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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!
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'm still vetting for the 2018 best of. There's still a shit-ton of albums to go through... and these are just my own finds. I'm still pulling 2018 releases I missed out of the thousands of artists I'm following on spotify and building that list. I haven't even started on the rest of the team's finds, or sifting through the reddit threads yet. I'm like a pig in horseradish for the next three months... so much good music.
I have found a couple I'm definitely putting in the list, though. These are gold. Consider it a preview of l2t best of 2018. ;)
When/how the hell did Darlingside go from ultra-obscure to 2 million followers? Last time I checked in on them was for the best of 2012, and damn, what a difference a couple years can make.
Oh, and if you are a Tom Waits fan, you should probably know about Ben Caplan. The man has a monster voice. Haven't spun his 2018 album yet but I'm sure it's crazy as hell and wonderful.
I feel very weird about this year. I've been active in hearing new things and it's not like the kind of music I like isn't being made enough or anythung, I've just been disappointed in the quality and consistency of new records compared to the last few years. It's probably the weakest of the century for me so far. The list of things I think are better than "okay" is quite short, and the list of things I'll care about for a long time is just...one?
I'm looking forward to having an aoty thread here and I'll probably check out some of what you're talking about to try and salvage this year.
Every year is a great year for music. Some years, you just have to do a little more cratedigging than others. What's your wheelhouse? I might be able to send some your way. Also I think we may do the actual group vetting here on Tildes, since nobody on reddit is ever really interested in helping out. We've got a google docs submission form that feeds into a rather sophisticated spreadsheet that @arghdos whipped up for us last year. Takes a lot of the pain out of the process and keeps everyone on the same page, makes it harder for albums to slip through the cracks.
We already know what all the major publications will put in their bestofs this year. Well, except NPR, they usually keep it fresh and interesting.
My main thing is hip hop (where the only artists who haven't either horribly let me down or left me unimpressed are Milo, Moodie Black, Black Thought, or Lil Wayne...the veterans there aren't exactly topping themselves), but I'm down to listen to any recorded music at all. The RYM, melon, and P4K year toppers are all letting me down, and so is everything else I'm stumbling upon.
This only contains things where I've heard a project in full, there's a lot of reasons things end up not on here, but I have a ranked list for this year if that helps.
Ah, not my wheelhouse though @parliament might be able to point you at some groovy stuff if you get into the trip-hop arena at all.
Edit: Also some gems can be had trolling HHH threads like this or this or perhaps this. Most suggestions are shit but there's always one or two comments in there from someone who knows what's up. If you find anything that blows your hair back be sure and let us know - we need hip-hop genre champions on the team. Most of the hip hop we're into is the... for lack of a more tactful way to put this... tame white boy variety. I'd love a good list from someone who's got the full span of the genre. ;)
Separating myself from Reddit also meant separating myself from HHH...but I think they kept me in a rut anyway. Thanks for the links, though...I'm certainly not done with this year. As whiny as I'm being here, I still genuinely believe there's always good stuff happening.
That man is an absolute genius. His Freestyle on HOT 97 with Funk Flex is still hands down the best that ever graced that station. It's 10 solid minutes of pure gold. But I have to agree, mainstream hiphop seems to be trapped in a bit of a doldrum right now. Even the new .paak was definitely not up to the same standards as his previous albums. I really thought him and Dre collabing would produce something truly magical, but it turned out to be incredibly safe and overall pretty disappointing.
There is still a lot of pretty solid "indie"/underground stuff being produced though. My favorites so far this year have been Pete Flux & Parental - Infinite Growth and Awon & Phoniks - The Actual Proof. They are both downtempo "oldschool" style hip-hop though, so I don't know if they will be to your taste. I come from a Tribe, Black Star (Talib+MosDef) and Soundbombing background so that's 100% my jam.
I heard I was summoned to this thread. To start, have you ever listened to Jazz Spastiks? I discovered them through Mark Farina's Mushroom Jazz series (volume 7).
I've been all over the place when it comes to listening to albums lately, but here's my 5 in a heavy rotation.
1877 - The Hopewell Furnace
BLack On BLonde - K-OS
Quiet World - Native Construct
Drunk - Thundercat
Tha Carter V - Lil Wayne
First band, The Hopewell Furnace, is a local band. The guys that make it up are pretty fucking cool honestly, and their music is heavy as shit. As for the other 4 albums, they've just been connecting to where I'm at in life right now.
Boggie - Parfüm - Hungarian song a friend of mine showed me. I can’t place why exactly I like it so much, but it’s been on repeat a few times this week. The video’s awesome, too.
Apart from that, I’ve discovered Sophie Hunger (Spotify). I’ve particularly enjoyed her Swiss German songs (my native language), e.g. D’Red (The Speech) and Z'Lied Vor Freiheitsstatue (The Song of the Statue of Liberty), but she has a lot of great songs in other languages too, such as the French Le vent nous portera.
There may be a trend that I enjoy songs in langugaes other than English more…
Fell in love with Brockhampton this year, I mostly listen to hip hoppy stuff like classic Eminem and Brockhampton. Sorry, really boring but I'm not really a big music guy haha.
This album got posted a few hours ago, so currently got it it playing at a somewhat formidable volume
Dubs On A Mission by Vibronics
Also been catching up on a few podcasts I've missed listening to over the last few months
The Epileptic Gibbon - one of my guilty pleasures is a bit of prog rock when no one's looking
The Voice Of Cassandre - always interesting people choosing interesting music
Experiment #508 - can be a challenging listen, but always worth it, in my opinion
Have also been re-trawling the huge catalogue of the much missed Muslimgauze
One of my favourite albums
Narcotic - Muslimgauze
If you enjoy any type of metal, I've been listening to the new albums by Architects [Holy Hell] and Fit for a King [Dark Skies]. They're both really good metalcore albums.
The past few weeks I've started going through all the releases I've found from 2018 and going through them all again to see if they'll make it on my year-end list. I've also listened to some stuff that I skipped over or that slipped by me earlier in the year.
After giving it a bit of a break, I can definitely say that MGMT's Little Dark Age is probably a top contender for me. It's just so dumb and fun with a really sardonic lyrical style. I definitely listened to this album on repeat when it had first released. It kind of surprised me because the only other MGMT album I found myself enjoying was Congratulations so it's nice to see they can still get my attention, even if not consistently.
Ross From Friends' Family Portrait was a huge find for me this year. It's kinda like lo-fi house music. It's got some great grooves and just overall a great listen while you're studying or working out. I had heard some of his earlier stuff but none of it really grabbed me like this one did.
This week specifically I've been trying to get into the new Panda Bear. I think it's got serious potential but still doesn't really reach the highs of his previous efforts. I'm liking the new direction in sound a lot more than what we got on PBMTGR though.
Been really into Ritual Necromancy's Disinterred Horror lately as well. I listened to it maybe once when it came out earlier this year but since coming back to it it's really pulled me in. Maybe it's just the weather but I really love listening to metal in the winter.
For anyone who wants to try some jazz:
Janek Gwizdala - The Space in Between
and bonus