#Also that electric guitar (I think?) repeated set of chords that starts early on

[starscreamingg]

okay I know the amazing spiderman 2 isn't the best but why does Electro's theme FUCK

[stuonsongs]

My Top 10 Favorite Songs of All Time - 2006 Edition

2021 Editor’s Note: I was looking through some old files and found this thing that I wrote sometime in the summer of 2006 at age 22. For all I know, it could’ve been 15 years to the day! Looking back, I’m not sure how many of these songs would still make my top 10. Don’t get me wrong, I still love all of these tunes, but I’m sure you know how it goes - You get older, you get exposed to more things, and your idea of good music expands. Anyway, I thought it might be nice to share with anyone who still uses this site. I present it in its original format without edits to my writing. I ended up writing full posts in this blog about some of these songs if you go through the archive. 

Stu’s Top 10 Favorite Songs…Ever

Let’s start with some honorable mentions. These were so close, and I thought about it for so long, but they had to be left off.

Honorable Mentions

All Summer Long – The Beach Boys

All Summer Long. 1964. Capitol

This song has been described so many times as being “the perfect summer song.” When you listen to it, you can’t help but smile from the opening marimba intro, all the way through. It just screams “summer” and it hurt me to leave The Beach Boys off my top 10.

Bleed American – Jimmy Eat World

Bleed American. 2001. Grand Royal

So full of energy, so rocking, and so what would’ve been the most recent song on my list. I wanted to keep it in the top 10 just so I could have a song from the ‘00s, but it wasn’t meant to be. When the chorus kicks in, I can’t help but headbang.

Marie – Randy Newman

Good Old Boys. 1974. Reprise

Randy has said that a lot of young composers pick “Marie” as their favorite Newman song, and I can see why. The idea of a guy having to be drunk to tell his wife that he loves her is pretty funny, and throughout the whole song it’s just the beautiful melody with tons of strings, all to a tune about a guy ripping on himself as he comes home drunk to his wife.

Does He Love You? – Rilo Kiley

More Adventurous. 2004. Brute/Beaute

I guess this is newer than Bleed American, so it would’ve worked too. This is another more recent song that it killed me to leave off the list. The outro is an arrangement of the main tune with a different chord progression performed by a string quartet. Very beautiful. Also when Jenny Lewis screams “Your husband will never leave you, he will never leave you for me,” I get chills every time.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

So here it is. After a long day’s work, I’m finally finished. It actually turned out much different than I was thinking when I first started. The number one wasn’t really even in my top five when I started, but I slowly realized I loved it so much. I also left Ben Folds (Five) off this list completely, and I don’t know, I just feel the whole catalogue of Ben is so solid, none of the songs stick out to me that much. But anyways, here it is! After the break of course…

Stu’s Top 10

10.

(Love Is Like A) Heat Wave – Martha and the Vandellas

Heat Wave. 1963. Motown.

This one beat out “Bleed American” just barely. The reason being that somehow, despite being nearly 40 years older than Bleed American, it still has so much energy that it kills. Dan Bukvich once told our Jazz Arranging class that you can boil all the oldies you hear on the radio down to three categories: 1) Great Song. 2) Great Performance. 3) Great Arrangement. This song is one of the great performances. The handclaps throughout, combined with the driving baritone sax behind everything and constant snare drum action will keep anybody with blood running through their veins dancing all night long.

9.

Bodhisattva – Steely Dan

Countdown to Ecstasy. 1973. MCA

This song is my Freebird. It’s just a basic blues progression song at its core with some minor changes at the end of the form. The real kicker that drives this song home is the three minute guitar solo in the middle that isn’t nearly as rocking as Freebird, but it is highly proficient and takes me to places that just make me want to play the song over and over again. I have no idea what this song is about, probably Buddhism, but hey, this once again proves that lyrics rarely matter and the music itself is the core.

8.

Zanzibar – Billy Joel

52nd Street. 1978. Columbia

This song reminds me of long car rides on vacations down the west coast with my parents growing up. They used to play a tape of 52nd Street, or at least their favorite selections, constantly on these trips. I didn’t hear this song again until early in my senior year in college and remembered why I loved it so much. The song has a heavy jazz influence, displayed in the breakdown where Jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard does a solo. The best part of this song though is at the end of the 4th line of each verse, Billy does this “Woah oh oh!” thing that just makes me want to sing every time. It was between this and “Miami 2017 (Lights Go Out On Broadway)” which is also a great song, but the “Woah oh oh!” is too much for ol’ Stu boy.

7.

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) – Bruce Springsteen

The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. 1973. Columbia

Early Bruce Springsteen records have something that very few other artists can ever pull off without sounding cheesy or forced. It has this undeniable sense of urgency, like the world will fall apart and life will crumble through your fingers if this one moment in time doesn’t work out the way Bruce describes it. There are so many early Springsteen songs that just set a scene of “We have to get out of this town right now girl before it kills us, no matter what any of our parents, friends, anybody has to say.” There’s a line that kinda sums it up: “Well hold on tight, stay up all night ‘cause Rosie I’m comin’ on strong. By the time we meet the morning light, I will hold you in my arms. I know a pretty little place in southern California down San Diego way. There’s a little café where they play guitars all night and all day. You can hear ‘em in the back room strummin’, so hold tight baby ‘cause don’t you know daddy’s comin’.”

6.

I’ve Got You Under My Skin – Frank Sinatra

Songs For Swingin’ Lovers! 1956. Capitol

This song falls into the category of great arrangement. This Cole Porter classic tune was arranged for Sinatra by Nelson Riddle. The story goes that he was still copying down parts for the players while riding in the cab to the recording studio on the day of recording. After the players ran through it once with Frank, they stood up and applauded. The Baritone sax takes control here, outlining a Db6/9 chord throughout the intro. Of course, Frank’s vocal delivery is spot on and goes up and down in all the right places for the biggest emotion impact. It’s amazing how a song with no real chorus can be so good.

5.

A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke

Ain’t That Good News. 1964. RCA Victor

This song was not even going to be on this list, but then I ran across it while scouring my collection of music and remembered how good it was. Then I listened to it and was blown away by the level of detail that went into this arrangement. Sam’s vocals soar above the mind blowingly beautiful arrangement. The lyrics to this one actually add to the tune itself, speaking of wrongdoings in the world around him, and how social change is on its way in the form of the civil rights movement. The song flows with such ease out of Cooke that one might forget the weightiness of the content, but the song’s content is just so heavy that it’s impossible to deny it.

4.

Whatever – Oasis

Whatever EP. 1994. Creation

This song was released as a Christmas present to the U.K. from the Gallagher brothers and company. It never appeared on any full album, only being released as a single, and amazingly, it blows away anything else they’ve ever done. Think “All You Need Is Love,” but with tons of rocking energy and a snide, nonchalant attitude. The chorus speaks, “I’m free to be whatever I, whatever I choose and I’ll sing the blues if I want. I’m free to be whatever I, whatever I like, if it’s wrong or right, it’s alright.” Not exactly poetry, and the song isn’t exactly breaking any new ground either, but the song is absolutely perfect in every way, and it was going to be my #1, but perhaps the only reason it’s not at number one is because I’ve played this song so many times that at the moment, these next three are beating it, but who knows how I’ll feel in a few months. This song also pulls the same “outro performed by a string quartet” thing as “Does He Love You?” but even better. It’s so simple, but I can’t get enough of it.

3.

Mr. Blue Sky – Electric Light Orchestra

Out of the Blue. 1977. Jet

This is obviously the best Beatles song that the Beatles never wrote. The staccato guitar during the verse combined with the strings present in just about every ELO song combine to make a force that is undeniably catchy and musically challenging at the same time. This is really what makes ELO so good. I didn’t discover this song till probably Nov. 2005, and it was one of the best days of my life. I didn’t want to include two songs by the same artist in my top 10, but if I did, I probably would’ve added “Turn To Stone” on this list too because it is almost as awesome as this one. It’s a shame that just like Billy Joel, most critics at the time hated ELO for being overly creative musically (they called it pretentiousness). These days we have acts that really are pretentious (see Radiohead), but everyone loves them, even critics. I’m not knocking all Radiohead, just most everything post OK Computer. Sorry, got a little sidetracked there.

2.

Only In Dreams – Weezer

Weezer. 1994. Geffen

This has been my favorite Weezer song since about a month into me picking up Weezer’s debut album back around early 2000. It has this ostinato (a repeated motif over and over again) in the bass throughout most of the whole song, never even really resolving to the Gb major chord (excluding chorus, which never really resolves) that it wants to until the end of a 3 minute contrapuntal guitar duet when everything dies out except the bass which just retards on its own until it finally plays the single Gb we’ve all been waiting for. The song on the whole up until the guitar duet is pretty tame, but once those contrapuntal guitar lines start intertwining, my ears perk up every time. I can sing both lines at separate times upon request and when the drums finally kick back in fully at the climax of the song, I let out a sigh of relief or bang on my car wheel in exultant joy, whichever is more of an option at the time.

1.

All Is Forgiven – Jellyfish

Spilt Milk. 1993. Charisma

I always loved this song from the first time I heard it, but I didn’t realize how much I loved it until maybe April 2006. I found out about Jellyfish first semester of college in the Fall of ’02 and heard this song, and knew it was great. The constant tom-tom driven drums, the fuzzy, almost white noise distorted guitar, and the half time bass throughout. It was great. Then in April I put it on my mp3 player for the walk to school, and then I listened to it for about two weeks straight. Seriously. It runs into the next song entitled “Russian Hill” which is almost as good, but because it’s a separate song, I couldn’t include it on the list, but in my mind, they always run together and are basically one long 9 minute song. The ending just gets more and more white noise filled until you can barely take it anymore and then it just cuts off completely into the slow acoustic intro for Russian Hill. It’s perfect in every way. I think this would fall into the category of great song. And the way the song builds up right to the middle of the song and then cuts out completely except for some very VERY faint xylophone noodling, and then busts back in with some feedback directly into guitar solo. Man I love this song.

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Italy brings the rock’n’roll youth of tomorrow to Rotterdam 2021

It’s the final day of doing my yet again botched attempt at a review series and I’ve been dying to post my gigantic write-up for my newly beloved Italy, at the top of the bookies, darling of all hearts, ready to rock Eurovision, and even more! Vai vai~

ARTIST & ENTRY INFO

Representing them this year is Måneskin, a band made up of four - singer and possibly the hottest motherfucker to grace the planet Earth Damiano, guitarist Thomas, drummer Ethan, and the cherry on top - bassist Victoria, whose half-Danish heritage is the reason Måneskin is called Måneskin (= Moonshine). They thought of this name at a “battle of the bands” that they won, thinking they might as well change it to something different, but in the end... say it with me now

They have known each other since highschool, made a band in 2016, won the “battle of the bands”, started out making a living as buskers in the streets of Rome, from which they gradually grew through playing small gigs, and later tried out for X Factor Italia season 11, on which they came 2nd.

They went on to release an EP titled after their debut single of the name of the song above, including some of their X Factor covers, and later on got to get big through releasing an album, getting it certified all kinds of goodnesses, having singles from that album be popular, even releasing a documentary of themselves... they’ve done so much in life and they’re only 20-22 years old... aw man, the life is just ahead of them, for them to be so young and win Sanremo on their first try. (And I’ve always wanted them for Eurovision ever since I was aware of their existence, because their music is very nice, and they just feel like charming human beings. So imagine my joy seeing them announced for Sanremo 2021? And them WINNING months later??? man what kind of luck do I have even if just for a year lmao <333)

“Zitti e buoni”, the last song title alphabetically this year, is purely of the band’s making, and the lyrics are talking about not abiding the rules in general, how they’re out of their minds but they’re not like “them”, and how people talk but don’t know what they’re talking at all.

REVIEW

IT’S A PRETTY CRAZY GOOD ROCK SONG AMEN HALLELUJAH OPRAH WOOOOOOO

wbk I love it. Yeah sure it might be composited of something that sounds like standard rock riffs and what not, but it’s the ENERGY that goes into it that gets me more excited for this than for Finland, a fellow rock song of this year’s final.

Damiano’s vocals have the specific kind of rockstar tinge to them, and they’re very complimenting to the song. The way he says everything is beautiful, the “e buonasera signore e signori” line in particular is just a moment that shows the beginning of power somehow, I don’t know. The chorus is great, eventhough it’s just one line repeated but it changes the pronoun each time (going from “I’m out of my mind” to “you’re out of your mind” to “we’re out of my mind”) - MAGICAL.

And the bridge. YES, the bridge. Along with the outro it’s the best part of the song. The chord progression. The lines repeated on that bridge. The emotions going on. The delivery of the lines of the emotion. It’s a convincing little bridge, to the point that it sounds just as great with violins! Wish they brought one, because according to Love Love Peace Peace, nothing screams winner quite like a violin.

God damn to the Måneskinsters pump this song up to the maximum. It was originally a ballad song, and I think that’s for the better for them to present it as a rock song, because a Sanremo ballad in a pool of Sanremo ballads... unless it stands out according to demoscopic & press juries, and there seems to be a no better option at hand that could make them stand out other than just sending a classy ballad, it just fizzles out in a spectacularly lame fashion. Måneskin’s one real shot through was with a song that would make them stand out, and they did it, and they’re here.

Everyone has put in their work, their passion, their skills into this, and it shows off in spades. Måneskin themselves are fantastic and chill human beings, who too, just like Flo Rida, get to enjoy how crazy amazing Eurovision experience is. And for that I salute them with my whole heart. Whatever they do tonight on Eurovision, they’ll leave a lasting mark in it. And for a good reason.

Also an Italian Eurovision edit that doesn’t suck, once again, yay! (In their defense, they didn’t have a whole lot to work with, so they released theirs early - just a few trimmings here and there, and a lyric change so that they skate by EBU easier with their anti-swearing policies. Gahddamn swearing~)

Approval factor: FUCK YES Follow-up factor: The funny thing about this is that last year their entry is about making noise but the song was a love ballad, this year it’s a song titled “shut up and behave” while dressed in a loudest motherfucking musical setting lol. Fuck the rules! It was solely on the Sanremo’s last year’s winner Diodato not to send an entry he thought that would fit for Sanremo, and that’s good on him - he can return next year replenished as all hell, and maybe aim for the trophy again? wishful thinking? aaaa. Anyway on a personal scale “Zitti e buoni” is a marvelous follow-up from “Fai rumore”, even if skipping 2020 entirely, especially after “Soldi”, which was already a fab follow-up after “Non mi avete fatto niente”, and even from “Occidentali’s Karma” on. And so it is subjectively a good follow-up. Italy SLAYS. AQ factor: As I write this, the odds are very much in their favour, if not a little bit too persuaded over the fact that Måneskin gave a good rock performance and knew what they would be doing, or it’s just that the Italians like overbetting for their acts way too damn much. But nevertheless, I just wanna hope for them to break the expectations people set on rock songs in Eurovision and SMASH themselves a victory. Or a top 2. Or a top 5-10. Anything will do, goddamn.

NF CORNER

Well, I promised that I will talk about Sanremo in a NF corner, because this is the first year I actually cared to watch it myself, unlike when I would’ve sided with someone whose reviewing style I love in not caring to watch it, and usually just check all the songs on the last day lol.

One thing about Sanremo that I sorely underestimate is that a handful of artists on there can come across as very versatile, and the one song you loved of one genre they presented several years ago, can be completely different and leave you baffled for days if you’re not very familiarized with their discography and the Italian music scene in general. Which now I’m going to pay an extreme amount of attention towards following Sanremo 2022 on out because hot damn did I never see gems like Willie Peyote coming!

Did I call him a gem over his entry? Yes, somehow. Am I even sure if I’m being serious?

I think I can somewhat agree when I say that for the international fam watching Sanremo at least, “Mai dire mai (La locura)” was a major expectation destroyer, at least for the crowd whose main lookouts in a lineup like this years were Ermal Meta, Annalisa, Arisa, etc. You know they’re gonna bring a ballad, and their ballads are usually decent, but what about the unexpected? That’s where a handful of acts, including Willie, comes in for me. The bass hooks in the second the song starts. The beat is minimalistic but strong enough to slap. The steady rap flow is mesmerizing, paired with that somewhat specifically Italian(?) vocal timbre. The chorus is greatly catchy, and it is a sung chorus, with this song still being largely a rap song. The electric-esque guitar soundwaves interspersed throughout the song are magnificent and magical, and on the chorus they even make a constant melody riff that repeats and may get annoying on multiple listens, but I still adore them. I really love the bridge as well and all that goes into it. A fantastic surprise of the season for me personally.

Now I figure that the lyrics may hinder the enjoyment for some, especially the points raised in some lines that may seem questionable and shady (if this went to Eurovision and got a “twerking” comment on Youtube, I will not be surprised if the description of choice is “patriarchic twerking”), but am I supposed to be fully offended at some points of it if I’m not its target audience, although I see some of what I do nowadays in those lines? “Mai dire mai” is probably dedicated to the Italian media and the Italian trends and what not. I’m not even disappointed it didn’t win, because if it went to Eurovision, it would’ve likely been met like a lesser “Occidentali’s Karma” - catchy song with lyrics that fly over listener’s heads which might as well be very accidentally mocking how we live our lives.

“Mai dire mai” has just less of a memorability-in-history value and no memorable gimmicks (Francesco had a gorilla, what is it visually going for on Willie’s performance?), besides, it would’ve suffered even WORSE post-Eurovision-edit than OK has - a lot of the bits and bobs that pass me by but when I notice them they make a really great entry, but other than the (presumably copyrighted) removal of a sample from a TV series (spoken by a fish character, nonetheless), what else is there to remove???? With Eurovision’s rules specifying that brands (Spotify, TikTok) and swearwords (lots of the good old Italian ones that Italian radios would digitally scratch out to emphasize that there were a LOT in the second verse) can’t be sung live, the song loses some of its lyrical charm. And you can’t just go around the song like Francesco Gabbani chopping off entire verses full of content full of witty lyrics and a reference to Chanel in order to present the more lyrically singable-along-to lines and not let go of the long chorus to whom his gorilla can dance to. “Mai dire mai” is RIFE with lyrics, that’s what a rap song is. It would have absolutely fallen apart.

Also no one paged it as a potential Eurovision winner during Sanremo, at least seriously, and it doesn’t have much that would have clicked with the future Eurovision generation and contestants when they would be asked to name their favourite Eurovision song of all times. In a world where from Italy they really like “Grande amore” and “Soldi” and even sometimes could name “Occidentali’s Karma”, is there really a place for “Mai dire mai (La locura)” over “Zitti e buoni”? Who would be naming that song as their favourite of all time? If you raised a hand, you lie to yourself, because that would’ve been me.

Now I don’t know how many of the Tumblr fam would draw ire at me putting out paragraphs worth of me being ultra positive towards this song, because as I’ve learned, there’s an ironic and unironic audience for Mr. Peyote on Tumblr especially, but for me I guess it was pretty worthy, also a thing I was finally able to yell off my chest since, and now I finally said it, I will continue streaming “Mai dire mai (La locura)” in peace.

He might’ve not won Sanremo, but his song won the equally important Mia Martini Critics Award, and also, my heart. Rest in broken shards of the Boris aquarium, my sweet cynical prince~

Måneskin were my 2nd after him so I’m equally happy they won. But what about my other favourites?

• Extraliscio ft. Davide Toffolo - Bianca luce nera A diluted version of the liscio genre, still makes for a very fascinatingly catchy and swaying song with lots of great instruments that are violins and a clarinet. What I figure is kinda a love song. Their performances were also great, with lots of dancers on stage and a genuinely great fun to be had, and you may remember them more after their performance in cover night, which was titled “Rosamunda”. They were the ones with their main singer’s guitar spinning for whatever reason that was there to make their song catchy, I guess.

• Lo Stato Sociale - Combat Pop A little bit of a far cry from their glory heydays with 2nd place in Sanremo 2018, but they returned with an equally banging song and an amazing set of performance chaos they brought in each and every time - dedicating their first night’s one to making a performance to not forget (and being the ones of two to reference the great Bugo&Morgan incident from last year, the other being Willie Peyote), the second competitive one was for referencing politics, and so on.

• Colapesce & Dimartino - Musica leggerissima Sweet melancholic song with the shades of Sebastien Tellier kinda sound, this song may seem jolly at first, but the especially melancholic undertones denote that there’s something else going on. It’s actually about depression, as that’s what the term “musica leggerissima” (very light music) means. But it still found a heart in Italian listeners and the Italian world finally woke up to how great Antonio Di Martino and Lorenzo “Colapesce” Urciullo are, and a handful of viewers were slightly heartbroken to see it not place in the superfinal top 3. Who knows if they would’ve actually won over Måneskin. I just know that their rollerskater girlie is so damn fine~

Bugo has also returned but I think his redemption arc started off the wrong foot, as his return entry, “E invece si”, was a bloated showtune ballad and got obnoxious to listen to at part. I declared to myself that night when I first heard the new entry that regarding on what made “Sincero” great, I side with Morgan.

And a special shout out to Ghemon, whose 2019 song was more than just a “purple rose” unlike I noted on a last proper Italian entry review. I don’t know what expectations I had for him, but I certainly wanted to love “Momento perfetto” more at the first listen, which was also somewhat of a show-tuney piece, but with a bit more funk and pizzazz, also Ghemon was VERY much vibing with his song, and that made me feel great for the few other performances of it that I saw the following days. It’s definitely a grower song, and around 2 months after Sanremo I fell into a bit of a rabbit-hole of his earlier music discovering, and I may be a bit exaggerating but, give Ghemon a bit more of acknowledgement and a stellar enough song, and with a little bit of magic touch, I can maybe see him lifting the Golden Lion trophy one day. Don’t ask why. (also lovely music video for his 2021 entry, which replaces continuous spinning in an aesthetic area to everybody moving their body in a diner (hopefully with everyone in the MV tested and been negative for long enough for the MV to actually happen).)

NF CORNER (NON-COMPETITIVE)

There’s so much needed to be discussed about there. So I’ll restrict myself to the moments that I remember and cherish:

• Rosario Fiorello. Just. Him.

• And the gentleman next to him, Achille Lauro.

tw // body piercing

Belarus 2018 could never

Fiorello and Lauro are perfect matches to each other’s worlds of imagination, and I was more than ever glad to see so much creativity coming from each one of them, a host and a nightly interval act respectively.

