what are you listening to 2018

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listened through 3 of the discs earlier now listening to the Amon Duul II live set from 1969 in th eBlow up Club in Munich.

https://img.discogs.com/QSXbW3QM7mPmzKTwSMDmhhy34iA=/fit-in/600x606/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-592724-1537725781-3942.jpeg.jpg

that looks very cool but i have no idea what it is

xp i feel like a chump for buying the Catherine Ribeiro box set that only had five discs!!

that salzman lp is a real mishmash of then current modern classical/avant practices... kind of a mess, but it has a few nice moments. from what i understand he was something of a mimaroglu protege hence the release on finnidar (he also had an earlier release on nonesuch but haven't heard that one)

https://img.discogs.com/9ljaxwS-ieOjpkiplKPQPfKOU8A=/fit-in/600x610/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-936744-1481520265-8404.jpeg.jpg

Beethoven - Piano Concertos #3 and 4 (Mitsuko Uchida)
Mozart - Piano Sonatas (Andras Schiff)
Tuba Skinny - Six Feet Down
Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Orchestra - Sinatra at the Sands
Bob Dylan - Trouble No More (Bootleg Series Vol. 13)

https://img.discogs.com/Gbvp3jX-q22fPWQQaMkehtM1g8c=/fit-in/597x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1163490-1427907842-2353.jpeg.jpg

http://www.journeyus.net/upload/save_image/140702_1.jpg

Hawkwindz I bought both.
I thought the French box set with teh 5 discs was mastered a bit quietly.
This seems to be less so. Seems to be about the same volume as the other discs I have on my 3 changer.
& covers a few more lps.
Looked like price might be rising which is one reason I went ahead and bought it. Think I'd been looking her up on here thanks to the recent lp reissues which is when I first heard about this box set.
I think the lps that are on here and not on the earlier box coincide with the lps that are up on Spotify not sure what the story is there.

But great stuff.

largely this:
https://img.discogs.com/CWe7ut2qkiUud2Fgfoiqcr4pQqk=/fit-in/599x538/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-618424-1456786574-9675.jpeg.jpg,
but mainly this:
https://img.discogs.com/SncwpS4ebyociholOuk5M3K4e60=/fit-in/500x500/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-8902803-1471129284-1351.jpeg.jpg (nick fraser quartet's "starer") which is knotty & itchy yet lyrical. malaby sounds uncharacteristically unhinged, unison/entropy/unison schtick hasn't sounded so vital in donkeys. it is "on"

https://img.discogs.com/oB93_hkSuffNJNyFQp3nOGF__3M=/fit-in/600x592/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2133461-1522609625-5049.jpeg.jpgoh my this is a trip

https://img.discogs.com/aF2OanRDSu1rv2OV5nGY6u6EJIw=/fit-in/600x594/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2486699-1425215823-2584.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/7kzKA26uUjAtbzpNBEjn0coNRgs=/fit-in/600x530/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4821466-1376570137-7503.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/ZKRO3DVwkuBwpgc50T87bzCJSZg=/fit-in/555x556/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1878452-1378995998-7503.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/ZKRO3DVwkuBwpgc50T87bzCJSZg=/fit-in/555x556/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1878452-1378995998-7503.jpeg.jpg ffs

https://img.discogs.com/6ocHCq-xCx_h6m8CzWnqGc0W0RA=/fit-in/600x537/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-6282365-1415525895-9086.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/_Vexyv247vp1NgOYDp8ODh-dR2Y=/fit-in/600x603/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1496218-1299941633.jpeg.jpg
no bus to the bike shop 5 miles across town. off i go shanks's pony in the rain

Dvorak- American String Quartet (Lindsey Quartet)
Pharcyde- Bizarre Ride II

https://media1.jpc.de/image/w600/front/0/0042282928023.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/u_7TSFmPtgEo3bxD9rQZDCYpJWQ=/fit-in/339x333/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-952981-1176784415.jpeg.jpg big boom-bap parade beats & humane new orleansy swagger

https://img.discogs.com/4deSgq16aI3IkvGzeusu4tCiV1k=/fit-in/300x300/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1067140-1288717933.jpeg.jpg and more of the same

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which is sublime and I just got turned onto by the Rough trade lps of teh year list. May have read a review of it a while back, not sure

Raincrow a live set by the Stacy Sutherland featuring blues band.

