24
votes
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.
Bob Dylan – Blood on the Tracks
Country: USA
Release Year: 1975
Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Folk Rock
Featured Instruments: 12-string guitar, banjo, bass, bass guitar, drums, guitar, harmonica, keyboard, male vocals, mandolin, organ, steel guitar
My response to the music: When love affairs go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong, and when it’s an artist who has fucked up and/or gotten his heart broken, it’s the fans who reap the benefits. So what’s going on here in this at once disjointed and unified narrative? Well, it all started when he got nervous as she bent down to tie his shoes, and then he realized she was his twin...he swears he can change...people don’t know how to act around him...he’s only known careless love...he’s hoping that the cliché is true, that the darkest hour is right before the dawn...but he’s face down, just like the Jack of Hearts...he gets a chill whenever he thinks about how she left that night...he remembers how she gave him shelter from the storm...he’s seen people disappear like smoke. He’s saying goodbye to more than just her, and the regret stabs through almost every song.
Elliott Smith – Roman Candle
Country: USA
Release Year: 1994
Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Indie Folk
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, cymbal, electric guitar, harmonica, male vocals, snare
My response to the music: This is not necessarily his best album, but he was writing and performing from a position of greater strength than on any of his other albums. There’s no such thing as a happy Elliott Smith album, but at least this one isn’t heartbroken. I think “Kiwi Maddog 20/20” needs to be uses as the soundtrack during an intimate drinking scene in a film.
Tom Waits – Small Change
Country: USA
Release Year: 1976
Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Piano Blues, Vocal Jazz
Featured Instruments: bass, cello, drums, male vocals, piano, tenor saxophone, viola, violin
My response to the music: This album seems to me to be a track by track play of a piano player working at a blues bar who likes to partake of the firewater along with the customers, so by the end of Side A, he’s had one too many, and he has to blame it on the piano. Apparently this is a common occurrence, though, because he alludes to his bad liver later on. But everything will be all right, because his shift is just about to come to an end, and he’s looking forward to getting off work and going home to see his girl.
Al Green – I'm Still in Love With You
Country: USA
Release Year: 1972
Genres: Southern Soul
Featured Instruments: baritone saxophone, bass, drums, guitar, male vocals, organ, piano, tenor saxophone, trombone, trumpet
My response to the music: I embarrass myself by trying to sing along to this joyful, wonderful album. I try to mimic that scratchy, sexy falsetto, and of course I fail. Who can compare to that illimitable bedroom voice?
Colette Magny – Colette Magny
Country: France
Release Year: 1965
Genres: Blues, Chanson, Chanson à texte, Vocal Jazz
Featured Instruments: female vocals, guitar
My response to the music: A clear influence on avant-garde singers like Catherine Ribeiro, Magny takes to this album with her simple guitar and her wonderfully expressive voice to sing blues songs in French and English, 10 of the 14 she wrote or co-wrote. As authentic a piece of expression as one can ever hope to find.
Archie Shepp – Attica Blues
Country: USA
Release Year: 1972
Genres: Soul Jazz, Jazz-Funk
Featured Instruments: alto saxophone, bamboo flute, baritone saxophone, bass, cello, cornet, drums, electric bass, electric piano, euphonium, female vocals, flugelhorn, flute, guitar, male vocals, piano, soprano saxophone, spoken word, tenor saxophone, trombone, trumpet, violin
My response to the music: This album is a beautiful mess, as if every ugly thing from its contemporary circumstances came tumbling out and—through the lens of an artist's vision, by the unpredictable arrangement of the detritus by a master's hand—coalesced into a powerful elegy for all those wasted lives, born out of everyday miracles and destroyed by everyday tragedies.
Colette Magny – Colette Magny (no streaming link)
Country: France
Release Year: 1967
Genres: Chanson à texte
Featured Instruments: double bass, female vocals, guitar, spoken word, vibraphone
My response to the music: Husky, feminine rawness couched in passionate protest music. Magny is the opera diva singing over the PA system at Shawshank, and I'm the baffled prisoner standing in the exercise yard. To this day, I have no idea what she's saying, but when I hear her voice, I feel free.
