- Grandaddy - Under the Western Freeway
- Take a trip, join me in the sun / But not really though, 'cause I ain't having fun. "Laughing Stock", "Summer Here Kids", "A.M. 180"
- Aragon - Aragon
- Imagery: '80s Japanese townhouse; late afternoon light coming through a crack in the shoji; mahogany, cream and dark shades of brown. It's cool how well a group of session musicians meshed when creating what I've heard was intended to be the soundtrack to a film that was never made. I can't get over Kazuhiro Nishimatsu's vocals; he seems to have just released a couple of singles in the '80s, sung on this, and fell off the radar. Is he, like, an accountant now? "手編の音符", "家路", "Horridula".
- Double Virgo - Eros in the Bunker
- ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ – )✧⃛*
- XTC - English Settlement
- "Runaways", "Snowman", and "Jason and the Argonauts" are good songs, but other than that each song feels like 5-6 minutes of a guy satirizing British society in an over-the-top cartoon voice. They did the same shit on Black Sea: "people are greedy and violent and they are pretending that they are not greedy and violent." "bad things are happening and people are trying to pretend that they aren't happening." Almost every one of this band's songs is a variation on the same theme. I will grant it that every song is musically distinct and can understand the appeal of most of them, but some are actively annoying, mostly because of the singing. I like "Snowman" specifically because it's about a personal relationship, which is a lot coming me. It gets me thinking of how music isn't always universal. Maybe my frustration stems from my inability to relate to an album that came out 40 years ago in a country I've never been to.
- 2019 Four Tet single - ⣎⡇ꉺლ༽இ•̛)ྀ◞ ༎ຶ ༽ৣৢ؞ৢ؞ؖ ꉺლ – ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(ƟӨ)ʃ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡ ꐑ(ཀ ඊູ ఠీੂ೧ູ࿃ूੂ✧ළඕั࿃ूੂ࿃ूੂੂ࿃ूੂළඕั✧ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ɵੂ≢࿃ूੂ೧ູఠీੂ ඊູཀ ꐑ(ʅ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡(ƟӨ)ʃ͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡͡
- Really dig the treefrog sample.
- Raime - Tooth
- James Ferraro - Cold
- "Sentinel"
- Pink Floyd - Meddle
- Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One
- The Mars Volta - De-Loused in the Comatorium
- Radiohead - A Moon Shaped Pool
- Yo La Tengo - Painful
- Konrad & Wolfgang - 10 kW/h (1973-1977) (discs 1 & 2)
- Honeydip - Portable Audio Science
- Circulation - Colours
- 0comeups - Creek Don't Rise
- Meshuggah - Chaosphere
- Ismistik - Remain
- Growing on me.
- Move D - Kunststoff
- Pteranodon - Pteranodon 2
- A Beautiful Machine - Home
- "Home"
- loveliescrushing - Xuvetyn
- "Virgin Blue Eyed"
- Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
- Scott Cortez - Twin Radiant Flux
- Transient Waves - Transient Waves
- Tokyo Shoegazer - Moondiver
- "Into the Deep Sky"
- Scarling - Sweet Heart Dealer
- "Can't (Halloween Valentine)", "Crispin Glover", "Band-Aid Covers the Bullet Hole", "Alexander the Burn Victim".
- Terje Rypdal, Miroslav Vitous & Jack DeJohnette - Rypdal - Vitous - DeJohnette
- Jan Garbarek - In Praise of Dreams
- "Conversation With A Stone"
- Maya Ongaku - Approach To Anima
- This is a must-revisit.
- Swayzak - Himawari
- Junior Boys - So This Is Goodbye
- Moving into a new apartment shouldn't be as depressing as it is.
- Ride - Going Blank Again (2/2)
- I believe this is my first listen-through. "Time of Her Time", "OX4", and the B-side "Going Blank Again".
- And Also The Trees - Green Is The Sea
- Massive Attack - Heligoland
- How does it feel to kneel at the feet of the choices you make? First listen all through. "Flat Of The Blade", "Paradise Circus", "Saturday Come Slow".
- Ride - Going Blank Again (1/2)
- Swayzak - Shape Memory Effect
- Come - Gently, Down The Stream
- Laid - Starlight City EP
- Monster Movie - Last Night Something Happened
- "Shortwave", "Winter Is Coming".
- Camera Obscura - Biggest Bluest Hi Fi
- "Double Feature", "Eighties Fan".
- Cabaret Voltaire - Red Mecca
- Kvist - For Kunsten Maa Vi Evig Vike
- Tristan Magnetique - 3
- Silent Watcher of Dark Matter - Deep Space
- Silent Watcher Of Dark Matter - Installation
- Uploaded this obscurity on YT almost a year ago without listening to it. It's pretty good.
- Steve Tibbetts - Northern Song
- John Foxx - Cathedral Oceans
- Zero Ohms - Atma-spheric Surfaces
- Lux Aeterna - Terje Rypdal
- Pat Metheny - Bright Size Life
- Kenny Wheeler - Gnu High
- Terje Rypdal - Terje Rypdal
- Rainer Brüninghaus - Freigeweht
- Trentemøller – Trentemøller EP
- Grapefruit - Light Fronds
- Volahn - Aq'Ab'Al
- Surprised to see this categorized as black metal, seeing as it's pretty dynamic, melodic, and overall enjoyable. In fact, it sounds closer to post-hardcore/screamo, especially the melodic guitar parts, some of which wouldn't sound out of place in a Pretty Girls Make Graves song.
- "Najtir Ichik"
- Grand Belial's Key - Judeobeast Assassination
- Great riffs, supposedly hateful lyrics, but I can't understand what the fuck the guy is saying.
- Christina Kubisch - Sechs Spiegel
- Boo Williams - Home Town Chicago (2/2)
- Various Artists - Apollo
- Mecano - Autoportrait
- Second listen since last August. I like the eclectic tracks like the first three and "Autumnmatic Play", but the three standard post-punk songs fail to make an impression.
