#disco elucidations

[godspeedmajortom]

I love that Harry can find the purple leopard print leotard and say, "This is the kind of animal I want to be." I love that it takes +8 electrochemistry to do this, that Harry has to be so in touch with what brings pleasure to his physical form to even notice the fabric in the river, to not just dismiss it as another piece of trash amidst the milieu of Martinaise malaise. I love that putting on the bodysuit requires him to reject fear and embrace his queerness (and let it embrace him), and that once he does, he will never let it go. I love that Harry will strip naked in the middle of a sleet storm in front of Kim to don this salty, weathered thing because he has finally, absurdly, found something so perfect for him.

Half Light protests, Physical Instrument mocks, Composure warns, but E-Chem knows. "Don't you *want* to feel different?" Of course. Of course you do, Harry. Of course you want to become someone who you actually want to be.

It's so beautiful that Harry can actually discover a meaning for himself, some small solution for the depressive horror of his pre-bender life. Thank you, leopard-patterned bodysuit. And thank you, Helen Hindpere, for adding this to the game.

(Fayde Reference)

[handeaux]

A Century Before Roller Disco, Cincinnati Caught Roller Skate Fever In The 1880s

Roller skating seems to ebb and flow in popularity from generation to generation, or so it has seemed in Cincinnati. Older folks may remember the roller-disco craze of 1980 which swept through the Queen City from the West Coast.

Cincinnati’s first exposure to roller skating occurred just after the Civil War when a group of businessmen opened the Queen City Rink in the autumn of 1866. Their rink was located on Freeman Street between Laurel and Betts in the West End, opposite Lincoln Park. The partnership included Enoch Carson, seller of lighting fixtures; Charles Wilstach, stationer and later mayor; and Frank Alter, shoe store owner.

Queen City Rink was popular, but apparently none too profitable. The business model was based on renting skates and did not bring in the volume required to turn a profit. The Cincinnati Post [4 April 1885], recalling this inauspicious start, said the enterprise produced “Irish dividends” – losses – throughout its existence. This despite booking stars of the roller-skating world, such as “Professor” Alfred Moe, who did tricks like skating on stilts. The rink seemed to attract an unsavory clientele. One newspaper sniffed that the customers were “far from select.”

That risqué atmosphere earned the Queen City Rink a starring role in a drama, “Heart of the Queen City,” staged in 1868 at the National Theater. The scenes in this play, described as “not at all moral in its character” and offering “peculiar attractions of the sensational kind,” were set at various Cincinnati locations, including the old Millcreek House tavern, the Public Landing and the Queen City Rink. The rink scene incorporated comic and trick roller skating routines by then-famous skaters Eugene St. Clair and Henry Levi.

As the 1880s dawned, skating began to attract increasing numbers of fans. When the very high-tone Highland House atop Mount Adams opened a roller-skating rink in 1881, the city took notice. So did the Methodists. A bishop in that church told the Cincinnati Enquirer [15 February 1885]:

“Roller-skating in public rinks is not a whit different, in its moral aspects, from dancing in ballrooms. The discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church is construed to put dancing in mixed assemblages under the ban which it explicitly pronounces against ungodly and demoralizing amusements.”

By 1885, Cincinnati boasted eight roller rinks including the revitalized Queen City Rink, Highland House, Melodeon Hall, Princess Rink on Linn Street, new rinks in both Cumminsville and Brighton and two rinks patronized exclusively by African Americans on Sixth Street in the West End.

The aroma of impropriety still clung to roller rinks. A Cincinnati Post review [4 April 1885] of skating in town confessed that it could not be truthfully stated that the rinks attracted “all the best people in town.” Still, the management generally maintained a level of decorum:

“The managers can not prevent ‘mashing’ or the voluntary cultivation of any sort of acquaintances by young ladies – the class in most imminent danger – but they can and do prevent the entrance of nearly all of both sexes who have forfeited all rights in respectable quarters.”

Despite the managerial vigilance, the fact remained that roller rinks brought in young people from both sexes and mixed them together in an activity that invited close if not intimate contact. Whether fondling a young woman’s ankles while helping her lace her skates or catching her as she fell, young men found salacious opportunities at every turn.

The Cincinnati Gazette [6 June 1882] reported the misadventures of a young bookkeeper named W.R. Goodall, “not deficient in personal attractions,” who spent so much time at the Queen City Rink that he was known as an informal instructor “in the graceful manipulation of that modern breakneck invention called roller skates.” Young women sought this charmer to elucidate the finer points of skating. It appears that Goodall couldn’t keep himself from bragging about his many “students” and said some unflattering things about some of them. Their boyfriends were not amused. Zeke Workum accosted Goodall on Fourth Street and bloodied his nose and Louis P. Ezekiel cornered him on Baymiller Street a pulled a knife on him.

Cincinnati was transfixed by a Commercial story [8 February 1885] about a Bucyrus, Ohio, heiress who eloped with a roller-skating instructor. Her clandestine husband, Sylvester Osborne, when confronted by his wife’s very unhappy father suggested that he might consent to disappear after having the marriage annulled if Daddy would give him a mere $20,000.

Still, Cincinnati generally escaped the more sensational skating scandals that plagued other cities. A lot of the local skating activities were just peculiar. For example, the opening of the Highland House rink led to the creation of a Highland House Roller Skating Club, organized to not simply skate, but to play an indoor version of polo on the rink. Although known as “polo,” contemporary descriptions of this game sound more like hockey.

The Cincinnati Tennis Club introduced roller skating as entertainment during pauses in their matches at Music Hall and the Cincinnati Gazette [29 October 1881] suggested that tennis on skates was the next logical step.

The Princess Rink, which hosted regular “polo” competitions, introduced a new attraction by staging a game of baseball on skates. Rink manager John M. Cook told the Enquirer that a wholly different set of skills is required from participants in this game.

“Base-ball on roller-skates, he said, depends more for success on expert skaters than it does on expert ball-players. The game will, no doubt, be productive of lots of fun and amusement.”

Mayhap, although it does not seem that the experiment was repeated more than a few times.

Like all fads and crazes, roller skating had dwindled into a childhood pastime by the end of the decade. While it lasted, however, the amusement made a substantial contribution to the economy. The price of boxwood – used then to make the wheels of roller skates – doubled in the early 1880s, launching a search for an agreeable substitute. Richmond, Indiana, according to the Enquirer, kept 19 factories busy manufacturing roller-skating paraphernalia, employing a thousand men.

A sporting equipment dealer told a Cincinnati Times-Star reporter that he was raking in money because of the fad.

“Everybody in town will be on wheels and I am going to get rich selling skates. Can’t I sell you a pair?”

[caltropspress]

FEEDBACK LOOP #12: AJ Suede's "Most Black Superheroes"

Hands of onyx—my magnetic field fuck up electronics, I’m shielded—they feel it fusing. Born from nothing, sudden futures.

—ELUCID, “Ghoulie” (2022)

Boogying to my Walkman with the S on my chest.

—Redman, “A Day of Sooperman Lover” (1992)

Charlie Parker was a great electrician who went around wiring people.

—Bob Kaufman, “Fragment” (1959)

Although electricity, like the air around us, seems very impalpable, appealing to so few of the senses, it is yet capable of being measured…

—Lewis Latimer, from Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System (1890)

1.

Black superheroes harness power outside themselves—channeling it, conducting it—becoming maestros of electro-ultra-magnetics, masters of ceremony. Amiri Baraka assessed the drumming of Sonny Murray, speaking of “his body-ness, his physicality in the music,” concluding that Murray was “a conductor of energies.” AJ Suede has reinvented himself as one Ark Flashington, and he’s cold lampin’. On “South Bronx,” KRS-One describes how “power from a streetlight made the place dark.” A cold lamp is one drained of its energy—its electricity siphoned to illegal sources. Think of New York City going dark during the blackout of July 13, 1977. Think of how the subsequent looting led to audio equipment ending up in the hands of budding creators. Think of the scene in Stan Lathan’s Beat Street from 1984: how they run wires from the abandoned building in the Bronx to a lamppost. The building, burnt out five times by an arsonist landlord collecting on insurance money, is given new life. The electricity stolen from the lamppost powers Kenny’s turntables and gets the party jumping. Jeff Chang details how the Ghetto Brothers played on the block by “plugging their amps into the lampposts.” He quotes Kool Herc divulging how he did the same, sharing a hack he’d learned watching construction workers: “I had a big McIntosh amp…300 watts per channel. As the juice start coming, man, the lights start dimming.” Light and dark merge like the twisting of two frayed wires. Psycho Les promised to “pump more watts than any RadioShack” on the Beatnuts’ “World’s Famous,” and all these examples prove how potent tinkering can be: a life-giving force, a revived pulse.