• Once again, “Rosamunda Medley” by Extraliscio, I didn’t watch the cover night in its entirety but I think it’s good enough of a medley if it got a 3rd place from the cover night from the orchestra!

• Sanremo Newcomers section of this year. I liked or vibed to almost every song out of the 8, and I’m decently happy with the winner, but if there’s one big shoutout I really want to make, is to “Regina” by Davide Shorty, for it’s such a cozy funky little love song that always makes me happy when I hear it. My personal winner preference, but I don’t mind Davide getting 2nd! For as long as he gets to place 1st in a future main Sanremo event hihihihihi

• Diodato proving himself to be a dance king at the beginning of his “Che vita meravigliosa” performance, my good Twitter friend made a bunch of videos where he dances to a lot of songs, as per request, check them out and you won’t forget it.

• Since Sanremo 2021 got rid of the audience as per COVID regulations and much to Amadeus’s dread, there ended up quite a handful of audience related memes. Such as the penis balloon et al.

• Remember when Sanremo 2021 audience was supposed to be whisked away in a cruise ship for safety measures? Pepperidge Farm remembers

• SESSO IBUPROFENEEEEEEEE

The guy that sang this song actually has the same birthday as me, so in my eyes, I feel like he has some charm to it. I’m biased lol sorry

There’s way too many more but I am afraid of flooding my post beyond your readability interest. Let’s hope that, in an event of Italy’s victory or non, we’ll get to see an even more iconic event of Sanremo emerge come the future. <3

ANY LAST WORDS?

Måneskin’s big goal was to rock Eurovision, and I think they’ve greatly accomplished that by just... doing what they do best, and that is, rocking. They leave energy lasting for days.

In bocca al lupo, fam. You’ll nail it, and even if you don’t win, Italy shouldn’t not hail you as national heroes after it’s all over.

[junionigiri]

BNHA Rarepair Month - Day 11 - Laughter

for @bnha-rarepair-month

Summary: Tokoyami and Kaminari audition as guitarists for Jirou Kyoka's band. (College/Band AU part 1)

Relationship(s): Tokoyami Fumikage / Kaminari Denki (bromance, arguably) (TokoKami); Tokoyami + Kaminari + Kirishima (TokoDenShima); Jirou + Yaomomo + Bakugou + Shinsou (band!)

Rating: T

Warnings/Notes: ok this is just crack lol

Recommended listening: Master Exploder! Crappy little artwork!

Links: AO3 | FFNet

Tokoyami stares at the computer screen with a deep sense of foreboding as Kaminari looks at him with that crazy, bean-eyed look on his face. “Eh? Eh? Whaddya think of this one, Tokoyami? Think we can get away with a cover of this mind-blowing masterpiece?”

The electric blonde just showed him a rather old video of the eccentric and ageing rock star, Present Mic, on YouTube, back in his early days performing in small-time punk clubs. It consists of a lot of screaming, theatrics, tight pants and deep V-necks, and literal blowing up of electronics when the singer accidentally activates his quirk a number of times during the song. It’s perfectly balanced by the presence of the rock star’s rocking guitarist, one Aizawa Shouta, who grimly provides back-up in the form of tasty licks and surprisingly well-modulated backing vocals.

“Demoniacal,” quoth the raven, putting one of his hands thoughtfully under his chin. “Risky. Little chance of reward to be gained should we pursue this madness.”

There might be a thin line of drool at the end of Kaminari’s mouth as he waits for Tokoyami’s final response. The dark-feathered boy sighs.

“Fine. Let’s do it.” It’s utterly impossible to say no to Kaminari Denki’s face, dopey or not. The blonde whoops in victory.

“Yeah boiii! We are gonna rock their fuckin’ socks off!” He excitedly plays a mindless pentatonic on his canary-yellow Stratocaster with a manic grin on his face. He then peers up at Tokoyami, his eyelashes fluttering cutely. “I love you so much bro! Do you love me too?”

Tokoyami keeps a straight face as he takes his sweet time setting up his own guitar. After a moment of silence, Kaminari still hasn’t stopped fluttering his eyelashes at him. He sighs deeply again.

“Yes,” he relents with a persistent dark aura surrounding him. “I love you too, brother of mine.”

That’s enough for Kaminari to break the silence with another ear-piercing whoop. He’s really serious about channeling Mic-sensei, isn’t he. “Let’s do this, bro! Tokacious Denki (TokoDen for short), at your eargasming service!”

*

Soon, they’re at the edge of the stage of the large auditorium of the chateau belonging to the prominent keyboardist and mechanical engineering major, Yaoyorozu Momo. In the audience next to her are the explosive drummer/biology major, pre-med track student Bakugou Katsuki; band manager/psychology major Shinsou Hitoshi; and the woman they have to impress the most, bassist/vocalist/composer/band leader/music business major, Jirou Kyouka.

At the center of the stage is Kirishima Eijirou, sports sciences major, and one of their closest bros in UA University who wanted to be their hype-man and roadie. Everyone is looking curiously at the redhead as he clears his throat and begins his monologue.

“So… these guys told me not to read this,” Kirishima says, waving a little card with his messy scrawl over it, “But, uh… dammit! I’ll read it anyway! Because I wrote it! And it’s true!”

The band and their manager stares up at the redhead dumbly as he takes out the card. His voice rings out of his mouth and all over the auditorium, “I fucking love this band!!! They are the best band in ever… period!”

The bird sees Bakugou scoff loudly from his seat. Kirishima is undeterred and doesn’t stop shouting. “Ladies and Gentlemen… Tokacious Denki!”

Kirishima then bows with his arms out and side-steps his way off the stage. Kaminari, clad in lots of shiny black leather, confidently ambles up to the microphone, yellow Strat swinging around his scrawny body, with Tokoyami trailing grimly behind him.

“... whey,” the blonde says coolly, making Jirou Kyouka’s eyebrows raise, “This song is a cover of EraserMic’s magnum opus called… Master Exploder.”

There’s barely a quiet interval before Kaminari begins strumming out the first chords of the song. Tokoyami feels a little proud of his bandmate for overcoming his fears over barre chords. Soon, he’s joining him by playing the opening lead with his own guitar. Kaminari begins to sing:

“aaaaaah-aaaaah-aaaaaah-aaahahahahahahahahahah-AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”

… well, not really singing, per se, but screaming. The dark bird sees the flustered look on the band members’ faces at the heights that Kaminari’s voice reach. If Tokoyami closed his eyes and listened, he’d be convinced that the person screaming next to him is actually Present Mic.

He certainly has the theatrics down, at least.

The blonde dramatically kicks down the mic stand after he screams with all of his might, and moves on to sing, “I DO NOT NEED!”

“He does not need.”

“A MICROPHONE!”

“A microphone.”

“MY VOICE IS FUCKING!”

“Fuckin’."

“POWERFUUUUUUUL!!!” Kaminari inhales loudly as he continues strumming madly on his guitar. “AAAAAAAAAH YEAH!”

Tokoyami plays the next notes with ease, his fingers flying over the fretboard of his guitar. He sees Yaoyorozu discreetly appraising his riff with a small smile on her face.

As they rehearsed before, this is the part where Kirishima comes running up to the stage to stand next to Kaminari and dramatically stare him down as the blonde continues to scream, “aaa-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!”

The voice is so shrill, it pierces through everyone like a shockwave. Kirishima flails about like his brain has exploded and pretends to drop dead on the stage.

“Sorry!” Kaminari says, not looking sorry at all. He directs his manic grin back to the flustered audience and continues the song. “I DID NOT MEAN--”

“He did not mean.”

“--TO BLOW YOUR MIND!”

“To blow your mind,” Tokoyami whispers to the microphone, earning him an interested stare from the manager Shinsou.

“BUT THAT SHIT HAPPENS TO ME, all the tiiiime!”

They do a rather complex guitar duel right there and then. He sees all the band members watch them intently. Jirou’s trademark earjacks are twitching. She seems to be hiding her mouth behind her hands, which formed a tent in front of her face. He knows that they’re judging the two of them very, very seriously.

“Now take a look!”

“Take a look,”

“Tell me what do you see?”

“What do you see?”

“We got the pick… of DESTINYYYYYY! AAAAAAAAAAAH…. AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!”

They shred the last few notes of the song in unison, heads bobbing violently in sync. By the end of it, Tokoyami’s breathless. He can only imagine how Kaminari must feel, having spent the last three minutes screeching like a banshee, but he’s got his arms out and ready to take in the praise.

“...”

A stunned silence envelopes the auditorium. Kirishima, who isn’t actually dead, scrambles up to his feet, stands next to Kaminari, and joins him in staring at the silent judges nervously.

It’s Bakugou who breaks the silence first. “Emo bird-head’s okay. Shitty Hair roadie’s okay. Hard pass on Pikachu.”

“Noooo!” Kaminari flails dramatically onstage and falls to his knees. “Y-you can’t do that! TokoDenShima is a package deal!”

“I can do whatever the fuck I want, charger-fucker!” the drummer yells, with a juicy expletive or two. “I couldn’t hear myself thinking with all the screaming!”

“No offense, Bakugou, but you do a lot of screaming yourself. Haven’t had a quiet thought since you got me on board as manager,” Shinsou deadpans, earning him his own juicy expletives. As if to drive his point home further, he rubs the space between his eyes and trains his haven’t-slept-in-a-month, dead-inside stare up the trio on the stage. “Anyway… you certainly got Present Mic’s yowling accurately, except for the part where he sets the mic on fire by screaming… to which I’m grateful for, by the way. Please don’t ruin our equipment.”

“You got it, you sexy sleepy manager, you,” Kaminari says, with two finger-guns pointing his way. He’s blatantly ignored by the purple-haired guy, much to Tokoyami’s relief.

Shinsou turns to the girls seated behind him and asks, “What do you think, MomoJirou?”

Yaoyorozu hums for a few seconds before nodding uneasily. “The rascals have… spirit, I guess? I think I can play something that’s compatible with their level of skill, so... I’m okay with whatever Kyouka has to say.”

And so, Kaminari, Tokoyami, and Kirishima turn their hopeful gazes to the fearless band leader, Jirou Kyouka. For a few tense seconds, the girl’s triangular eyes appraise them seriously, ominously even, as her fingers tighten in front of her covered mouth.

The tense silence is broken seconds later by pure, unrestrained, unfiltered cackling.

Tokoyami’s a little taken aback by how the bassist is suddenly howling with laughter. Her earjacks wave joyously in the air in front of her as she tilts her head backwards and forwards and even slaps her knees at one point in an attempt to get all the pent-up energy out. She keeps at it for a good solid minute or two before she calms down, grasping at her stomach desperately and struggling to look at Kaminari in the eye.

“S-sorry--it’s just that--you got that real, stupid Jamming-Whey look in your eyes when you’re screaming--”

“... Whey?” Kaminari repeats with that distinct empty look on his face. Tokoyami suddenly knows what Jirou means, and before he knows it, he’s chortling helplessly on the side, too.

And just like that, the auditorium is suddenly filled with laughter. Kirishima starts to guffaw and has to bend down on his knees just to steady himself. Yaoyorozu also begins to laugh heartily in the most lady-like way Tokoyami’s ever seen on a human being. Shinsou’s chuckling darkly like everything is a dark joke, but the tired look in his eyes is gone at least. Even Bakugou gives in and begins to howl like a madman from his spot on the auditorium.

In the midst of it, Kaminari’s just going, “Whey? Wheyyy??” in confusion. The laughter dies down eventually, and Jirou gets enough breaths in her lungs to start speaking properly again.

“What the fuck. You guys are in.”

There’s a moment of stunned silence among the three. Jirou just shrugs and says, “But I’m not letting you near the microphone, Jamming Whey. Stick to the guitars.”

“Yeahhhh boiii!” Kirishima cheers. In the next second, he’s lifting the two mildly shocked guitarists off their feet with his brawny arms. “You guys, we did it! The six of us, we’re gonna be the greatest band in the world, aw yeah!!!”

“Wheeeyyy!!!” Kaminari cheers, earning him another round of laughter from the band leader. He turns his dopey victory smile to Tokoyami and gives a thumbs up. “Kilt it! Love you, bro!”

Tokoyami sighs darkly as Kirishima continues to spin them round and round. He barely hears Shinsou dully welcoming them to the A-Band from below.

“Love you too, brother of mine.”

And thus begins their maddening, dreadful journey to the top, as the greatest band in the world.

[grimelords]

My May playlist is finished and it’s got everything from Rachmaninoff to Peaches across 3 and a half hours, I hope you enjoy it.

If The Car Beside You Moves Ahead - James Blake: James Blake has got such a big brain and this song is unbelievable. He has such a way of taking things that could be gimmicky like this vocal stuttering, or looping vocals and making them totally heartrending.

The Boxer - The Chemical Brothers: The central melody of this song is constantly stuck in my head and complete proof that you can make an incredibly catchy hook with just three notes if you need to.

known(1) - Autechre: I think this is maybe Autechre's most straightforward song but it still sounds like a harpsichord concerto getting sucked into a black hole. The way the violin-ish part swoops around throughout the whole thing, disintegrating and reforming before your eyes is hypnotising.

Sundown - Boards Of Canada: Guess who started crying this month listening to an ambient Boards Of Canada song thinking about how the end of soil is within my lifetime and we have destroyed our only home the earth!!

Do I Wanna Know? - Arctic Monkeys: With their new album coming out I went back and listened to AM for the first time in a while and it's still really astonishing what they pulled off. This and R U Mine? completely blew me away when they came out. Having the audacity to completely change your sound and style and have it work perfectly is amazing, and then disappearing for five years and trying to do it again? Bold.

FML - Kanye West: I was listening to this a lot when Kanye was off his lexapro and fucking his whole life up. And now there's a sequel to this on the new album where Kim's begging him not to fuck the money up, which I think is a very good kind of storytelling.

United P92 - Venetian Snares & Daniel Lanois: I love the idea of ambient Venetian Snares and this is the song on the album where their two ideas meet in the middle the best I think. Also the way this builds and builds into total chaos I always forget that it's coming and get surprised when it says 'the machine can cum', what a funny song.

Turnstile Blues - Autolux: I saw Autolux's drummer in Jack White's band when he played on SNL a couple of weeks ago and suddenly remembered how perfect this song is. A true testament to the power of a simple groove that sounds like it was recorded in a concrete garage.

Young For Eternity - The Subways: Yet another great song about being a vampire and all the benefits that vampirism can bring to your life! Thank god for Dracula! He sucked the shit out of me, now I can leave my work for nights and leave my days for sleeping! Young for eternity!

Oh Yeah - The Subways: I bought a 7" of this song a couple of weeks ago in honour of the time it inexplicably caused me a mental breakdown and made me sprint out of my house to drive around town crying and listening to it on repeat for some hours about 5 years ago. Not sure what that was about!

The Blues - Defeater: As far as songs that go for less than a minute go, I really can't fault this one. Pure power, it does absolutely everything it sets out to do and still manages to get two choruses in under the wire.

Bombay - El Guincho: I saw Holy Mountain this month in a double feature with El Topo, and although El Topo kind of sucked I loved The Holy Mountain a lot. There's a part where there's been a battle and a whole lot of protesters are dying on the ground bleeding, except you can see that the blood and guts are obviously special effects, you can see the hose that she's using to pretend to cry and the guts are green balloons and things like that. Hold on I found it on youtube anyway I know I've seen it before and I thought it was in the video to this song or another one of CANADA's videos but I watched them all and can't find it! If anyone can tell me the music video I'm thinking of, thankyou. This song is also, of course, good.

Swim Good - Frank Ocean: Honestly has there ever been a better song about wearing a cool suit and driving your car into the ocean?? Never. This is perhaps the best sing along song ever because you've got to do your smoothest voice ever until he does his little emo yells of 'I'm goin out!' near the end.

Batphone - Arctic Monkeys: I think this is my favourite song off the new Arctive Monkeys, it's the most '3am slamming away at a club piano' type vibe of them all, but most of all I love the little spiralling into space guitar noise that keeps happening whenever he finishes a line.

An Open Letter To NYC - Beastie Boys: I'm almost always thinking about the time Beastie Boys made a very serious song about how good New York is after 9/11 and they said 'dear New York I know a lot has changed, we're two towers down but we're still in the game'.

Black Car - Beach House: I can't get enough of the new Beach House album, and this song in particular. It's some of my favourite lyrics of theirs ever, a good song for when you're trapped in a dark labyrinth of your own creation.

Midnight Radio 1 - Bohren & Der Club Of Gore: Got quite heavily into Bohren & Der Club Of Gore again this month. This is from the album before they got rid of their guitarist and replaced him with a saxophonist, which pretty dramatically changed their sound from 'extremely brooding night music' to 'film noir soundtrack', which is still very good but really not the same. Anyway this song goes for 20 minutes and it feels illegal to listen to it any time before 2am.

House In LA - Jungle: I am so excited that Jungle are finally back and with such an amazing song too. I love how spacious this is, it feels very different to their first - a lot more grown up and I really can't wait for the album.

Lemonworld - The National: Someone had a tweet a while ago that was like 'the guy from the national sounds like he's been going through a divorce for ten years now' which is very true, but this song feels like it's from happier times when he went to see his sister in law and had an morosely horny time. This song feels like the entire experience of reading a literary novel condensed into 4 minutes: a depressed older man in New York having a sort of backwards, confusing sexual thought. This is a song I regularly listen to on repeat and sing along to, it's a very specific feeling and I think "it'll take a better war to kill a college man like me" is one of the best lines he's ever written.

Rigamortis - Zomby: I put off listening to the new Zomby album for so long because his last one was just so boring but he's completely redeemed himself on this, it's really something. It feels like one long piece, which is amazing when any sort of thematic coherence is a rarity for Zomby albums. There's a lot of recurring sounds and motifs, and almost zero drums in the traditional sense. It feels like a really mature reflection on grime that he's been building up to for years.

Indoors - Burial: Whereas this song sounds like you're waiting outside a club in hell.

Segeln Ohne Wind - Bohren & Der Club Of Gore: Another Bohren song but from much, much later. I love the way the brass sounds in this when it finally comes in, it's so rich and overpowering.

Isle Of The Dead - Segei Rachmaninoff: Wikipedia says "The piece was inspired by a black and white reproduction of Arnold Böcklin's painting, Isle of the Dead, which Rachmaninoff saw in Paris in 1907. Rachmaninoff was disappointed by the original painting when he later saw it, saying, "If I had seen first the original, I, probably, would have not written my Isle of the Dead. I like it in black and white." and it also says "Prints were very popular in central Europe in the early 20th century—Vladimir Nabokov observed in his novel Despair that they could be "found in every Berlin home". Folks what is going on with this spooky painting.

Been Caught Stealing - Jane's Addiction: For a long time this was the emergency dead air song on Triple J, which is an inspired choice in my opinion because there'd be ten seconds of eerie silence because something's gone wrong at the station and then suddenly two huge loud chords! and dogs barking! A BEEN CAUGHT STEEL IN! ONCE!

Sledgehammer - Peter Gabriel: I was sitting on the toilet when I saw a news article that said Peter Gabriel has finally made his music available on Spotify and I said 'yessssssss' loudly myself and then played Sledgehammer. Honorable mention to the best ever sample of this song in Contemporary Man by Action Bronson, which is unfortunately still unavailable on Spotify.

Reaching The Gulf - Dylan Carlson: I saw a review of this album saying Dylan Carlson is the only choice for soundtrack if they ver make a movie of Blood Meridian and they're completely right. I'm also so glad that he collaborated with Emma Ruth Rundle on this, it feels like the closest I'll get to bonus tracks to her Electric Guitar One album.

T-1000 - Swarms: I have no idea where or why I first heard this album but it's been in my rotation for a long time. It's in the general canon of post-Burial dubstep before dubstep got americanized and it's just very nice. When the vocals finally come in on this it's a very emotional moment for me.

Casino Trem - Tyondai Braxton: It's really surprising listening to Tyondai Braxton's work after Battles because he has such a distinct melodic style it's shocking to realise how much he brought to that first album. After listening to a lot of his solo stuff it becomes so recognisable it almost feels like you can go back through Mirroroed and pick out every single guitar line of his making. Anyway this song is great. Starts out sounding like what it feels like to be trapped in a pokie and ends up like you're trapped in a databent Banjo Kazooie cartridge.

Kick It - Peaches & Iggy Pop: The first time I ever heard this song, and the first time I ever heard of Peaches or Iggy Pop was on the soundtrack to Midnight Club 3 so I didn't really know what the fuck was going on. I still don't really. I love that this is supposed to be like a dangerous sexy song but the whole time Iggy Pop is just rebuffing her advances and bullying her. Then she's like 'go to berlin' and then the song ends. Still not sure what this one's about still!

If You Know You Know - Pusha T: GOD this song is good, I've been listening to it on repeat. What I love about Pusha T is where a lot of other rappers talk sort of frivolously about drug dealing and everything, he often feels like he's putting his hand on your shoulder and looking you straight in the eyes saying 'I am not fucking around. If you need drugs of any calibre or kind I can get them for you in massive quantities.' The impish way he's saying 'if you know you know', absolutely kills me, like he's a cartoon man winking at me while hiding drugs inside a tennis ball.

Hacker - Death Grips: I think I put this on my playlist last month but I'm still on it so. My new favourite part of this song is when he says "The table's flipped now we got all the coconuts bitch / Burmese babies under each arm / Screaming beautiful songs".

Cavity - Hundred Waters: Hundred Waters feel like a really underrated band to me, I've been listening to their last two album a lot this month and they're just stunning. The long build up towards the end before the two note melody comes back and kills me? What a moment.

Music For The Long Emergency - Polica: I didn't love this album when it came out but I've been listening to it more and more and it's really growing on me. I think I put this song on a playlist a month or two ago so I won't write more but let me say this: Polica rules.

On The Grid - Lime: tfw you turn the knob and you do a good job and you wind up on the grid :/

Elephants - Them Crooked Vultures: I feel like Them Crooked Vultures gets forgotten when people talk about Queens Of The Stone Age albums. People bring up Desert Sessions and Kyuss but somehow forget that this giant album happened. Anyway this is far and away the best song on it because it just keeps on giving and giving. It's just a huge jam about riding an elephant and having cool hair(?).

