Perhaps one of the first major Western collections of the genre, 1989's Cumbia Cumbia: Cumbias de oro de Colombia is supremely entertaining, in the way only cumbia and related genres can be. It's weird how among white folks in the US, cumbia is definitely a specialty, even elitist-only, genre, but is total top 40 in its countries of origin and throughout Latin America but hey I'm not knowledgeable enough on any of those subjects to do anything but idly speculate. Anyway, highlights include the flutes on Gabriel Romero's "La Subienda" and the bouzouki/mandolin-esque string instrument on La Sonora Dinanita's "Se me perdió la cadenita." Also, it is bad that I want to learn Spanish simply so that I can download more music only available through Spanish websites? Yeah, prolly.
Rovo's Imago is pretty close to the album I wanted VCN to be - it has a similar shiny over-processed production to the two big Boredom albums and anything OOIOO, but in this context, if not a boon, it's negligible - the album has some pastiches of krautrock and drum & bass, but a lot of it, such as the entirety of "N'dam" and "Numa" and the bell-heavy first half of "Larva" are virtually genreless. I really did have a lot more to say about this, but I forgot it all, fuck. Anyway, it's quite good and better than the Boredoms LPs from around the same time.
The Malefice by Pentagram Chile is perfectly adequate death metal, even with the coherent vox, but I can definitely see people considering it a disappointment after their demos, which are really quite excellent, especially the first one. Their sole single reprises the first two songs on their debut demo with pretty much identical (yet somehow worse?) performances and fidelity. At the very least, they're way better than those rape rock goons in the more famous Pentagram.
It's amazing what the presence of non-saxophone instruments can do for a sax quartet - WSQ's Selim Sivad is so much better than W.S.Q. pretty much entirely do to the presence of percussion and (some) piano. The kalimba and voice especially add so much to the music compared to the quartet-only recordings - only "Tutu" with its stilted pseudo-funk groove is a real misstep and whenever the African percussion really gets going, its almost a minor miracle. I'd wager this is better than any actual Miles album, or at least better than any of 'em other than On the Corner. Also I learned yesterday my only real meatspace friends don't know who Miles Davis is (and like fedoras) and I almost cried into my Sprite.
Monday, March 31, 2014
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Power of the Trinity: Great Moments in Reggae Harmony is certainly a solid comp, but, what with my being a white hipster and all, it mostly served to remind me of how much I love Heart of the Congos. I really fear I've been underrating it all these years out of contrarianism.
And the title of the Very Best Bollywood Songs is definitely a misnomer; it may be closer to what actual Indian people think is the best Filmi tracks, but for my taste it features far too much modern music, with its sickly sentimental digital synths and treacly tempi - even the tracks that are obviously just pastiches of the "classic" Bollywood sound, like "Ladki Badi Anjani Hai," completely lack the grace, soul and groove of their vintage counterparts and even with the older selections, they're mostly ballads with little of the unusual arrangements and eclecticism that animates the best filmi. The only track here I knew offhand was "Roop Tera Mastana," even though I've heard the soundtracks to Bobby and Sholay neither of the tracks present seemed familiar, which points to their lack of memorability and thus their unfitness for this comp as much as my habit of stuffing too much music into my ears.
And the title of the Very Best Bollywood Songs is definitely a misnomer; it may be closer to what actual Indian people think is the best Filmi tracks, but for my taste it features far too much modern music, with its sickly sentimental digital synths and treacly tempi - even the tracks that are obviously just pastiches of the "classic" Bollywood sound, like "Ladki Badi Anjani Hai," completely lack the grace, soul and groove of their vintage counterparts and even with the older selections, they're mostly ballads with little of the unusual arrangements and eclecticism that animates the best filmi. The only track here I knew offhand was "Roop Tera Mastana," even though I've heard the soundtracks to Bobby and Sholay neither of the tracks present seemed familiar, which points to their lack of memorability and thus their unfitness for this comp as much as my habit of stuffing too much music into my ears.
obviously downloaded simply for the band name, Yom & the Wonder Rabbi's With Love was tagged as jazz in my files, but despite the presence of either sax or clarinet on every track, it's more akin to a hybrid of a perkier dark jazz (which isn't jazz, for the record) and an electronically-tinted rock half-way between post-punk and Radiohead, but with obvious Jewish influences, primarily in the sax/clarinet leads. Obviously, if I think it sounds anything like Bohren & der Club of Snore or Yorke 'n' the Boys, it's not going to get a hugely positive reaction from me, but, hey, at least it's instrumental and at least it's Jewish, and I listened to most of it while getting my hair combed, and that always puts me in a good mood.
here listen to this and think about all the cool good music not made by white ppl w/ gtrs you're missing out on by still being a backwards rockist scumfuck (this title is aimed at myself, for the record)
https://soundcloud.com/quebajo/uproot-andy-worldwide-ting
Scorpio Universel's Volume II is further proof in my eyes that, as good as compas is, no one I've heard comes close to Tabou Combo at their best - but then I've only heard a little by Les Shleu Shleu and actually not as much from the genre as a whole as I should have. Still colourful groovy fun, even if every song is at least a minute and a half too long for my taste.
hot dang, the first half of Vladislav Delay's Kemikoski EP as Conoco is some of the best ambient techno I've yet to witness; it's aquatic and crackly and incredibly memorable. Then there's the twenty-minute closer, which makes the release twice as long as an EP needs to be and is both more dense and far less interesting than what came before it, to my chagrin. :'(
the Grå Fraktion comp just doesn't hit the lo-fi black metal sweet spot, simply by being too punk and more than a little too, well, I hate to say it, but hipster. I mean, this shit has ties to Iceage! Real black metal does not have ties to trendy post-punk revivalists; that's like the first rule of black metal, duh. But then again, I'm okay with Sexdrome so I guess I'm a hypocrite.
also the World Saxophone Quartet's W.S.Q. is making me wonder if I just don't like saxes as much as I thought I did? Because Lake/Hemphill/Bluiett/Murray is quite a line-up and the music, like Birthright is doing nothing for me. Maybe it's just saxes by themselves? I never was a fan of For Alto, for the record, and I guess I like my unaccompanied reeds to be all about extended techniques and circular breathing and to sound as much like Conic Sections as possible, I guess.
the Grå Fraktion comp just doesn't hit the lo-fi black metal sweet spot, simply by being too punk and more than a little too, well, I hate to say it, but hipster. I mean, this shit has ties to Iceage! Real black metal does not have ties to trendy post-punk revivalists; that's like the first rule of black metal, duh. But then again, I'm okay with Sexdrome so I guess I'm a hypocrite.
also the World Saxophone Quartet's W.S.Q. is making me wonder if I just don't like saxes as much as I thought I did? Because Lake/Hemphill/Bluiett/Murray is quite a line-up and the music, like Birthright is doing nothing for me. Maybe it's just saxes by themselves? I never was a fan of For Alto, for the record, and I guess I like my unaccompanied reeds to be all about extended techniques and circular breathing and to sound as much like Conic Sections as possible, I guess.
