Saturday, May 5, 2012

Wish I Had An Angel | Alone In The Dark | Nightwish

Here's a quick background of Nightwish. They're a Finnish band who are famous for writing gothic-rock songs.

One of their most popular songs is Wish I Had An Angel, which was very successful in European and even North American charts.

I don't think there's anything really unique about this song. It's just another, good, basic, rock songs, and I really appreciate that. Solid rock songs like this is becoming harder and harder to come by, and it's good the ones that are good are still energetic and well written.
Song Wish I Had An Angel
Album Alone In The Dark
Artist Nightwish
Genre Rock
Buy MP3 File on Amazon for $0.99

Soldier's Lullaby | Evolution | Alex Mitchell

Man, this song is cool. Soldier's Lullaby is really a song performed with nothing more than an electric violin and a loop station.

Alex Mitchell really uses the loop station and electronic effects to really emphasize the emotions in this song. For those who don't know, a loop station is a machine that basically loops certain parts of play. For example, at the beginning of this song, Alex plucks his violin with the loop station on recording. After that, the loop station repeatedly plays the pizzicato section over and over again. At other points, you can also hear him loop another layer of sound on top of the pizzicato. By using reverb effects on top of everything, the noises produced really seem to go together and make a really somber atmosphere.

There are several distinctive parts in this piece. One can hear the steady, sad beat from the pizzicato at the beginning. When Alex starts using his bow, I can imagine a soldier really questioning himself about the actions and sins a soldier is destined to commit. The atmosphere then changes, and then comes the march. And at the very end, comes the regret, and of course, sadness.

A wonderful piece. Don't forget, this song is entirely performed by one person. I think it's quite safe to say that Alex Mitchell is quite the one man army.
Song Soldier's Lullaby
Album Evolution
Artist Jason Anick
Genre Electronic
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Union | Monkey Business | The Black Eyed Peas

I'm very excited to have discovered one of the older songs by The Black Eyed Peas. This post is about Union, a great song about humanity.

Although The Black Eyed Peas have been rather disappointing to me personally, this is one of the good songs they've made that isn't filled with booty crap.

This song has a great trumpet and piano feature, making it even a little jazzy. It's not often that I find a jazzy rap song, and so this is relatively fresh to me. I'm surprised that this song didn't go viral like many of The Black Eyed Peas' songs.

In a sense, this song is trying to convince of all that we should focus our efforts not on war and hell, but instead on true crises like poverty and lack of proper education. I'm glad that this band created a nice song like this.
Song Union
Album Monkey Business
Artist The Black Eyed Peas
Genre Hip-Hop/Rap
Buy MP3 File on Amazon for $0.99