Listen Close: "Pagan Poetry" by Björk
Find out what makes “Pagan Poetry” by Björk such a special track, and how you can use it to improve your musical listening skills through ear training.
Open Your Ears to the Music of Björk
Few artists are as creatively experimental as Björk, which makes her music the ideal exploration ground when stretching and improving your musical ears.
Capitalising on aural inspiration (Part Two)
If you haven’t read Part One of this article, here’s a quick summation: in ear training, as in most musical pursuits, some of the most productive moments don’t come from dedicated practice time or specific exercises. In fact, they come from those fleeting moments of...
Capitalising on aural inspiration (Part One)
You know that feeling when you hear a mind-blowing song: that bittersweet mix of awe and… dejection? The immediate listening experience can be immensely rewarding, but to hear a composition which takes advantage of music theory to a greater degree than we’re...
Listen Close: "Psychoanalytwist" by Milk Cult
Steel Pole Bath Tub were an undeniably prolific band, releasing somewhere in the neighborhood of ten EPs and LPs between the years 1987 and 1995, as well as a heaping handful of singles. But even this level of productivity wasn’t enough for these noise-rock weirdoes,...
Listen Close: “Give Up the Ghost” by Radiohead
Sometimes it can feel like the music world is just treading water between Radiohead releases. Yes, we’ll listen to tons of other bands and fully enjoy many of them, but Radiohead remains one of the only groups that can still stop everyone dead in their tracks, getting...
Listen Close: "Turnin’ on the Screw" by Queens of the Stone Age
Recent talk of the possibility of a new Queens of the Stone Age album before the end of 2011 has me certifiably giddy. I’m a big fan of lead-Queen Josh Homme’s side project Them Crooked Vultures, and their 2009 self-titled LP spent some serious time on my...
Listen Close: "Pack Up The Cats" by Local H
Local H are known for being a reliably straightforward rock band (you probably at least remember them for their few and minor radio hits in the mid to late ’90s), but on Pack Up the Cats, their third proper LP, the two-piece pulled some left-field moves that...
Listen Close: “Better Already” by Northern State
Northern State are no longer together, and though that’s a bummer, they left us with three hyper-fun—and very different—albums before they hung up their microphones a few years back. I’m not here to give you a Northern State history lesson (though I’d love to), but...
Listen Close: "Mehu Moments" by K-X-P
I like to think of myself as an open-minded music fan with varied tastes to match. But if you were to open up my iTunes and scan through the genres, you’d find that my eccentricities, no matter how expansive I wished they were, actually don’t stretch all...