- Tones On Tail - Pop
- "Lions"
- And Also The Trees - The Klaxon
- Wire - Document & Eyewitness
- "And Then...Coda"
- Boo Williams - Home Town Chicago (1/2)
- Manuel Göttsching - Die Mulde
- Earn - Hell On Earth
- M. Geddes Gengras - Enduring Doubt
31 May 2023
- Gavin Bryars - The Sinking of the Titanic, performed by Philip Jeck and Alter Ego
- Mark Fisher. The vinyl crackle at the beginning was surprisingly pleasant.
- Rob Preston - Insect Mechanics
- Porcupine Tree - Moonloop (Unedited Improvisation)
- Darkstar - North
- Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
- Mercury Rev - All Is Dream
- And Also The Trees - (Listen For) The Rag And Bone Man
- Burial - Burial (last quarter)
- "Wounder"
- Günter Schlienz - Orphée Aux Enfers
- Jack Jutson - Mother Official
- Summer '16 afternoon nap music.
- Ato Vari - Louise
- Side A is a NWW-like combination of radio interference, watery creaking, and distant reverberating organ. Side B is a slow-shifting drone with the roughness of an idling diesel engine but soft, light overtones reminiscent of Eno's "New Space Music" or Kevin Drumm's non-noise works.
- Study of the Lifeless - Study of the Lifeless
- "Nothing Ever Stays the Same" is good, but most of these songs sound the same! The follow the exact same formula, have similar vocal melodies, and I swear they share an identical drumbeat.
- Burial - Burial (3/4)
- Xiphiidae - Crystal Marvelous Fruit (hour 2)
- Gimu - A Season In Your Soul
- A lo-fi Darkest Before Dawn. I need to actually buy some of these weird cassettes someday (I won't).
- Tom James Scott - Teal
- Xiphiidae - Crystal Marvelous Fruit (hour 1)
- Tukuum Shimmering - Flowers are Offered
- Incessant horns and a mere hint of percussion.
- Twells & Christensen - Coasts
- Akhira Sano - Kalo
- White Prism - Reappear
- Quiet Evenings - Patience Folding Waters
- Picking up where Direction Music left off in '91.
- Thoughts On Air - Mallo Yallo
- Last couple of tracks are great, plus some others. Will revisit.
- Elementals' Orrery - Elementals' Orrery
- Panabrite - Wizard Chimes
- Dolphins Into The Future - ...On Sea-Faring Isolation
- Urge Overkill - The Supersonic Storybook
- "The Kids Are Insane", "The Candidate", "(Today Is) Blackie's Birthday"
- Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
- Proem - Socially Inept
- Brian Eno - Another Green World
- Jon Hassell - The Surgeon of the Nightsky Restores Dead Things by the Power of Sound
- Finished the last 40 minutes of Index ID - Expedition and the last 18 of Vektor - Terminal Redux.
- Index ID - Expedition
- Nice office building techno.
- Proem - Socially Inept (partial)
- Voivod - Phobos
- Totally noisy wrath. Voivod goes post-hardcore/alt-metal. "Bacteria", "Neutrino".
- Vektor - Terminal Redux
- Cherubs - Short of Popular
- "Carjack Fairy"
- Voivod - Dimension Hatröss
- Closure - Closure
- Hole - Live Through This
- I love revisiting music I liked as a teenager and discovering that it's actually still great. "Violet", "Miss World", "Doll Parts", "Asking For It".
- Snapcase - Progression Through Unlearning
- Toxik - World Circus
- Meshuggah - Chaosphere
- I disable the audio generators of fear. "New Millennium Cyanide Christ", "Elastic"
- The Stooges - Fun House
- I get it now. "Fun House" "1970".
- BP - Golden BP.
- Animals As Leaders - Animals As Leaders
- Passive rec by Demensa. How did I enjoy this? "The Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing"
- The Church - Hologram of Baal
- S-Core - Pretension
- Troum & All Sides - Shutun
- Andrew Barrett, Dominic Coppola, Evan Miller, Mike Collino - Byron Recital Hall No. 6
- I woke up at 3am with the songs "Mookid" by Aphex Twin and "Learn To Fly" by Foo Fighters in my head simultaneously.
- Red House Painters - Old Ramon
- "River"
- Tintern Abbey - Beeside / Vacuum Cleaner
- Busy bee, buzzing all day long.
- Straitjacket Fits - Hail
- Your costume is bedecked, like the emperor's used clothes. 1988 Flying Nun Edition with 10 tracks. Not the one with "She Speeds", but that's a good song. The first in my experiment to see if I can correctly guess an album's title track without looking at the track listing or hearing the title in the lyrics. The title track, which I correctly guessed was the title track without looking, is my favorite.
- Low - Murderer
- Projections - Between Here and Now
- "Escaping Sao Paulo" is a part of my childhood. It was probably my only exposure to deep, atmosphere-based music and one of a few real tastes of real dance music that wasn't by Alice Deejay or played on Music Choice. This is the first song I really remember wanting to "live inside". I recall lying in bed in the dark, swaddled in bedding, listening to the rainforest sounds and just basking in the atmosphere. This and "Home Movies" by Blu Mar Ten, which were both featured on the Midnight Club II soundtrack. I made no attempt to seek out more similar music, even though I found this album on iTunes and bought the track. Maybe this had something to do with my attitude of "electronic music isn't real music, except that associated with video games" or my general ignorance in online music discovery. I wonder how things would have been different if I had just bought the entire album and listened to it. I speculate that my grunge phase would have passed much quicker. This is my first time listening to anything other than "Escaping Sao Paulo". It's an OK album, a pretty run-of-the-mill blend of downtempo and nu-jazz. Very turn of the millennium, kind of anonymous.
- Swervedriver - Sandblasted
- Suddenly realizing how great this song is.
