Get Back Up

I just got back from a weekend in New York with Kelly and her family. We were taking her sister, Jamie, back up to school and, while we were in the area, took a couple days to snowboard. It was a lot of fun and, since I haven't posted anything in a while, I feel like I should somehow relate snowboarding to music...

So here's what I've got:

The most important thing you can learn from snowboarding is to get back up. When you fall, you can either quit or you can get back up. Those are your only two choices and, as the case is with snowboarding, you are faced with that choice often.

See, snowboarding has one of the highest learning curves of any sport. If you didn't learn to snowboard when you learned to walk, tough luck. You WILL fall and you WILL get hurt. And it will take a long time until you are "good" at it. Through all of that, most people give up. You get a taste of snowboarding that is associated with catching your edge and having your head slammed into the ground. It's not a good feeling, but it is part of the learning process.

Me, being the adrenaline junkie that I am, have gone through all sorts of injuries in my learning process. I like to say that I was "raised" by skiers, as most of the guys I hung out with while I was learning were all experienced skiers. Experienced, meaning that I was constantly being pushed to go faster, steeper, and bigger than I would have liked. This led to injuries on all parts of my body - a fractured tailbone, unknown injuries to my knees and wrists, a mild concussion or two, etc.

When you're laying on the ground, wondering if you can move your legs and arms, you feel like quitting; like it's not worth it. Then you get up and do it again (sometimes after days or weeks of recovery). It's either because you've got masochistic tendencies or because you're passionate about what you do.

The first day we were out, Kelly and I took Jamie. Maybe she only got in 4 or 5 runs over the course of the day, but she ended with some accomplishments. Being able to link a few carves together is impressive, regardless of the swollen knees and sore appendages that it took to get there.

So this is where it ties to music. You WILL write crappy songs. You WILL play crappy shows. You'll hear people that can play circles around you. And you can either push on or you can give up. But if you're going to push on, do so intentionally. Bounce ideas off of friends, study your recordings, watch video of your performances. Go out with some intention on getting better. If you settle for what you're failing at, you'll just fall again and again.

And seriously, we don't need people who put out the same sound and the same performance over and over again. Know that it's okay to fall. You just have to get back up and keep moving forward.

Soundtrack Review: The Art of Flight

I say “movie soundtrack” and what do you think? I know I’m immediately thinking big orchestral scores similar to The Pirates of the Caribbean and Lord of the Rings. To a lesser degree, I think of movies like Juno and Scott Pilgram vs. the World. Film is one of those places where you can get a hipster to listen to an orchestra or you can get someone with slightly more class to listen to Sonic Youth. It’s a beautiful dichotomy.

But what is it that makes these soundtracks so great? If you were to throw the Juno soundtrack in with The Pirates of the Caribbean it wouldn’t bode well for either. Music is set there to compliment the film. It helps you to experience the film on a deeper level. In my examples, we’ve got POTC and LOTR as these big epics with battles and adventure …and music that makes you feel like you’re in the midst of those exact things. With Scott Pilgram, the music helps you to feel like you’re in the midst of a video game. And with Juno, you feel like a lost indie kid in a big confusing world.

The music is there to remove you from your seat and place you in the movie. Consequently, when you hear the same music without the movie, it is emotive of those same feelings. When I hear the POTC soundtrack, for instance, I immediately am thinking of scenes from the movie.

But this is a rare case. Unless it’s the theme song, for most movies, hearing something from it won’t evoke anything reminiscent of the movie. And even a more rare case is that there is a documentary with such a mind-blowing soundtrack.

Enter, The Art of Flight. It’s a snowboarding documentary. When I think of snowboarding documentaries, after thinking of how awesome the footage is, I am reminded of how terrible the music is. It’s so often over-produced rap, angsty punk, or something else that’s way too much of a sensory overload when combined with watching guys drop off 70 foot cliffs. The music rarely makes you feel like you are there.

