several sub-subgenres. They include:
Brutal death metal
Pretty self-explanatory, brutal death metal favors faster, heavier and more brutal playing styles. The death metal nesting doll continues, as a sub-sub-subgenre called slam death metal has emerged from brutal death metal, infusing hardcore punk and even hip-hop elements into its sound.
Deathcore
The “deathification” of metalcore. I.e., the collision of hardcore punk, metal, and death metal. Like metalcore, deathcore is a label often rejected by metal dudebros who see the subgenre as “inauthentic.”
Death doom
The marriage of doom metal with death metal. Slower tempos and a more broody atmosphere with the growls and blast beats of death metal.
Melodic death metal
Pioneered in Sweden, leaning closer towards mainstream metal with a more melodic style.
Technical death metal
Also known as tech-death or prog-death, presents progressive metal with a death metal slant. Time signatures, rhythms and instrumentation becomes more complex — or, some would say, progressive — within this sub-sub-genre.
Who Makes it?
The death metal scene is robust. Here are several genre heavy-hitters:
We’re back this week with another installment of the Metal Minute. Many moons ago, I covered progressive metal, an artsy and psychedelic interpretation of the genre.
This week, we’re exploring the despairing world of doom metal.
What is it?
Doom metal is a subgenre of heavy metal that casts a gloomy, despondent shadow. If Edgar Allan Poe was a metalhead, this would be his genre of choice.
Cover for “Dehumanizer” by Black Sabbath
The genre can be traced back to the 1980s influence of Black Sabbath, a band that’s blues-infused style laid the groundwork for what would eventually develop into its own scene.
What’s it Sound Like?
The subgenre features slow, almost laborious tempos that compound an overarching tone of dread, despair and neurosis.
It’s common practice for guitarists and bassists to detune their instruments in order to achieve maximum heaviness. This effect leads many to describe the genre as “sludgy.”
Cover for “Epicus Doomicus Metallicus” by Candlemass
The lyrical content of doom metal songs tends to center around several core themes: depression, paranoia, despair and occasionally the occult. While other subgenres, such as black metal, lend themselves towards extreme vocal distortion, most doom metal vocalists sing in a clear fashion.
Thus, it’s all the easier to pick out a song’s bleak themes. For example, “Solitude” by Candlemass represents clear doom metal ethos in its lyricism.
I’m sitting here alone in darkness Waiting to be free, Lonely and forlorn I am crying I long for my time to come Death means just life Please let me die in solitude
“Solitude” – Candlemass
Subgenres Within Subgenres
Not only is doom metal a heavy metal subgenre, but is possesses several subgenres itself. Sub-subgenres, if you will.
Doom metal subgenres include drone metal, epic doom metal, gothic doom metal, sludge metal (also known as sludgecore), progressive doom, and many others.
Cover for “When the Kite String Pops” by Acid Bath
Each subgenre retains the core elements of doom metal but with the integration of qualities from other styles. For example, sludge metal is a combination of doom metal and hardcore punk.
Songs like “Finger Painting of the Insane” by Acid Bath feature the loping guitar rhythms characteristic of doom metal with the screaming vocals and “punch” of hardcore.
Album cover for Faye Webster’s “Underdressed at the Symphony,”
Relationships are often marked by the music shared with people. There are songs I can’t listen to without remembering certain points in time, points in relationships, or points in states of mind, whether it brings pain or pleasure.
The worst breakup of my life left me turning to the grounding capacity of music. Japanese Breakfast’s new album “Jubilee,” had just come out, and I spent all my free time wallowing and projecting onto the song “Kokomo, IN.”
To this day, I can’t listen to that song, or a myriad of others without thinking about that specific person and stretch of time. I think of “Kokomo, IN,” as a capsule holding all of my emotions towards that relationship. They’re placed there for me to return to whenever I want, or to discard with appreciation for how it helped me process a difficult moment.
It was empowering for me to mark the song as a memorial for my relationship. I never considered that it must be even more empowering to create your own album as a form of remembrance, and Faye Webster’s new album feels just like that.
With her smooth voice and beautiful accompaniments, Atlanta based singer-songwriter Faye Webster quickly became a household name for indie music lovers. While I knew her new album would be good, I didn’t expect it to resonate so hard with my past experiences.
Her highly anticipated new project “Underdressed at the Symphony,” is full of nostalgia and lost love. The album is lush and graceful, featuring Webster’s recognizable crooning and lengthy jam sequences. It is, unmistakably, a breakup album.
The cover for "それは皆からの秘密です (185.45.195.172)," a hexD DJ mix by Sienna Sleep.