- In Gowan Ring - Abend the Knurled Stitch O'er the Glinting Spade
- Heard "To Thrum A Glassy Stem" last summer and decided to revisit the whole thing. It's a great combination of shimmering drones and medieval-flavored folk. I'd love to see this guy live.
- Low - The Great Destroyer
- I guess this is my 6 month-late Low phase, which should have commenced after Mimi's death. Discovering that mid-period Low is pretty good! "California", "Silver Rider".
- Stars Of The Lid And Their Refinement Of The Decline
- Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - Floating Weeds
- Classic Bandcamp cassette-ambient.
- Black Dice - Beaches and Canyons
- "Endless Happiness"
- Various - The Philosophy of Sound and Machine
- Obviously "Blue Calx" is my favorite track here, but either because I'm so much more familiar with that track than the others (besides the B12 tracks "Bio-Dimension" and "Debris") or it's truly unique, it really doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the album. Not a lot of techno sounded like what RDJ was doing back then. I think it's really cool, also, how he went under the alias Blue Calx here. I wonder if anyone guessed? Also, I think this track's appearance here with that title, along with it existing prior to the recording of SAWII is the reason why it's the only track on SAWII with an official title.
- Pram - Iron Lung
- "Water Toy"
- "Blue Singer", though the version from Gash is better.
- Low - Trust
- I'm not scared of waking up / I'm not afraid of getting cut. "Canada", "Shots and Ladders"
- In Gowan Ring - Abend the Knurled Stitch O'er the Glinting Spade
30 April 2023
- Aphex Twin - Windowlicker
- How is it that I've been a fan of this man for almost a decade, and yet this is the second time I've listened to his most popular song? I've written it off as a joke for way too long, I reckon. It's actually pretty great, the single as a whole. The Formula track is just insane, and "Nannou" just comes out of nowhere, this calm prepared piano piece, truly in the spirit of drukQs.
- Early Day Miners - Deep Harbor
- thecoldwaters delivers yet again.
- David Sylvian - Gone To Earth
- Just got back from Jupiter Records to buy something for my mom for mother's day (Honky Chateau and After The Gold Rush) and for myself (Meddle on cassette and The Shutov Assembly on CD, though a cassette of that would've been pretty fucking cool) and remembered that I bought this on cassette a few weeks ago. The ambient side is better than I remember when I used to sleep to it years ago, and I enjoyed the "pop" side more than I expected. I love this fatigued, dark Southwestern feel.
- maudlin of the Well - Part the Second
- The Dillinger Escape Plan - Ire Works
- I hope you see my face in the mirror. Perfect, I loved a couple tracks before but the rest just grew on me.
- Aphex Twin - ...I Care Because You Do
- I've known about this album since November 2014, which is roughly when I started listening to Aphex Twin. My first exposure to him, probably like a lot of people around my age, is being recommended and hearing "Alberto Balsalm" on YouTube after wondering what a song with that album cover sounds like. I remember taking instantly to that track, but I think this is my first full listen through this album. "Acrid Avid Jam Shred", "Wet Tip Hen Ax", "Mookid" (it never occurred to me how great this track is. I love that whiny synth), "Alberto Balsalm", "Next Heap With" (always reminds me of The Sims 3)
- Sora - re.sort
- The top rated glitch album on RYM, but I'm not impressed. Should I be surprised? "Satelite Towers" is good though.
- Miles Davis - On The Corner
- The For Carnation - Marshmallows
- "Salo"
- Aphex Twin - Melodies From Mars
- First listen since early 2015 or so. Track 1, Track 9, Track 10 (The glissando synth on track 10 reminds me of that múm track off their first album)
- Aphex Twin - Analord 10
- Prolly my favorite Analord, maybe besides 08. "Xmd 5a" would fit in perfectly on Syro.
- AFX - Analogue Bubblebath 5
- Favorite Bubblebath. I am so familiar with this album. B3, "Cuckoo"
- The For Carnation - The For Carnation
- Who did this to us?
- Listened to a couple hours of user48736353001. So many of these tracks have such character, and I'm amazed at how different they all are. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of these were made during his classic '90s period. He could probably have released several well-regarded albums from these tracks. Makes me realize how much QC he has over his releases, even though he's released tons of music across his aliases anyway.
- Guidance Recordings - '90s Deep House Tribute Mix
- Virtual Dream Plaza - 无限渴望
- Am I getting into this weird shit now?
- Virtual Dream Plaza - 一见钟情
- Second listen after a couple years. I dig this now. Very beautiful. I hope it's not just a pre-existing song slowed down with reverb.
- Virtual Dream Plaza - 仮想夢プラザ
- Virtual Dream Plaza - ここに彼女が来ます
- sky 空 - Before 前
- Ambient vaporwave album released in 2016 on cassette. Much better than I expected, so luch. I seem to remember attempting this in early 2020 while at my old job, but got distracted.
- desert sand feels warm at night - 水に流す
- Guidance Recordings - '90s Deep House Tribute Mix
- Yura Yura Teikoku - Hollow Me
- "Tender Animals"
- Another random urge to listen to the first two Mercury Rev albums has begun.
- Echo & The Bunnymen - Heaven Up Here
- Burial - Rival Dealer
- The Soundcarriers - Entropicalia
- I tried to guess which track was the title track without looking at the track titles beforehand, and I guessed correctly. "Entropicalia"
- Fugazi - The Argument
- Your secret's out. "The Kill", "Life And Limb", "Oh"
- The Birthday Massacre - Violet
- Pretty good, I wasn't expecting to enjoy '00s Hot Topic music. I'll probably revisit. The Birthday Massacre's music is simplistic - simple chords and chord progressions, simple melodies played on high-pitched synths that wouldn't be out of place in an NES game. Chibi sings with a girlish voice melodramatic lyrics that may touch the heart of any black-clad teen with a deviantart account. This band is immaculately of their time. Their discography-consistent cover art - at once innocent and melancholic and dark, with its glorious muted shades of blue and purple, often featuring children, trees, and nighttime scenes - I can imagine perfectly on a wall display in Hot Topic, among displays of body jewelry and Invader Zim merchandise. They are the ultimate '00s pop goth band, and that is completely fine.
