#i really need to give this album a relisten!!! this song hooked me on my first listen.

[starlingfawn]

a particle of death

a beam of hate

no love is left on this smouldering stone

no heart

no touch

just snow

[declanlikesmusic]

Today's Listens: Episode 006

August 11th & 12th, 2023

I'm sure you might be aware that my last episode was a delayed bummer by the end of it, so I'm really just gonna start writing these episodes on the days once again to hope for a better outcome with them. My days without work are already over as soon as they began and because of work yesterday and a knockout bout of hayfever today, I'm gonna have to turn this into another double episode because I've hardly listened to enough on both days. Still though, let's have fun with these

We got some more content warnings on this one, albeit they're minor in comparison: Do watch out for a short but immediate mention of suicide as well as a reference to sk*nning that even I can barely tolerate most of the time.

ℍUM♥ℕIGHTM♥RE – 宇宙の認識 (2016)

Do pardon the unicode that comes packaged with this artist's name, but this is HUMANIGHTMARE, a once young & up-and-coming vaporwave producer who tragically lost to suicide in 2020. I caught ear of this particular album during a commemoration livestream on Vapor Memory and it allured me enough to want to seek out and check it out back then. I thought it was a very good album at the time and to this day, I still think the same way, though it leans very much into greatness at a good handful of points. This was a super meditative take on the growing slushwave sound of the time along with some hypnagogic drift tunes and I think the results should not go overlooked by fans of those genres. Tracks like the opener 宇宙の誕生 as well as 脳の網 are absolutely gorgeous, while the track that hooked me in the first place, 宇宙との関係、is so captivatingly strange to me in a way that I can only adore and fascinate about. If you're already deep into vaporwave, I highly recommend this one.

7.5 / 10

Highlights: 宇宙の誕生、宇宙の盛り、宇宙との関係、宇宙の夢、脳の網、復活

SURFING – Emotion (2019)

Up next on the trans agenda is the third and most recent album by vapor & chillwave duo SURFING. Their 2012 debut is one of the most iconic works of the genre and rightfully so, because it perfectly blends original instrumentation & singing with dense, hazy and deeply nostalgic vaporwave samples. So I have no idea what brought in them the need to forgo that entirely, as 2018's Incubo was still sample-based but nowhere near as dreamy and this one fully submerges into the stylings of chillwave & indie rock with none of what made them so excellent before. That said, with that expectation in mind, while this is still their least good album, it was at least better than what I was anticipating after the first couple of tracks. Visions is the song everybody turns to and for good reason, because it does bring a newfound energy to the band, but my favourite moments were still where they leaned back into their dreamy & hazy sonic roots. It's still a good album and if you're a fan of dream pop, I'd give it a shot. Just don't expect anything particularly dense.

6.9 / 10

Highlights: Visions, Crazy, Hearts, Enough, Give You Up.

Chat Pile – Remove Your **** Please (2019)

I'm going to say it now, this is among the worst EP titles I have ever read. I know that this band was deadset on making intensely dark & grim stories through noise rock & sludge metal, but if it wasn't for me keeping an open mind, I would've steered clear of this record entirely even despite the loving reception this got back then and even now. Which is a complete shame because I ended up enjoying this one more than any other Chat Pile record so far, even God's Country (which warrants a relisten at this point). I even found my current favourite Chat Pile song through this record in the form of Davis, weirdly enough. The drums just sounded much better on this record than I had previously heard, sounding way less blurrier and more burrowing, though that might just be attributed to my headphones being replaced months ago. Couple that with the noise, the energy, the vocals and especially Davis's melodies and despite the horrible name, I'd recommend this one to fans of dreadful rock music. I still don't love them as a band, but this gives me hope that whatever they cook next, I might be able to start clicking with them.