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intelligent sounding turn of the 70s rock. I think I need a physical copy of this so hope somebody does an official version sometime.

Fleetwood Mac - _Future Games_
Snail Mail - _Lush_

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electronic takes on traditional Acholi rhythms from an artist on a Ugandan electronic tape label Nyege Nyege tapes who I came across because the Wire have a feature on a festival they held in September.
Hadn't really taken in that there was electronica going on in East Africa.
This sounds great as did Disco Vumbi both of whom are up on Bandcamp
& there is a longer piece on the label here
https://daily.bandcamp.com/2017/04/06/nyege-nyege-tapes-feature/

wish I'd known about the label when i was doing a show earlier this year would have made sure i included some of their stuff in it.

//e.snmc.io/i/300/s/107843fe6fd08a08a1bb7309ba45888d/6490679
listened to that earlier too

https://img.discogs.com/YUGtQ7GZGJ4PH99A5v-5tOXgrOc=/fit-in/600x542/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-58157-1329066718.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/ulXbmDTaR1MPnTD3-RqWaVgWruc=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-123914-1164928578.jpeg.jpg kinda german language circle-meets-heaven17-on-rephlex vibe

https://img.discogs.com/jCjqNm6ZovYrWJOmAexP0YScggk=/fit-in/600x538/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-117615-1244013138.jpeg.jpgach, die Sehnsucht!

kinda german language circle-meets-heaven17-on-rephlex vibe

wow

well, more a hypothetical compromise between those three poles than the extremes of each.
this morning:
https://img.discogs.com/VRFv9Jo7p_r3XMt-ilZBrDdc6VE=/fit-in/600x599/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2335229-1375078200-5142.jpeg.jpg

Currently enjoying

Ambarchi/O'Rourke/U-Zaahn : Hence
Julia Holter : Aviary
Kate Bush : Never For Ever 2018 remaster
Szun Waves : New Hymn To Freedom
Jimi Hendrix : Electric Ladyland 2018 remaster disc 2 of early takes

a new tio me Clock Dva set from the Lyceum in 1981 . I assume it must be in support of thirst having been released cos Adi mentions the lp having just come out.
Sounds pretty great so far.

Wish somebody would reissue clock Dva's material from this era as well as The Box's stuff.

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61lIFEc5LZL.jpg

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve broken out the Christmas music: starting with Vince Guaraldi and Ella Fitzgerald.

been listening to that brilliant Ben LaMar Gay album: Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun. Not sure which thread it belongs, but he is an AACM member and a Chicagoan.

tyshawn sorey - pillars
container - lp (2018)
skee mask - compro
aleksandir - yamaha
tupac - all eyez on me
sonny rollins
will dimaggio - at ease
kacey musgraves - golden hour
ken mode - loved
rosalia - el mal querer, and los angeles

pillars is so good. The first part that sounded quite "out there" last month - sounds like a pop record to me in places now!

smidge of an oliveros/dempster vibe

https://s.s-bol.com/imgbase0/imagebase/large/FC/7/5/8/0/9200000023470857.jpg

Insanely gorgeous 90s jangle pop from the Netherlands.
The acoustic 'Here' is the most beautiful song ever.

https://img.discogs.com/ttxwNA-gAYDlQtWWKTzIIdNsGO4=/fit-in/400x400/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-4156389-1360346149-7405.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/fX1HaR2OzCvx9QljLSL_OGtbDd0=/fit-in/597x590/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-2852020-1304918432.jpeg.jpg

haven't heard that one before. i like the cover.

