The Dyes of Patch 1

In these final entries, seeing as though Karmath the Blog has been primarily a personal MP3 journal, I'd like to share the main influences of my songwriting. My "greatest hits" if you will. What with all the MP3 "Best of the Year" lists and everything, I figured I'd show you where I take most of my inspiration from in the music world.

I s'pose I'll start at the back end of inspiration and work my way up.

I love artists who blend a lot of genres together into a hodge podge collage, creating an entirely new sound all their own. They aren't creating a movement, but they are creative enough to show that they are true geniuses. I take a great liking to raw rock, big drums and production. I also love riff rock, heavy recognizable riffs that are both easy to play and easy to remember. Riffs that get stuck in your head.

I'm a fan of music that changes its production from song to song. What happens when you take an electronic music duo production team that makes great heavy sample beats from all sorts of different sources and put them together with a singer/songwriter with a nack for folk/rock/blues/funk/dance/country/experimental music? Genre bender with production bender = Beck.

I consider Beck's best albums to be the ones where he teamed up with The Dust Brothers, best known for the Fight Club soundtrack they scored. These albums include "Odelay", "Midnight Vultures", and "Guero". There are so many different sounds from song to song, it's like a new palette was created for each. They're so interesting to hear and distinguishing and taking in each new timbre of each new song's aural palette is extremely engaging and fun. These albums are what gave me my love for really staying in tune to production and found noises. It keeps albums interesting. You're reinventing yourself with each new song. Beck does this better than any other artist I know.

I try to make all of my songs sound different. I want each record to sound different. I want all sorts of different styles within my music, blending together to create a new whole.

Here's a good example of a quintessential influential Beck song: Derelict from "Odelay". It has samples galore mixed with found, somewhat sloppy noises. It's dark, with a distorted vocal line. Plus, the eastern instruments provide for a sort of drug induced ambience that's not uncommon for Beck. His ridiculousness can sometimes provide for some far out noises and feelings.

So, we've got found noises, a great collage of different genres, great production, and an empathetical feeling due to all. I have no idea what the song is about, but I feel like I do:

Beck -- "Derelict"