Renaissance – Scheherazade and Other Stories
Country: UK
Release Year: 1975
Genres: Symphonic Prog
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, bass, drums, female vocals, keyboard, male vocals
My response to the music: 1,001 nights. That's a long time to be a sex slave telling stories to your captor. Long enough to bear a couple children to him. I imagine Scheherazade being in labor, pushing out a baby while still keeping up her tale-telling to make sure the sultan wouldn't execute her in the morning. Oh, well. All's well that end's well, I guess. Set the tables for the festival and hire the minstrels! Scheherazade has survived her captivity by not cuckolding her rapist!
Dolly Parton – Jolene
Country: USA
Release Year: 1974
Genres: Nashville Sound, Singer-Songwriter
Featured Instruments: banjo, bass, drums, female vocals, fiddle, guitar, harmonica, piano, steel guitar
My response to the music: For me, this album is very much a case of Dolly calling me darlin' and inviting me to listen to a couple of her songs. She knows I'll love them, as everyone does, and based on the strength of those two tracks, the joy will carry me through the rest of the album, which probably isn't as good as I think it is...but are there any albums out there that have better starts to their Sides A and B?
Clementina de Jesus, Doca & Geraldo Filme – O canto dos escravos
Country: Brazil
Release Year: 1982
Genres: Candomblé Music, Work Songs, Jongo
Featured Instruments: afoxé, agogô, caxixi, female vocals, ganzá, jongo, male vocals
My response to the music: A folklore album, par excellence, since the music was discovered in the early 20th century among workers of African descent, these tunes being handed down from the mining slaves of yesteryear. An excellent musical document featuring soothing vocals and soft, natural percussion. Features instruments such as afoxé, agogô, caxixi, and ganzá.
Heilung – Futha
Country: Denmark
Release Year: 2019
Genres: Nordic Folk Music, Neo-Pagan Folk, Dark Folk
Featured Instruments: female vocals, male vocals, spoken word
My response to the music: The rave version of the Wardruna project, and that's not a criticism. I can see the lights strung up in the dark woods and the games of chase that suddenly turn...less than fun. But there are dark poetry interludes growled and hissed. This music is too bloodthirsty to be safe.
Gillian Welch – Revival
Country: USA
Release Year: 1996
Genres: Americana, Contemporary Folk, Singer-Songwriter, Alt-Country
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, bass, dobro, drums, e-bow guitar, electric guitar, female vocals, lap steel, male vocals, optigan, pedal steel, steel guitar, upright bass
My response to the music: Faded silver-nitrate moments of poor rustics struggling against the inevitable, putting their trust in Jesus and in barroom girls, roaming, scraping out a living, dying with a hated jar of moonshine in their hands.
Gillian Welch – Hell Among the Yearlings
Country: USA
Release Year: 1998
Genres: Americana, Contemporary Folk, Singer-Songwriter
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, banjo, bass, electric guitar, female vocals, hammond organ, kick drum, male vocals, piano, snare drum
My response to the music: As we are slaughtered in the prime of our strength, is not death more often premature than not? Running wild, bucking against the world, and then suddenly reaped by the invisible scythe. Look around at your fellow yearlings. This is, indeed, Hell.
Fẹla Ransome-Kuti and The Africa 70 – He Miss Road
Country: Nigeria
Release Year: 1975
Genres: Afrobeat
Featured Instruments: male vocals
My response to the music: What's with those droning, proggy keyboards in my groovy Fela music, and why does Fela make it work? How can he defy my expectations and turn everything he tries to gold? Those horns sound like echoing ducks holding a conversation across the expanse of a lake's surface.
Anthony Davis – Variations in Dream-Time
Country: USA
Release Year: 1983
Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz, Third Stream, Modern Creative
Featured Instruments: bass, bass clarinet, cello, clarinet, drums, flute, piano, trombone
My response to the music: This is bonkers. Piano, trombone, cello, bass, drums, flute / clarinet all in top form, often playing in overlapping time signatures, expressing such ominous beauty, like when a storm boils in the sky. It was Davis' intention to create compositions of interactive improvisation, perhaps this accounting for the dynamism of this recording. Think of this as a musical obstacle course, where Davis is the mercurial pace car.