7.2 / 10

Highlights: Mask, Davis

netbooks.WRLD – loosies '19-22 (2022)

Speaking of EPs, I don't know how many y'all heard this up-and-coming talent named netbooks.WRLD? Dude's pretty local in the online vaporwave & electronic music communities and his discography is about as fresh as the next lemon you will ever buy, but real talk? I think he's by far one of the most promising artists to pay attention to! I was initially a dumb stupid dumb skeptic back when his debut album ENDLESS STAIRCASE popped up in 2021, but upon the last couple of months, revisiting that album, tuning in to his brand new single, checking out his Skylive performance and now coming over to this EP of loose cuts, I have fully turned into a believer! The dude makes some downright excellent post-industrial plunderphonics and vaporwave tunes all over his catalogue and I think I found some of my favourite tracks he's ever made through this EP. Sure, they were mostly featured in other places and that's counting the bonus tracks, but god, I've been hooked to them completely in the 24 hours since hearing this. My only sticking points against it are the volume of the high frequencies being a little too harsh for my personal headphones, but I know that's by design considering his aesthetic. Other than that, holy shit, go check out ENDLESS STAIRCASE and this EP at your earliest convenience.

8.3 / 10

Highlights: pipes song, shook shook, RAGDOLLS

Vįr+üål Åįrßñß – ▚ ▛ ▜ ▟ ▞ (2021)

It's the second day and one of the best discoveries I've made last year was this random but completely ethereal-looking and unpronouncable album by a young Virtual AirBnB and I thought to relisten to it for the morning. Spoiler alert: This might just be one of my favourite vaporwave albums. This record is compact, but it is so gorgeous and stunning! It flawlessly blends together elements of mallsoft, new age music, I believe sophisti-pop R&B vocal samples and just overall aesthetics of beauty, nature and the future. Almost every single cut here is downright heavenly. Listening to them all from front to back is one of the most soothing, relaxing, beautiful and often transcendent experience I've personally had with the genre and it's so criminal how overlooked this album is so far. High recommendation to the absolute heavens. Just put your headphones on and let the rivers drift you away.

9.3 / 10

Highlights: ⿴ ༄ ℣ ₪ ℣ ༄ ⿴, ••• ❒︎ ❒︎ ᵒ ᴼ ᵒ ▫ 𐊔 ▫, | �� ☱ ☲ ☳ ☵ ⟗ |

サイバー '98 – RENDERED FANTASY

Saiba '98 is an enigma to me. I don't think, even in the vaporwave scene, this short-lived alias got any of the credit it honestly deserves. The music's not excellent, but for a vaportrap artist, this guy managed to craft some of the unique, jarring and abstract material in this form. Upon relistening to DIGITAL FOREST for instance, I found it absolutely fascinating in how the tempos are sporadic and unformed, the beat instrumentaion is basic and minimal and the backing ambient atmospheres are ghostly and dark. This culminates into his last album under the project, RENDERED FANTASY, and while I can't tell you in good conscious that I love it or that it's completely great, this is honestly the best release of the few still publicly available. More than any other album I've heard from them, this album is glitchier, darker, more ominous, eerie and experimental than ever before. I almost completely admire the way he was seeing through his vision on this one. If you're curious, I can't guarentee you'll love it, but if you're a fan of vaportrap or experimental music, I'd give it a fair shake.

7.3 / 10

Highlights: b e n z a i t e n , Love Translator (self care), Hospital Flower, Kingdom_$lave, Life is a Constant Double Helix

crt paralysis – "Slideshow" (2022)

I'm about neck deep with vaporwave again these past couple of days, so next I threw on this project that got me very curious. Known for making some great vaporwave & DnB as dotnds, CRT Paralysis is a broken transmission side-project of theirs that I'm not fully enamoured with but still greatly appreciative of, especially with their Winter Paralysis series of albums. This "Slideshow" caught my eye though as it looked to center completely around the nostalgia of 2000s office computers and Windows 95 styled corporatism. However, not exactly in the way that I viewed it as a child, which is a little disappointing, but I still found this to be a very good time. The presentation was what drove this home to me the most, it's pretty off-kilter, even for Bandcamp standards. If you're curious for some late 2000s vaporwave nostalgia in a format that I could see INTERNET CLUB doing back in the day, I'd recommend this one.

