Taplog - Music Diaries - Forums : Best Ever Albums

Tap · 2015-11-05T15:54:49-05:00

TAPLOG I will be writing about my day's listening here, a post for each day. Just getting this started, I'll fill out the structure of the day as it goes and then I will edit in details and thoughts later. Feel free to comment and suggest things just maybe don't give too many suggestions and also really try to sell me on it or I might forget. Oh and if there's anything here you're interested in hearing but you're having difficulty finding, pm me and maybe I can help you find it. 11/5/15 Art Angels by Grimes Then I followed this up with the Improv4Humans podcast, new ep today has musical guest Dan Deacon. It was too distractingly funny though so I had to pause. Got me thinking that I didn't give a close enough listen to Deacon's latest, so let's give that a whirl. Gliss Riffer by Dan Deacon Yeah, I don't know. I like it. But my way in with Deacon was Spiderman of the Rings. I still love that album, because there was a forcefulness to it, and danger and sharp edges and all of that. While the compositions following that album have gotten more intricate, it feels like all the edge has gotten sanded off. I think the songs on this are fine, and I do like a lot of them more than what was on the previous album (and, controversially, a lot of Bromst, which I still need to put on my year chart come to think of it), and would love to experience them live. But I guess it's a combination of the smoothing of the sound and the increased familiarity with who Dan Deacon is that leads to me noticing that there is some sort of nuanced development to his sound, but just not being able to feel it as much. But I wouldn't say it's bad by any means. It's getting too normie in here so now: Flowers Of Evil by Ruth White Oh, this. I love this album. It's one of the many albums that I love that I found through the Creel Pone unofficial reissue label. Lots of musical spoken word that's all been treated to some degree put over synthesizers of varying levels of murkiness. Nothing really in the way of percussion, but in spite of that and all the murk there's still some really clear forms to these songs that makes them seem quite direct. Anyone looking to expand their knowledge of women making far out electronic sounds in the early days of it absolutely must check this one out. I can hear some loud drums being soundchecked at the venue next door now which is simply too distracting so now I'm goin to some talky podcasts, starting with Who Charted. New format is weird but it works for some word listening. But now I need something wordless to go with the working so Precipice by Byron Westbrook This is just some fantastic ambient music right here. But what makes this stand out is that beyond the gorgeous waves of sound, there are all of these weird little elements to the songs, enough to where I've seen this album referred to as electro-acoustic on top of being ambient. What's great about these layers of weird synthesis in the mix is that they're more than just flavor, they're major determinants in the structure. Like in the last track, there's all these gorgeous waves and it's wonderful but then they break apart into some series of notes and the slowness intensifies and I like it a lot. I need more, so KOCH by Lee Gamble This album is still growing on me, a year later. And I still don't know how to describe it. But man oh man I love these timbres. It's some pretty consistent, minimal music. But there's this quality to his music where it's like he's taking something that previously existed and erasing, and the talent is in the space that's created from the erasure. I don't know. I still need more time and more listens. I'm hungry so I'm going to get something going with that while finishing up the Dan Deacon ep of Improv4Humans. I dunno I could imagine a lot of people find this sort of improv comedy to be annoying but this is so much my jam, absolutely loving it. This will be one of those podcast episodes that I actually listen to more than once. Ok now to go through this again so I can figure out what I want to say here Art Angels by Grimes I guess I have a sort of weird relationship with capital p Pop. I enjoy a song here and there but I never really feel compelled to go dive into a whole album. This is a bit different than capital p Pop, with all the indieosyncrasy. But there's still that slick sort of timbre all over the place, and so many filter sweeps. So I do feel put at a distance from this. On the other hand tho, I've seen some people online absolutely losing their shit about how bad this is. And I completely disagree with those folks. This has tons of really fun catchy songs on here. Kill V Maim, Pin, Realiti (which I actually prefer here to the previously released one), Venus Fly, and Scream and Flesh Without Blood are all great as far as I'm concerned. The other songs, nothing strikes me as being especially bad or enough to make me want to skip, but I don't know if I feel a strong pull back to them. I figure I probably won't be pulling out this album in it's entirety all too often (though I'll have it on my phone for a lil bit I think), but I do think this is good stuff. But the overall timbre, like I can never feel at home with this sort of sound, I'll always feel like a tourist with it and so I value the stuff I feel more at home with more. Now let's go with a first listen for something I think I'll feel at home with On Earth by Hans Otte This is another Creel Pone thing that I ordered recently, I'm not sure if there's any copies online. I guess this was some sort of sound art thing that happened in the space pictured on the cover, and man it must have been really cool to be there in person, with all these noises and spoken German coming out of the squares on the ground and also from the ceiling. It starts up and there's a sort of irregular bass throb that gives a pulse to the whole thing, while waves of noise build up from nothing and hang out in the space for a bit. It can get a bit harsh. But I have no problem with that. The structure isn't super overt, very much in the horizontal development mode throughout and I'm more generally aware of change happening than seeing an exact point of it, if that makes sense. Sometimes this sort of thing doesn't work for me so well when it feels like it's just lingering in a certain mode and not pushing into anywhere new, but this uses a small selection of sounds to go all sorts of places, like it gets into a sort of rhythmic thing in the second half of side A with much more... I guess they would be percussive hits? Well, sort of? It's weird. But the focus in aesthetic and constant development in what the piece is is just great to take in. And then Side B sort of repeats the process of Side A, but gets into more feedback drones, it feels similar in shape, but slower and everything hangs a little different in my ear. And more of the German spoken word. Yes, I am at home here. That's it for today on the music front. Going to catch up on adventure time and then get things sorted for the day tomorrow.