https://img.discogs.com/zstTY3fO6ZU9VU0HCqsZP6nYKJE=/fit-in/597x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-516643-1172941791.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/zy98u-6FF4Ki-R6armhoZ5esCGI=/fit-in/600x593/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-3822716-1345802548-2650.jpeg.jpg nice little e.p. of 1966 skronk

Who's the artist?

oops its a peter brötzmann trio recording. him, p. kowald & pierre courbois.

https://img.discogs.com/etipOIK7ZxS2Dwcg0CLgKHd8-14=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-9374686-1479476150-8517.jpeg.jpg

normally, i don't dig callahan's schtick, but this rules:
https://img.discogs.com/NDxQDEpRs8ely-3JA444SDJpI14=/fit-in/600x600/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-5340747-1390960372-5427.jpeg.jpg

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a2717866482_16.jpg

https://kikagakumoyoggb.bandcamp.com/album/masana-temples

just done a disc of nuslux' home brewed blorpins, rejected an enervatyed sounding yeh/corsano/shiflet disc but now jamming this spectre flux thing which i believe is pete nolan and the blues control folks sounding pretty vital in a half-assed shredding thrum brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr XPQRTZ ??????? to call it drone would do it a disservice
https://img.discogs.com/A1X7pnIAEl90Yh7XdfG2yBPq-ac=/fit-in/600x598/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-1201754-1349378213-2613.jpeg.jpg

https://img.discogs.com/cPfm0SClm-AeTOG3WkwUHP8ahVE=/fit-in/600x596/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-12642830-1539189998-8078.jpeg.jpga grower but still a little underwhelming, formanek goes heavy on the subtlety & ponderous big john barry type plodders. there's a few really good knotty melodies & lurching rhythms, but way too stately.

A chap, possibly a lady, almost certainly a chap up the page mentions Blue Skied an' Clear, a compilation of covers of Slowdive songs with a second disc of original tunes. I have also listened to this record during this year, although only part of it. This is my copy:
https://i.imgur.com/8yEz1xd.jpg

That's my actual copy of the record, touched by my hands. Last year I wrote a blog post about it, which I will copy here so that no-one can accuse me of trying to drive traffic to my blog:

"Let’s have a look at Morr Music's Blue Skied an’ Clear, a compilation album stroke label sampler from 2002. Disc one has covers of songs by top British shoegaze band Slowdive; disc two has original songs inspired by the band. So it was that in 2017 I was moved to write about an album of covers released in 2002 of a band that flourished and faded in the early 1990s, as if descending a staircase into the past. I gazed at translucent figures who could not see me; I studied their ways and surfaced gasping into the present. As I write these words I imagine invisible eyes from the future studying *me*.

Slowdive was a shoegaze band. What was shoegaze? In the gap between C86 and Britpop there emerged a generation of fey, pale teenagers whose guitars broadcast formless, distorted washes of sound to an audience that craved an aural comfort blanket. The genre had a good run but the leading lights split up or ran out of ideas or ground to a halt. Britpop obliterated the traces. Britpop was brash, populist, highly commercial; shoegaze was none of those things. It had an air of passive self-absorption that was at odds with Britpop's extrovert nature.

Slowdive passed me by at the time. I was into electronic music, and in those days it was difficult to become familiar with a wide range of different bands. You either had to borrow lots of records or have a lot of money. There was no Youtube, and Slowdive was never played on the radio. I could only read about them in the music press, except that I continually got them mixed up with Swervedriver, another shoegaze band - Slowdive and Swervedriver are the same colour, both red - so I can't be sure if my memories of the band are correct. From my point of view Slowdive and shoegaze was a blip that came and went between Madchester, ambient house, and then Britpop and drum'n'bass. It was part of the sadly doomed and forgotten pre-Britpop era.

