random stuff rushomancy is listening to

Thanks Alex! I'm enjoying sharing stuff here... I'll try to keep it updated around every week or so... I know my name's on the thread but other contributions are welcome as well :)

New playlist - secret word for this one is "Ghost". Thought about just making it a 20 minute live version of the Phish song combined with Albert Ayler (actually the Yosuke Yamashita Trio playing Ayler) but that might be a little _too_ contrarian I guess, even if it would be good. Here's what came out instead:

The Solitaires - I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance
Dwarr - Ghost Lover
Marlin Wallace - Ghost Train
Farao - The Ghost Ship
Golden Disko Ship - Girl As A Slower Ghostship
The Ilk - A Ghost Story For Summer
Fleetwood Mac - The Ghost
Jay Som - Ghost
Brother Android - Ghost Station
Bent Knee - Holy Ghost
Lonnie Johnson - Blue Ghost Blues
Concretism - Telex Ghosts
Unknown NYC Traveler - When Robots Have Ghosts
Timeless Legend - Ghost of Love
Thumpermonkey - Deckchair For Your Ghost
Sam Amidon - Ghosts
Charlie Parker - I Don't Stand A Ghost Of A Chance (1947-03-02)

No ringers on this one, all deep cuts. Sometimes I just want to be obscure!

Autumn! Here's what came up this time. Lots of oldies this time out.

Jeff Phelps - Excerpts From Autumn
that dog. - Autumn in June
The Kinks - Autumn Almanac
Bing Grosby (yes, that's a typo, I'm leaving it) - Autumn Leaves
Bai Kwong - Autumn Evening
Don Ellis - After an Autumn Rain demo
Gridlink - Constant Autumn
Ved Buens Ende - Autumn Leaves
Peter Hammill - Summer Song (In The Autumn)
Aphex Twin - Autumn Travels
Lee Hazlewood - My Autumn's Done Come
Robyn Hitchcock - Autumn Is Your Last Chance
Horse - Autumn
Onra - Autumn Moon Shining Over the Calm Lake
Captain Beefheart - Autumn's Child
Joanna Newsom - Autumn
Gianni Safred - Autumn 2001

I did another one on the topic of "mirror" but this one I think came out nicer, even though it was less work.

Oh, and for the record I don't think the Bing Crosby and the Ved Buens Ende are the same song.

it could be yours

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/4771806?ev=rb

i'm actually tempted! i mean it's cheaper than that fucking pink floyd box set. but ultimately i'm not a "record collector", don't even have a record player... looking it up though i ran into something else that's pretty interesting though so i don't mind still looking.

also still looking for a version of the beatles' "what goes on" i like. this is difficult because it is not a very good song. in fact i am slowly growing to hate this song.

I Wonder If It Will Be Friends With Me?

The White Stripes - Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground
The Temptations - Shakey Ground
Janko Nilovic - Black on a White Ground
Stevie Wonder - Higher Ground
Daniel Koestner - Breaking Ground
Bascom Lamar Lunsford - I Wish I Was A Mole in the Ground
Radiohead - Ground
Thingy - Grounded, I Guess
Quinoline Yellow - Off Ground Touch
Christina Pluhar/L'Arpeggiata - Curtain Tune on a Ground (H. Purcell)
Tjupurru - Stompin' Ground
Exploded View - Stand Your Ground
Egg - Wring Out the Ground Loosely Now
Basic Soul Unit - Grounswell
Dreamcast & Burymeinamink - Ground

One hour to the second! I know there are people who are like flawless at that, but I just guesstimate this stuff.

OK, here's an actual video. I found this instrument on a list of words especially beloved by the editors of a particular edition of the Chambers dictionary. Good luck seeing three heckelphones in one place anywhere else but here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBhkaL6z82M

Another mix. This one has Hoobastank on it.

Blaze Foley - My Reasons Why
Roland Kirk - Search For the Reason Why
Adam, Mike, & Tim - You're the Reason Why
Bobby Edwards - You're the Reason
George Aaron - Silly Reason
Lifetones - For a Reason
Shere Khan - No Reason
NNB - 25 Reasons
Hoobastank - The Reason (Bo En Remix)
The Lost - No Reason Why
The Circulatory System - The Reasons Before You Knew
UJ3RK5 - Reason Sleeps Tonight
Toy - The Reasons Why
Stereolab & Nurse With Wound - Animal or Vegetable (A Wonderful Wooden Reason)
The Velvet Underground - I Found a Reason

wow has it been two weeks already, time flies when you need to pee every hour

i have been on a heavy italo disco kick since that thread got bumped, i'm super excited that there's a documentary about the den harrow war, i have Opinions which i will keep to myself

here's a random record i found by browsing bandcamp's italo disco tags

https://hysteric-edits.bandcamp.com/album/oz-wave-edits-83-87

huh, i can't keep track of all the music - i know people here like to rag on ted gioia (and he probably deserves it!) but nobody else told me about this recent release featuring an early 1942 live recording of "barstow" by harry partch!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1eVVsXTqWU

The Drift

OK, this is a little bit of a different one. No set length, no hammering and sawing to fit the songs in the right space. The theme is drifting; if you're counting the minutes the effect isn't convincing. I put in what needs to be there and leave out what doesn't. And, I haven't done this in a while, but I'll do a little writing on the songs like I used to.