2. 

The precedent for suggesting superheroic poetics in hip-hop is congenital. Captain Sky’s “Super Sporm” traveled through the vas deferens (vas def?—mos def!) in 1978, smooth operations and muscle contractions assured its arrival in Big Bank Hank’s “Rapper’s Delight” lyrics in 1980 (“I can bust you out with my super sperm…”), and Kurtis Blow accepted the secretions in 1985 (the same year he told us, coincidentally, AJ is cool—no question). Seminal indeed!

Redman’s “A Day of Sooperman Lover” (1992) is Blowfly-level spoofing—not so heroic or chivalric as the song turns from rescuing a kitty cat to a Crying Game situation where our caped crusader unexpectedly “felt the bozack” of his beloved. Worth noting that when Reggie “dipped into [his] Sooperlover suit” it was accompanied by a “quick flash.” The rendezvous might’ve been chaotic but it was no Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos. Suede needs that steel to be ultra-conductive—something like Tricky’s “Black Steel” rendition. Something similar to “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel” (1981). Flash’s early opus of the scratch and prismatic turntablism relied on disassembly of The Official Adventures of Flash Gordon (1966) record as much as it did disco data and funk fodder. Look up in the sky—yeah, above the clouds like Gang Starr in ’98, with Preemo pulling from Superman: The Man from Krypton, a 1978 children’s record.

The fixation probably apexed with the Last Emperor’s “Secret Wars.” “What if I had the power to gather all of my favorite MCs,” he proposed, “with the illest comic book characters and they became archenemies?” The original writing and recording of “Secret Wars” dates back to 1995 and ’96. Last Emp told David Ma that MCs and superheroes both operate as “modern day mythology.” Hip-hop heads decolonized comic conventions like Fanon, placing Black Masks over White Skins: Jean Grae, Ironman, MF DOOM, et cetera, and it don’t stop, and it can’t stop. 

3.

The fact that most Black superheroes use electricity speaks to a historical tendency for [particularly non-Black] comic writers and illustrators to codify stereotyped representations of identity. AJ Suede, though, celebrates the commonality of so many Black superheroes with an emphasis on their weaponizing of electricity. Purveyors of potent defenses (a double portion of protection, ELUCID would say) whose Main Source of power derives from an [ec]static breaking of atoms.

Suede deads the myth of superpredator and elevates a superhero mythopoeia super-suited to an Age of Incendiary Devices. He assembles a team (in hip-hop we might call it a crew) of comic book characters to demonstrate that most Black superheroes use electricity. Whether he presents this as a tired trope or point of pride is left ambiguous, but I prefer to think of it as a salute to the commonality.

4.

AJ Suede holds a “couple of lanterns, lighting the path,” and the desire path leads us to Edison’s Lab in Menlo Park, New Jeruzalem. It was there that Lewis Latimer took eight steps to perfecting the carbon filament after Edison caught the L. Latimer literally wrote the book on electric light: Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System. History, as it goes, has made Latimer the lesser-known, but we can measure his impact in such luminaries as Bigg Jus. “I blow mics like filaments,” Jus rapped on CoFlow’s “Silence.” “I’m tungsten light within that causes something.” Something. What it causes must be too ineffable. Suede describes his “armor like tungsten, wolfram, / Wonder who indestructible.” Last Emp teased, Inconceivable? Unbelievable? On “Electric Relaxation,” Q-Tip claimed to be “stronger than Teflon.” We can thank Lewis Latimer for the threaded socket as well. See it on the cover of the Project Blowed compilation from 1995: a bare bulb hanging down, suspended in a white void, hinting at the empty-headed ingenuity of the most virtuosic freestyles to emerge from the MCs serving the Good Life. “There’s something special inside of my mental cargo vessel,” Aceyalone raps on “I Think,” “and it runs on lethal, ethyl methane, profane, / Kinda like a flux capacitor.” He thinks—bright bulb idea sharer. 88 MPH stream-of-consciousness thoughts. 1.21 gigawatts powered by either plutonium or hooked pole + lightning bolt. 

5.

Granville T. Woods got labeled “Black Edison,” but—actual fact—Thomas Alva should’ve been dubbed “White Woods.” Edison tried to jack Woods’ steez, claiming ownership (as oppressors are wont to do) to his patents, but Woods was having none of that litigious noise and won in court. Edison wanted credit for a creation that wasn’t his, but Woods was like, “That goddamn credit? Dead it, / You think a white inventor paying you back?—shit, forget it!” With his Synchronous Multiplex Railway Telegraph, Woods equipped trains with magnetic forces for the purpose of communication long before DONDI and FUTURA were bombing ’em.

And what was Edison up to in the meantime? He produced an 1896 film, The Watermelon Eating Contest, which featured “two of the colored gentry eating melon on a wager.” In 1905, he promulgated a worser racial cinematic vision with the Edwin S. Porter-directed The Watermelon Patch, which depicts a melon heist by “darkies” and a pursuit of the thieves by scarecrows-turned-skeletons. Subsequently, we see bloodhounds and cakewalking. On “Most Black Superheroes,” AJ Suede circumvents the mob. He moves “left with the science, but right with the math.” Red-right, white-left, Buck 65 rapped in 1999, memorizing his RCA cables. The wrath of Suede’s math is on par with Jeru’s—he knows how and when to plug in, to plug tune, when to summon storms from the grass surrounding the watermelon patch.

6.

That AJ Suede is singing about Black superheroes distracts from his own heroics. Behind his “Ark Flashington” alter ego, Suede gathers the “harvest abundant [for] feeding the village.” The pun on “arc” weds his electrifying powers to “ark” in a Noachian sense. “Ark,” from the Latin arca, meaning “chest,” alludes to a coffer for storing secrets (abilities, identities) or a chest in an anatomical or figurative sense: the seat of emotional strength and fortitude. The “ark” in Ark Flashington, there-to-the-fore, is the chest from which AJ Suede’s arcane language springs. As purple lightning flashed and purple haze lifted, Cam’ron rapped on 2004’s “More Gangsta Music” about “walk[ing] around like [he’s] got an S on [his] chest.” He had the “Tec on [his] left,” but it’s not a TEC-9 in Suede’s case; it’s a high-voltage technology.

7.

As AJ Suede welds words together, there’s the constant risk of an arc flash—something, as his loyal listeners, we’d masochistically welcome. The way he tangles spools of l’s (“billionaire”; “still feel”) and coils conductive short-u’s (“deductibles”; “government”; “clusterfuckable”; “but”; “wonderful”) leaves us feeling vaporized. (We caught the toxic fume vapors!) 

As such, we should come correct in PPE. Contact artist Lonnie Holley to commission a replica of his “African Mask” (2004)—a welder’s mask, actually, wreathed by a radial tire. Ribbons of rubber and sockets hanging like talismans and outlet boxes. This assemblage of scraps links [literally] the millennia-old metallurgy in Nigeria with the 20th century segregated workforce at Sloss Furnaces in Birmingham. Rockin’ the protective Holley headpiece will have you “feel[ing] wonderful,” as Suede says. You’ll be ready to drop a gem on ’em or, conversely, run the joules. You’ll look like the masked figure on the cover of Ark Flashington—all psychedelic oversaturation and electromagnetic energy exuding outward. Replace the S on your chest with the same inflammable material emblem from Massive Attack’s debut—embrace a “Safe from Harm” simmering beneath the surface of your epidermis.

8.

“Alternating current in the blood gets channeled,” AJ Suede raps as he morphs verb into noun. You’re sitting on your sofa alongside Canibus tuning into Channel Zero, but the cathode-ray tube is on the fritz. Screen all fulla snow. Suede juxtaposes the light and dark of alternating current electricity in our TV sets and—like David Lynch—reveals the light and dark media representations of humanity. 

