Strings
 

I've always liked violins and strings the most out of the musical instruments, (listening to, that is. Have no actual musical ability whatsoever.) so I was really excited to discover some contemporary violinists and composers.

Bond -- I've heard of them before, but never heard them. Winamp has some of their songs.

Edvin Marton -- Love his sad songs, if you want upbeat, go for Bond. "Romeo and Juliet", "Art on Ice" are both highly recommended.

"Grandpa's Violin" found on the .Hack soundtrack is great. Pretty depressing though.

Anyone else have recommendations?

There are string quartet "tributes" to modern bands. Basically a selection of songs covered using a quartet. There's a few around, Nine Inch Nails, and Tool have em, and Coldplay (I [i]think[/]). I really like them, you might want to check those out.

the most recent beck album, "sea change," has the best use of strings i've heard on a rock/pop album since quadrophenia. i read somewhere that he had his dad arrange the strings on at least a few of the cuts....

if you go to www.beck.com & download the sea change streamer in the news section, you can get a free listen. the song "paper tiger" is really cool......actually has a guitar soloist & string section mimicking each other to great effect.

clann zu is a band with a electric violinist in. He plays on pretty mcuh every track. I'd highly highly recommending listening to the band.

What about Bobby Yang (warning: sound plays when entering website, and excessive use of Flash / Shockwave)? There's also a video of him playing Eruption by Van Halen on the site. I don't think you can purchase anything by him yet, however.

http://www.apocalyptica.com/home/

Apocalyptica started out as a Metallica cover band (played entirely on strings) I think they have branced out to other metal bands since then.

ooh! download yellowcard! they are great with their violinist!!

Oh God...I'm just kidding. Don't touch it with a 10 ft. pole.

Heh heh, I don't actually mind Yellowcard too much... Shows you how old I am doesn't it? :lol:

I wonder with all these bands that use violins whether they would every hire a violinist to go on tour? Especially those heavy metal ones... It'd be kind of interesting, don't you think?

for a bit of a shift, G.E. Stinson plays electric violin. Anything he works on is cool.

go look up the kronos quartet
:D you may especially like their collaberation with Clint Mansell for the "Requim for a Dream" soundtrack

they play very modern pieces and are can be a bit avant gaurde at times so just give it a couple listens before you judge :P

For an eastern flair, you might check out Twelve Girls Band.

I dont know about any new stuff but Bach has some badass violin concertos.

You should really check out string quartets by Beethoven, Bartok and Shostakovich. They push this traditional (and great) instrumental paradigm to its limits!

Apocalyptica is one of the best bands around...well...were. They've gone from Metallica cover band to basically distorting their cellos to sound exactly like electric guitars, and adding drums and (sometimes) vocals so that they are little more than a gimmicky rock band.
Rasputina does a sort of Gothy cello rock thing.
Vaartina is an awesome Finnish band that has a lot of violin and other strings in it (owing to its Finnish folk roots), and they also have Kalevala *Finnish mythology* chants that are really crazy in Finnish!
Shostakovich String Quartet 8 is amazing, just like death metal but more innovative!
Certainly don't recommend the "tribute" cd's, they're by The Section who seems to do little more than download a Midi (porr quality digital music file) and arrange it without actually hearing the song by the band they cover...it's just bad. Sorry, that's how I feel.
Also, um...check out Arvo Part, he does medieval type stuff. Very cool