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12/9

62. Luciano Berio: Sinfonia by Luciano Berio / New York Philharmonic / The Swingle Singers
63. AE_LIVE_KREMS_020515 by Autechre (First Listen)
64. Somnia by Greg Davis
65. The SalMar Construction by Salvatore Martirano
66. Work On What Has Been Spoiled by Borbetomagus
67. Ekstasis by Julia Holter
68. Oiseaux 96-98 by Hrvatski
69. 1 by Lifted
70. Clarinet And String Quartet by Morton Feldman
71. Huh? by Charles Barabé & Wether (First Listen)
72. Stopcock by The Set Ensemble (First Listen)

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Clarinet And String Quartet by Morton Feldman (2015)

This year I finally started getting into Morton Feldman, and this release had a big hand in it. I'm still pretty new to his work so I'm not trying to speak with authority here, but this recording seems really special. Stuff I tried previously was all pristine studio recording stuff, and when combined with the extreme duration of a lot of his most celebrated work, it put me in a position where I really struggled to connect with the work. But this album was recorded in a living room. Maybe it's because I listen to stuff on headphones so much, but it's so much better in my eyes for music to already feel like it exists in a real space in most cases (except for when that non-space is an active component of what the music is, of course). The musicians really take their time with the piece, it's a few minutes longer than what was previously the longest recording. And it all comes together in a way that makes all the consistency and the way a varied experience is pulled out of it and how instruments blend together into a single superinstrument with fantastical pitch generation capabilities and then break apart and spread out, and everything else just totally click for me. I don't think I've gotten near fully appreciating everything going on with this, but I feel like I'm psyched to keep working at it and living with it, and that me connecting with this album when I did will be significant for the future.