Violent Femmes – Hallowed Ground
Country: USA
Release Year: 1984
Genres: Folk Punk, Cowpunk, Country Rock
Featured Instruments: acoustic bass, acoustic guitar, alto saxophone, autoharp, banjo, celesta, clarinet, cornet, drum set, electric bass, electric guitar, female vocals, fiddle, game call, harmonica, jew's harp, male vocals, marimba, organ, piano, sackbut, tenor saxophone
My response to the music: I just love it when people raised on religion have to wrestle with it, and what's more punk than playing explicitly religious music to a punk crowd, pissing them off in the process? As Brian Ritchie said, "it’s more punk to defy your audience than to play what they want to hear." Amazing that some high-schooler wrote all these songs.
Fela Anikulapo Kuti and the Afrika 70 – International Thief Thief
Country: Nigeria
Release Year: 1979
Genres: Afrobeat
Featured Instruments: alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, bass guitar, congas, drums, female vocals, guitar, male vocals, maracas, piano, sticks, tenor guitar, tenor saxophone, trumpet, valve trombone
My response to the music: More jazzy than I'd have expected from a Fela album, with a heavy emphasis on bold brass. Still, the groove dominates. I'm also surprised how the chanting vocals start in right away.
Margit Myhr & Erlend Apneseth – Slåttesong
Country: Norway
Release Year: 2021
Genres: Norwegian Folk Music
Featured Instruments: female vocals, hardanger fiddle
My response to the music: Solo female vocalist singing hymns a cappella in a foreign tongue? Yes, please! Of course a whole album of just that would be a bit too monotonous even for me, so it's quite nice that the tracks alternate between the soloist and explorations of the hardanger fiddle (an eight-stringed Norwegian instrument). This is a beautiful, understated, nuanced album that I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people found boring. As far as I know, the songs played here are not original compositions but traditional tunes.
Gillian Welch – Soul Journey
Country: USA
Release Year: 2003
Genres: Americana, Contemporary Folk, Alt-Country
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, bass, bass guitar, dobro, female vocals, fiddle
My response to the music:
You ever have a vocalist just totally resonate with you? Something about Welch's voice comforts and calms me, her storytelling more metaphor than narrative. It’s like… she sings from the perspective of someone who is content with being sad, clinging to the hope of better times.
Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
Country: UK
Release Year: 1968
Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Chamber Folk
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, classical guitar, double bass, drums, flute, guitar, harpsichord, male vocals, midi, soprano saxophone, vibraphone
My response to the music: I love the conflation in music of sex and religious experience. That album opener is like standing in a violin downpour at night. The instrumentation on track 2 is actually quite experimental, demanding the listener's ear. Then a walk in the wet garden after the downpour. If this music doesn't speak to you, it's because it doesn't speak to your heart. Because that's the only thing this album can speak to. The heart. I think this is the perfect album when you're returning home after staying out all night. I love how the harpsichord goes hard then silent then hard again. If music were an embroidered object, it would be some of these songs. This album is about turning points--when the rain gives way to clear skies, when the night gives way to the dawn--standing on the cusp of love. "Madame George" is spellbinding, the last song you listen to as the dawn comes, when you've been out all night and are dead tired but still enchanted by the memory of the stars. This is falling in love, not with a person but with an experience and a forgotten but remembered snatch of some whispered line. Here's that violin downpour again. Feel it on your face as you turn your collar up, as you turn your face toward home. This is an album detailing the life portals we must all step through, the last being death. I love that final moment of experimental dissonance. The music—like life—is over. The music is disrupted.
T. Rex – Electric Warrior
Country: UK
Release Year: 1971
Genres: Glam Rock
Featured Instruments: bass guitar, bongos, congas, drums, flugelhorn, keyboard, male vocals, saxophone, tambourine
My response to the music: Years ago when I told my friend I’d never heard this whole album before, he asked me what planet I’ve been living on. Well, sorry! My knowledge of music is really hit and miss. I knew “Bang a Gong (Get It On)”, but that was it. I guess I spent so much time on David Bowie that I just overlooked Marc Bolan. What charming dancing music this is! Put on the lipstick and eye shadow. Hold your guitar for me, right out there in front of you.
