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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've been back in my usual multimonth dive of King Diamond and Mercyful Fate. I keep getting stuck listening to "The Eye" over and over but I'm trying to dig deeper into the mid and later King Diamond albums.
I've also been listening to Endless Wound by Black Curse and Eroded Corridors Of Unbeing by Spectral Voice. Along with Blood Incantation there's gotta be something in the water in Colorado for such nasty and "out there" death metal.
It helps that those three bands share a lot of the same members
Elder - Lore (stoner doom from New England). This was one of the first albums I bought after broadening my metal tastes by actively listening to different things in r/metal. While the followup album Reflections of a Floating World is a better album, Lore has better songs, and the subsequent Omens honestly just feels like more of the same. Check out the first track, "Compendium", for a good example of this band's sound.
Embers of Oblivion - Widdershins Path (melodeath from the Netherlands in the vein of At the Gates).
Emperor - Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk (Norwegian black metal!)
Empty Tremor - Apocolokyntosis (progressive from Italy). Released in the late 90s as part of that era's surge of Dream Theater clones. This was their debut album and is quite good, personal highlight being the shortest track "Slice of Life"; with their sophomore album Eros and Thanatos showcasing improved musicianship and song structure; third album The Alien Inside going a more straightforward approach. I can't speak to their fourth album Iridium because I don't own it and haven't listened to it. The story I like to say about Apocolokyntosis is that this is an album from some guys in Italy, who sing in English, that I purchased the Japanese import version of from a store in France.
Some things I've purchased this week:
Ars Onirica - II (Lost), melodeath/doom that reminds me of Rapture & Novembre
Blood Incantation - Interdimensional Extinction, their first EP
Gorement - The Ending Quest, considered by many to be the perfect death metal record. It's good but I wouldn't say it's perfect...
Eternal Storm - Come the Tide, melodeath from Spain
Man Elder is so good. Personally I like Lore a lot more than reflections, but that could just be some nostalgia since Lore is the album that got me into Elder.
recent metal/metal-adj releases: Blood Oath, Tomb Mold, Bruxa, Imperial Crystalline Entombment, samples of stuff coming out this week
non-recent metal: Inherits the Void, Cognizant, Archspire
other: all of my typical morning commute synth/pop/indie artists (Now Now, David Bazan, Pedro the Lion, Chvrches, Tokyo Police Club)
Babymetal. Saw them live with Dethklok at the Toronto show. Had never listened before and was blown away. Now I'm hooked
The new surprise The National album. I absolutely love everything they put out but this one especially I've enjoyed a lot. I love it when established musicians go back to their roots, and this album has lots of themes from their earlier Americana/Folksy work from Cherry Tree and their self titled album that we haven't heard from them in decades.
This short documentary on 90s jungle music in video games introduced me to Soichi Terada, who I've been listening to for a good chunk of my available time to just have music in the background.
Specifically I've been listening to a compilation done with Terada's permission, Sounds from the Far East, and his new album Asakusa Light.
I don't want to paint it as exotic or anything, but there's equal parts nostalgia and novelty for me here because there's stuff I've heard in Asian shops as well as TV and radio around me* with just a general vibe reminiscent of Terada and his peers who influenced games coming out of Japan, with the genre underpinnings of House (4/4 beats, rhythm interplays between elements, etc). It's all new, but also some somewhat familiar.
I found the old technical drawings for the first loudspeaker I built last weekend, which put me down a memory lane with the first music I listened to on my first Hi-Fi (Rotel + Marantz classics, plus the loudspeakers).
What’s been great has been listening to whole albums again for the first time in a while, instead of just endless playlists recommendations.
No surprising or hidden treats here, instead it is just some of the biggest hits (at least in my world view at the time):
Dire Straits - Alchemy
Jamiroquai - Emergency on Planet Earth
Sting - Ten Summoner’s Tale
U2 - Joshua Tree
and Bruce Springsteen - Streets of Philadelphia (song). This was the first song I had on MP3 for which I had to buy a new Cyrix CPU (PR233-MMX) with MMX-instructions to be able to play back. It was a couple of years after I built the stereo, but part of the same period of my life.
I like listening to music for most of what I do during a day. But nothing beats the strong memory connection you get by listening back on old favorites.
Thanks. I hadn't heard of this.
Somehow Jamiroquai caused Youtube to suggest the Dead South Live at the House of Blues. I like it
Glad you liked it! Jamiroquai, in addition to having a name you never can spell right without triple checking, manage to always keep their own, recognizable, unique sound (and hats), which I really appreciate.
Thanks to your suggestions in the other thread, I found this, which is lovely. I really enjoyed your original suggestions also.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-LtCbPUoTM
Aurora - Nature Boy (acapella) - Melkweg-Amsterdam-The Netherlands 2018-02-28
I think you might dig this podcast!
https://www.earwolf.com/episode/u-springin-springsteen-on-my-bean-born-to-run/
Its Scott Aukerman (from comedy bang bang) and Adam Scott (from Parks and Rec, Severance), covering the Bruce Springsteen discography in a very comedic fashion. They also have done seasons of this show covering U2, R.E.M, and the Talking Heads. It's a very funny podcast, but also entertaining to listen to if you genuinely love those bands.
Quite a bit of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin%27s_Marvelous_Mechanical_Museum_(album).
I keep finding "new music" and find out the original artists/bands have passed away or broken up long ago. Ie Zard or T-ara 😂
I listened to the latest Blur album "The ballad of Darren". It's a great album, and I really didn't expect that level from a band that hasn't put anything out for a while.
The newest TesseracT (British Progressive Metal band) album, War of Being. With the song War of Being, being the first song that I had heard from them, when it was released as a single. Found the band Imminence, which is a metalcore band from Sweden. What sets them part is that their lead singer, also plays the violin in the songs that they do.
Tried the German Deathcore band We Butter the Bread with Butter, which is a interesting name. They are interesting to say the least, not entirely sure if I like them or not. Right now they are in the not for me side of things.
Listened to "Desolation" by Imminence. Sounds interesting, I may have to spend some more time listening to them. Thanks!
The new Oomph! and Sincere Engineer albums. I'm glad the rest of Oomph! is continuing without their former singer, the new singer sounds great to me. I had already heard some of the Sincere Engineer songs as single releases + their set at Four Chord Music Festival. Great new albums from both bands.
I’m a pretty big Switchfoot fan, and I went to the Beautiful Letdown 20th Anniversary concert last week. Since then, I’ve been working my way back though all the albums to see if I missed anything (rare) or removed stuff I should have kept from my main all-library playlist (frequent). 9 albums in, so far, with 3 and a long EP to go. Then I’ll probably go back through Jon Foreman’s solo stuff again.
Black Celebration, by Depeche Mode. I have a thing for 80s synthpop, and "But Not Tonight" is an absolute experience.
Alongside that, a lot of Gigi D'Agostino, really. Italodance is an often overlooked genre, and my go tos have been "Silence" and "Parole Parole" .