Jotcamp is a pair of art students with some vague principles on media gluttony. We don’t want to just sit back and consume all the tasteful art we come across, so we’ve made this blog to compile and comment on that delicious media to keep our TV, music, and movies habit from becoming a one way conversation.
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Stained Glass - Piggy Back Ride and the Camel
Stained Glass started out as a Beatles cover band, and this song, Piggy Back Ride and the Camel, really drives that home with its kazoo tomfoolery.
18 Plays | Download
Stained Glass - Light Down Below
I’d been told that Stained Glass had released 2 albums, but I’d only ever come across Aurora, the follow-up record. Just before I went to Italy, I found a copy of their debut, Crazy Horse Road, and it’s most of what I listened to while away. It’s so good that I’m going to post a pair of songs off of it. This one’s called Light Down Below.
It turns out that the band put out a number of great singles, bundled onto a CD reissue of this album because none of them wound up on Stained Glass’ LPs.
16 Plays
My blogging hiatus has been due to a two week trip to Italy, far from my music collection and without an Internet connection. Won’t be back until the 19th, but then I’ll share some of my 1200+ photos and the albums (all new to me) that I loaded onto my iPod to tide me over on trains and planes.
Wigwam - Frederick & Bill
Wigwam’s second album is a progressive rock masterpiece. Half of the Finnish band’s material would feel at home in a Clapton set, slow jamming blues songs with tasteful guitar and organ flourishes, while the others, like this song Frederick & Bill, borrow heavily from Canterbury prog influences and feature great jazzy guitar riffs. I found this long interview of the band’s keyboard player which is worth checking out if you’re interested in the history of Finnish rock.
41 Plays | Download
Friendly Strangers - Bellflower
My room-mate and I have been devouring this album over the last few days. Friendly Strangers are basically what I think most indie bands ought to sound like. They’ve got a smattering of banjo, viola, and accordion on this record, set to a number of different styles. They’ve got a good sense of humour, as you’ll see in the lyrics and in the descriptions of the band that they’ve put onto their website:
Innocent bystanders have described Friendly Strangers’ music as “really pretty except for that one song” and “like that other band but not really at all.”
Pretentious folks have described Friendly Strangers songs as “modern Americana sewn to the corpse of a prominent early 20th century poet” or “a collection of spiteful hymns sprinkled with rosemary and carefully burned about the edges.”
52 Plays
Cirith Ungol - Edge of a Knife
Cirith Ungol was an American metal group most active during the 80s that started off sounding like a 70s hard rock act akin to early Judas Priest. They weren’t really revivalists, though; they’d formed in the early 70s but just didn’t manage to score a record deal until 1980. I think the album’s cover is the perfect level of corny for a record like this. It matches the band’s constantly over-the-top vocal and guitar theatrics that make their songs so fun to listen to.
42 Plays
Quest For Fire - The Hawk That Hunts The Walking
I went on a bit of a music dig this week so that I’ll have lots of new albums to listen to on my flight to Italy. I think I’ve come across a bunch of promising stuff.
Quest For Fire is a Canadian psychedelic rock band that put out their self-titled debut in 2009. They sound similar to Tame Impala, so like a spaced out Sam Roberts, but they write longer, open-ended songs in the vein of post-rock groups like Pelican. I have a feeling this record is going to get a lot of attention from me this summer.
43 Plays | Download