7.0 / 10

Highlights: "Newlife" 2008/04/02, "Screenshot" 2006/08/17, "Evening" 2008/07/03, "Email" 2008/07/04, "Lounge2" 2008/07/09

RAWINTHEVOID – Alphalord (2018)

How do I go about this one? This was the third album from a then very young RAWINTHEVOID. RAW is a talent in post-vaporwave & plunderphonics that I've been looking forward to seeing his growth for a few good years now. His two latest albums MD (Manifest Destiny) and NOTINTHEMOOD are especially great and, even with some very rough patches, they still shine in comparison to his very, very humble beginnings. I've been going through his catalogue backwards and it's fascinating to see how rudimentary & borderline regressive their sample-based works were back in the day. Even on Alphalord, currently my least favourite of theirs (but only barely behind Double Couple), I still found a wealth of fascinating ideas for its alphabet-long tracklist. For example, I would've never thought that speeding up a whole ass noise rock album down to less than six minutes in a song would've sounded any good. To spoil you, it doesn't sound good, but I'm glad someone tried it anyways. I don't recommend this one. If you're curious, go through his latest albums and his live sets, but don't go digging through the back catalogue. Trust me.

4.4 / 10

Highlights: c3, m13, o15, q17

VHS Head – Persistence of Vision (2014)

To close off this post, I went with the sophomore album from one of the most "Dude, how come you've never heard of this guy" artists in the realm of electronic music. VHS Head is a producer of IDM & Glitch Hop beats that are constantly punchy, sporadic and memorable, all thanks to his incredibly persistent sampling of found VHS tapes. He's growing a cult following overtime but it's not exactly helped by his sparse release schedule. This album came out less than five years after his first and he only thought to put out a followup just a few months ago. I can't wait to try that out, but I would shoot myself in the foot if I didn't go for this album first and I'm very glad that I did. I guess when I heard it, I was a little unenthusiastic in a way? But only the way that still made me love this album in the end, like my thought process was "Of course this album is great." The beats are still punchy, the constantly shifting sample flips are more memorable this time around, I think it's even better and more consistent than his debut! Highly recommend this one, with no doubt.

7.9 / 10

Highlights: Enter the Devil, Don't Look in the Closet, Camera Eyes, Red Ocean Apocalypse, Dead to Morrow, Frozen, Body Magic, Angels Never Sleep

Finally, another episode in the books! You'll notice I'm committing to these a little less and less, but I'm honestly not sure if I can keep doing these daily. I'll keep 'em up for as long as I like, but I think it's time to finally admit that I might skip days proper. I'll find a way to still make them work though, because no doubt, every day, I find something new that I want to talk about. Maybe I could make it more of a highlights thing than an outright journel, but we'll see how that shapes up. Until then, I'll see you next time!

[jezfletcher]

1000 Albums, 2020: Albums #30-21

This is the first of six posts wrapping up my and Sam’s 2020 Music Project. Once again, as we have for five years now, we’ve hit 1000 albums from the year. In fact, this year, we listened to 1074 albums released in the year (December 2019-November 2020, inclusive), plus 102 throwback albums (not from 2020), and 1698 entities in total, which also includes tracks released as stand-alone singles, EPs and the like.

While we listen to the same set of music, Sam and I have quite divergent tastes, and his choices will be quite different from mine. But I’m hoping for a couple of high-profile crossovers. There are certainly a few albums this year that we both very much enjoyed.

As a programming note, I’m ordering my posts slightly differently this year, in order to keep Sam’s anticipation of my posts as high as possible (after all, he’s the one who most cares about this). Rather than giving the long list of “almost ran” albums right at the start, thereby eliminating all the real contenders, I’m going to count down my Top 30 albums ten at a time, after which I’ll reveal the longer list of outlier albums #31-100. That way, he’ll be thinking “ooh, will Butch Walker be in his top 10??” right up until the last post. Except I’m bound to disappoint him, because Butch Walker comes in at #54.

After I’ve finished the albums, I’ll list my top tracks in two posts: the first will be the outliers, the second will be actual writeups of my genuine favourite tracks of the year. Usually I provide my top tracks without much commentary, but this year I’ve got a collection of ~30 tracks or so that I do want to say something about individually.