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END OF WEEK 5

Listens: 72
Albums: 64
First Listens: 12

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WEEK 6

12/10

1. Agitations by Lotic
2. Chimeric by Radian
3. Simple Songs by Jim O'Rourke
4. Get Down by Pita
5. Fluvine by Fernando Grillo
6. Lucas by Skeletons
7. D. I. Go Pop by Disco Inferno
8. Primordial Forms by Nick Forté
9. Deceptionista by ADR (First Listen/Playthrough because it's a video game too PC version is currently missing files on download copy so it's just a listen now)
xx. http://t-c-f.in/ (Partial Listen, Full Acquisition)

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Primordial Forms by Nick Forté (2015)

Modified version of earlier post:

Nick Forte was in the Schematic camp for the early 00's IDM activity, and he also put out some stuff on Sublight. I didn't do the best at keeping up, but I enjoyed his collaborations with Dino Felipe and Young Man's Disease. I've missed a few releases, especially recently, but I saw this one was on Amish Records' Required Wreckers series, and I've really enjoyed what I've heard from that. So I check this, and while there are some elements of rhythm, this is mostly just a bonkers sound adventure sort of thing, way further out there than what I'm used to from him. The process involved designing some one second samples in some old 90's audio software, with the speakers off. Their creation was purely on how they looked. And then he used them as building blocks, in the same antiquated software, to stretch and manipulate into filling in the elaborate structures found on the album. There may be some effects were used but for the most part it feels pretty dry, and the sound source being limited to these constructed waveforms definitely gives this a peculiar hand crafted electronics feeling that is really fresh and not the sort of thing you can get just anywhere. Anyone looking for a good brainfloss would do well to seek this one out.

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http://t-c-f.in/ (2015)

I saw some tweets from TCF, a really cool musician who is crazy smart and does a lot with cryptography, lamenting how only the thing he released on vinyl got any attention, and the hundreds of other minutes he released with different distribution. And so that got me curious about this site of his, http://t-c-f.in/. I'd looked at it once before and gotten very confused. There was a string of characters above a text box, "54C6051C13". So I just enter in that text into the text box, and hit enter. BAM. Given a link to a short mp3. So I think for a moment, and decide to try another string of characters "62C024C30C" that fits the structure of the previous one, not using any different roman characters than what's been established. This gives me a different short mp3. So I try "AAAAAAAAAA" and sure enough, another short mp3. At this point, I decide to do a bit of cheating, and discover that there does look to be around 200 minutes of material here! So now I have it all downloaded on my computer and am listening. Looks to be about 267 tracks and 3 hours, 9 minutes of stuff. Yeah, I'm gonna go thru this whole thing tomorrow, I can't stay up super late tonight. But this is sounding incredible and definitely seems like something everyone needs a heads up on.

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12/11

10. Standards by Tortoise
11. AE_LIVE_NAGANO_300515 by Autechre
12. Luciano Berio: Sinfonia by Luciano Berio / New York Philharmonic / The Swingle Singers
13. http://t-c-f.in by TCF (First Full Listen)
14. Ritratto Di Giovane / Symphonie Pour Un Enfant Seul by Françoise Barrière / Christian Clozier
15. Bastard by Gajek (First Listen)
xx. Assorted Music feat. Alcohol
16. Garden Of Delete by Oneohtrix Point Never

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I went hard on the socializing so no write ups tonight. But I did realize, like I've been writing up these things cause I want to create a document that I can show to people, but all these cool releases have been popping up this month and I don't know how to compare them against things I'm more familiar with. So I'm just going to present a thing of 69 music releases in a random order. I think that will be fun. So that's where I'm at. BTW this TCF release is the biggest thing that no one is talking about.

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Tap wrote:

I went hard on the socializing so no write ups tonight. But I did realize, like I've been writing up these things cause I want to create a document that I can show to people, but all these cool releases have been popping up this month and I don't know how to compare them against things I'm more familiar with. So I'm just going to present a thing of 69 music releases in a random order. I think that will be fun. So that's where I'm at.

