SAMURAI CHAMPLOO OST

This week in Acrosstheunivers-ity, I wanted to bring something different to what we normally recommend routinely. Because of my love for anime, I've seen plenty of series that have influenced my life and personality. No wonder that after weeks of watching a series, when it reaches it´s last chapters I feel sluggish and sad .. though it sounds silly, because the adventures
of the characters who have lived with me are ending forever. Reviving the feelings that their experiences produced in me it´s possible by listening to the music that accompanied them. Images come to my head and I can meditate about the message of the series.

On this occasion, since it will not be the only one, I´ll talk about the soundtrack of the anime series that has influenced my life most: Samurai Champloo.

Jin,Mugen & Fuu respectively

Samurai Champloo appears in 2007 under the direction of Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of the legendary Cowboy Bebop (series of worship for all lovers of anime).

The series is set in the Edo period in Japan and follows the adventures of Mugen, Jin and Fuu, three completely different people that are brought together by fate in a thrilling adventure in search of the samurai who smells like sunflowers.Specifically, something that is special of Samurai Champloo, is the attitude of the characters,similar to the people of the twenty-first century. Besides the soundtrack gives it that urban touch that makes the difference.


The Samurai Champloo soundtrack, has several musical styles mixed superbly by the director in each of the episodes, adding an incredibly modern and original atmosphere.

The artists who make up this wonderful soundtrack are Force of Nature, Tsuchie and Fat Jon. Shing02 in addition,a Japanese rapper who sings during the opening theme with Nujabes "Battlecry". The ending theme is sang by Minmi who runs with the beautiful theme "Shiki no Uta"or song of four seasons.




Some songs can not be heard on the albums of the official series. This is the case Obokuri Eeumi a beautiful song from her album Ikue Asazaki "Utabautayun" and "San Francisco" by MIDICRONICA for her album "# 501" which is the ending of last episode.



Nujabes is a Japanese producer and DJ of hip-hop. In the soundtrack to the style used is heavily influenced by cool jazz. Although we could qualify his music as jazz rap.Some great songs? "Mystline"and "Aurarian dance".When Shing02 colaborates with Nijabes, they create great songs such as "F.I.L.O"


DJ KZA and Kent are the DJ / producers in Force of Nature. Creators of new techniques and concepts have a strong style of his previous experience as a hip-hop artists.Their songs create a calm and mysterious atmosphere. Listen to "Just Forget" and "Hiri Zuru Style".


This was my recommendation for this week, I hope you enjoy listening to something different .To conclude I´ll just say that in Samurai Champloo Shinichiro Watanabe achieves a masterly combination between feudal style and and urban hip-hop,creating a masterpiece, and proving once again that it is one of the masters of animation.

Stream of Consciousness

I'll admit it: lately, I have been terrible about keeping up on music. Please excuse this sin; the fact of the matter is I'm here to learn Spanish (whether or not that's obvious), and so I've pretty much been listening to the one Pereza album I own on repeat since arriving in Pamplona. It's Animales, in case you were wondering-- I heard Princesas one night in a bar a few years ago and decided to download the CD so I had something in Spanish to listen to. But I digress.

Originally, I intended this post to be about a band that's hot right now on my college campus, so I decided to head over to the website for Cat's Cradle, a well known venue for alternative acts in my college town in the States. One act caught my eye for two reasons, the first being that I'm bummed I won't be in Chapel Hill to see them perform. The other is that they are indirectly related to a band Ines mentioned in her last post (I'll explain why in a minute!). Anyway, the band is called Built to Spill; they were big in the 90s and are still well known and respected on the lo-fi scene. They are touring now because they have an album coming out in October.

In Ines's last post she mentioned The Ataris, which was without a doubt my favorite band when I was in 8th grade and 13-14 years old. My musical taste has evolved considerably since then, but I still remember most of the words to the songs I used to listen to-- including one called "Song for a Mix Tape". One of the verses goes, "...it had all my favorite songs. There was Jawbreaker and Armchair Martian, Built to Spill and The Descendents; yeah I even put one of ours on it". The introduction of the song is a clip from The Descendents "Silly Girl", and a line of the song is inspired by (or directly copied from, depending on how you choose to look at it) from Jawbreaker's "Jinx Removing". Jawbreaker, now defunct, is one of my favorite bands. They're generally considered "punk" depending on who you talk to, so if you're looking for something a little harder than The Ataris I highly recommend them.