Hamiet Bluiett's Birthright is just too dry to make any kind of positive impression. Maybe I don't like the sound of baritone sax? It's very ROUND, which I'm not opposed to, but nothing grabbed me at all. Ugh I suck at talking about music, I really do. I should just go back to rating and keep my mouth shut.
but Sofrito International Soundclash is just about as amazing as their Tropical Discotheque and that one is gobsmackingly excellent so you know you're into something good with this 'un, too. Just so much danceable goodness, from all over - cumbia percussion, disco bass, steel drums, thumb piano; it's got a little bit of everything right in the world.
but Sofrito International Soundclash is just about as amazing as their Tropical Discotheque and that one is gobsmackingly excellent so you know you're into something good with this 'un, too. Just so much danceable goodness, from all over - cumbia percussion, disco bass, steel drums, thumb piano; it's got a little bit of everything right in the world.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Un Fuego de Sangre Pura by Gaiteros de San Jacinto would be closing in on perfect if the songs were shorter and it had Even Moar cumbia. Still, it's kinda' vaguely like Gaiteiros de Lisboa had a baby with Luzmila Carpio that was raised by Chico Trujillo or summat and how could I possibly not want to marry an album that sounds kind of vaguely like that?
Toni Braxton? I think you misspelled "Anthony."
Anthony Braxton and Mario Pavone's Seven Standards shows that you can utilize an outside/inside approach to traditional material (and that there are less obvious standards than, what, "'Round Midnight" and "Lush Life" and "On Green Dolphin Street?") and still come across really rather dry. The really frickin' weird thing about this date is that Pavone plays bass, right, duh, but the sax is handled by his bandmate Thomas Chapin while Brax himself tickles the ivories! Oh and Pheeroan Aklaaf and Dave Douglas appear, too, so this is a pretty star-studded affair, all things considered. And everything gets started off just fine with "Dewey Square" but the band just doesn't gel elsewhere and Chapin should stick to sax and not flute. Then again, what I really want from this line-up is duel axefire spraying across the countryside and killing everything in its path and slightly out versions of standards with AntBra playing piano isn't quite what this doctor* ordered.
*I am not actually a doctor.
And Ali Wali by Ghulam Hassan Shugam didn't pass either the "Did it give me chills?" (it didn't) or the "How often did I forget I was listening to music while it played?" (it was quite a lot) test, which are my go-to criteria for how good any Hindustani or Carnatic music is.
*I am not actually a doctor.
And Ali Wali by Ghulam Hassan Shugam didn't pass either the "Did it give me chills?" (it didn't) or the "How often did I forget I was listening to music while it played?" (it was quite a lot) test, which are my go-to criteria for how good any Hindustani or Carnatic music is.
I download (or rather, have downloaded) a lot of music that, looking through my music months later, I have no idea what it is or what compelled me to acquire it - usually I have at least a vague notion of genre but then I get to something like Wordwounder by Zijnzijn Zijnzijn! and I just have no fucking clue. With its four tracks, all over ten minutes and two over twenty, not giving any clues with the names ("Breathe In?" "Ash Floats From Fire?" What genres COULDN'T those song titles be?) it could be anything from noise rock to free improv to, well, I was gonna' say grime but nah. I had decided it was probably atmospheric sludge metal (helped by my misreading the title as WorLdwounder) when I put it on and it turned out to actually be... Pauline Oliveros? :/ Droney accordion! That's much better than Cult of Luna! The production is lo-fi to the point of being mostly hiss but the joy of sloppily played accordion still comes through well enough and I was really hoping that it would turn out to be a deconstructed free folk album, but then some rather unremarkable keyboards took over and I realized it would just be drone after all - but with very little accordion past that point, much to my chagrin. The next three tracks are all mostly guitar based and very amateurish - not that the accordion wasn't but accordions are just GOOD, y'know? So yeah, not remarkable by any stretch of the imagination. Sorry, Zij Zij!.
I guess the main thing I can say about Zara McFarlane's album is that, squished as it between a version of "Police and Thieves" that is the sophisticated black woman equivalent of when a white guy with a guitar covers a pop song and a version of "Plain Gold Ring" that won't exactly have you forgetting your copy of Nina Simone in Concert, "Spinning Wheel" isn't a Blood, Sweat and Tears cover, thank god. The album opens with a mbira-(and possibly balafon?)-led track that had me thinking back to last year's Laura Mvula album, which I actually really dug and led me to expect an album of afro-art pop in the same vein, despite the "soul jazz" tag. Alas, it's the sort of pop album that wears its jazz influence on its sleeve, but somehow doesn't really count as jazz and sometimes abandon that concept entirely, such as on the guitar-only "You'll Get Me in Trouble." When it is trying to be jazz, it seems fixated on getting the point of how jazz it is across, like it's trafficking mostly in genre signifiers. It's just safe and not truly enjoyable enough to make up for that. It makes you long for the days when jazz, even in the mainstream, actually broke rules and set high standards for itself, but then you listen to Yasmina, A Black Woman by Archie Shepp and you get both reinforcement of that starry-eyed view of back in the day and proof that maybe it wasn't always so rosy. The opening drum solo actually prepares you for an absolute classic, and the first few minutes of the title track live up to that assessment - but over the course of twenty minutes the groove gets stale and the next two tracks are just utterly uninteresting - he covers "Body and Soul" for chrissakes! I've always seen Shepp as a second-rate figure compared to the great improvisers of his day and Yasmina certainly isn't up to snuff compared to the best stuff, say, Frank Wright or Pharoah Sanders. But hey they can't all be Jewels of Thought.
I guess the main thing I can say about Zara McFarlane's album is that, squished as it between a version of "Police and Thieves" that is the sophisticated black woman equivalent of when a white guy with a guitar covers a pop song and a version of "Plain Gold Ring" that won't exactly have you forgetting your copy of Nina Simone in Concert, "Spinning Wheel" isn't a Blood, Sweat and Tears cover, thank god. The album opens with a mbira-(and possibly balafon?)-led track that had me thinking back to last year's Laura Mvula album, which I actually really dug and led me to expect an album of afro-art pop in the same vein, despite the "soul jazz" tag. Alas, it's the sort of pop album that wears its jazz influence on its sleeve, but somehow doesn't really count as jazz and sometimes abandon that concept entirely, such as on the guitar-only "You'll Get Me in Trouble." When it is trying to be jazz, it seems fixated on getting the point of how jazz it is across, like it's trafficking mostly in genre signifiers. It's just safe and not truly enjoyable enough to make up for that. It makes you long for the days when jazz, even in the mainstream, actually broke rules and set high standards for itself, but then you listen to Yasmina, A Black Woman by Archie Shepp and you get both reinforcement of that starry-eyed view of back in the day and proof that maybe it wasn't always so rosy. The opening drum solo actually prepares you for an absolute classic, and the first few minutes of the title track live up to that assessment - but over the course of twenty minutes the groove gets stale and the next two tracks are just utterly uninteresting - he covers "Body and Soul" for chrissakes! I've always seen Shepp as a second-rate figure compared to the great improvisers of his day and Yasmina certainly isn't up to snuff compared to the best stuff, say, Frank Wright or Pharoah Sanders. But hey they can't all be Jewels of Thought.
