dearthspiel omuggle

I never truly realized the skills it takes to be an extreme metal vocalist until someone (RNG!) pointed out how rhythmically inept and generally terrible the dude from DsO is, even apart from the whole "paedophilia-themed power electronics" thing. You know how TMR partly sounds the way it does because the Cap'n refused to like actually listen to the other instruments when laying down his vocals? Mr. Darth Spell o' MEGA honestly sounds like he has no idea what the rest of the musicians are doing, like some accidental horrible indeterminancy. It ruins the music, which is generally of a pretty high quality. But with those vox over top, shit hasn't got a chance.

turkey jerky!

New Derya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek album is super nice. It makes me think of Pram (and Stereolab, to a less extent) more than any vintage Anatolian rock I've heard - that stuff always brings to mind swarthy men with huge moustaches and this stuff reminds me of... libraries, or something, if anything, which isn't to say it's clinical or square, though it is clean-cut for psychedelia. I dig it quite.

snazzy jazzy japanesey straveezy!

on first blush, listening to Takeshi Inomata's 1970 album Jazz Rock in Stravinsky reminded me of the time that a friend of a friend handed me his headphones so I could listen to a dubstep remix of "Bridges & Balloons." Thankfully Inomata's takes on "Petrushka" and "the Rite" aren't quite that tasteless, but it's still a weird and arguably futile mix we have on hand here - what keeps the album from being a total failure is that it's fecking hard to totally fock up these ficking ballets and it'll take more than shoehorned proto-disco beats and psych guitar to do so (one strange thing is that the version of "Petrushka" here is one I was unfamiliar with, with a totally different second half - maybe it's earlier?) and also, for my money, vintage jazz-rock and fusion is some of the most inherently agreeable music there is, so it's silly and unnecessary but far from unlistenable, even with a disappointing lack of improv and annoying fade-outs every couple of minute.

hippo critter

one day I chide people for praising an album that sounds like the early 70s took a dump and then the next day I give 4.25 stars to a fuckin' boom bap album from 2019, which in hip hop terms is like if the Weyes Blood album was Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys, and the NEXT day I give 4.5 stars to Aldous Harding's "The Barrel" which is like a goddamn Linda Perhacs song, so fuck it - insert Walt Whitman quote we all have been known to use to get us out of being called on our blatant hypocrisy.

pistfulness

the new weyes blood album is obviously well-made and enjoyable but it still makes me as apoplectic as I am any time the Hot Hip New Critically Acclaimed Album sounds like shit my parents would've been listening to in 1971. Non-metal non-electronic white person music is inherently irrelevant this decade. enjoy your new Carpenters album, I'll be over here living in the present (sometimes.)

(i like the carpenters, for the record. and I just gave 4.75 to a Karl Hector and the Malcouns album, so I'm a blatant hypocrite, but I find it funny that the album that just bumped WB from the top spot on the 2019 chart is like seven years old but sounds infinitely more modern.)

i should probably update this blog

but I have nothing to say.

uh... Shostakovich is really good? the new Jamila Woods is good but a disappointment? I'm really getting impatient for new Crying material? The arpeggiators in FL Studio 12 are fun as heck but I can't figure out to actually work them into songs?

that'll do, pig, that'll do.