Want to join WRVU Nashville for the 2018-2019 school year? Requirements: Must be a Vanderbilt student Training: 10 album programs, 5 in-studio sessions with a DJ, written and hands-on exams…
Join WRVU Podcasts as (part one) DJ’s Cole Jackson and Ayden Eilmus break down some of the music out there that’s just, well, bad; join us also for (part two)…
The boys of Snake Cheney are from right here in Nashville, Tennessee. After meeting and starting to play together at MTSU, they’ve quickly found a sound that dubs them the kings of keeping it dreamy.
You’re invited to WRVU Nashville’s 2nd Annual Cranberry Jam!! Come on out to Drkmttr on November 30th to this COMPLETELY FREE SHOW to see four of our favorite Nashville bands:…
The National’s most recent album, Sleep Well Beast, released September 8, 2017, is characterized by a tracklist that can be compared to a morning commute. “Guilty Party” resembles the melancholy of waking before the sun has risen, a sheet of morning dew still covering the hood of your car. But the sun does rise and the gloom quickly turns into anger and frustration. “Turtleneck” embodies the morning drive itself — the agonizing slow burn of exit after exit, when you begin to tailgate cars just to feel like you’re making progress. Unlike previous albums, where each track transitions from one to the next like the tranquil flow and ebb of a stream, Sleep Well Beast is a complete mishmash.
Kristen sits on a backless bench in the hallway of a classroom building. It’s dark outside and the hallway is barely lit. All you can hear are the handfuls people loudly roaming through the building, filing into classrooms for meetings. She looks completing unfazed by the conversations around us, and looks confidently prepared to discuss her show, Swag Swag Like Caillou.
Over this past weekend a couple of us on the e-staff got together to clean out WRVU’s office. Full of dust, old CDs, and old promotional t-shirts, this needed to be done. So on Sunday morning we banded together with a roll of paper towels, some all-purpose cleaner, and a truly impressive number of trash bags. WRVU is over forty years old at this point, and with time inevitably comes a series of knick-knacks and souvenirs that someone just can’t bear to get rid of. That’s where we came in. Over the course of several hours, we excavated the desks and shelves of WRVU’s office, unearthing a startling collection of items in the process.
Lattes, candles, lotions and liquor—as soon as the leaves begin to change, store shelves are mercilessly spiced with the flavors of fall, and we’re all hit with the pumpkin plague, ready or not. To help make the farewell to summer less jarring, I’ve created a playlist packed with autumn aesthetics that is certain to lull you into apple-cider serenity for the next three months—or at least the next 89 minutes.
Even though I like to pretend I’m a music aficionado, let’s face it: I seriously have no idea what’s going on when it comes to titling remixes. Sure, I have every song in my iTunes library labeled to a tee. I take care to list who’s featured on a track, who produced it, what label it’s on (if any), and most importantly, what the artist labeled the track. As a result of this OCD tendency combined with my love for all things electronica, my music catalog is brimming with words like “refix,” “original mix,” and “flip.” Despite this need for classifying these songs with various descriptors, I have no clue what most of these words actually mean. I’m sure many of you guys are in the same boat. So, after a few days of digging on Reddit and a few Google searches, let’s see if it’s possible to clear up some of this jargon.
One of the primary differences between tracks is length. Each different length has a different name. In a sense, every song in its purest form is an original mix, but some songs come in multiple versions. Although it seems intuitive, it’s still helpful to clarify that original mix denotes the first complete mix by the original artist. Simply put, it’s a song by an artist with no other changes; it can be of any length. If an artist prefers the track to be longer, he or she will produce an extended mix. In the extended mix, the track usually includes a longer intro and outro and is longer than the original mix. This type of mix is how the original artist imagines a song without time constraints — usually too long for radio. The last type of mix in this temporal category is the radio edit. In the radio edit, expletives are taken out and the length of the track is cut between 3 and 5 minutes in length (but usually closest to the three minute mark). Intros and outros that may bore radio listeners and take up valuable advertisement time are cut down.
Open up Twitter, type in “azealia banks”, and witness the 23 year-old rapper-singer-songwriter’s solitary crusade against any soul that she sets in her sights. A lot of artists talk huge game about being above caring about the public’s opinion of what they do or say but make no mistake, they, like many of us, shiver when they hear the phrase “did you hear what Azealia Banks said this time?” She utterly embodies the term “outspoken”; her Twitter is essentially a platform through which she unleashes barrage after barrage of unfiltered passion.
Banks is seemingly inexhaustible when it comes to her unflinching hostility, and the list of targets who have been unfortunate enough to come under her heat reads like a who’s who of key music industry figures and past and current stars. There’s T.I., Lil Kim, Diplo, Nicki Minaj, Rita Ora, The Stone Roses (?) and of course, Igloo Australia, whom Banks reserves a singular hate for. No one is too large for her to size up and attack, proved most recently by her brief spar with Erykah Badu, an indisputable hip-hop/r&b/soul/black music dignitary. Her long list of enemies made in her short career garnered Banks the reputation of an unproductive troublemaker during the period of time in which Banks’ debut Broke With Expensive Taste languished in label hell. As Hazlitt writer Sarah Nicole Prickett notes, Banks had been seen as more famous for her acidic insults than her actual music.
By a stroke of luck, I ended up winning a pair of tickets to the Cold War Kids’ concert in Nashville this past week through a WRVU giveaway. So, on Friday night, I ventured out to Marathon Music Works to watch their Hold My Home tour. I entered the venue to a surprisingly packed audience. Per usual, I weaseled my way as close as possible to the opening act, Elliot Moss.
Though I missed part of the act, what I did see was exciting. Before the show, I only knew Elliot Moss from his song “Slip,” but I was tingling with anticipation at the thought of seeing the life performance. Marathon Music Works has a tendency to be a loud crowd, and I was worried about his voice fading out amongst the chatter. Instead, Moss set the mood for the rest of the concert. By easing into the concert with his quiet energy, Moss outdid my expectations. My personal favorite of his ended up being “I Can’t Swim.” Definitely be on the look out for more of Elliot Moss in the future — he’s yet to release his upcoming debut album, but Highspeeds is definitely one to watch out for.
Getting into the electronica scene these days can get a little overwhelming. Trap, deep house, progressive house, jersey club, future R&B, dubstep, future bass and many more… the list just goes…