#Water damage

[victusinveritas]

[shiftythrifting]

For the low price of $30CAD, you too could own waterdamaged colour prints of kronk, yzma, and that squirrel!! Posted on kijiji

[kingsbridgelibraryteens]

What Do Library Staff Do All Day?

Sometimes we weed books and other items!

We weed our collections using different criteria including shelf space, circulation stats, and condition. Here are examples of two items that we weeded for poor condition yesterday — the book for (a LOT of) water damage and the DVD for being so scratched up that it would no longer play correctly.

While we're on the subject, please please PLEASE remember to take good care of items that you check out from the library. When items are damaged, we need to weed them from our collections. Unfortunately, we can't always afford to replace them until we have enough money in our budget ... and if the damaged items are out of print, then we can't replace them at all!

📚☹️💽

[scrivnomancer]

Cleaning out the garage and finding the old sign from when I received the Outstanding Masters Thesis of the Year award in grad school… and discovering water damage made it more badass.

[conservethis]

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Bourbonnais Public Library (@bourbonnaispubliclibrary)

[dustedmagazine]

Ian Mathers’ 2024: A milestone, a millstone, a molehill

Los Campesinos by Martyna Bannister

At this point, my fondest wish for these year-end essays is that some day I’ll get to write one that starts by noting we just had a year where it didn’t feel like everything got worse. But 2024 is not that year, and 2025 already isn’t looking good either (up here in Canada we’re looking down the barrel of an election likely to give us our worst Prime Minister in some time, and that is a low bar to limbo under). And yet we keep making art in the face (sometimes directly, defiantly in the face) of all that. Even recent confirmation that Spotify is worse for music than you might have thought simply will not stop the human impulses to create and connect.

And just as with every other year, the variety of ways those impulses were expressed, even just in the medium of music, are wonderfully manifold. If my own listening had a theme it was the unexpected but welcome return. My album of the year was undeniably Los Campesinos! All Hell, where the band I’ve seen play live the most came back after 8 years with what I am increasingly comfortable calling their best album, full stop. I am probably on record somewhere admitting that I don’t tend to like the results when bands follow a record with an EP of stripped down versions of those songs, but LC!’s More Hell (originally bonus tracks, but definitely good enough to stand on its own) feels like the first time in a while I get their appeal. And if you’d told me at the end of 2023 that not only would there be a new LC! album by the end of 2024 but that Underworld of all people would suddenly have a record out (their first since 2016 if you only count ones that could fit on a single CD), I literally wouldn’t have believed my luck, even before hearing the vivid, joyous humanity bursting from Strawberry Hotel.

Meanwhile, although Godspeed You! Black Emperor has been more active than either of those acts, when I saw them live in February I had no idea before year’s end they’d release a record they’d apparently already finished (or that I’d see them again the night of the US election, an experience that is going to stick with me for a while). Admittedly I don’t necessarily make a practice of scanning upcoming releases to see what’s in store. But still I probably would have bet at least $20 at the beginning of the year that none of those bands would put out anything, let alone that they’d be three of the records I played and loved the most. And while they were less unexpected by me, other returning acts like Cassandra Jenkins, Xiu Xiu, and Midwife all set new best-LP benchmarks for me this year.

That’s not to say that 2024 was without new thrills. Sometimes it was from established acts, like finally checking out Chelsea Wolfe after meaning to for years and absolutely loving She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (I know the earlier records are different, but this still means I need to get into them I think) or truly locking in with Water Damage for the first time. And sometimes it was totally new to me like Dis Fig (although I already loved the Body), Whitelands, or Doechii. And then there’s Alan Sparhawk’s White Roses, My God, which somehow felt like it falls into both categories, and is a record I’ll be coming to grips with for a while.

Last year I talked about a change in my personal year-end methodology, and this year it feels right to continue in a similar vein. Cutting down to 20 records left plenty of wonderful ones out, but ultimately, I went for the ones that I kept returning to, the ones I’d push back listening to other albums I wanted to get to in order to spend more time with. And there’s again a further 20 songs, representing ones that didn’t show up on an album, or where I didn’t love the rest of the record as much, or just from albums that didn’t quite make it in. In alphabetical order, with links to my reviews where they exist for the albums and links to videos for the songs. We got through another one; here’s to finding as much good in 2025 and to all of us being back here again with lists of art we loved at the end of it.