Jimi Hendrix - Drifting: Starting at the beginning. One of the first records I had was a cassette dub of a comp called "The Essential Jimi Hendrix". I believe this song was on it. I've always had a certain fondness for Jimi's ballads. The up-tempo funk numbers he was doing around these period, you know, I can't tell the difference between Freedom and Earth Blues and Ezy Ryder so good. I guess the ballads have a bit of the same problem. I guess this song sounds a lot like "Angel". I like this one better. The lyrics... OK, they're adolescent poetry, but I was an adolescent when I first heard it, and it's better than that "Angel of the morning" kind of stuff, even if I do like Jimi's singing on that demo. So: The best way to start.

Tim Buckley - Drifting (Escondido 1970): OK, this is a weird one because I did wind up putting this song on this mix twice. I have this bootleg from the Starsailor band, those last gigs before his 18 month sabbatical, and he does "Drifting" on it. It's very different from the official version on "Lorca", shorter, Bunk and Buzz Gardner are very present so it's a lot more jazz. Sound quality is a bit dodge - I don't think there's ever been an official issue of either of the Starsailor band tapes - but it's the kind of rough around the edges that I like; not really worse than The Copenhagen Tapes (I remember reading somewhere that the Copenhagen Tapes was a deliberately degraded listening copy that was released without the taper's permission and it sounds it; I'd like to hear the original for sure), and the weird fades between tracks make it really suitable for mixes.

Snail's House - (snowdrift): This is where things start getting next level for me. I love old music that has been with me so long it's part of my identity, but I also love new music that seems to go with parts of me I've never acknowledged or understood before. This is a video game soundtrack - I'm not sure if the video game actually exists or not. But it encapsulates the things I love about modern-day synthesized game music - a minor key chord progression with chiming notes (would it be gauche or superficial to say that they remind me from falling snow?) that develops, arpeggios, string sounds, intensity, excitement, without ever really losing that melancholy at the root, eventually coming back around to it. It's not sonata allegro, it's basically unchanged, but the melody isn't what needs to change, we are, and I do.

Radiohead - Backdrifts: One of the two "new songs" from Hail to the Thief that weren't played at their 2002 Iberian sojourn, and my two favorite songs from the record; the most electronic, and the least disappointing by comparison with the excitement of the '02 recordings.

Hearts & Minds - Slowly Drifting Outward: Honestly? In 2018 I consumed more new music than I can possibly remember. Honestly? I don't know if I've ever actually heard this song before yesterday. Whatever possessed madman was wantonly expanding my music collection last year, they had pretty decent taste though. This is some sort of progressive jazz, keyboard that sounds like sampled Mellotron flute, good horn playing.

Iceage - Drifting Outward: I really connected with Iceage's 2018 album; I thought it was a big improvement on, refinement of, "You're Nothing". Some good songs on "You're Nothing", though, some songs I liked a lot at the time, and this was one of them, though it didn't grab me like "Simony" did.

Johnny Moore's Three Blazers featuring Charles Brown - Drifting Blues: I cheat a lot, I give the illusion of breadth by just picking up some nice genre comps. Martin Scorcese Presents the Blues? Never seen it, but that CD set has some great blues on it that I'm not otherwise familiar with, not being a Real Blues Head. Don't know when this is from - '50s? '60s? Stark sonic contrast with the Iceage, probably the biggest shock jump cut on the mix, but I feel like it works.

The Wailers - Driftwood: This one the other hand is a more sedate transition. Pretty sure these folks aren't Bob Marley's band _or_ the "Out Of Our Tree" band. Could be wrong on the latter. This came from a web project called "The Exotica Project" which Numero picked up and licensed a bunch of the tunes from. Numero's issue sounds a lot better.

Barbara Moore - Drifting: We have to get around to the library music eventually, don't we? This is an unusual one in that the record is focused on vocals. It's one of the more acclaimed records in the genre. The haunting harmony vocals have a bit of exotica to them, which makes it flow pretty well from the last section.

Dirty Three - Cast Adrift: One of the first MP3s I had was the bonus CD from the Dirty Three's "Ocean Songs" - I seem to recall that I had enjoyed their playing on that Cat Power record and was inspired to delve into them. I don't even think I have the original record anymore but for some reason that bonus CD has stuck with me.

Klan Aileen - Adrift: I think I discovered these folks on the back of their 2018 album and then backtracked to their '16 record. Kind of shoegazey, noisey bits but overall pensive in much the same way as that Dirty Three song was. I like the echoing reverb.

If By Yes - Adrift: It seems like this is a pretty obscure one? I found out about them because a song of theirs was mixed by Cornelius and showed up on CM3... I loved it and then I found out Petra Haden was involved and of course I loved it. I keep getting surprised because I'd forgotten there was so much heavy guitar involved.

Octo Octa - Adrift (Avalon Emerson Furiously Awake Version): Well I guess you all know how I feel about Octo Octa! I actually don't think I have the record this song was originally from... her old stuff is a little too emotionally harrowing for me to really listen to. It was easier to get into Avalon Emerson because there weren't all those ISSUES to deal with. Anyway it's nice. Not the best track on this mix probably but good.

Seahawks - Drifting (feat. Indra Dunis): For some reason Seahawks are my favourite Balearic group. I don't know why. Right place right time I think? Again they have better songs but it's a good come-down from the Octo Octa tune.

Ray Pollard - The Drifter: OK, look, I didn't put Dobie Gray's "Drift Away" on this and some of you may well be pissed at me about that. I just don't like the song very much. I'm not saying that this really good Northern Soul song makes up for it, or even that I know jack shit about Northern Soul beyond this really good comp I have, but it is a fucking great song.

