From the double album The Powers That B, as with most things Death Grips, this is pretty singular. It’s really unclear what you’d call this, other than experimental. Maybe Dadaist?
This comes from Play Cell, a pop-punk album on Lookout distinguishable primarily for the rarity of a female singer in a scene where you didn’t find very many of them. It’s a decent album, but not great, and somehow I ended up with four albums from them.
[Read More]I kind of feel like I should give a Jim Anchower-style apology here for disappearing for a while, but the truth is, I was traveling and didn’t queue up any entries for while I was gone. Sorry about that! Back into the music mines with me, though!
That was not the triumphant, rockin’ return I was hoping for. Oh well. Live by the shuffle, die by the shuffle. Anyway, I like the breakdown at the end of this song.
[Read More]Just a quick one today, Five Songs is on the road!
Surf-ish instrumental band Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet are probably best known as the band who did the theme song for Kids In The Hall. That’s a bit of a shame, as they put together three very strong albums. Strong enough that at one time, underground luminary Steve Albini called them the best band recording. Anyway, thoroughly charming and full of personality, their albums are all worth giving a try, with Dim The Lights, Chill The Ham being my favorite.
[Read More]Just a quick entry today, but some fun songs.
An early song from Big Black, this was on the EP Bulldozer, the first one that featured Santiago Durango and so is really the first real recording from them. This song was later found on The Hammer Party, which collected the first couple (or three, on CD) EPs. It’s an interesting document of a band that is kind of finding their sound, and there are some strong songs on the collection.
[Read More]Today’s set is, frankly, a mess. The hazards of the random number generator.
210 songs in my collection from Andrew Bird, and this stupid thing picked a repeat song. Sure, we get Six Songs today, but come on. I do feel like the number of repeats I’ve seen is higher than I would expect. I also know that humans are TERRIBLE at estimating the randomness of a system and related probabilities. I should work it out for real.
[Read More]Today’s music. Sometimes, while I’m assembling the play list, the next song that pops up is something I desperately want to add. And yet I resist. Why do I do that? The rules on this thing are dumb.
I don’t feel like I acknowledge great band names enough when they come up here, so for the record: Cretin is a great band name. Playing something between death metal and grindcore, Cretin are either going to get you banging your head and wrecking stuff at your desk, or are going to seriously try your patience for the next couple minutes.
[Read More]One of these songs is not like the others.
Another piece from Deathsentences of the Polished And Structurally Weak. This album was really more about creating a mood and atmosphere than it was about anything as conventional as songs. It’s a pure exploration of sound for its own sake, and as such, forms quite an interesting experiment.
From one experimental electronic artist to another. Jelinek works with small bits and pieces of sounds, up to and especially including glitchy noises and artifacts, and reassembles them into warm, understated songs. This track, from the magnificent Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records, is a great example of the kind of music he creates. Subtlety is an underappreciated skill for musicians.
[Read More]Hey, I know somebody playing on one of these! (SPOILER ALERT: not the first one.)
It feels really wrong to just have one track from The Wall in here. It further feels like this is the wrong time to discuss Pink Floyd. Maybe I’ll do a Pink Floyd special at some point. Anyway, suffice it to say, The Wall is over the top and ridiculous, and nevertheless I still love every part of its hammy majesty.
[Read More]Sorry about the second song in the playlist. You’ll see when you get there.
From Stepfather, an album that featured some pretty experimental songs, distinguishing itself from its more straightforward predecessors. “You” is built around a nice, conventional funk sample, though.
To the extent Front 242 ever had a “hit”, it was this song, briefly a staple of a certain sort of dance club. And just in case you wanted to hear that industrial dance beat more clearly, they helpfully provided an instrumental remix on the inevitable 12" single of the song, along with six more versions of it. Say what you want about the purveyors of industrial dance, but they got their money’s worth out of any song that got traction.
[Read More]Oh god, this is a bad song. I’m so, so sorry, if anybody is listening to this. This is like something straight out of the cheesiest fever swamps of power metal, but with no ridiculous flaming guitar solo.
Much better! One of the slower songs from Burning Airlines, but still with that little keening guitar line to keep things interesting. And I love the way that they recorded the bass for their albums.
[Read More]