20 LPS

Alan Sparhawk — White Roses, My God (Sub Pop)

The Body & Dis Fig — Orchards of a Futile Heaven (Thrill Jockey)

Cassandra Jenkins — My Light, My Destroyer (Dead Oceans)

Charli XCX — brat (Atlantic)

Chelsea Wolfe — She Reaches Out to She Reaches Out to She (Loma Vista)

claire rousay — sentiment (Thrill Jockey)

Clinic Stars — Only Hinting (Kranky)

Doechii — Alligator Bites Never Heal (TDE/Capitol)

Glass Animals — I Love You So F***ing Much (Polydor)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor — “NO TITLE AS OF 13 FEBRUARY 2024 28,340 DEAD” (Constellation)

Hypnodrone Ensemble — The Problem Is in the Sender — Do Not Tamper With the Receiver (WV Sorcerer Productions)

Jessica Moss — For UNRWA (self-released)

Locrian — End Terrain (Profound Lore)

Los Campesinos! — All Hell (Heart Swells)

Midwife — No Depression in Heaven (The Flenser)

Underworld — Strawberry Hotel (Smith Hyde Productions/Virgin)

Vince Staples — Dark Times (Def Jam)

Water Damage — In E (12XU)

Whitelands — Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day (Sonic Cathedral)

Xiu Xiu — 13” Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips (Polyvinyl)

20 MORE SONGS

Allie X — “Off With Her Tits”

BABYMETAL/Electric Callboy - “Ratatata”

Bruno Berle ft. Batata Boy — “Dizer Adeus”

Caroline Polachek — “True Love Waits”

Chappell Roan — “Good Luck, Babe!”

Charli XCX ft. Lorde — “Girl, so confusing”

The Cure — “Alone”

Gracie Abrams — “I Love You, I’m Sorry”

High Vis — “Mob DLA”

Kendrick Lamar — “Not Like Us”

Kenya Grace — “Strangers”

King Woman — "Bury"

Magdalena Bay — “Death & Romance”

Olivia Rodrigo — “obsessed”

Sevdaliza ft. Pabllo Vittar and Yseult — “Alibi”

Shaboozey — “A Bar Song (Tipsy)”

Thursday — “Application for Release From the Dream”

Tommy Richman — “Million Dollar Baby”

Venjent — “We Need Jungle [I’m afraid]”

The Weeknd — “Dancing in the Flames”

[londonedge]

Water damage in Poplar

[theplushfrog]

A moment of silence for my books.

There was a water leak in my MIL’s basement where we were keeping most of our stuff due to moving in to take care of her as she went through her cancer treatments.

The leak was mostly over our boxes of books.

Out of 250+ books only 30 are completely dead and gone but most are still drying and will need to be treated for mold.

A lot of the ones ruined are my childhood books, which is just gutting. Many aren’t shown in these photos because they were thrown away immediately due to mold and how they fell apart in our hands.

If you know me, my books are my life.

If anyone knows the best ways to treat for mold, please let me know.

[andmaybegayer]

problem with putting the bandcamp blog posts on while I'm at work is sometimes they'll slip in a 20 minute long string ostinato piece and I'll just be like huh! still going! every two minutes for fifteen minutes.

[imathers]

Top 20: Water Damage — In E

So I feel like I've gotten kinda weird about album lengths as I've gotten older. As a kid who might only be able to listen to one or two new albums for a few months at a time, long-ass albums were great to me! I was going to run out! It was weird that old LPs were often significantly shorter, even when I liked them. But the passing of time, and the ability to never run out of things to listen to, meant that I have a whole new appreciation for the ability to make a satisfying album that clocks in at under 40 or even 30 minutes.

So given the type of music they make, I appreciated that the first two Water Damage releases I heard (2022's Repeater and 2023's Two Songs) hovered around the 40-42 minute mark. Any act that plays heavy, hypnotically droning psych/motorik tracks with the motto "Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation" I would fully expect to always go on for hours and hours and, as good as they always sound, I find hours and hours of that harder to fit into my life.

And yet, and yet... those two (excellent!) release just didn't hit me as hard as the four songs In E, which is as long as both of them combined. This is the kind of music where I'd have a real hard time picking out specifics about what might be different here, but I've tried playing Repeater/Two Songs back-to-back to see if it's literally just duration and that's not it, either. And yet I've let all 82 minutes of this play out a ton and never gotten tired of it even a little. If you watch that live video (which I actually don't know if it's "from" this album or not), I frequently found myself just bobbing along to the pulse the way the drummers, bassist, and one guitarist all do. This is not the only kind of music I love, but I do love it specifically when I feel for the duration like I could just listen to this kind of music the rest of my life and be perfectly satisfied.

[goodbysunball]

Best of 2024

Keeping it trim, for your sanity and mine. Too much good music released this year, again, but nothing topped the swirling, weighted haze of "Everyone Thought You Were Dead.”

While I'm very strongly in favor of buying music and supporting artists, consider also a donation to Gaza Soup Kitchen and The Sameer Project.