Moulettes – Constellations
Country: UK
Release Year: 2014
Genres: Chamber Pop, Art Pop, Progressive Pop
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, autoharp, bass clarinet, bassoon, cello, clarinet, double bass, drums, electric bass, electric guitar, female vocals, flugelhorn, guitar, hammered dulcimer, harp, lap dulcimer, male vocals, piano, pocket trumpet, synthesizer, tenor horn, trumpet, tuba, vibraphone, viola, violin, waterphone, wine glasses
My response to the music: Yet more down to earth than their sophomore album and also more progressive, for it's more rooted in this realm. This quintet is so damn talented, bringing in a lot of instruments you rarely hear in pop, such as the dulcimer and the bassoon.
Björk – Debut
Country: Iceland
Release Year: 1993
Genres: Art Pop, House
Featured Instruments: bass, drums, female vocals, hammond organ, harp, keyboard, male vocals, tabla
My response to the music: I adore “Venus as a Boy”, such a charming, wonderful, slightly freaky tune with lush strings to make it all better. This album indulges as much in the pounding club beats as it explores the more delicate side of Björk, liquid harp and all. I just can’t enough of Björk’s quirky, breathy, sometimes husky and cracked vocals. I might be overthinking this, but I feel like this album is a struggle between the ephemeral and the eternal, the pleasure-seeking of the nightlife and the object of its search: a lasting love.
Espers – The Weed Tree
Country: USA
Release Year: 2005
Genres: Psychedelic Folk
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, bass, cello, drums, female vocals, harmonium, male vocals, organ, recorder, synthesizer
My response to the music: It's got those tried-and-true English female harmonies going on, accompanied by some exquisite fingerpicking on the acoustic guitars. Actually, I hear a bit of Renaissance here, at least at the beginning. This album is a real hidden gem of psychedelic folk. Quite pastoral in overall feeling. The album takes a marked psychedelic turn on "Blue Mountain", but without losing the pastoral feel.
Світлана Няньо (Svitlana Nianio) & Олександр Юрченко (Oleksandr Yurchenko) – Lisova kolekciya
Country: Russia
Release Year: 2015
Genres: Avant-Folk
Featured Instruments: female vocals, keyboard
My response to the music: Weird folksy female vocals accompanied by nothing but a Casio keyboard, yet able to create a faerie feeling with modern means. I detect a strong water motif here--not the sea but rather forest streams and secluded ponds. Minimal yet lush at the same time. I can't help but wonder who Lisova is. Is she the singer, or are the songs about her? I'm thinking the latter.
David S. Ware Quartet – Godspelized
Country: USA
Release Year: 1997
Genres: Spiritual Jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz
Featured Instruments: bass, drums, piano, tenor saxophone
My response to the music: At this point, I’ve heard a lot of jazz, and I’ve heard a lot of saxophone in jazz, but my breath is taken by the refrain of the first track. It is, to my ears, perfect saxophone phrasing, making the most of its spiritual quality. It’s a deep cry of love and longing, and I won’t deny its immediate resonance with me. The rest of the album is excellent free jazz spiritual meandering. Piano, bass, and Ibarra’s drums accompany, none of them afraid to innovative around Ware’s explorations and ascensions.
Tim Buckley – Blue Afternoon
Country: USA
Release Year: 1969
Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Psychedelic Folk
Featured Instruments: 12-string guitar, acoustic bass, conga drum, drums, electric bass, guitar, male vocals, piano, vibraphone
My response to the music: There are all too often those moments in singing competitions where the singer hits the high note and sustains it for a long time, letting the voice vibrate out over the audience. If the note is held too long, applause will inevitably start, and then the cameras will zoom in on the celebrity judges’ faces. The judges know the cameras are on them, and so for the sake of ratings, they will pretend to wipe away tears as they, too, applaud with much manufactured emotion. Those are the moments of TV “magic” that make me recoil in horror. And then there are vocalists like Tim Buckley who are the antithesis of all that. His voice is a crafted instrument, and often he, too, will hold a note, but he’s not doing it for applause. In fact, often what he does—his extension and vibrato—can be a bit unsettling, which is just the effect he’s going for. When the TV competition singers go for those long, high, sustained notes, you know exactly where it’s all going. With Buckley, it’s always a refreshing surprise. Evocative, poetic, passionate vocals.