Richard Lockwood - Now I'm Adrift: Oh this must be another one of those 2018 finds. I don't know anything about this person, some folk loner. Really good songs. Reminds me a little bit of Fred Neil, maybe a bit more cerebral.

Tim Buckley - Driftin' (Venice Mating Call): The original live version that was polished up for Lorca. Buckley's vibe was in a very different space in '69 than it would be a year later. These long, long, vibrato-laden notes that John Oswald distilled into their essence on "Anon", instead of jazz the more familiar sound of Lee Underwood and Carter CC Collins. It looks like this was the only song I kept around from Venice Mating Call, so it must have really stood out.

DeWalta - Drift in the Void: So this is a 2019 release, and I know even less about it than I do the 2018 records! Also, it's electronic stuff, which is a genre of music I really enjoy listening to and never have shit that's interesting to say about! Other than that we're clearly in the "long songs" portion of the mix, which is extremely congenial and amenable to, well, drifting, and that this song does actually pair well with Tim Buckley's eight minute legato-folk tune.

Computer Magic - Drift Away: This is one of the things I love about doing mixes. It's a 2018 record which means I didn't listen to it enough and when I pulled a basically arbitrary subset of the songs I like this popped up. The penultimate song in a mix is very often something that is really meaningful to me, something that gives me a sense of culmination... after getting pretty far out there with the last two songs I wanted something that was a little more focused, had direction and especially meaning. Drifting can be a way of letting go of the past.

Brian Eno - Spirits Drifting: A little on the nose as an ending but if it goes anywhere it has to be the ending. It's the long fade. You can't follow it up with anything. Eno's really good at these sorts of pieces - I know others get more press, but Spirits Drifting is, I think, my favourite.

Turned out about 90 minutes. I guess you could fit it on a C90 - those things were really about 47 minutes a side so there'd probably be room - but I don't have a tape deck anymore. It just made for a good listen. It's good to talk about music, to spend some time thinking about why I like what I like rather than just listing off songs other people might enjoy listening to.

Cool concept and a pleasant change of pace from Scott Walker.

This wouldn't have been a good fit at all, but it reminded me of Richard Barrett's adrift, the avant/electroacoustic take on drifting. Here's an excerpt:

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

Very nice! I probably couldn't have fit it in, no. BTW the Iceage song is actually called "Everything Drifts"!

Doing the obsessive listening thing again. Probably shouldn't. Most of the stuff that gets featured on Bandcamp I wind up liking. David Bowlin, Moor Mother, um, I forget what else. Did you know 4mat put out a new record two weeks ago? I've been listening to his stuff since the early '90s. I guess I haven't really "grown up with him", but it kind of feels like it? I liked his stuff when I was a kid who was into MOD files, and I like his stuff even better now.

https://4mat.bandcamp.com/album/modern-closure

I can't walk so I'm just listening to more deep cut Dead boots. Didn't think I liked Scarlet->Fire until I heard the 1979-11-01 performance. Stuff like Barton Hall... it's so TASTEFUL and CLASSY. If I wanted to hear that shit I wouldn't be listening to the Dead.

So here's something that's not entirely tasteful or classy. I never really knew where the old murder ballad "Rain and Snow", what the Dead used to open their shows with, came from... turns out there's this banjo folkie from the Smoky Mountains by the name of Obray Ramsey who brought it to wider knowledge in '61. Guy was apparently fairly well known in the revival scene of the day but seems thoroughly forgotten right now... which is a shame because he seems like he was a big influence on Sam Amidon in particular. Anyway, in the late '60s somebody get the idea, seeing how all the hippies were into that shit, to repackage Ramsay as a "rock musician" so there was a band called White Lightnin'. They appeared on the soundtrack to the misbegotten cult film "Zachariah" in '71. Before then, though, the producer had a guy named Len Novy cut a "rock" version of "Cold Rain and Snow" for his record. Obray Ramsey isn't around but Byard Ray shows up on fiddle:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxPzCWwAU0k

this is a really cool comp, opens with the original “rain and snow”:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71XF9pNXlcL._SY355_.jpg

Cool Robert Crumb cover.

I was looking for copies of the Wheel of Fortune pilots featuring a drunk Edd "Kookie" Byrnes and I ran across Pea Hix's Youtube channel. This is a pretty nice disco acetate he posted. There's also a link to a stylophone trio he wrote on Soundcloud that I recommend heartily, but this up-tempo disco jam is the one that grabs me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy9sb5DTxwE

i'm listening to this sam vosbikian oud solo from 1950 (it's the first song here, about one minute in https://eastriverstringband.com/radioshow/?p=2314 ) and it strikes me... is that a reggaeton beat? like, did old-time kef bands use reggaeton beats a lot? or am i just dreaming shit here?

You'd have to work very hard to convince me that this version of "Shaft" isn't being recorded by the Portsmouth Sinfonia under a pseudonym.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZy1onGBF_E

Here's one I threw together really quick:

You Have Been Warned

Rose Elinor Dougall - Strange Warnings
Moving Parts - Anti-Aircraft Warning
Mac Rebennack - Storm Warning
Boreal Network - This is a Tornado Warning
David Axelrod - Warning Talk, Part Three
Boards of Canada - Energy Warning
Kazuki Muraoka - Warning Siren
Breakmaster Cylinder - Spill Bass/Tomato Warning
The Armed - Parody Warning
Game Theory - Time Warner
Snakefinger - Friendly Warning
Soul Camel - Horsehead Nebula (another warning light)
Alec Lambert - God is Already Warning Us
Monster Magnet - Look To Your Orb For The Warning
Macabre (Pentagram) - Be Forewarned
Talking Heads - Warning Sign
Giant Ant Farm - Eva's Warning
Caribou Vibration Ensemble feat. Marshall Allen - A Final Warning

my brother is like "maybe one day you will get into hardcore" and honest to god i try but i gave it another shot today and the record that stuck out most to me was a polish christian record with a french horn player on it, which, like, i don't think is what he was hoping i'd get into?

