If It's Too Loud...

Forgotten Fridays is an occasional feature here at If It’s Too Loud... where we go back and find the lost records of our glory days. We played these on our college radio shows, put them on countless mix tapes, and then forgot they existed. We go back and remind you of their existence, and help decide if they were any good. I just realized we have yet to do a Forgotten Friday yet this year, so here we go with an old favorite from my college radio days... At Home with the Groovebox  was released by Grand Royal back in 2000. All artists recorded songs with the Roland MC-505 Groovebox. According to Wikipedia, the Roland MC-505 is "...  a combination of a  MIDI controller , a  music sequencer  and a  drum machine." Since this was released on the Beastie Boys label, it's filled with artists either on Grand Royal or friendly with the Beastie Boys. As you can imagine, the results vary wildly, but all are pretty interesting.  One of the better contribut...

Busiest new release week so far this year, so let's not waste any time. ††† - ††† : ††† is a side project of Chino Moreno of the Deftones. I only realized this after finishing the album for the first time, and it explains quite a bit - the album would fit right in on mid-1990s alt-rock radio in a lot of regards, and it is ultimately an all-over-the-place nostalgia trip more than anything else. It's worth listening as a curiosity, for certain, but whether it has staying power for you might be based more on your love of the Deftones and/or the state of alt-rock when you were in high school/college. Nina Persson - Animal Heart : Nina Persson is perhaps best known for her work as lead singer of The Cardigans, but this is her first solo album. Truly, this is an album that mirrors her work with A Camp more than it resembles anything you remember from The Cardigans, but that's not really a bad thing. There are some memorable tracks on here along with some slower-type songs...