The current carries “through the fingertips and eyes, / Talking to the skies” like Lynch settles his camera on #6 utility poles. Over the course of his career, the Twin Peaks director has been partial to electricity. “I don’t know why all people aren’t fascinated with it,” he said in 2006. “It makes beautiful sounds, and it makes a lot of times some incredible light. It runs many things in our world, and it’s beautiful. It’s sometimes dangerous, but it’s magical. It’s such a power….” He speaks to the ethos of Ark Flashington, and Suede’s “Most Black Superheroes” delves headlong into the racial components. Sure, Lynch has the soot-blackened faces of the Woodsmen (“Gotta light?” one infamously asks). He hideously birthed the “jumping man” (leaping tall buildings in a single bound…) above the convenience store in Fire Walk With Me (1992). The “jumping man” is acted by Carlton Lee Russell, a Black man, though he wears a mask of white plaster. A second Black man, credited fittingly as “the electrician,” is also present in that surreal scene. But these racial undertones are just that—rarely discussed contexts secondary to Lynch’s infatuation with the direction of electron flow and the nature of good and evil. No more than minstrelsy of the manic and unhinged, if that. AJ Suede sacrifices everything on the gallows-like altar of a transmission tower in order to get us closer to overstanding.

9.

Remember how they treated Black soldiers after Nam? By simply raising the question, AJ Suede raises hell and reminds us. “Never give help,” he says, subverting the saves-the-day super duty tough work of your typical superheroes, “’cause they don’t give a damn.” History is a weapon which can be used to recognize the difference between a worthy rescue and an informed recusal.

In Seize the Time (1970), Bobby Seale’s account of his days developing the Black Panther Party, a current navigates through his narrative—“current” in both senses: contemporaneous to his volatile times and the flow of charged particles. Writing at the height of the Black Power movement [calculate Black power in wattage], he notes that our “modern, highly technological society” includes pervasive “electronic surveillance,” in addition to and aiding the efforts of “cops armed and equipped for overkill.” Electricity found its path into his earlier employment struggles, too. “I worked at Kaiser Aerospace Electronics near Oakland,” he writes. “It involve[d] testing for microscopic cracks in metals by a complicated chemical and magnetic process.” Despite mastering the trade and finding the knowledge rewarding, he quit a little over a year later because he conscientiously objected to where the company was moving: “[T]he war was going on and I felt I was aiding the government’s operation.” Government clusterfuckable, in Suede’s words. Later, as Seale was transported by US Marshals across state lines, he spent a layover in a Salt Lake City lockup, what he refers to as “a completely electronic jail.” The future shock of his detainment, with its “doors [that] opened and closed electronically”—absent the necessity of any human touch—reminded him of a “streamlined concentration camp.” “I was on a political charge,” he writes [my emphasis]—quarks, protons, and electrons notwithstanding—and ultimately this seeming scientifikal fact limits his options. “If I escaped,” he reasoned, “everybody would believe I was guilty of all that jive, those trumped-up charges. At the same time I knew darn well the power structure is going to move and do everything they can to try to convict me and railroad me into prison and the electric chair.” And there’s no glory in damning yourself to the living/dying embodiment of Eric Haze’s iconic Death Row Records logo, is there?

10.

Black people must ultimately come to realize that such coalitions, such alliances have not been in their interest…[I]n fact, the whites enter the alliance in many cases precisely to impede that progress.

—Kwame Ture and Charles V. Hamilton, Black Power: The Politics of Liberation in America (1967)

Ture and Hamilton point to labor unions to emphasize “the treacherous nature of coalitions.” As unions achieved collective bargaining rights nationwide, Black workers experienced “deterioration.” In the 1940s, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (Suede’s new crew name, if I had my way) got their victory, but Black laborers were contracted out of the union. Ture and Hamilton quote Myrna Bain: “The excuse was advanced that, since their union contract specified ‘whites only,’ they could not and would not change this to provide continued employment for the Negroes who were at the plant before the union was recognized.”

“Fuck what you got,” AJ Suede raps, liberals, well-wishers, and allies “can’t change spots.” In fact, it’s not a matter of “can’t”—they won’t change spots. The only math they know is a zero-sum game. “After handshakes people still change plans,” so like Public Enemy said, you can’t truss it. 

11.

What recourse does AJ Suede have? He signals the skies and gathers the [Black] powers available to him. He recruits Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III’s Static, giving props to Virgil Hawkins’ namesake static bolts that sizzle and criss-cross into a Malik El-Shabazz “X” on the front panel of his cap. He hangs a banner from the 1994 inaugural issue: YOU DON’T START NONE THERE WON’T BE NONE. Time is illmatic, of course, and Nas tells us he “keep[s] static like wool fabric”—linking electricity, beef, and even “the kinkiness of Black people’s hair.”

Suede calls upon Black Lightning, tapping his ability to ionize illbient beats and throw up a force field before fists. He brings in Black Vulcan from the Super Friends in case they need to spot-weld the Fugees' "Ready or Not" submarine (on loan). He looks to da baddest bitch—no, not Trina (though she fellates at a pace “like lightning”)—but to Storm, relying on her to psionically and atmokinetically keep the peace. Hardware heads over with metal alloys looted from Alva Industries. In the same way Milestone Comics diverged from the prevailing archetypes and tokenism of Black superheroes, AJ Suede builds a posse that can apply pressure through a low-pass filter or phaser.

“Most Black Superheroes” survives on the subtle cracking and clicking of the Geiger counter in a tick-tock Doomsday clock loop rendered rhythmic: a molecular metronome. Drums tapped out on a cellar circuit breaker rather than an SP-404. Yes, most Black superheroes use electricity, and AJ Suede turns his sine waves square through a fuzz pedal. He abuses the tube amp until he achieves Electro Harmonix. He regulates the barometric pressure between Seattle and Bristol, rhyming at a rainy-day downtempo BPM, tautens the tripwire, and sends the circuit breaker tripping. His woofers thud the trunk of the jeep with melanated melankolic bass tones. “Most Black Superheroes” is an electric boogaloo of AJ Suede’s own mad scientist invention—a hip-hop park jam of resistance and Vedic possibilities where ohm meets om.

Images:

David Lynch, The Factory Photographs, 2014 (detail) | Captain Sky, The Adventures of Captain Sky, album cover (1978) | Superman: The Man From Krypton, Peter Pan Records (1978) | Lewis Latimer, “Electric lamp” (with Nichols, Joseph V.), patent (1881) | Project Blowed compilation, album cover (1995) | The Watermelon Patch, screenshot, Edison Films (1905) | Lonnie Holley, African Mask (2004) | David Lynch, “Electricity in Hand and Home” | Hardware, appearing in Milestone Comics (issue unknown) | Black Lightning in Justice League of America #174, (Jan. 1980) | Static, Issue 1, Dwayne McDuffie and Robert L. Washington III, DC Comics (May 4, 1993) | Storm, appearing in Marvel Comics (issue unknown) | David Lynch, The Factory Photographs, 2014 (detail)

[still-busy-being-mortal]

pentiment thoughts

(no spoilers dw)

ok so if you’re following this blog, chances are you’ll love pentiment. it’s definitely more of a visual novel than a video game per se, but there’s still plenty of choices to make that affect the story significantly.

there are three really cool things it does: dropping you into the 16th century catholic world completely, subverting all “murder mystery” expectations, and showing the bittersweet passage of time in a small town.

i’ve never encountered a game that felt more truly human, despite the far-removed time and subject matter. it handles issues of parenthood, scapegoating, diversity, and class so deftly you’ll almost fail to appreciate it. that said, i definitely have some thoughts that i haven’t seen elucidated anywhere else. namely, i think the game is almost of victim of its own immersion. the choices are so subtle that you don’t often know you’re making them, and you don’t see the other path that has been closed off, which makes the game *feel* very linear and railroady, even though it’s not. after i finished, i saw there were outcomes i thought were written into the game that were completely different in other people’s playthroughs. personally, i would appreciate the work that went into the game more if i could see when choices were being made.

this game is definitely not disco elysium, which was my main point of comparison. i personally think de has much greater replay value.

my other issue was the lack of reformation/lutheranism discussion. it’s definitely present in the game, and [mild spoiler, maybe] some characters convert to lutheranism by the end of the game, but i felt like it was going to be a bigger plot point than it was. one of your skills can be reformation knowledge, and one of the early big conversations centers on martin luther, but this game is definitely not *about* the reformation. it felt like it was heading that direction early in the game, so i was disappointed when it never got there.

overall though, this is an incredibly unique and special game that should appeal to anyone who doesn’t mind incredibly text-heavy games, especially those with an interest in history or religion. i’ve never seen time’s passage represented more touchingly.

