Get To Know A Top 10: January 2019 Thread - Tap - Music

SquishypuffDave

Gender: Male
Age: 33

Hayden wrote:

It's also kinda cool how Aviary wasn't even out during the last 'Get To Know A Top 10'. Really is a beast of a record... can only imagine people warming up to it after they've had time to digest so much. Took me about two years to settle into Have One On Me.

I'm actually really keen to see the writeup for this. Even though the album hasn't quite clicked for me, I'm really happy to see that Holter is continuing to change things up, since she seemed to be going down a chamber pop trajectory and could have easy just stuck in that lane and kept churning out great chamber pop albums. Now I'm keen to see where she goes next; she's a chameleon willing and capable of exploring different musical traditions. What she does with her own role in her music is also interesting. She made herself less of a focal point in earlier works, but in Aviary she's just going at it as a singer in ways I haven't heard from her previously, and it seems like she has been thinking through what kind of presence she wants to be, which isn't a problem that less versatile performers have to worry about so much.

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Gender: Female
Age: 38

Fischman wrote:

RE: Can/Tago Mago

[...]

So while I was a bit surprised to hear how far out the albums I've listened to so far are based on them coming from the same person who listened to this way back in 1971 release, now that I've listened to Tago Mago again, it seems to be a perfectly logical sequence. Some of the songs, especially Aumgn, sound like they could be direct forbears, in if not actual sound, at least in terms of the experimentation with sound as well as attitude/composition of some of the songs on the likes of Fenn O'Berg or Boredoms.

It was fun rediscovering this album in this context.

Yeah as Skinny said, this is right on the money, but that'll be the next thing I get to. I am very glad to hear that it makes sense like that!

Hayden wrote:

On another note, going to spin Fenn O'Bergs debut. Didn't even know they had more than one record together.

Oh they've actually got a bit of work together now, Magic Sound of Fenn O'Berg and Return of Fenn O'Berg was all there was for a while but then 2010 you get their only studio album, In Stereo, which were accompanied simultaneously with the straight live documents Live In Japan Part One and Live In Japan Part Two, followed by the edited live recordings album In Hell in 2012. All of which I think is worth hearing but I do like the group a lot so your mileage may vary.

But yeah, let's get into Aviary. You may be surprised to hear that I have literally thousands of words to say about it!

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Age: 38

I might need to look over this in the morning, sorry for any grammatical errors or other sloppiness

Julia Holter - Aviary (2018)
First Heard: October 25th 2018
I was familiar with Julia Holter's music back to when In The Same Room came out as a single, and I had a slow burn with her music, coming back to it more and more. I didn't get as on board with Loud City Song as a lot of people did, and I still need to spend more time with that really, but Have You In My Wilderness grew on me a lot. It took like a year to really start getting frequent, but I ended up spending a lot of time with this one. I was excited for this new one and thought maybe it could end up being a favorite of the year.

Listens since October 25th 2018, which is only 81 days ago: 10/25/2018, 10/26/2018, 10/26/2018, 10/27/2018, 10/28/2018, 10/29/2018, 10/31/2018, 11/3/2018, 11/6/2018, 11/7/2018, 11/13/2018, 11/19/2018, 11/30/2018, 12/8/2018, 12/12/2018, 12/17/2018, 12/31/2018

It's 1/13/2019, so just under 20% of my days have had a full listen of Aviary in it since I first heard it (with one day getting two listens). It probably would've been higher if it wasn't for all of those holidays, honestly. That number will go down in time, as I continue to let it breathe more and exist with other music (some of those early days, it was basically the only thing I listened to). But even though I'm spacing it out more now, I'm so excited to go back again. I still have Aviary fever (bird flu?). But yeah since I've been listening to this so much, I'm going to get into it in detail, so probably don't read this if you haven't heard it yet and want as many surprises as possible.