Friday, March 28, 2014
Let's Play God
Okay, so first off, I'd replace Rashid Bakr's minimalist cymbal-tapping on his, William Parker's and Frode Gjerstad's Seeing New York from the Ear with the immaculate groove machine Hamid Drake and then we'd probably have a four star album on our hands.
then I'd take away the trappy production and poppy hooks present on a few tracks on Smoke DZA's K.O.N.Y. and I'd also give a name that makes me frown less and think less about imperialism posing as activism. it still wouldn't be the best thing he's ever done, but it'd sit pretty well next to his previous work. oh and of course I'd make all the misogyny turn into misandry. and then destroy capitalism and create a classless world society and then turn all of the men in the world into women and then turn all of the straight women into lesbians and exile all the white people to Mars and I'd melt all of the guns down and bring Audre Lorde and Marsha P. Johnson back to life and make them duel presidents of the planet. I mean, if I'm playing god, obviously. of course I'd do all that.
then I'd take away the trappy production and poppy hooks present on a few tracks on Smoke DZA's K.O.N.Y. and I'd also give a name that makes me frown less and think less about imperialism posing as activism. it still wouldn't be the best thing he's ever done, but it'd sit pretty well next to his previous work. oh and of course I'd make all the misogyny turn into misandry. and then destroy capitalism and create a classless world society and then turn all of the men in the world into women and then turn all of the straight women into lesbians and exile all the white people to Mars and I'd melt all of the guns down and bring Audre Lorde and Marsha P. Johnson back to life and make them duel presidents of the planet. I mean, if I'm playing god, obviously. of course I'd do all that.
I was going to say that I wished that jerk was popular here instead of trap but after about the fifth song on DJ Mustard's Ketchup I get the feeling I'd learn to hate it, too, if I was exposed to it from every angle every day. But - wait I think they just turned "busy saying no but your pussy wet" into a refrain so yeah fuck rapey motherfuckers forever and ever kill all rapists amen
so yeah I'm in one of those moods apparently today but what's wrong with not wanting to put up with ~rapejamz~? nada, nada, nada - nada damn thing.
so yeah I'm in one of those moods apparently today but what's wrong with not wanting to put up with ~rapejamz~? nada, nada, nada - nada damn thing.
Dans Les Arbres are exactly what I expected them to be:
expertly performed but a little too safe. I've actually come to appreciate some modern ECM releases (Tim Berne's Snakeoil albums, mainly) but this is just too clean and polished and ECM-y in production to show the material and musicians in the best light - it's improv with no rough edges, which makes it smooth which makes it the improv equivalent of smooth jazz, just not as nauseating, which appellation is fitting because it's on ECM aka the more bourgeois Windham Hill. both albums are genuinely pleasant, however, rather than being "merely pleasant" in the most pedantically-looking-down-on-the-music sense of the phrase.
Everything in the World Needs to Be a Calliope
literally everything. calliope bread, calliope hands, calliope cars. my gender is calliope. my pronouns are calliope, calliopes, callioped. I am of calliope descent. I live in calliope city, calliope in the united calliopes of calliope. I speak english, spanglish, volapuk and calliope. I have a calliope-colored pet calliope named "calliope." etcetera.
Vicks VapoWave: relieve sinus congestion with 90s nostalgia!
Miami Vice's "Synth Colour" is the perfect vaporwave song: it makes you feel like yr consciousness is being uploaded to a supercomputer in a 90s version of "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" and what's more vaporwave than that? The rest of the album doesn't quite live up to that because it's more instrumental hip hop, which isn't to say I don't dig instrumental hip hop, but just that the opener tricks you into thinking you'll be getting "pure" vaporwave (as if such a thing exists) and then a bunch of the other tracks sound like Knxwledge or summat - still some of the best stuff the genre has to offer, though.
and in non-vaporwave news: the opener to the Szilárd Mezei International Improvisers Ensemble's two-disk Karszt, which takes up 3/4ths of the first CD, made me think of a description I read in Jazzword (go there! this guy's a real pro, a real head, and that may be the site that gets me to redownload SLSK [after this semester's over, after this semester's over...]) about Braxton's Ghost Trance Music project(s) (which I've never heard) - it moves at a glacial pace and seems to alternate repeatedly between a long, lethargic, static even, head and long solos, but the further along it goes the more you realize that the variations in arrangements of the main theme are different every time and gradually more sections that deviate from the main two are added - it's even sprightly in places! - and it's all around a-ok. Too bad very little of the rest of the album is really worth mentioning, as fine as it is - the title track opens with piano so dissonant it sounds like the instrument is out-of-tune but mostly plods though the other highlight, "Macskák" (which means cats!), actually does sound like the titular animal, which is surely as high of a compliment as I can give a piece of music.
oh and Igor Koshkendey's solo album is not quite as good as the best Chirgilchin, but it practically is another Chirgilchin album, so defo (soul)seek that out, if'n you like sweet Tuvan soul music.
and in non-vaporwave news: the opener to the Szilárd Mezei International Improvisers Ensemble's two-disk Karszt, which takes up 3/4ths of the first CD, made me think of a description I read in Jazzword (go there! this guy's a real pro, a real head, and that may be the site that gets me to redownload SLSK [after this semester's over, after this semester's over...]) about Braxton's Ghost Trance Music project(s) (which I've never heard) - it moves at a glacial pace and seems to alternate repeatedly between a long, lethargic, static even, head and long solos, but the further along it goes the more you realize that the variations in arrangements of the main theme are different every time and gradually more sections that deviate from the main two are added - it's even sprightly in places! - and it's all around a-ok. Too bad very little of the rest of the album is really worth mentioning, as fine as it is - the title track opens with piano so dissonant it sounds like the instrument is out-of-tune but mostly plods though the other highlight, "Macskák" (which means cats!), actually does sound like the titular animal, which is surely as high of a compliment as I can give a piece of music.
oh and Igor Koshkendey's solo album is not quite as good as the best Chirgilchin, but it practically is another Chirgilchin album, so defo (soul)seek that out, if'n you like sweet Tuvan soul music.
Thursday, March 27, 2014
now Ingar Zach, that's a percussionist!
M.O.S. (which I keep mentally referring to as either M.O.P. or P.O.S. - must have hip hop on the brain) is defo top-tier solo percussion improv, especially the first half and the last eight minutes - it's not as colorful and frenetic and inventive as Ustensiles or as brutal as Will Guthrie (whom I really need to hear more of) but it's still remarkably well-crafted and fluid and fluent, utilizing a whole host of techniques extended or otherwise, with some especially spine-tingling bells and bow(l)s at around the twenty-eight minute mark. It really almost reaches a ritual ambient mood towards the end. Good shit!
I'm getting really excited for the Dans Les Arbres albums, but then I remember that they're on ECM, and then I'm not.
I'm getting really excited for the Dans Les Arbres albums, but then I remember that they're on ECM, and then I'm not.
