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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WELCOME TO 2016

I'm going to be keeping track of the releases I listen to, and keep track of total number of listens including all repeats, total releases listened in 2016 (first time I listen to an album in this year it will have a (LTY) after it), first listens for albums released this year (indicated by (FL16)), and first listens from years past (indicated with an (FL)). and just keep a running tally at the end of each post. I won't be including live broadcasts or recordings that aren't released in an official capacity in the counts but I'll make note of them. Posts will go up when I have something to write about and then if more happens in the day I edit it in.

1/1/16

1. Blue As An Orange by Pierre Bastien (LTY)
2. Miseri Lares by Valerio Tricoli (LTY)
3. Subtle Scatter by Max Eilbacher (LTY)
4. Extinguishment by Fraufraulein (LTY)
xx. a bunch of weird music on WNUR live stream cause Olivia Block is supposed to be live on it soon
xx. Olivia Block Live on WNUR
5. Dangerous Orbits by Bérangère Maximin (LTY)
6. I Love You, Please Love Me Too by Joseph Hammer (LTY)

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Extinguishment by Fraufraulein (2015)

There's something I find really compelling about the dynamics on this. You've got Billy Gomberg on bass guitar and Anne Guthrie on french horn, and they're also both doing "electronics" and field recording playback. So like the first track, you get this really quiet mash of recordings, there's all sorts of detail and activity, like I'm pretty sure I heard some sort of distant screaming at times, but it's all just so obscured. And so I focus in, and then a clean feedback drone sort of thing cuts in and the distance exaggerates, leaving whatever events are documented in the recording feeling unknowable. As the piece progresses tho, we do manage to move in close on something, and though it is muffled it feels very significant and like the piece has really worked to go somewhere. There's all sorts of nuance in the quiet interplay between the acoustic instruments that I'm glossing over, and gradual accumulations of surface noise and all sorts of other gestures that fill in the moments here. I don't know if I quite have the language to unpack all of that here. But if you're open to giving some experimental drone type of thing a close listen, I think this one is quite rewarding in what it has on offer, and the way the activity slowly unfolds feels really fresh and will play with your attention in some really fun ways.

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Dangerous Orbits by Bérangère Maximin (2015)

This album I'd been listening to for a lot of 2015, but it didn't fully click with me until those last two weeks in the dead of winter. Same thing happened to me in 2014 with the Kassel Jaeger album, which is funny because I do see a bit of overlap in the timbres. The music here is much different on this album though. I don't really think she's ever done anything quite like this stuff before. Each track is over 10 minutes long, but held to some consistency via looped noises or phrases (tho most of the sounds don't exactly fall into those loop times, it isn't rigid sounding or anything). The sound palette is all sorts processed sounds, on the verge of sounding entirely synthetic at times but there's always just a hint that they've come from something physical and recorded. And in these really focused compositions, Maximin excels at patiently developing the sounds, forcing them to evolve while still holding to the pulse, enveloping but still engaging on a narrative progression sort of level. The title seems to be Dangerous Orbits because that narrative is so often that as the feeling of looping progresses, some parts start to feel like they're spiraling off and like the whole structure is about ready to collapse in on itself. Give this one a chance, and then give it a chance again 6 months later.
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Running Tally '16

First Listens: 0
Releases listened this year: 6
2016 releases listened: 0
Total Listens: 6

Last edited by Tap on 01/02/2016 08:42; edited 2 times in total

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oh wow some cool looking '16 stuff already. Gonna have to get on that.

Hey Tap how familiar are you with Daphne Oram?

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Oh whoops sorry that stuff was all released in 2015/2014, I was just trying to indicate that it was the first time I listened this year. That may need to be made clearer. It's good stuff tho.

I've only heard a few tracks from Daphne Oram, there's some on the Creel Pone Creelpolation set, and then some other compilations. Don't know if I have much of a sense of her besides the Radiophonic Workshop affiliation tho, I should fix that and oh man just looking thru discogs right now and I see this http://www.discogs.com/Daphne-Oram-Vera-Gray-Listen-Move-And-Dance-Volume-1/master/722555 I should get that.

