The XX

Dark, emotive, and hypnotic, all words that aptly describe the full range of The XX's style. This four piece band consisting of Romy Madley Croft (vocals, lead guitar), Oliver Sim (vocals, bass guitar), and Jamie Smith, known as Jaime XX(beats, MPC sampler), and Second guitarist and keyboardist Baria Qureshi, hails out of London mixing R&B and classic 80's guitar riffs. Their debut album "XX" won the Barclaycard Mercury Prize, awarded to the best album from the UK and Ireland, in 2010. It also reached #9 on Rolling Stones albums of the year list for the same year.

What caught my attention about this band was their significant use of bass guitar. I'm a fan of any band that can effectively use the bass guitar to link both the beat of the song (Whether it be actual drums or a sampling device) to the lead guitar. Their songs have a quality which makes you sit back and take in each note from each instrument. Vocals are often done in harmony and done quite well. Croft and Sim play off each others voices and bring you a sound equalized in highs and lows. 

-Alejandro

Dubstep...Oh yea!

For this week, I decided to talk a little bit about a genre of music most people aren’t familiar with and some that have never heard of it at all. A very interesting form a music known as dubstep as emerged in recent years. The first dubstep songs have been released around 2000, originating from parts of London. For those who have never listened to dubstep, it is basically a form of electronic dance music that consists of slow, but hard hitting beats and heavy bass lines, sometimes using songs that already exist. Dubstep is different than what most people are used to listening and I wouldn’t be surprised if a whole lot of people aren’t too fond of it. It definitely isn’t something you can just start playing and fall in love with…at least not for the majority of us. It is hard to explain what dubstep even is, hence the picture above, but it is something I would recommend listening to at least once. However, keep in mind that one dubstep song can sound COMPLETELY different than another. So if one song doesn’t sound too appealing try listening to another song. Some can be very hard and extreme where as others are softer and more mellow. It also depends on the artist or DJ creating the music, some are very skilled at what they do where as others have no clue. Typing in “dubstep” on Youtube might not be the best way to find some good songs but do some searching; you might find something that catches your…ear? To give you a place to start, listen to some of the songs by UKFDubstep, they have a good variety of songs with a lot of diversity in each one. Everyone should try expanding to different types of music once in awhile, why not now?
-Jason D

Here is a link to a good mellow sample of dubstep.

This link is to a song that is a bit harder than the first.

Here is one for a quick laugh but still a pretty good beat.

Intro to Music

My name is Alejandro Perez and the blog you are reading will be focusing on bringing new Artists and bands into the spotlight. I hope everyone finds a new genre or maybe a particular artists they find interesting. We chose to not necessarily focus on one type of music, instead every post will contain something new and different, hopefully catching every niche possible. My musical taste ranges from Electronica to Rock to just about anything out there. Hopefully, as you read this blog you will find something that tickles your fancy. Music is interesting to me because no matter how far back into history you search, every ancient civilization had some form of music. Regardless of said civilizations location in relation to each other, whether they openly traded or not, musical instruments and music has been found throughout the world.

Whats up everyone, my name is Wesley and this is the first blog I have ever be apart of. I will try and blog about news revolving around the music industry. I mostly into Rap and House music but I enjoy a little bit of everything. I look forward to blogging and hope you all enjoy the blog!

Hey welcome to our MusicToday2011 blog

Hello everybody, I'm Jason and this is actually the first post of the first blog I have ever made. I always wanted to start a blog but never really had an idea of what I would even talk about. If you haven't realized yet though I picked a topic along with my blogger team. We decided that we all love music and want to share some of the cool and interesting things we come across everyday relating to our favorite bands, DJ's, and other musical artists. I myself listen to just about anything when it comes to music. Whether its rock, rap, techno, or house music, I have a little bit of everything on my iPod. However, until now I never attempted to follow bands and artists as far as news and their backgrounds. Typically a friend would just give me a CD or send me a couple songs that "I needed to listen to". This was usually the way I learned about all the music that I currently listen to. Of course everybody doesn't listen to the same music but I still hope to have fun with this blog and share the fun things I know and learn about music.