I don't know why I keep giving Weasel Walter all these chances
considering I don't even like the Luttenbachers, but I think I'm finally done. Eruptions, by Walter, Kevin Drumm and Fred Lonberg-Holm, is best described by that old chestnut about sound, fury and lots of obnoxious jokey song titles signifying nothing - it makes a nice racket in small amounts but when you're doing a forty track album you really should limit your average track length to 40 seconds, tops. Even 40 minute-long songs can be exhausting in anything but expert hands. And then the duets on Ominous Telepathic Mayhem made me really realize that the problem is, in fact, Weaselboy himself - he plays like a jazz drummer parodying extreme metal drummers - it's like it's a continuous drum roll and he lacks the dynamics and touch (imo, obvs) to make that interesting - he actually saps the interest out of most things I've heard him play on. We just don't get along, the Weaz and my ears, though according to my old ratings we did at one point? I'm fickle - but I'm allowed to be - I contain multitudes.
awww
you ever listen to half of an album and really dig but for whatever reason wait days or weeks to finish it and when you come back to it the rest is terrible and you don't have the first half on hand to reevaluate because you deleted it from your MP3 player? That never happens to me.
haha j/k that happens all the time. it just happened with Da Bush Babees' Ambushed - first six tracks I was certain I had just unearthed one of thee lost classics of early 90s hip hop: ragga-flavored jazzy boom bap from just one year shy of the best vintage? What's not to love? Then I stopped listening to music because I'm weird like that. Now I'm addicted again, and I have really built this album up in my head, see? Like I had prewritten all these accolades and placed it in my top 50 or w/evs of the 90s and then I actually finish listening to it and... it's just kinda' unremarkable. The beats are exactly the sort of beat I'm usually nuts for and the rapping's competent (except for the guest spot from some corny clown who tries to pass off "random" and "asthma" as a rhyme, which really hurts, deep down) but there's no spark, no chutzpah, nothing to set it apart from any of the other dozens of albums from around this time period that attempt the same thing. And there's a "wasn't rap so much better in the ~good ol' days~?" track. In ninety-fuckin-four! So *pop* goes those accolades. And their next album has multiple Mos Def verses! D: In the immortal words of my mother: "peaturkey."
haha j/k that happens all the time. it just happened with Da Bush Babees' Ambushed - first six tracks I was certain I had just unearthed one of thee lost classics of early 90s hip hop: ragga-flavored jazzy boom bap from just one year shy of the best vintage? What's not to love? Then I stopped listening to music because I'm weird like that. Now I'm addicted again, and I have really built this album up in my head, see? Like I had prewritten all these accolades and placed it in my top 50 or w/evs of the 90s and then I actually finish listening to it and... it's just kinda' unremarkable. The beats are exactly the sort of beat I'm usually nuts for and the rapping's competent (except for the guest spot from some corny clown who tries to pass off "random" and "asthma" as a rhyme, which really hurts, deep down) but there's no spark, no chutzpah, nothing to set it apart from any of the other dozens of albums from around this time period that attempt the same thing. And there's a "wasn't rap so much better in the ~good ol' days~?" track. In ninety-fuckin-four! So *pop* goes those accolades. And their next album has multiple Mos Def verses! D: In the immortal words of my mother: "peaturkey."
hey guess who my new crotchety cranky old white guy music crush is
you're wrong, it's Charles Wuorinen
he writes overly intellectual, needlessly complex, emotionless works that really swing and resonate with me
also the very first notes of "Six Pieces: III" make me think I'm listening to "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" and when was the last a modern classical piece did that?
That said, "Time's Encomium" is kind of undercooked and barely edible.
e: but the percussion symphony is just extra neato!
he writes overly intellectual, needlessly complex, emotionless works that really swing and resonate with me
also the very first notes of "Six Pieces: III" make me think I'm listening to "Shimmy Shimmy Ya" and when was the last a modern classical piece did that?
That said, "Time's Encomium" is kind of undercooked and barely edible.
e: but the percussion symphony is just extra neato!
Listen to this while staring at its cover:
http://sultanhagavik.bandcamp.com/album/tdnwh
Creepy as all get-out, right?
Maybe the first great album of 2014, I dunno', I ain't heard too many and I can't remember which ones I have heard, anyway, lulz.
Creepy as all get-out, right?
Maybe the first great album of 2014, I dunno', I ain't heard too many and I can't remember which ones I have heard, anyway, lulz.
Piñata
three tracks in the Madgibbs album's just as good as their EPs and probably the most fruitful combo of Lib and an MC since... yeah. And the most jawdropping thing is that I actually enjoyed a Danny Brown guest spot. I know, right?! I was expecting to find the DB, Rae, and Black Hippy and OF associate guest verses to be a major deterrent to enjoying the album, and the rest might be, but the fact that Brown actually impressed me bodes very well for the rest of the album. It's already the best RYM best-album-of-the-year hip hop album of this decade by a wide margin.
e: oh and Mac Miller's here, too. ugh that does not make me anticipate the second half of this record despite how good the first half is.
ee: "Shame" and "Watts" threaten to muck the whole thing up at the end but the title track has the best production on the album and, even with the presence of Mac Miller, is among the best posse cuts since "Proteck Ya Neck II the Zoo." There's just something about a bunch of MCs who either get shat on as weedcarriers or that no one will ever hear from again just ripping shit up like their lives depended on it.
e: oh and Mac Miller's here, too. ugh that does not make me anticipate the second half of this record despite how good the first half is.
ee: "Shame" and "Watts" threaten to muck the whole thing up at the end but the title track has the best production on the album and, even with the presence of Mac Miller, is among the best posse cuts since "Proteck Ya Neck II the Zoo." There's just something about a bunch of MCs who either get shat on as weedcarriers or that no one will ever hear from again just ripping shit up like their lives depended on it.
Wednesday, March 26, 2014
I'm a Sucker for Poorly Produced 80s Early Extreme Metal
and Poison (no, not those guys!) are second only to Parabellum in that category, in my (admittedly limited) experience. Awakening of the Dead has production that makes the most blown-out Memphis rap tape look like, idk, Madonna or something, with drums that clip like a barber and tinny rudimentary riffs. It gets overshadowed by the surprisingly coherent and epic album their fame mostly rests on, Into the Abyss, which shows the band can still crank out a tune when the fi ain't so lo, though it does suffer from a slight deficiency in the scruffy charm of their previous work, but the real greasy artery-clogging meat of their discography is the barbaric caveman stomp of the debut Sons of Evil demo, which needs to be heard in its full thirteen-track glory and might just be in the top five metal releases of the 80s.
and on the way more obscure tip, Oddech Buntownika's sole 1987 album is an astonishingly overlooked should-be-addition to the early noise metal canon. Really brain-smashing stellar stuff - makes you feel like a true connoisseur for knowing it exists.
and on the way more obscure tip, Oddech Buntownika's sole 1987 album is an astonishingly overlooked should-be-addition to the early noise metal canon. Really brain-smashing stellar stuff - makes you feel like a true connoisseur for knowing it exists.
no regrets with "Egrets!"
so yeah Toshimaru Nakamura's Egrets is almost as good as Pool, the last album he did with Jason Kahn as Repeat, and that's in my top three EAI albums ever so wowie wow wow. love the drone.
okay so ratings/nonratings
Can I call the Angel Haze album a sell-out? It's trappy and top-40-pop-rappy with pretty much nothing that her previous work had going for it.