[bossymarmalade]

Ringo is such an empathic soul! My fav is Geoge. He was the introvert like myself. And he gave us Monty Python after all! In 1976 using the album list in Hunter Davies' autobiography that I borrowed from the school library, I began my album collection going backwards--Let It Be, Abbey Road and so on. That book noted HELP had a culturally problematic storyline but it ignited George's interest in Hare Krishna. I became intrigued with Hinduism.

George's compositions throughout his life always had a spirituality/message that appealed to my hippie heart. Oh why had I not been born at a time to experience Beatlemania!? (But then I wouldn't have become a roller skating disco diva🛼. Btw love the BeeGees but their Sgt Pepper film was a travesty except for Aerosmith singing "Come Together.")

When I cried over John's murder, my college roomies thought I was flakey. I have seen Paul/Linda/Wings & Ringo/All-Starrs in concert. Well, I have written too much to explain why Magical Mystery Tour is my fav album of theirs. But plz elucidate on "Which is your fav Beatles album?"

The George-Monty Python connection is SUCH a joy. Like the mentions of 'Loretta' in both Life of Brian and Get Back, hee.

HELP does indeed have a culturally problematic storyline but! As a Hindu in the diaspora I learned to take what I wanted from representations of my religion, and the version in Help! is honestly so ridiculous and farcical I barely connected it to actual Hinduism anyhow, heh. (Other Hindus' mileage may vary ofc but that's my experience 😌) Also I'm tickled that the year I was being born was the year you started your collection, how neat is that??

My high school years were steeped in the grunge scene but that's also when I started collecting/listening to Beatles in earnest. My whole friends group did. I think I tried to watch the BeeGees movie but was turned off pretty fast, ahahaha! In all honesty I didn't even really care for the Yellow Submarine movie (blasphemy, I know XD)

That's SO COOL that you've seen at least some of them in concert! Closest I got was a tribute concert lol. And for the longest time I would say that Magical Mystery Tour was my favourite too! Let it Be is a very VERY close contender but I would probably still choose Magical Mystery. The movie is a GONG SHOW but I love the mix of songs, and the videos they put out for it. Penny Lane Lennon is my favourite Lennon look of all time.

[grufonzo]

fabulous parfaits, toy store romps, smoking weed in a McDonalds, roller disco Tuesdays, trips to the oceanfront, sadness indulgences, apocalyptic visions, out of context comedy showcases, the cutting edge of poetry design, elucidating themes of camouflage in modern art for the club scene cigarette interludes of in transit dialogue gaps

🔥blaze

[orphanofkos]

creating a disco elysium miniseries just elucidates how fucking poorly whoever okayed it understands the game itself. like the big thing about disco elysium is that its an experience or even piece of art that could only exist in the medium of a video game / interactive medium. you lose everything that made disco worthwhile by translating into a miniseries. its just such a fucking soulless cash grab made all the more obvious by the fact that the people who are hoping to make money from it don't actually understand the content and importance of its existence and don't care so long as it can tap whatever fucking fandom market they have their eyes on.

[sputnikodin]

sleep deprivation sucks for reasons i largely won't elucidate here but i will say that i'm really mad that it prevents me from playing disco elysium

[sinceileftyoublog]

Pitchfork Music Festival 2021 Preview: 15 Can’t-miss Acts

black midi; Photo by YIS KID

BY JORDAN MAINZER

While yours truly won’t be attending Pitchfork Music Festival this year, SILY contributor Daniel Palella will be covering the actual fest. If I was attending, though, these would be the acts I’d make sure to see. 5 from each day, no overlaps, so you could conceivably see everyone listed.

FRIDAY

Armand Hammer, 1:00 PM, Green Stage

Earlier this year, New York hip hop duo Armand Hammer released their 5th album Haram (BackwoodzStudioz) in collaboration with on-fire producer The Alchemist. It was the duo’s (ELUCID and Billy Woods) first time working with a singular producer on a record (though Earl Sweatshirt produced a track), and likewise, The Alchemist actually tailored his beats towards the two MCs. Haram is the exact kind of hip hop that succeeds early in the day at a festival, verbose and complex rhymes over languid, cloudy, sample-heavy beats, when attendees are more likely to want to sit and listen than dance. And you’re going to want to listen to Armand Hammer, whose MCs’ experiential words frame the eerie hues of the production. “Dreams is dangerous, linger like angel dust,” Woods raps on opener “Sir Benni Miles”, never looking back as he and Elucid’s stream-of-consciousness rhymes cover everything from colonization to Black bodily autonomy and the dangers of satisfaction disguised as optimism. (“We let BLM be the new FUBU,” raps Quelle Chris on “Chicharrones”; “Iridescent blackness / Is this performative or praxis?” ponders Woods on “Black Sunlight”.)  There are moments of levity on Haram, like KAYANA’s vocal turn on “Black Sunlight” and the “what the hell sound is this?” type sampling that dominates warped, looped tracks like “Peppertree” and “Indian Summer”, built around sounds of horns and twirling flute lines. For the most part, Haram is an album of empathetic realism. “Hurt people hurt people,” raps Elucid on “Falling Out of the Sky”, a stunning encapsulation of Armand Hammer’s world where humanism exists side-by-side with traumatic death and feelings of revenge.

You can also catch Armand Hammer doing a live set on the Vans Channel 66 livestream at 12 PM on Saturday.

Dogleg, 1:45 PM, Red Stage

It feels like we’ve been waiting years to see this set, and actually, we have! The four-piece punk band from Michigan was supposed to play last year’s cancelled fest in support of their searing debut Melee (Triple Crown), and a year-plus of pent up energy is sure to make songs like “Bueno”, “Fox”, and “Kawasaki Backflip” all the more raging. Remember: This is a band whose reputation was solidified live before they were signed to Triple Crown and released their breakout album. Seeing them is the closest thing to a no-brainer that this year’s lineup offers.

Revisit our interview with Dogleg from last year, and catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Subterranean with fellow Pitchfork performer Oso Oso and Retirement Party.

Hop Along, 3:20 PM, Red Stage

Though lead singer Frances Quinlan released a very good solo album last year, it’s been three years since their incredible band Hop Along dropped an album and two years since they’ve toured. 2018′s Bark Your Head Off, Dog (Saddle Creek), one of our favorite albums of that year, should comprise the majority of their setlist, but maybe they have some new songs?

Catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Metro with Varsity and Slow Mass.

black midi, 4:15 PM, Green Stage

The band who had the finest debut of 2019 and gave the best set of that year at Pitchfork is back. Cavalcade (Rough Trade) is black midi’s sophomore album, methodical in its approach in contrast with the improvisational absurdism of Schlagenheim. Stop-start, violin-laden lead single and album opener “John L”, a song about a cult leader whose members turn on him, is as good a summary as ever of the dark, funky eclecticism of black midi, who on Cavalcade saw band members leave and new ones enter, their ever shapeshifting sound the only consistent thing about them. A song like the jazzy “Diamond Stuff” is likely impossible to replicate live--its credits list everything from 19th century instruments to household kitchen items used for percussion--but is key to experiencing their instrumental adventurousness. On two-and-a-half-minute barn burner “Hogwash and Balderdash,” they for the first time fully lean into their fried Primus influences, telling a tale of two escaped prisoners, “two chickens from the pen.” At the same time, this band is still black midi, with moments that call back to Schlagenheim, the churning, metallic power chords via jittery, slapping funk of “Chondromalacia Patella” representative of their quintessential tempo changes. And as on songs like Schlagenheim’s “Western”, black midi find room for beauty here, too, empathizing with the pains of Marlene Dietrich on a bossa nova tune named after her, Geordie Greep’s unmistakable warble cooing sorrowful lines like, “Fills the hall tight / And pulls at our hearts / And puts in her place / The girl she once was.” Expect to hear plenty from Cavalcade but also some new songs; after all, this is a band that road tests and experiments with material before recording it.

