Tag: punk

Spotify’s New Hardcore Gardening Playlist and Brain Dead Collab Will Rattle Greenhouses Everywhere

May 1, 2024

All around the world, millions of Spotify fans love listening to hardcore punk music—and some science shows that plants love it too. 

Hold up. What?

Yep, you read that right. Horticulturist, author and lecturer Chris Beardshaw says that research shows hardcore music helps plants grow. Stacked against other sonic selections like classical and pop, plants nurtured by hardcore are stimulated into amplified growth.

“Surprisingly, a increasing body of research shows that the frequency of hardcore music helps plants grow,” Chris told For the Record. “The thumping, repetitive, high-decibel noise of hardcore stimulates and energizes plants cells, almost as if they’re bouncing around in a tiny hardcore mosh pit.”

But hardcore music isn’t just helping plants grow faster. The hardcore music scene is growing in recent years, including on Spotify, with a 50% increase in the creation of “hardcore music” playlists by Gen Z listeners.*  

Known for its intensity, attitude, angst, grit, and DIY ethos, hardcore music is a fast-paced, adrenaline-fueled subgenre of punk rock that’s perfect for awakening your senses—and your plants. That’s why Spotify is launching Hardcore Gardening, a playlist full of hardcore music classics and fresh favorites. 

Along with our newest playlist, we’re also teaming up with LA streetwear brand Brain Dead to launch Plant Growth Through Extreme Noise—a limited-edition apparel collection embodying the rebellious spirit of hardcore music.

 

 

From New Songs to Nostalgic Favorites, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater Playlist Hits All the Right Notes

July 28, 2020

At the turn of the millennium, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater video games brought together the best of the gaming and skateboarding worlds. And while the series was popular for letting anyone land a virtual ollie or kickflip, it also became known for its soundtrack. So when news broke that Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 would be remastered and released later this year, skaters, gamers, and audiophiles rejoiced.

For original fans, the game will have a familiar look, feel, and sound—but there will also be some major modern upgrades. The soundtrack includes a lineup of throwbacks from the original game and newer songs from up-and-coming artists. And with genres spanning rock, punk, and rap, there’s sure to be a little something for everyone.

“I think that the new game is going to make fans remember why they enjoyed this series in the first place,” Tony Hawk told For the Record. “Since many of us have been stuck at home, people have told me they’ve busted out their old consoles to play our video games, especially the first two, because it brings them back to a time they remember fondly. When they see what we’ve offered them in the new game, in terms of upgrading, remastering, and the new music, I think they’re going to love it. I can already feel the excitement and people haven’t even gotten their hands on it yet.”

The new game launches September 4, but the wait for the soundtrack lineup is over. On July 28, Activision teamed up with Noisey for an exclusive virtual concert where the set list for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2  was revealed. The show featured performances by some of the game’s new musical additions, including CHAII, Merkules, Machine Gun Kelly, and Rough Francis.

Alongside these new artists, the soundtrack will also feature iconic songs from the original game including Bad Religion’s “You” and Goldfinger’s “Superman.”

“I get a lot of feedback about the game’s music, specifically ‘You’ and ‘Superman,’” says Hawk. “People tell me that was the starting point for their musical interest when they played the game during their formative years. I’m thankful that these bands are still performing and that they’re still supporting us in this remaster.”

For the Record also caught up with Bad Religion’s Jay Bentley and Goldfinger’s John Feldmann to talk about the new game and find out why they think music and skateboarding go hand in hand.

Other than appearing on the Tony Hawk soundtrack, does your band have a personal connection to skate culture?

Bentley: We were recording Suffer, No Control, and Against the Grain around the same time that camcorders were becoming popular. A lot of people used them to shoot skate videos. People started asking us if they could use our songs in their videos, and we would always say, “Yeah, of course!” I don’t think any of us realized at the time that we were part of a culture bubble that was growing so exponentially.

Feldmann: I discovered so many bands like T.S.O.L., Social Distortion, and Dead Kennedys through skate culture, mostly through the skateboarding magazine Thrasher. There was also a connection between our band and the culture itself. I remember this one show we played where the audience was just okay. Then we played “Superman” and the crowd went ballistic. We didn’t know what was going on. After the show we realized that the song was in the Tony Hawk game and that’s how all these people discovered our band.

Speaking of, can you give us some background on “Superman”? Did you expect it to still be popular 20 years later?

Feldmann: I wrote “Superman” in 1994 in my Santa Monica apartment in probably 15 minutes. It was too late to make it onto the album we were working on at the time so when Tony Hawk’s team asked us for an unreleased song, it was just sort of there. I never thought much of the song at first, but I’m grateful that it’s still relevant.

What do you think was key to the popularity of the Tony Hawk soundtrack when it was first released and also today?

Bentley: I think when people hear something at a specific time in their life, like playing video games over summer vacation, those memories stick with you. You always have that good feeling when one of those songs comes on.

Feldmann: I just think that music and skateboarding go hand in hand, it always has. Even when I was a kid, we would make our own soundtracks on cassettes based on whatever we were listening to at the time and play those while we skated.

How do you think your band has changed from your first album to your most recent?

Bentley: I remember years ago, [guitarist and songwriter] Brett Gurewitz said that one of the hardest things for him was to express a lifetime of emotion in two minutes. That’s something that we’ve always strived to do. I think as a band, we’ve gotten better at putting out our feelings in a way that’s easier to understand.

