Aww, the computer loves you too, YACHT.
The Band’s Music From The Big Pink seems like a super impressive debut album, but of course, they had been Dylan’s backing band, so they were not rookies. There’s been far too much written on the music of the 60s, and I was nowhere near existing, so I have nothing fresh to say. Good record, though.
[Read More]This is from the 1975 album Remember My Song, a record that became famous due to sampling (especially in Eminem’s “My Name Is”). As with so many of these great old funk records, it’s a delight that it was resurrected by interest in the source material, because it’s absolutely incredible. I mean, yes, the break that Dre flipped is astounding, but listen to this entire thing. The temperature in this room dropped about ten degrees when this kicked on, it’s so cool. And, for real, look at this album cover. Goddamn!
[Read More]Russian Circles usually gets tagged with the post-rock label, which doesn’t really hang together to me. There’s nothing really post- about most of their stuff. To me, this is really just straight up instrumental metal, and it’s faaaantastic at that. They’ve been cranking out fantastic albums for years now, and it seems like it would get tired, but it absolutely does not. This is from the magnificent Guidance, which is as good a place to start as any.
[Read More]We’ve had this Public Enemy cover before, so bonus song today!
You know, I have this band squirreled away in my brain as “extremely twee, not my favorite”, and so I haven’t listened to this album much. I pulled up a little writeup to get a little bit of background, and apparently I needed to pay more attention to the lyrics on these songs. But I do not, I pay very little attention to lyrics, so I missed that apparently some of these twee songs are really filthy. Oh well, they’re staying in that twee bucket.
[Read More]The lead-in to the The Long March EP, this really tells you what to expect on this record. And, honestly, this is an extremely generous EP - 9 tracks, 35 minutes, that’s plenty of material for a full LP.
Aw, hell yeah, hip hop day! This comes to us from Imani, Vol. 1, released in 2015 after a 10 year break between records. Alas, there is no Vol. 2 (yet?). There’s actually some similarity in approach between Blackalicious and Blue Scholars, with both broadly approaching hip hop from a sort of modernized throwback stance, if that makes any sense. [reads what I wrote] It does not make sense.
[Read More]This is one of the three epic (10+ minute) songs on Kentucky, where Panopticon really lets the black metal blast out. But even among the fury, he takes the time to have that interlude in the middle. It’s just a super interesting fusion. Listen to the…flutes? pipes?…on the outro. Just good stuff.
I knew exactly zip about Ezra Furman when his 2018 album Transangelic Exodus showed up on some end of year lists. I know slightly more than zip now, with the thing I’ve learned: this album rips. Listen to this, this is basically a Cars song but with cello, which is bitchin'.
[Read More]We’ve had a couple tracks from this record, which is Crazy, The Demo Sessions. Every time it comes up, I’m reminded how much I like this, and then I go look at his discography, get intimidated, and kind of give up. Not very laudable of me, I suppose.
See, the beginning to this song is the sort of thing that got people dismissive of the third wave. There’s no real point to adding the “rude 69!” bits to the song other than to just have the whole enterprise be all smirky. Other than that, it’s a totally reasonable instrumental. Well, whatever.
[Read More]This is really pretty avant-garde for the punk scene of 1984. I mean, sure, there were plenty of post-punk bands working in kind of adjacent spaces, but this is still pretty far out there.
We’ve had Imarhan on here before, but as always, I feel kind of inadequate writing about bands from other cultures that I’m not familiar with. Sure, I can write about, say, punk bands from the US plenty, but I guess I’m not really up to the task of writing about a rock band from Algeria, esepcially as they’re clearly blending their own influences with those of rock. It’s very cool stuff, though.
[Read More]This comes to us from early in the third phase of Stax Records’ life, after they reached an arrangement with CBS Records. This period still contains plenty of fantastic songs, but Stax was also on a slow decline. Luckily for them, they had plenty of space to decline in to.
I wonder if I could play this on the bass? I should try. (I cannot.)
[Read More]This track sounds like at least three different songs being played simultaneously, which is delightful.
One of the things that the Internet promised us is that we’d be connected to people all over the world, opening up new cultural horizons. That’s mostly worked out by allowing all the worst people in the world to find each other, which isn’t exactly a positive development. However, it did connect me to multiple folks in places like Australia and New Zealand, who sometimes recommend music to me like Bananagun. So, I guess it’s all a wash.
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