Before we get there, though, let’s look through the first set of my top albums of the year.

#30. Saint Saviour - Tomorrow Again (chamber folk)

A great collection of music, with an ethereal folk quality running through it. But they elevate it with chamber instrumentation, in particular some very fine string arrangements. These work perfectly with soft vocal harmonies, and some oddly catchy riffs. It is, in some ways, quite sullen, but the otherworldly quality stops it from ever being less than fascinating.

My favourite track here is a real stand out: Taurus. It fits beautifully with the rest of the album, while also being the exemplar of what makes the album good. The haunting piano riff, which is eventually doubled with intersecting vocal lines is just a beautiful piece of music.

Recommended track: Taurus.

#29. Post Animal - Forward Motion Godyssey (psychedelic rock)

This was an album that took out an Album of the Week award in February, but it was one that I didn’t necessarily think a lot of for the rest of the year. When I came to relisten to it, I was reminded again that this stood out. This isn’t your regular psych-infused indie rock. It has a hardness to it which helps, but more that that, these folks play with harmonic and melodic shifts that don’t necessarily make sense. It almost feels like a new tonality at times—just enough to catch you off guard and make you constantly re-evaluate where you’re balancing in listening to a track.

My favourite track off the album is the self-titled Post Animal, but to be honest, there’s a great deal on the album of similar quality—it’s the combined weight of all of the great stuff that propels this into my Top 30 albums of the year.

Recommended Track: Post Animal

#28. The Jerry Cans - Echoes (Inuit neo-folk)

An album I liked well-enough on the week we listened to it (it took out the third place spot to two albums which are now below it in the list), it took until relistening for me to get it into my head that it was genuinely the best and most interesting album of the week. Combining mildly folk-infused pop rock with Inuit-language lyrics and judicious use of throat-singing, this is the kind of album which you’re forced to consider on its own terms.

Mostly, though, it succeeds by being catchy, well-written rock. The folk parts are just icing on the cake, and provide it with a differentiating point that really help elevate it when you’re comparing it to other top albums of the year. There are a number of good tracks here, but I’ve picked Atauttikkut, one of the ones completely in Inuit and with the best incorporation of the rhythmic throat singing at an appropriate point.

Recommended Track: Atauttikkut

#27. Aloud - Sprezzaturra (blues rock)

This is a surprising entry for me, and it’s likely to surprise Sam as well, as this is another that didn’t stand out that much in the week I heard it. But on the numbers, it was definitely an album that warranted a relisten. And once I’d taken the whole album, rather than just the isolated track I added to my “revision playlist”, I saw what a rich collection of music it was. It’s not specifically limited to blues—it takes in a lot of jazz and soul influences, in the way of an artist like Lake Street Dive (#3 album of 2016 for me). And there’s variety across the album, which makes the whole album a much richer experience than listening to just your favourite track or two. I mean, isn’t that the great point of an album in any case?

Picking out a single track, as a result is difficult, and the one I singled out the first time doesn’t even feel necessary like the best candidate. Instead, I’ll go with Hungry Land, which almost takes a bit of jazz-era Chicago or E-Street Band kind of crunch to it.

Recommended Track: Hungry Land

#26. The Phenomenal Handclap Band - PHB (psychedelic soul)

Again a band which can really pump out those jazz influences, these guys also play with nu disco, experimental pop and dreampop to give a surprisingly diverse album. It’s an album that’s often based around those driving jazz riffs though, even when you get a good danceable track like my top track Riot.

Quite surprisingly, despite this being one of my top albums of the year, I don’t think it’s among their personal best work, meaning that there’s ample room for the 2022-ish PHB album to really blow me out of the water. They’re capable of it.

Recommended Track: Riot

#25. Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit - Reunions (alt country)

This is one of the rare albums where my list will agree with the bulk of the “best albums of the year” lists. It doesn’t happen often—I like to think it’s because I listen to a shit-ton more music than the average music journalist, but this is probably kidding myself. Anyway, despite not agreeing very often, this is a match, and it’s a fine album. Isbell has a strong sense of honest songwriting, and can put together something that’s heartwrenching in both tone and lyrical content. Tracks like It Gets Easier are hard-hitting numbers, while others provide much needed levity.