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oh yeah I've heard that one and it's pretty neat. Been into her for awhile but just now been really obsessing over her stuff. The Oram Tapes anthology is a fantastic selection of her work (which is very useful seeing as her stuff is mostly scattered across a few official releases, some soundtracks, a bunch of weird academic tapes, compilations of electronic music, or just generally archived in the recesses of the disorganized world of recorded music) and I'd definitely recommend giving that a listen when you get the chance. Seems way up your alley

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1/2/2016

1. Spanish Fighters by AMM (FL)
2. It's Cosy Inside by Woo (LTY)
3. TCFX by TCF (http://t-c-f.in/) (LTY)
4. Tempo Furioso by Martin Davorin Jagodic (LTY)
5. Bidden by Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase (LTY)
6. Euclid by Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith (LTY)
7. Subtle Scatter by Max Eilbacher
8. Two Aspects Divided by Zaïmph (LTY)

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

TCFX is a chatbot. You go to http://t-c-f.in and ask it "can I get a jpg?", it responds "why do you want to do get a jpg so much?". You can also ask it some other things about art, music, cryptography and tea (known interests of TCF). It seems pretty exacting about what it wants, and most of the time your messages will return a link to one of the 268 fragments of music squirreled away on a particular directory on the site. The first time I encountered this site, I feel like I saw the interface with the text box and the encrypted string of text, and just completely checked out, on account of all that cryptography stuff being hard and not understood by me. It wasn't until I saw TCF on twitter talking about how he had released a huge amount of music this year but the only stuff getting reviewed was what came out on vinyl that I dove in and dug around. I didn't even realize it was a chatbot at first, I got fixated on the string of characters that shows up when you first load the page and just played around with variations on that and seeing what mp3s they gave me. And once I realized all the music was in one directory, I got some browser extension that let me grab them all in one big go. So I have no idea if this was the intended way of consuming this music, whether I'm supposed to be listening to all 3 hours of this in one go or not. I feel like the point of this unconventional release method is to encourage people to engage with cryptography, that people should have some sort of literacy with it as a way of having a sort of political power, that my initial response to seeing this site was dumb and that I shouldn't be so afraid to put some thinking work in on cryptography... I don't know, I certainly don't think I fully understand it, but I do want that literacy after all this. There's probably something more to this release that's accessible with a bit more knowledge on the subject. So I think I'm at least on the right track with how I'm consuming it. Now this would all just be an interesting thing if the music wasn't special too, but I think that this music is worth the effort for anyone interested in the outer limits of experimental music. I've listened to the whole 3 hours 3 times now, and it is an incredible, madness-inducing experience. I don't know what order I'm supposed to go thru it in so I just take it alphabetically. The collection of tracks is actually more like a handful of distinct musical ideas that get reiterated with different sort of flourishes of processing and effects, but their core remains the same in each iteration. And so I spend 3 hours jumping around between these threads, and over time the differences start to fade away and the inevitable return of the unchanging cores beats down on me more and more and everything starts to feel really loopy up in the ol' brainspace. I have no idea if I'm supposed to be doing any of this, I've never consumed anything in this way or heard anything that felt like this, which all adds up to one of the strongest, most experimental releases of the year.

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Bidden by Angst Hase Pfeffer Nase (2015)

Here is some noise/electroacoustic music from Chris Cooper, a musician who's been in all sorts of things that I need to check out further (been hearing good stuff about a group of his called Prants who released something in 2015). This album compiles compilation and split tracks from 1996-2008, with an unreleased jam thrown in for good measure. This is absolutely my favorite kind of noise music, where it's more just a music of noises, and there's actual dynamics and stuff. Minutes can be spent with quiet synth moans before the harsher textural assaults hit, which makes the abrasiveness have more significance than if it were simply a constant guarantee. The space this approach provides allows for the structures of the pieces to get really dense at times, making for a very active and engaging world of sound. The sequencing is chronological, and the early tracks are just as masterfully put together as the more experienced works. Some really well put together stuff, anyone who wants some noise that's more on the electroacoustic side of things would do well to check this one out.

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Running Tally '16

First Listens: 1
Releases listened this year: 13
2016 releases listened: 0
Total Listens: 14

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1/3/2016

1. Untitled by Brendan Murray / Perispirit (LTY)
2. EP7 by Autechre (LTY)
3. Hot Shaker Meet Lead Donut by Prants (FL)
4. Reflekzionz by Ekoplekz (LTY)
xx. Keith Fullerton Whitman - Redactions, Live at Boston City Hall, October 9, 2015 (link)
5. Bastard by Gajek (LTY)
6. The Feed-back by The Group (LTY)
7. Two Variations by M. Geddes Gengras (FL16)

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Reflekzionz by Ekoplekz (2015)

Ekoplekz continues his residency at Planet Mu with another fine release of hazy analog electronic jams. As the cover might suggest to the synesthesiacs, this album does have a lot more bright timbres and an overall punchier sound. Relative to the other Ekoplekz stuff, that is. The way tracks unfold is still full of repetition and consistency, taking an idea and just riding it out to the end of the track. So I'm not sure if this will exactly be winning over anyone who wasn't into Unfidelity. But by applying his usual careful crafting of sounds to these occasionally brighter/more direct modes, he has managed to make a very worthwhile addition to the discography with Reflekzionz. I do wish that maybe there was more of that quality though. Tracks like Downtone are maybe a bit too familiar with the moody single-mindedness. But at the same time, it's still a really good jam, and there's tracks like Quakers Road Skank that are overt about putting a new wrinkle in the sound with the really awesome punchy synth that comes in midway thru. So I'm not mad about it or anything.

