what are you currently obsessed with/feeling/digging/exploring (11/17/2017)

Oh and that headshot is of Frank, not me!

i pulled out the first three REM albums and listened to them again. so so great. chronic town hit me harder than before.

i want to hear more Zouk

i have come to terms with my enjoyment of lofi house

will post more later

Not sure what it’s called, but essentially everything on Clay Pipe. Maybe it’s called Place music? Albums specifically about a specific place and time. I know these are already overstaying their welcome for people but I love several of these albums.

never heard of that Clay Pipe label, although some names look familiar - thanks!

String quartets, mostly Beethoven and Emerson String Quartet. I'm gonna dig into Haydn soon.

XXXXXXpost of course I meant these guys: https://rollingblackoutscoastalfever.bandcamp.com/

i've also been enjoying an album by h takahashi - really minimal introspective ambient melodies, i keep coming back to it.

its these lads still!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRul8JmDvKE

It's been a slightly slower year than previous in terms of new acquisitions. I've checked out absolutely tons of stuff via Spotify, though, so I feel like I'm plugging away at hearing new stuff even if I don't love it. I'm still exploring krautrock and have picked up the entire Kraftwerk back catalog and albums from Roedelius and Harmonia. Psyched about the upcoming Soul Jazz compilation, too.

But I've been curating my music library for 40 years, this year I've taken more time to dig back into it, listening to entire back catalogs all in a row (Cocteau Twins, Throwing Muses, 70s Richard Thompson) and reviewing bands I haven't spun in over a decade (Sisters Of Mercy, Clearlake, 80s King Crimson, early Bats and other kiwi goodies).

It's good to stop and smell the roses.

Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever. I can't think of a guitar band I've liked this much in many, many years.

thanks to don's link above now i just want to listen to lady leshurr, nadia rose, paigey cakey, honey cocaine, and stefflon don. i've never heard any of them before!

Vaporwave !
Trying to make my way through the entire genre piece by piece
And have ILX to thank for the discovery : )

Non-league is very healthy for music at the moment. A lot of the grounds aren't as well secured as those higher up the pyramid, you can basically just walk in and absorb the latest in genial adventures. My current go-to's are Seel Park, Ironworks Road, and Llanelian Road. But you can go up even as high as league one and still score a decent haul, Boundary Park being the obvious one, just ask I'll point you in the right direction

Scott, you should listen to Melkbelly's Nothing Valley if you have not yet:

https://melkbelly.bandcamp.com/album/nothing-valley

(And aren't there already enough threads with a similar theme? Still, I will take advantage for my own current obsession.)

I am thinking about how much longer I can put off cleaning my shower curtain liner. I am thinking about whether or not the new allergy treatment I am going to try next week will work. I am thinking about whether what someone told me about local geographic cutters makes any sense (I suspect it doesn't).

Rock the way it was meant to be according to me (not much of a rocker).

Ben Webster and assorted ECM stuff now that it's on Spotify.

Hovhaness

saer, what is that?!

Ben Webster was an awesome talent, he should get raved about just as much as Coltrane imo.

Rudipherous, you might like Madeline Kenney - a thread was started which turned me onto it. Melkbelly is great!

"And aren't there already enough threads with a similar theme?"

this thread is just for today. that's why i dated it.

Vaporwave !
Trying to make my way through the entire genre piece by piece
And have ILX to thank for the discovery : )

same, I've spent like the entire year going through Vektroid's discography and much of the Orange Milk catalogue

okay, its not JUST for today. i just wanted fresh obsessions...

x-post (too late)

this thread is just for today. that's why i dated it.

Okay, it better be locked once the day is over.

saer, what is that?!

― Susan Stranglehands (jed_),

its a little bit of estate hoofball magic picked up on a detour, there's few more here before some of them are aleady beginning to erode!

Half Price Cheese Pasties at Boundary Park - Winter Jams 2017

Today I've been a little obsessed with forgotten country(?) singer Sandy Harless. He shows up on a Wayfaring Strangers comp but there's not much talk about him barely anywhere at all!

I think his album is beautiful but maybe it isn't that special? I don't have a super deep knowledge of 70s folk/country after all.

https://fromthestacks.bandcamp.com/album/sandy-harless-songs

Deep knowledge is for the birds, and what do they do with it? shite everywhere

i definitely gorged on Orange Milk this year. via Spotify.

x-post

The Madeline Kenney album is good so far. I think it's something that I will need to listen to a few times before forming a definite opinion. (I'm kind of relieved it isn't noisy rock like Milkbelly, because then I'd be saying, yes, it's similar, but not really as good, etc.)

