Posts

Good news! No Japanese noise today!

Tribulation, “Cauda Pavonis”

Listen to this track, and think about the other stuff featured on Five Songs in the past. What do you think this band normally sounds like? Some kind of soundtrack-y kind of thing? Something closer to post-rock? Foetus tribute act?

If you look into your heart, you know the correct answer. Something like this? Yeah, it’s metal.

Lambchop, “Jan. 24”

Lambchop chose to release two albums on the same day in 2004, Aw C’mon and No, You C’mon. It’s not entirely clear why they chose to release them as separate records, instead of a double album. There’s not really any distinction between the types of songs on the two albums, and it’s not like one is all b-sides or anything. They just decided to release two records, a bit of an odd decision from a band that has always been a bit odd themselves. At any rate, the world is a better place for more Lambchop songs, so may they release fifty albums on the same day.

Kind of wiplashing around today.

Art Brut, “Formed A Band”

This might be the platonic ideal of the Art Brut song, a song where you legitimately can’t tell if they’re putting you on or not. I think they’re doing both, it’s dead serious as well as an arch joke. Like, it’s many layers of put on that just wraps around itself. Putonception.

They Might Be Giants, “Destroy the Past”

You know, I never actually saw Inception.

Some bonus tunes today!

Morcheeba, “Blindfold”

We’ve had several trip-hop acts around here in the past, and here’s one of the lesser known bands from that scene. Morcheeba, like all of the trip-hop bands that hung around for a while, pretty quickly expanded beyond just straight trip-hop. For example, beyond the drums and a little bit of scratching, this is more jazz than trip-hop. At any rate, this album (Big Calm) is very good.

You know, I didn’t think it could really get more third wave-y around here, but it seems like New Shuffle might be even more fond of the stuff. But, you know, here you go!

Death From Above 1979, “Never Swim Alone”

Pounding drums and bellowing through distortion is a time honored formula that almost always gets me going. Just big, pounding, and shameless. Delightful!

Less Than Jake, “Glumble”

Lots of Less Than Jake recently. This comes from Losers, Kings, And Things We Don’t Understand, a compilation of the various non-album cuts that they produced before and around the time of their first proper album, Pezcore. In these early years, Less Than Jake was really more of a punk band than anything else, but they did a good job with it. As always, it’s more down to the energy and hooks than anything else with pop punk.

Today!

J Church, “Bomb”

Camels, Spilled Corona, and the Sound of Mariachi Bands is a great name for an album, in this case the first of multiple singles comps that J Church put together. As befits a band as prolific as they were, J Church was constantly putting out songs on 7"s, random comps, splits, and other places. They had the good grace to collect that stuff together periodically, and the comps are really basically on a par with their normal albums.

Almost like a Special in here today!

Mr. Lif, “Success”

I feel like I haven’t bought a new concept record in a while. I suppose some of the unintelligable garbled metal I listen to could be concept records, I’d have no real way of knowing. You could tell me basically anything about the lyrics or themes or whatever of some of those slabs and I’d probably believe you. At any rate, many of my favorite concept records are rap records, and I Phantom is one of the very best.

Lots of electronics today.

Prefuse 73, “140 Jabs Interlude”

Rivington Não Rio, the 2015 album from Prefuse 73, was something of a return to form for Scott Herren, his best work since Surrounded by Silence for my money. This track takes a little bit to get going, by turns downright pyrotechnic by the end, and Herren’s beats are great when he’s really going for it.

RJD2, “Shot In The Dark”

Prior to firing shuffle up for Five Songs, I had just been listen to STS x RJD2, a delightful collaboration featuring some absolutely ferocious work from RJD2. He’s still never beaten Deadringer, mind you. But I wanted to plug the fact that he’s done some cool shit otherwise.

I’ve legitimately missed this. It was a bit of a grind at times, and I’ll have to find the right pace, but it’s nice to be back in the saddle. And it’s nice to explore the dusty corners of my music again. Here is today’s trip into the vault.

Edan, “Humble Magnificent”

One issue that I have with this thing is that I stopped doing “previously"s, which was a huge hassle, but I haven’t gone back and re-tagged everything. So, I’m not entirely sure what I’ve covered. At any rate, Edan is a rapper/producer/DJ out of Boston who has thus far only made two albums (Primitive Plus and Beauty and the Beat) and a mixtape, but it’s all magnificent. His beats in particular are fantastic, the perfect blend of dusty loops and filthy drums. One of the best pieces of music news in 2018 is Edan’s return to music, with a new album coming out soon. I couldn’t be more excited!

It occurred to me that I didn’t explain who Plexasaurus Rex is. That’s my music server! As you might have guessed, I’m using Plex, and I have to say: so far, it’s pretty good! Did a good job organizing my music, interface seems solid. No complaints thus far. And, of course, I gave it a dumb name, the same dumb name that every other sad nerd who thinks they’re funny gives their server. Anyway, here’s today’s tunes,, now that we have today’s sad exposition out of the way.

WOAH. Kinda blacked out there for a little bit. But we’re back! We’re using a new service! This time it’s all running on all our own shit so it should be solid! I’m only at the mercy of the software! And the device it’s running on! And my home network! And…hang on, I’ll come in again.

Aw, who cares? The rock stopped, and now it’s going again. I think I even have most of my own music back. Let’s do this! HIT IT, PLEXASAURUS REX!