My semi-pseudo-review of Childbirth's It's a Girl was just going to be "fuck white cis feminism" but nah that's too harsh for a set of tunes that actually have a bit of verve and fun - the lyrics aren't as horrible as they could've been, as terrible as they are, and the tunes are mostly nifty. I mean, there are worse 90s genres to make a half-baked nostalgia-market-aimed revival of than riot grrrl, right? Like grunge. Fuck grunge a million times over again and again forever and ever amen.
I'm finding that it's nearly impossible for me to talk about Perez Prado's Pops and Prado because it's just so samey, y'dig? It's lush and danceable and kitschy and classy and ultimately just kind of there and redundant after a while.
K.I.M.'s Miyage is kind of an interesting breed of DJ mix - it's wildly eclectic and playful, incorporating everything from Arthur Lyman to PTV to Asa-Chang and Junray, as well as K.I.M.'s own naivetronic compositions - however, the choice of ending the whole thing with a cover of Morrissey's most Morrissey moment in the history of Morrissey (or at least the Smiths), "Meat is Murder (And Chinese People Are a Sub-Species)"... well, I have to knock of some points for that.
also Open Mike Eagle's Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes just possibly set the record for the shortest time it took for me to turn an album off due to lyrical content, when OME referenced listening to "'97 Weezer" 17 seconds in. :/
My semi-pseudo-review of Childbirth's It's a Girl was just going to be "fuck white cis feminism" but nah that's too harsh for a set of tunes that actually have a bit of verve and fun - the lyrics aren't as horrible as they could've been, as terrible as they are, and the tunes are mostly nifty. I mean, there are worse 90s genres to make a half-baked nostalgia-market-aimed revival of than riot grrrl, right? Like grunge. Fuck grunge a million times over again and again forever and ever amen.
I'm finding that it's nearly impossible for me to talk about Perez Prado's Pops and Prado because it's just so samey, y'dig? It's lush and danceable and kitschy and classy and ultimately just kind of there and redundant after a while.
K.I.M.'s Miyage is kind of an interesting breed of DJ mix - it's wildly eclectic and playful, incorporating everything from Arthur Lyman to PTV to Asa-Chang and Junray, as well as K.I.M.'s own naivetronic compositions - however, the choice of ending the whole thing with a cover of Morrissey's most Morrissey moment in the history of Morrissey (or at least the Smiths), "Meat is Murder (And Chinese People Are a Sub-Species)"... well, I have to knock of some points for that.
also Open Mike Eagle's Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes just possibly set the record for the shortest time it took for me to turn an album off due to lyrical content, when OME referenced listening to "'97 Weezer" 17 seconds in. :/
Tuesday, March 25, 2014
That Tino Contreras comp
is friggin' ace. And I don't mean asexual. It doesn't show its Latin American origins as much as one might expect, which is perhaps a touch disappointing, but it's groovy with just the right touch of kitsch, eclectic, fresh and maybe even singular.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
and the new DVA album would get two stars, if I were to begin rating music, but, as you can easily tell, I AM NOT.
It feels like a classic example of interesting arrangements at the fringes supporting utterly banal songcraft. It kind of has that feeling of mainstream "indie" pop slightly deconstructed but not nearly enough to lend it major interest that plagued Privilege, which I'm actually growing to like less and less as my opinion on it coalesces - what I thought was simply displeasure at the band abandoning the surefire smash hit formula of Entanglements is actually dissatisfaction with an overlong set of subpar songs that hint too much at the top 40 (I remember scoffing at some website comparing them to Neon Trees but I must concede now that comparisons like that are too accurate for comfort in terms of both sound and quality) and show Zac Pennington caricaturing himself - one of the two protagonists on their last album may have been a paedophile, but they're still more likable than the lascivious cardboard cutout youth that populate the EPs, though I could stand or even grow again to love Z-diddy's arch assonant chic hiccuping gossip if the music didn't overstay its welcome half-way through each part. it's one damn good extended play stretched out over five. but that's neither here nor there.
It feels like a classic example of interesting arrangements at the fringes supporting utterly banal songcraft. It kind of has that feeling of mainstream "indie" pop slightly deconstructed but not nearly enough to lend it major interest that plagued Privilege, which I'm actually growing to like less and less as my opinion on it coalesces - what I thought was simply displeasure at the band abandoning the surefire smash hit formula of Entanglements is actually dissatisfaction with an overlong set of subpar songs that hint too much at the top 40 (I remember scoffing at some website comparing them to Neon Trees but I must concede now that comparisons like that are too accurate for comfort in terms of both sound and quality) and show Zac Pennington caricaturing himself - one of the two protagonists on their last album may have been a paedophile, but they're still more likable than the lascivious cardboard cutout youth that populate the EPs, though I could stand or even grow again to love Z-diddy's arch assonant chic hiccuping gossip if the music didn't overstay its welcome half-way through each part. it's one damn good extended play stretched out over five. but that's neither here nor there.
I May Just Crack and Use This as a Space to Rate Music
Because I'm starting to get THAT itch again, but classes start tomorrow, and this might just be an insidious way my brain is getting me to sabotage myself, when I've been doing really well. See, first comes listening to new music again, then rating it, then the next thing you know I've redownloaded SLSK and logged back onto RYM and am again slave to my basest passions. :(
But I just have so. much. music. that isn't being listened to and ugh gross fuck I should just whiteknuckle through it - I really had kicked my addiction!
anyway, if I were to start rating music again, Indonesia Pop Nostalgia would be 3.5, but eh whatever
But I just have so. much. music. that isn't being listened to and ugh gross fuck I should just whiteknuckle through it - I really had kicked my addiction!
anyway, if I were to start rating music again, Indonesia Pop Nostalgia would be 3.5, but eh whatever
Saturday, March 8, 2014
speaking of ATCQ
one of my favorite things about early Tribe albums is when Tip refers to himself as "abstract" and then says something very concrete:
"and the abstract rapper says: I want chicken and orange juice"
hmmm yes chicken, that's definitely an abstract concept describing something incorporeal or purely hypothetical. yup never encountered this "chicken" before.
"and the abstract rapper says: I want chicken and orange juice"
hmmm yes chicken, that's definitely an abstract concept describing something incorporeal or purely hypothetical. yup never encountered this "chicken" before.
Friday, March 7, 2014
Anyone else wonder if You Turn Me On wasn't an unsung minor influence on midwest emo? I mean, the guitars on "Sleepy Head" and "Godsend" are kinda' proto-semi-twinkly, y'dig? Maybe I'm straining at gnats (at Nats!) or summat but there you go.
It makes more sense than considering Team Dresch post-hardcore, for god's sake, and people actually do that.
