Word: riff
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...that really bothered me, though, is the hateful “Robot Rock.” The beat has this horrible riff that sounds like it came off the most annoying effect on the keyboards in your Long Island high school’s bootleg “piano lab.” It’s this kind of aural insult that led fans to accuse the prerelease leakings of the album to be the work of imposter hacks...
...once sparked a rap feud by accusing Ja Rule of being too soft, Fitty engages Olivia in a whispery duet about mutual satisfaction, built on a slithering Middle Eastern keyboard riff that makes him sound awfully, uh, considerate...
Mash-ups--the marriage of a vocal from one song with the music bed from another--no longer sound so revolutionary as they did when they first conquered the Internet, but the unlikely pairing of Lynyrd Skynyrd's riff and Nelly's spliffs improves both. --By Josh Tyrangiel
Harris had a point. But then again, how often do you see the über-precise Carlos D discard his bass mid-song to play a rough saxophone riff or nimbly manipulate a set of keyboard loops with his feet? Menomena has always been a more claustrophobic, oddball project—and, as they showed last week, it’s had a most liberating effect on their music...
...first three tracks emblemize this interplay. Track one (“Am I saying ‘tight’ too much?”) begins with what sounds like a classic indie-pop-punk riff and whiny vocals (“fuck this town/I’ll burn it down”) but then eventually progresses to an impassioned and screechy vocal breakdown à la Born Against’s “I am an Idiot.” This trend crops up again, but reversed, in track three—starting out with the intense...