My personal favourite track on this album is Be Afraid, which has a great hook in the chorus, which feels neatly rhythmically contorted.

Recommended Track: Be Afraid

#24. Badly Drawn Boy - Banana Skin Shoes (indie pop rock)

Part of our music project this year was listening to all of the albums which won the Mercury Prize for album of the year, from Primal Scream’s Screamadelica right through to this year’s winner Kiwanuka from Michael Kiwanuka (which we actually heard as part of last year’s music project). Amusingly, Badly Drawn Boy’s album The Hour of Bewilderbeest, which won the 2000 Mercury Prize came up not long before we discovered a new album from the group, 20 years later. And this is a very fine album. It has that quality I love in established artists’ later work, which is that they feel a sense of freedom of what they’re creating. Here, they’re much less serious and affected than in Bewilderbeest, allowing a fuller sense of humour and fun to their lyrics, and providing more of an upbeat drive.

There’s no less complexity to the songwriting though, and there’s some biting satire to the content. But it’s put into a remarkably delicious container. Often you don’t realise some of these poppy numbers are ascerbic as they are. A couple of really good tracks on here, but I think my pick is Is This a Dream?.

Recommended Track: Is This a Dream?

#23. MOBS - Cinema Paradiso (80s pastiche pop)

There’s always a place for pure pop in my album lists, and MOBS not only provide us with pure pop, they throw it through the magic 80s synthpop filter. It comes out blasting the other end with cheesy neon energy and a oiled-up saxophonist wearing leather pants. It’s high-energy stuff, pulsating with a kind of groove and energy that is too often eschewed in modern popular music.

There are two tracks I particularly love here, Big World and School’s Out, both of which take funk and disco rhythms and throw all the pastiche of the 80s on top. All with a rich, bassy production quality that sounds a lot more modern. I will say that I thought early on that this might be higher in the list than this, but on relistening it felt a little more like a “solid” album with a couple of really great fun tracks on it.

Recommended track: School’s Out

#22. Jason Wilson - Sumach Roots (eclectic folk)

This is an album that over the year since its January release has become something of a meme between Sam and me. Because it was an album we both really liked overall, and yet for both of us, it was difficult to point to any individual songs that seemed to really illustrate why the album was good. Hence the term “a Jason Wilson” entered the parlance, meaning an album that we liked despite the seeming lack of individual standout tracks.

Partially, the reason this is good is its eclecticism. It kind of runs through various modes of melodic folk, perhaps with reggae influences being something of a touchpoint across the album. Wilson assembles a good ensemble of musicians to match his flow, and there’s a consistent feeling of coherence as a result. While it’s hard to pick out an individual track, I personally like the double/half time reggae of Happy Little Sisyphus, which has its own relentless quality as though it’s constantly driving its own rock up a hill. But again, this feels like an album that you can’t gauge just by listening to a single track in isolation.

Recommended track: Happy Little Sisyphus

#21. DMA’S - The Glow (Australio indie rock)

A really good collection of music from the Australian group here. I would have said I “surprisingly liked” their 2018 album For Now, but this is an album I absolutely embraced. It’s also an album I’d somewhat forgotten about until I did relistening at the end of the year. It won my Album of the Week back in July when it was released, but it largely didn’t feature in my thought process for the end of the year until I realised what a concentration of great tracks it has. Criminals, Round & Around, and title track The Glow are great pieces of enjoyable pop rock, infused with just enough aggression and drive to give them an edge.

My personal favourite track though is Never Before, which swoops upwards with an almost ethereal, psych-channeling vocal line, still while bringing the crunchy guitars and driving beat underneath to move it forward. But there’s a lot that’s good on this album, and while this might not canonically fit the definition of “a Jason Wilson”, it’s also an album which feels like it becomes more than the sum of its parts.

Recommended Track: Never Before