- Matt Smith - Burning Blue Soul
- "Like A Sun Risin Thru My Garden", "Delirious", "The River Flows East In Spring", "Song Without An Ending".
- The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
- "Powerless"
- The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
- You and me were never meant to be part of the future". "In The Morning Of The Magicians"
- The Church - Magician Among The Spirits
- Massive Attack - 100th Window
- Take a look around the world, you see such bad things happening. "Everywhen", "Special Cases", "Antistar"/"LP5".
- Maurizio Bianchi - Armaghedon
- Giancarlo Toniutti - La Mutazione
- The Flaming Lips - In A Priest Driven Ambulance
- Eleventh Dream Day - Beet
- Isotope 217° - The Unstable Molecule
- "La Jeteé", "Prince Namor"
- Pete Namlook & Tetsu Inoue - time2
- The Flaming Lips - Hit To Death In The Future Head
- I wasn't expecting something so catchy and fun from pre-classic era Flaming Lips. "The Sun"
- The Flaming Lips - Zaireeka
- "The Train Runs Over the Camel But Is Derailed by the Gnat"
- "March of the Rotten Vegetables"
- Red Shift - White Out
- First listen on 7 May 2022
- Verve - The Verve E.P.
- Solar X - Outre X Mer
- The Flaming Lips - Clouds Taste Metallic
- Music that is apparently trying to be as silly as possible is growing on me. Minecraft.
- Follakzoid - II
- Burial, Four Tet, Thom Yorke - Ego / Mirror
- Jabu - Versions
- Low - Transmission EP
- "Caroline 2", "Untitled".
- The Naked Souls - Two And One
- Bleach - Snag
- Tangerine Dream - Zeit
- Eleventh Dream Day - Prairie School Freakout
- "Sweet Smell", "Coercion", "Among the Pines".
- Grant Lee Buffalo - Fuzzy
- "Fuzzy"
- Daughter Of The Industrial Revolution - Variable Resistance (Parts 1-3)
- Nine Inch Nails - Hesitation Marks
- "All Time Low", "Satellite", "While I'm Still Here"/"Black Noise".
- Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
- And I just made you up to hurt myself / And it worked, yes it did! "All The Love In The World", "The Hand That Feeds", "Only" - love, love, love the theatrical singing, "Sunspots", "Beside You In Time"
- Brian Eno - Thursday Afternoon
- What better album for a hot, stormy Thursday afternoon?
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - 12
- I literally listened to this while walking around cherry trees.
- Virginia Astley - From Gardens Where We Feel Secure
- That one circusy song made me laugh out loud. "Hiding in the Ha-Ha"
- The 7th Plain - Playing With Fools
- Boris - Boris at Last -Feedbacker-
- Barn Owl - Lost In The Glare
- Diethelm & Famulari - Valleys In My Head
- "Swiss math jazz". "Portrait"
- Kim Jung Mi - Now
- Korean Love. A spring classic. "Wind"
- Shadow Community - Restless Song / Halcyon's Coffin
- Mid-Air Thief - Crumbling
- Sheena Ringo - Kalk samen kuri no hana
- First listen: blur of flowery instrumentation and quirkiness that went totally over my head. Second listen: the blur comes slightly into focus; I recognize moments of brilliance. Third listen: I understand?
- X.Y.R. - Pilgrimage
- X.Y.R. - Quiet Time (QTT7)
- Ryuichi Sakamoto's 2017 NTS mix, which is great.
- Mikkel Rev - The Art of Levitation
- "The Art of Levitation", "Nothing So Hidden", "Deep Sea Aviation" (lead synth sounds like those buzzing magnet things that make a horrifying sound when they meet).
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - Left Handed Dream
- "Kacha Kucha Nee", "The Garden Of Poppies", "Venezia".
- Seam - The Problem With Me
- "Bunch", "Stage 2000", "Autopilot".
- 800 Cherries - Romantico
- The opener and "Planc-tone" are good, but the rest is too close to Stereolab.
- Robert Wyatt - Old Rottenhat
31 March 2023
- Brian Eno - The Shutov Assembly
- Eno's music post-Thursday Afternoon is unfairly treated. Maybe it's because he leaned into the whole "ignorable backround music" concept, making music actually intended to complement the atmosphere of public sp-oh, right, that's what he was doing from the very beginning. Well, at least since 1975. The Music for Installations compilation, probably almost 100% of its 325 minutes consisting of post-1985 compositions, was well-received, though the albums these pieces originally appeared on weren't. I still can't find an explanation for this, and looking at the reviews for some of the work from this period doesn't help- Pitchfork calls this album "rhythmless, tuneless"; Erlewine claimed The Drop "doesn't particularly hold the listener's interest"; "New Space Music" is too static, and Drowned In Sound considers Neroli "as ignorable as it is interesting" in so many words (with a cute ladybird analogy), though in 1993 this is a bad thing, as if the core tenet of ambient music obsolesced after 15 years. It's funny when an artist is acclaimed as groundbreaking for a concept and is later criticized for actually following through on that concept.
- "Ikebukuro"
- "Lanzarote"
- Bill Laswell - Outer Dark
- Laswell without the fretless all over it is great, though he makes nice use of (what sounds like) guitar feedback, like on Cymatic Scan. It's ambient with just a hint, a suggestion, of "tribal" percussion, and not too rhythmic.
- Brian Eno - Another Day On Earth
- Nine Inch Nails - Bad Witch
- Brian Eno - Lightness: Music for the Marble Palace
- Klaus Schulze - Kontinuum
- I'm starting to see the appeal of this album. It's more similar to works like "The Cello" than I remember. Schulze tones down the sequencers in his later work to the point where they kind of blend into the pads.
