HELL ORBS

The Police, “King Of Pain”

By the time Synchronicity came out, the Police were really out of gas. There are some fine pop songs on it, but lots of filler, and even the good songs are kind of tame compared to some of their previous songs. I really liked this album a lot back when it came out, but find myself listening to it only very rarely now.

Budos Band, “Old Engine Oil”

There are about three seconds at the beginning of this song when you think it’s going to be a classic rock vamp. But then the horns kick in, and it’s a regular Budos vamp. But with some classic rock touches here and there in the guitar, which is a lot of fun. It kicks off another classic record from the Budos Band, an album which dials back the psych stuff from Burnt Offering just a little bit. It ends up being right in the middle for their albums, behind Burnt Offering and I, but ahead of III and II. I haven’t placed Long in the Tooth yet, but I think it winds up probably right around III somewhere.

Tortoise, “TNT”

One thing I’ve always loved about Tortoise is their willingness to name songs things totally different from what they might sound like. A song called “TNT” should sound like, I dunno, an AC/DC knock-off, not a cerebral post-rock tune with a trumpet solo.

Secrets of the Sky, “V”

That’s the Roman numeral for 5, not the letter. All of the songs with Roman numerals on this record are little interstitials. I, uh, remember listening to this record several years ago, but that’s the extent of what I remember.

Pretty cool stuff today.

Amon Tobin, “Proper Hoodidge”

It feels like we’ve had Tobin before, but the mighty and infallible Five Songs Index says no, so here we are. Tobin is probably my second favorite electronic artist after Squarepusher, with Supermodified being my favorite album of his. It’s sometimes difficult to say what he does differently from others. I suppose, fundamentally, that there’s more of a sense of narrative with his songs. He seems to be going somewhere with his stuff, and sometimes electronic music can seem a little unfocused or aimless.

Just in case anybody is curious, I’ve started using ToVid to upload songs to YouTube. It seems to work with a minimum of hassle, the only drawback being that I sometimes need to convert songs to MP3 before uploading them. For that job, media.io seems to work pretty well. Between the two of them, it means I don’t really need to do very much to get things uploaded. As for today, let’s hope today’s songs are a better bunch than yesterday.

I listened to yesterday’s songs again with Megan on the couch, and it was kind of a lackluster set. Not that some of those artists haven’t done good things, but it sure didn’t hang together. I guess that’s the hazard of this thing, but here’s hoping today’s songs rock!

Oh, I’ve also added a tasty treat to the front of the playlist today for those that don’t follow me on Twitter. LINK! HE COME TO TOWN!