Carston Früm, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Write Ambient Music

Hope you're all staying cool on the hottest day New York has had in a long time. I've never been so happy to be sitting at the desk answering phones at my internship; free air conditioning! When I'm in the city I share a room the size of a closet with no A/C, so fat guy + A/C = I'll do whatever you need, so long as I can keep my rolls cool.

Last week I put out an EP of music I'd started during my last week of college. Bear with me, it's sort of a big deal. One, because I'm actually selling it (which I never do with my music). Of course, there's still the option to download it for free; nobody has any money anymore, and I'd rather have people listening to it and spreading it around and not making any money off of it than them not getting it because of some set arbitrary amount (originally, I tried a $2 minimum, which lasted all of 15 minutes).

Two (and this reason's actually kinda cool), it's the first time I sat down every day and forced myself to commit an idea to "paper". Each song minus the bonus track was started in a succession of days, and was finished once the impending doom of graduation was dealt with. As such, some of the music is tense, uncertain, sorrowful, what have you. The regular gamut of emotions one runs through right before starting the rest of their life. 

I talk too much. The music's my take on ambient (so, ambient film score, sort of) with fittingly Swedish band name to match. The name was born out of the idea to have our names pronounced entirely wrong with what was written. Carston Früm was a take on Christian Frahme, one of my housemates; of course, it helps that it looks like Sigur Rós.

http://carstonfrum.bandcamp.com/
^My personal favorite track, and the one that started the whole project.

Download, listen, spread, enjoy, and if you like it enough give me money! That gives me more incentive to do these types of things, or at least lets me buy things to do them better.

One last thought before I go: caught Prometheus on Tuesday. Apart from a rather refreshing take on film score in a major release, I'm still trying to decipher why the film was made. It looked incredible, sure (possibly cause of the Imax 3D and all of the subwoofer), but I didn't see the point. Between all the mouthfucking aliens and Charlize Theron's bodysuit (admittedly awesome), it seems like Ridley Scott missed the whole idea of a movie: it has to have a point. Which I feel Prometheus did not.

Though it did allow me to whisper "Spaaaaaace" at every possible moment.

Pictured: Space. And robot Michael Fassbender.

I'm done.

Bor(ing)n This Way

Unless you've been living under a rock for the past year, it's impossible not to have heard all the hype surrounding Lady Gaga's new album. The woman's a genius. Her extra-musical activities have served to solidify that, no matter how her album sounds, it would be the next biggest thing since... well, her last album. Between her last effort The Fame Monster and her newest album, she's become the champion of the misunderstood, the bullied, the underdog. The majority of the gay community regards her as some sort of leather clad Jesus with the rallying cry "Be yourself!" With over 10 million followers on Twitter and 35 million hanging on her every word on Facebook, the album was destined to be a resounding success saleswise, especially considering the concept of the album is nearly dead. Projected album sales for the week were expected to break 800,000; I'll get a finite number once those details are released.

Good for her. There's only one problem though:

The album FUCKING SUCKS.

Pardon the language, but seriously. There's absolutely no redeeming qualities on here whatsoever. It's a damn shame too, since The Fame Monster was not only her best output, but one of the best pop albums released in the past 10 years. She kept her trademark weirdness and refusal to adhere to societal norms, but backed it up with music that actually had some SERIOUSLY incredible writing. Listen to "Bad Romance" or "Telephone" again and don't tell me that they're not still stuck in your head days later. They were catchy, memorable, incredibly dancy and helped propel her into the upper echelon of pop stars who weren't only popular, but GOOD too. Which is a rarity in today's day and age.

Born This Way trades in all aspects of good writing for a collection of 17 insipid, bland, generic fist pumping anthems solely written for Gaga's "little monsters". And I'm sure all of them, in their "misunderstood" lives, will find this album the greatest ever written and will sing its praises until the day they die. Or the day they grow up, at least. As for the rest of us, her more casual fans, we've been thrown to the wayside. The album sounds great, no doubt about it; the production is fat, the beats pounding and driving, the synths huge, larger than life and Gaga's voice right in front of it all.

The writing, however? Entirely unmemorable. The only tune that holds any weight as a contender for a legitimate song is second single "Judas", largely due in part to the fact it's a near carbon copy of Bad Romance with slightly dirtier synths.

Listen to this:


And then try to convince me it's not a sped up, grittier version of this:


Other tracks on the album try to replicate former successes as well. "Americano" tries and fails far too hard to be "Alejandro", leaving the listener with one of the worst tracks on the album, first single "Born This Way" has been proven time and time again to be ripped off from Madonna's "Express Yourself" and "You And I" is a poor man's version of "Speechless". The biggest problem is nothing has any personality to it. While The Fame Monster was still very much a dance-pop album, you could tell serious effort was put into making the songs stand out, if only a little bit, from the rest of the trite on the radio. Born This Way has all those 4 on the floor kicks and side chained off beat synthesizer work that's been oh so prevalent the past 2 years. It sounds like everything else.


"Hair" succeeds as a mindless dance song with a halfway catchy chorus hook and an admittedly awesome sounding second verse, even if it contains an absolutely awful intro and far too much 80s saxophone for its own good. "Government Hooker" and "Schiebe", if combined into one song, would be the best on the album; both have an underlying industrial vibe that I may be biased towards and rather amusing premises. That's what... 3 total songs that have only a little appeal? Out of seventeen?

Unacceptable.

Next time, Gaga, PLEASE remember that there's more than just the sad, misunderstood fucks out there. Us normal folk like to listen to you to. Or did, at any rate. And if you're going to take cues from the 80s, at least pull them from good artists.



I rest my case.