Saturday 12 April 2014

STUDY MUSIC FOR HEAVY LISTENERS

Studies claim that listening to more of instrumental and classical music helps, especially after the discovery of the 'Mozart Effect', saying listen to Mozart improves your mental performance. Well honestly, I've tried listen to Mozart and Beethoven, and I kept reducing the volume because it didn't seem so helpful after having listened to so much progressive and heavy music for months together.

Some people prefer going into that 'No, I can't listen or watch anything during exams, it's very distracting!' trip, but most of us need something. You will be in different moods, so I hope this helps keep up with your changing moods. It's my last semester, and I'm relying on this.

Few tips:
1. Don't let the music be too loud. it gets distracting. Keep it at a moderate/low volume because you're not playing the song to listen to it. It's more like music creating an ambience/background music.
2. Don't listen to heavy/extreme music, you'll either get mindfucked or tear pages and break stuff, considering no one absolutely loves studying.
3. Instrumentation is important. Beautiful note selection and sweet progressions keep you in the mood.
4. People recommend listening to waves and waterfalls and crickets. Dude, just don't. You'll land up somewhere else if you're high. Ambient music, however, helps.
5. I do not advise people to do this, but I drink when I'm studying sometimes.  It isn't a necessity. Moderate drinking, 2-3 pegs max. :P
6. If you do not care about any of the above suggestions, it's cool. Maybe you'd prefer listening to music that you've been accustomed to for a very long time.

Progressive music is a boon to this time of the year. With many lengthy songs, making a playlist is less time-consuming and there's variety. I do recommend a few instrumental bands, and a few kinda heavy bands.

These are the bands I normally listen to. There's also a list of instrumentals that I listen to below this list.

1. Porcupine Tree

This is one of my favourite bands when I'm studying, and otherwise too! Instrumentation is ace, I need not say more. I can't particularly select an album, but yeah, I could be more specific. If you want a long trip, Voyage 34 is at your service!
Albums: The Incident, Fear of a Blank Planet (whole album), In Absentia
Songs: Anesthetize and the title track (FOABP), Dark Matter (Signify),  Blackest Eyes and Drown with Me (In Absentia), Arriving Somewhere but not here and Lazarus (Deadwing), The Blind House and The Incident (The Incident).
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2. Opeth


Very enjoyable, plus there's variety.
Albums: Damnation, Watershed, Blackwater Park, Ghost Reveries
Songs: Atonement, Isolation Years and Hours of Wealth (Ghost Reveries), The whole 'Damnation' album, Folklore (Heritage), Bleak (my all-time favourite Opeth song), Harvest, Drapery Falls (Blackwater Park), the whole 'Watershed' album.
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3. Karnivool 


Karnivool is not what I regularly listen to, but when I do, it feels awesome. Make sure you don't listen to Persona though :P I've been a fan of the first two albums and I haven't got the hang of Asymmetry yet. Maybe in a few months, let's see.
Albums: Sound Awake, Themata
Songs: Cote, Lifelike, Scarabs, Shutterspeed, title track (Themata), Deadman to Change 1 and 2 (Sound Awake), We Are, Sky Machine (Asymmetry)
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4. Deftones

I can't explain how awesome I feel when listening to this band! This is more on the heavier side. I mostly listen to Deftones in breaks or before going to bed, or the first thing in the morning. It doesn't exactly calm me from any stress, but it keeps me awake and motivated :P
Albums: Around the Fur, White Pony, Self-titled album, Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan
Songs: Mostly everything. Okay fine, here are some! My Own Summer, Be Quiet and Drive, Lotion, title track (Around the Fur), Digital Bath, Knife Party, (White Pony), When girls telephone boys, Battle Axe (Deftones), CMND CTRL, Rocket Skates, Sextape (Diamond Eyes), Swerve City, Leathers, Poltergeist, Graphic Nature (Koi No Yokan)
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5. Nine Inch Nails

Nine Inch Nails sets a very different mood. I'm pumped more than anything.
Albums: Broken, Downward Spiral, The Fragile, With Teeth, (Ghosts I-IV and The Slip are secondary)
Songs: Wish, Happiness in Slavery, Gave up (Broken), Closer, The Becoming, Reptile (The Downward Spiral), The Wretched, No you don't, The Great Below (The Fragile-Left), The Hand that Feeds, Only, Right Where it Belongs (With Teeth), Came Back Haunted, Copy of A (Hesitation Marks)
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Some songs that set the mood completely:
1. Textures: Storm Warning, Awake
2. Alter Bridge: Metalingus
3. Tesseract: Concealing Fate
4. Pantera: Psycho Holiday, War Nerve
5. Despised Icon: MVP
6. Fell Silent: Erase Begin, Immerse
7. Gojira: A Sight to Behold
8. Judas Priest: Painkiller
9. Iron Maiden: Aces High
10. Lamb of God: Ruin
11. Slipknot: Vermillion II
12. Led Zeppelin: Immigrant Song

I've also been listening to Indian bands Blakc and Paradigm Shift.

