9
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.
Been a while since I bought any new music, so I trawled some of my RSS feeds for reviews and ended up finding a few things I liked enough to pick up:
Brothers of Metal - Fimbulvinter (2024) (bandcamp link) - Ultra cheesy power metal. One of those bands where I'll probably always blindly buy their new releases because I love this nonsense so much.
The Vision Bleak - Weird Tales (2024) (bandcamp link) - Gloomy, atmospheric gothic metal. It's a concept album that references the works of various horror and pulp fiction authors (like H.P. Lovecraft) so it ticks all the boxes for stuff that I'm a huge nerd for.
Silhouette (bandcamp link] - I grabbed both of their albums after sampling a couple songs because they're so damn cool. Black metal from France with clean female vocals. I don't speak French so I have no idea what any of the songs are about but they're great!
Oh and I also bought a copy of Sabrina Carpenter's Short n' Sweet after seeing her Tiny Desk Concert to add to my miniscule-but-growing collection of pop music I don't hate.
That Vision Bleak album has rarely left the decks since release, easily one of my favorites from last year! Love the dynamics throughout, main reason I think the 'one track' concept works so well.
Recent stuff:
Maisie Marra - 1991
Dream-pop from Ireland. Gentle minimal drums layered with reverbed guitars, soft bass, and twinkling keys and synths that build. Simple beautiful, heartfelt vocals given plenty of dreamy space, that fit perfectly on top.
Jameel Na'im X - For My Kid's Kids
Just now discovering this hip-hop artist from New Orleans. Laid-back storytelling hip-hop with some instrumental soul flair underneath.
Lab Rat - Selftitled
D-beat hardcore punk from Portland, OR. Short grind-length high-energy tracks. Piercing, sharp, aggressive vocals. Walls of buzzing guitar tone.
Tharmazegethuzan - Beasts of Black Smoke
Raw black metal from PA. Tense, worming guitar riffs. Noisy and raw drums. Reverb-heavy shrieking vocals. Not too raw and not too clean, just icy and grimy and perfect.
World Eaters - Hounds of Blood
Canadian 40K-themed death metal. Straight-forward heavy, plodding death metal riffs. Prepare to be bulldozed and chainaxed.
Other stuff not recent:
Violent Magic Orchestra - Death Rave
Black-metal-inspired cyberpunk techno/electronic music from Japan with one absolutely killer album cover and guest spots from a lot of well-known names in metal.
Altar - Youth Against Christ
A band that reminds me of Deicide in its very on-the-nose (almost unintentionally humorously so) anti-Christian themes and also reminds me of them sonically in some ways, but this being an older record has a more classic production and mix that sounds really good and enjoyable. A bit of a guilty pleasure, in a way. Snack food metal I guess.
Sargoth - Lay Eden in Ashes (YT Link)
Recently discovered this 1998 Swedish black metal release and highly recommend it! Fast, punchy near-industrial-sounding drums that remind me of Mysticum. Crispy, crunchy, buzzy guitar tone. Classic black metal shrieks. Fun songwriting with plenty of little extra bits of flair thrown in- starts and stops, tempo changes, and so on. All of this melds together perfect with just the right amount of production and a proper mix.
I don't usually listen to power metal, but a black metal youtuber mentioned Powerwolf in an offhand comment and I have been trying to conceal my internal head banging all week at the office. I especially like their latest album Wake Up The Wicked.
I've been enjoying Gaspard Augé's (Justice) work released under the name Musclorvision: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d14tkC_v3Z8
Over the past couple of years I've done a better job of looking up the names of people in bands that I enjoy and finding their solo work / other bands. It's often very rewarding!
I do this also, and it leads to really good finds. Didn’t know the album you linked, thanks for that!
With hip hop, it also works by looking up the producer of music you like and find other artists produced by them. I’ve found some producers always produce great albums, no matter who the rapper is.
Same can be done with small labels. Often multiple groups or artists under the same small label are awesome.
David Bowie - Blackstar
Somehow slept on this when it came out, it’s incredible. Some of his best work.
Jean-Yves Thibaud - The Magic of Satie
Just a solid collection of Erik Satie piano pieces. Understated and calm, but a lot to dig into if you listen closer.
Downhill2k01 - Butterfly Tetrad
Found this as the background music of a IG video of a panda tumbling through the snow. That’s pretty much what it sounds like. Think Aphex Twin’s prettier, more melodic moments.
The Primitives' 1988 LP Lovely. There were a few songs that were just okay, but the album as a whole is so thoroughly good that it took me by surprise. The first song, "Crash" is the best, and the only one I'd heard before. I'm glad I gave this album a chance.
Because I enjoyed her in Wicked so much, this whole past month I've been listening to a lot of Ariana Grande. I was never an active fan of hers, I liked her in Victorious and would like songs I heard from her on the radio such as Love Me Harder and thank you, next. But this was the first time I've gone through her discography.
eternal sunshine was great, and I think if I had listened to it when it came out Grande would have been a top artist for me and yes, and? would have been in my top 5 songs on Spotify. I think it's one of my favorite albums of 2024 alongside Hit Me Hard and Soft and Prelude to Ecstasy.
Positions surprised me a lot, it's an inventive sound. The track "shut up" caught my attention particularly due to the use of violin, the opening reminded me of Max Richter's On the Nature of Daylight.
I feel like I've been missing out on her music all these years. I knew she was talented but not this talented and exciting.
I'm listening to R.E.M. back catalogue (well, I suppose it all is their back catalogue now sadly).
I skip the albums that have the extended live stuff in as I'm really only interested in their studio work.
From the first album to the last, then I'll do it all again.
Two vocaloid producers(Vane Lily and JamieP) I like combined with an another (ricedeity) to create a group called FLAVOR FOLEY and they have a few songs up, I've been listening to them mostly this week.
weathergirl / Eleanor Forte - Saddest song in the group, hits hard in the rain.
Water the Roses / GUMI - On the calmer, sadder side compared to the rest of the songs. The instruments and the chorus tickle my brain in a way I can't explain.
炜WARD ROMANCE / Feng Yi - Great, energetic. I've been craving for a Chinese-inspired since Shadow Assasins. I just wish the slow part(pre-drop? I don't know what it's called, I mean the part at 1:31) was longer.
rawdog / Hayden - ...Eh, nice song? I wasn't expecting a song this explicit when I clicked on it. Still liked it though.
BUTCHER VANITY / Yi Xi - BUTCHER VANITY is apparently their first song, I didn't notice it was from FLAVOR FOLEY 'til now. I listened to BUTCHER VANITY a lot and I'm currently burnt out from it so I haven't listened to it this week but I'll list it here for completion's sake.
I randomly learned of JamieP recently because I happened across the surrealism of Shrimp Miku.
GigaP also recently released the Vocaloid version of the No Title on streaming, at long last. So now we have the album versions of Hibikase, Drop Pop Candy and No Title on Spotify and such. The only version on commercial streaming for years is the version with Reol singing, which definitely isn't bad, but those don't fit on my Vocaloid playlists. (Related to that, I didn't put a video link for the song names No Title, because only the Reol version has been officially released in video form to date; the No Title+ Miku version is only on that album.)