Everyone loves a good intentionally low-quality effect for nostalgia reasons. The sensation ranges from posting movie screenshots run through VHS filters to pressing modern albums onto vinyl to those people on Twitter who post pictures of anime on CRTs. In more recent years, this phenomenon has created a trend of lobit music, made to replicate an era where YouTube uploads were low quality and waiting for your music to download took forever.
The term for the effect applied to music is called bitcrushing, and it’s a pretty simple filter to put on your music. Combined with Gen Z having nostalgia for 360p YouTube videos and now being old enough to put out music, it makes sense why there’s been a surge of it recently.
That said, it’s also existed for as long as people have been able to do it, leading into this brief history of one effect.
I’ve touched on the history of goth music on this platform before.
Considering the sheer volume of goth and goth-adjacent bands I cover on here, I think it’s safe to say that I’m fairly goth-focused. However, I’m far from an expert. When it comes to anything I’m passionate about, I consider myself perpetually learning and perpetually growing.
I’ve been long-familiar with the influence of punk music on the development of the goth subculture. Post-punk exists a staple of goth music (and my top genre of 2023).
What I wasn’t aware of, however, was the influence of black culture on early goth music. Once goth began to branch out from its deathrock roots, artists drew from numerous inspirations.
Among them, and arguably among the most important to the scene, was a genre I wasn’t even aware of until I started my research. This genre was not only important, but quite literally spearheaded the production of one of the most iconic goth songs of all time.
What is Dub?
Dub emerged from the reggae scene in the late ’60s and early ’70s. In its earliest iterations, dub tracks were simply instrumental versions of reggae songs.
According to an article by MasterClass, artists would strip a track — usually of the reggae, ska and rocksteady genres — of its leading vocals and highlight bass and drums, occasionally mixing in their own sound effects.
The “first” dub track was created in 1968 when the engineer for Treasure Isle studio accidentally pressed a copy of “On the Beach” by the Paragons without the accompanying vocal track. The mistake was a hit among Jamaican DJs, who improvisationally rapped (a practice called toasting) over the instrumentals.
Cover for “On the Beach” by The Paragons
Jamaican audio engineer Osbourne “King Tubby” Ruddock, roused by the track’s unexpected success, took to his mixing desk to experiment. Ruddock’s influence was instrumental in the growth of dub’s popularity and its spread overseas.
None of this would have been possible if not for the advent of multitrack recording, which allowed artists to strip down tracks in the first place. Other technological advancements in the recording industry would later prove instrumental in the development of the genre.
Cover of “Escape to the Asylum of Dub” by Mad Professor
In the 1980s, a dub scene emerged in the United Kingdom with artists such as Mad Professor, Scientist, Jah Shaka, Adrian Sherwood, UB40 and Mikey Dread, who inspired acts like the Clash and the Police.
During this time, electronic elements also made their way into the scene, leading to subgenres like dubstep and dub techno. Contemporary dub is considered an electronic genre as a result, often played in clubs and dance halls.
What’s that got to do with goth music?
The list of genres influenced by dub is multitudinous, featuring rock, post-punk, pop, hip-hop, house, techno, edm and many others.
If you’ve made it this far, you might be thinking: oh, dub influenced the goth scene through its relationship to post-punk. And while you wouldn’t be wrong, there’s an even more overt example of dub’s impact on the goth scene.
“Bela Lugosi’s Dead,” the debut single of Bauhaus, is widely considered to be the first gothic rock record. Released on Aug. 6, 1979, the 9-minute track served as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to the late Bela Lugosi, star of the 1931 film “Dracula.”
Cover for “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” by Bauhaus
According to bassist David J in a 2018 interview with Post-Punk.com, dub and reggae were major influences in the song’s production.
“I mean, basically Bela was our interpretation of dub,” J said.
The sprawling instrumental beats and deep, preternatural bass of the song’s first half certainly echo dub’s style.
“It’s all very intuited,” frontman Peter Murphy said in a 2019 interview with Kerrang! magazine. “Very dub.”
The cover for "Significant Soil" by Mister Water Wet
On the internet, it has been incredibly easy to find incredibly niche music if you know how to look for it, or even if you just accidentally stumble into it. One of my favorite recent instances of this has been a scene referred to as mineral ambient, or simply mineralism.
Mineral ambient is a form of ambient that focuses on atmospherics based off of ambient dub and dub techno, which means lots of echo, layering, and a very nocturnal sound.
Unlike these, mineral ambient has a strong focus on creating an organic-yet-surreal atmosphere – I’ve personally described it as “primordial ooze music,” which I still feel is a good descriptor of the vibe.
The unusual name comes from the label West Mineral Ltd, which describes itself on its website as “an Audio-Mineral exploration company.” Founded by ambient artist Huerco S, the label is considered the originator of the sound.
That said, after development by artists outside of it, there’s now a wide range of albums that would be considered mineral ambient or adjacent to it. So let’s get into some!