- The Chi Factory - The Bamboo Recordings
- Polyrock - Polyrock
- First listen since 2016. Found from someone's chart when I used to browse some shitty messageboard that purported to be about music, was drawn in by the unpleasant washed-out brown and yellow of the front cover, as if it's a photo from an old magazine with cheap inks, though it seems to be some stock RCA design rather than something deliberately chosen for the album. Anyway, every track on this album is a great pop song, to the extent that I'm puzzled as to why this band wasn't more popular. Was it their bland art-student non-image? Were they seen as simply too derivative of Talking Heads and the like? It's also strange that Philip Glass was involved in this album. It's not really minimalistic, is it? Most of the time there's at least two guitars and two keyboards playing distinct melodies; there's just so much detail (I'm aware minimalism =/= sparseness, but still...). Most of the songs are the same basic new wave pop, though there are a few instrumentals and the repetitive, droning "Your Dragging Feet", and I wouldn't say any of the songs sound the same. It's the kind of album that struck my jaded internet-age music nerd self as just some more typical quirky zolo art punk, but somehow stood out.
- John Luther Adams - Become Ocean
- And Also The Trees - Farewell To The Shade
- Roedelius - Geschenk des Augenblicks
- The Sound - Heads And Hearts
- Sad Lovers and Giants - Headland
- There seems to be a distinct subgenre of '80s-early-'90s rock that was made by bands who started out making post-punk during that genre's first wave, but have moved on from that sound. This album and the aforementioned album by The Sound are particulars that I have in mind, and perhaps And Also The Trees' later work. It's kind of like "big music", U2-ish, but less bombastic and arena-ready. RYM would call it "art rock"; their music slowed down, track durations grew, seemingly bloated by the atmosphere they create. Overall I guess it's inoffensive, like they matured out of the youthful energy and brooding of Joy Division's kin and into a complacent moderacy.
- (Most of) Nine Inch Nails - Bad Witch
- It's cool that Reznor's doing long eclectic tracks like the last two here, which are the highlights. For some reason I ignored this album when it was released, even though I'd enjoyed Hesitation Marks back in 2013 and still do. Up next: Add Violence. Also, it's actually incredible that this was released almost 5 years ago. My memory contracts the NIN timeline so that I remember this being released along with the two Ghosts in 2020, but there was almost two years between them. I proabably ignored this because I was listening almost exclusively to weird experimental music when it was released and thought I'd outgrown NIN. Boy, was I wrong...
- Mathias Grassow - Himalaya
- Tujiko Noriko - From Tokyo To Naiagara
- Listened to this twice consecutively today while reading Adrian Tomine. I actually listened to some of this about 4 years ago while flying to Minneapolis. I turned it off because I couldn't hear it well over the cabin din. "Robot Hero", "Tokyo"
- Emerson, Lake & Palmer - Tarkus
- Man, I'm dumb. I thought, "wow, this guy is really trying to imitate Greg Lake...wait, Emerson Lake, and Palmer...that is Greg Lake!". My dad likes this band but I've never actually heard him listen to them. He always used to say, "are you ready, Eddy?", which pissed me off because it reminded me of Ed Edd and Eddy, which I hated, but I am just learning now that he probably got that from the last song here. I dig the slightly corny military march keyboards toward the end of the title track. It's good when music makes you facepalm.
- Dan Pound - Drift
- True Roach protege. Thanks to that random mix I found via Soulseek. "Adrift".
- Akio Suzuki - Stone
- Cluster - Sowiesoso
- "Sowiesoso", "In Ewigkeit", and hell, the whole album.
- Kaito - Special Life
- Aril Brikha - Deeparture In Time
- Andy Stott - Faith In Strangers
- And Also The Trees - Virus Meadow
- And Also The Trees - The Millpond Years
- Pete Namlook - Silence III
- Roxy Music - Avalon
- Then I wonder is it fair / Now you're on your own, who cares about you?
- Slim - Slim 0097
- "Idyll"
- YS - Perfumed Garden
- "Secret Isle"
- The Church - After Everything Now This
- See? "Chromium".
- The Church - Persia
- "Volumes"
- The Church - Pangaea
- Bill Laswell and Tetsu Inoue - Cymatic Scan
- I heard (well, read a YouTube comment) that this album is a result of Inoue and Laswell fooling around in the studio, warming up/jamming in preparation for their collaboration. After an hour, they found that that jam session itself was pretty fruitful, and released it as an album. Somehow doesn't evoke space, but wandering around an empty coastal city at twilight. Also, the Bandcamp cover artworks for Laswell's ambient works suck.
- Lull - Cold Summer
- Chi - Chi
- Mathias Grassow - The Fragrance Of Eternal Roses
- 62 Eulengasse - 62 Eulengasse
- Tricky - Maxinquaye
- Metamatics - SpookTinselShoal
- Another Fine Day - Life Before Land
- Ditto - In Human Terms
- Kit Clayton - Nek Sanalet
- Never heard any of this aside from "Aspoket" (a track which I still can't decipher, though I came close this time. Something about mosquitoes?). Great example of non-traditional, off kilter dub techno with still some hints of that delay-rich goodness. Also, pretty cool that this guy is from Illinois!
- "Nuchu" (great, but wild choice for an opener), "Aspoket"
- Never heard any of this aside from "Aspoket" (a track which I still can't decipher, though I came close this time. Something about mosquitoes?). Great example of non-traditional, off kilter dub techno with still some hints of that delay-rich goodness. Also, pretty cool that this guy is from Illinois!
- Robert Rich - Electric Ladder
- "Shadowline" (Love the e-bow, Rich is great with the e-bow), "Aquifer", "Never Alone". I was attracted to this for its similar cover art to Somnium and Perpetual.
