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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.
Kyoto - Phoebe Bridgers: More upbeat than her other songs, with some really satisfying trumpets in the chorus.
Timefighter - Lucy Dacus: Her voice is so velvety smooth and the guitar riffs in this thing as it ramps up are so cool. One of my faves.
I Believe in You - Kacy Hill/Francis and the Lights: Classic catchy, synthy, pop-y Francis production, complete with a silly dance.
Guilty Conscience - 070 Shake: Really catchy and ethereal alt hip-hop. 070's voice is super interesting to me, has a cool edge to it.
Unmoved (A Black Woman Truth) - Ayoni: Absolutely gorgeous vocals on this, particularly in the chorus.
Fire in Bone - The Killers: Coolest new Killers song I've heard in a hot minute. Grew on me over multiple listens.
I saw Lucy Dacus last summer at Mitski's last show of her cowboy tour, it was a great time. She seems like a really thoughtful and collaborative musician and I'm excited to see her continue to work.
I enjoyed expanding my horizons this week by listening to Royal Music: Sounds From Uganda (1950-1952), a recording of traditional Ugandan court musicians by an ethnomusicologist in the 1950s. Apparently the instruments and knowledge of how to play them were lost when the palaces were crushed by the Ugandan Army in the 1960s, so these recordings are the last remaining testament to a proud musical tradition.
That's some cool stuff. The sound is really good too.
I've been slowly making my way through the recommendations over in my Bandcamp thread. I've listened through almost everything there once and am returning to stuff I liked to get more comfortable with them and see if I want to purchase them. Nevertheless, there were a few that were instant-buys from me and got entered into immediate rotation:
This is straight up pop perfection. Incredibly catchy, eminently listenable, fun to sing along to, and not a bad track from start to finish. I've had "Good Intentions" on repeat since I've heard it. Its bridge is musical magic.
Their sound is simple and down-to-earth, but so satisfying. Great vocals and great writing. I'm also a sucker for a solid opening song, and "Great No One" makes me want to listen to the rest of the album every time I hear it. I haven't ventured into Jump Rope Gazers, their second album that they just put out, but I'm excited to get to it once I've worn out my welcome with this album.
This was actually recommended by someone a while back who I'm sad to see has since vacated their account here on Tildes. It's a rich, folksy album with decadent vocal harmonies across the entire album. It's gorgeous. "Living Room, NY" is probably the best slice of the album and really captures its soaring, resonant feel.
I imagine over the coming weeks I'm going to be slowly folding many of the recommendations from that thread into my library, as well as some stuff that I've found and explored on my own. I mentioned in another comment that I'm pretty much sick of my music library at the moment having listened to everything in it for years now, so I'm excited to dip my toes back into the waters of music discovery and really freshen up a lot of what I'm listening to.
Glad that you ended up enjoying Magdalena Bay so much. Definitely check out some of their previous releases too—I really like a few of the tracks on "mini mix vol. 1" (video version), which I think they said was a set of not-totally-fleshed-out tracks. It's only 12 minutes total for 6 tracks, but it's great.
Overall I think "The Girls" would take first place for their song I've put on repeat the most. It doesn't look like it's even available on their Bandcamp, just a single that's on Youtube/Spotify/etc.
I just got turned onto The Beths as well! I can't recall if that came from one of these threads or from reddit (probably mentioning their new album), but I've been listening to their discography nonstop for the last couple of weeks.
I've kept going with rateyourmusic top albums, listened a lot to LP1 by FKA twigs, Blonde by Frank Ocean and Symbolic by Death, all solid albums.
These days the youtube algorithm has blessed me with this Japanese singer, I really like it for some reason, it has this old school vibe and the singing is real nice.
I've been listening to the smooth jazz instrumentals playlist compiled by Pekka Martikainen. You can find it on Spotify. There's so many great, easy listening tracks on that playlist. My favourites are the ones without saxophone or trumpet, usually. There's just something I really love about jazz without brass... I need to refine my googling skills in order to find a treasure trove of this stuff haha.
I finally had a chance to hear Virus, the new Haken album, which was released last week.
It's good, but I don't think it's great. As always it will take a few more listens to form a final opinion, and I haven't looked too closely at the lyrics yet, but I already know I like it more than their previous album Vector. I still prefer the more symphonic sound of their early works though.
(Releasing an album named Virus during a pandemic appears to be a coincidence. According to the band they had the initial ideas for this album way back in 2017, when they were writing their previous album. The two are loosely connected.)
Spotify
YouTube
I really enjoyed Virus. Though there isn't much by Haken I don't like.
Pink Floyd, Meddle and the new one from Imperial Triumphant.
Oh, heaps of King Crimson as well.
TODAY
To kind of my own surprise, an instrumental of Beyoncé; Crazy in love, mainly for the trumpet, which I know was sampled, but it's used more in this song than the original, and because personally I prefer this key/tune than the original one. Unfortunately the lyrics are just generic 2000s pop music stuff.
I don't know why, but I associate that trumpet melody with (the idealized remaking of) the 80s and and people just hyping Reagan into office with not the slightest care in the world. Just an animating feeling.