You may listen to other bands like Devin Townsend, Isis, Intronaut, some even listen to Tool. If you feel like listening to Slipknot also, I feel you. The frustration gets you there sometimes. Alter Bridge and Soundgarden also work well in the study leave, but not while studying.


Here are a list of a few instrumental bands:

1. Exivious

Discography: Exivious, Liminal 
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2. Animals as Leaders


Discography: Self-titled, Weightless, The Joy of Motion
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3. Cloudkicker



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All the best! 

Tuesday 1 April 2014

INDIAN ROCK AND METAL DOCUMENTARIES

From when rock began in India for the very first time till today, we've been a very interesting growing scene. Here are a few videos of rock and metal documented in India, with a few international ones as well. 

Rockumentary - the evolution of Indian Rock was Directed by music journalist Abhimanyu Kukreja during his stint with NewsX, a national English Channel based in India. The documentary was released on national Indian television in the year 2008 and still gets broadcast occasionally. In 2005, while still being in university, Abhimanyu realised that not much was written about Indian rockers as compared to their international counterparts. This prompted him to start his own word of mouth research and document the roots of Indian Rock and Roll music. So by the time, he passed out of University, the script was almost ready. Instead of practicing hard news and make an easy career in the news industry, he decided to be a music journalist. He wanted to make a series that would document the history of Indian rock but unfortunately the channel gave him a 24 minute slot. Approximately 450 minutes of footage was shot but a lot of it could not be aired as news stations in India prioritise hard news over rock music. Not their fault, rock is not exactly a selling point for them. During his time with zeenews.com and NewsX, he is also credited to have shot and interviewed the likes of Wes Borland (Limp Bizkit), Jethro Tull, Boney M, Herbie Hancock, George Duke, Chaka Khan, Pandit Ravi Shankar, Indian Ocean besides a host of other Indian and international acts. Since his resignation from mainstream television, he has been working on his second one which is independent, details of which will be out soon.



Part 1


Part 2


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This is the most popular one. 'Global Metal' (2008) is a documentary film by Sam Dunn of Banger Films Inc. Sam studied anthropology and his work mostly focused on the heavy metal culture. He made this documentary after 'Metal: A Headbanger's Journey' (2005). He is also popularly known for the Iron Maiden film 'Flight 666'.

The documentary is on parts of the world where most of the west doesn't really believe metal thrives. Some people still think we don't have Internet. But fuck them, check this one out if you haven't. It's a must-watch for every metalhead. Featured are some popular dudes like Sahil 'Demonstealer' Makhija of Demonic Resurrection, Reptilian Death and Workshop, and heavy metal cooking show Headbanger's KitchenNolan Lewis of Bangalore band Kryptos, Ananth in Prakalp days, Spiked Crib and an amazing gig at Razz in Bombay.


This was shot back when no major headliners had really played, Iron Maiden being one of the first and biggest bands.
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There was something amazing that came out last year, a film on heavy metal in India by Mehr Singh. At the time, Mehr, a Delhi filmmaker submitted this as her final project while she was doing a course in film and design through the Symbiosis Institute of Design in Pune.

This is another must-watch.


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Now Rock el Casbah hosted by 'Yusef Hashish' (I see), had a small episode where he promoted videos of Indian Metal bands like Demonic Resurrection (Mumbai), Scribe (Mumbai), Artillerie (Delhi) and Kryptos (Bangalore).

This guy is epically cute. Please watch! :P



Bhayanak Maut was also playing randomly in the background!
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We are all aware that Iron Maiden had segments of India in Flight 666. There are some other bands that did so too, like Meshuggah and Parkway Drive. Here are the featured parts of India from their documentaries.

Meshuggah played 'Great Indian Rock' in Pune and Delhi in 2010:



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Parkway Drive played Kolkata, India in 2011. This was pretty cool! The crowd was on stage! xD


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And then we have these guys too


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And these guys


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India has also featured in the Lamb of God documentary film 'As the Palaces Burn' with me and a segment from the Indian show, which will soon be out of DVD this year.

That's all for now! :)