Anyway, I guess the main point of this post was how interesting I find the way bands are related to one another and influence one another, especially bands as diverse as The Ataris, Jawbreaker, and Built to Spill. Just to tie it back to my original intent-- a band students on my campus are listening to-- here's a video I found on YouTube that someone made for one of my favorite Built to Spill songs, "Car". Enjoy!

Those wonderful 90s

Who doesn´t remember those American teenagers obsessed with losing their virginity before the prom?Those parties at the "Rich boy" house, with tables full of red plastic glasses and punch bowls? What about those drunk girls turning on the poor nerds of the highschool? What about the practical jokes to the Dean? And the American football players with their busty blond cheerleaders? Where are those bands that played at the Spring Break?

Those moments have an original soundtrack: 90s Punk-pop
Punk-pop came out from the fussion between Punk-rock and Pop music. When a group of californian youngs called "The Descendents" started talking on their letters about highschool,proms,girls,friends...to sum up, they started to talk about what really matters to a teenager at the U.S.A . Los Angeles time wrote about them when their first Cd (Milo goes to college) came out at 1982 that it was "perfect for the kid who was always the loser who never got the girl". Maybe you haven´t heard much about this group, we´ll that may be because they started at the 80s, but if you want to know more about them, they´ve got a great webpage: http://www.descendentsonline.com/

Although The Descendents started what seemed to be a new music style (and lifestyle too) who actually settled it was Blink 182. This californian(what a surprise) band was formed by Tom Delonge,Mark Hoppus and Scott Raynor (this last one was fired from the group for his problem with drink) at the end the battery was played by Travis Baker. Their influences? Bad Religion´s punk, and Green Day´s and Offspring´s punk-rock.

But what does Blink 182 make that differences them from their predecessors?: they didn´t talk about politics on their letters, their songs were made for brats and they were completely original. Their success came from the fact that their music reflected the experiences of teens, and conected with the life of skaters and surfers that just wanted to have fun. Have a look at their website http://www.blink182.com/,because they are coming back with a tour on 2009 and 2010.

Blink though, wasn´t the only band that made it.Sum41,Good Charlotte,New found glory, Ataris,Yellowcard,Bowling for soup or Zebrahead, composed the tendency.You can listen all their songs for free at http://www.garageband.com/genre/poppunk. And in this atmosphere, not only the music changed, movies did too. And the industry noticed that this film genre had it´s place. So, American pie appears and becames a complete success. And its plot its not the 8th wonder,but its hilarious. And another series that turned out being a complete success asociated with pop-punk was Malcolm in the Middle. But after this boom, there was a weakening, around 2005, this groups have a more alternative style, and new groups such as Fall out boy have taken over.

The strength of Pop-punk is gone, but we will always remember those wonderful 90s, and the hope that this genre never dies completely. Life seemed so easy...

Sharing and Discovery

To me, music is all about sharing and discovery, so I thought I'd share with you some of my favorite sites on the Internet for discovering new bands.

First up is Rolling Stone, the official website for the magazine of the same name. At least in the States, this magazine is pretty much the Bible for anything and everything pertaining to music news. They have interviews with artists, album reviews, and stream mp3s so you can hear a song before buying it. Plus the website has a section for blogs, where people frequently comment and express their views about bands and what's going on in the world of music.


The next site is one I've been using for awhile-- Last FM. On Last FM, you create a user profile and submit what kind of music you like to listen to, and a personalized radio station is created for you to listen to online. Last FM introduces you to new music because when they create your radio station, they take into account what other users with similar tastes listen to. It's a really great resource for finding new bands, and best of all, it's free-- so its perfect for college students with little disposable income.



Tuneage, powered by Tumblr, is a great blog I stumbled upon this summer. Ten contributors write for the blog, and each day they bring to you a free song to stream as they make recommendations about what music to listen to. And it's not all "I like this band, so listen to them!" either-- some of their recommendations are more like, "Kings of Convenience is a great band to listen to on a rainy day." Again, the best part of this site is that it's free, so it's a really easy and convenient way to discover new music without spending money or illegally downloading.


