Grails

Guest Playlist: Grails picks the 11 best songs for OD-ing

Grails: Deep PoliticsGrails: Deep Politics (Temporary Residence, 3/8/11)

Grails: “I Led Three Lives”

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The newest album from Portland, Oregon-based instrumental-rock band Grails, Deep Politics, got a nod in a recent installment of This Week’s Best Albums. Mixing cinematic compositions with worldly sounds and a little ’60s psychedelia, it encapsulates, perhaps better than any of its other releases, what Grails is capable of as a band.

For its guest playlist, Grails made 11 picks based on a new, tongue-in-cheek method of determining a song’s quality.

The 11 Best Songs for OD-ing
by Grails

Emil Amos: At a shitty party some years ago, a man was heard to have said in a drunken defense of the Eagles, “More people have shot up and died to this band than will ever hear ours!”

That man was me. After this rip in the logical fabric of the universe was torn, a new yardstick was introduced to the high-record-collector culture around the concept of “Can you OD to it, though?” And then the inevitable schools of thought naturally followed: “Is it a harsh track to OD to, or more mellow/inviting?”

See what you can get out of these, enjoy yourself, and don’t die!

Tangerine Dream: “Ricochet”

Daft Punk

The Groove Seeker: Daft Punk’s Tron: Legacy soundtrack

On a weekly basis, The Groove Seeker goes in search of killer grooves across rock, funk, hip hop, soul, electronic music, jazz, fusion, and more.

Daft Punk: Tron: LegacyDaft Punk: Tron: Legacy soundtrack (Walt Disney Records, 12/7/2010)

Daft Punk: “End of Line”

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Daft Punk fans have been waiting five years for this.  Tron fans have been waiting close to thirty years.  As the Tron: Legacy soundtrack is Daft Punk’s first release of new material since 2005 album Human After All, there seems to be no other logical way that the French DJ duo could have staged its return.

In a perfect marriage of aesthetics that only the Master Control Program could have arranged, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter have left their grand discothèque anthems and enlisted an 85-piece orchestra to build an ambitious sonic accompaniment to Tron: Legacy’s parallel digital universe.