Sounds like a fun idea! Interested to see that it looks like

also

Tap wrote:

12. Luciano Berio: Sinfonia by Luciano Berio / New York Philharmonic / The Swingle Singers

cool you've been listening to this so much lately 😄 A true masterpiece. There's another recording of it with Riccardo Chailly conducting the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, and it's not quite as good imo BUT it does include the fifth movement to the piece that Berio hadn't composed yet at the time of the above one's recording. It's kind of like an epilogue so not necessarily essential, but still definitely worth hearing. Also the Chailly is worthwhile for an excellent rendition of Berio's Folk Songs which is probably the standout of the record

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Yeah I've been meaning to check that, but I've been too focused on this one. Think it's gonna be on my overall once I get around to finishing updating some decade charts. Such good stuff, glad to have snagged it here.

12/12

17. t-c-f.in/ by TCF (additional content)
18. Deceptionista by ADR (game)
19. Stopcock by The Set Ensemble
20. Bastard by Gajek
21. Plot Defender by Nochexxx
22. Without Knowing Why by Andrea Pensado
23. Deceptionista by ADR (game)
24. Garden Of Delete by Oneohtrix Point Never
25. A Small Prometheus by Robin Fox
26. Omnicircus by Frank Garvey

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Plot Defender by Nochexxx (2015)

Here's something that sits in a sorta techno or electro space, even directly shouting out James Stinson in a track title. So it's not like a hugely revolutionary sound to be found here. But that's OK, because what you do have some impeccably crafted analog electronic dance music. Nothing about it sounds clean. Some elements may seem a little harsh to some folks, but I think the raw energy on display is enough to get those hypothetical folks on board. And even if they do get all bummed out, surely the really fun and direct melodies in Arbury Flowers would get things turned around for them. Tho before that there's a ton of fun stuff, like the title track gets sounding really demented in places without being overwhelming about it, still seeming like it could function as dance music legitimately. I am a sucker for this sound palette though, so I don't know if you're not so into the analog electronics you may find it all a bit grating. But if that's something you get down with, this is one to check out.

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12/13

27. VEGA INTL. Night School by Neon Indian
xx. Music Podcast: Brainwashed Radio Episode 315
28. Deceptionista by ADR (A/V Version)
29. Peau Froide, Léger Soleil by Vainio & Vigroux
30. A Readymade Ceremony by Félicia Atkinson
31. Terror & Healing by Tsembla
32. Anoxia by L A N D

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Music Podcast: Brainwashed Radio

So Brainwashed.com is a website that has been around for a long time, and are a great resource for some cool stuff operating in the fringes. They have a podcast, but it is very infrequently updated. The last batch of episodes came in March, but recently there have been 9 episodes since December 2nd. It's just songs getting played and a guy saying what it is, nothing too fancy, and they cover stuff like BEA favorites Colleen, Jenny Hval, Letha Rodman Melchior, and many others that you may be familiar with and even more that you probably won't be. I picked this episode because it started with an excerpt of the Matmos washing machine album that I hadn't checked yet (sounds great!), and then there's been a few things that weren't on my radar at all that sound pretty cool. And then there's this Steven Stapleton/Christoph Heemann thing that sounds so good but I'd have to get it on vinyl and my record player is on the fritz. But yeah, it's basically a very good radio show that you can listen to whenever you want. Good stuff, worth checking out.

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Deceptionista by ADR (2015)

Aaron David Ross is one half of Gatekeeper, who had some pretty cool releases out there, an album on Hippos In Tanks called Exo that was pretty cool. This solo work seems to simultaneous move further into nerdier IDM territories but also further into a more zeitgeisty that uses more space. But like with other work you can sort of squint and see how the abstracted dance music grammar resembles stuff people could dance to, this one I'm squinting but I'm not really seeing it. Which works fine for me, filling my headphones with fractured beats is a longstanding hobby of mine. What makes this stand out from other things that could be described similarly is the use of Vpeeker. That's a service that lets you see the most recently uploaded things to Vine, and this uncurated look at what people all over are doing was used to fill the work with all sorts of odd sounds. It's not like it goes full on Wild Why on it, but it does give a lot of color to the work. The visual elements of the Vines were also taken for a visual component. Billed as a game, it's really more of a lightly interactive abstract video. I was actually expecting it to be pulling video live from Vpeeker and showing something different every time you load it, but I guess that would be really bandwidth intensive. So it's a composed stream of different Vines, all manipulated and layered on top of each other and on particles shooting around in the virtual space. The album is great by itself, but taken with this it becomes this huge overwhelming experience, vividly colored with the fragments of other people's data.