Angus & Julia Stone – Down the Way
Country: Australia
Release Year: 2010
Genres: Folk Pop, Indie Folk
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, banjo, bass guitar, cello, drum, drum programming, drums, electric guitar, female vocals, guitar, harmonica, keyboard, lap steel guitar, male vocals, moog synthesizer, pedal steel guitar, piano, timpani, trumpet, viola, violin
My response to the music: Every time I listen to this bro-sis duo, I get the sense of relaxed, sunlit days. Everything is chill, and everything is about a special kind of love.
Chico Mello / Helinho Brandão – Chico Mello / Helinho Brandão
Country: Brazil
Release Year: 1984
Genres: Modern Classical, Avant-Folk
Featured Instruments: acoustic guitar, alto saxophone, bass, bombo, bongos, cello, female vocals, guitar, male vocals, piano, soprano saxophone, surdo, triangle, viola, violin
My response to the music: Like a lot of avant-prog-leaning music from the late-70s to the mid-80s, this album has a highly experimental, sinister feel to it. There's a cold intelligence to this exploratory music, when playfulness is serious business.
Klaus Nomi – Za Bakdaz
Country: Germany, USA
Release Year: 2007
Genres: Art Pop, Classical Crossover
Featured Instruments: male vocals
My response to the music: Bizarre, interesting, experimental. With a lot of help from his friends boiling away the mere campiness of the singer, Klaus shines here in all his bold beauty, and though he died in the middle of making this "opera", the music spent a lot of time in studio cleanup, prepared by its songwriters.
I've been a fan of the Hallowed Ground album since my sister got the tape in the early 90s. Never Tell is still such a banger.
Also, my boss turned me onto Klaus Nomi a couple of years ago. As a huge King Diamond fan his vocal style really works for me.
Love your write ups and appreciate all the recommendations. One thing I have been missing since I left the other site is the jazz community there, so glad to get some recs in that vein here.
So glad to contribute to this growing community!
I’ve actually be diving into Tildes’ own user created music which I asked to hear in this thread - I want to hear your music!. I really am enjoying everyone’s own work this past week, but I’ve also been diving in to - Kaidi Tatham - Fricassee/The Only Way - Apple Music
Kaidi Tatham - Fricassee/The Only Way - Spotify
(Sorry… couldn’t find it on Last.fm)
Thanks for linking to that thread -- I have a bunch of stuff to listen to now(and I posted my music)!
Awesome! And you’re welcome. I’ll dig in when I get off work. We have a ton of great artists here.
Thanks for checking out LUCY Jeakams!
From that thread I've listened to Tildes' favourite Surf Curse, Violet Noise... and that's about it. Still need to listen to everyone else there cause it's a gold mine for music.
I quite like Northlane.
They are metal sounding with talented melodic vocalists.
Alphawolf is good too and Mastodon.
I have been listening to a lot of UKdrill.
Artists like K trap and Frosty.
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - PetroDragonic Apocalypse
Australian psych-rock band playing their take on prog/thrash metal. Incredibly fun with appealing sci-fi/fantasy weirdness.
Caterina Barbieri - Myuthafoo
Minimalist, drone-oriented music based on analog synthesizer loops, but with a big sound and cavernous reverb. Hypnotic and boldly introspective.
THE END - Why Do You Mourn
Spiritual free jazz meets noisy chamber rock. Lurching bass and baritone sax riffs overlaid with at times creepy vocals and wailing, moaning sax improv. Fascinatingly dark.
Mico - Zigurat
Colombian blackened hardcore. Some of the crunchiest, squealiest guitars in recent memory playing furious, complex-yet-catchy mathcore riffs. Seriously pissed-off vocals.
Methods Body - Plural Not Possessive
Ambient electroacoustic music with slightly sour, free-intonation microtonal tunings. Thoughtful and organic, good music to listen two while reading literary fiction.
Generated from my lastfm:
3x3
Found Crumb a few weeks ago and have been non stop listening to them. Great band. Also been listening to some Persona music (I love Persona), Drake, and Turnover (I discovered Peripheral Vision years ago, such a banger).
Currently been listening to some HC punk -
Other than the above, random chill/trip hop playlists on Spotify when working at my desk.