Particle - Hundred Waters: This song feels like it could be the EDM hit of the summer if it was structured slightly differently, but instead it's the biggest brain pop song I've heard in a long time. I love how much power the bass has in this, it really feels impactful when it comes and goes. The vocal performance is obviously incredible as always but I really love the distorted vocal line that sort of tears itself apart now and then, against how clean everything else in this song sounds it really makes it.

Me Or Us - Young Thug: Thinking hard about when Young Thug sampled First Day Of My Life by Bright Eyes and made it into a really really good song.

Because I Love You - Montaigne: God this song is good. All the time the lyric 'I ate a salad today, I ate one yesterday too' pops into my head and makes me laugh. She tweeted about this song a couple of days ago and it really made me laugh: "My ex-boyfriend & I once watched BBC Sherlock & during the ep he paused & basically soliloquised about how he’s a tortured genius just like Sherlock & I’m his Watson in as condescending a way as you’re probably imagining then poured a shot of whiskey & now you know the story"​

listen here

[musicmixtapes]

Halloween Mix (October 31 ‘18)

Happy Halloween to all my favorite witches, vampires and ghouls--This week's mix is pretty self explanatory but I had so much fun making it and think that it can be listened to even when it's not Halloween because we all have spooky hearts year round

Listen on Spotify

1. Witch by the bird and the bee - The beginning of this song with the xylophone sounds already sets us up for some interesting tones and makes it all the more spooky vibed throughout, which was automatically very ear catching when I first listened to it. But other than that, the entire love-lust-desire themed song of a witch entrapping someone in their spell and taking names without mercy is such a great trope for female empowered music. There are so many references to the "spells" "biddings" "conjurings" "hauntings" in this piece which makes it a classic halloween song. But I didn't find this during witching season, in fact, I discovered it over the summer which goes to show that it holds the test of time and can be enjoyed not just on this specific day (although I highly recommend it going on your own Halloween mix for sure). There is also another really cool instrumental segment in the mid part of the song where an electric guitar or string instrument of some sort is introduced followed by the step down chords of the synthesized creepy piano/string sound that is recurring in this piece. 

2. Ungodly Fruit by Wax Tailor - This artist, who I have featured one other time on a previous mixtape, produces some of the the smartest and most unique pieces that I have had the pleasure of hearing with unworthy ears. There are not many words in this piece and in Wax Tailor true character, the words in the song are samples from different films. The first lyrics heard are Sampled from Professor Alexander Siletsky in the 1942 film To Be or Not to Be. The second portion of lyric is sampled from the 1934 film The Man Who Knew Too Much. Listening to the extravagant horns throughout the piece along with the interesting harp and assorted strings woven through create a vintage love/horror movie vibe that perfectly aligns with the samples of the movie lines that are showcased. 

3. Black Magic Woman by Fleetwood Mac - Please for the love of halloween and all things magical, do not try and tell me that this is a cover of Santana's song because it is the other way around actually. His much popularized cover is quite fantastic, I agree, but there is something special and essential Fleetwood Mac about this piece that sets up the vibe of the band from very early on in the metamorphosis of the group. Now, if you are only familiar with the more recent group, you would be confused by this track because it sounds different and queen Stevie Nicks is not anywhere to be found. The group used to consist of Peter Green, Mick Fleetwood and Jeremy Spencer before the grouping was changed to what we know now. Honestly, this song is just a prediction about the queen witch that would later grace the band, but also a desire song about a mystifying woman.

4. Monster Mash by Bobby Boris Pickett & The Crypt Kickers - If you have been living under a rock for every October since you were born, then you don't know this awesomely spooky hit. Otherwise, I'm absolutely sure you've sung, you've danced, you've enjoyed this graveyard smash of a song that has created a rippling effect over halloweens for over fifty years. I remember being in kindergarten at my Halloween parade and walking around showing off my angel costume to this song, so yes, it has had a lasting effect on me for sure. Lou Simon, senior director of music programming at SiriusXM Radio, says, “‘Monster Mash’ has timeless appeal. The generations who grew up with it have fond memories of the song from the ’60s and again from its ’70s renaissance. The familiar arrangement is uncomplicated and delightful. It’s just one of those records that wears well and makes people happy.”

5. The Boy With The Thorn In His Side by The Smiths - Ok starting this one off with a literary definition, just in case you don't know exactly what Morrissey is referring to... To have a thorn in one's side is to have something or someone that continually causes problems for you; my definition of this is when someone will not quit pissing you off and making life hell even if they are unaware of doing so, we all have one of these and they are utterly unshakeable such is the way of life. When asked if this song was inspired by Oscar Wilde in an interview, Morrissey replied: "No, that’s not true. The thorn is the music industry and all those people who never believed anything I said, tried to get rid of me and wouldn’t play the records. So I think we’ve reached a stage where we feel: if they don’t believe me now, will they ever believe me? What more can a poor boy do?" 

6. Leave Me Be by Beau - This is one of two songs on this week's mix that does not exactly conform to theme I laid out but there was no way I was going to leave it out because the sounds and emotions included in this piece is perfectly in line with the general feeling of the playlist. The singer's voice is so weird and unique, I have not heard anything like it before, but it definitely reminds me a bit of Lene Lovich's (80s singer) voice when she does those big jumps in range and pitch in the chorus of the song. I guess the voyeuristic image of someone bothering the speaker of the song and pestering her like an impetuous ghost following one around does conform to the theme of ghoulish natures and general halloween-ness. My favourite line from the song is the repeated phrase "All I ever wanted was just to be left alone/All I ever wanted was something to call my own" because me too... me too. 

7. The Piano Duet by Danny Elfman (Corpse Bride) - Sitting in the piano room of my college dorm in the East Village on a Monday night a couple of weeks ago, I was exhausted of studying statistics and needed something to bring me to a peaceful state of mind. At first, I tried playing other pieces of music, but they proved too complex for my muddle mind at the time. Then I came across this simple and wonderful piece hailing from the classic animated king of Halloween, Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride. I was fascinated by the wandering notes that can be played with literally one finger which turns into this complex two handed piano piece that takes more time than I had to learn in its entirety. Danny Elfman has composed a lot of music for Burton which has become well loved and renowned but this short piece is striking and emotional for me. If you have the chance and a piano, you should play around with it because I think it is so satisfying to play. 8. Agony by Yung Lean - Originally I found this song in another version, one that was done by the alternative band Beach Fossils and I was hesitant not to put that version on the mix, but in the end decided the original needed to be heard and loved more. Coming from the Swedish hip hop/rap/emo/etc performed and artist Yung Lean, this vulnerable piece of music which describes how it feels to become unraveled is unrivalled by a lot of other songs about chaos that traps you in your own mind. What's more is that the song comes from a place of truth because the artist, Jonatan Hastard's (Yung Lean), spent time in a psychiatric facility due to mental health issues which were making him unable to live successfully. I think that it is so important that mental illness be represented in the music industry because it shows not only that having illness is okay, but that you can deal with it and get through it. So, thank you for showing us yourself, Hastard, and encouraging us to do the same. 

9. Skeletons (Acoustic) by Yeah Yeah Yeahs - How fitting for this celebratory day with none other than the queen of being spooky and distorted. In this track, the speaker asks her lover to basically tear her apart, to destroy her by any means necessary because she has already been destroyed by the love she has experienced. Now, one of the most important things to remember about a song that has very few lyrics is that the ones that are there, are there for a particular reason. The phrase "frost or flame" returns more than once, and it is due to the reference to the poem by Robert Frost "Fire and Ice" in which he details which way the world ending would be better. The speaker relates this to the way that her lover can destroy her: either by burning her or icing her out. I am going to include the poem because I love it so much: Some say the world will end in fire/Some say in ice/From what I’ve tasted of desire/I hold with those who favor fire/But if it had to perish twice/I think I know enough of hate/To say that for destruction ice/Is also great/And would suffice.

10. Femme Fatale by The Velvet Underground - I'm sure you've heard of this phrase before, but do you know why and when is became such an iconic phrase? No? I didn't either until I heard this wonderful song. This phrase has actually been around since the turn of the 19th century with the mass popularization of the gothic type of novel, but it resurfaced with this song in the 60s and has stayed relevant to this day. What I didn't know about the 'femme fatale' is what I found from contributors on Genius music (I use this all the time for insightful explanations): "Edie Sedgwick was an American socialite, actress, and model that came from a very wealthy and prestigious family. She was a part of Andy Warhol’s “factory” crew, and became one his closest friends and muses as Warhol brought her to fame." I think that this tribute to a friend and inspiration makes for the perfect song and gives a deeper meaning to a tale of a heartbreaker and 'take no prisoners' woman that is depicted here. 11. I Put A Spell On You by Annie Lennox - Classic. Breathtaking. Magical. Three words that describe this song and specifically the Lennox cover of this song. Something about the way the high chords of the keyboard are struck in the beginning of the piece is so gratifying, I just knew I would be in love with listening to this in the first few seconds. Honestly, and I never thought I would be saying this but, I have to thank whoever put together the 50 Shades of Grey film because that is the reason the cover of this song exists, which is kind of annoying. Nonetheless, it thankfully exists, and tells about a man who cannot be faithful to the woman who is telling the story in the song. So, she puts a spell over the man so he will not leave her and remains faithful to her instead. Despite having such amazing music to go behind it, this is such a wicked sentiment and fits perfectly with the season. 

12. Found Love In A Graveyard by Veronica Falls - This song is really, really sad. And I wasn't sure I was going to include it because it is really striking and makes me feel very emotional due to the intense meaning behind it. But, I think that music is, yes, supposed to uplift you and put you in a good mood, but not always. Sometimes, songs have a power to touch the things deep and dark inside of us that are untouchable by anything else, and this is a beautiful concept; sad, but still beautiful. The minor and eerie chords and drumbeat that start the song off with the discordant "ooohs" let us know this is not going to be one of those sunny, uplifting songs, but one of the darker ones. This piece can very well be about the literal sense of finding love in a graveyard with someone who is no longer alive, but I think it's about finding love in someone who is not present in one's life and wanting them so much but not being able to have them anymore. Listen with caution if you are already in your feelings. 

13. Zombie by The Cranberries - Let me paint a picture for you: it was summertime five years ago. A thirteen year old girl who was just discovering her musical genre for singing and listening alike stepped onto an outdoor stage in mid-June. The heavy guitar of a somber rock song come on and she begins to sing; surprise, the song is this one, and the girl is also this one who is writing to you. This song particularly has had more influence over my own writing and singing style than any other in this mix, both because it is beautifully metaphorical and because it is truthful to the point of tears in some respects. The song tells about the Troubles which occurred in Northern Ireland between the unionists and nationalists, the tensions and violence which spanned over decades and literally tore families apart. Dolores O'Riordan, the writer and singer of this song said, "This song is our cry against man’s inhumanity to man, inhumanity to child."

14. Time Warp from The Rocky Horror Picture Show - Not going to lie, I first heard this song and saw the scene performed when I was 12 and discovered the wonderful television program that is Glee. After that, though, I further investigated the chaotic goodness that is the Rocky Horror Picture Show and became enamoured with the explicit messages of open sexuality, breaking social norms and utter weirdness that makes up the show. This song is the most recognisable from the show, but by no means diminishes the other pieces that are performed. If possible, I really suggest either seeing a live performance or watching one online because all of the different characters, which you can hear in the recording are produced on the stage; the visuals make all the difference in the holistic experience of listening and I think in this instance, enhances the value you will hold with the song particularly the ever shifting point of views and voice sounds exhibited.

15. Werewolves Of London by Warren Zevon - First and foremost, all credits for this song being in my life go to my father because I have been listening to this with him since before I could write, much less write about music on a blog for my friends and family. Because it was such an integral part of my music experience from a young age, I enjoy examining not just what it means, but what it means to me.  The song is based on the 1953 film "Werewolf Of London" and if you haven't seen it, I recommend the viewing of this, because it's a really good movie, but either way you can enjoy the song separately because it stands on it's own. It describes and details a werewolf doing all normal human behaviour and a man meeting him and being like "wow this is really strange". Even just the first line of the song depicting a werewolf getting chinese food at the store is so funny and strange, and then talks about in the next lines a woman being mutilated by werewolves. I love the contrasting images outlined in this piece with such a simple 3-chord progression that is so catchy. 

16. Voodoo Child (Slight Return) by Jimi Hendrix - The distortion of the guitar in the intro for this track is so awesome, I cannot get enough of it and it is quintessential Jimi Hendrix  classic rock. Hendrix's gruff and raw rock voice comes through amazingly in this song and tells us a story about psychedelic experience of exaggeration with voodoo practice that was popularized especially during the 1960s and 1970s. The image of chopping a mountain down with the edge of one's hand presented in the first verse suggests that this is a drug induced experience in which the narrator is having an out of body vision of this happening, or so we can assume (I don't think Jimi chopped down a mountain, but who knows). As for the much iconic phrase 'voodoo child', I attributed this notion to the feeling of some of the African heritage and cultural spirituality that centers around practice of voodoo which has traced back through centuries. The intervention of God given to shamans or mediums, the servants of the spirits, results in a magic of spiritual nature. 

17. Blood In The Bathtub by Bonny Doon - I think the only scary thing pertaining to this song is the title and matching phrase that is repeated in the chorus of this low key song, but otherwise it is really of a loving, sensitive nature for year round enjoyment. Again, the guitar in this song is so present and the riffs included are indicative of some blues inspiration which is really nice and adds a lot of colour. As for the meaning, I ascertained that the speaker feels bad about his actions towards the end of his and the subject's relationship and is trying to explain his feelings about their demise. The aspect I appreciate about this song is that the speaker isn't trying to get back or win the affection of the subject, but instead agree that they have the right to leave and be lost or confused, which is a really valid feeling. The blood can be many things, but I like to see it as an impurity where the goodness (water) of the relationship was supposed to be. 

18. Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) by David Bowie - I often find that this spectacularly strange man can describe feelings that we all have in surreal ways no one would think to, yet do it so precisely we can't help but love it. This is a description I found online for the piece that I think is really perfect and I couldn't say it better myself: "The song title was inspired by a Kellogg’s Corn Flakes ad campaign: “Scary Monsters and Super Heroes”. It describes the feelings of an obsessive man when he gets a shy girlfriend. Though his influence on her initially works out well for the relationship, it becomes too much for her. She soon becomes a recluse, leaves the man, and descends into madness, seeing all strangers as ��scary monsters’." I love this thought of being terrified of strangers and can relate on days in the city when I don't feel like talking to anyone.

19. Monster by ALASKALASKA - A new song for this mix, which was hard because surprisingly, not many artists cater to the halloween aesthetic genre of songs. I impose the thought that we need some bands/artists that only write for this holiday and season because I want more halloween music, not just the same old same old. This song is not about making someone else the monster, but the other way around of someone making you out to be a monster in order to place blame and flip the script. If you've ever been in a relationship where someone uses an ugly aspect of you in and twists the conversation to make you look bad, you can definitely relate to this song. The electro indie sounds in this song which are discordant and not so pretty go perfectly in line with the songwriter's intentions of meaning, in my opinion. 

20. Which Witch by Florence + The Machine - A bonus track and a demo from the How Big How Blue How Beautiful album and quite possibly my favourite song from the album at the same time. This song makes so much sense coming from Welch because she exudes the witchy nature in every way and writes about pagan nature and deity folklore a lot in her music which is so outside the realm of regular music that we are used to, which makes her so likeable and a force in the music industry. This track describes a two fold witch trial: one in the realistic and historical sense of witches being put on trial for having sinister ways and doing unexpected things for women for their time period. The other is her having her heart put on trial for loving in a way that was not desirable from her lover, even though she never tried to hide what she was. Now that she is escaping from the relationship, she explains she has no regret for what has happened, no matter what the man says in retaliation to her opinions. 

Thanks for listening and reading!

See you next week,

Julia

[alivingroomatthebottomofalake]

My Top 100 albums of 2017

I listened to too much music in 2017. It was hard to keep track. Pop music was weak as fuck, I didn’t really find much joy in it, but I was finding roughly 10-30 albums each month that I could really enjoy in other genres. Many of these were releases on small labels. I must admit, listening to this much music made it hard to enjoy this much music. I don’t think I’ll be doing this in future. I have whittled it down to the 100 albums that came out in 2017 that I spent the most time with, that really lasted in my mind as great new music, i.e. my favourites, and while I try to be objective about my criticism, it’s still about what speaks to me specifically. Everything beyond the top 10-20 is in a pretty vague order, vaguer as it goes, with the final 20 being albums I liked a lot but didn’t spend as much time with, hence the vaguer reviews). I’ve limited each review to roughly 100 words (fewer as we go along, in fact, I tapped out towards the end because I got tired of writing. This took longer to do than I planned and fuck it), and as with last year’s list, I’ve intentionally avoided the use of genre words and pointless artist comparisons (as much as is possible). Check each record out on the merit of the content, not the style, and you will enjoy more.

1. Bjork - Utopia

Utopia sees Bjork return from the darkness with a fresh optimism, and also a fresh process and palette of sounds. The open form/narrative led song writing, and seemingly meandering vocal style that has been gradually replacing the pop style of her early albums has firmly cemented itself, and while not having an obvious verse/catchy chorus form, or club banger beat might be a barrier for the uninitiated, it is one of the album’s strengths, as Bjork explores the themes of the lyrics with some incredible arrangements and some of the most curious production experiments of her career, creating probably the most Bjork album yet. It’s dense and joyous, takes no prisoners in its honesty, and is lush as fuck.

Favourite tracks: Arisen My Senses, Claimstaker

2. Shackleton and Vengeance Tenfold - Sferic Ghost Transmits

Undulating and pulsing bells, acoustic and synthetic percussion, and cinematic swells of scifi synthesizer drones and blips framing a half spoken, half sung narrative about some dark shit. It’s the juxtaposition of the deep, almost monotone delivery of the tormented lyrical content and the brightness of the production, the activity in the sounds that really makes this music come alive. There’s something otherworldly and ancient about the material, curious and yet familiar. The poly-rhythmic patterns and the rich palette of sound textures draw one in for repeated listening, making this a highly addictive record.

Favourite track: Five Demiurgic Options

3. Children of Alice - Children of Alice

There’s so much going on in this music. A strange collage of textures and instruments play out a montage of ideas, flowing together in a seamless exploratory form. If there’s a story here, it’s not being expressed in any literal terms, yet the mood seems to flow in a radiophonic sort of way, and the listening journey is a blast. There are moments that the album falls into recognisable bursts and loops of what could be called “music” but the tracks don’t dwell on developing these ideas in any uniform or traditional fashion, and the pleasure here is how the disjointedness and variety keeps the listener on their toes, especially when several opposing genres and tonal centers begin overlapping. Then the magic really starts to happen.

Favourite track: Rite of the Maypole - An Unruly Procession

4. Saicobab - SAB SE PURANI BAB

What seems on paper as a really simple combination of instruments, becomes an intricate map of rhythm and unexpected sound interplay. The compositions are led by the voice and sitar, and glued together by a percussionist and double bassist. The backings are often as furious as the foreground energy, but the mix gives the instrument hierarchy a tension that totally serves the music. There is an additional level of intrigue in the quality of vocal treatments and fx that elevates the strangeness of the record. At times the energy is chaotic, but the music is highly organised, and while striking the balance of these feelings is no easy task, Yoshimi and co get it right.

Favourite tracks: aMn nMn, Bx Ax Bx

5. Dustin Wong & Takako Minekawa - Are Euphoria

Well, this is such an apt album title. The music on Are Euphoria is itself dancing. This is music reveling in process. Nothing ever really feels settled, but without giving off an unsettling feeling. Rather, it’s an exciting kind of bliss, the thrill of the search. Beats morph tempo, melodies orbit the tonic but hardly resolve, busy textures scratch away beneath nonchalant, liquid vocals, it’s all very quaint, yet mature and highly addictive. Mostly this album is just fun. Fun because one can hear the joy that went into it, and the euphoria is not just expressed, but easily received.

Favourite tracks:  Zaaab, Haha Mori

6. Rabit - Les Fleurs Du Mal

“Chop it up”, says the voice that opens this album, giving perhaps an obvious indication of the process behind the music that follows. Sharp strikes of strings and cut up bits of dialogue in various languages merge with mangled atmospheres and asymmetric synth melodies. There’s a lot going on in this album, but never too much at a time. It’s immersive, but there’s a sense of buoyancy. The album carries a dark quality throughout most of the themes, but it’s an enjoyable darkness, less overt terror, more curiosity. There is a prettiness that pervades the evil. Another aptly titled album.

Favourite tracks: Possessed, Ontological Graffiti, Bleached World

7. Yazz Ahmed – La Saboteuse

Yazz Ahmed’s trumpet tone is impeccable, and on this album she has assembled a cast of amazing players to deliver some incredible moments of ecstatic musicality. There’s a lot of brilliant soloing, infectious melodic themes and well-planned arrangements. The balance of light and shade, big and small, old and new, is constantly moving, like a tightrope walker, balanced and sure footed, but never at rest, never without risk. The album is a constant slight of hand, lulling the listener with warmth and gentle caresses, but beyond mere background moods, it’s full of adventure, and one can’t help but accept the quest it presents.

Favourite tracks: Al Emadi, The Space Between the Fish and the Moon, Bloom.

8. Emel - Ensen

Emel has the most haunting, captivating voice I have heard in forever. I don’t even really know what her songs are about, because she is from Tunisia and sings mostly in Arabic. This album is sombre in tone, and occasionally brutal. The drums sound huge, although they sound like small instruments turned up with great urgency. Even at it’s subtlest moments the album is urgent and immediate. That’s not to say the album is direct or blunt, it’s full of elegance and finesse, but it isn’t really nice, it’s beautiful and human, and it’s the latter quality that perhaps lets the darker side in.

Favourite tracks: Lost, Kaddesh, Ensen Dhaif.

