What is music? Have you stopped to think about what really is music?  A first grader clapping their hands together and vocalizing three sounds would tell you that they are making music. Some would say Yoko Ono's singing is music.  Others could also call the call of whales music.  Each of us have our own preferences to what we listen to and what we like.  One person might call Beethoven the greatest musician of all time, while another might argue that it was the Beatles.  These two artists were incredibly diverse in the types of music they produced, however, they were both great and one cannot simply say (although they do) that Beethoven was better because he played classical music and the Beatles only played Rock n' Roll.  When one looks at music they need to see how that particular artists interprets music in their own way and not underhandidly dismiss it because it is not what you are used to listening to.

This is something which I have to remember every time I review new album.  I do not just review one type of music, I review everything from hip-hop to grunge rock to international music.  I have to review the albums and music for itself, not for its classification.  Today I had the opportunity to listen to an album entitled This Changes Nothing by a new band called Ready Fire Aim.  This is the first album in the electronica genre I have ever reviewed, so I got myself ready for the experience.

In my first listen through of the album, I have to admit I was not impressed. The music to me was very reminiscent of some of the pop junk during the early 80s when many of the new wave bands began to experiment with their synthesizers and computerized keyboards. In addition, a déjà vu of when techno music first hit the club scene.  All I heard was the synthetic sounds of the keyboards and the repetitiveness of sounds from track to track.

Although they have a very cool logo and album cover (black with lazer etched type), I was not impressed with the music the first time through.  However, I always try to listen to an album at least two or three times.  The first is just to listen to see if I like it and make any notes for items that struck me as being really good or bad.  During my second listen-through I listen to the lyrics, vocal quality, instruments and production of each track.  On second listen through I found that this album had a number of high points.  For a number of songs was a spiritual tie-in between the title of each track and the essence of the corresponding music where it was trying to tell you a musical story. To do this, I had to kind of let myself and my biased views of music go ad be in-tune with that they are trying to accomplish with their songs.  A second strong point for this album is the high production quality of their songs.  If you like this music I can see where you would really love this album.