Catch them doing a 2 PM DJ set on Vans Channel 66 on Saturday and at an aftershow on Monday at Sleeping Village.

Yaeji, 7:45 PM, Blue Stage

What We Drew (XL), the debut mixtape from Brooklyn-based DJ Yaeji, was one of many dance records that came out after lockdown that we all wished we could experience in a crowd as opposed to at home alone. Now's our chance to bask in all of its glory under a setting sun. Maybe she’ll spin her masterful remix of Dua Lipa’s “Don’t Start Now” from the Club Future Nostalgia remix album, or her 2021 single “PAC-TIVE”, her and DiAN’s collaboration with Pac-Man company Namco.

Angel Olsen; Photo by Dana Trippe

SATURDAY

Bartees Strange, 1:45 PM, Red Stage

One of our favorite albums of last year was Live Forever (Memory Music), the debut from singer-songwriter and The National fanatic Bartees Strange, one that contributor Lauren Lederman called “a declaration of an artist’s arrival.” He’s certainly past arrived when you take into account his busy 2021, releasing a new song with Lorenzo Wolff and offering his remix services to a number of artists, including illuminati hotties and fellow Pitchfork performer (and tour mate) Phoebe Bridgers. Expect to hear lots of Live Forever during his Pitchfork set, one of many sets at the fest featuring exciting young guitar-based (!) bands.

Catch him at a free (!!) aftershow on Monday at Empty Bottle with Ganser.

Faye Webster, 4:00 PM, Blue Stage

Since we previewed Faye Webster’s Noonchorus livestream in October, she’s released the long-awaited follow-up to Atlanta Millionaires Club, the cheekily titled I Know I’m Funny haha (Secretly Canadian). At that time, she had dropped “Better Distractions”, “In A Good Way”, and “Both All The Time”, and the rest of the album more than follows the promise of these three dreamy country, folk rock, and R&B-inspired tunes. Webster continues to be a master of tone and mood, lovelorn on “Sometimes”, sarcastic on the title track, and head-in-the-clouds on “A Dream with a Baseball Player”. All the while, she and her backing band provide stellar, languorous instrumentation, keys and slide guitar on the bossa nova “Kind Of”, her overdriven guitar sludge on “Cheers”, cinematic strings on the melancholic “A Stranger”, stark acoustic guitar on heartbreaking closer “Half of Me”. And the ultimate irony of Webster’s whip-smart lyricism is that a line like, “And today I get upset over this song that I heard / And I guess was just upset because why didn't I think of it first,” is that I can guarantee a million songwriters feel the same way about her music, timely in context and timeless in sound and feeling.

Catch her at an aftershow on Saturday at Sleeping Village with Danger Incorporated.

Georgia Anne Muldrow, 5:15 PM, Blue Stage

The queen of beats takes the stage during the hottest part of the day, perfect for some sweaty dancing. VWETO III (FORESEEN + Epistrophik Peach Sound), the third album in Muldrow’s beats record series, was put together with “calls to action” in mind, each single leading up to the album’s release to be paired with crowdsourced submissions via Instagram from singers, visual artists, dancers, and turntablists. Moreover, many of the album’s tracks are inspired by very specific eras of Black music, from Boom Bap and G-funk to free jazz, and through it all, Muldrow provides a platform for musical education just as much as funky earworms.

Revisit our interview with Muldrow from earlier this year.

Angel Olsen, 7:25 PM, Red Stage

It’s been a busy past two years for Angel Olsen. She revealed Whole New Mess (Jagjaguwar) in August 2020, stripped down arrangements of many of the songs on 2019′s amazing All Mirrors. In May, she came out with a box set called Song of the Lark and Other Far Memories (Jagjaguwar), which contained both All Mirrors and Whole New Mess and a bonus LP of remixes, covers, alternate takes, and bonus tracks. She shortly and out of nowhere dropped a song of the year candidate in old school country rock high and lonesome Sharon Van Etten duet “Like I Used To”. And just last month, she released Aisles, an 80′s covers EP out on her Jagjaguwar imprint somethingscosmic. She turns Laura Branigan’s disco jam “Gloria” and Men Without Hats’ “Safety Dance” into woozy, echoing, slowed-down beds of synth haze and echoing drum machine. On Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark’s “If You Leave”, her voice occupies different registers between the soft high notes of the bridge and autotuned solemnity of the chorus. Sure, other covers are more recognizable in their tempo and arrangement, like Billy Idol’s Rebel Yell ballad “Eyes Without a Face” and Alphaville’s “Forever Young”, but Aisles is exemplary of Olsen’s ability to not just reinvent herself but classics.

At Pitchfork, I’d bet on a set heavy on All Mirrors and Whole New Mess, but as with the unexpectedness of Aisles, you never know!

St. Vincent, 8:30 PM, Green Stage

Annie Clark again consciously shifts personas and eras with her new St. Vincent album Daddy’s Home (Loma Vista), inspired by 70′s funk rock and guitar-driven psychedelia. While much of the album’s rollout centered around its backstory--Clark’s father’s time in prison for white collar crimes--the album is a thoughtful treatise on honesty and identity, the first St. Vincent album to really stare Clark’s life in the face. 

Many of its songs saw their live debut during a Moment House stream, which we previewed last month.

The Weather Station; Photo by Jeff Bierk

SUNDAY

Tomberlin, 1:00 PM, Green Stage

While the LA-via-Louisville singer-songwriter hasn’t yet offered a proper follow-up LP to her 2018 debut At Weddings, she did last year release an EP called Projections (Saddle Creek), which expands upon At Weddings’ shadowy palate. Songs like “Hours” and “Wasted” are comparatively clattering and up-tempo. Yet, all four of the original tracks are increasingly self-reflexive, Tomberlin exploring and redefining herself on her terms, whether singing about love or queerness, all while maintaining her sense of humor. (“When you go you take the sun and all my flowers die / So I wait by the window and write some shit / And hope that you'll reply,” she shrugs over acoustic strums and wincing electric guitars.) The album ends with a stark grey cover of Casiotone for the Painfully Alone’s “Natural Light”; Tomberlin finds a kindred spirit in the maudlin musings of Owen Ashworth.

Get there early on Sunday to hear select tracks from At Weddings and Projections but also likely some new songs.

oso oso, 2:45 PM, Blue Stage

Basking in the Glow (Triple Crown), the third album from Long Beach singer-songwriter Jade Lilitri as Oso Oso, was one of our favorite records of 2019, and we’d relish the opportunity to see them performed to a crowd in the sun. Expect to hear lots of it; hopefully we’re treated to new oso oso material some time soon.

Catch them at an aftershow on Saturday at Subterranean with fellow Pitchfork performer Dogleg and Retirement Party.

The Weather Station, 4:00 PM, Blue Stage

The Toronto band led by singer-songwriter Tamara Lindeman released one of the best albums of the year back in February with Ignorance (Fat Possum), songs inspired by climate change-addled anxiety. While the record is filled with affecting, reflective lines about loss and trying to find happiness in the face of dread, in a live setting, I imagine the instrumentation will be a highlight, from the fluttering tension of “Robber” to the glistening disco of “Parking Lot”.

Revisit our preview of their Pitchfork Instagram performance from earlier this year. Catch them at an aftershow on Friday at Schubas with Ulna.

Danny Brown, 6:15 PM, Green Stage

The Detroit rapper’s last full-length record was the Q-Tip executive produced uknowhatimsayin¿ (Warp), though he’s popped up a few times since then, on remixes, a Brockhampton album, and TV62, a Bruiser Brigade Records compilation from earlier this year. (He’s also claimed in Twitch streams that his new album Quaranta is almost done.) His sets--especially Pitchfork sets--are always high-energy, as he’s got so many classic albums and tracks under his belt at this point, so expect to hear a mix of those.