Another blog I discovered this summer is The OCMD, and like Tuneage most posts offer free music to stream. The difference is this blog is updated by one person, and it's more of her personal thoughts on sharing the music she loves (mostly indie and electronica). But it's still a good read, and still a great resource for discovering new bands-- especial ly since, as the title indicates, she is obsessive about music.


That's all for now. I highly recommend you check out these sites (at the very least, Last FM) to discover bands you'll love but didn't know existed. Enjoy!

Floatation Therapy II

Hi Rockers,

As you can see in my previous post, my name is Elena and I study in the Communication faculty of Navarra. This week I take the opportunity to offer you all a blog and a web, which could bring you more information of what I talked about last week: The English band Fightstar and their latest album. I'm going to recomend you other site and other blog too, which contain news and media about the most latest famous alternative and hard-rock bands. Who hasn't ever got bored of his music and thought "Well I really need something new that fills my mind but I don't know where to find it"?

To begin with, I will continue talking about Fightstar. It seems that their popularity is increasing with the passage of the weeks since they released their last work. Now, I invite you to visit these worhtwile sites. http://www.fightstar.org/ is an unofficial website which contains recent updates, interviews, an incredible photo gallery and a forum in which you can share your opinions and feelings about the band. Of course, to enjoy the forum you must register on the website, but if you really like this band I recommend it to you, because you will find all you wish about performances. You will know new people from all countries to talk with. It's a really good experience. But if you want to know more about other bloggers opinion you can visit buzznet . This is like a huge blog where many bloggers post their opinions about this band and other ones which they love. It contains many videoclips and even articles from magazines like Rock Sound.

Secondly, in one hand, I'm going to show you a good website which contains lots of alternative music radios, so you can chose the one you want and listen to it, discovering new groups and songs you would have never heard of otherwise.

ALTERNATIVE ROCK RADIO STATIONS

This is the name of the website. It's very easy to use, so don't be worried thinking that you will have to download a special player or something like that. Just if you have the windows media player it will automaticaly reproduce the songs (it's the same with stuff like winamp, spacial audio etc...). These radios often play modern rock bands as Nickelback, Billy Talent, Saosin, Avenged Sevenfold; but you could find sometimes themes by Jimi Hendrix or Pink Floyd.

On the other hand, there's an online music blog which contains posts of many users who want to share information about alternative music. They can be very different. For example, one which caught my attention was a post talking about the most annoying songs of all time (very funny by the way). This is the url www.onlinemusicblog.com/blog/.

Well, I hope you like these websites and you make use of them because they are worth.If you have any suggestions or you know interesting websites with similar caracteristics you can comment or just send me an email.

Elena

Music in the Faculty and a specialized "indie" website

I have to admit that I have no idea how I should do my section. I have already affirmed that I want to speak about groups done in the university, but I have no references, because I'm also learning about this topic.

Back To The Seventies

That's why I have searched some information about the music that is listened in the University of Navarra. In the Faculty of Communication, the students have the choice to do practices of radio. The radio station has many programms, but I want to focus on "Plástico 70", aprogramm that make reference to the vinyl records of the 70's ("plástico", or plastic in English, was an alternative name of the vinyl records). Why am I speaking about this section of the radio? Well, I think this is the "approximate" radio station that fits with the origins of underground music movements (origined from 60's to 80's). I recommend to every reader of this blog to listen the different podcasts. There are relevant and famous names from groups and artists like "The Who", "Deep Purple", "Cat Stevens", "Bob Marley", "Pink Floyd" and also explanations of certain styles, like "Punk" or "Heavy Metal".

Photo called "The Sweet balance of Vinyl" by Tobias Zeising

All lovers of the diverse music, please visit the suggested website. It will give you a lot of joyful hours and you will learn a lot about different styles of music.

Oh My God, look at OMB!

Secondly, I have searched in the "Oracle of the Web" (what a wonderful sense of humour) some specialized websites of our beloved independent and alternative music. OnlineMusicBlog is a very good example that offers a lot of possibilities. It has a very simple layout that helps a lot to not to "get lost". The page has a blog with recent news, like new releases of albums, updatings of other websites that allows you to download music, new downloadable software (music programms like "Piano Wizard Premier") or other related content to this kind of music (like the funny list of "The 10 Most Annoying Songs of All Time").

