What makes a good old fashioned riff? Those few notes which whirl around your skull all day and put a big fat grin on your face. Notes which produce the sort of guitar line that you can almost chew a chunk out of. A good riff is almost something natural, as if hewn from a rock, harvested, foraged, fished for in the murky depths of the sea. It can seem impossible for that sound to have ever not existed, for it to have been made rather than just be. There's something primal about a good riff, as if it exists in all of us. I always think that a riff has similarities with the homing ability of birds, as if a killer riff is inherent in all of us even if we don't know how. How many times have you heard the opening riff to The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and unconsciously started humming along, letting it fly you to the Wild West, before you realise that you have no idea which film it's from, who wrote it, or how you know the song at all? Those few wobbly notes, crafted by my hero Ennio Morricone, are now inbuilt in us all, like migrating swallows know to fly south for the winter, there's something in us which knows these few notes seemingly even before we've had a chance to discover them. The power of the riff is what brings stadiums of sweaty football fans together to chant the dark-electro opening of Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by the Eurythmics and makes beer bellies bounce to The White Stripes and Seven Nation Army.
It is an earworm riff that can be that first introduction to the giddy joy you can get from a great tune, and The Irregular Riff is hopefully going to be the place to find more great, unusual, compelling and just damn fun songs and sounds. Here I am going to post a new release that I have found and I feel the need to share, shout about, wax lyrical about and all that. The only criteria is that these must be upcoming releases, something you can buy for yourselves in the coming days, weeks or months but is currently just a youtube video or a wiggly line on a soundcloud page. So none of ya Beatles, Kinks or Stones, I'm gonna be ploughing into the new stuff, although I will also highlight new reissues or compilations if I feel the music needs some attention.
The Irregular bit? Hopefully not an indication of the frequency in which I post new music but rather of the types of music. No genre limits here. If it sounds good or interesting or just so damn strange that I need to share it, it'll make it onto The Irregular Riff.
So check back as often as you fancy. I aim to make the blog something you can just dip into whenever you want for a browse, see what's what and hopefully find something new which gives you that bottom-lip-biting-feeling and happily rattles around your head for the next couple of days.
No comments:
Post a Comment