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Sunday midnight
ok so coming into this day, I've been listening to something I was shocked to discover was not in the database yet and so I just added it. I mean it's on me too, I kept forgetting about it but man
this right here is my favorite work of both akron/family and michael gira. it's a split so the first 7 songs are akron family and then the last 5 are angels of light. The akron/family set alternates between these quiet low key sad songs and these huge bombastic songs (if you like indie rock in any capacity I strongly suggest listening to the song future myth at least). It gets really huge and distorted and messy at some points, and I love it. I actually saw em live around the time this came out and it was so good. They made some comment about ppl just downloading it on soulseek so I bought the cd of this split there. god knows where it is now, I'm using spotify. I was jamming this on the stereo in the living room, but then one of my roommates came home and wanted to try to finish watching the wolf of wall street. And so the akron/family side was just ending so I said whatever and paused it and checked out some of that. the movie is really problematic but its so heightened that it really does work as a comedy. my roommate gets tired tho and only gets thru another third, I go out for a smoke on my porch. I live next to this venue and they're doing a rave tonight, and so while i'm smoking i'm listening to the muffled sounds of techno remixes of beach boys songs?! I am very confused. this is a real thing tho that actually happened, I swear to you. but anyways I get back to my room now, and I'm finishing the angels of light side on headphones. But beforehand someone I know is all astonished I've never heard Pet Shop Boys - West End Girls. And I listen to it and yeah, I've never heard it, it's a fun 80's jam tho isn't it? Anyways now after much delay I get back to this Angels of Light side. This works really well on headphones because the songs aren't as bombastic as akron got (although bits do get pretty rockin in their own way sometime, especially the provider, which is also totally a jam and you should listen to that song at least). I appreciate the swans stuff and even enjoy it on occasion but it's just so heavy that a lot of the time I just can't do it. I've always been way more into the angels of light stuff, but a lot of the albums I find to be a little uneven. But this sequence of five songs, hell yes it is all so good all of these are so killer. Sorta has that wooden wand and the sky high band style of just feeling like it exists so comfortably in rock traditionalism but just wonderful melodies and vocal performances make it seem so noteworthy and ahhhhh so good. EXCEPT WHAT THE FUCK. the copy on spotify starts skipping on the angels of light side on the provider, like it was ripped from a scratched cd. jesus christ spotify get it together. I sent them a complaint message hopefully they fix that. but yeah, after a brief interlude to download a proper copy, I get back on track and finish up this album and it's so good. Seriously y'all, check this one out. Just don't do it on spotify because ugh.
I'm going to be going to sleep soon but talking with a friend I came to realize they'd never heard Liars - Drums Not Dead. BUT THATS A CLASSIC i say. And so I encourage that and then I'm like well it has been a while for me too so that's what I'm gonna fall asleep to.
guess I'm full on committing to this nostalgia for 10 years ago but I'm a very nostalgic person. this album is so pretty. I'll be falling asleep before it's done I bet so no big summary but ah man, this album. I remember getting this and watching the dvd with my college roommate, with the three sets of videos from each member of the band for every song on the album. some of those videos were really great, I need to go back and watch that stuff again. but yeah this album is so good I'm going to close my eyes and let it blanket me now but first I guess I should explain how I'm treating this thread. I guess my plan for this is to just make big summary posts like this before I go to sleep and then on Saturday I'll close it up at midnight. that should be interesting, some insane clown posse affiliated act is performing at the venue next door that night. but yeah this should be fun I think. my goal here is to give an honest accounting of my listening (musical and otherwise) and the nature of how its happening or came to happen.
A little hungover, and I think actually itll be easier for me to post thru the day rather than try to sum it up at the end each time. So right now I'm walking to pull out some money and get some food with
On headphones. I always struggle with what to listen to and I already had a spotify playlist for this cause its been in the rotation this past week. It was released by PAN Records which is absolutely my favorite active label right now, many of my faves from this decade are things they released. And so I've been going thru and listening to stuff they put out that I missed, and this was one. There's a sort of doomy drone thing but with some rhythms and a real clarity of form to things, which is totally my jam and a fun contrast to all the sunshine outside. I am going to have to pause this as I go into places but that's why I went with something I'd already heard before.