9. Somi - Petite Afrique

This album was a surprise. The tone is set with a little soundscape/collage of music and dialogue snippets, and then segues into a beautiful reworking of Sting’s Englishman in New York (substituting Englishman for African).  The chords are re-harmonised and the lyrics altered, translating a new meaning.  Moving onward, the theme continues, lyrically exploring racial identity, and musically pushing the boundaries of African and African American music traditions. It’s a soulful and militant record. It’s catchy, but fully loaded with potent messages, wicked grooves, and hot arrangements.

Favourite songs: Black Enough, The Gentry.

10. Adult - Detroit House Guests

Adult invited a bunch of artists to stay at their place in Detroit and collaborate on some music whilst there. Artists including Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe, Michael Gira, and Douglas J McCarthy (and more) contributed ideas and vocals to the album. It’s a trippy, synth laden affair. Lots of cool modular sequences and minimal beats, matched with mantra like vocal passages, all whirling around together to create a pretty arty combination of club music and experimentalism. It’s a slow build over about the first 4 tracks, but once it gets going, it’s just a blast to move your body to. However, the weirdness doesn’t let up, and makes for great listening and dancing alike.

Favourite tracks: We Are a Mirror, This Situation.

11. Arca - Arca

It was such a surprise to hear Arca sing. Having produced tracks for so many vocalists, it was probably only a matter of time before they got on the mic. Arca’s voice expresses a sense of fragility, but it’s a deep and personal fragility, definitely not musical. Of that, there is confidence, expertise. The melancholic melodies are expertly accompanied by very sparse instrumentation, and the results are elegantly spun threads of sonic gossamer. But the album does take off and hit hard at times, with some instrumental tracks more reminiscent of earlier Arca works, but they’ve developed the sounds and ideas further, and these moments fit with the new sung material well.

Favourite Tracks: Anoche, Desafio.

12. Noveller - A Pink Sunset For No One

Noveller, aka Sarah Lipstate plays all this beautiful ambient music on an electric guitar. Her sounds are amazing, and the way she weaves it all together with a single instrument is masterful. I think what I appreciate about this record is the virtuosity it displays without ever needing to stand out. The tracks are all quite subtle, and even when the dynamics swell, it’s not about showing off, it’s about tension and release. They are great compositions, and Lipstate’s consummate execution make them a dream to immerse ones self in.

Favourite tracks: Rituals, Another Dark Hour.

13. Dale Cooper Quartet and the dictaphones - Astrild Astrild

Composed of lush, noise riddled drones, moody saxes and dreamy vocal croons, Dale Cooper Quartet & the Dictaphones perfectly invoke their namesake. Like a dreamy cinematic tribute album, but with all the right grit and character to own it. There’s some amazing atmosphereic floating choir “ahs” drifting between the sax lines, and some incredible soundscape tracks that barely feature any “notes”, they swell and dip and build some tension, interspersed with only a few dynamic peaks. The album is all tension and only a few moments of release, but they are beautiful releases. It’s a long album, with long tracks, and it’s a commitment to listen, but worth every second.

Favourite tracks: Pemp ajour imposte, Son mansarde roselin

14. Craig Taborn & Ikue Mori – Highsmith

Tarborn’s incredibly virtuosic avant –garde piano playing blends perfectly with Mori’s masterfully designed electronic textures. The two become one, effortlessly creating new worlds of sound with each gesture. Each piece explores the sound sources in a unique way. There’s a constant juggling of hierarchy that makes for interesting tensions, and while the complexity of the rhythmic textures and atonality make the album dense with information, it also has a really fun quality. The energy keeps it entertaining, but the talent and artistry elevates the listening experience to a state of enlightening euphoria.

Favourite tracks: Music To Die By, Variations On A Game

15. Black Quantum Futurism - Telescoping Effect Pt. 1 Soundscape

This album was composed/designed to accompany the words of Rasheedah Phillips, whom I was lucky enough to see perform with Moor Mother recently. On its own, this music is a powerful work, and an eclectic listening experience. There’s a sense of narrative built in to the collage of sounds and genre, a sci-fi attitude pervades the nature of electronic and synthesized elements, all the while balanced by a celebration of black American culture. It’s intense, and intensely musical without needing to fall back on tropes or tunes. Music that balances on that fine line between radiophonic story telling and acousmatic concrete/collage,  with a fresh and engaging character.

 Favourite track: 1919 (Saros Cycle)

16. Matt Mitchell - A Pouting Grimace

This album is dense, atonal, and rhythmically manic. It sounds like free improvisation, but feels highly organised. To be honest, I don’t want to know which it is (lies, I want to know everything). The virtuosity of the musicians is incredible, but the artistry in both the compositional forms, and how fearlessly the music is expressed are the real strengths of the record. The organised chaos could be annoying or pretentious, but it’s neither, it’s tasteful, exciting, and incredibly contemporary.

Favourite tracks: Mini Alternate, Heft.

17. Sarah Davachi - All My Circles Run

Davachi explores drone, stasis, duration, and the potential of simplicity in four different ways on four different instruments. The pieces for strings, voice and organ respectively, work in similar ways, with overlapping sustained tones gradually replacing one another, but the final piece, composed for piano is obviously a different approach, a kind of La Monte Young era minimalist approach to piano playing. The piano work isn’t out of place or character though. The album is broken up in the middle with “chanter”, another piano piece with a similar feel that ties the whole thing together at the end. It’s some incredible ambient background music, but also beautiful for deep listening.

Favourite track: For Organ.

18. Nicola Ratti – The Collection

Ratti’s Collection begins with a sophisticated arrangement of minimal rhythmic pulses and blips, some overlapping tones emerging from some swells of noise, developing slowly and gracefully into a gorgeous understated composition. The tempos and patterns change from track to track, but Ratti maintains a consistent quality and palette of sounds and across the album, doing as much as possible with the sparse instrumentation. It’s a brilliant album of delightful electronic sounds and intriguing patterns.

Favourite tracks: L2, L8.

19. Merzbow, Keiji Haino, Balazs Pandi – An Untroublesome Defencelessness

This is ultimately a drum record. Balazs Pandi is a monster. The drumming is off the hook. Haino and Merzbow exist as energy, fuelling the onslaught. That’s not to say the album is without variation or dynamic. The record has plenty of variety, up and down moments, subtlety, brilliantly crafted noise, beats, riffs, even some shouted vocals that tie it all together. It’s a sonic journey of discovery. Writing about music like this feels pointless because it taps into something more primal than words. However it feels more political than primitive. This music is reaching into the depths of the human condition.

Favourite track: How Differ the Instructions of the Left from the Instructions of the Right? (Part III)

20. Cleric - Retrocausal

Holy shit. Cleric do everything, like, they play all the notes, all the styles, all the… volumes (?). This album covers a lot of ground, and it doesn’t hold your hand or buy you breakfast first. Fuck, the first track alone is a relentless journey of musicality and brutality. Some of the heaviest riffs of the year, but also some maniacal juxtapositions and ruptures that cause it all to be even more interesting and intense. In the end though, this music is all the more engaging because it stretches so far beyond mere “heaviness” and brings in all these extra colours and feels. Not to mention, it’s great to have a heavy band with some idea of contemporary tonality that stretch beyond diatonic neoclassical lameness or drop D minor modal bullshit. Cleric fucking rule.

Favourite tracks: Ifrit, Resumption.

21. Dead Cross - Dead Cross

To think I almost didn’t bother checking this out. What a loser I’d have been. Dave Lombardo put a hardcore band together, and got Mike Patton involved on vocals, and it totally works. Some great lyrics on here, and Patton is on top form, showing no signs of going soft. The star of the record is the drums, Lombardo is a tight and ballistic barely even covers it when he’s underway. The song writing is also a highlight, the riffs and breakdowns, and overall catchiness of the album really makes this some brutally infectious music.

Favourite tracks: Idiopathic, Grave Slave

22. Alessandro Cortini - Avanti

This album is very special. I feel lucky in that my first hearing of it was a live performance. I saw Alessandro give a talk about synths and his process making the album, and then saw him do the album in full, with old home movies that his grandfather made playing in the background. The record is a beautiful nostalgic reflection. Made entirely with a EMS Synthi AKS (processed through guitar pedals) the beautiful drifting tones and the simplicity of the melodies makes this the kind of music one could be lost in forever, swept up in a daydream and forget time altogether.

Favourite tracks: Aspettare, Iniziare

23. Demen – Nektyr

Demen make soundtracks to dreams. This music is pacifying and disarming. It is spacious, lush, expansive, and yet reserved. Elegant, is perhaps the most apt adjective. The drums are huge and distant, drenched in reverb, as is almost everything, giving the music it’s floating quality. The hamonic shifts are few and far between, making the subtlest of transitions feel enormous. While some tracks begin with long emphasis on emptiness, the dynamic and emotional range of this album is not to be underestimated.

 Favourite tracks: Niorum, Illdrop, Ambur.

24. Mary Halvorson Quartet - Paimon

I’ve been a big fan of Mary Halvorson’s guitar work since her appearance on Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant record. Here her playing and arranging are put on fine display as she interprets Zorn’s Masada material, for Book of Angels volume 32. The Quartet of drums, bass, and two guitars makes for a thicketed texture, and the musicians approach the material this way – texturally – more than they cover traditional jazz quartet roles. There’s still plenty of attention to the melodic frameworks of the original compositional intent, but the group has a tendency to go full battle royale in the solo sections, rather than politely accompanying. The soloing is superb, but the madness is part of what makes the Masada material so special, and Halvorson and co have captured it beautifully, adding a masterful spark and character to this ongoing series of releases.

Favourite Tracks: Yeqon, Chaskiel.

25. Pinkcourtesyphone - Indelicate Slices

Richard Chartier makes beautiful ambient sounds into dreamy musical landscapes. His new record, Indelicate Slices is a beautiful collection of such music. As the title may suggest, this record isn’t sweet background soundscapes to bliss out to, Chartier is delving into some gritty, dark territory on this album, playing with some suspense and pushing the extremes of what the genre may accept. There are some long moments of almost nothing but the tiniest record crackle, which says something of the artist’s minimalist attitude. It’s exciting to hear this approach to sound, from the negative perspective, as opposed to the tendency for bliss and serenity. The dark mood creates a sense of expectation, which Chartier only pays off in small doses, but they are worth the long moments in between.

Favourite tracks: minimumluxeryoverdose, in voluptuous monochrome

26. Nadah El Shazly – Ahwar

Hailing from the Cairo underground scene, Nadah is a beautiful singer, with an eclectic musicality and and abstract sensibility. Collaged forms of music swirl around, tonalities layer up in exciting unresolved ways, and yet it is always soulful. This is a really colourful record, with carefully attended to arrangements, plenty of chaos, but never a mess.

Favourite tracks: Barzakh (Limen), Palmyra.

27. Gravetemple – Impassable Fears

The tone of this albums is abrasive, the bass and guitar tones (if they even are instruments) are sheets of steel against gravel against my brain. It’s ugly in the most perfect way. It’s almost impossible to think of this as music – almost – but the human voice makes the intensity of the crunching somewhat physical, visceral, and the physicality of the drumming binds it all into something one can truly feel. Then somewhere in the middle the album introduces melodic electronic sounds, crunched, low res sounds that bleed into a fresh roaring onslaught. It’s full of surprises, but the gems protected by berserkers. This is not one to go into lightly, but fucking perfectly rewarding for those with courage.

Favourite tracks: Elavúlt földbolygó (World Out of Date), Domino, Áthatolhatatlan félelmek (Impassable Fears)

28. Nazoranai – Beginning to Fall in Line Before Me, So Decorously, the Nature of All That Must Be Transformed

From the long slow build of drums and curious noises, opening up to a cinematic landscape of another world, there’s a lot at play here, lots of colour, lots of restraint. It’s as if this group have only a small idea of the headroom they have to play with, and approach the music with calculated precision, allowing for a gradual, yet slow growth. The first track takes about 20 minutes to peak, and it’s a delicious, almost spiritual high point. Part 2 comes down for a moment, just enough to find a new path, before it begins to tear shreds off the feelings created in the first part, until it gets to the magic and truth at the core. When the vocals begin, all seems revealed, the search is over. The final 10 minutes is an unbridled expression of intensity, joyously reveling in the phenomenon of sound. It’s fucking awesome.

Favourite track: Part 2.

29. The Body & Full of Hell - Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light

Abrasive and dense, the pairing of these two bands ascends to dizzying levels of heavy. Maximum weight and intensity scrape through your ear-holes with this one. A really clever blend of electronic and  brutal metal elements, the former used sparingly to add highlights to the later, such as the abrasive synth tone in the opening track, or the bouncy kick and vocal fx in track two. It could be a bit pompous, or even a bit generic “noise band”, but it’s way more fun. It really sounds like this was made in a playfull way, and thus the music keeps you playing along throughout the onslaught.

Favourite tracks: Earth is a Cage, Farewell, Man

30. William Basinski - A shadow In Time

Basinski returned in early 2017 with a new album, 2 new works that continue the trajectory of his career, and adding a new sense of depth and density to his palette. The album plays with some familiar Basinski processes, the reverb feedback, gradually unfolding over a long duration, stretching and smearing the tones of loops until they become some kind of trans-sensoral phenomenon. The compositions seem more deliberate on this record, with less reliance on loops for loops sake. There’s a clear sense development in both tracks that make them engaging in a new way. I always like Basinski, but I’m loving this more than usual.

Favourite track: A Shadow In Time.

31. Félicia Atkinson – Hand in Hand

This album is a delicate and bold blend of pulsing electronic melodic sound, atmospheric incidental sound, and spoken word. Atkinson’s words and sounds aren’t expressly trying to teach or convey a sense of importance, but there’s something about the delivery that makes every moment feel important, something that needs to be learnt, or learnt from. Compositionally, Atkinson is a master at balancing textures, and the record explores a lot of sonic variety. On the surface the album is calm and you could almost tune out of it, but it is an album of exquisite detail.

Favourite tracks: Adaptation Assez Facile, A House a Dance a Poem

32. Ifriqiyya Electrique - Laa La Illa Allah

This album has a deep dark atmosphere, and dare I say it, something ritualistic is brewing away beneath these tunes. From the masses of percussion, the cave like reverb, and the mantra like chanting vocals of the first track, this group from North Africa have made a captivating collection that weaves in some upbeat bangers, and some super distorted, rumbling bass, creepers to make a potent spiritually cleansing record. I have very little knowledge of the where or who of the group, but it’s certainly not your typical nice easy world music for a day on the green. It’s gritty and up close and uncomfortable, but also kind of ground shaking and infectious.

Favourite track: Stombali - Baba 'Alaia

33. Anjou - Epithyma

Epithyma opens with a series of crossfading, delicate loop slices, melting and morphing shape, pulsing, but never really landing or forming in any repetitive musical sense. Anjou is sneaky with melody, it’s there, sliding around the periphery, never truly taking over or coming into focus. It’s perfectly ambient, by definition. As ideas are exhausted, they’re so naturally replaced and seamlessly transitioned from that one forgets what came before, or how long it may have been. A beautifully constructed collection of synths and space.

 Favourite track: Soucouyant

34. Walker Harris English - Walker Harris English

These 4 pieces feel like meditations on existentialist cinema rather than just music compositions. There’s something so haunting about it, and instantly immersive, like being lost in “the zone”. The trio have so masterfully developed and transmutated a realm of unfathomable beauty and familiarity into a mystery. Very little needs to be said beyond that. It’s incredible, subtle music. Listen to it.

Favoutie track: A2: Beyond House

35. Sevdaliza – ISON

This is one of the best singer/electronic music releases I’ve heard in a very long time. It has cool, chill grooves and tasty as fuck sound design, creative arrangements, and it manages to be totally current and on trend whilst unashamedly embodying myriad influences that could be easily failed retro pastiches, but instead serve to strengthen the record, and heighten the moods it’s invoking/expressing. Very disappointed that this didn’t seem more mainstream appeal, because its way better than many things of the genre that had half the content/detail.

Favourite tracks: Hero, Marilyn Monroe.

36. Idles: Brutalism

Idles is a brutal reality check. Working class punk rock too late for the world, self-aware, spitting in the face of bullshit and calling it what it is. They are angry, and they have a very good sense of humour about the world and their position in it. They also know sound. The drums and bass are solid bricks and the guitars are like swarms of killer bees. It all serves the lyrics, which I will leave you with a taste: “The best way to scare a Tory is to read and get rich/I know nothing I’m just sitting here looking at pretty colours”.

Favourite tracks: Mother, Well Done, Rachel Khoo, (Fuck it, all of them are brilliant).

37. Xiu Xiu - Forget

Forget is a pretty tidy record. I don’t know if that’s a compliment for Xiu Xiu, but I guess what I mean is that it is cohesive and coherent in a way that translates more directly than many of their earlier releases. I first heard this band live, and so my idea of Xiu Xiu is tied to the stage in a really hypnotic and noisy way, but I found this album has deepened my appreciation of their agenda/aesthetic more than before. Jamie Stewart’s voice sounds better than ever, and the arrangements are lush and exciting.

Favourite tracks: Queen of the Losers, At Last, At Last.

38. Trespass Trio – The Spirit of Pitesti

Sax, bass, and drums is an amazing combination of instruments. It never fails to capture my attention. Trespass Trio keep it simple and soulful, angular and loose, and constantly adventurous. The title track is a dirge like exploration of time and space that conjures an ocean of moods. There’s a few upbeat tracks that swing and hit and dance about the ring in confusing fashion. Very cool stuff.

Favourite track: In Tears.

39. Ulfur - Arboresence

Icelandic composer Ulfur opens his new album with a droney string motif that cinematically crescendos with the sounds of rain, culminating in a blistering explosion of black metal blast beats. This sets the mood for the various extremities one should be prepared for over the course of the record. Ulfur weaves between moody songs and soundscapes, electronic rhythms, dreamy psych-pop and dense spectral sound paintings. A truly unique and eclectic record, masterfully handled.

Favourite track: Tómi› Titrar

40. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Plankton: Music for an Intallation By Christian Sardet and Shiro Takatani

Plankton is an hour long composition by Japanese legend Ryuichi Sakamoto, designed for an installation that explores and documents the nature of the namesake micro organisms. It’s a subtle and immersive piece. Drawing on the philosophy of ambient, washing across the background with all its splendour and detail, free to be ignored or enjoyed on whatever terms you prefer. I could put this on repeat all day long.

41. Hogni - two trains

Two trains begins with a gorgeous Icelandic choral work, perhaps as a statement of identity, of origin, but it quickly moves on to more contemporary sounds, with Hogni’s beautiful falsetto voice leading the way through string laden electronic beats. The choir sounds return here and there over the course of the record, and there’s a great blend of light and dark moods on the record. I’m impressed with the way the variety of styles approached on here works, especially considering the more commercial bent to the song styles. Brave choices and good songs.

Favourite track: Komdu me>

42. Thor & Friends “The Subversive Nature of Kindness”   

Thor Harris delivers a feast of percussion on this record of repetition based minimalism. Each track takes a very simple motive and builds on layers of percussive melody with synth and voice and strings, taking the simplicity to very moving emotional, and cinematic places. It’s all very considered and my only criticism is how safe it all feels, which I guess is the point; kill them with kindness. It’s beautiful music.

Favourite track: Swimming with Stina.

43. Mario Batkovic – Mario Batkovic

I never could have thought I’d be writing about a solo accordion album in my yearly list. Maybe I’ve been listening to too much Pauline Oliveros over the last couple of years. That’s a good thing. Mario Batkovic is an amazing accordion player. The album highlights his virtuosity as an instrumentalist, as well as a consummate composer, but it also shows him investigating sound, delving into the tone of the instrument, and exploring what it can do. This is what makes me love it, because Batkovic presents the instrument as more than notes, and delivers a rich and complex series of sound paintings.

Favourite tracks: Gravis, Desiderii Patriae

44. Wadada Leo Smith – Najwa/solo reflections on Monk

Trumpet player Wadada Leo Smith released two great records this year. I am including them together only because I feel that his “Solo reflections on Monk” gives insight to the work on Najwa. Najwa is an ensemble record, with 4 guitars, and most notably to my ears is the bass tone of Bill Laswell. Each piece seems to be a moving tribute to a master of the jazz idiom, from Ornette to Coltrane, and the album explores this devotion in character. The dedications are blistering, joyous harmolodic/spiritual jazz experiences, while the title track feels like a tribute to Miles, a bare amorphous atmosphere, perhaps presenting the trumpeter’s influence as honestly as it can be. What is great about these two albums side by side, is hearing a modern master of the idiom pull new things out of the influences, and show that regardless of the instrument one’s hero played, the content is what inspires, not just the tool.

Favourite tracks: Najwa, Ohnedaruth John Coltrane: The Master of Kosmic Music and His Spirituality in a Love Supreme

Also: Adagio: Monkishness - A Cinematic Vision of Monk Playing Solo Piano

45. Ben Frost - The Centre Cannot Hold  

Frost had a fucking busy year, with a bunch of EPs, TV and film scores, and this full-length album (Edit: I just finished Dark, and if I could find the OST album I would be rating that in my top 20, it’s phenomenal). The Centre Cannot Hold is more of what Frost is known for with his solo works.  Dense harsh sound pounded, tenderised, and compressed into musical forms, often forcibly. But Frost’s sensibility as a composer of sound and music doesn’t lack subtlety or musicality, and the production is such high quality that after a few minutes the static and distortion become such natural entities, allowing the listener into the beautiful tones and warm beats tumbling throughout the record.

Favourite Tracks: A Sharp Blow in Passing, All That you Love Will Be Eviscerated.

46. Laraaji - Sun Gong/bring on the sun

These two albums seem to play best as companions. Bring on the Sun is a multifaceted exploration of minimal/ambient ideas using zither and mbra, voices and other sounds, beautifully recorded and performed. Sun gong uses metallic percussion as a drone instrument, and explores similar ground with different tools. Both albums are dense with content and yet easy to absorb, offering a constantly engaging and surprising experience on repeat listens. I actually feel bad that I haven’t spent enough time getting to know every nuance of these two records, as they have so much to offer.

Favourite tracks: Sun Gong No.1, Laraajazzi.

47. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Levitation Praxis

In a similar vein to Laraaji, Levitation Praxis sees Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe perform a beautiful series of sounds in a barn full of Harry Bertoia’s sound sculptures. The resonance of metallic forms in such a reverberant space is intoxicating, and Lowe uses his dreamy falsetto voice to commingle in the reverb bringing a warmth and humanity to the cold steel sounds. The presence of the space is felt in the recording, the shuffling of a body through the room, the intuitive nature of the performance, all factors that make listening to this special.