Erykah Badu, 8:30 PM, Green Stage

What more can I say? This is the headliner Pitchfork has been trying to get for years, responsible for some of the greatest neo soul albums of all time. There’s not much else to say about Erykah Badu other than she’s the number one must-see at the festival.

[myrecordcollections]

George Clinton, Bootsy Collins and the rest of the Parliament Funkadelic and Rubber Band hydra seem blessed with unlimited inspiration. Clinton, who helps produce and write nearly everything these bands release, taps a — you’ll pardon the expression — mother lode of black popular culture, gathering up all genres of music, humor and pulp fiction. Funkentelechy vs, the Placebo Syndrome is the new “funk opera” by Parliament, while Booty? Player of the Year further elucidates and obfuscates Collins’ deceptively hilarious challenge to modern soul balladry and funk vamping.

Clinton triggers Parliament’s album with a song so hard that bullets bounce off it. “Bop Gun (Endangered Species)” is an R&B you tickled by synthesizer fills and mugged by a gang of ribald trumpets. His lead vocal is both playful and passionate: Otis Redding as gunslinger philosopher. Later, when certain elements of Funkentelecln’s plot grow cumbersome and impenetrable, Clinton blasts away the confusion by simply losing it in the riffing, which peaks on “Flash Light,” a gritty disco digression.

If the name of the main character in Clinton’s latest scenario seems corny at first — he is Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk — it’s only because no one could possibly foresee the multiple puns, wise-cracks and convolutions its creator can wrest from it. From the start, all Parliament Funkadelic music has been enthusiastically excessive, in everything from verbiage to the number of musicians employed. While Funkentelechy is no exception. Clinton’s production work here is atypically light and clear. Whereas in the past he’s usually encouraged the bass and drums to sound murky, to retard the beat and thereby offset the jangle of his raft of hardnosed and Hendrix-inspired guitarists, he’s now developed an invigorating musical and verbal precision. Michael Hampton’s expert guitar solos quiver starkly in the mix, and Clinton even strives to make his own lyrics intelligible — not coherent maybe, but intelligible.

And, if “Funkentelechy” and “Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk (Pay Attention — B3M)” go on too long — the fatal P-Funk flaw — “Wizard of Finance.” which sounds a lot like Graham Central Station, and especially “Bop Gun” display a new rigorousness and brevity.

The dense dance beat of Bootsy? Player of the Year rarely lets up. Floating above the never-say-die drumming, the booming bass and the Rubber Band’s curt horn section is Bootsy Collins’ voice, a lovely, delicate croon that somehow cuts through the instrumental mesmerism like an FM DJ’s ultrasincere inflections infect the airwaves.

Bootsy Collins is the least macho male working in popular music; his pitch is never manipulative or nasty. On “May the Force Be with You” and the loping “Very Yes,” the long love songs that pad Player of the Year, he pushes beyond slick palaver into the area of the touching ballad. Which is nice, but has nothing to do with his magnanimous radicalism. He’s got this notion that absolutely anything — any phrase, surrealistic word association, cracked culture quotation, even any mistake — can be used as a narrative device in his stream-of-funk songs (e.g., this record’s best cut and Collins’ masterpiece to date, “Bootzilla”: “I’m a rhinestone rock star monster of a doll, baby/I’m a doll for all seasons”).

[godspeedmajortom]

I’m fascinated by how variations of Sea Power's “Want to Be Free (Remix)” provide a musical theme for death and endings that follows Harry and his foils throughout Disco Elysium.

The first place you hear it is as “The Field Autopsy” while inspecting the Hanged Man’s body. It's barely recognizable as the original song, though. It's sluggish and muddy and bilious. The piano melody has been lowered and sustained to an ominous funereal organ and combined with deep strings. A lilting viola line in the lush layers of the original "Want to Be Free" is isolated here and contrasts with the low organ, rising like the stench off a corpse. If you do the autopsy first thing as Kim suggests, Harry – freshly, grotesquely awakened from his apocalyptic bender – is not in a much better state than a corpse himself.

The music underscores a visceral scene of death and decay, our introduction to the Hanged Man, the first of Harry's foils. Both Harry and Lely are agents of state-sponsored violence as a cop and mercenary, respectively. They bear similar physical scars from the neglect of the systems they grew up in. They both desperately want to escape the horrorshow of their lives, using drugs and dark fantasies to cope with the terrible things they see and do but finding little more than self-destruction in the nihilism. The Bloated Corpse of a Drunk taking the Hanged Man's place in Harry's first night dream makes their connection explicit: you should be dead, Harry. This may as well have been you.

The next place you hear a variant of "Want to Be Free" is in the washerwoman's shack in the fishing village. “Live With Me” is wistful and melancholic. The gentle piano and cooing vocals evoke the wind and waves on the bay, an escape calling outside the salt-rimed shack. But this is a place of death, or at least its potential, as the return of the high viola from "The Field Autopsy" reminds us. This is where Ruby hid when Harry's arrival made her fear for her life, where she contemplated killing herself if things got even worse. This is where Harry can end up if no one vouches for him at the RCM tribunal finale, where his wounds will grow infected without medical care, where there is little left to do but return to drinking and wait to die.

But true to the song title, the shack also offers Harry the possibility of learning to with himself as he emerges from his bender. Here is a mirror free from the damage and trauma of attempting to destroy himself where he can reflect on who he was and who he wants to become. He can choose to keep or let go of his past coping/defense mechanisms like his facial hair and The Expression. He can choose to embrace or reject the self-defeating fantasy of fascism. The shack marks a midpoint of the game, when the hangover has worn off but before the case is closed. So "Live With Me" scores the balance between potential endings: abandonment or acceptance, relapse or recovery, death or life. Harry breathes in the sea air, breathes it back out, and takes another step.

I didn’t realize this until a recent replay, but “Live With Me” also plays when you visit the Working Class Woman to notify her of her husband’s death. Since this is an optional sidequest, I understand why they didn't create original music for it. But they didn't reuse "Rue de Saint-Gislaine", the song for the rest of the Capeside Apartments (including the Smoker on the Balcony's apartment when you talk to the Sunday Friend). The Working Class Husband is another mirror for Harry who has met his end, and "Live With Me" plays to mourn him.

Victor Méjean died from an accident while inebriated, a fate that also could have befallen Harry on a previous drinking binge. The striking thing about Victor's death is how easily he could have been overlooked and forgotten. He died at the end of a pier in a fenced off, abandoned part of town. His wife wasn't concerned about his days-long absence. It's only by virtue of Can Opening and Jamrock Shuffling that Harry will know about or find him. Victor literally and figuratively died slipping through the cracks – of the rotted boardwalk, yes, but also of any sort of social safety net. This is what happens to alcoholics in Revachol. This is what will happen to Harry if he continues drinking and hasn't built his own personal safety net with Kim or Cuno to prevent the RCM from abandoning him. As Harry informs Billie of her husband's death, it's only natural for him to think of his own possible endings, and the soundtrack reflects that.

The final version of the song you hear is “Burn, Baby, Burn” blasting from Sad FM on the boat ride to the Sea Fortress to find the Hanged Man's killer and Harry's last dark reflection: Dros, The Deserter. Dros shares Harry's penchant for clinging to political ideology to give meaning to his life and obsessing over women he can't be with. He lives in bitter isolation, refusing to move beyond the failures of the past, his personal shortcomings and the evils of the world alike. He's emblematic of yet another possible outcome for Harry: not literal death, but despair-induced stagnation that leaves one living like a ghost in the mortal realm.

By the time Harry gets in the boat to the island, his fate at the end of the game is set. The RCM (specifically Jean) has all they need to decide whether to accept or abandon their prodigal lieutenant-yefreitor. Should his former partners leave him, Harry can return to the shack and the circle of drunks who have also given up on life. Or he can return to the island, where he would take Dros' place as the creepy old man haunting the fortress, scaring children, and staring at the mainland with longing and resentment. But even if Harry returns with his unit to Jamrock, simply resuming his old life will not keep him from returning to the depths of despair. The RCM broke him; the RCM will not save him. Neither outcome helps Harry become a person he truly wants to live with.