Update: I did finally get into some hardcore. Foundation's "When The Smoke Clears" is a good record.

In the meantime... it's Christmas time! I hate Christmas music. I have a significant collection nonetheless, but it's all terrible music that's not at all in the "spirit of the season" and that nobody wants to hear.

This record is not terrible but nobody wants to hear Jimmy "Duck" Holmes (whose latest record was recommended by Ted Gioia on his 2019 longlist) singing "Christmas Alone" in December. Nobody but me.

https://jimmyduckholmes.bandcamp.com/album/christmas-alone-merry-christmas-baby-single

I'm just fucking exhausted, I socially transitioned this week and it has been great but I am really tired. Too tired to do anything really but write about music.

My CD of Mellotron demos came in the mail yesterday and I sort of fell into a hole from there. Next thing I knew I was watching this performance by Lisa Bella Donna.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sggSUJI4E8U

I know it's a stereotype for people like me to be into analog synths. I don't mind fitting a stereotype. Honestly I'm lucky to have gotten into the Mellotron first, because there's never been any "entry level" access to those. Under other circumstances I might have a longstanding habit of spending more than I can afford on circuit bending. Also helping: My dyspraxia - doing the craft type stuff, soldering or changing out oscillators or any of that shit, is something I've avoided because doing hardware computer stuff was stressful and difficult enough for me with my dexterity issues.

The issue with this sort of stuff is it's so easy to substitute gear for talent (looking at you, The Edge), and the result of this glut of decent-but-not-great material means that I don't spend a lot of time listening to Berlin School stuff. If I like a piece of music, I want to listen to it more than once, to really absorb myself in it, and most of this stuff, there's no reason to do that. Exceptions are some of the old Tangerine Dream and Redshift's s/t.

I ca see myself doing this with Lisa Bella Donna's stuff. Some of it at least. She's got like five albums out this year and I'm not going to listen to all of them, but she does seem more than usually talented to my ears.

I've been having a rough time of it so I didn't get to post any music this weekend, even though I have some I wanted to post. Youtube is also half-convinced I am a bot which complicates things somewhat. Anyway here is Angel Witch on East German television in 1981:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4I3_VtGjqs

So anyway here's the thing, I got a couple things to tell you about here. Earlier this year I read a book on requiems and there was some really good stuff in there... I paid attention to an offhand mention of Ukrainian Valentin Bibik's piano variations on Dies Irae. It's up on Youtube and so is some of his other stuff... I was taken with this piece, apparently from a longer cycle, "In The White Night".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD5u80b268I

Another thing I've gotten into over the last couple days is Curt Boettcher... I didn't know about the new comp, and listening to it got me off on a rabbit hole. I listened to this extensive career overview fan comp called "I've Got To Love Somebody...". I don't know anything more about it except that while it's not perfect there's some excellent stuff on it. I was particularly taken by this seven-song run at the end of disc 2:

Curt Boettcher - It's a Sad World (solo piano)
Tommy Roe - It's Now Winter's Day
The Plastic People - This Life of Mine
Lee Mallory - Many Are the Times
Friar Tuck - A Bit of Gray Lost
Bobby Jameson - See Dawn
The Ballroom - Baby, Please Don't Go

Whoever sequenced these did a fantastic job. It's just a completely knockout sequence of downer Boettcher.

Through that comp I also got into some records I hadn't previously heard about, the Eternity's Children LP, which just hits all the right spots for me, and the Moses Lake record. I can see how some people might find the Moses Lake record too "wacky" but to me it's amazing, Boettcher's production at its best applied to a heavier, more rock band rather than his typical sunshine pop metier. Their 15-minute adaptation of the first (I think) creation story from Genesis deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Aphrodite's Child's "666", IMO. And that's followed up with a completely kick-ass adaptation of "The Hollow Men"...

ok it is still early but here is my 2019 list as of 2019-12-17, i'll probably find some more stuff after this but i have some time to kill now so. this includes reissues, archival, whatever, just whatever is in my tags.