I get home just as that albums finishing, great timing. I'm pretty sure I'm underrating that album on my own charts, it was very good. Anyways my skin feels all gross so I go for a shower, get the lil speaker thing for my phone and jam the first couple songs of
cause I wanted some cool songs that could cut through the fan and shower noise, and I had just recommended this one to a friend so it was fresh in my mind. After shower I switch back to headphones. It works better this way, although the songs are really strong it's got all that psych rock detail that is really fun to get all up close to. This one really feels like it should be more popular, I'm listening to Obstacle Eyes right now and you should too. And now I'm gonna use it to soundtrack some video gaming, I got this game Brawlhalla for free by putting in my email here. It's a lot like smash bros but the netcode seems really good, I easily find matches with 4 people and there's no lag.
that music actually worked really well in that context, totally won every game cause I'm awesome. Now I'm gonna watch some of that HBO show Veep, I've been catching up on it and it is very funny.
now I'm listening to some of the aphex twin unreleased soundcloud tracks. He's got some new ones up and they're actually kinda hidden, they don't show up on main page but can be found at https://soundcloud.com/user48736353001/tracks. very fun stuff. there's some really solid tracks in this batch (fogbeak!), it's insane how many great lil melodies this dude came up with. Just filling some time cause on this other forum I go on I arrange this thing where each week at this time someone picks an album and I stream it on mixlr and we all chat about it. This week someone has picked
Which I think I heard ages ago but it has been a very long time. I went through a lot of the Kranky stuff back in the day when I was first hearing Keith Fullerton Whitman and Stars of the Lid, and I don't know if I gave it all the fairest of shakes, or just simply the newness of the dronier leaning music to me made it difficult for people to stick with me after the first few landed. But yeah, this is just lovely, absolutely wonderful sunday afternoon tunes. I want to be a puddle. In chatting with the people I get the suggestion to look into Windy & Carl - Drawing of Sound, which is another one that I have a sort of familiarity with but needs a listen.
So that finished and was wonderful. It's about to be 4pm, which means it's about to be midnight in london, which means that this weeks new releases will be appearing on bleep.com to peruse thru and see what's happening. But I want to have some coffee so I'm gonna go out again while listening to something I just added to the db
there's this cool label ESP Disc that put out a lot of cool free jazz and other weird stuff, and the founder passed away recently. I've seen the name around a lot and have been wanting to push my knowledge of free jazz stuff cause it's a really fun time in my opinion. So I've been browsing the label's discography and just randomly picking things that I haven't heard yet, and I've found a lot of really cool stuff. And holy crap, this ones fantastic. I'm listening to a rerelease on spotify I think, the tracks had to be edited down to fit on the record originally I guess. First track is this 33 minute beast, the drums start out feeling like theyre constantly tumbling forward but start alternating between that and something that holds more steady and then some distorted crazy jazz violin guy credited as "The Wizard" comes in a just starts tearing shit up. This is cool. Listening on headphones which is maybe not the best idea (or maybe it is) because one saxophone is panned hard left and the other hard right, and the way they play off each other it gets a little disorienting with the back and forth, but it is a really cool sort of disorienting. But maybe it would be better slightly diminished via speakers. I'm digging it though. 2nd track appears to be a solo thing from Lowe, gives us a little breather from the really busy stuff but still some really impressive technical stuff but also just really engaging and not just show offy. Third track goes back to the pandemonium of all the players, this one's a bit shorter at 22 min but maybe crazier? This one seems to have a bit more with all the players coming together, no one working as a focal point just everyone making a big huge thing. There's still lots of bits where it feels like one person is taking the lead but yeah, some really fun stuff here. Those of you who are into the free jazz sorta stuff should really check it out.
Last edited by Tap on 05/04/2015 00:10; edited 5 times in total
Watched some more veep and then zoned out on some fan noise while writing up something for the best movies thread. Mad Men and Silicon Valley will be on soon but gonna get another album from, what I was given in the "you must listen to the album below you" thread.