- Hoshina Anniversary - Nihon No Ongaku
- I.F. - I.F. 2
- RAMZi - Hyphea
- X.Y.R. - Pilgrimage
- I first listened to this in really late 2020, a few months after its release, but it made no impression on me. I like the type of ambient that takes cues form "world" music (i.e., vague mishmash or aboriginal music) but instead of repetitive conga thumping, it's this psychedelic bath of sound with many layers. This actually reminds me of Cluster's live performances, specifically their U.S. live album, and of course CHI. It has that spacious live recording atmosphere.
- Robert Rich - Electric Ladder
- Cuushe - Waken
- Cabaret Voltaire - Dekadrone
- Some of Starflyer 59 - Fell In Love At 22. Good B-sides, except for "Samson", which is one of my favorite rock songs ever.
- And Also the Trees - (Listen For) The Rag and Bone Man
- "A Man With A Drum", "The Beautiful Silence".
- Sunny Day Real Estate - How It Feels to Be Something On
- Lull - Way Through Staring
- I had overlooked this on my original Mick Harris / isolationism phase, but it's as good as Cold Summer or Continue. I also fell asleep to Like A Slow River.
- Man, I need to start listening to isolationism again....
- Minilogue - Blomma
- Spring canon. Almost in league with the best stuff on the FAX label. "Everything Is All You've Got", "Mellan Landet", "E de nan Hemma?", "Evaporerar ut fran sitt Gomstalle".
- Oneohtrix Point Never - Memory Vague
- Caboladies / Oneohtrix Point Never - Split
- cv313 - Plays Sequential Space
- I fell asleep about an hour into it, but it's more of the same...
- The Higher Intelligence Agency & Biosphere - Birmingham Frequencies
- mu tate & X.Y.R. - Interior Music 011/012
- Minilogue - E de nan Hemma?
- Charlemagne Palestine - Strumming Music
- Kemistry & Storm - DJ-Kicks
- Rei Harakami - Unrest
- Susumu Yokota - Grinning Cat
- Roovel Oobik - Popsubterranea
- "Komik Kapital Kaput", "Finger On The Trigger, Transfigured".
- Bare Minimum - Can't Cure The Nailbiters
- I've been seeing this album around RYM for a while, originally in TwiceStyle's ratings. It isn't very distinctive, kind of vanilla, but it has this subtle anxiety that I dig and isn't overly dramatic. It brings to mind Ewa Braun's Stereo, and like that album tends to ride along on its grooves without really saying anything. Even Jeremy Enigk's cameo flashes by without fanfare, folded into a bed of tense guitar strumming and bass that tone bend up and down uneasily. Between the longer, the quieter tracks - "Clanking", "Luchuk", and "6" - and the subdued ragers (set to Brian Speckman's best Billy Corgan impression) such as "Downing-Dolly" and "Your Bravo", the former are my picks.
- The Church - Hologram of Baal
- "Great Machine", "Tranquility". I'm glad to see The Church matured. I really dig the space and waves of sound on tracks like the aforementioned, and "Glow Worm". I might end up doing a discog dive (post-Starfish).
- Perispirit & Brendan Murray - Untitled
- The Church - Bastard Universe
- The Church - Magician Among the Spirits
- "It Could Be Anyone"
- Mick Karn - Titles
- Main - Haloform
- Big Black - Headache
- Contrary to my expectations, this was pretty accessible, almost fun. It's harsh, sure, but it's much more a traditional hard rock piece than I'd expect from an album packaged in a body bag, distributed with a poster of a man with his head sawed in half, and released by a band that is Big Black. But really, if you work past the power tools, they're a lovable, friendly, fun rock band down at heart.
- Hovercraft - Akathisia
- Peter Christopherson - Time Machines II
- Schema - Schema
- Way noisier than I expected.
- Casino Versus Japan - Casino Versus Japan
- It's funny how CVJ made this after discovering Boards of Canada, yet it barely sounds like BoC, but then his two subsequent albums, released two and four years later, are the ones that got panned by some reviewers as BoC clones. It's amorphous blurs of what is barely recognizable as techno; the synths are there, the beats are there, the occasional sample is there, but they fall in and out at random, barely harmonizing and following any path. If an album of techno tracks were a finished puzzle, this is just after the pieces were poured out of the box and spread on the table.
- Minutemen - The Punch Line
- First full Minutemen release for me (I actually listened to fIREHOSE a few months ago). Now I realize how much of an immediate inspiration these guys must have been on those mid-'80s SST fellows and Homestead acts. Those skittering, nervous ones that traded in hardcore menace for country twang and whimsy.
- The Supreme Dicks - The Unexamined Life
- Intense, smoldering, depressive, weird. "The Forest Song Or Especially When The October Wind With Frosty Fingers, Punishes My Hair"
28 February 2023
- Bark Psychosis - Scum
- Nth listen and now recognizing the beauty of the guitars. Before it was the bass and drums, specifically the awkward drum beat closing out the last ~6 minutes of the piece, now hearing that euphoric outro for the complete change in mood the shimmering wall of guitars create. Now reading about plants that have cells with sharp crystals that plunge into the mucosa of any beast that comes along and tries to eat them. Plants, too, that have microscopic needles attached to microscopic hairs on their leaves which spike the skin and inject it with a cocktail of irritants that produces simultaneous burning and itching sensations.
- Robert Hood - Nighttime World Vol. 2
- "Still", "After Hours".
- Shame - Food For Worms
- Rei Harakami - [lust], again!
- "Grief & Loss", "After Joy", "First Period", "Lust".
- Tortoise - TNT
- "Swung From The Gutters", "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men And Women", "Jetty", "TNT".
- Alpha - Come From Heaven
- Something tells me you have something on all of us now "Sometime Later", "Apple Orange".
- Casino Versus Japan - Go Hawaii
- "It's Very Sunny", "Local Forecast", "Late For School".
- More Yo La Tengo miscellanea. Some track off of Popular Songs, including the phenomenal last three. "The Fireside" is so soothing. Awkward sequencing on that album, huh? Duration-wise, I mean.