48. Kyle Motl – Transmogrification  

A collection of solo double bass improvisations recorded over two days. Motl explores his instrument intimately, pulling sounds from the wood and steel and hair and shaping them into gorgeous careful music. There’s not a lot more to say. The album presents an imaginative and adventurous spirit making abundance with very full tools.

Favourite track: Urrong.

49. Kid Koala (with Emiliana Torini) - Music to draw to: Satellite

Sweet tunes, with a delicate balance of scifi and mellow pop. Emiliana Torrini’s voice is beautiful, and it breaks up the atmospheric instrumentals really nicely. This is some pretty easygoing music, great evening chill out soundtrack stuff.

Favourite tracks: Collapser, Photons.

50. Flaming Lips - Oczy Mlody

The Lips made a trippy as fuck, synth pop record. It’s totally acid, and only those who have the experience will know exactly how perfect it is. The lyrics are totally oldschool tripper lyrics. It’s kinda perfect at this stage in there career to just own that shit. It has some great sounds, and the comfortable nature of the music is constantly shifting, and gets a bit mucky from time to time. Definitely feels like acid to me.

Favourite tracks: There should be unicorns, Listening to the frogs with demon eyes

51. Shackleton and Anika - Behind the Glass

This goes here on the list because it’s so incredibly similar to Shackleton’s other record with Vengence Tenfold, and although it’s just as good, I felt two albums like this in one year wasn’t fair to put them so close together. Proves how pointless this rating system is. Anika’s voice and words are cool as fuck, and the sounds, production, and arrangments are hypnotic. Enjoy.

Favourite track: The Future Is Hurt / Dirt and Fields

52. Will Guthrie - People Pleaser

This is another great album that I heard for the first time as a live performance. Will has amassed an odd bunch of sounds/samples and collaged them into something quite abstract to accompany his percussion and drums. It’s quite a mission. It has a punk quality to it, sounds a bit DIY and noisy, and I love it for that. Unfortunately I’ve only got it on vinyl and have paid no attention to the track transitions. Just check it out.

53. Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe - Kulthan/Marlek

Two very cool modular synth albums, that are both 2 long tracks that explore very simple repetition/minimal ideas, probably each a single synth patch. Lowe has been doing a fair bit of this lately and I’m really enjoying it. It’s not super ground breaking, it’s just cool music. Lowe uses his voice as a subtle element in there with the machine which really elevates the sounds to a higher level, and gives the music a mystical feel.

Favourite track: Magnamite

54. Boris - Dear

Boris return with massive drums and some dense as fuck doom. I think my favourite thing about this band is the way the simple pounding weigh of the band is juxtaposed against the vocals, which are, for lack of a better word, beautiful and clean against the heavy tones.

Favourite songs: Deadsong, Kagero

55. kara-lis coverdale - grafts

Grafts is a single 22 minute track. It would seem that it is made up of a whole bunch of simple little loops, grafted together. I’m not really sure if that’s the idea or not, but it makes sense. The sounds are gorgeous, and the piece flows seamlessly. It’s a great work and can be enjoyed repeatedly with much depth to be discovered over multiple listens.

56. Moor Mother X Mental Jewelry - Crime Waves

It’s moody, dark, angry, bold, and it’s gonna fuck with you. The lyrics are heavy. It’s not quite hip hop. It sits more in line with the recent afro-futurist/punk movement. I love it. I saw Moor Mother Goddess live in January and her shit is the real deal.

Favourite tracks: Death Booming, The City.

57. Nicole Mitchell - Mandorla Awakening II: emerging worlds

This is a psychedelic free jazz odyssey, on the Sun Ra level. It inhabits so many sound worlds, it’s cosmic. The flute is the focus, but it’s full of some amazing percussion and string passages that blur the lines between late 1960s scifi film and gypsy music. It’s kinda hard to pin it down, which is why I love it so much. Great music in the car. So much happening.

Favourite tracks: Egoes War, Forestwall Timewalk, Staircase Struggle.

58. Colin Stetson: all this I do for glory

I love Colin Stetson. Every year he tries something new. This album opens with a cool little beat based track, which caught me off guard, and the beats/percussion continues throughout as a feature of the record.. His sax tone is still dirty as fuck, but no longer the only focus. I love the way he has tried some vocal things on here, which sometimes sounds like he’s singing while playing the sax (I wouldn’t be surprised) and the percussion stuff is very cool. Tracks still fall into the classic Stetson, repetitive minimalism/arpeggio word, but it’s still refreshing and surprising.

Favourite tracks: Like Wolves on the Fold, In the Clinches

59. Thurston Moore - rock and roll consciousness

I guess what I love about this, its that it takes a bunch of really aggressive and noisy elements, things one usually expects from Thurston Moore, but it uses them as this really positive tool, and explores a really trippy type of happiness. It’s almost summertime, getting high on the beach music. It really caught me by the heart.

Favourite tracks: Turn On, Exalted.

60. Kaitlyin Aurelia Smith - The Kid

What an incredible universe of sound Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith has created. The more I listen to this, the more baffled and in love with it I become. I’m always finding new nuances, and there is a lot of ideas drifting through this record. This album is more focused on the “song” than her earlier works, and there’s a lot more beats and vocal led tracks. The beats are grainy and glitchy, and the vocals are very processed with harmonies from vocoders and such. I like the songs, but I love the synth instrumental bits. Overall, this album is super playful, and colourful, and lots of fun.

Favourite tracks: Who I Am & Why I Am Where I Am, I Am a Thought.

61. Mere Woman – Big Skies

What a fucking great sound. Sydney’s Mere Women have produced an enormous sound, and they have some great beats and lyrics. Ultimately, the guitar sound is what has captured my attention the most, but I’m really excited by the overall package, the consistency of the songwriting and the way each some has a clever, stripped back and focused character. There’s never a generic beat or form.

Favourite songs: Big Skies, Drive.

62. Binker and Moses - Journey to the mountain of forever

A fantastic 2 disc set with one album entirely drums and sax duets, and the second disc augmented by some additional saxes and drums, trumpet, harp, and tabla. It’s the perect background music for art making, and that’s how I usually listen to it. Disc two is the shit!

Favourite tracks: The Shaman's Chant, Valley of the Ultra Blacks.

63. Nadia Sirota – Tessellatum

Nadia writes such epic string arrangements, I can’t even tell what instruments I’m hearing after a while. It’s an exploration of drone and rhythm, but it feels super fresh, and it avoids a lot of minimalist clichés while still seeming canon.

It’s a deep listening, immersive, durational work, and as such, it needs to be listened to in full, perhaps a few times, to really be appreciated. Totally worth the time.

64. Ecca Vandal – Ecca Vandal

Feels like the most mainstream thing on my list is a DIY local who brings the party and the fight on her debut record. It’s probably the best pop record of the year, and one of the best local releases in years. Ecca is a phenomenal performer and a great songwriter. Her team, the band and collaborators, have really made something fresh, mashing a lot of different genres together, and making if work. The best thing is how courageously heavy and out there the riffs are.

Favourite tracks: Price of Living, Future Heroine, End of Time.

65. Actress - AZD

Beginning with some totally cool blippy synth bits, AZD takes its sweet arse time building up into the masterful dance album it is. Once it does, each cut is just as perfect as the next. This is the perfect music for late night house party dancing.

Favourite tracks: Fantasynth, X22RME, Falling Rizlas.

66. The Necks - Unfold

Four nice long tracks, each with a different mood to explore. The Necks are masters of the long unchanging, durational improvised sound world. On this album, the focus is less on groove and more of texture, and the organ plays a central role in the first two pieces, giving this a kind of spiritual, 1960s, Terry Riley/Alice Coltrane kind of vibe. The percussion takes more of the lead on the last track which is more rhythmic, but still not really a groove. Great stuff for sure.

Favourite tracks: Overhear, Timepiece.

67. Jeff Mills - Trip to the Moon

Jeff Mills scored the old 1902 silent film, A Trip to the Moon, using beautiful synthesisers and playing with all the oldschool scifi tropes, reworking it into a delicate collage of music and soundscapes. What’s great as a listening experience is that the transitions that would no doubt seem obvious with the film, create surprising forms in a purely musical realm. Very cool stuff.

Favourite tracks: Rocket Spaceship Destination, Outer Space, Bewilded, But Not Confused

68. Lau Nau – Poseidon

Finnish artist Lau Nau has a dreamy and delicate sound, but it avoids being overly twee and meh with some lush arrangements and her cool, lazy vocal style. I’m a fan of the string sound on this record, and the subtle fx processing/electronic textures, which totally fly under the radar, but serve to really enhance the mood. Occasionally things get a bit more outrageous, and bizarre, and it adds t the overall adventure of the record.

Favourite tracks: Unessa, Suojaa uni meitä, Kun lyhdyt illalla sytytetään, ne eivät sammu koskaan

69. Cornelius - Mellow Waves

I love Cornelius, and it has been so long since he released anything, so this had me super excited. Point was a life changing record, and the follow up, Sensuous, was good, and mellow Waves is still pretty good, although I feel like Cornelius has a thing he does and it’s pretty clear now that that isn’t about to change much. Mellow Waves is more cool Cornelius tracks, lots of sudden blips and shifts in reverb, lots of polyrhythms and noisy guitar solos. Quaint and sophisticated yet also kind of raucous. I can’t help but feel he does this sort of thing in his sleep, but it’s still good music.

Favourite track: Sometime/Someplace.

70. Avey Tare - Eucalyptus

I like this so much better than Slasher Flicks, and the recent Animal Collective Painting with… Avey has developed a really interesting bunch of ideas, ranging from loose psychedelic meanderings, to straight up pop folk tunes, all built around voice and acoustic guitar, and punctuated by strange arrangements of sounds, worked on in collaboration with the genius Eyvind Kang. It’s relaxed and ambitious at the same time. A curiosity of sorts, with lots of depth.

Favourite tracks: Ms. Secret, Selection of a Place, Coral Lords.

71. Black Cube Marriage - Astral Cube

Chicago instrumentalist Rob Mazurek leads this ensemble of improvisers and sound adventurers. The results take on many forms, with shifting and cascading textures and rhythms bursting with noise and all manner of avant shit on display. It’s a little bit chaotic, but it represents masters of their art doing what they do best.

Favourite track: Syncretic Illumine

72. Graham Lambkin & Taku Unami - The Whistler

Well, I mean, what even is this? On the surface the record comes across as nothing more than a bunch of random recordings. Maybe that’s what it is. Stuff is happening, it has been recorded, and it’s really fascinating to listen to. The first disc sounds like someone in a workshop, occasionally whistling while they work. Disc 2, titled Small Mistakes In Nature has instruments being played at times, and the sounds of the outside world, and really flows on into bizarre headspace of where the hell am I and why? To be honest, this is an acquired taste and sometimes a frustrating listen, but it’s something I like, so…

73. Brooklyn Raga Massive – Terry Riley in C

I’ll begin by saying, I love Terry Riley and I love In C, so this was an easy win. Traditional Indian classical instruments playing an amazing piece of western music, that itself was inspired by Indian classical traditions. It works, and it’s a fucking awesome version of the piece. Just do it.

74. Jlin - black origami

Curiously, it took me a while to get into this. Something about the sound is too clean, and I couldn’t quite get into it. But after a few tries, it got me hooked. I think what I dig is the types of patterns and the choices made in terms of percussion sounds and vocal textures. It has such a cool feel and great movement, but it’s abstract enough to ponder and delve into with the ears as well as the body. I saw Jlin a couple of times live recently, and it translated so well that the album got back on my radar.

Favourite tracks: Enigma, Nyakinyua Rise.

75. SUBHEIM & MONOLOG - Conviction

A very cool dark, downtempo mix of drones and throbbing beats. With lots of space, some lush guitar, and plenty of swelling dynamics. Not much to say about it, it’s simple and tidy, and calculated.

Favourite track: Wone

76. Erin K Taylor - Source

Source is 1 track, almost an hour in length. Centered around a field recording, with bird calls and a trickling stream, and the very distance sounds of traffic. After a while it sounds like other sounds are being subtly added into the mix, but I’m unsure how much this is edited/constructed, and how much is just captured. Eventually, there’s some vocals, and the planning and artistry is revealed. This is a deep listening album and really requires patience and attention. It has some surprised buried in there, that will reward you for your time.

77. Pan Daijing - Lack

Maybe this could have made it higher on the list. Listening back again now, it is so much more interesting than I remember. The voice seems to be the central connecting element of the work, and Pan Daijing constructs a variety of abstract forms, punctuated by noise and synth, and a mix of acoustic instruments (what sounds like dulcimer on the opening track). All very cool stuff.

Favourite track: A Loving Tongue

78. Smakos - A Vampire goes west

Synth based instrumental music, all very atmospheric and cool, with what seems like a strange narrative throughout. The sound is a bit distant, with a sweet little reverb to it, and it plays on the nostalgia a bit with the blippy arpeggios floating through the tracks. Very cool use of sampled voices in the background too.

Favourite tracks: One Day We Will Trip Out From Star To Star, Picnic In A Multiverse Cassette.

79. Schnellertollermeier - Rights

Minimal math rock type stuff. The first track caught my attention by barely doing anything for the first minute and a half. But then things develop, and grow and the patterns are fun. It takes a while, but gets pretty heavy. Each track follows a similar formula, building up from a simple polyrhythmic idea, but they are cool ideas.

Favourite track: Round

80.  Ex Eye - Ex Eye

Colin Stetson teams up with Shahzad Ismaily, Greg Fox, and Toby Summerfield to make a kind of Baritone sax centered (for lack of a better word) metal album. It’s heavy and chaotic and mixes up the genre elements in a fresh way. Nice to hear more sax in heavy music. This album takes some risks and it pays off.

Favourite track: Opposition/Perihelion; The Coil

81. Deradoorian – Eternal Recurrence

Stripped back and mellow, moody, lush, emotionally rich and dynamic. All this and more, Angel Deradoorian has made some beautiful and thoughtful tracks. I often get lots in this record, and just let it play on repeat because it’s a bit short, and it’s really hypnotic. Aptly titled I guess.

Favourite tracks: Return-Transcend, Ausar Temple

82. Keiji Haino, Jim O’Rourke, Oren Ambarchi – This Dazzling Genuine “Difference” Now Where Shall It Go

More pounding noise, guitar and drum improv, from three fucking legends of the game. It’s wild and full of energy and never really lets up. Keiji Haino has been mad busy with these kinds of collab albums of late, and somehow, they’re all winners. Check it out if you’re into this sort of thing.

83. Platform - Flux Reflux

An album of avant garde improvisation, with some incredible sounds and textures.  Platform seem like a pretty hip group, and they craft a bunch of really cool, diverse pieces.

Favourite Track: Reflux

84. Tyshawn Sorey - Verisimilitude

Moody, dark and slow, atonal and pointalistic modern jazz type stuff. Led by Percussionist Tyshawn Sorey, and with some amazing piano playing by Cory Smythe, Verisimilitude offers a lot of very creative and interlectual approaches to new music, crossing over the contemporary classical avant garde and free jazz worlds seamlessly.

Favourite track: Obsidian

85. Matt Nelson, Tim Dahl, Nick Podgurski - GRID

Four tracks of screeching bass guitar, sax, and drum interplay. It’s noisy as fuck, and really interestingly constructed. There’s a form of instrumental torture at play, but everything is completely in sync. The group operate as a single unit. Destroying everything with blissful abandon.

Favourite track: (-/+)

86. Trio Heinz Herbert - The Willisau Concert

A live improvised album of electronics, drums, and guitar, some of the most beautiful sounds I’ve ever heard. It moves between abstract and odd to pulse driven and musical in waves of expressive brilliance.

Favourite track: Fragment Z / Brugguda

87. Bérangère Maximin - Frozen Refrains

Aptly titled, Frozen refrains could well be just that, a small collection of time stretched moments. But it’s a lot more, and it takes a little patience to delve into. It really teases you, and makes you wait, but the detail in the sound design and in the micro forms of the long seemingly unchanging sound scapes are rich and exciting once you really listen.

Favourite tracks: Burn and Return, Clash.

88. Ohmslice - Conduit

This album is a mishmash of bizarre processed percussion, synthesiser, and abstract/surreal poetry, with some crazy guitar and horns in there for some bizarre accompaniment. It’s actually really compelling, and the words make it seem all the more interesting.

Favourite tracks: Crying On a Train, Broken Phase Candy, Paint By Numbered Day

89. Here Lies Man – Here Lies Man

This review is a cop out, (this is where I tapped out of writing in general) but… This is a dirty psychedelic rock/afrobeat cross over record, and it is pretty cool. I enjoyed it a bunch of times, not much more to say.

Favourite tracks: I stand alone, Belt of the sun

90. Perera Elsewhere - All Of this

Dark moody beats and singing. I liked it a lot. Something kinda post triphop, downtempo type music with cool modern production ideas. Definitely worth a few listens.

Favourite track: Girl from Monotronica

91. Locust Toybox - Drownscapes

David Firth of Salad Fingers fame has always made music under this moniker, but this is the first in a while, and usually his music is kind of broken beat type stuff. This is a lush dreamy ambient album, and it’s totally gorgeous.

Favourite tracks: Return To The Meadow, Birthday Lungs

92. Chicago/London Underground - A Night Walking Through Mirrors

An excellent live free jazz album that I spent quite a lot of time with in the first half of 2017. Beautiful sounds and textures, great players. Put it on at night.

Favourite tracks: Something Must Happen

93. Wolf Eyes - Undertow

Abstract and noisy, with cool spoken word bits. I was a bit surprised by this one. It’s trippy and dark, which I like.

Favourite tracks: Undertow, Thirteen

94. Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure

This is just some cool electronic music that I enjoyed. It’s not solely focused on beats, and that makes me happy.

Favourite tracks: Istian, East Sedducke

95. Tomutonttu – Kevätjuhla 

Cool and exotic sounding electronica. Beautiful sounds full of curious charm and otherworldliness.

Favourite tracks: Kuteen valoon I - Lukin jalka, Operaatio satamassa

96. Juilia Bloop - Roland Throop

Cool loops and beats, amounting to some excellent atmospheric oldschool sampler music. Very chill and yet very clever.

Favourite tracks: Too Many Ghosts, Let’s have some music

97. Cologne Tape – Welt

A really eclectic and exciting mishmash of ideas and instruments on this one. Moves from blippy electronic experiments to bombastic drum focused stuff but always with subtlety and an atmospheric quality.

Favourite tracks: Welt 2, Welt 4, Welt 8.

98. Rafael Toral - Moon Field

This is a brilliant electronic/scifi style soundscape album. It’s a weird and beautiful combination of sound design/fx and abstracted music ideas.

Favourite track: The Stars

99. Bellows - Sander

Beautiful and sweet tape loops and synth patterns. It’s really simple and sophisticated.

Favourite tracks: Untitled #2

100. Do Make Say Think - Stubborn Persistent Illusions

A really good collection of ideas in a genre that doesn’t often have any. I enjoyed this a lot.

Favourite tracks: Bound, And Boundless, As far As The Eye Can See.

Honourable mentions.

There were a whole bunch of albums I enjoyed that didn’t technically fit the list, compilations, and a few EPs, all great but not right for a full length album list. I also left off a bunch of things that I thought were great, but I just didn’t have time to delve into it all. I wish I had’ve had more time with a bunch of albums.

That all said, these two albums deserve a mention, but not in the top 100 because both these albums were recorded in 1975, and only released in 2017. They both show innovative legends doing their respective things as well as can be expected, and are both gorgeous listening experiences. Neither needs more detail than that.

Terry Riley & Don Cherry Duo - Live 1975

Organ minimalism and trumpet improvisations, a meeting of two legends, a conversation through the medium of music.

Suzanne Ciani - Buchla Concerts 1975

Ciani demonstrates the potential of the Buchla synth, in all its glory. What more do you need.

[ciathyzareposts]

The Legacy: Bad to the Bone

The enemies get more terrifying and grotesque.

       The Legacy is a much bigger game than I expected going in. I figured it would be a typical adventure game set in a haunted house with maybe three levels and a basement, all of them relatively compact, with all rooms serving some kind of purpose. But the creators of this game made a true hybrid, and from the RPG side, that includes enough levels, with enough space, to satisfy a Wizardry or Dungeon Master fan.

From what I’ve discovered so far, the main house has at least five levels. I’ve explored three of them, made a quick visit to the fourth, and read about a fifth. There are three separate basements, although only one is full-sized, and at least one sub-basement below that. And there are portals to other planes or worlds–maybe as many as one per rune symbol, which would be about a dozen so far. 

Given the size, my usual approach to adventure games–have one or more characters run around, map everything, annotate puzzles, don’t worry about whether they screw something up, then play the game “for real” with a final character–wasn’t going to work. Despite some reader warnings, I’m just going to have to trust that the game won’t place me in a “walking dead” situation. I’ve reserved two magic crystals (which regenerate spell points) in case I need a final bit of spell power, but beyond that I’m just going to have to trust my instincts. Thus, after taking Major Robert Kowalski into a few final areas, I re-started the game with the witch Irene Bolingbroke. I re-did the first level as efficiently as possible. Despite knowing the location of the Juju fetish, I did end up killing all the zombies. The CRPG player in me just couldn’t live with a bunch of enemies roaming around.

      I darted up to the second level long enough to get the bulletproof vest and then took on what turned out to be a shotgun-wielding zombie in one of the lower levels. It took me a couple of reloads, but I eventually killed him with my own guns and looted his shotgun and sunglasses. Between the vest, the shotgun, and the sunglasses, Irene looked pretty badass for most of this session. Late in it, I found an anti-magic tiara which replaced the sunglasses and changed her look entirely. It’s amazing what a little headgear can do.           

Looking at that portrait of Irene, you can’t help but hear the opening chords of George Thorogood’s guitar.

           The main basement, right off the entry hall, was a standard 22 x 22 level with a lot of one-way doors that funneled me along specific paths. The toughest monsters were these gray demons that I labeled “gargoyles.” They took forever to kill and hit hard but fortunately didn’t hit often. Irene ultimately found four different types of handguns and two different shotguns, a knife, a baseball bat, and an axe. I don’t remember what weapons I use to kill what foes, but I ultimately killed every one I encountered except for the “beholders” I described last time–a note indicated they might even be beneficial–and some others that I’ll note below.