It is difficult for me to talk about this album without getting into hyperbole, and I think that really should be avoided here. Because this is vocal pop music. It's a bunch of songs with a voice singing words at the center. It's a lot more than that too, but I have this theory about vocal pop music. The unifying thing is that it expresses a specific character, an individual, through things that go beyond music theory. Like there's no theory for the Pearl Jam vocals and their ripples through music that followed, it's just a thing that happened and people feel one way or another about it. You can apply music theory to the singing, of course, but it will only get you so far. And even though pop is short for popular, I think what unifies this is that individual characters can arbitrarily rub you the wrong way, or even non-arbitrarily but by no fault of the character. At the end of the day the music can be doing something absolutely worthy of acclaim, but you just don't like the vocals. This can get very complex of course, and get into issues of hating large amounts of unrelated music with related identities, and the ethical weeds around that. But I do think at the end of the day if you don't like Julia Holter's vocals, that's fair. And even if you do, there are plenty of other things about the music that could turn you off, such as bagpipes. But I am on board for all of it, and that has led me to an experience that makes me feel so much like I did when I was first discovering that music can be really good, but with the added benefit of maturity this time.

I've heard people talk about this album being difficult and stuff, but that really has not been my experience in the slightest. I was very ready for this. I'd been picking up on a trend with releases like Laurel Halo - Dust, where there was a top billed artist who has their identity come through in the music and truly feel like the director of it, but where significant room is given to collaborators to shape the music, in a way that doesn't try to hide that they had a big role in making the music what it is but still is producing music that feels like it belongs wholly to the top billed artist. Compare the Eli Keszler collaborations on Dust and compare them with Oneohtrix Point Never's on Age Of. OPN seems like he is operating very strongly from that top down visionary songwriter role, he's taking Prurient's screams and using them as purely as color, his work feels like he is a strong dominant force over what is happening. And I don't mean this as a criticism of him here, I think his approach produces really cool stuff. But like the reason Keszler's looser percussion on Last Known Image of a Song is so cool is because of how controlled his earlier contributions had felt, and even in this case it does feel like it's still relatively controlled. But his tracks on Dust, it feels like he is so integral to what the music is. Nicht Ohne Risiko basically sounds like a preview of Keszler's amazing solo album Stadium. But even there, Halo's presence is still strong, there's still something there that Stadium doesn't have. And then she does stuff like Do U Ever Happen, where Keszler makes a significant impact on one of her vocal pop tracks (and of course this one also features Julia Holter on Cello because everything is connected), and this is balanced with all the other collaborations that don't feature Keszler and Halo produces something that communicates her voice even stronger for having had the support of others. I had previously been thinking of Holter in the top down visionary sort of style, but this album made me realize how completely wrong I was about that.

There's so much that I love about this album. Like if you break it down by vinyl tracklist, the way the A side works with each track expanding the possibilities with wide strides is such an amazing opening. You start with a spiritual jazz sort of thing that's reminiscent of Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman to my ears, a forceful blast that floats up untethered, and then we slam into Whether with the very grounded drumming. But wait, both of those tracks were pretty consistent, here comes Chaitius to pull out a complicated structure that switches from a fully composed section into a whole other section that leaves a lot of room for improvisation and builds up to this whole other part. But wait, all of these tracks have gotten pretty full of sound and had a lot of people on them, well here comes Voce Simul with just the duo of Julia Holter and Sarah Belle Reid. So you get this whole whirlwind of an opener. Chaitius in particular really blows me away, like that turn from her saying "I feel so joy" and then Devin Hoff's double bass announces the big turn the music makes. It really helps that Holter wrote up a bunch of great insightful things about the album and all of the collaborators, so that I know the following about this song:

Quote:

In “Chaitius”, there’s a mix of both kinds of direction that leads to something kind of different I think—the first half is all notated (it’s a transcription I made of an improvisation I did on synth using a two voice melody I wrote), and in the second half of the song, I passed that improvising-based-off-the-melody approach on to the musicians, so there they are doing this kind of call-and-response back and forth with that same two-voice melodic material. But while recording, they were playing over these kind of congested vocal and synth recordings I’d already made, so honestly it was a lot to work with all at once, and the creativity and improvisational abilities of the musicians really shows on this one.

