This music is not mainstream! - Rend Collective Experiment
One of the things that I hear often from people is, “I don’t listen to Christian music, because it all sounds the same.” My followup question is whether or not they are talking about K-Love. Not to say that K-Love is a bad music station. For the most part, they play music that is fairly solid lyrically (with some major exceptions that certainly sound nice and Christian, but have really bad or incomplete theology). Now, I’m not saying that everything you listen to or sing must contain super deep, theological lyrics, but let’s at least not listen to misleading or outright wrong theology. The conclusion that a lot of those people come to is that they either a) just deal with K-Love, b) listen to secular music, because sure there’s some bad stuff in there, but not all of it’s bad, and it’s certainly more musically interesting than hearing the same thing over and over again (come on K-Love, expand your playlist past the same 15 songs over and over again) or c) not listen to music at all.
I would like to submit to you an option d. There’s a lot of really great, theologically rich, musically interesting Christian music out there. A lot of people have asked me for suggestions, and to be honest, I’m so musically eclectic that often I’m not sure where to begin. I listen to a lot of music, and a lot of it is music that you have probably never heard. The only way for you decide if you like a lot of this music is to listen to it! You might find that a lot of it kind of grows on you. What I’d like to do is to share with you the artists that I’m listening to. I’ll give you some representative YouTube links perhaps, a link to purchase an album or two on Amazon, and who knows, maybe you’ll find some new music that you love to listen to that helps you in your quest to keep your mind on things above and not on earthly things.
Up first in the series of, “This music is not mainstream!” is a group that is about as not mainstream as you get, Rend Collective Experiment. Here is how they explain what Rend Collective Experiment is on their website (which by the way has a really cool design… www.rendcollectiveexperiment.com):
The Rend Collective Experiment started in 2004 as a group of confused 20 somethings started trying to figure out life, God and community. Then in 2007 it grew into a collective of musicians and artists trying to share with the world what they were learning. All our music is grown out of an organic environment and we hope you can appreciate our bond through our music. We try to make journey music that talks from the heart and trys to follow God’s heart yet its music for all not just the religious!
The first thing that you notice about this Irish group, Rend Collective Experiment is that they are not your typical band, with a lead singer, drummer, electric guitar player, bass player, maybe a keyboard player, an acoustic guy and a singer or two. The lead singer on one song isn’t the lead singer on the next song. One song may have drums, the next may not. In other words, if you are an eclectic listener like me, you get to be eclectic without having to change CDs! I can still remember the first time I heard their album, “Organic Hymnal,” and listening to the song, You Bled and exclaiming out loud, “Brass!” Listening to this album, I heard the song, “Love Divine” and said to Jodie, “Wow, these lyrics are great! This sounds like a hymn.” That’s because the song is the lyrics to Love Divine, All Loves Excelling set to new music. Listening to this song helped me to rediscover a hymn that we sing maybe once or twice a year. Oh, and did I mention there’s brass….
You can listen to several Rend Collective Experiment songs by visiting their YouTube page, http://www.youtube.com/user/RendCollective. That being said, their album that’s out, “Organic Hymnal” really needs to be experienced as a complete album. You can purchase the album on Amazon or iTunes (along with I’m sure a host of other services). I shall leave you with a couple of YouTube videos. The first is of their song, “Movements.” This video shows off their quirky humor side (the album really has both serious and quirky music on it). The second video, I saw long before I ever heard of Rend Collective Experiment, because I’m a geek, and saw it on a blog. It wasn’t until later that I made the connection that this was the band I was listening to so much.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCYgQWLO8vY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaJ4A7mXJH8
(Originally posted June 21, 2010)