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Side note to anyone looking to dive into some 2016 releases who also enjoys electronic stuff, Umor Rex have three things scheduled for release on January 8th but they're all available to listen on their bandcamp page now. https://umorrex.bandcamp.com/

Dunno if I'd recommend this M. Geddes Gengras release though, it's a bit unfocused sounding. Though the second track taken from a live performance is a bit better about that.

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Running Tally '16

First Listens: 3
Releases listened this year: 20
2016 releases listened: 1
Total Listens: 21

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1/4/2016

1. Multiples by Keith Fullerton Whitman (LTY)
2. Song Cycle by Van Dyke Parks (LTY)
3. Five Pieces 1975 by Anthony Braxton (LTY)
4. Blue As An Orange by Pierre Bastien
5. Rope Commercial Vol. 2 by Three Legged Race (LTY)
6. Technophelia by Geneva Jacuzzi (FL16)
7. Subtle Scatter by Max Eilbacher

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Subtle Scatter by Max Eilbacher (2015)

If you're a fan of the wilder side of what's coming out of the modular synthesizer resurgence of the past few years, you need to know about Max Eilbacher. He's in some band Horse Lords that I need to be more familiar with but I hear are good, and has recently been collaborating a fair amount with the Matmos dudes. And then under his own name he throws down all sorts of electronic sound adventures. The first side slowly builds things up but then eventually spends a while with this combo of a filtered sounding synth in a looped descending sort of groan on top of a steadyish kick drum, with some more freeform type noises filling in the margins. That eventually fades out as we presumably go to the next track (it's hard to say) with lots of brittle metallic gurgles, like you're struggling to swim in a giant pool of rust. The progression never has a particularly linear feeling, it keeps you on your toes taking little detours into lower volumes or granular vocal fragments (so I guess there is a bit of computer on here too). The second side is even stronger, I think. It starts with something very sparse, small sounds that establish a pretty clear (if slightly irregularly shaped) form, that gradually build up with some extra click and clack to start feeling a bit more metered. The timbres are about as abrasive as they were towards the end of the first side, but the sounds themselves are often so much shorter and quieter, and with the more metered structure, it's again a very different experience than what came before. There's more that happens of course, but I think you get the point. This is cool modular synth music that is patient enough to explore an idea pretty thoroughly, but it is also music that displays a certain amount of restlessness and a desire to keep moving into different territories and get into some exploring. So if that's something you're looking for, Eilbacher is really someone you should know about.

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Running Tally '16

First Listens: 4
Releases listened this year: 25
2016 releases listened: 2
Total Listens: 28

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1/5/2016

1. Have You In My Wilderness by Julia Holter (LTY)
2. Hot Shaker Meet Lead Donut by Prants
3. Quasars by Christian Clozier (LTY)
xx. Lexachast by Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas (link)
4. Hosono House by Haruomi Hosono (LTY)
5. Le Trièdre Fertile by Pierre Schaeffer (LTY)
6. Tract: A Composition Of Agitprop Music For Electromagnetic Tape by Ilhan Mimaroğlu (LTY)
7. Always Offended Never Ashamed by Kerridge (LTY)
8. Ustensiles by Le Quan Ninh (LTY)
9. The Prepaid Piano & Replayed by Andrew Pekler (LTY)
10. Barons Court by Sarah Davachi (LTY)

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Always Offended Never Ashamed by Kerridge (2015)

Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Homer joins the Lollapalooza freak show. There's a scene where they show the gen-x'ers dancing to some band, and it's all ridiculously slow and angsty. That's how I imagine people would dance to this album. That's how I'd do it anyway. Because this is some bleak, slow moving stuff. It's just some distorted doom tones from guitar and synth and some pitched down/also distorted vocals filling the space between some really slow moving beats. The harshness is all diffused by some liberal amounts of reverb though, softening all the elements, as though they're behind some horror movie fog. Even if you don't trust that metaphor, you have to figure that it's a very compatible atmosphere. And I haven't listened to his older stuff as much as I should, but I feel like there was more of a separation of elements previously, and the diffusion blurring those boundaries here is a cool development. It's not the sort of thing you'd want to listen to after falling in love or the birth of your child or whatever, but it's not as intimidating as this sort of thing could be so if you're afraid of getting too spooked, don't, you'll be OK.

