Avalanche City - Our New Life Above The Ground

• Release Date: Unlisted
• Label: Unsigned
• Standout Songs: Love Don't Leave, Drive On, and Ends In The Ocean
• Sounds Like: A happier Death Cab blended with Bright Eyes.
• Rating: Eight catchy acoustic riff's out of ten.

Avalanche City is the first CD released by up and coming star Dave Baxter, who wrote and recorded the majority of the album (though he got by with a little help from his friends, like Ringo). Recorded in the countryside of New Zealand, Baxter includes deep echoey bass drums, a unique vocal sound and a healthy mix between upbeat songs (Love Love Love) and mellow jams (The Citizens). 

Drive On is a terrific song describing Dave's journey's most likely through the New Zealand countryside. He proclaims to the world to just forget about everything, leave your cell phones, and just drive. This song's somewhat slower, mellow nature is upbeat at the same time. It's a song where you just feel like you could drive forever and not look back. It'd be a great highway driving song for the evening, try it. 

My favourite track of the CD is most easily Ends In The Ocean. It's just SO upbeat. The pounding rhythm of the drums comes in around :28 seconds and it drives the song forward. It's a very free feeling song. The kinda song you'd play when you were starting. Think in a movie like 500 Days of Summer around the 450th day, where Tom Hanson gets out of his funk to pursue architecture. This would be a perfect song to play over a progressive video collage during this part. Tearing everything of his chalkboard, cleaning his house, finding a rhythm finally. This song is perfectly adequate.

Repetition is one of the only downsides of this album. The majority of upbeat songs have a slow almost ska-style up-strumming pattern. Hit a bass note, then hit the bottom couple strings, repeat. Baxter is a talented guy, but there's gotta be some more variation. 

Not to discourage you from listening or anything. It's still a great album, one of my new favourites to chill and study to in the background. It's simple in a way that all the songs revolve around Baxter's life in New Zealand and how great it seems. This is definitely a good thing, one of the best driving CD's since Golden Earring released Radar Love in 1973.

- Alive in stride with Canadian pride. 

Love Don't Leave: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIsTNh9hzHs&feature=related

Drive On: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KU6yYuK7Ayo With Interview following.

Homepage: http://www.avalanchecity.com/

Skrillex - Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites

• Release Date: October 25th, 2010
• Label: Mau5trap/Big Beat Recordings
• Standout songs: Kill Everybody (Bare Noize Remix) and With Your Friends (Long Drive) (Original Mix)
• Sounds Like: If an autotune machine gained A.I and had a child with the Bloody Beetroots.
• Rating: Four autotuned Dj's out of five.

Skrillex is the breakbeat-dubsteppy bastard child of Sonny Moore, the original singer in the weird, yet occasionally good From First To Last. Moore fills all 9 songs with catchy hooks and super-hardcore progressive dubstep breakdowns that terrify as much as they can inspire at the same time.
Songs like With Your Friends provide listeners with an almost sensitive side of Sonny, as he almost overuses autotune on the only line in the whole song. It's def not as polished as others, say, Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites, but I think that's what really makes it as a song. The entire four minute experience is basically a huge piano/vocal solo, mixed with a bit of synthesization (which isn't even a word, shut up).
On the other hand, the Kill Everybody remix delivered by Bare Noize, a european DJ trio, blows me away. It's intense for every second. Despite the somewhat graphic or offputting few lines of vocals (wusses), it tears the original mix up. The drop at :55 seconds is insane enough to make me drop my Biology notes and download a mixing program.
One thing though I really like about this is that for the 6 real songs (not including remixes) included, they're all different. Moore strays far from his musical boundaries in a way, to make all kinds of different sounds.
The bad thing is though, in almost every song, there is a huge drop. When I say huge, I mean like Jonathan Ogden or Arnold Schwarzenegger huge. They drop and it's almost out of the blue in a song like In For The Kill (even if it's not on the album, it's got an annoying drop in the middle of an upbeat remix). Every drop is more and more intense, and it can get close to killing the song. I mean, yeah, it's good, but it's a little too much for every song. I live for the drop as does any true fan, but at the same time, I want an artist to take it to another level you know? Try something new, do something different to keep people interested.
Bottom line is, if you want something to hype you up at the gym, or before a big game (Mac Lax 2010!), Skrillex will lend you his trancey tunes to jam out to with your big hippie headphones on.


- Alive in stride with Canadian pride.

With Your Friends (Long Drive) (Original Mix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq-geJ9UwG4&feature=channel

Kill Everybody (Bare Noize Remix): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ylVRGttEW4&feature=related

Skrillex Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/skrillex