Sleep Token's Take Me Back To Eden has been my go to since release. Love that album.
Beyond that, Scar Symmetry released a new album that was pretty great. Also the new Vulture Industries album.
DJ Sabrina the Teenage DJ has been monopolizing my listening history for the past two years ever since she popped up on one of my Discover Weekly playlists. Last.fm describes her music as "outsider house", I would describe it as a 90s nostalgia fever dream. Each track is a weaving mix of far reaching samples blended together with an expert touch. Maybe a clip from a hallmark movie. Maybe a sample from the bridge of a 90s christian contemporary song. Maybe a clip from Celine Dion. All of that to say, the music itself is a v i b e.
Meaningful Stone and Asterism. The former is kind of a pop-indie Korean singer, and the latter is a three person Japanese metal band.
Some newly released albums I have on rotation this week:
Clark - Sus Dog
Been a big fan of Clark since Body Riddle (which still my favourite album of his). I thought I wouldn’t like this album as much as he does a lot more vocals than usual, but I’ve been enjoying it. Probably my favourite thing he’s released since 2014’s Clark.
Sigur Ros - ATTA
Just beautiful, cinematic, easy to drift your mind away and get lost in it.
Anthony Naples - Orbs
Super chill, super smooth. Loving this one for getting into a groove while working.
The last year has been one where I've really delved into jazz for the first time, after only dabbling previously, and part of that has been listening to all the big canonical albums. One of those is The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Coleman. I enjoyed this one when I first listened to it, but it didn't stick with me all that much. After my most recent listen I came away with a lot more appreciation. It's not all that out there, especially when compared with Ornette Coleman's later work as well as the rest of the free jazz movement, but some of the playing on this is just incredible. I think coleman may have moved into being one of my favorite saxophonists, he's great on this.
I just joined Tildes, so this is what I've been listening to the past month. I prefer to listen to music by the album, and I've linked to bandcamp when possible.
Metal
Violent Creed of Vengeance by Smoulder - If you like the sound of epic, fantasy themed heavy/doom metal with powerful female vocals, then Smoulder has plenty to offer. Violent Creed of Vengeance is their latest album as well as their best in my opinion. The heavy metal is prominently featured this time around compared to sharing the spotlight with doom in the past. I love the speed and aggression of Violent Creed, but I think the doom undertones are what really make Smoulder stand out.
Hive Mind Narcosis by Thantifaxath - Thantifaxath are masters of sinister, discordant, avant-garde black metal. There's just something so weirdly satisfying about Hive Mind Narcosis that I don't know how to put into words. This is definitely a musical niche I would hesitate to recommend, even to other metalheads, but I could listen to it all day.
Holoscene by The Ocean - No one does progressive post-metal better than The Ocean. Prog metal itself is already such a vast subgenre that the label has lost much of its identity for me. Holoscene further bends this lacking genre definition by adding a dose of ambient electronica. This fusion fits perfectly with my expectations from The Ocean. I hope the band doesn't completely shift away from metal, but I can't deny that Holoscene is a work of art. It's nice to have a conclusion to The Ocean's long running paleontology series.
Terrasite by Cattle Decapitation - Leave it to the vegetarians to deliver existential environmentalism in the form of deathgrind. Cattle Decapitation is back with another absolute ripper. It's always refreshing to hear their longer song lengths for deathgrind, and Travis' varied vocals continue to be an auditory marvel.
Black Flame Eternal by Cloak - Cloak is a pretty straight forward black 'n' roll band with gothic elements. However, they are damn good at it. Black Flame Eternal is no exception and definitely their best work yet.
Zwielicht by Mental Cruelty - A friend recommended this album to me. I hadn't heard of Mental Cruelty, and I try to listen to new bands chronologically. Starting at 2016, what I found was bland brutal deathcore with the usual guttural vocal noises that I can't help but laugh at. It wasn't all terrible (and improved as I moved along the discography), but I'm not too fond of this style of deathcore. Their 2021 album, A Hill to Die Upon, added symphonic elements and much more diverse riffs. Now they officially had my attention. Then Zwielicht took everything from A Hill to Die Upon, blackened it, and turned it up to 11. It is a phenomenal album, and I'm glad I didn't dismiss Mental Cruelty based off their older material.