    The basement also had some smaller demons that could poison Irene, but fortunately I found a healing spell before they became much of a problem.         

If they didn’t poison, they’d be almost cute.

           In one of the basement rooms, I found an electric toolkit, which turned out to be the key to fixing the fuse boxes. Every level so far has had a fuse box, and once I fixed it with the kit and turned it on, darkness ceased to be a problem. I was able to do most of Irene’s exploring without wasting the batteries in the flashlight. I ultimately found two more sets of batteries, too, plus an oil lamp, plus a spell that lets you see in the dark, so I think I’m all set on light.

In both the basement and second floor, I finally found rooms marked by triangles. Each had a bed and was thus marked as a safe space to rest. My character couldn’t rest, however, until late in this session–the game kept saying she didn’t need it. I was well into my sixth hour before she needed rest or food. Unless the game is vastly longer than it seems, I can’t imagine that running out of food is going to be an issue.          

Awakening after I was finally able to sleep.

        Beyond that, my primary find in the basement was a dimensional gateway that led me to a freaky area that I didn’t feel I was ready to explore yet. There was also a special room with a demonic skull and a ray of light, but I couldn’t think of anything to do there. I trust it comes into play later.          

I think I might be here a bit too early.

         The second floor had all those ghosts, and I ultimately found the painting that got rid of all of them with a single match. I wasn’t so lucky with the winged demons, but I was ultimately able to kill them all with firearms and melee weapons. There was one series of corridors where I had to walk in the opposite direction from the one I intended to progress, which was kind of fun to figure out.

The person knocking behind the locked door turned out to be the private investigator sent by the real estate agent to find out what happened to the previous owners. She hadn’t made much progress before the zombies and ghosts scared her out of her wits and she got trapped in the room. The room she was trapped in had a plaque denoting it as “Room 7.” To free her, I had to find the doors numbered 1-6 and walk through them in sequence (this was explained by another plaque in the southwest corner). She took off running after a brief conversation.         

I didn’t expect to find dialogue options in this kind of game.

            The third level was an insane asylum. The game’s story is that the owners of the house were running a private asylum on their third floor, complete with padded cells, sterile tiled floors and walls, and security doors. I guess they were taking inmates on contract from other facilities, but the owners were secretly feeding the hapless souls to demons (more on that in a bit). I’m left wondering how they got the inmates to the asylum–did they parade them through the main part of the house? There are no exterior entrances that I can see.          

One of the padded cells of the asylum level.

          The only inmate remaining was Ellen Prentiss, sister of the last owner, Robert Prentiss (we had a bit about her last time). She was wandering the halls in a straitjacket, wielding an axe, and she attacked me just as soon as I appeared, shouting that I had Winthrop blood so I had to die. I couldn’t find any way to reason with her or stop her, and since there was a puzzle later that required me to be wearing her straitjacket, I assume killing her was the right thing to do.             

I hadn’t yet found the fuse box when Ellen attacked.

         The level also featured numerous floating snakelike things with mouths at each end. They died in a few blows of the axe. Later, behind a secret door, I encountered blobs of living fire that defied all weapons, but fortunately died from the use of two fire extinguishers found on the level.          

Taking on a living ball of fire with a fire extinguisher.

           Behind one of the padded walls of the asylum, a human figure begged me to free him from the Ethereal Plane and not to summon “the Karcist.”          

Unless “the Karcist” is the local medical examiner, you’re fine.

         All of the levels I explored were full of items, some of which I had an immediate use for (first aid kits, magic crystals, ammunition), but most of which I have no idea what it’s for. Since inventory space is limited, I’ve mostly just been annotating the locations of unknown items and trusting I’ll be able to find them in their original locations if I need them. Such items include three demonic figurines, half a dozen “Chinese coins,” several runestones, and something called the “Hand of Glory.”

I’ve also found new spells at regular intervals, but I’ve hardly cast any of them. I started with “Flames of Desolation,” an offensive spell, and “Crimson Mists of Myamota,” a protection from physical harm. Over the course of the game, I’ve acquired “Aura of Mystic Defense,” “Shroud of the Dark Walker” (a displacement spell), “Sight of the Dark Walker,” “Belgor’s Mental Violation,” “Elixir of Health,” “Key of the Shadow Lord” (unlock doors), and “Dimensional Rift,” the last one only just acquired. I’ve put most of my spell points into “Elixir of Health,” probably getting less out of the defensive spells (and thus reducing the need for health) than I could have. They seem to last a pretty long time, too.         

Finding a key spell.

        That leaves the story. There are a lot of documents in this game, and fortunately a couple of “document wallets” to collect and organize them. I’m keeping an ongoing timeline, plugging things in as I learn them, rather than just updating myself with the latest, so some of this will be a repeat:

The issue here is less a haunted house than an evil ancestor; hence, the ��legacy” of the title. Elias Winthrop was dedicated from the beginning to bringing evil demons into the earthly plane, and has guided his descendants to do the same.

            1599: Elias Winthrop born in Telbury, England.

1620: Elias Winthrop marries Ann Puttnam.

1639: Elias Winthrop builds Winthrop House in Longport, Massachusetts.

1662: Elias Winthrop burned in Boston as a warlock after confessing freely to his sins. He is said to have taken command of numerous demons and devils. The house passes to his son, Hildebrand Winthrop (1641-1699). Elias somehow cheats death and becomes “the Karcist.”

1665: Hildebrand constructs a number of “secret areas” attached to the basement.

1693/1694: Josiah Winthrop and Alaric Winthrop born to Hildebrand Winthrop. Both later take on new last names (Maitland and Mayhew, respectively). Josiah occupies the house but has no grandchildren, so the house eventually passes to Alaric’s line.

1699: Hildebrand dies in a fire after years of “debauched revelries” in the house. 

1727: Third and fourth floors added to the house, presumably supervised by Josiah Winthrop.

1729: Josiah Maitland tries to dig down into the deep cellars where his father held his debauched rituals but is repelled by the rock demons (what I called “gargoyles”) living there.

1730: A tunnel is built connecting the basement to some natural caves.

1780: Fifth floor added to the house, but with no access from the lower four floors.

1790: The Cult of Melchior forms this year or sometime before it.

           If the cult was going to worship one of the Three Wise Men, this painting suggests it would have made more sense going with Caspar.

        1792/1793: Lawrence Mayhew, son of Alaric, and Lawrence’s wife Grace both die. The house passes to Miles Mayhew. Grace’s ghost ends up haunting the house, and in trying to lay her spirit to rest, Miles ends up opening the house to supernatural forces.

c. 1827: Miles Mayhew marries Mary Locke. The have two daughters: Miriam (1828-1898) and a second one not named.

1841: Edgar Allen Poe visits his friend, Miles Mayhew, at the house and later writes about his terrifying experience. 

1841: Mayhew opens a Museum of Esoterica on the fourth floor of the house, exhibiting occult artifacts that Hildebrand had owned. The museum is continually maintained from this point, though not open to the public.

1843: Strange lights reported in the skies above the house, accompanied by disappearances in Longport.

1848: Miles Mayhew’s wife, Mary Locke, is possessed or goes insane. She claims that the Karcist is her new husband, and she torments Miles daily with demonic visitations. She dies the same year. Their unnamed daughter, the “Siren of Longport,” is hung as a murderess in Boston after killing a series of men. Miriam becomes a member of the Cult of Melchior.

1850. Elias Winthrop’s paternal line ends with the death of Miles Mayhew. The house passes to Miriam, who has married a Giles Murchison. They have a daughter, Abigail (1861-1925), born after Giles dies in 1860.

1861: The house’s third floor is converted to a private insane asylum under Miriam’s direction. It opens for patients in 1865.

1880: Miriam is running the insane asylum and giving some of its patients as sacrifices to Sea Demons. She puts a cult member named Anton Wisniewski in charge of the asylum.

1893: Strange lights reported in the skies above the house, accompanied by disappearances in Longport.

1899: Anton Wisniewski is still running the third-floor asylum, handing over its hapless residents to “Sea Demons” so they can be made into “Servitors.”

1900: Nathan Prentiss (d. 1964) is born to Abigail Murchison (1861-1925) and Tom Prentiss (1872-1931).

1902: Sarah Prentiss (d. 1970) born, sister of Nathan. She will later marry Alexander Cowley. The player character is the son, grandson, or great-grandson of this union.

1915: Karen Daniels born, who marries Nathan Prentiss sometime before 1940.

1920: Anton Wisniewski casts a spell to summon “hellions” to roam the lower levels so that the sea demons can no longer enter the house and demand human lives. 

1937: Nathan Prentiss learns that the runes scattered around the house appear every time the Rite of Opening is performed. A “lurker” (what I’ve been calling “beholders”) also accompanies each gate.

1940: Ellen Prentiss born to Karen and Nathan.

1942: Robert Prentiss born to Karen and Nathan. He will marry Catherine Rosemonde (b. 1950).

1943: Strange lights reported in the skies above the house, accompanied by disappearances in Longport.

1962: Robert Prentiss and his Acolytes of Doom complete the Rite of Forbidding in the Egyptian temple. 

1964: Robert Prentiss murders his father, Nathan, and learns from some documents about his heritage. He vows to continue opening gates so that the “Great Beast, Belthegor, Lord of the Dark Triumvirate, can enter the earthly plane.”

            From Robert’s diary. This is how I learned about Belthegor for the first time.

           1967:  Ellen Prentiss tries to burn down the house and is locked in its asylum.

5 July 1992: Robert Prentiss reports a growing number of incursions to the house from other planes. He notes that the time for opening the “final gate” will soon be here.

2 September 1992: The sea demons are apparently back, because Robert writes about driving into town and kidnapping a vagrant to appease them.

12 September 1992: Ellen Prentiss escapes from the asylum and murders Karen and Catherine. Robert becomes convinced that he is “The One”–the inheritor of Elias Winthrop’s legacy. He accidentally fills the asylum with fire demons when trying to cast a spell to locate Ellen.

Late 1992: Robert summons a “dark god” named Alberoth to patrol the lower levels of the basement. Ellen doesn’t find him a threat as she can just run past him. 

Late 1992: Ellen Prentiss kills Robert. Knowledge of the disappearances or deaths of Karen, Catherine, and Robert make their way to the outside world. Ellen dedicates herself to freeing Belthegor but needs to find Elias Winthrop’s heart and somehow get to the fifth floor “through the gates behind his face.”

1993: Marcus Roberts, an amateur paranormal investigator, takes it upon himself to enter the house. He sees Ellen but manages to avoid her. He finds portals to other dimensions and accidentally releases zombies into the main part of the house. He becomes convinced that he must find the Golden Torc in the basement, but he is (probably) killed there by a shotgun-wielding zombie.

1993: The realtor, E. Croxley, hires private investigator Dee Kirby to find out what happened to Karen, Catherine, and Robert. She is scared and locked in a room by some ghosts and basically discovers nothing.

1993: The player inherits the house and begins his investigation, just as the disappearances and strange lights are scheduled to resume.

           If you don’t feel like reading all of that, the result seems to be that I have to stop Elias Winthrop’s spirit, known as “the Karcist,” and perhaps his human agents, from completing the final Rite of Opening and bringing the demon lord Belthegor to Earth. To do this, I’m apparently going to have to travel to other planes. I can apparently do this by casting the “Dimensional Rift” spell where there are already existing glyphs on the walls of the house–the very runes I’ve been wondering about. There are already at least a dozen of them, so I don’t know if they go to a dozen separate locations or just separate coordinates in the same map. Either way, a note suggests that I’ll need to protect myself with the “jade god of the Mayans” before I go.         

Instructions on taking gates through other planes.

         (Incidentally, I think you get most of the experience in the game from reading notes, not killing enemies or solving puzzles. Hence, even players who have already been through the game once and know the story will want to stop and read everything to make sure they get the points.)      Quite a few mysteries remain. I don’t understand the relationship between the Karcist, Belthegor, and the Melchior and his cult, for instance. Nor do I understand the role of the Sea Demons–are they in league with Belthegor or just an ancillary menace? Who are the other two gods making up the “dark triumvirate”? Do these demonic statuettes that I keep finding–named Cartag, Pthark, and Skaruk–have anything to do with it?        As I end this session, the most viable way open for exploration is the fourth floor of the house, where there’s supposedly some kind of museum. I have several ways to access the sub-basement, but every time I go there, some floating ball of tentacles stops me and kills me pretty fast. It’s very hard to push around him. I wonder if this is supposed to be the “dark god” Alberoth that Ellen wrote about. She mentioned that he appears in the lower level and can seemingly be in multiple places at once, which explains why he’s always at the bottom of whatever staircase I take. I think the real reason I’m making the association is because of Aboleths from Dungeons and Dragons.           

A dark god, or just an annoying creature?

             Late in the session, I found a second way forward when Ellen’s note about finding a portal “behind Elias’s face” reminded me that I had yet to do anything about the painting in the entry hall, and I had just the thing–a green gem that seemed likely to fit into the hollow in the painting’s pendant. It did so, revealing a secret door behind the painting. (It tore the painting in half in doing so. Did someone have to re-paint the thing every time they wanted to close the secret door?)           

The secret door led to a special room with a portal.

         The secret door led to a room with a teleporter, which took me to some weird Egyptian-inspired temple. Unfortunately, the place is full of locked doors I can’t access yet (but that was before I got the “Key of the Shadow Lord” spell). There’s a guy hanging around one corner who looks just like a regular guy, not a monster, but he won’t talk to me.            

I don’t want to kill him because he’s a normal-looking guy in a suit..

          Other open puzzles and blocked ways are:

A locked door in the southern part of the second level. It defies every attempt to force it. I can’t remember if I tried the spell yet.

Two locked doors in the asylum, coincidentally right above the part of Level 2 that I can’t access (which, come to think of it, would correspond with the nailed-shut doors on Level 1). I have tried the spell on them, to no avail.

A basement room where every time I try to enter, my eyes get blurry (sunglasses don’t help), something screams, and I’m knocked back out and down the hallway.

A dimensional gateway in the basement. 

         As I was compiling the information above, I realized I never found anything that looks like the “catacombs” that Marcus Roberts was planning to explore as he headed down the set of stairs that led to the shotgun-wielding zombie. That area, as I mapped it consisted of a single hallway of eight squares plus three alcoves. Perhaps there are secret doors or something else I missed down there. I need to head back and check it out.

In short, I don’t know if I’m more than halfway through what is shaping up to be a very long, large, and interesting game. I particularly like that most of the lore is presented in epistolary form, found more or less randomly, and the player has to piece it together

Time so far: 13 hours

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/the-legacy-bad-to-the-bone/

[mellofellowblog]

Looking Backwards to Move Forwards

*WARNING: LONG INTROSPECTIVE LIFE STORY REFLECTIVE POST INCOMING*

As an aside from the daily exercises and actual songwriting that you don’t see here I’ve taken the plunge and started getting songwriting lessons as a kind of third prong to my attack on my writing process. Apart from a couple of songwriting workshops and little insights from my old guitar teacher at school over a decade ago my entire ‘songwriting journey’ has been just doing it, chipping away every now and then and glacially figuring out what works and what doesn’t. So this one on one learning experience is quite new to me and a little scary since it makes things really feel like i’m starting again, like a fully grown 30 year old going back to high school to study algebra or something. Well, i guess it’s probably a lot closer to going back to uni and getting a tutor, but even that gives off a feeling of going backwards to a part of my life that I’ve ‘moved on’ from. It might seem like i’m throwing everything I’ve built out the window and starting again this year with my overhaul, but I think its really more so that I am hyper focussing now on something that always had an air of “...and later I’ll put in the work and hone this properly”. That said I think its important to acknowledge where I’ve come from and give my old self a little bit of props despite the fact that I’m mentally burning all the progress I’ve made down, because really, although I hope this ‘reset’ helps improve my songwriting a lot and fixes areas that I have neglected over the years at the end of the day nothing can really erase the instincts I carry in regards to music that I’ve built up over the years. That and theres still a part of me that rejects the notion of putting myself out there as “starting again” when if I stop to think about it, I have actually put in a lot of work over my life so far. Obviously i still feel that I have a fair ways to go, but I thought it would be fun to look back at my humble beginnings and give a rough timeline of musical events that have got me to where I am today, with a rough focus on songwriting. So basically a TLDR mellofellow life history lesson that nobody asked for but I thought might be fun to do. Welcome to my musical “this is your life”

1998/1999?: My first guitar Not sure if i was 8 or 9, but at around that age on one of our family trips to my grandparents in Mount Gambier (South Austrailia) my dad bought me a 3/4 nylon string acoustic guitar. I remember he got a good deal on it because when removing the price sticker it peeled off a little section of the paint on the bridge next to the saddle. My best friend at the time was getting lessons and I don’t think there was anything really extra that motivated me to get one, but I have distinct memories of the day we bought the instrument home and I had it sat on the bed at my Grandparents place, blindly pulling at the strings to make sound come out of this foreign wooden box. No idea that this was the start of something that would consume my life in years to come.

1999?-2003: First lessons from a one horse town I grew up on a farm near a very small town in rural Victoria called Derinallum and went to the appropriately named local school: Derrinallum College. with about 20 kids per year (that always dwindled towards yr 12 due to most people either changing schools or dropping out to pursue farming) it had a pretty small population of about 90 people, but there was still a music teacher who taught everyone who wanted to learn all the basic instruments they wanted to from flute to trumpet, piano and yes, guitar. I remember having a few different teachers early on as people would come and go, the first one showing me my first G chord and giving me a chart for “knocking on heaven’s door” much to my fathers delight, but soon after my regular teacher had started me basically learning single note flute music with letters written under the dots (something that simultaneously gave me a keen ear for picking up melodies but absolutley ruined any chance at sight reading properly). I remember picking what I considered the hardest tunes to play at the annual performance recitals, the melody from “the entertainer” and the bassline from “the theme from Peter Gun” are pieces that stand out in my mind but my biggest claim to fame from this point in my life was figuring out how to play the melody from “all the small things” by blink 182 all by myself by ear. I felt like I was freaking Mozart not needing to be taught or read something and still being able to play it and that discovery gave me those initial inklings of the potential for what I could do with this wooden box.

2004: New school, new lessons and the Led Zeppelin live dvd So at the ripe age of 13 I had made the big move up in life from Derrinallum to Ballarat Grammar boarding school in Ballarat, Victoria. It was a pretty wild transition from the get go, but musically was initially a little discouraging as at my first guitar lesson (from an amazing human being Laurie) I found out that I had basically needed to start all over again and that the biggest carry over from my entire 4 years of musical pursuits had yielded me the one G chord i still remembered. It was acknowledged that the solo flute lines I had learned were good for training my ears, but really had no real value for the things one would typically learn in a guitar lesson. Laurie had asked me what type of music i enjoyed or would like to start learning and I remember saying that I didn't really had any preference for music, that I liked “anything with a bit of a beat” so I quickly was given my first chord charts in 4 years and it looked like I was going to become a acoustic rhythm type of guy. But then everything changed about halfway through that year when one of my friends got a dvd of a little band called Led Zeppelin... Apparently the year before at the end of year house performance the year 12s had done a rendition of Stairway to Heaven which got my friend to chase up this dvd but oh my god. I have never had such an influential experience as I did watching that live version of stairway. I remember playing that song on repeat for months every morning before class (I’m sure much to my 6 roommates detest) and from there everything about my relationship with my guitar changed. Rather than just putting in a half hours effort before each lesson out of worrying I would disappoint my teacher, I was practicing 3, 4, 5 hours a day for just the fun of it working on my magnum opus of being able to play Stairway to Heaven all the way through. I remember slowly accumulating the entire Zep discography, learning each section of stairway bit by bit until finally being able to nail everything including the solo on my black ashton acoustic. I had made friends with a boy who had a real Gibson electric guitar and remember being dead set on getting a Les Paul of my own, scoping out my dream guitar like Jimmy Page’s on a school field trip to Chapel street in Melbourne and begged my parents for one that Christmas, to which they obliged and I was over the moon.

2005 - 2007: Musical identity and my first songwriting baby steps With a full back catalogue of Led Zeppelin and my Epiphone Les Paul at my side I flourished musically over the next couple of years, cementing my identity as a “long haired guitar guy” mastering improvising blues licks and the discographies of Zep, Hendrix, Pink Floyd, Sabbath, Queen, Cream and anything else that came from that same vein of guitar centric late 60s/early 70s music up to an unhealthy obsession with Van Halen and guitar virtuosos. I ended up getting school colours for music in my year 11 and 12 for the work I was doing in the school jazz band and by the end of my tenure at high school was expanding my musical repertoire to singing and piano because even though my quick pentatonic blues licks were the cornerstone of what I enjoyed playing I still had some shred of understanding that if there wasn’t also a song behind the guitar solos, things quickly became a little too wanky for my liking even at the time. Van Halen seemed the perfect blend of being able to show off when the solo came, but still ultimately still be servicing the bigger picture of a song. I would print off chord charts from entire Pink Floyd and Beatles albums and sit in the practice rooms and sing them front to back at the piano as a bit of a break from my ruthless 5+ hour guitar practice schedule. Near the end of year 11 my beloved guitar teacher was putting on a songwriting workshop where I learnt the basics of songwriting and started putting together my own really embarrassing silly songs. I remember finishing my first one called “Clayman’s Desire” which was an acoustic folk track in the vein of Queen’s “39′” about a little clay person who goes on an adventure to make friends. Even though there was a huge disconnect between the guitar centric virtuosic stuff i was playing I still felt super proud of it. I had high hopes that just like Brian May in Queen I would find a vocalist who would sing over all the riffs and music I was coming up with, but I would still get a song or two on each album that I would sing myself for variety and a way to show an extra notch in my belt not just as a guitarist, but as a guitarist who could also write songs too. Throughout year 12 I kept a little songwriting book where I would write poetry in hopes that i would turn everything into songs. It was all nonsensical wannabe surrealist kinds of stuff inspired by songs like “I am the walrus” by the Beatles, a band that I was gorging on in between my shred guitar escapades. By the end of year 12 in the holidays before starting uni the following year I made my first “album” of basically demo recordings on a CD i called “The Project”. It included some psychy guitar riff instrumentals as well as some very basic songs that were more or less just vessels for me to put little guitar solos into all recorded either DI or with the one microphone I owned (drums too). Still nothing like the shred guitar i was still all about playing, but uniquely me and something I felt that if i kept at it would eventually get to a point where i could write things that sounded closer to the greats I had admired. Even back then I knew everyone had to start somewhere and even though I was proud of the stuff I had made I still rightfully felt that any dreams of making good quality music were far off into the future and that was okay.