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Peau Froide, Léger Soleil by Vainio & Vigroux (2015)

I think this is my favorite album cover of the year, and I have no idea how to explain why. I just love that image. The quality of the album itself though, that makes a lot more clear sense to me. It's Mika Vainio from Pan Sonic collaborating with this guy Franck Vigroux, who I wasn't previously familiar with but apparently I need to be. I guess he's responsible for the processed guitar stuff on here, but he's also a "multi-instrumentalist" so who knows what else he had a hand in here. But yeah, this album has all sorts of slow moving rhythms, distorted and sharp and feeling like some too-cold air, with minimal bass holding down the rhythm while the processed guitar rings out in whatever space is left available. But there are also a number of twists in the formula, passages that give themselves over to the a blurrier, drifting form, or songs that dial back the harshness midway thru and throw in some vocoder. There is a focused variety in the way these songs are constructed, and also in the sounds around the rhythms between each song, making for a rich listen with some real depth to it that still also manages to keep the world of sound feeling cohesive.

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A Readymade Ceremony by Félicia Atkinson (2015)

Here is an album with a sound that I like to refer to as "prosumer lofi". Like there's equipment being used that's on a sort of professional level but comes packaged with laptops, and some stock sounds are in here too seemingly. (Oversimplifying:) Analog lofi has the limitations of tape create a sort of muddiness as a way of adding a distinct character to the music. With this prosumer lofi stuff, there is a digital clarity that makes it quite different, like the way clipping is used, that's a sound that is very commonly considered quite ugly. But here on album highlight L'Oeil, the way the clipping adds to the character of the piece and is key to my enjoyment, that really makes me see a kinship between the two approaches. That song, with it's whispered vocals and tickles of prickly textures all around the stereo space, also has a kinship with the whole trend of experimental musicians doing work that is reminiscent of the ASMR phenomenon that has built up on youtube over the past few years, evoking that sensation in a musical context. I only became familiar with Atkinson this year, looking back at some of her work I found it to be some nice ambient drone type of things that seemed good but didn't especially grab me (I need to give them more listens), but this album is really something special and stands out in the crowd.

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Terror & Healing by Tsembla (2015)

Terror & Healing comes to us from recent Kemialliset Ystävät contributor Marja Johansson, and in retrospect it seems like she may have had a strong influence in the way that album deviated from the ones that came before, particularly in the electronic rhythms that were used. This album maybe doesn't quite hit the tempos or density levels that were seen there, and Johansson's melodies do feel a bit less direct sometimes, she clearly has her own goals that are distinct from what Jan Anderzen does with KY. But there is still this very playful approach to sound, a strong imagination that can see the fun that comes in bending it all. But it's not like a full-on psychedelic assault meant to attack your reality or anything, I'd say it's accessible and friendly, approachable in how it keeps the song-type forms relatively clear. Just a good fun time. If you're already a fan of the sound of that last KY record this is one I'd strongly recommend checking out.

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Anoxia by L A N D (2015)

This is very much a percussion driven album, but not like some kind of talent showcase "oh wow did you see how many drums there were on that, that was a lot of drums" kind of way. It's just that seemingly all of the sounds are happening because something was either struck or scraped (and possibly bowed or brushed or the other things you can do). I found this album around Halloween and it seemed like very good timing. It's not exactly soaked in "doom"/"spooky" vibes. Moderately dipped, maybe. But there are a lot of high end drones and spacious reverberations that keep this from going into that pummeling mode where everything feels super heavy. Although there are times where things are being struck very hard and the bass drum billowing out while heavily distorted drones fill in every inch they're given, that can get kind of intense. But even in those moments, the refined quality to the sound that keeps it from feeling aggressive, exactly, more chinscratch than \m/ perhaps. I'm probably a bit biased towards seeing beauty in these harsh/cold releases, but I think this album in particular is focused on finding a gorgeous experience in that world, and is quite successful.