Flesh + Blood by Judiciary - Judiciary is one of my favorite crossover thrash metal bands. Their previous releases leaned closer to the hardcore side of crossover. Flesh + Blood straight up shreds like there's no tomorrow while brimming with the seething anger of hardcore. It's a combo I can't refuse.
Jazz
Gift from the Trees by Mammal Hands - I absolutely love Mammal Hands. They are such an innovative jazz trio. I've listened to Gift from the Trees so many times. It's fantastic for soothing background noise or times of intense concentration.
Opus 127 by New Cool Collective & Alma Quartet - Beethoven's Opus 127 gets a one of a kind makeover in this awesome collaboration between New Cool Collective and the Alma Quartet. This is a fun, unique crossover that I didn't know I wanted. I wonder how Beethoven would react if he was around to hear it.
Ambient Electronic
Rock
Been going back to some classic Black Metal this past few days:
I've also been listening to Negator, a band which I've never listened to before, more specifically their album VNITAS PVRITAS EXISTENTIA, among a few other newer bands like Gallowbraid.
Here's my 3x3 from my last.fm account.
I started listening to The Killers once more and I have a (not so) teeny tiny obsession with "Somebody Told Me" and "Mr. Brightside", and I blame a certain episode off of The O.C. for this. Lovely songs, though.
What was sprinkled in through the week was lots of Britney Spears, a bunch of grunge/post-grunge and Alexandra Savior, much love to her music. That's been my week!
After falling in love with Black Dresses, I’d dove deeper into Ada Rook’s catalogue and found a new favorite album in last year’s UGLY DEATH NO REDEMPTION ANGEL CURSE I LOVE YOU. Retains her wild lyrics and experimental noise edge but with a much more industrial focus.
I’d also given Tove Lo’s most recent album, Dirt Femme, another chance and some of it is really coming around to me. Standouts being No One Dies From Love, 2 Die 4, and Grapefruit
No One Dies From Love and Grapefruit are bangers! Tove Lo is a little softer than my usual taste, but she is so talented.
Not sure if there are too many classical fans here, but I stumbled across a little suite of Sibelius gems that are known as the Tree Suite. I kinda love the idea that he was probably just sittin' outside watching some trees (birch, spruce, pine, rowan and aspen) and felt inspired to write some chill pieces.
I do have to admit that I've only been listening to The Spruce on repeat. I'm an absolute sucker for pieces that start with a few sparkly arpeggios followed by a lil waltziness.
If you're up for some more arpeggios, I'd also suggest Liszt's Un Sospiro. I literally feel like I'm floating away and transported into a different dimension when I listen to this piece. I think this may be my favorite rendition because of their tempo, ridiculously fluid way they transition between sections, and the clarity in the melody line, if that makes any sense. This is just personal preference though! I'd love to hear about other people's go-to renditions of this piece.
This week has pretty much been a back-and-forth of two albums:
Sinister - Diabolical Summoning
Sargeist - Let The Devil In
Post Animal put out a killer new album last year, and I pre-ordered the vinyl back when it dropped. I just got it last week and was surprised to find they had all signed it. So I been digging back through that one. A great underground band that gets better with every album.
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nMqn_bhMO0d6QpzBsXkQ7O6GgGzeNALsM
I have been mostly listening to Yelle and Deee-Lite this week! Here are a few of my favorites by each:
Yelle:
Deee-Lite:
I've been enjoying-
Mother Mother
Battle Tapes
Mystery Skulls
Dirt Poor Robins
Jenelle Monet
Ken Ashcorp
Scissor Sisters
Jenelle Monet's new album is lesbian and throuple bang music, and its fabulous. The rest is just a smattering of groups I love in heavy rotation.
I've been listening to Sleep Token pretty much non-stop. Their new album Take Me Back to Eden has been the best album of the year for me so far. Just discovered them about 4 months ago and I'm a little obsessed. Genre bending a little...they could fit Rock, Metal Core, Djent, R&B, Pop, and Progressive. Just depends on the song. Highly recommend Granite as a first listen. Aqua Regia, DYWTYLM, and The Summoning to get a feel for their diversity. Take Me Back to Eden is probably my favorite song on the album though.