2008 - 2009: College After school I basically lived in the music room at college spending any time I wasn't out drinking with friends or cramming before tests playing with anyone who would give me the time and forming a covers band but in terms of original music things had already started to die down so early. I was still coming up with riffs and licks that were inching closer to the sound of things i knew i wanted to make but I kind of fell off the wagon in terms of songwriting throughout the semester, it wasn't until the semester break that I decided I wanted to follow up on my previous writing adventures with a focus on mimicking the styles of early Beatles with a little EP I called “Meatlebania” a cringeworthy attempt to focus on imitating the greats and ending up far from the mark. I remember posting tracks on my facebook page and getting criticised by some of my friends who expected something a lot better given my guitar playing abilities that they knew me for. It was pretty disheartening but to their credit looking back it was some of the absolute cringiest pieces of music i had ever made, let alone released. It had all the awkwardness of an 18 year old falling in love for the first time and not knowing a thing about good songwriting that came off as horrendously bad poetry and I didn't even put much effort into the guitar side off things, thinking that I wanted to bring the music down to the level of the songwriting and slowly move the quality of both of parts up together. A little bit of a profound foresight in concept for the quality of the finished product but again I was hopeful that this was still just the very beginning of my journey with music and that I needed to make these mistakes to move forward even if it was a pretty slow process. every step was going to get me closer to making something I could really be proud of.

2009 - 2010: Open mics and Comedy songwriting After the whirlwind of college came and went I was living in a shared house with some friends I knew from high school. It didn't take long before me and my housemate sussed out a local open mic night and were playing acoustic covers down there every week. It was actually a ‘reunion’ of an original band we started back in boarding school called Alloid (that resulted in some instrumental rock songs that had lyrics I wrote that were very ...not good). We were playing things like Hendrix and Rush acoustically with my housemate on bass and me on guitar/vocals but it wasn't until a few months in that I had a big light bulb moment of bringing a kazoo to do the solos to songs that things really fit into place. We would do things like Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Freebird with kazoo solos that hit all the guitar ones i knew note for note in a kind of over the top silly comedic fashion and with that I had found a new angle for music as a source of entertainment. After a while I started doing the acoustic/kazoo guitar rock thing by myself and phased in some originals that i would introduce with a bit of funny backstory. I remember playing Clayman’s Desire (the first song I had ever wrote) and getting a wonderful reception from the half dozen or so people at the open mic who were very supportive and saw the humour in playing an obviously undercooked song with a bit of charm in the cute awkward stage presence I had started to hone in on. Listening to comedy songwriters like Flight of the Conchords and Tim Minchin I ramped up the writing of quirky songs that i would put together and perform every week before eventually I had my first open mic “hit” with a song I wrote about a man crush I had on the Doctor Who star David Tennant. I would incorporate the shows theme song as the beginning and reprised it as a kazoo solo in the middle 8. It went down well at all the open mic shows I played, which were fast approaching 3 per week. With the disguise of using the fact that songs I was writing were “not serious” I was able to finish a lot of songs and figured out a ton about melody and the fundamentals of writing. I saw this as something I would do to hone my craft and eventually get back to writing “serious music” and apply these skills properly. I was building up a repertoire of comedy songs I would throw in in between over the top ‘kazoostic’ covers of rock songs like Killer Queen and the aforementioned Freebird to a pretty decent reception at the open mics. It was basically a real life meme before I knew memes were a thing. Eventually one of my friends from college was coming to see a fair few of my shows and loved my David Tennant song. She was a drummer with an amazing comedic musical theatre background and I thought I might be a wonderful idea to take our shared love of pop culturey things and start a band together.

2010 - 2012: Blue Turtle Shell With my pop culture sister from another mister at my side we started an original acoustic guitar/djembe “geek rock” band called Blue Turtle Shell, writing and performing silly songs about videogames TV shows and Movies that would incorporate themes from said pop culture topics into the songs as a kind of expansion of my David Tennant song template. It was so much fun being able to write with someone and to put in all the bells and whistles of vocal harmony and jokes in between songs of our open mic set. At the time i was also busking on the side playing all the pop culture and video game theme songs outside the comic book store in Melbourne raking in a pretty decent amount per hour compared to my bar job and one day I managed to get the band a gig at an anime convention from an event organised who enjoyed what I was doing on the street. We put out an EP as a twosome before becoming a trio with a mutual friend on bass and ended up having some pretty good gigs; getting a residency at the newly opened videogame cocktail bar and even “made it to” the finals of what turned out to be a scammy pay-to-play (well, convince all your friends to buy tickets to play) talent show competition in between open mics that we would play semi regularly that always had a good reception. It felt like we were starting to make traction and form some fans but things eventually faded out as I started realising that I was putting myself into a box songwriting wise. It was amazing to be able to write and play music that was uniquely “me” but I felt that I was never going to be able to do “serious music” so eventually when things died down with the band I just sort of stopped and thought of what I needed to do to get things back on that track.

2012 - 2013: Melbournes hardest working bass player So after my foray into the musical comedy world I thought it would be best to just put myself out there and play in some original bands in Melbourne. I put out a couple of ads on a musical craigslist site “Melband” offering my skills as a guitarist. After a week of no interest or replies I figured I’d chuck up an ad as a bass player and instantly had my inbox and phone blow up with requests. Within a week I was playing in 3 bands; one unnamed that was starting from the beginning in the process of writing what I would later know to be Mars Volta inspired porggy psych rock, another Middle Eastern Progressive Frank Zappa inspired band ‘Land of the Blind’ that was basically performing pre written complicated charts that would also have long improvised sections and finally a alternative indie/pop band ‘The Story Model’ where I was writing my own basslines and eventually contributing to songs. Each band held up a pillar of skills that I wanted to perfect as a writer and performer, the psych and prog nature of the unnamed band and Land of the Blind were much closer to where my head was at musically at the time but at the same time I knew I wanted to blend that with more of a pop influence that The Story Model had. Things were pretty hectic schedule wise but eventually after a few months the unnamed band broke up due to some pretty crazy intra-band politics -sadly before we recorded anything or played our first gig, but I still have some phone recorded demos of our jams that I look back on with fond memories- but even juggling two bands with regular gigs was a struggle that I rose to the occasion to. I was learning so much musically from this new life as a bass player, even just from my role in the band. As a bassist I had a world of appreciation opened up for me about groove and song feel, I’d always been a fan of riffs but the relationship between a bass player and a drummer is a sacred bond that is so powerful in conveying the musical ideas of the song. As the foundation of the musical cake I could also take in all the musical ideas of the melodic icing from the vocals or guitar leads, it felt like I was finally piecing everything together that I needed to eventually write my own music that would be closer to the things I wanted to write from the start. On top of all the gigs i was playing I also experienced my first proper studio sessions making demos with both bands as well as my first professionally recorded EP that I provided bass and backing vocals on with The Story Model. Eventually things died down and faded out with The Story Model which luckily coincided not long after I was stretching myself a little too thin anyways picking up work with another band that had contacted me on Melband a good year after I had initially posted my ad and forgotten to take it down. They were an alternative psychy rock band with a little prog influence with a bit of a following from Brisbane. The singer was moving to Melbourne to try and ramp things up musically after they had recorded their first album. To me it sounded like a dream melding of the pop sensibilities of the story model with the hard edge of bands like Rage Against the Machine and even some motifs that harkened back to my beloved Led Zeppelin. It was a band called Greefthief.

2013 - 2017: Greenthief and the beginnings of Mellofellow I juggled Land of the Blind with my new band for a little while but it didn’t take long to see that this was something I was willing to put more effort into since it lined up with so much of what I wanted to do musically, so I quit LotB and became a one band bass player. Things were so musically exciting and intense that there was no other way about it really, Greenthief was rehearsing 2-3 times a week after we found a drummer and had booked a massive 20-something date tour of Australia in support of the debut album they had recorded and were releasing after a month or two of me joining. I bought a Rickenbacker bass and an ampeg 6x10 fridge and set off on my first tour having the time of my life slamming fuzz riffs and writing new material with the band leader. After the tour we would still play a gig or two a week in Melbourne rehearse 2 days a week and usually I would go to the band leaders house for writing sessions once or twice a week on top of that. I loved the bands back catalog but was hungry to get some songs I had helped craft in to the set, I’d be pouring myself into the writing sessions expanding on a lot of my own writing knowledge while picking up a ton about editing down and how to package a hard hitting pop/rock song. While that side of things was amazing it wouldn't dawn on me until much later that while I was perfecting my role in the band writing wise as an editor, I wasn’t actually landing much of the finished product of songs from my actual musical ideas note wise. Structure and direction absolutely, and I knew I was a great soundboard for floating ideas to, but in terms of how many melodies or song sections in the new material that I had actually contributed and stayed in to the final product when it came time to perform the new tracks at gigs there was a bit of a disconnect between the 10s to 100s of hours I had put in to the little bits here and there that were uniquely me. That said I wrote 80% of my own basslines (and interpreted the other 20% in a unique way) and was changing a lot of ideas of the leaders that would have been a bit different had I not been there, but the bulk of the initial ‘heavy lifting’ writing wise was not mine and thats before you take into consideration that I had nothing to do with any lyrics. Luckily there was one track I had demoed that the leader liked enough to add to the set and it actually became the lead single and opening track of the first album I made with them, although I always had a discouraging sense that it was more of a meta move of the leader that he could sense that I was getting a little frustrated that I hadn’t really had much input in major song sections, but this could have just been a projection of my own self doubt (and i was always told that was not the case). Still, on the side of things while we were putting together our first release I was a part of ‘Tremors’ I was upping the ante of writing for myself as a way to demo things to the band but also with the idea that things that didn’t fit would be fair game for me to use for a kind of solo project. When the band’s musical direction moved a little further from my psychedelic rock interests in hope of chasing that holy grail of being played on Triple J, I ended up with a fair batch of psychy demos that wouldn't fit Greenthief that I would listen to each day on my commutes to work and then edit when I got home before rehearsals. Not a lot with lyrics but entire songs with melodies and riffs soley penned by me. Tame Impala had exploded a year or two before and I would see a lot of obvious knock off bands on the bill at Greenthief gigs with the idea of “i could do that” every time there was a washed out riffy set, so i did. I did do that. The plus side of having such an obvious direction helped when it did come to lyrics, keeping things psychy after being around so many psych bands at gigs I knew the basics of what their lyrics are written around subject wise and interspersed that with the influence of the bands I had grown up loving. A friend I had met through Greenthief had a pretty good home studio set up and I eventually took the plunge and recorded my first Mellofellow single with him on the first of January 2017. The weeks before I had hyper focussed on drumming since I knew that was my weak link musically although i had picked up a hell of a lot first and foremost as a bass player listening to the amazing drummers I had worked with. The resulting track “Journey to the Centre of Your Mind” was something I was hugely proud of and finally scratched the itch of being something I had written that was not a joke song but also got pretty damn close to what I was wanting to do musically in terms of my goals all those moons ago to have something that was on the level of quality that I wanted but could never achieve when I was starting out. Really that goal had already been filled earlier with the recordings I had done with Greenthief, but this time it was also my 100% my own writing. All my friends that I had made playing in bands as well as some that weren’t seemed to like my track and although I didn’t really have the means to push it to many people who weren’t in my immediate circle, that was ultimately the goal. My musical peers’ respect was all I could have wanted from a track that was solely my own and I could have so easily not done something like that with how hectic my schedule was at the time. It was at that point that I had to make the decision that I knew was going to be the final nail in the coffin for Greenthief when I went back to uni to get out of the dead end job that I had in retail. As a band we still played a lot, we had a 10 week residency at one of the most known rock venues in Melbourne, kept touring with releases and put out two albums in my tenure but the last of which I was a bit more checked out contributing a little less than I had on Tremors due to the lack of time I had juggling work, uni and the band. Though at the time I wasn’t too discouraged and was a little annoyed that I could put in so many less hours to writing sessions and still end up with nearly the same amount of contribution to the record musically as I had on the last record -though this was partly because there were some tracks on Tremors that were fully completed before I had joined on- I didn’t have any stand out songs that had started from my demos but there were a few that had main riffs that were my own and I think things just flowed a lot easier letting the band leader take more of the reigns and since we had been together for a few years things naturally came together with input from everyone more quickly than they had on the last record. Unfortunately I had to move to Mildura for placement as part of my degree and had technically played my last gig with the band before the release of that album ‘Mirror Lies’ but in the couple of weeks between finishing the sessions for that album and uprooting myself from the city I booked another session with my friend and followed up Mellofellow’s single recording my first release (technically too long for an EP but a pretty short album). Without being in Melbourne/with Greenthief a few less people got to hear the record than would have heard the single but it was still such a creatively fulfilling thing to be able to put out more of my music. It was a high that would keep me going through my year away from the city. To top things off I even had an made a record from start to finish over a weekend with a mate who had his own solo project Steve Tyssen (actually one of Greenthief’s previous drummers from before I had joined the band) who I had been playing with on the side over the last couple of years whenever he had a new album to release -the dude has made like 7 albums to date now its insane- but apart from that everything musically died down when I had moved out of the city. Still not a bad way to finish it all out, 2017 saw me drop 3 records in the one year! Oh yeah, and in December 2017 I put together a line up for Mellofellow in order to have a proper release gig for the record at a festival held by a friend of mine that was another amazing experience but ultimately the only time I have ever performed any of my tracks with a band. 

2018-2019: Slowing down and songwriting revelations So after my whirlwind musical year of 2017 everything got a bit quieter. When I got back to Melbourne I was still playing in Steve’s solo project on keyboards and had slowly been working on tracks for a follow up to the first Mellofellow record, but Greenthief had disbanded while I was away after they released Mirror Lies with a hired gun bass player. I suppose things needed to die down though since the last semester of my course needed to be pretty much my sole focus. I actually started playing open mics again when I got the time, doing acoustic versions of Mellofellow tracks but I’ll admit that it more so confirmed my suspicions about the holes in my songwriting ability. It might have been from seeing Steve’s solo tracks work so well in an acoustic context, but there was an obvious drop in quality in the stuff I had written that was taken out when you removed the drums and guitar solos. While a couple of tracks worked alright stripped back, the majority of them failed to have the same punch without the groove of a full band rhythm section and with the focus being placed more on the lyrics I felt awkwardly naked and could see that at the end of the day my songwriting fundamentals left a lot to be desired particularly on the lyrical front.  So I started trying to write songs primarily acoustic first with the goal of performing them at things like open mics and maybe even booking acoustic gigs with the knowledge that the songs could easily be expanded into full band tracks when it came to recording. This turned into more of a transitional period than I had hoped, partially not helped by the fact that after graduation I had to move back to rural Victoria for the first job I got out of uni in my chosen profession, which is an amazing but time demanding gig. 

So I’ve got another 10 or so Mellofellow tracks in the chamber ready to record from the last couple of years that I’m heading in to the studio with next month but I don’t feel like I totally stuck the landing with the transition I was hoping to make, there are still a couple of tracks that wouldn't really work acoustically and if anything my realisation of my room for improvement lyrically has lead me to second guess a lot of the lyrical choices on these tracks to the point that I just want to finish them acknowledging their flaws and move on to the next record that I will make now that I am undertaking this whole process of honing my songwriting craft. That said there are some tracks I’m getting ready to record that I’m most proud of as a songwriter, songs that I hope are a sign of things to come. Either way I am excited to clear out my bottom drawer of songwriting to see what lies ahead. I’ve already made some big changes to the ways I write and I know things are going to get better.

[dentalrecordsmusic]

Album Review: Mover Shaker - “Another Truck Stop”

Words by Ari Jindracek

I don’t have the longest history with Mover Shaker, but I do have a history. I was introduced to their first album, Michigania, by a friend in 2018, when I was already too late to see the band on tour. I wouldn’t say that I followed their career from there--that implies something more than liking their tweets from time to time--but they stayed a bright light on my radar. When they started posting promotional pictures and singles for a new album, this meant that I was ecstatic. I had, therefore, been anticipating Another Truck Stop since it was announced. I wasn’t confident enough to ask for an advance stream from the band, though, so I, like other fans, was left waiting, biting my nails, until November 21st, when the full album would drop. When I woke up the morning of the release and started listening at around six in the morning, I had expectations, but it didn’t even take me a full song until I was already texting the friend who had first introduced me to Mover Shaker, hoping I wasn’t the only one who was hearing this. I adore Another Truck Stop. The effusiveness of this review is more limited by my vocabulary than it is by my feelings for the album. It tells story after story, just as full of vitality as it is of deathwishes, and I’m drawn in, every time, to listen intently, lest I miss something important.

When the first shimmering note of “Latchkey” disappears into the second, a roar of bassy thunder, Another Truck Stop is already underway, and it starts strong. “Latchkey” feels like it goes on for much longer than its 2:12 runtime, purely because of all the variation that happens. The needle moves between slow, tiptoeing guitar and rumbling, heavy moments, usually hovering somewhere in between. Bassist Ryan Shea is turned up loud and spends quite a lot of time as the focal point of the song, underpinning the whole thing like the sound of the earth under the band’s feet. The lyrics, like the lyrics on the rest of the album, are firmly rooted in simple parts of life (a dog barking at the door, sleeping too late), the pains of social interaction (casual misgendering from someone presumed a friend, but needing to be polite about it), and a complicated relationship with death and dying. It is, for me, at least, intensely relatable. “Latchkey” ends in almost the exact way it began, a warm synthesizer that spirals out like it’s being sucked up into an alien spacecraft.

“Service Provider,” the first of the album’s two singles, opens with a masterful guitar showpiece, with parts entwined with each other in such a way that I can’t quite choose which one I want to focus on more. It clocks in at over twice the length of “Latchkey,” and its length works in its favor, lending space for more instrumental work. The bass is springy and fun, the drums roll and bubble up through the verses, and at the end of the two-part choruses, the guitars of Gabriel Miller and Jack Parsons play around each other like a pair of deer on a rainy morning. The lyrics are less hurt than those of “Latchkey” and more plaintive, desperate, for the song’s subject to return the love it demonstrates, or at least text back to prove that they didn’t die on the road (whenever I listen to this song, I think of my mother, who always wants to make sure I get home safe, even if I’m just coming home from work). The breakdown that lasts for about a minute at the end of the song feels like it’s going out of control, spinning out and crashing on a slippery highway, before surprising me, every time, by softening again and ending on synthesizers that lift the words up. Another surprise is the sudden launch into “Midwest Amnesiac Blues”, the album’s other single (if the quiet “oh shit” in the beginning is any indication, the band was just as surprised as I was). 

“Midwest Amnesiac Blues” is similar in approach to “Latchkey”--shorter, but somehow seeming to match “Service Provider” in size, with guitars that shriek out unexpected chords in surround sound and a near-constant clashing of cymbals. The dynamics drop out for the second verse, which leads into a heroic guitar feature, then a series of moments when various instruments drop out and it’s just the lead vocal and either a guitar or bass. It’s full of lyrics that feel like they would be best experienced in a packed room: “who needs friends with meds like these” and “if you kill yourself I’ll kill you” are evocative of feelings a lot of Mover Shaker’s audience are likely to relate to. The latter of these lyrics also feels like an answer to “I don’t wanna die but I feel like I might” from “Latchkey,” and like part of a conversation that continues throughout the record. I am continually thrown for a loop that “Midwest Amnesiac Blues” and “Service Provider” were released in opposite orders as a duo of singles and on the actual album, but I think that, in context, “Service Provider” is best placed between the two shorter songs, so that each piece feels like it carries equal weight.

“Vilify” is worlds away from any of the other songs on the record, not so much lyrically as in the sound. The slow pace set by the steady hi-hat taps and the lazy synth and bass is glacial compared to “Midwest Amnesiac Blues,” and the effect of the song is like that of a rainy day that is so cold it should be snowing. Part of that is the mentions of rain and cold in the lyrics, but part is the way the sound is stripped to bare branches and remains that way for much of the song. The way that the sound blooms at the end of the first part, though, is very early-spring, the first crocuses shoving their brazen heads through the snow. The Icarus allusion at the end of the second is less of a bloom and more of a terrified, melting scream that, nevertheless, matches tone with the floral sound that came before it. Each of these moments feels like the end of the song, but is not--the end only comes when the decision is made not to bother singing for no one. The lyrics are deeply fatalistic, touching on feelings of persecution, hopelessness, loss of friendships, and, again, death, in a complicated “And I feel like I wanna die / But I don’t wanna die” way. The lyrics blend with the sound well, creating a song that feels like standing outside, waiting for a bus away from an old friend’s house, in the pouring rain. 

The mood of “Honeydew / House of Youth” is much harder to pin down, partially because the song has multiple arcs, partially because it’s a veritable symphony. To me, it feels like there are three separate pieces of the song. “Honeydew,” the first section, is grounded in physical descriptions of lost love, like dahlias and the persistent green stain of copper jewelry on a lover’s hand. “House of Youth,” in the middle of the song, is less grounded--it feels more like a burst of catharsis that peaks with the whole band, and certainly everyone they play the song to live, chanting “I’m burning down this house of youth” to the tune of guitars like fire sirens. The chorus, however, feels like a world all its own, between the two named pieces. It is both grounded (Sparklhaus, for the record, appears to be a Michigan venue for house shows) and allegorical. The thing tying all three pieces together is mentions of dancing, which, as said in the chorus, is, essentially, the act of being alive. Describing “Honeydew / House of Youth” doesn’t do it justice; it’s a puzzle I’m still trying to figure out. 

