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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.
Bleachers just today released A Stranger Desired, a 10th anniversary re-recording/reimagining of their debut album Strange Desire. I'm really digging on hearing the stripped-down, acoustic versions of songs I know so well.
I’ve just started listening to Poets of the Fall. Fantastic band I never would have found if it wasn’t for the amazing Alan Wake 2.
First, an aside: It's bandcamp friday! Support artists you enjoy on a day where BC pauses their fees/commission they take from artists.
Stuff I'm listening to not released last week or this week:
Webinar™ / Yokohama - Websurf split
Dark Chisme - Selftitled
Lo Tom - Selftitled and LP2
Otherwise, what I'm listening to usually deals with recent releases:
Faves from last week:
Concrete Winds - Selftitled
Pneuma Hagion - From Beyond
Modern Rites - Endless
Tycho - Infinite Health
Ploho - Почва
Faves/looking forward to this week:
Molchat Doma - Belaya Polosa
Tears Run Rings - Everything In The End
Pyrrhon - Exhaust
Kaikkivaltias / Silent Millenia - Varjolinna split
Officium Triste - Hortus Venenum
Robert Henke / Monolake - Studio
Korrosive - Katastrophic Creation
I was looking through some older New Wave stuff and found this band called Cowboys International, so I bought a fairly cheap single called 'Nothing Doing' and their debut album 'The Original Sin', both released in 1979. The single had a flexi-disc (thin plastic disk with grooves intended for promotional stuff) which was not on the Internet so I digitized it, which you can find on youtube here.
As for the actual band, I like them alot, they're obviously quite obscure but were made up of very famous people who went to join other bands (Notably the Clash and Public Image Ltd). The lead singer Ken Lockie seems to still maintain the band name and released a solo album in the 80s, but I can't comment on that. He apparently makes techno music nowadays, which is interesting.
The musical Dreamland!! It's Midsummer Night's Dream set at Area 51, with aliens* instead of fairies. Incredibly fun, highly recommend!!
* but there are no aliens, no, no, no aliens, there are no aliens, No! No! No! There are no aliens, no, no, no aliens, there are no aliens! N! O!
I picked up a copy of the “new” Sun Ra album Pink Elephants on Parade. It’s an album full of covers of Disney songs culled from his performances over the years.
If you enjoy Sun Ra’s “perfectly controlled chaos jazz,” as my wife puts it, then it’s a fun listen.
Marietta - As it Were - further cementing Philly as my current musical spiritual home
MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks - Love Wednesday and "Joker Lips" sold me on this album.
Oops, realize I commented on this a few days ago. Just saw the thread and commented again out of habit, thinking it was a new thread, esp since I just finished summarizing my faves of last week on my blog, so I'll post those below, since it offers some commentary instead of a list.
Listening to / finding some underground punk/crust/hardcore/etc demos and tapes and such.
Aside from that, listening to my faves from last week (Week of Sept 6th releases). Here's the breakdown:
Non-metal
Molchat Doma - Belaya Polosa
Belarusian post-punk/new wave/synthpop. Cold and dark with a wonderful deep, low singing vocal. Melancholic, introspective, and heartfelt while feeling industrial and machine-like at the same time. Strong "silently staring out the window on an overcast day" vibes.
Tears Run Rings - Everything In The End
Portland, Oregon dreampop/shoegaze. Reverb and recessed vocals as you'd expect. Stays on the softer side of the genre. Dreamy and atmospheric with sounds that remind me of Starflyer 59 and Mew. The darker edge of the former, and the shiny crispness of the latter.
Robert Henke / Monolake - Studio
IDM / ambient / electronica from composer Robert Henke. Minimal, glitchy, industrial, rhythmic. Not overbearing like some electronic genres can be. This is subtle and heavily focused on percussion.
Extreme heavy music (harsh vocals)
Pyrrhon - Exhaust
Dissonant, progressive death metal from New York. Mixes of high and low growls. Changing tempos. Plenty of stressful sounding chords and melodies that often change to more standard sounding death metal in parts. Stays interesting and quite chaotic.
Officium Triste - Hortus Venenum
Death/doom that instantly recalls similar acts like Swallow The Sun and November's Doom. Beautiful, atmospheric, melancholic swells of melody with a harsh deep vocal layered on top to provide the despair. The contrast of the two works so well. It feels heartfelt and sincere.
Korrosive - Katastrophic Creation
Thrash but on the extreme end. Firmly in thrash territory musically (as opposed to death/thrash) but has fairly vicious and sharp vocals and overall there's an edge to this musically that makes it a step above a lot of the overly cheesy thrash out there that just falls short of making good music. Great solos, riffs, and mixing.
Kaikkivaltias / Silent Millenia - Varjolinna split
2nd side available here. Kaikkivaltias' side of the project is majestic castle-black-metal. A more raw/DIY form of something you'd expect from bands like Weald & Woe and Obsequaie. Silent Millenia's side is melodic black metal heavy on keyboards/synths but guitars too. Balanced well, and has the appropriate level of "synth cheese" to work here.