- Rei Harakami - [lust]
- Revisiting Caustic Window and some of ...I Care Because You Do.
- Parts of Yo La Tengo - From A Motel 6 EP and Pram's North Pole Radio Station .
- Over the past few days of my involuntary computer holiday, I enjoyed going through my "outro" playlist (a playlist of tracks I find relaxing for their lengthy instrumental and/or repetitive outros), some stuff I haven't heard in years, a bit of Plone's For Beginner Piano, and some of my old favorites. I've been on a really big slacker/indie rock kick lately. Spring is coming, so I'll probably be in the mood for Boards of Canada and assorted downtempo soon. Maybe some Ozric Tentacles, who knows. Maybe I'll relisten to that Casino Versus Japan album...
- Matrix - Isthmus #Fast
- One of the more unconventional entries in the Chain Reaction catalog. "Blue Film 2" is like a distorted loop from a film soundtrack set to a staticky rumble that is barely perceptivle as a beat. The main track is very bassy and even more minimal, consisting of hardly more than a kick drum stutter, a scraping snare, and a distant shimmering for ambience. On "Zkj", a clockwork beat is joined by various effects resembling steam-powered machinery, and in its second half, a a melancholic drone. It's quite different from the usual "4/4 and delayed organ chord" type of dub techno you usually find, and for that it's up my alley.
- blue smiley - ok
- blue smiley - return
- Pulsr - Sent
- Submersion - Deluge
- Gimmick - News From The Past
- My Morning Jacket - Chocolate And Ice
- Ewa Braun - Sea Sea
- Telstar Drugs - Telstar Drugs
- Lucette Bourdin - Rising Fog
- Windsor For The Derby - Calm Hades Float
- Ought - Sun Coming Down
- Madrugada - Industrial Silence
- Kevin Braheny Fortune - Perelandra Dawn
- Ami Shavit - In Alpha Mood
- The Sea and Cake - Nassau
- Expectation: boring instrumental jazz/math/post-rock. Reality: melodic, jaunty indie rock with variety. I do like when a few instrumentals are thrown in among vocal tracks though.
- York Redoubt - Cheap Funerals
- Joni Mitchell - Hejira
- Trixie's Big Red Motorbike Peel Session
- Going to listen to their compilation too. I just relistened to "A Splash Of Red" and suddenly realized how good it was. Great guitar and bass.
- Elysian Blaze - Levitating the Carnal
- Daddy's Hands - Daddy's Hands
- Sneaker Pimps - Bloodsport
- Much better than it's made out to be. It's pretty good. Kelli is the better singer but Chris isn't a terrible one. "Sick", "Black Sheep", "Grazes"
- Alpha - Come From Heaven
- It's real nice to just drift through as a whole, but the only track that stands out specifically is "Sometime Later".
- Luxurious Bags - Frayed Knots
- "Eyes Tell Me, Hands Tell Me"
- Dean Roberts - Be Mine Tonight
- Yo La Tengo - This Stupid World
- "This Stupid World", "Tonight's Episode". I'll be returning to this.
- Bathory - Bathory
- Bathory - Blood Fire Death
- "For All Those Who Died"
- Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion
- "Fainted Eyes"
- Various - Wound Without A Tear (2/2)
- I like the ambient dub stuff but the vocal shit is annoying. "Drawn From Sleep", "Rounded".
- Blind Idiot God - Blind Idiot God (2/2)
- "Wide Open Spaces", "Subterranean Flight".
- Nina-Noho - Ambient Classics 1990-1992
- Various - Wound Without A Tear (1/2)
- Sounds From The Ground - Luminal
- Various - Still In My Arms
- Listened to half of the Blind Idiot God s/t. I'm a fan of Martin Bisi's production style: spacey, reverberating drums and guitar that's a droning stream of noise.
- Oh yeah, I also listened to most of A Minor Forest's Inindependence. I've like "Look at That Car, It's Full of Balloons" for a while, but never heard the rest of the album. It's a bit by-the-numbers math rock, very 1998, but not bad. Also, I didn't know there were vocals!
- The Chi Factory - Red Lantern at the Kallikatsou (2/2)
- Autechre - elseq 1
- Dream Dolphin - Cloudy Sky, Rain and the Rainbow
- Portishead - Dummy
- Listened to a bunch (all) of the B-sides from The Church's Starfish.
- First disc of Antarctica - 81:03. It sounded more wintry, almost pathetic with the hiss of my old boombox.
- Autechre - Chiastic Slide
- This is funner than I used to give it credit for. Really, all their late-90s stuff is, before they started to space seriously out, though I like some of their later stuff. And I'm no one to complain about inaccessibility, since "Rettic AC" and "Hub" are my favorite tracks here. I really need to listen through elseq and the sessions again...
- The Chi Factory - Red Lantern at the Kallikatsou (1/2)
- Asmus Tietchens & Vidna Obmana - Asmus Tietchens. Vidna Obmana
- Asmus Tietchens - Nachtstucke
- It's a snowy, blue-tinted morning and I'm listening to Four Tet's New Energy. Between the Navy Yard buildings, I can see orange through a break in the clouds on the horizon.
- Zammuto - Solutiore of Stareau: Disc One
- Moose - Suzanne
- Tadashi Kamada - After Music
- I dig this ominous crusty cassette drone. On the shorter tracks, synths warble and whine and create something almost resembling a melody, a la M.B., while tracks like "Shadow", "Dim Consciousness" "Factory" are totally mechanical and amusical - industrial in the truest sense of the word.
31 January 2023
- The Declining Winter - Goodbye Minnesota
- Walrus - 光のカケラ
- 2nd listen in a little under 3 years. Reminds me of Boris, very noisy, I like the first track.
- Heard a Lush show from April 1988, one with Meriel Barham as lead singer (didn't know any recordings with her existed!). She has a good voice that I didn't really recognize listening to Pale Saints. It fits their spunky early stuff well. I also didn't realize they started out as kind of a punk band. I read in Miki's memoir that Chris Acland's background was in punk, which explains why a lot of their early songs were so jumpy.
