Musical Bands: Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

Now that my fundage has greatly increased, I've been able to spend my money on the really important things in life such as snowboard videos. And as you may have read before, from snowboard videos is where I find much of the music that I enjoy listening to. I found Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zero's little gem of an album, Up From Below, in this year's Transworld video, Get Real.

The track '40 Day Dream' sets the backdrop for Chris Grenier's part and from the first time I watched Get Real, the music from Grenier's part stood out as something I should look into further. At my first listen though, I had my doubts about the rest of the album. Only two tracks really stood out as usual. The other besides '40 Day Dream' was 'Home' and while they're still my favourites from the album, the rest deserved much needed second and third listens. The best way I can think to describe this album is a pleasant marriage of a full country band and psycadellery. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might sound like the hairy baby wandering through the desert the mother and father and father and mother of whom are Neko Case, Neil Daimond, Radio Head, and Zooey Deschenal all living at a Spanish mission in Texas at the turn of the century with a full horn section. However Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros might be classified, they are good!

Music: MGMT!

Since the fall 08 snowboard video release season, seldom have we seen a snowboard flick or teaser without an MGMT lick. And since much of my musical tastes and selections are inspired by rad parts in shred vids (skate, snow, surf, bike) naturally, I had to pick up the MGMT (pronounced management) album Ocular Spectacular. Why this psychedelic electric rock band has become the unoffical sound of snowboarding is revealed when watching the shred put to an MGMT song. Exhibit A: (you may need to turn the sound up on the player)


Aside from the sickness that happens when combining MGMT and shredding, their album, Ocular Spectacular, is quite the experience. Track by track, MGMT presents an unlikely marriage of variety and balance. Each track is very unique from the others, yet they're all held together through some common thread. Every song sings, 'I'm me', while also singing 'I'm a MGMT song'. And while many bands are hard to categorize, because of MGMT's balance between distinguishable sounds they're very easily classified and described as Pschycadelic Electronic Pop Rock. Far beyond cliche indy, and miles short of techno. More shredding Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

Exhibit D: (my favourite because of all the tree bonks!)

So pick up this album, put it in your shred/bike/life mix and move your body!