On Music: The Campaign For Real-Time

Aaaaaand welcome back to another installment of "New Music," with me, your host. I've been really lazy about posting of late (again), but I have returned (again) with a renewed vigor towards posting on an empty and readerless blog! Today I'm gonna talk about a band that, to be entirely fair, hasn't been exactly "new" to me for a while, since I've had some of their music on my iPod for a few months at this point, but until recently they were completely unnamed and rarely listened to. What band is this, you ask? Why, it's the

Campagain For Real-Time!




The Story
I originally recieved two of their CDs from a friend of mine in exchange for my copy of Daft Punk's Discovery. Me and this person worked together on a project where we had to relate various works of American Literature to music, and he threw one of C4RT's tracks onto the setlist. It eventually got taken out, but I enjoyed it enough to ask him for some more of their work, and, me being the forgetful lazy person I am, didn't actually end up making the trade some months after the fact. When we did finally make the exchange, he gave me a blank CD with the two albums on them, with neither the tracks nor the albums labled or identified. I put them on my iPod but, since they were all completely unknown, they ended up just sorta floating around, rarely listened to except on the occasional shuffle.

About a month ago (back when I originally planned on writing this post -fail), one of their songs came up on shuffle and I actually listened to it. And it was really good. I had a general idea that the band was good, as the only labled song I had by them, Song for New Amsterdam, the same song I got from my friend originally, was really good. It was a sort of hard to describe melodic punk-rock, with a real message to get across. But this new song was completely different, but in a good way. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what the song is like, yet again, but, and I'm no expert on anything musical, I'd say it was almost a mixture of hip hop and rock. I really don't know what to call it. Shortly after hearing this, I got really interested in C4RT again, and, remembering that I had two whole CDs of theirs on my iPod, set out to label and identify each of the songs and then listen to them.

The Artist
As mentioned earlier, it's really, really difficult to pinpoint exactly what kind of music this band makes. It ranges from rock, punk, techno, hip-hop, electronic, dashes of metal here and there, and it even covers Lennon. It, quite literally, is music. You can label certain bands as rap, rock, punk, techno, etc., but C4RT encompasses it all in such a unique way that you can't label it by any single genre. Though the band itself is made up of members of previous bands that broke up, they live by some crazy story that they are time travelers here to present us music from the future (or is it the past) in order to enhance our lives or something. And one can almost believe it too, based on how unique and varied each track is...except for the fact that it's completely nutters.

At the end of the track One in the Gut, there's a brief sound clip of someone asking one of the band members "So are you guys a serious band?", with the reply "We're serious about being effective..." I think this more or less sums up their perspective on the way they work as a band; serious about their music, but they don't take themselves too seriously.

The AlbumsLet It Rise
I have no clue in what order the two albums I have were produced, since there's so very little out there on the intertubes about C4RT, so I basically picked one of the two at random once I finally identified all the tracks and had everything nice and organized.

Let It Rise was the first album I ended up listening to, and, true to form, it contains no specific single genre of music. Each track was unique in it's own way (except they all weren't...more on that later), and each was excellent by it's own rights. D.C. 77 was the song I had originally heard that convinced me to look back into the band, and Let It Rise also has Song for New Amsterdam, the other song I had mentioned originally. Adjustments is a strong track, but the acapella "doo doo doos" they do in the chorus can be kind of annoying after listening to the track enough times. Rachel Says is another of the songs I would often hear on shuffle, think to myself "Hey, this is pretty good," and then forget what I was planning to do with it later when I couldn't find the track. Photo (Negative Cutter) and Real Time Blues are both good in their own, weird way and the rest of the tracks are just plain great.
Overall Rating: 8.5/10


Yes...I Mean, No
So, after thoroughly listening to Let It Rise I started on this album. It is in all parts equally as good as Let It Rise, but I can't really say which is better because of the ongoing uniqueness this band displays. However, as I listened I couldn't help but notice that some of the tracks sounded...familiar. I could have sworn I had already heard this or that track, and yet I know I couldn't have, because I was listening to the CD I hadn't listened to yet. Then I took a look at the tracks, and sure enough, almost half of this CD and half of Let It Rise shared similar tracks. How could I have not noticed when I was labeling the songs Turn the Gun on Me on and Yes...I Mean, No and Turn the Gun on E on Let It Rise. As it turns out, about half of each of the two albums share a similar song, one a remix of the other. After looking into the track titles a bit more, I learned that Yes...I Mean, No was almost certainly before Let It Rise, because of the track pairings. Turn the Gun on (M)E is relatively clear, but by far the most obvious was In Your Dreams and In Your Dreams (Sir Certainly Remix).

Remixing aside, I found that each of the tracks, especially the original mixes, were still completely different from any other track of theirs, even their remixes. C4RT has somehow managed to come up with a way to redefine themselves with each and every song. As a whole Yes...I Mean No is a little weaker than Let It Rise, but since it most likely came before Let It Rise, that's a bit more understandable. All in all, I really enjoyed this album as well, and would reccomend it to others for their listening pleasure.
Overall Rating: 8.0/10

Final Thoughts
The Campaign for Real-Time is an incredibly diverse band from a musical standpoint. Their tracks are varied and unique. Each song could stand alone, and together you have to ask yourself "Did one band really make all these songs?" Even the remixes are solid, to the point where they practically shouldn't even be recognized as remixes but entirely new songs. Ridiculous time travelers or not, I really like this band, and look forward to more music from these guys.

Band Rating: 9.0/10

The Campaign for Real-Time can be found on their Facebook or Myspace page.