Happy New Year, and thanks for reading. On with the show:

LP

VERITY DEN, s/t (Amish)

J.R.C.G., Grim Iconic...(Sadistic Mantra) (Sub Pop)

THE BODY, The Crying Out of Things (Thrill Jockey)

BILDERS, Dustbin of Empathy (Grapefruit/Sophomore Lounge)

SHOP REGULARS, s/t (Merrie Melodies)

SEPTAGE, Septic Worship (Intolerant Spree of Infesting Forms) (Me Saco Un Ojo)

ANADOL & MARIE KLOCK, La Grande Accumulation (Pingipung)

MORDECAI, Seeds From the Furthest Vine (Petty Bunco)

WATER DAMAGE, In E (12XU)

MATT KREFTING, Finer Points (Open Mouth)

12"/7"/CS/CD

ÅTHÄVOR, s/t CS (Satatuhatta)

BALTA, Mindenki Mindig Minden Ellen 7" (La Vida Es Un Mus)

BRAIN TOURNIQUET / DELIRIANT NERVE, split 7" (Iron Lung)

CICADA, Wicked Dream 7" (Unlawful Assembly)

DEAD DOOR UNIT, Abandon CD (Tribe Tapes)

LIGHT METAL AGE, s/t CS (self-released)

JIM MARLOWE, Mirror Green Rotor In Profile CS (Medium Sound)

PHILL NIBLOCK, Looking For Daniel CD (Unsounds)

NORMS, 100% Haza​á​rul​á​s 12" (11PM/Total Peace)

SIN TAX, Abnegation 7" (Miracle Cortex)

SUFFOCATING MADNESS, Unrelenting Forced Psychosis 12" (Toxic State)

Sharp Pins at the Pilot Light, May 23, 2024

FIVE SHOWS

Ryan Davis & the Roadhouse Band, February 2, The Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN

Unwound, March 21, The Mill & Mine, Knoxville, TN

Sharp Pins with A Certain Zone, May 23, The Pilot Light, Knoxville, TN

Negativland + Sue-C feat. Zoh Amba for two songs, June 8, Central Cinema, Knoxville, TN

Primitive Man, September 22, Eulogy, Asheville, NC

BONUS: Driving to Nashville to see J.R.C.G. only to find out it was canceled, but getting to eat the best meal of the year at Margot Cafe

FIVE BOOKS

All first-time reads in 2024; highly recommend Fat City and The Wall.

Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling (1966)

Mariana Enriquez, translated by Megan McDowell, Our Share of Night (2023)

Leonard Gardner, Fat City (1969)

Marlen Haushofer, translated by Shaun Whiteside, The Wall (1963)

Aurora Venturini, translated by Kit Maude, Cousins (2023)

[oddestishottest]

[corrupted-meiko-official]

(*rui had wandered back into sekai, hoping for some kind of peace, only to be greeted by the sekai of his universe- dark beyond belief.. his heart ached. everything felt wrong- and knowing it was his fault.. he didn't want to dwell on it- but he noticed someone nearby- but she.. something was also, definitely wrong here.*)

meiko..?

(@ghost-rui-kamishiro-official)

Meiko sits in the sekai like she doesn't quite belong here, like someone's bad Photoshop job in 3D.

ehhh? do I know you? hmm, I could swear I remember your face!

[teenslib]

Maybe you were reading in the Great Outdoors when it suddenly started raining; maybe that book was so funny you did a literal spit-take right onto the pages; maybe you have kids or pets. Whatever the reason, you've got a book with minor water damage. Don't worry! You can fix it easily and quickly with a household iron.

[dustedmagazine]

Water Damage — In E (12XU)

Anyone who plays guitar or bass is familiar with the key of E. It’s the lowest string in standard tuning, so if you’re planning on jamming, E is a pretty safe bet to get the blood racing and the air waves humming. On their new 80-minute, four-sided album In E, Texas instrumental noise-rock collective Water Damage explore various grinding permutations of the key of E, recorded live to tape. The result is a seething, sense-obliterating squall, to which the listener must willingly submit.

With the Velvet Underground’s seminal White Light / White Heat as an obvious precursor, opener “Reel E��� features violin as the main texture of variance, sawing and screaming over the churn of electric guitar, bass and drums, all throbbing in the red. There are several minutes of respite at the start of “Reel EE” as the bass and drums slam out a minimalist groove before a wave of guitar feedback sweeps up the remainder of the track’s frequency range. There’s more breathing room again on “Reel EEE,” with some almost-pretty dulcimer glimmering in the mix at points. And finale “Ladybird” is a cover of a song by Shit & Shine, featuring indecipherable vocals that sound like they’re being emitted by a broken radio.

Though it’s difficult to discern the individual contributions of the 11 listed players — including Thor Harris (Swans) and Jonathan Horne (Jana Horn) —  that’s beside the point. What matters here is the collective maelstrom, the saturated tape, the surrender to the void. If you’re in the mood to lose yourself in the sound of a jam-room burning to the ground under the intense pile-driving weight of volume and distortion, look no further.

Tim Clarke

[pinkblanc]