Not sure the songs are there (on the Kenney album), and the sounds aren't quite enough to carry it all if not. Still better than average and still interesting enough that I will probably give it a few listens. Some of the vocals remind me of Lowly's Heba, but maybe that's because it just happens to be another 2017 album I've heard.

Struck by this--- mostly just bits of voice, drums, electronics duh, that's all she needs:https://jlin.bandcamp.com/album/black-origami
Though her previous might be even better: https://jlin.bandcamp.com/album/dark-energy

Same sort of appeal in this brief, intriguing Melkbelly track: https://melkbelly.bandcamp.com/track/r2pcm Though much (not all) of the rest will have to grow on me: like the vox, but guitarss tend to fall back on lots of ye olde durrdurrdurr.

meant "guitarrs"

That's the Chitown indie-inflected (a tad clinical/grunge pedal) version of durrdurrdurr.

since the weather shifted i have resumed my obsession with death/doom

Durrdurrdurr will never die.

0:50: could complain about the guitars sounding too much like "To Parter" (not a sound that's overused), but not much durrdurrdurr to be had there. Maybe too clinical for some tastes. Maybe I want my punk clinical at this point. I don't really know Chicago indie, current indie, current rock, rock music in general, however.

Deep knowledge is for the birds, and what do they do with it? shite everywhere

― saer, Friday, November 17, 2017 12:55 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

And yet, none humor me with even a nugget!

I've been tasked to build a music collection for a friend of mine who's fairly musically ignorant but wants to learn more about techno and ambient. These are genre's im not super well versed in (though more than he is) so I'm trying to get a handle on it. Suggestions always welcome. The only two touchstones he gave me to start with are Aphex Twin Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and a single Booka Shade song he likes ("in White Rooms")

so yeah that's what I've been listening to and seeking out.

there are few on here!

Techno/House Bobbins of the past

thanks for the tip! There goes my evening!

I've been coming full circle and getting back into a bunch of 70s/ 80s/90s punk and indie rawk like Screaming Trees, Sonic Youth, Husker Du, Mule, Laughing Hyenas, Shellac, Tar, The Effigies, Richard Hell, Gary Numan, The Damned etc.

I just got a 4CD box set of 1940s and very early 1950s stuff by Illinois Jacquet and have been kind of blown away by that. Some of the 10- and 12-minute live recordings feature solos where he's screaming as hard as Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp or Pharoah Sanders, 20 years before any of them. It's crazy.

Going to try again to draw attention to this, the best song, which I'm needing to hear tonight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rU0-CMdkgjk

wait don't close the gate before i toss this in

Persian music cassettes I found in a thrift store

Getting reacquainted and obsessed with "I Believe in You" by Talk Talk. I never knew it was about his heroin-addicted brother. Such a perfect song, that haunted vocal, the broken glass guitar, the way that dubby bass kicks in and the celestial choir (is it a synth or real voices?) at the end

I was investigating a lot of medieval music and stuff played on period instrumnets. That was a couple of years ago when I stopped listening to music, now wishing I was dead. Thanks.

this article sent me down a nostalgic wormhole last week for Jane's Addiction:
https://longreads.com/2017/11/13/bootlegging-janes-addiction

Their early shows were so fierce, I'd just forgotten how potent they were.

Savage Young Du got me back deep into the Husker/Mould/Hart catalog for most of October. Same with the Replacements.

Am really into L.A. Witch for some reason. And Japanese Breakfast.

That Clientele poll also pushed me deep into their catalog, which I hadn't done in years.

I'm finishing off 1909 and getting started on 2017. Both seem like fairly average years.

I was investigating a lot of medieval music and stuff played on period instrumnets. That was a couple of years ago when I stopped listening to music, now wishing I was dead. Thanks.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, November 18, 2017

Why did you stop listening to music?