Convenient cause I already had it downloaded and intended to listen. Tho honestly I haven't really connected with Stetson's work yet, I'd hear it a bunch in turntable/plug rooms but never seemed to share the enthusiasm other ppl had so I sort of just tabled it for later. Maybe now is the time to dive in. This is some nice minimalism repetitive pulse type of stuff, something I can get on board with for sure. Got this on headphones chillin on the porch with a beer, suns still out but its not gonna be lastin long. This stuff is definitely good, but it feels very comfortable to me. And I mean it's very good and I think all the respect he gets and then some is deserved, but I'm just never going to value it higher than the things that really melt my brain. But still, the music on here is pretty great so far and this is a very nice start to the evening.
Watched the shows, they were very good. Been sitting in silence reflecting on the latest mad men, really curious to see where that's all going for the ending and all that. They ended the episode with Bowie - Major Tom and so I had to listen to this little thing from Cassetteboy
I love that so much. But now I'm really not sure what to listen to... actually I'm thinking I just posted this old thing I did a while back of music generated from sega genesis corruptions. Basically you take a save state from one game, load it into another game, and the new game tries to play back the originals music. Most of the time it's garbage but you find something cool sometimes. 32x games are the funnest to load into, so I grabbed this one called Toughman Contest. And so now I'm gonna dink around with some music to load in see what's good... I feel like Jungle Book will have an options menu with a sound test, that way I can easily gather a lot of different songs to corrupt. And wow they really do play nice, but this toughman is really breaking them quick so I'm gonna try.... Brutal Unleashed: Above The Claw does some interesting stuff but larges spaces of emptiness start popping up too quick, like the stuff dissolves way too quick... rbi baseball 95 same problem... these aren't working out I've mostly been listening to weird bursts of noise and now I'm hungry. So I'm gonna get a sandwich and listen to something chilled out, I actually only barely got into drums not dead before I fell asleep, so I'm gonna do that but for real this time
Yeah just a beautiful album, excellent sandwich soundtrack. I really do love leaving classic albums alone for a while and pulling them back out with the freshness restored, cause it really has to have been a couple years now since I've played this one. I really shouldn't leave this one for so long again though.
So time away from the genesis stuff made me remember that really drum focused things like the jungle book soundtrack don't do so well, except when loaded into a game like bc racers. for some reason that game makes everything really heavy on the rhythm and so I tried it and actually got something kind of interesting, the first 36 seconds is kinda regular (tho pretty different compared to the original music) but the 2nd half gets kinda weird and seems pretty cool in my book
So after satisfying that itch now it's time to relish the last bit of weekend before havin to go back to work. Gonna look for something really bonkers. I've been drawing from this list http://erstwhilerecords.blogspot.com/20...rimer.html of Electro Acoustic Improvisation albums since there's a lot of stuff falling under that classification I really like, but so much left unexplored. Already I've investigated AMM, Group Ongaku, Radian, and Olivia Block based on this list and really love all three a whole lot. Some of the stuff uses a lot of empty space, I don't know a bit too highbrow for me I guess but I just get bored. So I'm gonna just randomly grab one of these...
Oh cool this ones in the database already. It has guitar and electronics according to discogs and I like those things so I'm figuring this one might be good.
Hmm... I was expecting something more on the harsh noise side of things. But this is way more like a sort
of "tiny music", like I don't know if anyone's heard Afternoon Tea by Ambarchi / Fennesz / P...erg / Rowe but it sort of reminds me of that. Like this starts out super quiet and then theres some light guitar and electronic clickclickclickclick and and slowly progresses in a way that ebbs and flows very nicely. And it's all really engaging for me because there is a lot of activity, it's just tiny. It's really fun, I really love when music builds a very focused vocabulary that takes these sort of minimal components and just build up a sense of meaningfulness to what happens. If anybody likes tiny music this is worth checking out.
Doing the whole work thing now. Today will be a lot of podcasts at work actually, sometimes when starting back up after the weekend I need to pause a lot and that's just easier with podcasts. And so I got the Comedy Bang! Bang! 6th anniversary show up now, should be a fun one! They always get a bunch of good people for these and yeah, Lauren Lapkus, Paul F Tompkins and Thomas Middleditch all doing characters and being really funny (Middleditch is so good), yeah this is a fun start to the workweek. And oh man Joe Wengert doin his "man's man who doesn't know he's a duck" character, very funny. It starts to get a little off the rails as more and more people pile in, but still very fun. Tho there's a fair amount of inside jokery so if you haven't heard it before I wouldn't recommend this ep.