regal & alien rain - acid affair ep
Andreas Söderström & Rickard Jäverling - Adelsö
algiers - void
europa ritrovata - affect is no crime
smallpeople - afterglow
r. stevie moore - afterlife
vanishing twin - the age of immunology
hermann nitsch - albertina quartett
ptu - am i who i am
moor mother - analog fluids of solid black holes
yugen blakrok - anima mysterium
craig leon - anthology of interplanetary music vol. 2: the canon
v/a - aor global sounds vol. 4
death and vanilla - are you a dreamer?
sudan archives - athena
john hartford - backroads, rivers & memories: the rare and unreleased john hartford
low leaf - baker's dozen
ilyas ahmed - behold killers
upper reality - best of upper reality
jards macale - besta fera
david bowlin - bird as prophet
jute gyte - birefringence
the black heart death cult - s/t
black market drugs - brain science
v/a - bulawayo blue yodel
vilma vritra - burd
cherushii & maria minerva - s/t
cheer-accident - chicago xx
lucas gillan's many blessings - chit-chatting with herbie
田中裕梨 - city lights 2nd season
katarra parson - cocoa voyage
the 180 gs - the commercial album
arziv orchestra - complete recordings of a 1940s philadelphia kef band
l'orange & jeremiah jae - complicate your life with violence
shasta culta - configurations
ancient pools - cosine
floating points - crush
lizzo - cuz i love you
jimmy "duck" holmes - cypress grove
miho hazama - dancer in nowhere
jacques greene - dawn chorus
ben monder - day after day
de lorians - s/t
disentomb - the decaying light
aldous harding - designer
olli hirvonen - displace
lingua nada - djinn
rustin man - drift code
fort romeau - dweller on the threshold
frank harris & maria marquez - echoes
MMMD - egoismo
afrosideral - el olimpo de los orishas
v/a - electro acholi kaboom from northern uganda
edward bogosian - everything is fake: armenian folk music in nyc in the 1940s
96 back - excitable, girl
ron geesin - expozoom
hyper john & muzeumvisitor - falling for you
eric le sage - faure: nocturnes
papisa - fenda
jack quartet - filigree: music of hannah lash
ronin arkestra - first meeting
jaimie branch - fly or die ii: bird dogs of paradise
North Sea Radio Orchestra;John Greaves;Annie Barbazza - folly bololey: songs from robert wyatt's rock bottom
kokoko! - fongola
octo octa - for lovers
blaquestone - full circle
jucifer - futility
v/a - gabberdisco origins 01
marie spaemann - gap
ustad saami - god is not a terrorist
liniker e os caramelows - goela abaixo
liturgy - haqq
skander - harakat
rodan - the hat factory 93
fort romeau - heaven & earth
meara o'reilly - hockets for two voices
sevish - horixens
hama - houmeissa
Max Andrzejewski's HÜTTE - HÜTTE and guests play the music of robert wyatt
rrose - hymn to moisture
shinichiro yokota - i know you like it
emerson - if you need me, call me
Zdeněk Liška - ikarie xb-1
toyohiko satoh - iki
ill considered - ill considered 6
sunwatchers - illegal moves
anne leilehua lanzilotti - in manus tuas
xoth - interdimensional invocations
arthur russell - iowa dream
otoboke beaver - itekoma hits
lifafa - jaago
fredfades & jawn rice - jacuzzi boyz
raphael saadiq - jimmy lee
jonny dillon - s/t
gianluigi trovesi - la misteriosa musica della regina loana
fet.nat - le mal
gary gritness - the legend of cherenkov blue
the toms - life raft
christopher tignor - a light below
minami deutsch and damo suzuki - live at roadburn
oranssi pazuzu - live at roadburn 2017
ccr - live at woodstock
zeal & ardor - live in london
king crimson - live in newcastle, december 8, 1972
curt boettcher - looking for the sun
lost crowns - s/t
dreamcast & burymeinamink - the lost tape vol. 2
white ward - love exchange failure
raveena - lucid
dominique guiot - l'univers de la mer
Wędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi - Marynistyka suchego lądu
sisso - mateso
little brother - may the lord watch
spellling - mazy fly
patrick cowley - mechanical fantasy box
deafkids - Metaprogramação
the black egg - mind control losers
monokle & al-90 - mindperfection
radiohead - minidiscs (hacked)
4mat - modern closure
houssam gania - mosawi swiri
the micky sound - ndege ya mabua peku peku mitaani
grandmaster masese - new african soundz singles no. 1
rose elinor dougall - a new illusion
kaina - next to the sun
tyme/tatsuya yamada - no one like you and me
v/a - numerous agnomens vol. iii
v/a - nyatiti singles vollume 1
Oren Ambarchi, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie & Sam Shalabi - oglon day
tc4 - ola
that dog. - old lp
tomeka reid quartet - old new
angel bat dawid - the oracle
hysteric - oz wave edits 83-87
black moth super rainbow - panic fades
betonkust & palmbomen ii - parallel b
call super - peach 007
purple pilgrims - perfumed earth
elza soares - planeta fome
tomb mold - planetary clairvoyance
el irreal veintiuno - poliformo
wiktor stribog - poradnik usmiechu ost
v/a - post now: round one - chicago vs. new york
v/a - powder in space
go: organic orchestra - ragmala
koffee - rapture
octo octa - resonant body
rick white & eiyn sof - the opening
Gooooose - rusted silicon
fovea hex - the salt garden iii
v/a - seito: in the beginning, woman was the sun
nicola cruz - siku
stein urheim - simple pieces & paper cut-outs
partch - sonata dementia
envelope generator - songs i hate
yosi horikawa - spaces
riot ensemble - speak, be silent
hiromi - spectrum
carola ortiz - spirala
sun ra - the spirit of jazz cosmos arkestra at WUHY 1978
behavior - spirits & embellishments
legowelt - star simulator
shnabubula - super rite of spring
clipping. - there existed an addiction to blood
seba kaapstad - thina
helado negro - this is how you smile
v/a - the time for peace is now: gospel music about us
sankara - total liberation of the human race
ben ritz - trope insurance
"blue" gene tyranny & peter gordon - trust in rock
joe armon-jones - turn to clear view
Širom - a universe that roasts blossoms for a horse
barker - utility
vagabon - s/t
reptaliens - valis
blackwater holylight - veils of winter
mach-hommy - Wap Konn Jòj!
guerilla toss - what would the odd do?
solange - when i get home
no moon - where do we go from here?
krallice - wolf
loona - x x
wednesday campanella & oorutaichi - yakushima treasure
janan sawa - yema
wxyz - yiy
apparatus - yonder yawns the universe
bent knee - you know what they mean
charly bliss - young enough
kaisyn holamkhanov - zhuuk baraiym katynga
cucina povera - zoom
長谷川白紙 - エアにに
khana bierbood - strangers from the far east
polkadot stingray - 有頂天
3776 - 歳時記
phillip nangle - 2 karimba 3 octave
charlie koffeen presents j dilla's donuts - 2019-02-09 chicago
26 bats! - s/t
v/a - 30 years of rage part 1-4
nkisi - 7 directions
sakanaction - 834.194
collider - -><-
michael robinson - spirit lady
octo octa - i wanna tell you a story about house
spanky rogers - racing through time
paris strother - dream catcher
david briggs - symphonie improvisee on three welsh themes
davila 666 - huesos viejos
Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek - oy oy emine
nathan moody - chrysalis

