TorturedInToyland

The Oddities Of Myspace


SOURCE: http://www.ampjam.net/frontpage/2009/05/14/the-oddities-of-myspace/

The Oddities Of Myspace

Not too long ago, I got contacted by a band on the old Myspace. It might not sound strange as we work alongside musicians and bands and the odd local band sending us a heads up is not too unusual, but here’s the catch, this band was from the US, “over-the-pond” as we say over here, in Pennsylvania to be more exact. The challenge alone to write about them had it’s own appeal.



So, where to start? These guys were a bit of a strange combination, labeling themselves as a rock/grunge band but sounding more like an electronica act for the most part, pulled in all manner of directions at the same time. In fact, their music is a bit hard to get to grips with and one of the strangest sounds I’ve come across in a while, even outdoing Milton Keynes’ Dark Cloud project, listening to their Myspace gave one impression with a notable “Magic The Gathering” that sounds downright bizarre with warped vocals to a backing of classical piano samples, looking further afield to other sites gave other glimpses into a deeper and darker collection of industrial, metal and slow-paced experimental numbers.


To say the least it’s hard to put a tag on it, not exactly as mechanical as NIN all the way through and not entirely strange in it’s entirety. Then it hit me, the sounds were a lot like Terry Scott Taylor, specifically his work with soundtrack for the “Neverhood” PC games that had one of the strangest musical scores I’ve ever heard. A lot of musical ideas put together along in a fashion that comes across quite odd. (Yeah, I’m a geek, so sue me.)


With that in mind, it’s no surprise that these guys have one of their tracks included in the soundtrack for an indie film by Joseph Thomas of a film group called Poison Venom. The film is a bit of a zombie flick and has even been put forward to the Sundance film festival in Utah (the biggest indie film festival in the US) which should be an interesting angle of exposure for the band.


They also wanted to put forward their approach to using sites like Myspace too, how they wanted to keep things quite genuine by making sure that their contacts are pretty real, not myspace whores or people who aren’t interested in their music, something that some bands tend to do. That reminded me of something I wanted to write a blog about for some time…


It’s been a debate that just went on from a music festival last year where a few of us got a bit philosophical about the nature of the internet, or more specifically sites like Myspace and Facebook. On the surface you have a useful, but it’s the networking that can fail, especially for musicians, bands and promoters, to be blunt, when was the last time you checked a bulletin? The fault is the oversaturated network itself, as bands/people befriend more bands the tide of information, be it useless or not, gets overbearing, so we don’t look at it so closely and maybe even ignore it in time.


But it’s not all gloom and doom though, as Torture In Toyland put it to me, things like Myspace do allow you to have friends all over the world, plus back before such sites came up people could go find bands, but now bands can turn the tables and find people too. Having the bonus of a page for your band that can be customized how you want and feature your music, photos and such can’t hurt either, it’s no wonder that quite a few bands solely rely on the networking sites for their bands’ web-presence.


Otherwise, it takes something really out of the ordinary or profound to get me interested, that’s where Torture In Toyland came in, they contacted us about writing an article but I wasn’t sure where to start until they said what they messaged back about how they tried to keep things genuine, weeding out marketing whores from their friends list while still getting the best they could out of it. And trust me, with a lot of people, bands, businesses and so on out there asking to be your friend it can be quite a job. But it’s bands like these musical oddballs that have the right idea how to approach the internet, in the end it’s all about moderation.


--Craig
- AMPJAM