It makes more sense than considering Team Dresch post-hardcore, for god's sake, and people actually do that.
Brett Smiley - Like Jobriath, But, Y'know, Good
I have a minor fascination with glam that bubbles up now and again - not the ultra-sleazy "just 'cuz we're in drag doesn't mean we're not macho het dickheads" post-bubblegum/pre-hair-metal Nick Faust-approved likes of Slade and Sweet (or the Stones-aping apes of the New York Dolls) and not the artsy hipster-approved likes of Bo-e or Rocks-e or Loo Read, as much as I may enjoy some of their work. I'm talking the just kinda' uncool third stream between the two, the land where wild Jobriaths, Smileys, Harleys, Zolars and Riddells roam.
I've always thought that Jobriath really had everything going for him except for his voice, which managed the seemingly impossible feat of being too affected, gay, thin, reedy and theatrical for glam but he always had some of the scene's best tunes (I put "Movie Queen" and "I'm a Man" on the first mix I made for my sole girlfriend - which may have influenced her strongly-held belief that I was, in fact, a gay cis man.) Andrew Loog Oldham find Brett Smiley however was as close as you could get to the total package and really should've been the poster boy for glam - with a shock of blond hair and pouty lips, he lisped through a harp-and-swoony-MGM-musical-strings-addled medley of the Four Tops* and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which is pretty much the most glam thing to ever happen that doesn't involve David Bowie and stomach-pumps. I also think he might have even actually been gay. Problem was: he really only had like five good songs. Had he been given Jobriath's songbook, we'd be looking at at least one absolute Great album, but we'll have to make do with a lost semi-classic instead. And hey you may like the rest of the album more than me! Anyway, here's the single he actually released back in the early 70s, b-side first, 'cuz the a's ableist.
"Space Ace:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4vn-c9iD8c
Like Sun Ra! Geddit? :3
"Va Va Va Voom"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfRXbZpi1H0
IT'S SO WRONG OMG but also so good
so yeah there you go this was a worthless post ugh
*It just suddenly dawned on me that the Four Tops are literally named the Four Tops and I couldn't stop laughing. What, you think Levi Stubbs would be a bottom? Snrk.
I've always thought that Jobriath really had everything going for him except for his voice, which managed the seemingly impossible feat of being too affected, gay, thin, reedy and theatrical for glam but he always had some of the scene's best tunes (I put "Movie Queen" and "I'm a Man" on the first mix I made for my sole girlfriend - which may have influenced her strongly-held belief that I was, in fact, a gay cis man.) Andrew Loog Oldham find Brett Smiley however was as close as you could get to the total package and really should've been the poster boy for glam - with a shock of blond hair and pouty lips, he lisped through a harp-and-swoony-MGM-musical-strings-addled medley of the Four Tops* and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" which is pretty much the most glam thing to ever happen that doesn't involve David Bowie and stomach-pumps. I also think he might have even actually been gay. Problem was: he really only had like five good songs. Had he been given Jobriath's songbook, we'd be looking at at least one absolute Great album, but we'll have to make do with a lost semi-classic instead. And hey you may like the rest of the album more than me! Anyway, here's the single he actually released back in the early 70s, b-side first, 'cuz the a's ableist.
"Space Ace:"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4vn-c9iD8c
Like Sun Ra! Geddit? :3
"Va Va Va Voom"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfRXbZpi1H0
IT'S SO WRONG OMG but also so good
so yeah there you go this was a worthless post ugh
*It just suddenly dawned on me that the Four Tops are literally named the Four Tops and I couldn't stop laughing. What, you think Levi Stubbs would be a bottom? Snrk.
Nine Songs That Have Been Known to Make Me Cry
the Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem - the Parting Glass - "All the harm I ever did, I swear it was to none but me" - welp, yep, there you go: that's the most depressingly relatable sentiment in song.
Kimya Dawson - Hold My Hand and Walk Like Thunder - The only person of color on this list and it's... the whitest black girl EVER. :/ "Hold My Hand"'s 'bout child abuse. Not hard to make that topic tear-worthy, but Kimya makes it both quietly disquieting and funny. Still, I spent a portion of yesterday standing outside an Italian restaurant shielded from the rain waiting for my mom to pick me up, listening to the "Alex" section of "Walk Like Thunder" and weeping. There was a time in my life when I was half-pissed at Kimya for dedicating so much of the song to a trans man, when, as we all know, trans men are still MEN and therefore privileged and inherently evil, right? Fuck that noise, Natalie, fuck that noise forever. Anyhow, it's just like the best song ever written by a straight person kinda about how much it sucks to be queer. I mean, there's way more to it than that, death and perseverance and all that, but that's the message I got from it yesterday, in the rain: if you're trans*, you're going to die of cancer at 33, so there's no use not trying to make as many good friends as you can. Cheery stuff, truly. Oh and then Aesop Rock says some stuff in his usual semiscrutable fashion and yeah that makes me cry, too. :/
Hedwig and the Angry Inch - the Origin of Love - Look, I get all of the things wrong with this song - the awkward rhymes ("fork stuck in a spoon," really?), the dismissal of non-binary folk, the poly-shaming, the tenuous grasp of classical mythology - and maybe it's just where I first saw the clip for "the Origin of Love" (near the end of "Yu + Me: Dream," my favorite webcomic ever) that affects the effects it has on me but dang, the entire idea of your true love having been your literal other half and them being out there somewhere looking for you: that shit chokes me up big-time, every time. I still haven't seen the entire movie, because I'm all about NOT endorsing cis men playing trans women on stage or screen (excepting I'm all for Cillian Murphy and Zac Pennington playing women, trans or cis, just because they're both too fucking pretty not to always be in drag my god) but I've heard both the original cast version and movie soundtrack oh AND the Wig in a Box tribute album, despite the presence of, ugh, Spoon and Ben Folds, because I can't possibly pass up Yoko collaborating with Yo La Tengo or Fred Schneider yelling "WHERE MY PENIS USED TO BE WHERE MY VAGINA NEVER WAS."
Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End - There are few through-lines to the songs on this list, besides the ones that are Irish, but this and "the Origin of Love" have similar themes, expressed pretty succinctly in the former's title: you may be a loveless loser but there's someone out there for you. But that's the thing: I never take that message from these songs, but rather the opposite: there's someone out there for me yeah but I MAY NEVER FIND THEM and then I'll die alone and heartbroken at 27 without a dollar to my name and I'll have to do sex work and I'll be murdered by a john and I'll get AIDS from sharing estrogen needles and and and yeah. :'( WORK THAT SEXY CATASTROPHIZING, BITCH
the Magnetic Fields - Asleep and Dreaming - It's actually kind of amazing that no other Stephin Merritt songs have ever made me weep, considering that I'm pretty much the biggest fangirl of his that exists, and his sense of the sentimental fits so well with mine - "I don't know you if you're beautiful because I love you too much" is just straight-up the single fucking SWEETEST sentiment I've ever encountered in music. It's like a fucking One Direction lyric I swear but oh my, how the tears well.