I don't know -- I read and watch quite a lot -- but find myself with little strength for the discovery these days :-(

That's too bad. What kind of medieval music were you exploring? I've been re-listening to Ensemble Organum's discography and it's always fascinating to hear them play up the Byzantine influence on Western European sacred music. Their ars subtilior disc (Codex Chantilly) is incredible as well. Solage's 'Fumeux fume par fumée', a paean to smoking, consistently does it for me:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqdJ6DFRk8c

Alex Chilton
Orchestra Baobab, particularly the albums Bamba and Pirate's Choice
Sparks Kimono
Hildegaard von Bingen Sequentiae box set

Pomenitul - When I first got into it I did a thread: Chantilly Codex -- A medieval music thread

I found at least half a dozen killer discs of this stuff over the years. I'll try and put a list together before the end of the year.

this stuff = specifically Codex type music, that is...if you have more you should ofc revive sometime.

contemplating the possibility of teaching music appreciation next semester
i should probably use youtube playlists?

I was investigating a lot of medieval music and stuff played on period instrumnets.
the thread on early music has lots of good stuff in it if you are interested in that stuff. i haven't found an ensemble i like better than EMC of London. and i have tried! if there are better ensembles with a more interesting repertoire/interpretation of early music on period instruments, i would like to know about it.

mostly these days i am obsessed with to express my own musical ideas. someone asked me recently at a show if i "have other musical ideas" outside of the duo i played in when he and i played a show together. i had to pause and then i said yes, i do. i have many ideas. this may sound self-involved but under my circumstances i feel that i deserve to feel good about expressing my own ideas.

mostly these days i am obsessed with to express my own musical ideas
*trying to express
the emphasis is important because i am not able to express my musical ideas as well as i would like but i have been obsessed with trying

My jam at the time (thanks to some googling its all coming back to me) was working through the Musica Antiqua Koln's catalogue. I was looking for all the early stuff, and was looking for this record:

Early Italian Violin Music (Gabrieli, Rossi, Fontana, Marini, Farina, Buonamente) [1979]

Then it all went Kaputt for me.

this may sound self-involved but under my circumstances i feel that i deserve to feel good about expressing my own ideas.

If I were making music, or just working out musical ideas, I would never apologize for wanting to focus on that.

Not sure if this is the place, but...

I'd always liked Windy & Carl, but for whatever reason had never heard Drawing of Sound. It turns out it's an ur-text* for a whole bunch of things I really like: gauzy, swooping drones, warm bass tones - even that trilling guitar motif that Godspeed nicked and ran with. It also makes me think of the Verve at their most ecstatic ((Reprise), basically).

That and Talons', who are one of those bands I've loved in the past, but, due to my current listening habits, I'd sort of forgotten I loved. Coming back to that creaking, wheezing misanthropy - sort of a Scott Tuma on downers, or what Will Oldham might burn in his backyard in a dream purge session - has been magnificent.

*this sound must have a more nuanced continuum. Please holler with stuff I've missed.

have you heard the cocteau twins? kidding. but i think i probably thought of robin guthrie when i first heard drawing of sound. i think of it as their best album but i have not heard a lot of later albums. totally true about the godspeed thing!

currently trying to figure out why the only version of righteous brothers' "you've lost that lovin' feelin" on apple music seems to be a shitty stereo mix

have you heard the cocteau twins? kidding. but i think i probably thought of robin guthrie when i first heard drawing of sound.

I totally get the connection but Guthrie seems more baroque and intentionally soothing, somehow. I made that statement about it seeming like an ur-text kinda glibly, but now I'm wondering...

Electric Miles Davis always a constant, but have really been obsessing over the live stuff for the last couple of months - getting it all in chronological order, working out when personnel change etc. Seems like there's lots more radio broadcast dates out there now to supplement the official live discs, too.

I always underestimate how long Gary Bartz was part of the band, and forget how relatively late into proceedings Pete Cosey/Reggie Lucas joined.

I wasn't sure where to ask this but have frequently wondered and it's impossible to search so this is as good a place as any: what are your main sources for finding new/old music? Obviously, this could stretch a long way so maybe your top 3 sources, and if an answer is the 'internet' can you be more precise?

I reckon mine are: (now and increasingly) here, a select few mates, Spotify (with RYM a close 4th). Until 18 months or so ago, it would have been a few specific people on Twitter, but I can't bear the place so have pretty much abandoned it.

My answer would be the same as yours tbh - here, mates with good taste and Spotify

bandcamp daily, resident advisor, my youtube subs, a subreddit called /r/vintageobscura, rym lists and the lower reaches of their genre charts

that's a bunch of it, but sometimes... sometimes i just fucking _wander_. i see something that looks or sounds interesting and i spend a little time exploring to see where it takes me. mostly it's not a question of "where" but "how". it's like a variation on the question all writers seem to hate - "where do you get your ideas?"