"Want to be free/It will last forever/Eternally," croons the boombox on the boat. The lyrics echo the self destruction that Harry sought before the game's events: freedom forever from pain, the ultimate release of death. At least that's what the Ancient Reptilian Brain would see in those words. But there's tension in the lyrics as the desire for freedom and exhortations to "burn, baby, burn" repeat. The bridge offers an alternative vision of verdure not consumed by the disco inferno: "And the trees are green and overhanging/Feather-light, free, and everlasting." Perhaps a less moribund future exists for Harry, even if only in the next world, as a new person.

[lovejustforaday]

2020 year in review - honourable mentions

It’s year-end list season folks. I’m gonna be listing off my top 10 for this year with some tasty reviews, but I also wanted to make an appreciation post for a few albums that didn’t make the cut, so here’s a collection of mini reviews for five albums that almost made the top 10:

WEST OF EDEN - HMLTD

Main Genres: Art Punk, Glam Punk, Art Pop A decent sampling of: Dark Cabaret, Progressive Pop, Synth Punk, Post-Punk, Punk Blues

West of Eden is what I imagine what happens when a bunch of theatre kids become punk rockers. I had no idea who HMLTD were before I checked them out this year on a whim, and boy am I glad I did. This is very eclectic punk music with pop hooks and a lot of influence from cabaret and musical theatre. Definitely the kind of album where the artist throws everything at the wall to see what sticks, so it’s a mixed bag, but there’s a lot of pay off too. “The West Is Dead” is a wondrously flamboyant opener, and “Satan, Luella, and I” is a such a massive song, with a brilliant clash of aesthetics that is one part wild west, one part gothic, and one part broadway fanfare. Also I swear they’re sampling a vocaloid voice track on “Why?” so that’s something. Check this album out if you wanna get weird. 8/10

Highlights: “Satan, Luella, & I”, “The West Is Dead”, “Where’s Joanna?”, “To The Door”

FUTURE NOSTALGIA – DUA LIPA

Main Genres: Nu-Disco, Dance Pop A decent sampling of: Funktronica, Synth Pop

Ironically, 2020 has been a really big year for nu-disco even though we can’t go out to the clubs. Likewise, this somehow ended up only being my second favourite disco/pop crossover project this year, but this is still a great album and the singles are easily the best thing to dominate the charts this year. If Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? is classy, sensual, and soulful, than Future Nostalgia is spunky and free-spirited, like the perfect soundtrack to a night out with the girls. Dua Lipa has really proven she’s a force to be reckoned with in the pop world, and I’m glad she’s starting to approach the level of stardom of artists like Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande who frankly I think she’s starting to really outperform musically. The last two tracks standout as easily being the weakest, although unlike some man-children I’m not mad at the lyrics of “Boys Will Be Boys”; it’s just a weak song musically, but not enough to make me forget how much the rest of this kicks ass. Honestly, it’s a crime that I can’t be drunk off my ass shouting the lyrics to “Hallucinate” in a gay bar right now as I’m writing this, but I digress. Very good album, proud of Dula Peep. 8/10 Highlights: “Hallucinate”, “Break My Heart”, “Don’t Start Now”, “Levitating”

SILVER LADDERS – MARY LATTIMORE

Main Genres: Ambient A decent sampling of: Post-Minimalism, New Age, Electroacoustic

I checked out this album because it was co-produced by Neil Halstead of Slowdive (my all-time favourite band), and I didn’t know what to expect from the process of a shoegaze giant producing an album of instrumental harp music. Thankfully, I’m happy to report that the end result is both unconventional and beautifully mesmerizing. Mary Lattimore’s Silver Ladders is a heavenly ambient album comprised mostly of just gently plucked harps, warm reverb, and the occasional addition of sparse bass and synths. Lattimore’s harp work is intricate but subtle, and the songs make a lot of good use of the space between notes, especially on the title track “Silver Ladders”, a haunting siren song that ends in a crescendo of shimmering echoes. I find the shorter ambient pieces on the album work a lot better than the two darker, longer pieces “Til A Mermaid Drags You Under” and “Don’t Look” which I find to be a tad bit dreary. Still, like all good ambient music, this entire project is a lot more than just ‘background music’ and it really captures the imagination of the listener. I want to get lost at sea listening to the cold air of Mary Lattimore’s harp, but I’ll gladly settle for listening to Silver Ladders on the bus ride home instead. 8/10

Highlights: “Silver Ladders“, “Sometimes He’s In My Dreams”, “Chop on the Climbout”

SHRINES – ARMAND HAMMER

Main Genres: Abstract Rap, Experimental Rap, East Coast Rap A decent sampling of: Conscious Rap, Hardcore Rap

Definitely my favourite album cover of the year, and it’s a completely real photo of an incident that actually happened so that’s pretty crazy. As for the music, Shrines is a hypnotic, cryptic hip hop album with hard leftist politics and very interesting production that sounds like the sonic manifestation of a head full of cynical thoughts. Billy Woods and Elucid spit rhymes with a lot of poetic frustration, expressing the feeling of utter disenfranchisement by the power systems of classism and racism that dominate their society. The first half of the album is mostly tracks that are energetic like the absolutely ferocious “Leopards”, while later tracks like “Flavor Flav” and “Ramesses II” are mostly mellow and bitter. The beats can be disorienting and confusing, and some of the tracks are kinda formless, so its definitely not an album to dance to, but Shrines is great for a more introspective listen on a late night walk. If I had to pick an album that captured the zeitgeist of 2020, this is probably it. Great music and important subject matter. 8/10

Highlights: “Leopards”, “Dead Cars”, “Flavor Flav”, “Pommelhorse”

ISLAND – OWEN PALLETT

Main Genres: Chamber Folk A decent sampling of: Art Pop, Modern Classical, Ambient

Owen Pallett is an indie folk artist who has had one foot in the sophisticated world of modern classical music for some time now. Likewise, Pallett’s 2020 concept album Island is grand and orchestral with distinct movements. Continuing the saga of his character Lewis from his 2010 LP Heartland, the new album is equally philosophical and complex, telling the story of Lewis being metaphorically stranded after killing his manipulator god at the end of the last album in the saga. The majority of this album is brilliantly nocturnal in a way that is neither creepy nor unsettling, instead conjuring the invigorating fantasy of a mysterious and enchanting night of a full moon. “Paragon of Order” is particularly enchanting, and while this album only sits at #11 on my year-end list, this one track in particular is probably in my top 3 of the year because it’s just so incredibly magical and captivating in a way that feels like it’s lifting me to a heightened sensory experience every time I listen to it. The last few tracks are a little confusing, especially “Lewis Gets Fucked into Space”, taking a somewhat abstract direction that deviates from the gorgeous imagery of the first half that I fell in love with. Nevertheless, Island is an album I’ll want to revisit on nights when I’m feeling excited or inspired. 8/10

Highlights: “Paragon of Order”, “--> (i)”, “Perseverance of The Saints”, “--> (iii)”, “--> (ii)”, “The Sound of The Engines”

[shrimpkardashian]

I have a list of ~900 albums from 2019 that I still want to eventually listen to / review [IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT ALERT]

For this project (already 125+ releases deep), which is just impossibly daunting and makes me head hurt. IDK how to streamline this process or is any “critic” out there really listening to “all” the good music? It’s impossible I guess... BUT needless to say, these have made this list from an even larger pool of music that I either listened to briefly and immediately dismissed or (gasp!) never even came across my radar (radar = many many music blogs I follow via RSS). 