And really, snowboarding is a lot more tangible than most movies, so it should be easier to emulate the feeling through music. If music can make you feel like you’re sailing across the ocean in a pirate ship, shouldn’t it also be able to make you feel like you’re doing something a little less fanciful.

So often this is botched up, but not with The Art of Flight. Everything is perfect. There is literally nothing I would change about the movie, except to maybe make it longer. Since I first saw it about a month ago, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about snowboarding or stop listening to the soundtrack.

The soundtrack to this thing redefines what you think of as a soundtrack. It has variety, dynamic, and puts you right in the middle of the movie. Sure, I’m not out there hucking backflips over 100 foot gaps on a glacial melt, but I do snowboard and am pretty well familiar with the sport. And somehow, this soundtrack is snowboarding. It’s complimentary to the images to place you right in the middle of the action.

This is finally a soundtrack that recognizes that snowboarding is more than just about big tricks. When I’m listening to this, I’m doing what I do on a mountain. I like steep and fast and, occasionally, a good cruiser.

Right off the bat, you’ve got some house beats (that's what they're calling this stuff, right?), compliments of Deadmau5, that give the vivid feeling of flying down a chute, airing over small features, but in such a fluid manner and with such intensity. The bass is driving, but at a palatable pace that focuses on the control of every little muscle movement involved with keeping up with gravity. It’s not about going big, but about style. It’s the beauty of a well planned line and the thrill of the moments when your board leaves the ground.

After that, there’s this song by The Naked and Famous, “No Way.” It’s basically like cruising on some packed power and then dropping some fresh tracks. You’ve got the opening words of “When the daylight comes, do you feel it?” It’s in a soft voice and makes you think of cruising blues on packed power after getting first chair, bright and early in the morning. When I’m listening to it, I’m hearing the crunch of cutting through the snow through nice, relaxed carves down an empty slope. Every verse is like this – like cruising leisurely and enjoying life. Then you’ve got these big choruses that take you from the lift lines and packed powder to the back side of the mountain, laying fresh tracks through huge pow turns. It’s like floating.

Next in line is Apparat’s, “Ash/Black Veil.” It’s set by a delay driven, beat that seems to be comprised of some guitar, violin, percussion, and random sound effects. It’s light and open. Listening to this one, I’m envisioning a tree run. Not an east coast run, but out west, where you’ve got big, open aspen glades and powder. The song takes you along this trail, where you’ve got nothing but trees ahead of you and nothing but trees behind you.

Basically, the album continues at this pace – exploring the many facets of snowboarding, snow, and winter. You’ve got tracks for big jumps, tracks for steep lines, tracks for danger, and tracks for relief. This is what I want to ride to this winter. This is a soundtrack beyond the scope of a movie. It’s one that spans to reach the snowboarding (skiing, snowmobiling, etc.) subset of the population to the point of being the soundtrack to our lives for the next 4 months.

Check it:

And, of course, the rest of the soundtrack:

Segment	Artist	Song
Intro 1	Defrag	Element 1
Intro 2	M83	Outro
So Far Gone 1	Hendrickson/Dick/Harry	Before the Storm
So Far Gone 2	Deadmau5	Ghosts n’ Stuff (Nero Remix)
Down Days	Oswin Macintosh	Passion Victim
Wizard	The Naked and Famous	No Way
No Bueno	Apparat	Ash/Black Veil
Darwin 1	Klaus Badelt	Nowhere to Run
Darwin 2	Blockhead	Sunday Seance (Loka Remix)
Home 1	The Album Leaf	Another Day
Home 2	The Naked and Famous	Young Blood
Home 3	Mel Wesson	Motional Rescue Pulse
Avalanche 1	Mel Wesson	Stark Light
Avalanche 2	Sigur Ros	Track 6
Aspen	M83	Intro
Revelstoked	Hum	Iron Clad Lou
More stoked	The Black Angels	Young Men Dead
Even more stoked	M83	My Tears Are Becoming A Sea
Credits 1	Okkervil River	Westfall
Credits 2	We Are Augustines	Chapel Song