There is also a Music Store where you can download legal (I mean, you should pay) music; even you can shop musical intruments and material if you are an active musician. This section shows the professionality of the website, not only because the clear content of their very reasonable prices, but also because it almost perfect organization.

But the section that has amazed me is The Directory. If you aren't enough satisfied, the website offers you a lot of external links to essential information or software, like The Apple iTunes Music Store, Tickets-selling websites, Sheet Music Websites, Memorabilia (rare stuff like posters, merchandising in general) sites... and so forth. I just don't want to bore you, that's why I have tried to summarize all the aspects of this sophisticated website. I recommend an obligatory visit (sounds kind of contradiction, doesn´t it?).

Logo of OnlineMusicBlog

I hope you find interesting and useful these both websites. The first keep you informed about past and actual groups and styles of music, the second goes beyond and allows you to learn more how to begin a new group, offering equipments and scores. Sometimes, I will use these websites as sources of information, so don't be worried about the important news! (Ladies of the blog, I recommend you to visit them ;D).

Good night, and good luck!

Floatation Therapy

Hi rockers,

Firstly, I'd like to introduce myself, my name is Elena and I study in the communication faculty of Navarra. My aim with this blog is to make you all know new bands could interest you or just add iformation about their latest albums and concerts if you already know them. If you have any suggestions, please don't hesitate and write to me or just add comments, you're all welcome. This is my second post(the first one was published by dani's account but it was me the one who wrote it) and I like to make a special mention to talk about the band Fightstar and their new album.
I’d like to introduce them in a brief way. They formed in 2003 when Charlie Simpson was actually still a member of the pop-rock trio Busted and after,in 2005, he broke away from this band to focus on the new and more rockier project: Fightstar. During the band's initial emergence, they were faced with much scepticism due to Simpson's former pop career. But forget about Busted because they just are in a different league, Charlie doesn't record music for kids anymore. Fightstar is a post-hardcore british band formed by 4 members(Charlie,Alex Westaway, Dan Haigh and Omar Abidi ) which has already recorded three albums and a b-sides compilation: Grand Unification, One day son this will be all yours, Be human and Alternate Endings.

BE HUMAN is the latest album the band released and "The English Way" was its first single. Recorded on 3 November 2009 it reached numer 1 in the UK rock chart and the videoclip also reached number one on the MTV2 top ten. This new album include their dark and heavy elements but they have experimented with more of a "rock opera" sound including full strings and choir. Haigh, one of the members of the group, says “Some people will listen to this album and expect things to sound the same but we decided to just create things you'd enjoy listening to.” And he's right, the disadvantage that many albums present is that most of their songs are repetitive and share the same style, but Be Human does not. Now they have released their third single of the album,called Never Change, which has received lots of positive critiques. I'm going to leave here the videoclip of The English Way so you can judge their talent.



However, I think my favourite single is Palahniuk's laughter, from the first EP called "They liked better when you were dead"



One thing that I admire about this band is that each of their songs and albums are absolutly different, they are not the typical guys whose songs are always the same, I just cannot get bored hearing their tracks once again and again. It's a pitty they are not coming to Spain this year but the fan club is making a good job so we might listen to them next year in Madrid or Barcelona. I hope you like their music, thank you for spending your time reading this.


Elena

How to compete with Emule? Billy Talent III: Guitar Villain Edition

We hear a song we like and we jot the name down on a paper or we repeat what we think it´s the title of the song several times so we don´t forget it .Later we turn the computer on and remember, what was the name of that song? Ahhh...I´ll download it right now! We open Emule, Ares, Kazaa...we search and in seconds....Eureka!We click on a couple of times and it´s being downloaded. Months, maybe years of work have been put on that song. And, in a few minutes we are listening to it completely free and all the times we want. But really, who is going to spend 20 € on a CD, when you can have it for free? It´s quite evident that our society is no longer paying to listen anything. But, what would they pay for? What may encourage someone to go to the stores and buy?

Many artists have tried to offer their fans or possible new fans, unpublished material, that they couldn´t find on the internet, some failed and some succeded. But anyway, there is a group that has just hitten the nail on the head: Billy Talent.

These canadian rock band,made a simple reflexion that turned out being very effective. They thought : "Who listens our music? Youngsters; And what kind of youngsters? Youngsters who like Rock.; And what is being a complete bombshell between Youngsters who like Rock? : Guitar Hero. "

So what did Billy Talent do? They included on their new album (which reached out on July 14th on Canada) a second CD, that contains a version of all their new CD songs for Guitar Hero, but in this case they called it Guitar Villain.