Joanna Newsom - Esme - The only song that's on this list for its sheer beauty rather than any lyrical conceit - I don't find "blackberry, rosemary, Jimmy crack corn" or "ties and rails, ties and rails" to be exactly heart-string-pulling or gut-punching, but get me in the right mood and that main swooning melody will still make me bawl - then again, so will cats. Like sometimes I just see a cat and start crying. And Moomins. :/
Planxty - the West Coast of Clare - The definitive rough break-up song? "Numb with grief" - yeah been there. "Memories I have of you won't leave me peace" - yeah that, too. Dang, song, s'like you've actually been in love and stuff.
the Pogues - A Pair of Brown Eyes - Have I mentioned that the Irish just do sadness better than any other white people? This is the only song I've ever heard that really makes war sound as bad as war surely is - as antiwar as I am, I don't actually usually give a fuck about the soldiers - they're usually, y'know, men. But Shane McGowan, the poet laureate of punk, sets a tale of lost love against the absolutely horrific backdrop of bloody battle and suddenly the sheer terrifying reality of war comes to life. And in a sick, none-more-black way, it's even kind of funny. Funny, frightening, poetic and deeply mournful - that's a combination of emotions that basically no other lyricist in rock has ever managed to tap. The Irish, man. All this and Joyce? Dang. The Irish.
Honourable Mention:
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U - uh yeah, this was just a phase I was going through. I think I'm over it. I hope to god I'm over it.
There are actually at least two other songs that have made me cry under very specific circumstances, but I'm too embarrassed to mention them, and I'll openly admit that I cried during Meet the Robinsons. And Precious. :/
Kimya Dawson - Hold My Hand and Walk Like Thunder - The only person of color on this list and it's... the whitest black girl EVER. :/ "Hold My Hand"'s 'bout child abuse. Not hard to make that topic tear-worthy, but Kimya makes it both quietly disquieting and funny. Still, I spent a portion of yesterday standing outside an Italian restaurant shielded from the rain waiting for my mom to pick me up, listening to the "Alex" section of "Walk Like Thunder" and weeping. There was a time in my life when I was half-pissed at Kimya for dedicating so much of the song to a trans man, when, as we all know, trans men are still MEN and therefore privileged and inherently evil, right? Fuck that noise, Natalie, fuck that noise forever. Anyhow, it's just like the best song ever written by a straight person kinda about how much it sucks to be queer. I mean, there's way more to it than that, death and perseverance and all that, but that's the message I got from it yesterday, in the rain: if you're trans*, you're going to die of cancer at 33, so there's no use not trying to make as many good friends as you can. Cheery stuff, truly. Oh and then Aesop Rock says some stuff in his usual semiscrutable fashion and yeah that makes me cry, too. :/
Hedwig and the Angry Inch - the Origin of Love - Look, I get all of the things wrong with this song - the awkward rhymes ("fork stuck in a spoon," really?), the dismissal of non-binary folk, the poly-shaming, the tenuous grasp of classical mythology - and maybe it's just where I first saw the clip for "the Origin of Love" (near the end of "Yu + Me: Dream," my favorite webcomic ever) that affects the effects it has on me but dang, the entire idea of your true love having been your literal other half and them being out there somewhere looking for you: that shit chokes me up big-time, every time. I still haven't seen the entire movie, because I'm all about NOT endorsing cis men playing trans women on stage or screen (excepting I'm all for Cillian Murphy and Zac Pennington playing women, trans or cis, just because they're both too fucking pretty not to always be in drag my god) but I've heard both the original cast version and movie soundtrack oh AND the Wig in a Box tribute album, despite the presence of, ugh, Spoon and Ben Folds, because I can't possibly pass up Yoko collaborating with Yo La Tengo or Fred Schneider yelling "WHERE MY PENIS USED TO BE WHERE MY VAGINA NEVER WAS."
Daniel Johnston - True Love Will Find You in the End - There are few through-lines to the songs on this list, besides the ones that are Irish, but this and "the Origin of Love" have similar themes, expressed pretty succinctly in the former's title: you may be a loveless loser but there's someone out there for you. But that's the thing: I never take that message from these songs, but rather the opposite: there's someone out there for me yeah but I MAY NEVER FIND THEM and then I'll die alone and heartbroken at 27 without a dollar to my name and I'll have to do sex work and I'll be murdered by a john and I'll get AIDS from sharing estrogen needles and and and yeah. :'( WORK THAT SEXY CATASTROPHIZING, BITCH
the Magnetic Fields - Asleep and Dreaming - It's actually kind of amazing that no other Stephin Merritt songs have ever made me weep, considering that I'm pretty much the biggest fangirl of his that exists, and his sense of the sentimental fits so well with mine - "I don't know you if you're beautiful because I love you too much" is just straight-up the single fucking SWEETEST sentiment I've ever encountered in music. It's like a fucking One Direction lyric I swear but oh my, how the tears well.
Joanna Newsom - Esme - The only song that's on this list for its sheer beauty rather than any lyrical conceit - I don't find "blackberry, rosemary, Jimmy crack corn" or "ties and rails, ties and rails" to be exactly heart-string-pulling or gut-punching, but get me in the right mood and that main swooning melody will still make me bawl - then again, so will cats. Like sometimes I just see a cat and start crying. And Moomins. :/
Planxty - the West Coast of Clare - The definitive rough break-up song? "Numb with grief" - yeah been there. "Memories I have of you won't leave me peace" - yeah that, too. Dang, song, s'like you've actually been in love and stuff.
the Pogues - A Pair of Brown Eyes - Have I mentioned that the Irish just do sadness better than any other white people? This is the only song I've ever heard that really makes war sound as bad as war surely is - as antiwar as I am, I don't actually usually give a fuck about the soldiers - they're usually, y'know, men. But Shane McGowan, the poet laureate of punk, sets a tale of lost love against the absolutely horrific backdrop of bloody battle and suddenly the sheer terrifying reality of war comes to life. And in a sick, none-more-black way, it's even kind of funny. Funny, frightening, poetic and deeply mournful - that's a combination of emotions that basically no other lyricist in rock has ever managed to tap. The Irish, man. All this and Joyce? Dang. The Irish.
Honourable Mention:
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U - uh yeah, this was just a phase I was going through. I think I'm over it. I hope to god I'm over it.
There are actually at least two other songs that have made me cry under very specific circumstances, but I'm too embarrassed to mention them, and I'll openly admit that I cried during Meet the Robinsons. And Precious. :/
Thursday, March 6, 2014
(Yeah, this is Horby, if everything didn't tip you off.)
The downside to having successfully kicked my music rating and downloading habits and RYM addiction is that now I have nowhere to discuss music other than Facebook, and my non-RYM friends are surely beyond tired of my esoteric music posts. Also, I seem to still be addicted to the internet. Hmm. I would get a tumblr but there are people there I'd rather not run into and the last two tumblrs I had ended... badly. So getting a real live blogger blog seemed an obvious temporary solution: I'll be less likely to post self-lacerating, overly personal shit here than in that other community and can maybe focus more on music and less on melodramatic antics (though I assure you, it's still highly unlikely that there won't be some of those.)