- Chamber Music Ensemble Kukuzel - Early Chants of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church
- "Bulgarian Lament"
- Morton Feldman - Crippled Symmetry
- Luigi Tozzi - Deep Blue: Volume 2
- Air - Moon Safari
- Apart from the opener, this is less soft/loungey than I remember it being, but it's still good. "La femme d'argent", "Sexy Boy".
- Orlando Consort - The Rose, the Lily & the Whortleberry: Medieval Gardens
- Currently obsessed with "Rose, Liz, Printemps, Verdure".
- Fluxion - Perspectives
- Fluxion - [spaces]
- "Decay Section"
- Four Tet - Sixteen Oceans
- I think the day this came out I was working in a garden near Wilmington, a pleasant sunny spring morning in a pretty garden, shaded by tall trees...
- Earth To Infinity - Earth To Infinity
- Kimitaka Matsumae - Space Ranch
- "Galactic Bone"
- Coil - How To Destroy Angels
- Hood - The Cycle of Days And Seasons
- Guillaume Dufay - Missa Sancti Iacobi (Cappella Pratensis)
- Cranes - Particles and Waves
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - Smoochy
- "Rio"
- Blueboy - The Bank of England
- Iasos - Jeweled Space
- Twa Toots Peel Session
- "Yo-Yo"
- The Smiths 1986 Peel Session
- Stump 1986 Peel Session
- Syd Barrett Peel Session
- New Order 1998 Peel Session
- Electro Hippies 1987 Peel Session
- Spectrum - Soul Kiss (Glide Divine)
- Good.
- Eliane Radigue - L'ile Re-Sonante
- desert sand feels warm at night - New World Disciples
- Emily A Sprague - Hill, Flower, Fog
- Dopplereffekt - Cellular Automata
- Giuseppe Ielasy & Andrew Pekler - Holiday For Sampler
- Flying Saucer Attack - Instrumentals 2015
- I used to fall asleep to this in early 2017 or so. Listening to it now at a higher volume, I'm surprised at how noisy it is.
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - Sweet Revenge
- "Sentimental"
- Flying Saucer Attack - Peel Session 1996
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - Sweet Revenge
- Flying Saucer Attack - Beach Red Lullaby
- Flying Saucer Attack - Sally Free And Easy
- Flying Saucer Attack - Crystal Shade
- "Distance"
- Movietone - Mono Valley
- Roman Poirier - Plage Arriere
- Ametsub - The Nothings Of The North
- Blithe Field - Face Always Toward The Sun
- Syrup USA - All Over The Land
- Strafe F.R. - Octagon Sphere
- Laura Nyro - Eli and The Thirteenth Confession
- Aloof Proof - Expo One (Limited Exposition 1994)
- Ryuichi Sakamoto - Thousand Knives of Ryuichi Sakamoto
- "Plastic Bamboo", "Das Neue Japanische Elektronische Volkslied".
- HASYMO - The City Of Light / Tokyo Town Pages
- "Tokyo Town Pages" ambient version.
- The Music Tapes - The Orbiting Human Circus
- I seriously can't believe this is 6 years old next month.
- .O.Rang - Spoor EP
- Rainer Bruninghaus - Continuum
- Polvo - Today's Active Lifestyles
- Like a stain, you remember me fucking up your tapestry. "Thermal Treasure", "Sure Shot", "My Kimono".
- .O.Rang - Fields And Waves
- The way you change from day to day makes my soul cry. "Moratorium".
- Sourin - Sourin
- The Raymond Brake - Never Work Ever
- Karate - The Bed Is In The Ocean
- Tram - Heavy Black Frame
- "Nothing Left To Say"
- The Raymond Brake - Piles Of Dirty Winters
- "Philistine", "Slink Moss", "Whistler".
- Coroner - Grin
- "Status: Still Thinking", "Caveat (To the Coming)".
- Cafe Tacvba - Reves
- R. Andrew Lee - November Pt. 3 (Dennis Johnson)
- Bluetile Lounge - Half Cut
- Certainly not my first listen. Glad to see people give a shit about this band now. "Shifty", "Liner".
- R. Andrew Lee - November Pt. 2 (Dennis Johnson)
- Still can't listen to this without constantly thinking of W.
- Bluetile Lounge - Lowercase
- My >10th listen. Used to sleep to this once upon a time.
- Rune Bagge - Pink Dreams
- Bad Sector - Kosmodrom
- "Orbiter"
- 2350 Broadway - 2350 Broadway 3
- Not disappointed!
- Red House Painters - Shock Me EP
- Money Morning - Corporate Karma
- Spacecraft - Evening Star
- Hideki Matsutake - The Fantasia "The Invitation To The Stars"
- R.E.M. - Chronic Town
- Still on the fence with this band, leaning towards dislike, but I liked this more than I expected to.
- Tomasz Stanko - Suspended Night
- Dean Blunt - The Narcissist II
- Dean Blunt - Black Is Beautiful
- Dark Sky - In Brackets
- I don't know about this outsider house stuff.
- Mik Keusen - Blau
- Gunnar Haslam - Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom
- Raphael Anton Irisarri - The Unintentional Sea
- fIREHOSE - If'n
- Quiet Evenings - Patience Folding Waters
- Element Kuuda - Flight
- Troum & All Sides - Shutun
- Rumbling, geological drone, atypical of Maeror Tri / Troum. Not really a fan.
- Equations of Eternity - Veve
- Pretty much just beats and incessant dubby basslines. Kind of lacking, monotonous, though I may find myself revisiting it, who knows...
- Markus Mehr - Off
- Kenny Wheeler / Lee Konitz / Dave Holland / Bill Frisell - Angel Song
- Lush - Spooky
- It's very possible that I like this more than Gala.
- These Trails - These Trails
- Transient Waves - Transient Waves
- "Soulspace"