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I'm not counting the Amnesia Scanner & Bill Kouligas in the running tally thing since it's like just 15 minutes but I know some of y'all get down with Amnesia Scanner so you should absolutely be checking it out, http://lexachast.com/

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Running Tally '16

First Listens: 4
Releases listened this year: 34
2016 releases listened: 2
Total Listens: 38

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1/6/2016

1. Futuristie by Pierre Henry (LTY)
2. Without Knowing Why by Andrea Pensado (LTY)
3. Kneedelus by Kneebody + Daedelus (LTY)
4. Magnetoception by Joshua Abrams (LTY)
5. Hot Shaker Meet Lead Donut by Prants
6. Rie Nakajima & Phill Niblock by Rie Nakajima & Phill Niblock (LTY)
xx. Music Podcast - Now Is: Renée Baker
7. The Dried Rat-Dog by Brötzmann / Drake (FL)

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Magnetoception by Joshua Abrams (2015)

I had a fantastic time listening to music in 2015, there was so much amazing stuff, but this album is an easy pick for my favorite of the year. I listened to it a little over 50 times, and I just keep getting deeper into it. Some really linear sort of music, and if you're just glancing at the macro structure of the songs they might seem kind of simple, but there is so much intricacy in the micro structures of how the patterns interlock and evolve. It starts out with the longest tracks on the album that have a bit more of a subdued energy than the sections that follow. The hand drums from Hamid Drake (who I really really need to look into further, because he is clearly amazing) are actually the most prominent feature in the first track, but Abrams' slow bassline plays a crucial role in keeping the whole thing steady, while the tiniest tones escape from the other players' instruments. Those tones step up a bit for the second track, taking over completely for the second track and giving a different, swirling sort of movement to this one, carrying over even when Abrams and Drake eventually come in. There's autoharp in this one so that really sells the swirling. The two tracks work really well together, the second track really expands on some stuff that was set up in the arrangement of the first track. But once those are done you're close to 20 minutes into the album, and that's a pretty huge gulp. So you get two short breathers, the first being what I think is the only instance of a reed instrument on the whole album, and then the second keeping with the sparse arrangement, but speeding things up with a high tempo Abrams/Drake thing. This ramp up is necessary for the next section, where the sound really wakes up and goes vivid. This part is structured sandwich style, with a 2 minute diddy inbetween two 6-8 minute tracks. The two main tracks start to sound more like post rock (this is Chicago, after all), with more prominent electric guitar stuff, but it all keeps with the approach to construction that has been laid out. I'd imagine the busier sound could've gotten a little tiring, but I think the inbetween track helps prevent that by bringing things back down to a single instrument for a moment. But after all that, we've still got two more tracks, and they manage to bring another wrinkle to the sound in ways that I still can't quite explain. It drops the intensity, but doesn't quite go back to where we started. The guitars are still prominent, but the drums seem like they're a little bit more focused on supporting the centering that Abrams has been providing throughout the album. Maybe. I don't know, it's really good though. The way this whole album works, it just constantly expands the way that this thing it's doing can be gorgeous. Listening to it feels like going through a process that leaves me better by the end of it. I don't know if it'd have the same effect on everyone, but as far as I'm concerned there was no musical experience I valued more in 2015 than this one.

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Rie Nakajima & Phill Niblock by Rie Nakajima & Phill Niblock (2015)

So that Cafe OTO venue in London always seems to be having some amazing shows, and they've started sharing the wealth by setting up a download shot for some releases made from live recordings there. Lots of stuff that looks good, but I absolutely had to get this recording of a collaboration between Rie Nakajima and Phill Niblock. I would definitely recommend Nakajima's Four Forms over this one, but for anyone else who's as enamored with that album as I am, this is worth picking up. The live recording is of course going to be a bit less clear than that album, and it's a similar batch of modified objects with motors and things making clacks and scrapes. But rather than having the work divided into four pieces, you just get one continuous 40 minute chunk that develops without break. And then on top of that you've got Niblock throwing in some computer sourced sound (recordings of insects/animals?) that fits in with and expands the sound world, so even as a seasoned listener of Four Forms, this still feels pretty fresh to me. This night at OTO also saw Niblock perform a piece called Bag, which is included as a pretty sweet bonus. Good stuff.

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Running Tally '16

First Listens: 5
Releases listened this year: 40
2016 releases listened: 2
Total Listens: 45

Last edited by Tap on 01/07/2016 08:06; edited 4 times in total

Pentagonal

What a fantastic resource, can't wait to try some of these out.