my new year's resolution was to listen to less new music this year than i did last year. i think i've actually accomplished it... though i could still blow it in the next two weeks.

i have a hard time finding good mod music because most of the people on the tracker communities right now hate techno! it seems like all they want out of mod files is some fucking hans zimmer fake orchestra shit. for me i feel like a lot of the more innovative stuff is buried under this sort of thing. anyway, i gave it another go and found a good post-peak one, yuki satellites by radix. this one is apparently from '99 and first circulated as a bootleg mp3... it's actually bigger in mp3 than it is in tracker format, because the guy kind of went overboard with the samples. anyway this is quality shit, i'd love to hear more tracker stuff like this and the "speedball 2" theme and "aryx".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef_i-NyMlC8

my new year's resolution was to listen to less new music this year than i did last year. i think i've actually accomplished it... though i could still blow it in the next two weeks.

honestly, if i could do ten i would, because that long list... it's not useful, i know it's not useful. too much information, not enough context. i know it's not useful because i see lists like that and they are of no use to me. the ten best? there isn't such a thing, i'd be throwing darts at the list at random. i can give you one record that has meant more to me than anything else, and that is resonant body by octo octa, but beyond that it's just what sort of music you feel like listening to. what i'd like to do, more than a list, is to blurb each and every one of those, give a brief encapsulation of what they're about, so someone looking to explore has more than words that mean nothing to go by. but i don't have the time, or the words, to do any of these records justice, not really. these are all records that have at some point grabbed me before words, they grabbed me, and i can't tell you why they did and the records i've heard that aren't on this list didn't, i can't tell you which of these will grab you, and if you don't have time for it you'll probably wind up skipping it entirely, i know because that's what i do with these sorts of lists when other people make them. i had 45 minutes and i wanted to practice my typing.

how about this. you pick ten and ask me about them and i'll tell you. how's that sound?

that is an interesting way to escape the question. i listened to octo octa and it turned out that it is not the kind of music that interests me. electronic music in general i find difficult to love. the problem always being the repetitiveness, the lack of variation especially in the realm of micro-sound. anyways i give you my album of the year. it is an album about instant gratification, a spectacular pop album, voices from the heavens, melodies that totally leave me speechless and kill me. an almost perfect piece of music. Girl by Girl Ray.

i wasn't dodging the question, i just didn't give you the answer you were looking for :)

i used to have the same reaction to electronic music - couldn't take the repetition - but as i've listened to more music i come to understand that repetition is at the heart of all music, and the only difference is what the _nature_ of the repetition is. this girl ray record, i am listening to it now, and of course it repeats, like all music repeats, and if you acclimate to it you eventually don't hear it, don't notice it, and hear the change rather than the consistency. it's funny that you say that it's in "micro-sound" that it lacks variation, because to me that's where the variation comes - these are programmed patterns, programmed to be perfect and precise in their individual effect, and it's the combinations that drift, i don't know, maybe in a sort of "in c" sense except more controlled. there's greater economy of language in a lot of the best electronic music, the difference between a poem and a novel, but to get there you have to take the repetition for what it's there for, limbic shit or whatever.

it kind of disappoints me that cis people (and a lot of trans people, for that matter) seem to not hear in "resonant body" what i do, having struggled so long with invisibility to finally hear this record that puts it all out there and affirms and celebrates who we are and it's, i don't know, apparently a fucking dog-whistle or something, people will hear it and just not have any idea what it has to do with being trans.

ah well.

anyway girl ray is nice but doesn't grab me especially, it strikes me as being one of those records with a terroir to it, like i'd get it more if i was english. there's some records that are like that for me, having spent a long time in the american midwest a band like my morning jacket or wilco means something to me that it probably wouldn't otherwise

Lots of great stuff in this thread.

a couple weeks ago i decided to listen to every band i could find named "collage". my favorite was this estonian folk/jazz combo. estonian vocal harmonies and soul jazz, what a combo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0zVKS6vJes
― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Friday, 10 August 2018 02:34 (one year ago)

No way, they're one of my favorite groups.'Kadriko' is even better. hyper.records in Estonia put out a 2CD comp with their entire discography, minus 2 songs, plus a bunch of unreleased stuff. It's a real gem...

oh thanks! is that parimad lood? will have to check it out!