While I’m still thinking, the deep drums and haunting grand piano of “Amnesia Queen” roll in. With a line from “Midwest Amnesiac Blues” borrowed as a title, “Amnesia Queen” is the song from Another Truck Stop that is the most focused on death; the chorus is out-and-out suicidal, backed by a shrill guitar that seems to be crying out in pain. The words are all about a broken, painful relationship--“The way that you’ve been treating me cuts just like a knife / to my throat while I cry” is brutal. The relationship seems characterized by insincere apologies and repeated emotional harm, and it feels like the singer(s) are at the bottom of a well trying to plead for a way out, or about to step off a ledge, waiting for a reason to take a step back. It’s almost painful, in that context, how beautiful the piano is, how much the slow, steady drums and sustained bass tones make the song feel like a ballad. 

After the piano has petered out and the only thing left is the space after a hit of a drum, it feels like the narrative fishtails out, does a 180-degree turn, and burns rubber speeding away into “The Children Want Their Nicotine.” If there was ever a tonal shift in the history of humanity, this is it. While “Amnesia Queen”’s lyrics are always easy to understand, it took me a play or two to realize that “The Children Want Their Nicotine” had lyrics under the roiling hellfire of guitar, bass, and rotting feedback. While the lyrics of the first quatrain are just as self-loathing as those of “Amnesia Queen,” the desire for love sets it apart. The last half of the bite-size song, the screams of “I’ve got a gun / I shoot it for fun,” are terrifying with the explosion of sound at their back. The album’s narrative then swerves, again, into “Put Me to Sleep,” which feels like an 80s dance song that was far ahead of its time and then got lost for a few decades. Everything about “Put Me to Sleep” feels like a party song: the glittery synths, the bouncy bass riffs, and the simple, catchy chorus. The ascending guitar riff before the second verse begins is masterful and keeps the party rolling. The song, from the first beat through every instrumental break and the last strum of the bass, is electrically-charged, neon-lit, and it makes it hard to stop moving. If dancing is living, as in “Honeydew / House of Youth,” “Put Me to Sleep” drags tired listeners back into the limelight of life.

“We Can Go to the Landfill Together” didn’t start out as my favorite song as the album, but has taken the spot and is holding tightly to it. Part of that is Parsons’ lyrics: they’re beautiful, poetic, unexpected. The entire first verse is a masterpiece, and “from coast to coast I still believe a song can change the world” hits me in the same part of my heart where I hold songs that I loved so much I designed tattoos around them, the part that derives a lot of the hope that gets me through the day from music. The carousel-like twirl of the synthesizers and bass at the beginning draw listeners in toward the words, and the guitar part similarly reels listeners in during the chorus. The bridge of the song is aptly named, in this case: the first two lines are repeated twice, one in the slower tone of the song’s first half, and then, speeding up to highway speeds, signaling a headlong plunge into the outro. The outro starts with slow and peaceful instrumentals, but the drums really drive the charge, swiftly rolling, on and on, out of control down the hill. The line “Michigania / can’t cure what ails ya” (referencing the band’s first album) keeps sticking in my head. “We Can Go to the Landfill Together” pulls a lot of the work of the album together, and the rising action culminates in a clatter as the eighteen-wheeler comes to a full stop. “Another Truck Stop,” the last song, feels like a coda, a conclusion, and I keep listening to it, despite its simplicity, for how genuine it feels. The instrumentals are simple--the Sheas, it seems, are busy wishing they were dead, and don’t come in until the last half of the short song--and feel more acoustic than anything else. The song is a lullaby for the touring band. It’s not a bow tied around all of it, the thoughts of death, the messed-up friendships, the love not felt and the pain received; that’s too much of a tangled wreck to put a bow on. There is, however, a sense of hope, just because there’s something on the horizon: a gig, a crowd of friends, and yet another truck stop.

It’s been remarkably hard for me to write about Another Truck Stop, not because I didn’t put in the time with it, and certainly not because I don’t like it. As a matter of fact, I have no idea how long it will be until the universe tosses me another album I love this strongly. I know that I didn’t do it justice. There’s just so much that I can’t put words to in the instrumentals, in the way the lyrics hit me right over my heart, in the way it feels to listen, like spotting a blue-gray stormcloud on the horizon, sitting in the passenger seat on a drive through golden fields of dead cornstalks on the way to a place I’ve never been and where I don’t know what to expect. The only thing I expected of Another Truck Stop was that it would be good. It met and exceeded that benchmark. I’m holding my breath, counting down the days until I get to see it live, and I know that I’m going to listen to it dozens more times in those days. It’s going to take me some time to tire of this album. I kind of hope I never do.

Listen to Another Truck Stop on Bandcamp.

You can find Ari Jindracek still screaming about this album on Twitter.

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[thesinglesjukebox]

HARRY STYLES - TWO GHOSTS [5.81] I'm not sure this score merits that big of a smile, but maybe that's why people like him.

Julian Axelrod: I've been reading Teddy Wayne's The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, about a young pop star who finds fame and fortune before he hits puberty. It's a sad, lonely story about isolation: How can you have a normal life, much less a normal relationship, when you've lived your formative years in the public eye? "Two Ghosts" evokes the same themes; while it's ostensibly a breakup song, it doesn't make me think about Taylor or Louis or whoever he's addressing. When I hear it, I picture Harry alone in a million hotel rooms. I think of him sitting through press junkets, telling the same story over and over. And I wonder if he remembers what it's like to not be famous. Styles has cited bands like Pink Floyd and Fleetwood Mac as inspirations, artists he listened to with his father growing up. And this song doesn't hide its rosy view of the past; at its core, it's is an old-school country weeper delivered straight into the bathroom mirror. Even more than "Sign of the Times," this is the sound of one man set adrift, trying to bridge the gap between the present and his simpler past -- a solo venture in every way. [8]

Nellie Gayle: Harry Styles is the most convincingly genuine pop star on the market right now, if you ask me. Cheeky, guarded but kind, a jokester whose main relationship with the press is pranking his middle-aged, B list celeb friends for the delight of radio and late night TV. It's this facade that underscores an album full of sweet, insightful love songs. 'Two Ghosts' is exemplary of why his debut solo album is a risky but delightful turn. There is no catchy pop hook, and none of the album really delivers 1D style jams. Instead, Styles takes a risk and bets on the emotional insight he's smart enough to withhold from mainstream press. Two Ghosts is reminiscent of Ryan Adams - simple, heartfelt, and driven by vocals that ring with sincerity. [8]

Alfred Soto: Harry Styles could do American AOR better than Kings of Leon or anyone, and I'd rather listen to him sing this generic ode to feeling nothing at all than Chris Martin. But the charts have no room for this sort of thing, and on One Direction's solid albums the AOR moves were tracks, not singles. No one remembers he released a solo album in May. [5]

Ashley John: "Two Ghosts" is me now, looking back on the impossible purity of loving One Direction in 2012. [6]

Elisabeth Sanders: ***** *** **** [5]

Ryo Miyauchi: Instead of writing a silhouette of a girl as he did in One Direction, he now leaves behind a blank, reflective monument in "Two Ghosts." The record can initially sound deceptively shallow with it getting by a lot on guitars suggesting sadness and how Harry squeezes the most out his simple rhymes. But following his heartbreak, I'm reminded of another pretty lad's take on a change of heart, albeit far less snarky: "you used to have a face straight out of a magazine; now you look just like anyone." A lack of depth is precisely how one should get out of this. And how he ends up finding no meaning in the surface details only makes this hurt more. [7]

William John: Having not heard this since I gave Harry Styles' album a cursory play on its day of release, I was blindsided when it came on the radio in an Uber a few weeks ago; the spectral guitars at its beginning and plodding verses bear strong similarities to Paul Kelly's "How To Make Gravy", perhaps the only good Christmas song to ever come out of Australia, and with which I associate a nostalgia for tween-age summers so unbearable that I probably can't listen to it in full without crying. As if to distinguish himself from my memories, the chorus arrives with guitars folding into a stomp, acting to quell my tear ducts somewhat. But the air of nostalgia remains, and while Kelly's song ends with feelings of triumph seeping through the sadness, "Two Ghosts" is resolutely despondent, its narrator grasping fruitlessly for some semblance of the joy lost upon a relationship's dissolution. The repeated refrain "we're not who we used to be" indicates a compartmentalisation, a healthy separation between past and present; but then those eerie guitars come back again, and I'm convinced that Styles is just as much of a (new) romantic sentimentalist as me. [7]

Katherine St Asaph: I like this more when I mentally slot it not with Ed Sheeran and his market, but with Beth Orton or "You and I." (If vaguely approximating the amelodic rhythm of Right Said Fred gets them a credit, surely lifting one-third of the verse would qualify? You mean to say interpolation credits are about litigiousness and biz politics, not consistency?) Funny how this is what sounds like none of his peers. Also funny how Liam and Harry have gotten the careers that fit the other's band persona -- imagine the dreadful other way round. [5]

Alex Clifton: Harry's melancholic, Sea Change-inspired response to Taylor Swift's "Style" is, well, exactly it sounds like. The lyrics are quite pretty--if he's taken a page from Swift's songbook, it's the recall of detail to sketch a story (and several of these lyrics call back to other Swift songs, like the reference to the "fridge light" and, of course, "same lips red, same eyes blue"). A bit turgid after the weird, ballsy initial single of "Sign of the Times", but Harry carries it well enough and makes your heart ache a little. It's not great, but I'd prefer this from someone like Harry over any Ed Sheeran song these days. At least Harry's bewilderment at a fractured relationship sounds real. [5]

Tara Hillegeist: Why would anyone follow up such a delightfully pompous piece of treacle-pop like "Sign of the Times" with this, which sounds so pretentiously simple and vagueblogging in its "oh, girl, my dissatisfaction with you is a blame we both share, and it hurts me so to feel this inadequate for you" insinuations that it could've been penned by John Lennon? [0]

Anthony Easton: Erotic longing, somewhere between Laurel Canyon and Nashville in the middle of the 1970s, is always a good look, and Styles' smooth tenor convinces as it seduces. [9]

Cassy Gress: "Two Ghosts" is one of those early '70s songs that sounds like a backyard, just with fewer cicadas and citronella lamps, and more stars and faint chill. It's probably too simple, but it's as cozy and familiar as an itchy plaid Herculon couch. [6]

Claire Biddles: Slow and soothing, "Two Ghosts" defaults to the steady comfort of its parent album Harry Styles. The pretty-boy-singing-Fleetwood-Mac formula doesn't make for a remarkable single, but it delivers in keeping my anxiety at bay for at least four minutes, which is -- for me -- what Harry is there for. [7]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: On my headphones, the guitar strumming tickles both of my ears enough to coax me into a hypnagogic state. "Two Ghosts" is serene, yes, but I'm not quite sure it earns it. I'm generally fine with singer-songwriters relying so heavily on a certain mood to carry an entire song, but the obviousness of the "we're not who we used to be" line takes me out of the experience. And unfortunately, it creates a massive domino effect where I start to become annoyed with the rest of these lyrics. It's perhaps a bit telling that these "descriptive" verses are only able to conjure up images from their musical elements and not their lyrical ones. [3]

Stephen Eisermann: The southern-rock (lite) cousin of ""Either Way,"" this song allows Harry to display his tremendous understanding of a pretty devastating circumstance. The couple in question fell out of love, but rather than put the couple against each other the song instead focuses on grieving for the lost love. It's a beautiful, if simple, lyric that is elevated by the emotion that comes through from Harry's voice and the electric guitar. [6]

Andy Hutchins: The chords from "Rill Rill" (or is it "Wish You Were Here"?) are rill distracting, but young Harry is building a heck of a setlist for a guitar-strumming Glastonbury appearance, isn't he? "Competent soft rock that is warmer than it is boring" is a product Ed Sheeran seems happy to be far away from, what with his bar-hopping tunes and U2 karaoke, and Styles has always had the sort of velvet midrange that was well-suited to make it. Here, over a campfire set by Jeff Bhasker, he sounds at home. [6]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[ricardosousalemos]

Jim O’Rourke: Bad Timing

In the early 1990s, years before he joined Sonic Youth or partnered with Wilco or tried his hand at singing, Jim O’Rourke was a kind of prodigy in the experimental music underground. He recorded albums in his early twenties for labels like Sound of Pig, Amsterdam’s Staalplaat, and John Zorn’s Tzadik. He made music with whatever was at hand and was proficient on many instruments, and he often performed in the context of free improvisation. But O’Rourke’s first instrument was guitar, and one of his deepest musical loves was the art of arrangement—the precise placement of this note in this pocket of space, the choice of this instrument for that note. The two obsessions met in glorious fashion on his 1997 album Bad Timing.

In the 21st century, we take music built around steel-string guitar for granted. New practitioners have emerged (William Tyler, James Blackshaw, Ben Chasny), a latter-day legend has come and gone (Jack Rose, R.I.P.), and an endless series of reissues of albums by major figures stream by (hello, Bert Jansch). But 20 years ago, the notion of solo acoustic guitar as a medium for expression of album-length ideas was only just emerging from hibernation. Some of its resurgence during that period could be traced to the work of critic Byron Coley, who had written an article in SPIN in 1994, in which he’d tracked down the then-obscure John Fahey in Oregon. Fahey had barely recorded in the few years previous, and was living off the grid and on the edge of poverty, occasionally sleeping in homeless shelters. That SPIN piece, along with the Rhino compilation Return of the Repressed, which put his out-of-print music back in stores, cemented the guitarist’s status as an icon of American music. Neither he, nor his instrument, have left the conversation since.

In North America, the acoustic guitar is often associated with “folk” music of a certain mood; from 1970s singer-songwriters to the ’80s emergence of new age and then onto the rise of “unplugged” music in the ’90s, the acoustic became associated with relaxation, intimacy, quiet contemplation—a sound ostensibly more closely connected to the natural world than its electric counterpart. But Fahey’s vision for acoustic guitar was something else entirely. He was among the first to fully grasp that the the instrument had uniquely expressive qualities, that its possibilities as a device for melody, harmony, and rhythm were untapped, and alternate tunings gave it further flexibility other instruments couldn’t match. In Fahey’s hands, the guitar became an orchestra in miniature, and long, multi-part pieces with the thunderous sweep of a symphony could sit alongside rustic evocations of the past. Fahey’s guitar became a tool for collapsing time and space, able to incorporate the grand sweep of music history in a flurry of strummed chords, fingerpicked melodies, and raga-like repeating rhythms.

Fahey’s mid-’90s resurgence served as a backdrop for Bad Timing, and the connection colored how it was received at the time. The Fahey connect was further underscored by O’Rourke’s earlier work in Gastr del Sol, his post-rock duo with David Grubbs (they covered Fahey on their 1996 album Upgrade & Afterlife.) But while Bad Timing has deep spiritual connections to Fahey’s work, the actual music comes from a very different place. You could almost think of Bad Timing as as a record that’s trying to be a Fahey album but keeps getting derailed and ends up going somewhere even more interesting. It was originally written to be a solo guitar record, and O’Rourke has performed versions of the pieces in that setting, but as he worked on the music, he decided he wanted to take it into another direction, one that would incorporate his obsession with carefully arranged sound.

Expanding Bad Timing allowed O’Rourke to paint on a much larger canvas. “For me both Happy Days and Bad Timing were about my myths,” O'Rourke explained to writer Mike McGonigal in a 1997 interview in the zine Music. “A big part of my head is Americana. But the Americana I know comes from listening to Van Dyke Parks, John Fahey, and Charles Ives. That doesn’t exist, and I have to face the fact that it doesn't exist. I have to address that it’s nothing but a construct.” O’Rourke has always wrestled with the “Why?” part of record-making. He’s an avid and thoughtful listener and has absorbed a mountain of music, so with each project, he considers exactly why he should be adding to the pile. Bad Timing may be an homage to some of his heroes, but he takes their collective influence and bends it into a peculiar shape, a tangle of deep reverence and exuberant skepticism. It’s a fantasy that is aware of itself as fantasy, a self-conscious evocation of an individual artist’s obsessions that also functions as a neat historical snapshot.

Parks’ lush arrangements and his gentle irony; Fahey’s vast scope; Ives’ clash of folk simplicity and avant-garde dissonance—these elements are all over Bad Timing, and minimalism is the final piece of the puzzle. Though it draws heavily from the music of other cultures, particularly India, minimalism as a compositional technique is closely identified with American icons, in particular the work of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and LaMonte Young. Glass, Reich, and Riley are best known for repetition—they build meaning through gradually shifting clusters of sound. Young’s music has alternated between repetition and carefully tuned and deeply physical drone. Two other composers, Phill Niblock and Tony Conrad, both of whom O’Rourke work with, further extended Young’s drone conceptions. For this group, held tones become a form of change; from moment to moment in a drone piece, you expect shifts and development to happen, and when they don’t, you’re constantly re-discovering where you are in the now.

Bad Timing has this mercurial quality. It flows beautifully and is easy for a newcomer to enjoy, but it’s also a series of head-fakes, regular juxtapositions that jar the music off course as it moves from one mode to the next. The opening “There’s Hell in Hello But More in Goodbye” starts off almost as a carbon-copy of Fahey in his most whimsical mode, with a sunny finger-picked melody that one could imagine a turn-of-the-century farmer whistling as he strolled across a field. But after a few bars, it drops into a single repeating pattern played on just a small handful of notes, like a needle slipping into a skipping groove, and it stays there, as a lone chord is examined, poked at, and wrung dry. Other subtle instruments fold in—organ, piano—and as “Hello” unfurls it becomes a pure drone piece, quieter and prettier but not so far from the Niblock-inspired hurdy-gurdy blast that defined O’Rourke’s previous album, Happy Days. What started as “folk” ends as a kind of raga meditation.

This kind of shell game happens throughout Bad Timing, as the individual pieces convince you they’re one thing while they’re in the process of becoming something else. “94 the Long Way” opens with a tentative, lurching fingerpicked section, hinting at possible songs behind it, but not quite committing, until finally a pattern emerges that mixes a lurching bass-string loop, repetition in the middle register, and a simple descending three-note melody that becomes the center around which the rest of the track orbits. It at first sounds too simple, like it’s barely even a melody, but O’Rourke adds cheery keyboards, gorgeous pedal steel guitar, and trombone, and it starts to feel like a John Philip Sousa march—you think of fireworks and parades and kazoos and guys in funny hats and rolling expanses of land stretching to the horizon. 

The construction of the piece is impressive as new instruments are added every few bars and they all lock into place. But there’s also something joyously silly about it all, a cartoon of civic engagement. The bumptious cheeriness evokes children performing an exaggerated “whistle while you work” march, pounding forward in service of some high-minded collective ideal. The hint of camp extends further. I’ve always taken the “94” in the title to be a reference to I-94, the interstate highway that runs through Chicago. If you’re in the Midwest and you want to take a road trip, you’re almost certainly going to find yourself in I-94 at some point. O’Rourke’s song can be heard as an ode to the freeway, his acoustic Americana version of Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn”—indeed, the structure of the two songs is similar, and the snaking pedal steel is evocative of the gliding guitar in the Kraftwerk tune. It’s a soundtrack for looking out the window as you roll through the farmland of Wisconsin and Minnesota. 

“Americana” is an inexhaustible descriptor entirely dependent on perspective. American music, after all, is by its nature fractured, a bottomless well of influences that zig-zag around the country and then around the world. Hyper-local folk forms are “discovered” and stolen from and then sold back in a gnarled form by professionals from far away. Aaron Copland, composer of “Fanfare for the Common Man,” was a gay, cosmopolitan Jew with communist sympathies, and he created work steeped in American myths, dreaming up places where he might not be entirely comfortable (or welcome) if he were to actually visit them. O’Rourke’s musical fantasy is steeped in the past but also feels ripe with the possibility of the present moment; it’s of history but it sits outside of it. 

The second side of Bad Timing is essentially a single 20-minute piece split into two sections that grows steadily stranger while playing with ideas of nostalgia and memory. O’Rourke presents ancient notions of “American music” and then toys with them. The title track opens with another playful folk guitar figure before losing itself in haze of keyboard melody. For minutes on end, the song seesaws between two slowly plucked chords as hints of accordion nudge the tune along. You keep listening for changes, and you think you might hear something shifting, but you’re also happy to get lost in the repetition, the simple twinkling beauty and building tension of the arrangement. 

And then it explodes: a huge distorted power chord launches us into “Happy Trails,” the final piece. Suddenly we’re in the middle of a psychedelic rock record, and it’s like a light switch thrown on, or explosive laughter that sucks the discomfort out of a room. After the lengthy fallout from that blast, there’s another extended fingerpicked acoustic passage, and then the song is overwhelmed with a crashing marching band fanfare (a possible nod to Charles Ives’ Symphony No. 4, where a brooding string passage is interrupted by blasts of horns that sound borrowed from another piece). Adding further contrast, pedal steel guitarist Ken Champion, whose impossibly beautiful swells of sound add so much poignancy to “94 the Long Way,” returns with a downright loopy solo fit for the Country Bear Jamboree. Then the song sunsets in a golden-purple haze of muted horns, returning to uncanny beauty one final time. 

This seesaw between mischievous subversion and slack-jawed beauty is the key to O’Rourke’s best music. His sense of humor is both generous and slightly dark; there’s irony in his touch, but it’s not a negating one. It’s more about being open to hearing every possibility in a given piece of music. In a 2001 interview O’Rourke was asked if Bad Timing had an element of parody. “Not a parody at all, or infatuation, it’s more like trying to reconcile what is imagined, learned, real, and imaginary.” And then he added, “Is it really that impossible to believe that something can be funny and sincere at the same time?”

Bad Timing, and O’Rourke’s solo career that followed, is a convincing argument for creation in the face of self-consciousness. The “Why?” of music-making is under-explored. Does your individual record need to exist? For O’Rourke, and especially for his solo albums on Drag City, he justifies their release by lavishing care on every detail, and embracing the music of the past in all its complexity. O’Rourke has always been very careful about how his music is packaged and presented. He only allowed it to be released digitally in the last couple of years, and the downloads on Drag City’s newly created Bandcamp pages urge the listener to “please download the best possible quality.” He’s fighting against his music being reduced, whether that means shrinking the artwork, compressing the digital files, or removing individual tracks from the context of the whole. He’s asking for a lot from the listener, but giving even more in return. Bad Timing was where so many of these ideas came together for the first time, a glorious imaginary world that becomes real every time it plays.