Instrum333 - Music

1 GIZA Is An Instrumental Apocalyptic Sludge Metal Band From Seattle! Giza Was Formed In March Of 2012 By Steve Becker Trent McIntyre And Richard Burkett With The Goal Of Writing Loud And Massive Instrumental Music. In May Of 2012 Giza Recorded 6 Songs With Matt Bayles Mastodon Isis Minus The Bear Which Were Released In December 2012 On The Album Tilted "Future Ruins". Their Second Album "I Am The Ocean I Am The Sea" Was Released In April 2014. Giza Is Currently Playing Shows In The Pacific Northwest. Both Albums Are Available At Bandcamp. Follow Giza On Twitter And Like Them On Facebook. 2 Giza Hmmm The Music On Giza’s “Hmmm” Exists In An Eternal Now. Like The Smooth Cone Of Consciousness It Glides Ever Forward Against The Brittle Rim Of The Future While Simultaneously Erasing Any Trace Of Its Past. Morris Berman Who’s Well Worth Investigating Has Speculated On The Mind-Set Of Early Humans And Posited That They Had A Kind Of Unconscious Awareness—a Sensibility Keenly Attuned To Immediate Surroundings But Not Entirely Cognizant Of The Differences Between Those Impressions And Itself. Which Sounds Pleasant Enough—if Somewhat Paradoxical--And Which Also In Fact Comes Fairly Close To Describing The State Of Mind Brought About By “Hmmm.” Hmmm Is At Once Very Active And Very Still. The Rhythm Tracks Team Like City Streets. Yet There’s Nothing Headlong About It. Giza Achieves This Seemingly Contradictory State Through The Artful Manipulation Of Loops. A Loop Of Course Is Nothing More Than A Brief Repeated Musical Gesture—and Is Pretty Much The Hallmark Of The Electronic Music Of This Century. But Loops Can Easily Produce Static Music—music That Spins Its Wheels But Goes Nowhere. Giza However--By Using Syncopation Variation And A Few Other Tricks So Subtle I Can’t Even Begin To Suss Them Out—arranges His Loops So That They Come Alive Much In The Way That The Still Photographs Of A Zoetrope Come Alive When The Drive Crank Is Turned. The Album Is Divided Pretty Evenly Between Instrumental And Vocal Tracks. You’ll Note That This Is Actually One Of The Few Bits Of Information That The Tracks’ Titles Give Away. Giza’s Reasons For Using Such Non-Descript Titles Is A Mystery. Perhaps It’s A Post-Modern Commentary On Alienation Or The Anonymity Life In Our Tele-Com World. Perhaps Not. But If The Titles Strike You As Aloof Rest Assured—the Music Is Anything But. The Songs Are Uniformly Lovely. Giza’s Voice Is Unadorned And Pleasing And The Lyrics Are Impressionistic And Oblique. Some Songs Seem To Be About Lost Love Others About Lazy Afternoons But It’s Hard To Say For Sure Since The Lyrics Conjure Up Situations Rather Than Explain Them. With “Hmmm” The Emphasis Is On Emotion Over Information. The Instrumentals Are Each A Unique Musical Adventure. Number 268 Is A Ride On A Stop-Motion Roller Coaster. 350 Is A Sleek Noir-Ish Prowl. And 258 Shows Us An Alien Jazzbo Blowing A Weird Techno-Phone On A Buck Rogers Street Corner. Indeed There’s Something Of A Jazz Inflection Pervading The Whole Affair—with Traces Of Jaco Pastorius And “In A Silent Way”-Era Miles Seemingly Well-Woven Into “Hmmm”’s DNA. And As For The Sound—this Is Maybe The First Recording I’ve Heard That’s Struck Me As Being Completely Of The Twenty-First Century. The Edges Of The Sounds Are Crisp And Clean Which Gives It An Almost Holographic Depth. It’s Inviting Without Being Soft Or Fuzzy--More Of A Bracing Splash Than A Warm Wallow. If You’re Not Careful It Could Put Some Spring In Your Step. In Sum I’d Have To Agree With E. Padilla Who Said Of This Album Simply “It’s A Gem.” 3 Giza Giza$ Or Gizagetsdough Rapper Dave Keifer For Www.Dog-Eared-Records.Com read less