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12/14

33. Fantasy Empire by Lightning Bolt
34. Richard D. James Album by Aphex Twin
35. Mother Is The Milky Way by Broadcast
36. Rings by Masahiko Togashi
37. Timeless by John Abercrombie
38. Fleeting Pigments by Jymptom (First Listen)
39. Plot Defender by Nochexxx
40. La Di Da Di by Battles

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La Di Da Di by Battles (2015)

I remember back on the peer to peer platform Soulseek, there was this long convoluted history to the software that led to the early adopters being a bunch of IDM nerds. Well it's not that long actually, leaks found on napster for Warp releases would have the Soulseek URL in the filename, and they probably promoted it on the mailing list. Anyways, back before Battles were signed to Warp, a bunch of the guys who are all about Aphex/Autechre etc. are all very excited over the first EP's. And it made sense to me, because while it was still too rock for an electronic purist type, the focus on rhythm and patterns and the way the songs were more on the verse-chorus-verse tip was right in the wheelhouse for those listeners (and myself of course). Then of course for the debut album Tyondai Braxton went way more upfront with the vocals doing more than just the sorta breathing thing he did on Dance, and they did start going to some verse-chorus-verse stuff, and I think they lost a few of those nerds (not me though, I loved it). They blew up into like a popular indie band, but it wasn't meant to be as Tyondai exited the group. Gloss Drop was sort of an attempt to keep the status going but with guest vocalists, but all the live performing to set recordings must have gotten a bit frustrating. So I believe then with this album, this is Battles giving up the status of big indie band, and just making instrumental music for nerds. The structures are back on the sort of constant evolution vibe, and it's just layers of patterns and rhythm. But in the years since those early EPs, the band has really expanded their sound and so everything on here sounds way more lush and filled with details than what they were cooking up back then. So this doesn't feel like a retread at all, it's a familiar direction but one that shows a new path for the band (that I think looks pretty promising).

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12/15

41. Deceptionista by ADR (Album)
42. At Penguin House by Mon.goose
43. Hymie's Basement by Hymie's Basement
44. Having Never Written A Note For Percussion by Rrose
45. Electronics & Percussion - Five Realizations By Max Neuhaus by Max Neuhaus
46. Garden Of Delete by Oneohtrix Point Never
47. Rope Commercial Vol. 3 by Three Legged Race (First Listen)
48. Eliminated Artist by Yarn/Wire And Pete Swanson
49. Different Selves by Shapednoise
50. Rope Commercial Vol. 3 by Three Legged Race

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Eliminated Artist by Yarn/Wire And Pete Swanson (2015)

Pete Swanson, who you may remember from Yellow Swans, has been up to all sorts of cool stuff since that project finished. On this album, he mixes it up with this experimental music group Yarn/Wire, and throw down two longform pieces where Swanson gets some wild electronic oscillations and noises mixed up with Yarn/Wire's prepared and regular(? maybe just less prepared?) pianos and odd percussion. The first piece is based around some recordings Swanson took of the old EMS VCS3, and they composed some live things to go around some snippets. There's this fixed rate wobbling on the high frequency synth squealing, which gets picked up and echoed by some of the live percussion, while flourishes of scrapes and piano chimes get splashed around. I'd say for the most part it is actually kinda on the pretty side, but things do start getting a bit wildly erratic as we get past the halfway point. But it's not just happening just to happen, it provides some new ways for the physical stuff to play off of the shape of the synth stuff and helps keep that feeling fresh thru the whole work. The second track is similarly a mix of prerecorded and live material, but sort of a reversed process from the first. The source is recordings of improvisations from Yarn/Wire, that were then edited into a structure that could be performed consistently. And then so Yarn/Wire perform it, and their performance is mixed with the recording and supplemented with electronics, or something. This one starts a lot more slow, just some wooden sounding clomps echoing out, but I think the way the piece very patiently builds out it's sound world clicks with me a bit more. Though the more dynamic twists and turns of the first track's structure have their charms too. But yeah, good stuff, hopefully Swanson works more with these folks, he's not on enough things that are this pretty sounding (at times).