That's the one!

thanks for your answer rusho. i think i didn't express myself very well concerning electronic music and repetition. what you say is absolutely true most music relies on repetition of patterns and structures, that is normal and something i do not criticize. what i mean is the nature of electronic sound which to me is like a two dimensional area compared to the three dimensional space acoustic music and natural, untreated voices represent. most electronic sounds, especially the beat patterns are always identical, for me listening to them is a torture almost as if my head was subject to a small hammer hitting the skull at exactly the same position for hundreds of times. a human drummer will never be as "perfect", there will be minimal variations in his drumming, on a micro-tone level every hit on the drum kit will sound slightly different. that is what makes music made by humans so lively and attractive for me. whereas most electronic music to my ears sounds cold and dead and boring. that's probably why i never got house and techno. there are exceptions though, for example boards of canada. the reason might br their use of analog synthesizers and that their tunes are often not very beat orientated.

honestly i think i can relate to what you're saying, i did used to view electronic music that way, and over time i've just found different ways of listening. like when you listen to "peter and the wolf" david bowie introduces all the different instruments to you with their different motifs and sometimes i can sort of shift to hearing the individual performances but sometimes i get overtaken by the gestalt, the interactions, i _stop hearing_ the separate instruments, getting into that, you know, flow state.

that's the point of any repetition to me, it's learning what to ignore, what not to think about or process consciously, it's listening to "time has come today" without being driven crazy by the motherfucking cowbell (i don't think it's "humans" vs. "machines" per se). humans are surprisingly capable of acclimating to all kinds of things. i have personally found serious benefits to acclimating to electronic beats.

Fuck it I'm just gonna go way too deep on this one, or try at least (this all made a lot more sense at 5 AM before I got out of bed).

I used to say that my goal was to like all music, which made people look at me like I was stupid or something, and in truth it was a lazy overgeneralization. It's more that if I care about or respect someone, I want to love what they love. (Back when I said I wanted to like all music I also wanted to care about and respect everyone, which I've kind of given up on.)

When I was really young I used to judge people based on what music they listened to, like I wasn't sure I could date someone who liked Phil Collins or whatever. Now it's the reverse - I judge music based on who loves it.

I know for a lot of people it's not necessarily like that, it's more a "you like what you like (shrug)" thing. For me, ah, I feel like it goes back to Captain Beefheart.

The first time I heard "Trout Mask Replica" I heard about what most people without a thorough grounding in bottleneck blues and free jazz hear in it - some dude yelling over a bunch of noise. I put in a lot of work to hear something else. In retrospect I don't think my motivations for that were good. It was sort of classic troll logic, some clever dudes saying "Oh you probably aren't smart enough to get it", to which the rational and appropriate response is "Oh, fuck you", but at that time I very much wanted to be a Clever Dude and felt the need to prove that I was smart enough to "get it". Also I had paid full price for that CD, fifteen dollars, and I wasn't going to let that money go to waste, and also I had like three other CDs, so it was that, or Dark Side of the Moon, or listen to the radio which played nothing but The Sign and One Of Us on a constant loop - I like The Sign but I don't need to hear it every fifteen minutes.

Eventually after listening to about it 50 times (because my time was cheap back then) I slowly pieced it together that there was, in fact, more to it than some dude yelling over a bunch of noise, and that experience - I guess that trauma, because seriously you have to be kind of a fucked up person to willingly listen to Trout Mask Replica 50 times even though you don't really like it - has colored the way I experience music ever since.

I guess that never means I'll be a true poptimist, because I listen to any pop music as if it was fucking "Trout Mask Replica", as if it's some sort of mysterious puzzle I need to solve, but I'll also, you know, listen to it, because I've moved on from trying to be a Clever Dude. Learning to enjoy Trout Mask Replica was, in large part, a process of unlearning a lot of the unwritten assumptions and beliefs I had about how music was supposed to work. To get what the band was doing I basically had to teach myself Beginner's Mind, and having stumbled my way into some approximation of that skill I do find it a useful one to practice, and I've found it applies to pretty much any kind of music.

I'm limited in a lot of ways in what I can do, in what I can feel, but after decades of work I find that I can, with effort, learn to love pretty much any damn music if I put enough work into it. Other sorts of empathy come a lot harder, but if I can love the music someone else loves, well, it's a start.

And I feel like it works the other way around, as well. That's why I have one album I really recommend from 2019 and not ten, because I feel, rightly or wrongly, that if someone can hear what I hear in "Resonant Body" that they will understand me, understand my experience as a trans woman, in a way that's impossible to communicate any other way.

OK, that's probably enough digging for now.

OK, back to actual music. I don't know how I got here exactly but this Czech song is one of the most aggressively unfunky takes on "You Should Be Dancing" I could possibly imagine. It is at least fairly psychedelic, especially with the way OTT vocal echo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awkjjlVd1R0

The side bar (I am browsing in porn mode, which I do more and more these days just because Google will take anything I say and take it way out of context or completely get its keywords confused and start giving me news about transalpine Gaul or some shit) went on to recommend me something by "100 Monkeys", who I thought I recognized but it turned out I was mixing them up with 100 Flowers.

ok happy new year everybody tell me your favorite songs about WIZARDS

like "good wizard meets naughty wizard"

or "northlands old and toothless wizard" by eno (not that eno)

it's a new year and i need some fucking WIZARD JAMS

fuck it i can't wait any longer, here is my roughly hour-long mix of wizard jams

inside - wizzard king
sorcery - wizard's council
scanner - wizard force
albert ayler - the wizard
lone taxidermist - dribble wizard
shuttah - the wizard
the aquarian age - good wizard meets naughty wizard
the sun also rises - wizard shep
rondellus - magus (the wizard)
jessika kenney & eyvind kang - witch and the wizard
magma - maahnt (wizard's fight vs. the devil)
jake kaufman - the science wizard (explodatorium)
eno - northlands old and toothless wizard

the power metal -> free jazz segue is slightly, uh, daring, but that's one of the hazards of being me

no place for Emperor "i am the black wizards" nor for "We're off to see the wizard"?