Julia Holter x gorilla vs. bear takeover: AVIARY recording (Link)

You can check out all the other ones here. But yeah, even before I had read that, this song had me thinking about this one time that I had one of those streams where people play video games and talk over it on. They were playing a beta of the Friday the 13th game that came out a couple years ago where someone plays as Jason and tries to murder all of the other players. This one time, someone was playing as Jason and triggered a bug, where his first person camera was sort of knocked backwards in his model slightly, so that you could see the inside of the character model, the outside world visible through the now tiny eye holes in the Jason mask, which was still recognizably a hockey mask in a way. When the person playing looked down, they could see the inside holes that led to the end of the appendages, and the movement was hilarious. Here was a figure that I had seen from a bunch of other perspectives, I had a familiarity with their shape and movements, and now it was all backwards and wrong looking. And it's an experience I think of in relation to music sometimes, like how on Valerio Tricoli - Clonic Earth, he gets into these weird timbres that sound like heavy abuse of noise reduction processing, and it feels like being trapped in that negative space and it's amazing. But on this song, it felt like you start on the inside and it's made to be this beautiful thing, but it's just like a mold to pour batter in, and then the flip to other half of the song is like seeing how incredible the thing that the mold produces is. Now of course that's not an exact description, the vocals and synth that Holter had recorded as the bed for that half aren't so directly connected to the first half, but still, the music from the first half has a presence in this second half but it's all so different and I find it so satisfying to hear it get fleshed out, the big finish at the end feels completely earned, and doesn't even begin to overstay its welcome.

And then to have this song followed up by Voce Simul! Here's the whole thing of what Julia Holter wrote about Sarah Belle Reid.

Quote:

Sarah and I met earlier this year on the first day of rehearsals before recording, and that was that lol! The sounds she creates are extraordinary and enveloping and contribute a lot to the vibe of the record. Like all the musicians I work with, she is a composer as well and on this record she brought a deep mood and sensitivity to the music, without us having played together previously almost at all. Attached to her trumpet is a thing called a MIGSI that she co-produced (“Minimally Invasive Gesture Sensing Interface: an open-source, wireless interface that captures performance data and provides real-time extended sonic and visual control for improvisation.”), and with it, in performance and realtime, she produces kaleidoscopic and magical sounds that instantly build a vibe. These sounds are prominent all over the record, and where I find it especially moving is in “Voce Simul” (which no one else besides her and I play on), because we recorded that one just the two of us and the direction on that song was very free, I just had made a “fake trumpet mockup” demo (lol) as a guide for her, in particular in regards to melodic approach, and she immediately got it and counterpointed my melody with beautiful meditative lines.

Julia Holter x gorilla vs. bear takeover: SARAH BELLE REID (Link)

That article also includes a link to a youtube video of Reid showing off the MIGSI, it's really cool. And it's amazing how this person who she hadn't even met before rehearsals for the album played such a huge role in what this song is, like their playing is so exploratory. But the structure of the song totally supports this. Like look at this part

Quote:

Voce
Voce simul consona
Voce simul consona obviosa
Voce simul consona obviosa deliriosa

It's a triangle. That's totally something you are supposed to just keep stretching out on, the specifics of what Reid brings to the music may not have been planned but the framework of this music is something that feels like it requires this duo exploration. I think this approach is what I loved about Dust, and it is all over this album, producing a great number of distinctly amazing things. It comes from relationships that have been being built in Holter's music for years with people like Devin Hoff on bass and Corey Fogel on drums, who have been there since Loud City Song, and Dina Maccabee who joined after Have You In My Wilderness was recorded but was crucial to realizing that music live, and brand new people like Sarah Belle Reid. This album without them or any of the collaborators would be a significantly different experience. But the whole thing seems to belong to Holter's distinct voice. And as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm really into that voice.

