A Musical Adventure - Dan Smith

I recently reviewed the latest The Chariot album titled Long Live for Indie Vision Music. The album is amazing, The Chariot are one of the most creative bands in the scene today and their album was full of surprises and creativity. One of the best tracks on Long Live is titled "David De La Hoz", in middle of the track there is a verse performed by Listener. This is where our adventure begins, watch the music video for "David de la Hoz":



The video was filmed live and in one take, pretty impressive! Anyway, now you've seen the crazy spoken-word portion of the song, performed by Dan Smith of Listener. We thought it was interesting so we looked into Listener a little more and found some of his spoken-word stuff which is incredible. Here's a video of Listener:



Dan Smith seems to be a pretty good wordsmith, where did he get that talent? Well, more research takes us to his hip-hop group; a very popular Christian group called Deep Space 5. Yes, Dan Smith is in Deep Space 5 long before he was doing cameo's in The Chariot's videos, here's one of their tracks from their 2010 release The Future Ain't What It Used To Be titled "From the Outside":

Deepspace 5 "From the Outside" from Nathan Corrona on Vimeo.

Yes, that was Dan Smith in there throwing down some verses. Here's an interview with Dan Smith about the video, Listener, and Deep Space 5 which was done by fellow IVM writer JoshH.

DAN: I got started just writing a lot of rap music. I was really into writing rap music and rap songs and raps. In junior high and high school I thought that genre was really interesting to me, so I made it a lot, and was in several groups and put out a lot of albums, and did that a lot. And then out of college I was in a project called Deepspace 5. Tooth & Nail put an album out that we made and that led to some touring and we did that, and after awhile I just really got unimpressed by that genre and I just wanted to do something else, and there’s a lot of musics that are more interesting to me to make that express the feelings that I want to make and feel and give out and feel and make, so over the course of several years just sort of moved into a different direction.

I thought that was pretty cool, i also thought the other white dude in aviators in the video was pretty good, who is that? That dude goes by the name Playdough and he just released an album in 2010 called Writer Dye, which is a collection of hip-hop songs where each song borrows from a classic song in the past, from bands like Nirvana, Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon...

You can get the album here for free (or if you want to donate you can do that as well).

Now you've listened to a wide range of music and you get to go home with a free album! Scott Lenger did most of this research for us, good work Scott!

An Introduction to Christian Metalcore

I met a new friend the other day and i was telling him about how i write for IndieVisionMusic.com . He seemed genuinely interested and when i saw him later was asking me about what bands he should check out. I recommended As I Lay Dying, August Burns Red, and Haste the Day, but i couldn't just leave it at that, i had to make him a mixtape. Here's the mix i made him that (hopefully) represents Christian metalcore/hardcore and get him interested in heavy music:

1. As I Lay Dying - "Separation"
2. As I Lay Dying - "Nothing Left"
3. August Burns Red - "White Washed"
4. Oh Sleeper - "Son of the Morning"
5. Haste the Day - "Pressure the Hinges"
6. Means - "The Promise"
7. Gwen Stacy - "The First Words"
8. For Today - "Devastator"
9. A Plea for Purging - "Malevolence"
10. War of Ages - "All Consuming Fire"
11. I Am the Alpha and Omega - "The Bride"
12. Hundredth - "Desolate"

I figure from this playlist he can tell me what he likes or dislikes and go from there. What do you think of this list? Do you have some better recommendations? let me know...