So this is currently streaming on the NPR thing. I'll definitely need to give it more listens, but I was pretty into it. Way more dancey pulse driven sort of stuff than Central Market, which always gave me Danny Elfman vibes in a bad way that just turned me off. But it's not like straightforward dance music, there's lots of modular synthesizer weirdness (some contributed by Ben Vida and some other fine folks), yeah I'm into it. It'll definitely be somewhere on my list but I'll need to dive in a bit deeper.
Saw this from skinny posting about it, I was sold. I've always found Mark Fell's stuff to be interesting, but only a little bit of it has really sparked with me though. It all seems brilliant to me but I can't seem to get into the right space for a lot of it. Like the DJ Sprinkles collab stuff, that leaned way more in the direction of this sort of consistency where I just lose the nuance of everything and it goes wallpaper. But this one goes in the other direction, felt like a lot was going on and it was a really fun sort of disorienting thing that I want to spend more time with. This one will also be ending up somewhere on my year list I think, and also needs more time to digest.
Last edited by Tap on 05/05/2015 17:37; edited 2 times in total
I'll add those albums to db and some words about em soon, but work's finished for the day. After the Mark Fell album things got busy so I wasn't listening to anything. But now I'm free so while acquiring food i will listen to....
Saw this guy has a new release out now via the bleep new releases section, samples sounded interesting. But spotify doesn't have it yet so I'm checking his album from last year. It's interesting. A lot of it kind of feels just "okay", like things are working musically and there's some weirdness to things but on a level that flavors things rather than something that really disrupts the sung vocals over beats stylings. Which can totally be great, but I think on a lot of these songs it only hits the level of good for me. But some of these songs, like "Terminal", really were pretty compelling. Gotta say tho, the silences at the end of some of these songs are too long. But this guy seems worth looking into, I don't know if this is the right one to do it with but some of you all might be interested. I'll probably check the new album soon.
Next up I did a listen to the song Consumer Electronics - Alien Existence. It came out this year on a single release that can't be added to this site but is really very good. Just stays doing it's thing but the changes in the synth drone and the vocals just have me hooked. Went out for a smoke and saw roommate, chatted for a bit while overhearing some sort of... screamo band at the club next door. Is screamo still a thing? There was guitar and drums and a dude screaming I don't know.
This still hasn't leaked, came out last year only on vinyl (though a bonus cd Alps Combined did leak but it's not as good). You can hear an excerpt at https://soundcloud.com/dancing-wayang-r...ps-extract tho. It's very much worth buying, it starts out slow with bowed cymbals and feedback but then explodes with Eli Keszler's insane noise drumming and Ambarchi just totally shredding and ahhhhhhh so good. Or to be clear, that's how the album starts, and then ebbs and flows a bit and the excerpt catches one of the later valley-to-peak transitions. But yeah Eli Keszler's drum style is really crazy distinctive, tho now I think he's moving on to more art installation type stuff like giant wires suspended thru a tunnel and all sorts of weird stuff. You guys should check out his stuff it is pretty great.
I feel like a good way to keep this vibe going is by going to some
I've heard 77 Live and actually still need to chart it but this one seems interesting so I'm gonna check it out. And huh this one starts kinda dubby and chill, it gets plenty distorted but yeah wasn't expecting to come down this hard from all the drum hell of the last one. But yeah this is working quite nicely for me. Very cool, just been zoning out and taking care of laundry. Don't have anything smart to say about really, I liked it when the guitars were all loud.
after this I'm gonna do another podcast, Womp It Up, which is a sort of spin off from comedy bang bang, where these characters that Jessica St. Clair and Lennon Parham were doing on the show of this weird high school student and her teacher, it sorta spiraled out over the episodes to this huge mythology of the school they're at and the people there, and now they have a show where a different guest each week plays some character in that world. And this week is Chris Gethard, who is delightful! And it was pretty funny. The show is still new and so the format of it felt a little stiff at times but it seems like it's sorting out nicely.