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Different Selves by Shapednoise (2015)

The first track on this is so misleading. There's like this melody thing that runs thru it, like a whole phrase of notes that repeats and everything. People probably hear that and think "hey, this sounds really menacing and has some sharp textures flaring up a little, but maybe this album still wants to be my friend". No. It does not. The rest of what follows doesn't show much sense of melody, except that the heavy waves of distortion do seem to have a distinct pitch to them and there is movement there, so you're still engaged on that level somewhat and it's very compelling but not friendly like a clear melody. These abrasive pitched textures are leaping off of and swirling around heavy hitting, slow moving minimal beats. They're weird, they'll stay pounding away in a consistent fashion but then sometimes a little quirk will get introduced and they'll still say mostly consistent but with all sorts of squirreliness within the borders they created. So that really draws me in. But also, the abrasive noises on here are really well produced, they're harsh but not annoying about it, and are filtered well to emphasize specific pitches and helps maintain the sense of movement provided by the beats, keeping it from feeling like a blobby mass pounding away at your head. If you're looking for something brutal to soundtrack your march thru the bleak grey winter in the outdoors, this should do the trick.

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Side note: tomorrow will be the end of the week as I've been measuring it. I'll be doing some traveling come Friday, so updating will be pretty erratic. I'll still be writing up some things and posting them here but it'll be in weird spurts and I won't be doing the full listening tracking stuff. I just don't want you to think I'm giving up on that, it'll be back with bigger ambitions on Jan 1st.

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12/16

51. All Moments by Matt Carlson
52. Bastard by Gajek
53. St. Vincent by St. Vincent
54. Variance by Jega
55. Reverse by Roberto Crippa
56. Rope Commercial Vol. 3 by Three Legged Race
57. Precipice by Byron Westbrook
58. Resurrection by Leafcutter John
59. So Soon by Slag Boom Van Loon
60. Hysteria by Drainolith
61. Wald by Pole
62. Apocalypse, Girl by Jenny Hval

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Hysteria by Drainolith (2015)

So I think "damaged art rock" is a thing people say, right? I don't know if it's lame to say or what, but that's sorta where this sits I think. The first track actually plays things kind of straight, like there's all sorts of weirdness around the edges, but then as the album goes you get some stuff where the warping feels more connected to the songwriting itself. It shares a lot of the personnel of last year's excellent Dan'l Boone album, but I guess Alex Moskos is in charge or whatever, cause he's Drainolith. It all sounds quite a bit different than that album tho, on Dan'l Boone there was more of a feeling of empty space and the forms the songs took felt like they would be floating upwards and sort of disintegrating, but this album feels a bit more crowded, and has it's feet firmly planted in the ground. What happens here is more like you establish something as having bones, and then you take away the bones and see if the pile of gooey flesh and junk can still keep sort of the same form, but no matter what it always holds together. I'm not sure if that makes any sense but it feels appropriate for this album. It does have it's bones most of the time tho. One problem I do have, is that it's only like 25 minutes long. That is too short. But it does mean the album doesn't cost much digitally so that's pretty cool. You should buy it! You'll spend more at a bar but you'll have more fun here.

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END OF WEEK 6

Listens: 61
Albums/Websites: 50
First Listens: 5

So yeah, erratic updates starting now, but I'll be back at this for 2016 with a better system for keeping track of things.

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2016 starts on page 8.