“Infinity” by The Bear Season gets a Symphonic Treatment

The Bear Season

Man, pause your porn and check this out, it’s worth it.
Somebody came up with a symphonic version of The Bear Season’s “Infinity”, and uploaded it to SoundCloud.
The Bear Season! My friends! My precious! They were first covered here, and I have made a point of staying on top of all their latest releases. And (as you probably don’t remember, because not even their groupies read that particular post) my favorite song of theirs is “Infinity”.

This new symphonic version of “Infinity”, now, is the one to harbor in your heart, and rediscover time and again.
If I ever walk away from an exploding building in slow motion, then I want this to be playing in the background.

Check it out, dude, it’s a sweet sweet deal. Like angels’ pay. I can only think of a couple of things that are sweeter.

One is Rocket:

The other is, obviously, Gregorian! They should have been huge! What a shame Enigma took the cake instead!

And then, there’s this version of The Police’s “Fallout”, which is memorable if only because you can’t listen to Sting’s vocals!!

Ha! Ha! Take it, your ego douche!! See what happens for having confiscated half of Stu’s kit away for the recording of “Every Breath You Take”?? Karma has no deadline, my high-pitched friend…
Seriously, what a version from the deepest abyss of hell. Stu has been miked like crap, Andy sounds like he’s making the song up as he goes along (which is highly likely, if you ask me and my monkey), and that solo is the pits! And then, Sting ends up this “stellar performance” by doing a “splenetic jump”. Dude, Pete Townshend is pushing 72, and he bounces around with more flamboyance! Do us a favor, and keep dreaming of blue turtles, will you?

“This Is Not A Test” By The Bear Season (Video)

"This Is Not A Test" Is The Bear Season's Latest Single

Yet another music video from a young Uruguayan act, and yet another excellent one. You can tell it’s almost Christmas, can’t you?

The band is The Bear Season (featured recently on MusicKO), and the song is “This Is Not A Test”. It’s the A-side of the band’s latest single, an all-acoustic affair that you can get for free here. And I really, really like it. Musically, it’s an exciting change of tack. I’ve always carried a torch for the softer side of the band, ever since I heard this unplugged version of “Infinity” (from their debut EP, “Do It”):

“Infinity” was (and still is) my favorite track from their debut EP, and (when unplugged) the song’s just dazzling.

And the same can be said about this new cut. Moving, heartfelt, poignant… “This Is Not A Test” is all of that. It’s the kind of song to play in order to get laid on a first date. Make sure to keep a copy at home, and another at the car. Like Macca used to sing, “no more lonely nights”…

The Bear Season (Uruguayan Independent Artist)

The Bear Season: Ale Nario, Fela Magnani, Santiago de Souza, Dave Lazar, Manuel Curiel and Álvaro de León.

You know what? I’ve had it with these stuffy folks at Oxford. They’ve sold us a language that’s nowhere as limited as they’ve always claimed. They’ve shown us nothing but these sides of words they wanted us to see. Period. Take the verb “shock”, for instance. I’ve recently become aware such a verb isn’t as one-dimensional as they have told us all our lives. It’s dawned on me that it’s equally possible to be shocked positively and negatively, that you can be shocked both in good and in bad ways. Hesitant? Read on…

Definition of “something that shocked me in a bad way”: the day a friend gave me a copy of Anal Cunt’s “40 More Reasons to Hate Us” album as a birthday present, on the ostensible grounds that I love collecting rare CDs. As if that wasn’t bad enough, at around that time this wondrous friend had the chance to buy Led Zeppelin’s “Remasters” for the price of a single CD and add it to his personal collection, and he chose to buy a studio album by Wang Chung instead.
Despite the fact that I changed my address twice and that now I sleep ensconced in the middle of an underground labyrinth, I still have nightmares from time to time.

Definition of “something that shocked me in a good way”: the day I listened to The Bear Season’s debut EP (“Do It“) for the first time. Despite being Uruguayan, the guys sounded so Californian that I couldn’t help thinking if they had long blonde hair and big breasts then they’d be Athena Lundberg.
They’ve always been one of these bands I was more than eager to feature on MusicKO, but for some intricate reason or the other (like being busy listening to Pixie Lott’s debut album) I could never get around to doing it. Until now. Continue reading

NADIEQUIERE Discos, A New Uruguayan Record Label Launches

A new Uruguayan record label has launched. It is named NADIEQUIERE Discos (official page here, Facebook fan page here), and it has some bands I already covered on MusicKO (such as Casablancas), and other bands like The Bear Season that I’ve always meant to review but that are still on the pipeline because I’m as peripatetic as Ryan Adams. You know, I actually look a lot like Ryan – the only differences are that he has tons of hair, that he can sing and that he can play guitar. Oh, and that he has dated Winona Ryder.

The label also has a good handful of artists that are completely new to me, which isn’t surprising because (as those fabtastic Swedes sang) “I’m living in a box but I come out when opportunity nox”. I hope to get to know them better soon…

In the meantime, give NADIEQUIERE Discos a look (official page, Facebook fan page – whatever excites you more). Of course, you need to understand Spanish to read these pages. But if you don’t, that shouldn’t be that much of a problem. I mean, how many people who are regular opera-goers know Italian? Eh? And how many people could make sense out of the wreck that Tommy was narrative-wise when it was first issued? Poor Pete Townshend, I read he did almost 1,000 interviews to cover those narrative deficiencies. Lessons learned, kids? Do things right the first time around.