"i am the black wizards" is classic for sure but i never got much into first wave black metal, go fig. for "we're off to see the wizard" i was tempted by aunto molly urso's disco version of "over the rainbow" which goes into "we're off to see the wizard" a bit, but i decided against it

i also am enjoying j.d. emmanuel's "wizards" from '82, which is peak new age/berlin school shovelware (the berlin school as a whole is a good argument for the proposition that music should be difficult to make)

OK here's what I've been up to.

1970s TV news themes. I'm a fiend for them. I know it's weird, it's detritus and the kind of people who are into this sort of stuff... like if you think I'm not right in the head, I get that.

Like, here's the thing I am backed up on this by a blog post on CityLab, which is as far as I can tell a reputable site, calling this "The World's Greatest Local TV News Theme". Right here.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/08/long-live-the-worlds-greatest-local-tv-news-song/568813/

It's "Move Closer To Your World", and it was written by a guy by the name of Al Ham, who is like a legend in TV news themes, like the TV news equivalent of somebody like Mike Post. Now that's not what I'm posting here today, because bear with me, his wife - his wife was a lady by the name of Mary Mayo, who is famous in certain _other_ circles for working with Dick Hyman on his "Moon Gas" LP. I'll be honest with you it took me a long time to come around to Dick Hyman beyond "boy that's an embarrassing name to have", and even when I did it was just "Moog - The Eclectic Electrics of Dick Hyman", which is the one that's sampled on Beck's "Odelay" and has that avant-garde moog cover of James Brown's "Give It Up Or Turn It Loose".

Anyway God knows this is the sort of music I need way more of in my life.

So here's the stereo version of "Moon Gas" by Dick Hyman and Mary Mayo:

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

Enjoy.

Yesterday I did a list of some of my favorite jazz LPs from 1944-1970 and it was fun to write but I don't know there's enough interest for me to post another long list of random names.

OK wait. So in 1976 somebody decided to get Lesley Gore back together with Quincy Jones for a comeback record, which of course means a disco record. Like, you can tell that's probably not going to turn out well, sure. But did the leadoff single have to be so, well, stalkery? "Sometimes I watch you sleep?" And then there's the cover, for which some brilliant art director took a perfectly ordinary picture of Ms. Gore and decided to go all Diamond Dogs with it. That was not a good idea! That was really not a good idea!

Here is a random record by someone named Iya Khan called "Spaceman". It has never been sold on Discogs, but Discogs says it was released in 1985 and that Iya Khan has not released any other records. The B-side is called "Fat Girls". I have not heard the B-side.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exLX08o9Njo

Here's a quick one. Can't remember why I threw it together.

Pylon - Working Is No Problem
Captain Beefheart - Hard Workin' Man
Rush O))) - Working Man Slow Edit
Charming Hostess - Won't You Keep Us Working?
DEVO - Working in a Coalmine (Hardcore)
Fonzi Thornton - I Work For A Living (Nile Rodgers Long Version)
Mr. Airplane Man - I Work Hard
Otoboke Beaver - 6 Day Working Week Is A Pain
Rex Griffin - You Gotta Go To Work
Jesse Gould - Out of Work
The Fall - Fit and Working Again
UJ3rk5 - Uj3rk5 Work For Police
Wild Man Fischer - I'm Working For The Federal Bureau of Narcotics
The Clash - Julie's Been Working For The Drug Squad
Martin King - Working for the KGB (Extended)
Blue Orchids - Work

threw together an hour of cowboy songs a couple days ago but don't feel like posting the playlist, it was reasonably interesting but mostly it was just "oh yeah those are the musicians kate listens to all right".

so here's a musician i don't listen to

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHQiZ5Zzwk

"dreidel" the lead single and leadoff track from don mclean's 1972 (or '73, sources differ) s/t lp, his follow-up to his hit record "american pie". it hit #21 and then dropped like somebody quit paying payola for it. i was surprised at how much i liked this song, considering that i kind of hate "american pie". it's not the best song ever - slightly overproduced, slightly overwritten (particularly the bridge), but genuine effort was put into it and it's under four minutes long.

Trans Playlist #2: "I've Grown So Ugly", Robert Pete Williams

("Trans Playlist #1" was "September the Ninth" by Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge, not identified as such at the time)

"I've Grown So Ugly", a 1961 Robert Pete Williams song I first heard as performed by Captain Beefheart on his 1967 album "Safe as Milk", cuts to the heart of my experience with dysphoria. A combination of two things, really. One the one hand, the lyric "Grown so ugly I don't even know myself" perfectly encapsulates my experience of dissociation. On the other, the howling refrain "Baby, this ain't me" carries with it the emotional weight of dysphoria, the acute feeling of wrongness that can strike at any time.

Since I go obscure on these things, here's a live video from 1970 of Robert Pete Williams that turned up when I was looking for a stream of the song.

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