I'm not sure what to listen to so let's look at the mutant sounds archive. They were a really cool mp3 blog that isn't really active anymore and none of the links will work, but posted a huge amount of cool weird things. Like in the thousands. It gets overwhelming to sort thru so what I'll do is go back and look at this day in the most active years, so 5/4/2007, I scrolled down a bit and saw this and I think I need to find this one
Quote:
All time godhead monster alert, people! While the Ya Ho Wha 13 tribe's psychedelic freakouts and it's associated mythos have been much lauded and roundly investigated in hipster quarters over the last several years, there has been a complete absence of discussion about a similar and yet far more advanced spiritual/musical tribe by the name of Arica. Unlike Father Yod's teachings though, which were largely limited to those in his tribe, *this* group's philosophy would go on to shape the entire thrust of Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain, merely THE greatest motion picture in cinema history. All principal actors appearing in the film were required to undertake a rigorous weeks long preparation in Arica training before filming began.
emphasis mine. and then it says other appealing stuff after that but I'm sold this is what I'm listening to now
Yeah, wow, this is fantastic. If you have a low tolerance for hippie bs then maybe this wouldn't be your jam. But one hippie cliche this doesn't seem to be pushing is a sort of slacker easiness to the music, like there's a sort of restlessness here, the music is always moving somewhere a little different. Very very interesting stuff, glad I took this look today cause I think this one will stick with me.
Great ULL secretdad, a lot to discover, and i guess that's why nobody's posting, since they don't know any of the albums here (well at least i don't), and haven't checked any of them yet.
Good "summaries" anyway, i'll take some recs here maybe. Keep it going well!
lol yeah, I guess some of these even I hadn't really heard of until moments before hearing. hopefully the context around finding em is at least a bit interesting.
Tuesday morning
waking up is hard, going to start things off with a podcast again, Paul F Tompkins' Spontaneanation. It was funny, I think Tompkins works better as a guest than host but he still makes a really interesting show here, with a short interview and then a really narrative driven improv scene with some other people for the rest of the show. Ideally, the scene is supposed to be pulling some details from the story but I'm not sure how much that's coming thru. Still a fun time tho and I'll be staying listening.
Holy crap this thing is like 3 hours long I didn't expect the title to be so literal. It was a nice experience, but not one I think I'll return to. Smooth spacey jazz that steers clear from being all starbucks boring, but does get kinda samey after a while. I think the length was a detriment, like I get to Clair de Lune after 2 hours and it just doesn't feel especially vital that I'm hearing it. It's good and all and I hope it finds success, but I don't think it's one that will stick with me.
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I found all the missing color from the 2015 album covers! It was stolen. By Charlemange Palestine. But yeah this is some live thing that sounds like it was recorded a little weird and reverby? It's a sort of droney thing but there's drums and some weird voice and pulsing and energy and joy and some farm animals, it's a really good one. And the ending is just wonderful. This one had me feelin upbeat.
Now I'm checking out some new tracks on the aphex twin soundcloud (its up to 205 now), now located at https://soundcloud.com/8user48736353001. It's amazing that he's still pulling out things this solid.
and now some podcasting again, Hollywood Handbook. This show is like just so much bullshitting and the hosts stay so committed to this sort of Hollywood phony persona, it usually gets some pretty big laughs out of me. This episode was no exception, shorter than usual but also being constantly interrupted by extra ads that slowly become less and less real, I was laughing pretty damn loud.
New solo album from the other guy from The Books. This one is sounding fantastic, going to need to give it more listens for sure. I always thought the first books album had this quality that the others didn't, that quality like in fancy brown liquor when it sort of tastes like wood? Like a fancy wood taste that makes your stomach warm, I'm saying first books album had it others didn't. But anyway, I feel like this one has it too. And it is just great. Lots of cut up and effected sampled voices and pretty sounds. Good adult fun.
Now to have a quick listen to Autechre - Stop Look Listen off of We Are Reasonable People, a really good compilation from Warp Records with exclusive songs from all their artists, total classic comp. Although I'm not sure how the second half holds up, I need to relisten to the whole thing sometime soon.
Last edited by Tap on 05/06/2015 03:00; edited 5 times in total
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