I don't think I'd say this approach is exactly innovative, like for one thing, jazz. But there's also this album David Sylvian - Manafon, it came out in 2009. I haven't listened to it in full, but it feels like it could be described very similarly. Sylvian has these vocal pop songs, and he uses improvisers to help flesh them out, allowing them space to be a part of what the song is. But these are like the sorts of electroacoustic improvisers I nerd out over. Keith Rowe. Christian Fennesz. Toshimaru Nakamura. Evan Parker. Werner Dafeldecker. And even more! That's actually nuts. I should be nuts for this. But see the thing is, David Sylvian's powerful vibrato kinda bothers me. I do want to give it a chance, it seems like an incredible experience. But maybe I'm just not into his voice. So yeah, I can get it if anyone's not into Aviary, but I have been having the absolute greatest time with it.

So that seems like a great place to end right? I brought it home with the stuff I talked about at the beginning, had a good clean narrative and everything.

But I didn't even talk about Everyday is an Emergency.

This is the song that a lot of people don't like, and it overwhelmed me at first, I heard it all as one big mass. I started to pick out the individual voices though, noticing the Moog doing a pitch bend in the right ear around 1:30, things became more clear. But the why of it really snapped into place when I saw this hilarious tweet Holter made https://twitter.com/JULIA_HOLTER/status...8716482560 where she and some other people did an acapella cover using a toy that would record audio and play it back at a higher pitch. It led me to see the opening as a voice expressing panic, and then other voices coming in and mocking that panic, and then an eventual confusion about what is actual panic and what is mocking, and then a creeping feeling of exhaustion but somehow it just keeps going. That line of thought led me to think of it in comparison to Animal Collective - Panic, off of their album Here Comes The Indian. That song has some vocal sample of a weird yell that gets repeated with delay, losing fidelity with each repetition and eventually getting lost in the psychedelic murk.

Here's the thing though, Animal Collective have been explicit in the past about songs like Pride and Fight being an anti-war song. So it doesn't feel like a stretch to say that Panic is related to the anxieties that were felt on the politically left side of America under the Bush administration. And Holter has been explicit about how Aviary is informed by our current tumultuous political climate. And looking at the difference between 2003's panic getting erased in a psychedelic haze, and 2018's everyday is an emergency being an exhaustingly clear acrimonious cloud, like how you would have cordoned off free speech zones in the Bush era vs the constant twitter wars with never ending doxxing and other direct interaction, I think there's something there.

And that's like a whole other thing! It has nothing to do with my big story. I have not digested this album yet. Even with all of this, I haven't addressed anything that happens on the 2nd half. Or even amazing things on the first half like how Another Dream goes synth heavy and makes dream pop that follows dream logic! There's so much here! This album sets my brain on fire and I have more to get into as I live with this album more. It makes me completely understand the feeling on Les Jeux to You when it really gets going. And it feels like I know so much of what's here but that there's still so much more to know. But from what I already know I have absolutely no trouble saying it's one of my favorite albums. Maybe that'll change in the future somehow, but I know it is true right now.

Last edited by Tap on 01/17/2019 09:48; edited 1 time in total

Kool Keith Sweat

Tap wrote:

these are like the sorts of electroacoustic improvisers I nerd out over... Toshimaru Nakamura... Werner Dafeldecker. And even more!

Come2Austin

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Gender: Female
Age: 38

maaaan I wish, they even got Valerio Tricoli too! that looks like a blast, maybe another year I can get the cash to hit that up.

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Age: 38

Can - Tago Mago (1971)
First Heard: 2000
So in addition to my immediate branching off from Radiohead into IDM, I'd also heard the bootleg of their September 8th, 2000 show in Cophenhagen and thought, "hey, this song The Thief is pretty cool, I should check out this Can band." And so I got a hold of Tago Mago.

Listens since 2016: 8/12/2016, 2/15/2017

lol I really had thought I'd listened to this more recently. But it's been 18 YEARS of this album. I've heard it a lot. And let me tell you, when I first heard it, I absolutely hated the majority of it. How could they give you three of the most amazing songs and then just a bunch of total bullshit? Like what the hell?!

