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What have you been listening to this week?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
I dug out my good headphones for Housework Friday and put on Orbital's new album, Optical Delusion and damn it's good. Orbital very rarely, if ever, disappoint - especially with studio albums. They certainly didn't this time.
I have a theory and that theory is that Orbital are the best band of all time.
They're not my favourite band by any means although they're probably top ten. But the thing is, they've never put out a dud album, not in 30 something years (last year's retrospective album, 30 Something, is killer).
But who else can say that? Bowie couldn't. The Stones can't. Led Zepplin can't, nor the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Prince or The Who. Certainly not Metallica or Queen, U2 or Sabbath or anyone else who regularly makes it into lists of "best band ever" (lists in which Orbital NEVER feature, despite being one of the most important and influential electronic acts ever). I mean sure, Nirvana never did a bad album either but then they also only released three studio albums over four years. I don't think they are in quite the same league.
Anyway regardless of silly band-ranking nerdery (which is just that, silly and I do only for fun) it's an ace album, put it on, turn it up and enjoy!
All over the place.
HEALTH - Death Magic
Deftones - Around The Fur
Aurora - All My Demons Greeting Me As A Friend
Various extreme metal (as always) such as select tracks off of upcoming releases.
One of my most-anticipated ones is https://spiritpossession.bandcamp.com/album/of-the-sign
Absolutely wild guitar work- possibly AOTY contender already
Animals As Leaders - Parrhesia
Such a crazy good album from these guys. I feel like it has more soul than some of their other records. It’s not as technically challenging as some of their previous work… but that means nothing when these guys are arguably the best musicians on the planet. Red Miso for example is an extremely difficult song but they present it in a way that makes the normal listener enjoy the song without getting lost in all of their technical wizardry.
YouTube recommended a video and I went down a rabbit-hole of female Japanese musicians playing funk and jazz very well:
Here's the video it recommended:
Funk No. 1
The band is "Tokyo Groove Jyoshi" and the bass player is Juna Serita. Here's a video where she's leading some musicians doing their best Parliament imitation:
Princess of Funk
She joined another all-female band called "The Jazz Avengers." Here's a video I like from them:
Maybe I Know
The drummer is Senri Kawaguchi and they're playing a song that's originally from her first album, "A La Mode". Looks like she started the band. They originally played together as "Senri's Seven" for a film. Their first album is coming out soon.
Then I went looking for other jazz music and ran across this video by Hiromi Uehara who plays amazingly well. (And she seems to be really enjoying it, too? But it's showbiz so who knows.)
Dancando no Paraiso
In that video, the bassist is Anthony Jackson, who plays a special six-string bass guitar called a "contrabass guitar." Apparently he got a guitar maker to build one for him back in the 70's and now it's a thing. And the drummer is Steve Smith, who is apparently a famous drummer who used to play for Journey.
She's playing locally soon. Considering whether to get tickets, even though my attention span for complex jazz music is not high so I'm not sure I'd last for a whole concert.