The question is that over the fact that it was a brilliant idea of the group (and for sure from now on copied by more groups) the album "Billy Talent III" is scarely good. I´ll explain myself, it wouldn´t be necessary the second CD, to enjoy from the first to the last riff. The sound and letters of "Billy Talent III" are the pure reflection of youngs from the second millenium.Thirteen unpublished songs compose this album: From Devil on my shoulder, that speaks about low autoestim of teenagers(once more), to White Sparrows, a semi-balad based on the history of the death of the loved one. What´s more, it also includes themes like alcoholism(Saint Veronika), everyday decisions (Definition of destiny), and teenage love obssesion with Diamond on a Landmine (this song is so passional and real that it hurts).

Being objective, I could keep speaking about every song on the album because each one has got something to emphazise, but moreover it´s important to accentuate from this album that Billy Talent has astound us again (maybe Billy Talent II couldn´t be up to Billy Talent I, with songs like Nothing to Loose or Line and Sinker it´s quite difficult, although Surrender was excellent) and they have regain their punk freshness and that ska touch that enthralled us. There´s no doubt that again Benjamin´s high-pitched voice, D´sas angry shouts and those guitars that seem to be cursed are not going to leave you indiferrent.

Great marketing and music lessons, all combined on one CD: Billy Talent III

Music around univers-ity world

Our blog is going to talk about the last and interesting famous music groups which could interest any of the university students. We might mention legends of music like Jimmy Hendrix or make some useful recommendations.We will inform about concerts and new albums, new stuff, biographys, musician's experiences or some news about music. Hope you like it.

BY: Elena

WeLcOmE To UniVeRs-iTy!!!!!

Welcome to Across the Univers-ity, the blog that will keep you in touch with the newest and best college bands. My name is Inés Chaure Martínez and I am one of the editors of the blog, for more information my nickname is Inesitachamploo.No more comments.

ENJOY MUSIC!!!!!!!

The First Chord

So here is our blog on music and university music culture. I´m Liz, la americana, from New York. We decided to make this blog about music because it´s something that interests all of us, and we´re going to try and focus specifically on "university music"-- be it bands university students have formed, or what´s popular among univeristy students now (both in Spain and in the US). Hopefully we´ll all learn a lot about music and discover new bands to listen to!

I guess for now I´ll start with talking about a band that´s pretty popular in the US-- Modest Mouse. You´ll never hear them on the radio, but they´re big on the "indie" scene and have been around since the mid 1990s. With their second to last full-length album, "Float On", they started becoming more mainstream and gaining more notoreity. In August they released an LP of previously unreleased tracks. Below is a video for one of those tracks, called "King Rat", which got a lot of buzz this summer because it had been directed by the late Australian actor, Heath Ledger, who was friends with the band. The video is a little weird, but that´s Modest Mouse! They´re one of my favorite bands, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

Time to take the subway - Antecedent

We don't have any concrete ideas for our blog yet, but we are trying to think what students may like during her/his time in the university. That's why we have decided to speak about music, about groups, about groups of music (particularly founded in the university). We will give to this blog some "underground touch". I hope you enjoy it, see you in the faculty!

EDIT: Well, I'm not a specialist of "underground, indie or alternative" groups. I will let this task to the ladies. I just want to speak about "scholastic" borned groups. The problem is that I have no idea, I just want to inform about these groups (specially the ones of Pamplona, or others cities which are in the near, like San Sebastián, Bilbao, Vitoria, Logroño...etc) so that the people can go to their concerts, know more about their songs, links to videos or music, lyrics to understand them...All in all, I just want to promote between the rest of my classmates the music culture done by us.

I just want to add that I'm also searching a group, I play the trumpet. Any interested please email me (shown in the profile). I don't want to advertise my previous "group" (we only played for fun and for ourselves), I just want to show you which is my style (the recorded song has bad audio quality and I was very tired that day because we already had some concerts, that's why the trumpet's sound is not the one I wanted. However, I just want to share with you this "kind of music" (our "old" group was called "Absenta para 5" and our best song is a version of the group Dirty Pretty Things). I hope you like it :P