Since I stop rated music I've basically lost any interest in listening to new music - it seems obvious that that points out a fatal flaw in my enjoyment of music: what's the point, I say to myself, of listening to something if I can't catalog it and show that I listened to it to other people? In other words: why listen to new music if it doesn't increase my music nerd e-peen? The realization that my years of obsessively downloading and hoarding music are seemingly over is freeing and frightening, the latter because it makes me have to come to terms with how much time I've straight-up goddamn WASTED on a dick-measuring contest (and I don't even WANT the smallish-yet-still-too-large-just-by-virtue-of-existing cock I already fucking have!) the only meatspace results of which have been failing classes and creating an esoteric, elitist frame of reference and sense of aesthetics that alienates just about everyone I may try to relate to (though I did bond with an older guy at a Bahá'í feast over Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Cecil Taylor) when I should be creating art rather than merely acquiring and passively consuming it. And, on a much less important tip, I've realized that my habit these past four or so years of listening to tens of thousands of albums exactly once has actually backfired and made my taste even more banal and bourgeois and, yes, canon than it should be: since I gave up rating music, I've been craving nothing but comfort music, stuff I've heard a thousand times before, and in far too many cases that means music I listened to compulsively when I was a teenager, sometimes before I even had Soulseek or broadband - and that means white men with guitars far more often than I'd like to admit. Very rarely has music I've only encountered in the past three/four years been able to become comfort listening for me, because I've never given myself enough chances to get truly acquainted with it: thus I have a very small pool of albums I listen to when I need cheering up or empowerment or just something soothing: over the past week the selection of music on my Walkman (ugh I need a WalkLADY, thank you very much) has gotten progressively less eclectic and exciting and increasingly... Pitchfork. I had had tons of modern death metal and Cajun music and Tresor v/a comps and deep house EPs and Arabic jazz and Huayno music and free improv, y'know, typical hipster shit, as I always joke, and now half of that has been replaced with... twee pop, Charming Hostess, the Magnetic Fields, more twee pop, the Velvets, Team Dresch, Simon Bookish, still more twee pop, Josephine Foster, Kimya Dawson, Gentle Giant, Hunx and his Punx, even motherfucking Doolittle. Honest-to-goodness typical hipster shit. I probably really need the first two Belle & Sebastian albums too but I don't wanna complete the Diablo Cody poseur hipster trifecta. All the stuff I listened to at 18, with dashes of what I listened to at 14. And as I write this I suddenly realize how incredibly pointless it is to beat myself up for having, at my core, less dorkily eclectic and global-minded and anti-rockist taste than I like to show to the world. Seriously, it doesn't matter. How many people in Columbus, GA even know who Charming Hostess or Free Loan Investments are? And even if my Walkman was filled with (recent) Lil Wayne and Montgomery Gentry, it'd still be okay, and probably better, because people who listen to THAT don't build this grand elitist narrative about their superiority to the Normals based on something as utterly meaningless as taste in the arts. Hey ho wait - didn't I say this blog wouldn't turn self-lacerating and overly personal? I guess I just needed to recognize that just because I don't go to RYM anymore, that doesn't mean all of the weird negative personality quirks (and not like fricking adorable awkward "indie" movie manic pixie dream girl quirks - and even those don't look good on a hairy morbidly obese tranny) that came with basing my entire life around consuming music have disappeared. And if my mp3 player is filled with twee pop instead of extreme metal and EAI, then, hell, maybe that makes it slightly easier to find someone (maybe someone queer and cute!) to actually relate to, at least musically. Hey, an indie pop girl can dream, right?
Since I stop rated music I've basically lost any interest in listening to new music - it seems obvious that that points out a fatal flaw in my enjoyment of music: what's the point, I say to myself, of listening to something if I can't catalog it and show that I listened to it to other people? In other words: why listen to new music if it doesn't increase my music nerd e-peen? The realization that my years of obsessively downloading and hoarding music are seemingly over is freeing and frightening, the latter because it makes me have to come to terms with how much time I've straight-up goddamn WASTED on a dick-measuring contest (and I don't even WANT the smallish-yet-still-too-large-just-by-virtue-of-existing cock I already fucking have!) the only meatspace results of which have been failing classes and creating an esoteric, elitist frame of reference and sense of aesthetics that alienates just about everyone I may try to relate to (though I did bond with an older guy at a Bahá'í feast over Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Cecil Taylor) when I should be creating art rather than merely acquiring and passively consuming it. And, on a much less important tip, I've realized that my habit these past four or so years of listening to tens of thousands of albums exactly once has actually backfired and made my taste even more banal and bourgeois and, yes, canon than it should be: since I gave up rating music, I've been craving nothing but comfort music, stuff I've heard a thousand times before, and in far too many cases that means music I listened to compulsively when I was a teenager, sometimes before I even had Soulseek or broadband - and that means white men with guitars far more often than I'd like to admit. Very rarely has music I've only encountered in the past three/four years been able to become comfort listening for me, because I've never given myself enough chances to get truly acquainted with it: thus I have a very small pool of albums I listen to when I need cheering up or empowerment or just something soothing: over the past week the selection of music on my Walkman (ugh I need a WalkLADY, thank you very much) has gotten progressively less eclectic and exciting and increasingly... Pitchfork. I had had tons of modern death metal and Cajun music and Tresor v/a comps and deep house EPs and Arabic jazz and Huayno music and free improv, y'know, typical hipster shit, as I always joke, and now half of that has been replaced with... twee pop, Charming Hostess, the Magnetic Fields, more twee pop, the Velvets, Team Dresch, Simon Bookish, still more twee pop, Josephine Foster, Kimya Dawson, Gentle Giant, Hunx and his Punx, even motherfucking Doolittle. Honest-to-goodness typical hipster shit. I probably really need the first two Belle & Sebastian albums too but I don't wanna complete the Diablo Cody poseur hipster trifecta. All the stuff I listened to at 18, with dashes of what I listened to at 14. And as I write this I suddenly realize how incredibly pointless it is to beat myself up for having, at my core, less dorkily eclectic and global-minded and anti-rockist taste than I like to show to the world. Seriously, it doesn't matter. How many people in Columbus, GA even know who Charming Hostess or Free Loan Investments are? And even if my Walkman was filled with (recent) Lil Wayne and Montgomery Gentry, it'd still be okay, and probably better, because people who listen to THAT don't build this grand elitist narrative about their superiority to the Normals based on something as utterly meaningless as taste in the arts. Hey ho wait - didn't I say this blog wouldn't turn self-lacerating and overly personal? I guess I just needed to recognize that just because I don't go to RYM anymore, that doesn't mean all of the weird negative personality quirks (and not like fricking adorable awkward "indie" movie manic pixie dream girl quirks - and even those don't look good on a hairy morbidly obese tranny) that came with basing my entire life around consuming music have disappeared. And if my mp3 player is filled with twee pop instead of extreme metal and EAI, then, hell, maybe that makes it slightly easier to find someone (maybe someone queer and cute!) to actually relate to, at least musically. Hey, an indie pop girl can dream, right?
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