Five Star Review: Ustad Nishat Khan and Ensemble Gilles Binchois - Meeting of Angels

Gregorian chant spliced with Hindustani classical music? That's either going to be the best album ever or New Age shlock, no middle ground. Luckily this is much closer to the former! Polyphony and Indian classical music are the only things I meditate to, so this combination makes much spiritual sense (no pun intended - or whatever that would be) even if the genres seem so far apart.

In fact, the one real complaint I have is that this presents merely monophonic choral music, but I'm sure it would've been much harder to pull something like Tallis off in this context, and they would not have achieved such a seamless blend. The one complaint I imagine most people would have is that there are too many moments where the sitar and choir alternate rather than play simultaneously, but the album is so comprehensively contemplative and glacially-paced (and there's more than enough interplay between the elements) that I think it avoids ever feeling like Khan and/or Binchois were attempting to cheat, in a Mr. Dr. "seventeen-minutes of silence in a supposedly 80-minute composition" way.

This is basically like an avocado and peanut butter smoothie than ends up being the best vegan French dip sandwich you could ever imagine. This resonates on the frequency of tranquility. In the "E*st M**ts W*st" sweeps this makes Shankar/Menuhin look like the Lemon Pipers.

ABSRDST

Imaginary Friend is what I wanted both the new SOPHIE and Charli XCX to be: gay ducks.

This thing has VU s/t-level opener/closer action: "Stiffy" might've just knocked that Yeyana song off its perch as SOTY: it's like GFOTY, Easyfun, SOPHIE and Maxo and... like, idk, Snail's House or something all at once. It's pretty much the singularity. It's simultaneously bubblegum bass, chiptune, post-industrial and happy hardcore. I feel like Joe Pera hearing "Baba O'Riley" for the first time. AND ALMOST EVERY OTHER TRACK IS AT LEAST ALMOST AS GOOD.

plus it uses "collaboration" as a euphemism for sexxxytimes so that's something worth noting as well

oh and there's a CRJ/Danny L. Harle reference in the opener too dang dang dang

It Is Decided, Then...

The first Koenji album is the high-point of all rock-based musics, even besting MDK and prime Cardiacs and like... Team Dresch and shit. It's funner than piss, ice cream sandwiches and tribbing, probably, danceable as all fuck and I can't believe I once sucked so hard that I had it at a measly, whimpering, incel 2.5. GODDAMN NOW I REMEMBER WHY I ONCE NAMED A CAT CATSUYA YOSHIDA


"Zoltan" (or whichever one has the organ) suuuucccckkkkkks though like who thought that was a good idea?