But man, those first three tracks. The way the delay feedback builds up for the introduction to Paperhouse and then it all comes in sounding mournful with the gorgeous electric piano on top, before the drums and guitar kick up the energy and everyone builds up to a screaming intensity, before slowing down and finding some whole other groovy space, making you realize that the drummer is fucking amazing at drums, and then finding a way to spike it at the end so that when Mushroom comes in it just immediately kicks your ass. That's such an amazing opening, and then Mushroom pushes things even further. It feels very linear, but it's a tight four minutes and the path is full of a bunch of macro-structural elements so that it feels like things are happening, and we're getting somewhere. AND THEN OH YEAH BEGINS WITH AN EXPLOSION, and you get really cool backwards sounding vocals and this ringing feedback on the organ so that every step of it resonates in your ears different and tickles some other spot in there, and then somehow it turns all bluesy as the vocals snap into focus and then the song does a bunch of other stuff and it's all amazing!!!!

Then we get to Halleluwah. And I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. Like the drummer and the bassist, aren't they bored? They're just doing the same thing the whole time basically, and like there's stuff happening on top but it takes 18 goddamn minutes and it just feels like aimless wandering. Like what are we doing here guys? But then I find out what they're doing and it's just a bunch of bullshit!! This Aumgn track gets going and it's 17 and one half minutes. And instead of having the drums and the bass do the same thing, they just change having that foundation and get EVEN MORE AIMLESS and just do whatever, like they're just fucking around going "aaaaaaaaaaaaa" and stuff, and making stupid noises until the drums come in to get everyone to stop. And I'm like oh good, they're done with that BUT THEY'RE NOT. THEY HAVEN'T EVEN STARTED WITH THIS SHIT because fucking Peking O isn't just aimless, it's like THEY'RE TRYING TO BE AS ANNOYING AS THEY CAN (omg is that what the band name means), when that stupid drum machine part comes in and they make the stupidest noises, it actually makes you appreciate how much of the earlier two didn't sound this bad!

And then Bring Me Coffee Or Tea starts and they remember how to write songs, but I'm still kind of pissed off because most of this runtime has been spent unhappy with what I'm hearing. Like this had so much potential but then they ruined it! I'm so mad!

But then I listen to it more and more, getting hooked in by the first three tracks, and I get into Halleluwah a bit more, like Peking O really did make me think how parts I had dismissed before had merit. And that just kept happening and going deeper into the album, and now these qualities that I once hated are a big part of a significant amount of the music that I care for. The whole stuff with consistency and extremely linear music in Halleluwah is there in a whole bunch of stuff, from the repetitive basslines of Joshua Abrams to the extreme reductionism of Jürg Frey's L'âme Est Sans Retenue I. There's something I find incredible now about the experience of long durations and consistency, and what you can do with the accumulation of experience there. And then Aumung, getting to the point where I heard it as a whole piece and not just a bunch of independent stuff that happened, that was big for me. Listening to it with an emphasis on timbre, and thinking of it as sort of an abstract painting of timbre over time, all of the progression it took started to feel like a natural, connected development. And I think I get into that sort of listening with all the electro-acoustic, musique concrete, ambient, and other things like that that I listen to. And then Peking O, the joy of getting disgusting and annoying in exploration, that probably grew the most of all for me and informed my appreciation of Boredoms and Animal Collective and so many others. I love that drum machine part so much now.

I don't listen so much anymore, but when I do I love it all, and it had such a significant impact on how I listen to music. It has to be here. By both connecting strongly with where I was at when I was first starting to explore, and also challenging me to hear more, it was able to get me to return to those challenges and eventually change my mind. This band was full of brilliant musicians all bringing something great to the table, but there's one person in particular who I think I really owe all of this to.

Quote:

Meanwhile, Schmidt and his wife Hildegard took care of the organisational side of things. Mrs Schmidt was a formidable woman. She had already seen off Can’s original manager, Abi Ofarim, formerly of novelty 60s duo Esther And Abi. It was Hildegard who insisted they release Tago Mago as a double album. If the band had had their own way, it would have been a single disc, without Aumgn, Peking O and jokey closing track Bring Me Coffee Or Tea.

https://www.loudersound.com/features/ca...-tago-mago

Thank you Hildegard Schmidt. You probably changed my life, and I'm so glad this album was perfectly structured to get me to overcome my initial objections, and now I find so much more beauty in music than I could before I heard it.

