One AM
The only album I’ve actually pre-ordered this year is The One AM Radio’s This Too Will Pass. Pre-ordering is like betting that an album will be good; I think, I won the bet.
The One AM Radio is Hrishi Hirway and a rotating cast of characters. For instance, during his last tour, which I saw he was with two sax players and a upright bassist. Earlier I’d seen him with a violinist and two french horn players or a violinist and upright bassist. TOAR has always mixed electronic and acoustic elements but This Too Will Pass harkens back to his first album Hum of Electric Air with more of an emphasis on the acoustic elements than his second, A Name Writ in Water.
Despite processed, electronic or manipulated portions, it’d be an error to assume that this album was any way mechanical or without emotional. If you thought those Album Leaf songs were so yearning and emotional, wait until Hrishi’s voice is right in your ear singing these heartfelt songs. One constant in all of his recordings is between his breathy style of singing and his recording technique, it sounds like he’s recording so close to the microphone that he’s actually singing inside your head, or that he’s singing just to you. It’s a very personal way of presenting the vocals. The instrumentals vary heavily from song to song, from almost straight forward songs with embellishments from strings to bass clarinets leading a song with heavily processed drums. Despite the varied sounds, it has a consistent feel or, at least, a consistent asthetic, probably in part due to the vocals I mentioned earlier.
I can’t predict the future; I don’t know what’s going to come out between now and December 31, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this album makes my Top X albums of 2007 list.
Another reason to love TOAR is that he plays rad venues like Fort Oregon I gotta love a place where it costs $5 to get in and the artist has to walk right past you to get to the area he’s going to play (not a “stage” because there is no stage).
The One AM Radio - In the Time We’ve Got (mp3)
The One AM Radio - The Echoing Airports (mp3)
This Too Will Pass is available from insound.
The One AM Radio is holding a mix tape contest based on this album. I love mixtapes! I’ll enter and post the playlist and photos of the packaging when I’m done.
When we were driving, we listened to a lot of music — a lot of albums, but also a lot of mixes: ones people made for us, stuff we’d put together in the past, playlists we’d make on the fly. I’ve been thinking a lot about the Art of the Mix, and themed mixes, and also work based on other work…and so, here’s a contest: make a mix cd that is somehow based on the new album, This Too Will Pass. You can interpret that pretty loosely, however you’d like. Mail it to me, and the maker of best mix will get:
- a Dangerbird Records hoodie
- a One AM Radio t-shirt (your pick from any of the three designs on the website)
- a mix back from me
See the rest of the details after the break.
(I’m flexible on this stuff. If you win, and you already have a t-shirt and you’d rather get a copy of A Name Writ In Water on vinyl or something, that’d be cool with me, too.)
Ok? So, here are some parameters:
- the winner will be picked on content, packaging, thematic and formal unity, stuff like that
- it should come in a form of an audio cd (no tape player in my car!)
- and I mean audio, not like, an mp3 or data cd
- it should include a tracklist
- send it in to arrive no later than Friday, May 11th
- letters of explanation, introduction, exposition, and anything else you want to include with the cd would be dope
mail it in to:
Hrishikesh Hirway | The One AM Radio
c/o Dangerbird Headquarters
1617 Cosmo Street #410
Los Angeles, California 90028
As he says, mixes must be received by May 11, so get working on them!
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May 10th, 2007 at 7:12 pm
[…] As I mentioned before, I was going to make a mix for the One AM Radio mix contest. It had to be based on the album This Too Will Pass. I settled on the theme of “Home, Coming and Leaving.” It was a pretty hard mix for me to do, being constrained to a theme like that, but I liked the resultant mix, which runs from prison songs to old timey to soul/ Motown to indie to post rock. […]