Feldmann: When I started, I never listened to anybody. I just made records that I wanted to make and I wrote songs that I thought were interesting. I’m still making music for myself, but now I’m also thinking about what kind of reaction songs are going to have live and how much fun I’m going to have playing them at shows.

Is there an artist or a band that has inspired your sound that fans might be a little surprised to learn?

Bentley: When we started, we each had our own favorite band. I came in loving The Clash, Greg was really big on the U.K. Subs, and Brett was into the Ramones. Between all of us, we discovered that the only artist that we all liked was Elvis Costello. I don’t think that we tried to replicate his sound, but more his attitude and style.  

Feldmann: The Police are my favorite band of all time. Coldplay has also had a huge influence. Their sounds are so lush and they’re incredibly cinematic.

Why are you, personally, excited for the new Tony Hawk Pro Skater playlist?

Feldmann: This game is going to be incredible. But for me, people are going to play it and our song’s going to be in it. What more could I ask for than having a song that’s survived so long that’s going to come back around again? “Superman” was never a song that was on the radio or a big hit, but on an underground level, I don’t think there’s anything bigger.

Stream songs from the Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 + 2 soundtrack now, available on Spotify.

How ‘Joker’ Composer Hildur Guðnadóttir Ventured From Iceland’s Underground to Hollywood’s Red Carpet

April 6, 2020

When For the Record connected with Hildur Guðnadóttir at her Berlin home, it was a few months after the Icelandic composer had accepted the Best Original Score Oscar for her soundtrack to Todd Phillips’ anti-hero epic, Joker.

On its own, the Oscar win would be a life-altering event, but for Guðnadóttir, it’s merely the exclamation point for a remarkable awards-season run. It’s not just her iconic work for Joker that’s earning her trophies—her score for the 2019 HBO miniseries Chernobyl netted her an Emmy and a Grammy. Essentially, in six short months, this unassuming artist from Iceland’s avant-garde fringes has swiftly moved three quarters of the way to an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony).

But for those who’ve been following Guðnadóttir’s career for the past 15 years, the most amazing thing about her Oscar win isn’t that she’s the first Icelander to ever win an Academy Award, or that she’s only the fourth female composer to take home the statue. It’s that she’s the first Oscar winner who has also collaborated with electro-punk provocateurs The Knife, industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle, and experimental metal band Sunn 0))). 

From a young age, Guðnadóttir was positioned to pursue a composing career—her father is a clarinetist who leads a chamber ensemble, and her mother is an opera singer. But if Guðnadóttir’s parents provided her with the tools and training to become a musician, Guðnadóttir found her true artistic calling when, as a teen, she fell in with the ’90s Reykjavik indie music scene—a close-knit, creative community that spawned the groove ensemble GusGus, post-rock maestros Sigur Rós, and electronic experimentalists Múm (with whom she’d become an on-again, off-again member over the years).

“When we were starting out, none of us really saw any career opportunities in music,” Guðnadóttir recalls. “None of us started to make music because we thought we could live off of it. We were just making music to hang out with each other. So there was a lot of exploration that happened through that.” By the mid-2000s, Guðnadóttir had moved beyond the Reykjavik scene to become part of a global community of artists blurring the lines between neoclassical composition, found-sound experimentation, and post-rock grandeur. On top of establishing her own solo career, Guðnadóttir had become an in-demand session player for boundary-pushing artists like Nico Muhly, Ben Frost, and Pan/Sonic. But her forays into film scoring were abetted by another Icelandic native: the late Jóhann Jóhannsson. 

Best known for soundtracking Denis Villeneuve’s Sicario and Arrival (on which Guðnadóttir performed), Jóhannsson was instrumental in building the bridge between Hollywood and the avant-garde that Guðnadóttir would later traverse. “We came from basically the same scene in Iceland,” Hildur said of her long-time collaborator, who passed away suddenly in 2018 at age 48. “Then we started working together in 2003. He was super influential in opening people’s ears in Hollywood. He did an incredible job of bringing more inaccessible sounds to film-scoring.”

As Guðnadóttir has attracted more high-profile projects, Jóhannsson’s influence on her work has become more evident, especially when it comes to her methods for capturing those “inaccessible sounds.” Her approach to Chernobyl was not so much to complement a scene as seep inside of it, building her unsettling score from field recordings captured inside Lithuania’s decommissioned Ignalina Power Plant (where the series was shot) and investing her dread-ridden drones with a degree of claustrophobic unease.

“Radiation is such a strong character in the story, and I thought it was really important that the music was the radiation … I basically tried to make a musical instrument out of a nuclear power plant, and really root the music in the facts of this story.”

Naturally, a fictional work like Joker demanded a considerably different treatment. “The music has more space to make bigger statements,” she said. The results are no less effective, and Guðnadóttir’s Joker score—all trembling cellos and marauding percussion—deftly mediates between the melancholy and the frightening.

Needless to say, no one was more surprised by the score’s success than Guðnadóttir, but her journey from the underground to the red carpet has been a pleasant experience. Even before her award wins firmly established her as one of Hollywood’s most in-demand composers, the Icelandic outsider found a welcoming scene in L.A. not entirely unlike the one that nurtured her in Reykjavik. 

“I imagined Hollywood to be this competitive world, but I’ve been so wonderfully surprised to see a sense of community between film composers—people seem to be really happy to support each other’s work and cheer each other on.”

Tune into This Is Hildur Guðnadóttir to experience the avant-garde composer’s Oscar-winning scores.