I hope you all are enjoying reading these, I'm having a lot of fun writing them. I'm really excited for the next three, I've got some plans.

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Age: 38

Boredoms - Super æ (1998)
First Heard: I want to say just before college but maybe around the beginning of college? 2003-2004
I cannot remember how I heard this exactly. I think I was probably clued in on this by a friend of mine who told me about a lot of great rock music at college like Laddio Bolocko, Mclusky, Built To Spill and so many others. But I may have heard it before? I remember looking at a record store in Alaska at Boredoms CDs and seeing the obscene import prices and being like "oh fuck that" but maybe that was when I was visiting home after starting college.

Listens since 2016: 7/15/2018

OK so that's crazy, but also I listened to Super Roots 7 in 2016 and 2018 as well and that's operating from the same space (with one incredible 20 minute track that sounds like a hyped up version of Super Going, in between some ok remixes). So I don't feel like I'm as out of touch with this sound as this might suggest. Though it is also burned into my brain from hearing it a lot before.

Boredoms are a weird band, but you can sort of split them into two very uneven halves. You've got the much more populated noisy prankster side. I think it's fair to say it's in the spirit of Can - Peking O, though they find a pretty vast musical universe to explore. And then you have their popular album, Vision Creation Newsun, where they get into a kosmiche sort of sound in the service of worshipping the sun. The transition between these two points is Super æ, where you get the beginnings of the VCN sound, but with the noisy prankster side still coloring things. Though that's an oversimplification, because there's Acid Police that are the seeds for this change. And take a listen to Super 77/Super Sky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mp1ThgZakG0, this seems like it would've had to have come out earlier because the first one is a long track of manipulated baby crying with lots of empty space, and then when you get tired of that skip to after the 17 minute mark for the 2nd track, it's sort of like the Super æ sound but much more aggressively distorted.

Still though, I would say this album is them fully beginning to become what they will be on Vision Creation Newsun. I feel like transitional albums get sort of a bad wrap, like they get written off as the band not quite figuring it out yet. But I think they can capture a tension between two points and end up being more amazing for it. Like all of the weird fucking with the tape that goes on on Super You, or the first half of Super Are You, or something about the whole spirit of Super Coming. It's like what I was talking about with Sung Tongs, they're carrying the weirdness into a cleaner space.

A while back there was some meme originating from 4chan where someone would post an image of SpongeGar, a caveman version of Spongebob Squarepants, along with the text "band has 2 drummers"

And I always figured they were talking about Super æ because that image does kind of sum up how I feel about some of the more transitional parts of this album. Sure stuff like Super Going is more of a modern, blissed out feeling. But when the drums come in on Super Are? I'm SpongeGar. And then when the drums really get going, I am absolutely losing my shit about how this band has two drummers. I dunno, maybe they were talking about the new iteration of Oh Sees, but in my heart this will always be about Super æ.

I wonder though, is this the best representative for this interest of mine? Maybe this has drifted from me and I shouldn't keep trying to hold on to the past here. But what could replace it? Micachu & The Shapes - Never gets visceral, and the studio constructed rock songs move so quick, maybe that's more where I'm at right now, while still getting at this sort of energy? It's an amazing album, but it really is something different. Or maybe Borbetomagus - Zurich, three guys having an absolute blast putting two saxophone bells together and covering that with shredded guitar, that's pretty Spongegar. But Super æ covers so much ground, the pyramid formed by the title repeating on the cover containing the humanoid figure filled with the energy of the sun is still a giant landmark that I group other things around. I am still living in Super æ's time. But maybe one day I'll be "too mature" to go all SpongeGar, but I sure hope not.

But yeah, I'm so glad that Fischman has connected with this album from this thread, that's what these lists are for. I get to show someone a postcard with a picture of my musical landscape and they can just jump into it like it's a painting in Super Mario 64, and check something out and find something to take back with them and it has a place in their musical landscape, that's the craziest shit, I love it. So maybe one day it won't be in my top 10, but I'm glad it was here now so that that could happen.

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

RE: Aviary

Well, Ms. Holter sure can take you on a sonic journey, eh?

