The Star Online: Entertainment: Music
The Star Online: Entertainment: Music |
| Posted: Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda shares his passion for art and music. MIKE Shinoda loves to make art. His passion for the subject was evident during the recent telephone interview from Los Angeles, and the Linkin Park rapper spoke so passionately about artwork, writing songs and his music that one couldn't help but feel inspired. Linkin Park – also made up of vocalist Chester Bennington, guitarist Brad Delson, bass guitarist Dave Farrell, drummer Rob Bourdon and turntablist Joe Hahn – has been around since 1996, and besides its unique nu metal and rap rock hybrid, the band is also known for its meaningful lyrics. Singles such as In The End, Crawling and Numb are favourites among young listeners who relate to the angst and anxiety featured in the songs and Shinoda, the principal songwriter for the band, is largely responsible for connecting with the youth and giving them a chance to express themselves through the band's music. "I'm writing new Linkin Park material, but I'm always writing so that's not news," said Shinoda, 36, who is involved in various solo side projects, including the notable solo act Fort Minor which produced the hit song Where'd You Go?. Shinoda has also produced records for underground hip hop group Styles of Beyond and rapper Ghostface Killah, besides collaborating with hip hop heavyweight Jay Z. Shinoda revealed that the songwriting process has become easier for him now as compared to when the band first started. "For me, it's evolved over the time. I used to force ideas together, but now it's about clearing my head, trying to pull things together for specific things that I want to do." Unlike most songwriters who have at least a vague idea of the direction their song is taking, Shinoda prefers to find out what the song means at the end of his writing sessions. "I am the opposite of the guy who knows how the song is going to end," he said jokingly. The musician revealed that he practises automatic writing – a method introduced to him by renowned record producer Rick Rubin, with whom Shinoda co-produced Linkin Park's 2007 album Minutes To Midnight, 2010 album A Thousand Suns and their latest release Living Things. "He opened our minds to automatic writing and we would just go into the recording booth without any ideas. Even if the words are gibberish and don't make any sense, we just go through with it and see if we can pull something out of it in the end." What used to initially be an embarrassing process was made easier after Shinoda learned that famous songwriters also follow the method and that even the The Beatles' hit song Yesterday got its opening verse that way. "I heard that Paul McCartney initially recorded it as 'Scrambled eggs, my baby how I love your legs' instead of 'Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away'," he said with a laugh. When not making music – which is not often – Shinoda said that he fills his time doing something that he's loved to do since he was young. "I grew up painting and drawing and that's something that I've come back to (in recent years). It's an outlet (to be creative) when I'm not making music." Shinoda graduated from the Art Center College of Design of Pasadena in 1998, and was the youngest person in his class at the time. He credits his years in the college for preparing him for being in a band as it taught him how take and form constructive criticism – which Linkin Park is often subjected to. "In college, we had to put up our projects in front of the class and everyone would tell you why it's horrible. At that time it felt like abuse but the intention was not to get beaten down. We had to learn how to constructively give and take criticism and eventually, it was easier for us to tackle difficult topics more clearly." Shinoda, who thought that he'd grow up to be a painter, dabbles in art and has several ongoing art projects with various organisations. However, Shinoda said that despite sharing his creativity and artwork with millions of people around the world, at the end of the day, he creates the work for himself. "Art is subjective, you know. If you've grown up as an artiste you'd realise that you don't always connect with the audience. You say something and they think it's something else. "First and foremost, you have to do it for yourself. If you're doing art for other people, then you're putting your happiness in someone else's hands." Unlike artistes like Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson who love to portray their art through fashion, Shinoda prefers to let his work speak for itself. "I don't need to wear certain type of clothes for people to know that I'm an artist. In fact, the way that my band has been is actually kind of awesome for me right now. I can still go to the supermarket (unnoticed)," he said. Shinoda clarified that neither he nor his band members go to extreme lengths to not get recognised in public, although he feels that the anonymity sometimes allows them to focus on the more important things in life. "Our focus is 100% on the shows. We spend most of the time writing and preparing for our shows." "Chester is the one who gets prepared the most. If we're in the same hotel and he's one floor above me and 10 rooms away, I can still hear him singing. He gets ready for the show in the afternoon when the performance only starts at night." Fans will get to see all the hard work Shinoda and his band members put into their performances when they perform in Kuala Lumpur later this month. Shinoda is looking forward to returning to Malaysia after Linkin Park's first performance here over a decade ago. The band played to over 25,000 fans at Stadium Merdeka in October 2003, while Fort Minor's concert in Malaysia took place in February 2005. "It's been super long since we've been to KL and we're excited to go back there. The fans have not heard a lot of our music from our last albums – they would've seen them online but not live and that's a big difference. We cannot wait to see them all again."
|
| Posted: Fans in Asia fans warm up to The xx factor. With their sparse guitar lines, hushed vocals and enigmatic stage presence, The xx are a band who have come to personify cool understatement. As for their fans? Sometimes less so. "Couples have come up to us after the show and told us how they got together with our music," said Romy Madley Croft, singer and guitarist with the British band whose 2009 self-titled debut was hailed as a minimalist masterpiece and won the Mercury Prize a year later. "Some people tell you that they've cried their whole way through the show, and you don't really know what to say." A few are also prone to oversharing, in terms of how the band's music has inspired them in the bedroom. "It's a little bit awkward when that happens," she told AFP on the phone from Reno, Nevada ahead of the band's Asia tour. The tour has taken them to South Korea's Valley Rock Festival Friday and Japan's Fuji Rock festival and recent shows in Manila, Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. European and US dates followthis month. Such friendly fan enthusiasm illustrates how The xx's ghostly music inspires, even if the trio – Madley Croft and Oliver Sim, who started the band as a duo when they were 15-year-old school mates in London, and Jamie Smith – don't exactly crave the spotlight. Their black-clad, statuesque stage presence led one reviewer to describe them as looking like "mannequin dolls in the world's saddest window display" – an image that has not stopped younger fans from screaming at singer and bass guitarist Sim at their concerts, Madley Croft said. "Once you're in the middle of a tour you get used to the idea of getting up on stage in front of people, and it becomes a little bit normal," she said. "But it's never that normal. I never would have thought I'd do this or stand up in front of people and bare my soul." As well as performing, the band has this year put together its own mini festivals under the banner "Night + Day" in London, Berlin and Lisbon, using offbeat locations such as an abandoned theme park to help set the tone. Their appeal is wide. Songs from their debut found their way into various TV shows and adverts, while 2012's follow-up Coexist saw the band become an even more commercially successful proposition. "We did it for a couple of years when there were only about five people in the audience, when you certainly did not feel like a success," said Madley Croft. "Even now I have to pinch myself." First impressions of their precisely curated music – a delicate balance between sound and the absence of it - can be deceptive. Guitar notes slide glacially through songs that flirt with electronic dance music, occasionally allowing themselves to break into a beat. But what separates The xx from cold electronica is the personal, intimate and occasionally erotic nature of the songs. "After each show I feel like I've gone through a whole emotional experience and come out the other side. It feels quite therapeutic," said Madley Croft. The same can be said for their ever-enthusiastic audience. "Someone saw our Coachella set (earlier this year) and said he felt like he might as well have been up there on the stage naked, because he felt so emotionally exposed," she added. "It doesn't feel quite like that for us. But it is a good thing." – AFP |
| You are subscribed to email updates from Music To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
| Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610 | |
0 ulasan:
Catat Ulasan