The only shoegaze band that approached a commercial breakthrough was Ride, who managed a couple of top ten albums and a top ten single, although nowadays they tend to be thought of as a pre-Britpop indie band that had a shoegazing phase rather than a fully-fledged shoegazing band. My Bloody Valentine’s second album, Loveless, is generally regarded as the high point of the genre - the loudest, most formless, most diffident of all shoegaze records, the genre’s Kind of Blue. Slowdive never had a commercial heyday, and fan favourite Souvlaki was a victim of unfortunate timing. By 1993 the music press had grown tired of shoegaze and was more interested in the likes of James, The Wonder Stuff, Suede and so forth, and of course a year later the one-two punch of Definitely Maybe and Parklife opened the floodgates that swept Slowdive and shoegaze away forever, or at least it seemed at the time.

For some reason – I know not why – Slowdive became internet-fashionable again in the 2000s. The group recently reformed and has released a new album. Surprisingly, it’s terrific; a moody, floaty ambient indie pop record that manages to be formless and tuneful at the same time. In a just world "Sugar for the Pill" would be a massive radio hit. Judging by Youtube views the band has gained a whole new following, including this blue-haired woman who was moved to tears by the band's cover of Syd Barrett’s "Golden Hair":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTZhG9YSY_c

But what of Blue Skied an' Clear? The covers on Disc One are solid but sound a bit thin, as if the bands were all pushed for time. The problem is that Slowdive's music was inseparable from the production, with the result that shorn of the band's wall of effects pedals the music doesn't have the same impact. The exception is múm's cover of "Machine Gun". The song has a killer melody but Slowdive's production was plodding and unimaginative; múm's take is subtler, and the sound would have fit perfectly on Finally We Are No One.

There's another problem, highlighted by Limp's take on "Souvlaki Space Station". The compilation was released in the wake of Warp Records' glitch-pop heyday and consequently several of the tracks have pointless sub-Squarepusher glitchy treatments that don't fit the material, "Space Station" among them. Disc two's "Fade Out Your Eyes" is a particular bad offender.

Ulrich Schnauss' "Crazy for You" is the second best cover, adding twangy guitars and a shuffling beat to the original, which sounded as if it had been recorded in a tunnel. A few years later Schnauss' version of the song was used in a Lucozade advert, sped-up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWMpzLAAM4Y

I imagine Schnauss earned more from the advert than he did from Blue Skied an' Clear. During their career Slowdive tried to change their sound - they hired Brian Eno, although he didn't stick around for a whole album - but never really managed it. Their most recent album feels like the product of twenty years of gradual evolution rather than a sharp break, which is fine now but would have been disappointing if it was just Slowdive's hypothetical fifteenth studio album. It's fascinating to imagine what might have happened if Slowdive and Eno had hit it off; say what you like about U2, Achtung Baby was a major leap for the band and it did give them a second wind. Solvent's cover of "When the Sun Hits" reimagines Slowdive as Add N to X while Lali Puma's version of "40 Days" has something of Garbage about it but neither of them convincingly reinvent the band. Skanfrom's version of "Here She Comes" sounds like a Brian Eno solo track from one of his non-ambient vocal albums.

Disc two is a lot more variable. Whereas Disc One is listenable throughout, Disc Two has some complete stinkers, although it gets off to a great start with Manual's "Summer Haze" and Isan's "My Last Journey". "House Full of Time" and "Fade Our Your Eyes" aren't very good at all and Solvent's "Discontinued Parts" is godawful. Limp's "Silent Running" is nice - it sounds like an instrumental cover of "40 Days" - but again has tonnes of indifferently-executed, now-badly-dated glitches. I bought the album after hearing Icebreaker International and Manual's "Into Forever", which for me is the standout track. Schnauss' "Wherever You Are" is the other standout. The rest are basically inoffensive filler. That's (counts) four excellent tracks, three bad tracks, seven okay tracks. I find it hard to criticise the bands involved. They probably had six weeks to throw something together for the compilation and no extra money, so I imagine disc two is stuffed with demos that they didn't want to put out as b-sides.

Morr Music still exists. Blue Skied an' Clear was released physically on compact disc and triple vinyl. The vinyl has a poster and some twee stickers that made me smile. It's still on sale today albeit only digitally. It's one really good album of mostly Slowdive covers with a handful of original tunes as a bonus, plus some rubbish that you can skip, the end."