Very interesting album. This music could suffice as background music and be just fine; but it has a direction and a life that demands setting aside time and distraction whereby concentrated focus will reveal compositional... and emotional elements which will evade the casual listener.

It's a long one and requires real commitment, but she seems to rather deftly include enough variety within a fairly narrow sonic scope to keep it interesting, especially rhythm and mood wise, moving between sometimes dissonant and seemingly chaotic soundscapes to more standard pop-like, easy to digest sounds, and does so at the right times in the right measure.

Another plus for me.

Fischman
RockMonster, JazzMeister, Bluesboy,ClassicalMaster

Gender: Male
Location: Land of Enchantment

RE: Heave To by Olivia Block

So I'm now 7/10 into this fascinating list and this may well be the most fascinating album of all.

I'd love to see the making of this album. The program lists various musicians playing various "normal" instruments like cello, clarinet, trumpet, etc...

... but in listening, hearing those things is not readily apparent. There is so much electronically manipulated sound as to make the origin of the natural acoustic elements almost irrelevant.

Now here's the fascinating part; the music takes all these acoustic, or organic, instruments and mixes them with so much electronic sound, making them highly inorganic, electronic (artificial), manipulated, etc. But the final product seems entirely organic. It's a sort of crazy full circle of sound. On paper, it's something that should not be, but then here it is. It seems utterly brilliant to me in a way I've never encountered before, that something deliberately made unnatural ends up sounding, and feeling, so natural. The rhythm of nature seems very much present in her electronic manipulations.

In the interest of full disclosure, there is an underlying anecdote that colors my perception. Last April, I had to spend a few weeks on a very remote Alaskan island. It was dark, cold, windy, almost always either snowing or misting, and just walking from one adjacent building to the next could be a chore if not dangerous at times. Nevertheless, being an outdoor oriented person with an appreciation for the forces of mother nature, after work I would occasionally go down to the "beach" and just watch the unrestrained and unfettered power of the earth. There was the squeals of the seagulls, the occasionally menacing grunts and growls of fearless Russian Blue Foxes, and occasionally other bird shrieks and caws, all barely audible under the howl of the wind and the thunderous crashes of the waves on the rows of jagged rocks that made up the shoreline. i found it refreshing despite the rather hostile, unforgiving environment.

I'm sure it wasn't specifically Ms. Block's goal with this album, but listening to those compositions took me right back to that place and time, to the point I could hear the waves and taste the icy northern salt spray in the air.

Magnificent.

baystateoftheart
Neil Young as a butternut squash

Age: 29
Location: Massachusetts

Some brief thoughts on what I've checked out / revisited so far:

Wild Why by Wobbly:

This was my first time hearing this. Unlike some others in this thread, there is a decent chunk of the source material that I would prefer to the manipulations. Still, most of these songs got a fresh new twist through Wobbly's fractured presentation. Quite good overall, but the quality is a bit inconsistent. 3.5/5.

Let My Children Hear Music by Charles Mingus:

This was my third time hearing this. Tap, props that you have, but I have not learned how to listen to it yet. I've loved it from first listen, but I feel like there is untold greatness still in the music that I have yet to crack the code to. Easily the best third stream record I've ever heard. It's very much rooted in traditions, and yet it feels avant-garde and mind-bending. 4/5.

Sung Tongs by Animal Collective:

This was my second time hearing this. It flirts with greatness, but it's too front-loaded, the harmonies don't always deliver, and it has some bad lyrics (Kids On Holiday, for instance). The standout tracks are excellent and I love the genre space it's inhabiting. 3.5/5.

Syro by Aphex Twin:

This was my second time hearing this. With the exception of SAW 85-92, I think it's my favorite album of his, and definitely his most underrated. Compositionally and in terms of execution, consistently great. The crispness of the production suits it well. 4/5.

Heave To by Olivia Block:

This was my first time hearing this. Oh wow. It reminds me of many things in nature and nothing in nature at the same time. Both parts of the title composition carry this otherworldly energy, but the third track is not as good and a bit out of place. An intriguing listening experience. 4/5.
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