Anyway, because I’ll most likely never get to this (whatever this is, an Xgau parody or something)... Here is the list (please ignore some of my notations/typos):

1 matana roberts, coin coin chapter four 2 jeffrey lewis 3 negativland 4 camedor 5 the darkness 6 jai paul [leak] 7 shikoswe 8 anatolian weapons 9 cakedog, doggystyle 10 carly rae jepsen (LP, plus single w Gryffin) 11 parsnip 12 the comet is coming 13 girl in red 14 ezra furman 15 the kvb 16 freddie gibbs & madlib 17 say sue me (single) 18 denzel curry 19 fatamorgana 20 vivian girls 21 wobbly, monitress 22 helado negro 23 anamanaguchi 24 paul demarinis 25 comet gain 26 personal best 27 king princess, LP? big little lies single 28 marble arch 29 mini dresses 30 matt christensen 31 jade bird 32 black mountain 33 body meat 34 pat, Love Will Find A Way Home 35 acid arab 36 the 83rd 37 common holly 38 wicca phase 39 mark ronson 40 spirit in the room, single 41 rebe, “pienso en ti a todas horas” [just a single?] 42 a giant dog, neon bible cover LP 43 hey collosus 44 moon king (meh/ or *) 45 vanity productions 46 velvet negroni 47 g perico 48 budokan boys 49 skryptor 50 oscar scheller 51 the muffs 52 larry gus 53 these new puritans *** 54 angel olsen 55 bleu nuit 56 meatraffle 57 josephine wiggs 58 jennifer vanilla 59 big|brave 60 rico nasty 61 friendship, dreamin' 62 mike, tears of joy 63 bellrope 64 gbv 65 machìna, archipelago 66 toy, songs of consumption 67 ayankoko 68 the intelligence 69 drahla 70 corridor, junior 71 urochromes 72 david hasselhoff 73 aMAZONDOTCOM 74 kehlani 75 ne-hi EP (final) 76 avey tare 77 bonnie "prince" billy 78 battles 79 snapped ankles 80 mannequin pussy 81 toro y moi, soul trash 82 twen 83 self discovery for social survival comp 84 bad heaven ltd 85 eric frye 86 the mattson 2 87 duncan park 88 pure bathing culture 89 arthur russell, iowa dream 90 wild pink 91 flaming lips 92 pan amsterdam 93 flaural 94 knife wife 95 hannah peel & will burns 96 klein 97 meat puppets 98 tnght 99 james ferraro 100 royal trux / ariel pink 101 new rain duets 102 black marble 103 sui zhen 104 liam the younger 105 the mountain goats, welcome to passaic 106 frank hurricane and hurricanes of love 107 sebadoh 108 xylouris white 109 lindstrøm 110 franck vigroux 111 joyero 112 dorian electra  113 ride 114 crumb, jinx 115 nonconnah 116 cup, spinning creature 117 brutus 118 bjarki 119 khotin 120 alexander tucker 121 gunna 122 operator music band 123 tony molina 124 nanami ozone 125 sad planets 126 bemydelay 127 laurie anderson et al, songs from the bardo 128 teebs 129 deerhunter, timebends 130 tr/st (2 LPs) 131 dolores catherino 132 liturgy 133 floating points 134 sasami, LP + xmas EP 135 trikorder23 136 moor mother 137 have a nice life 138 la dispute 139 lingua ignota 140 lina tullgren 141 earl sweatshirt 142 entrail 143 alexander noice 144 shock narcotic 145 rakta 146 munya 147 el drugstore 148 buck gooter 149 caribou, single - more? 150 rosenau & sanborn 151 kevin abstract 152 pile 153 e for echo 154 animal collective, new psycho actives vol. 2 + live album 155 harlem 156 sudan archives 157 lil peep, posthumous ep 158 young guv, i and ii 159 orville peck 160 75 dollar bill 161 institute 162 tove lo 163 the chocolate watchband 164 foie gras, holy hell 165 french vanilla 166 chuck cleaver 167 kollaps 168 spirits having fun 169 game 170 badgirl$ 171 medhane 172 alberich 173 show me the body 174 the night watch, an embarrassment of riches 175 inus, western spaghettification 176 pregoblin, singles? 177 ra ra riot 178 de lorians 179 kool keith 180 kaspia & stride 181 glen hansard 182 dpeee 183 berlin taxi 184 foghorn 185 ionnalee 186 american sharks 187 sitcom, dust single 188 pip blom 189 j balvin & bady 190 fenella 191 tanya tagaq 192 sean o'hagan 193 j robbins 194 peter ivers (comp) 195 neon indian, not sure if single is part of larger proj? 196 triad god 197 yeule 198 roland tings 199 schoolboy q 200 ava luna EP 201 fried eggs 202 drugdealer 203 half japanese 204 todd anderson-kunert 205 emily reo 206 christelle bofale 207 brion starr 208 jan jelinek (reissue) 209 peaer 210 devin townsend 211 vik 212 young m.a 213 default genders 214 night lovell 215 rocketship 216 kim gordon 217 ellen arkbro 218 george clanton and nick hexum [single?] 219 the minus 5 220 penguin cage 221 felicia atkinson 222 take offense 223 moon duo 224 chemical brothers 225 nef the pharaoh 226 daniel norgren 227 unkle 228 pup (?) 229 baroness 230 velvet bethany 231 resavoir 232 gruff rhys 233 lana del ray 234 empath 235 burial and the bug, flame 2 236 russian baths 237 quelle chris 238 corpse flower 239 roy montgomery [reissue] 240 clinic 241 a.g. cook, [single] 242 why? 243 beck 244 francis lung 245 thom yorke 246 warmduscher 247 uv-tv 248 aa bondy 249 max richter, ad astra ost 250 younghusband 251 stereo total 252 julie's haircut 253 aa matheson 254 eartheater 255 kelly moran 256 mana (seven steps behind) 257 c.h.e.w. 258 sarah mary chadwick 259 midsommar ost 260 beabadoobee 261 life, a picture of good health 262 dumb, club nites 263 dame dolla 264 endless boogie 265 burna boy 266 lungbutter 267 wand 268 future punx 269 yves jarvis 270 kim petras [LP, halloween EP] 271 bts world 272 pikelet 273 panda bear, single 274 samiyam 275 red river dialect 276 ryan pollie 277 ryuichi sakamot (reissue) 278 jackie mendoza 279 dark blue 280 jay som 281 stephen mallinder 282 neutrals, kebab disco 283 foodman 284 capitol, dream noise 285 new pornographers 286 mark korven, the lighthouse ost 287 gauche 288 the japanese house 289 cave (re-issue) 290 ybn cordae 291 the vacant lots 292 arwen 293 rhucle 294 lil b, @ least 2 releases? 295 tea service 296 chai 297 black pumas 298 program, show me 299 marika hackman 300 sonny and the sunsets 301 lillie mae 302 mean jeans 303 the stroppies 304 poppies 305 twin shadow 306 vanishing twin *** 307 portrayal of guilt [EP + split single] 308 lucki [2 lps] 309 absolutely free 310 girl band 311 black midi 312 torche 313 perfume (best of) 314 white denim 315 clipping 316 the hu 317 big business 318 metro crowd 319 ex-vöid, 7" 320 broken social scene 321 lil pump 322 uranium club 323 doon kanda 324 hesitation wounds 325 sorry girls 326 bibio 327 red mass 328 the shins, single 329 lil keed 330 yeasayer 331 bts / blackpink KPOP 332 galen tipton, fake meat 333 the world, reddish 334 lanark artefax, ep 335 ladytron 336 g.s., schray 337 just mustard [single, more?] 338 mdou moctar 339 rangers, spirited discussion 340 tyson meade 341 dj nate 342 kelly lee owens 343 bambara 344 kilo kish 345 lusine 346 ralph heidel / homo ludens 347 psychic graveyard 348 homeshake 349 wives, so removed 350 proto idiot 351 let’s eat grandma, ost ep 352 foals 353 caroline shaw & attacca quartet 354 juan waters 355 mount eerie with julie doiron 356 mestozi 357 patio 358 oh baby, the art of sleeping alone 359 earth 360 haybaby 361 anna meredith 362 the caretaker (6) 363 rich brian 364 sunn o))), [two LPs] 365 alessandro cortini 366 ty segall 367 injury reserve 368 elucid 369 budos band 370 tim hecker 371 waqwaq kingdom 372 william doyle *** 373 innercity ensemble 374 filthy friends 375 prurient 376 shlohmo 377 bon iver 378 sean henry 379 yeesh 380 faye webster 381 megan thee stallion 382 squid, town centre 383 simulation (hausau mountain) 384 flying lotus 385 horse jumper of love 386 rap, export 387 lansky jones 388 the gonks 389 cate lebon 390 rome fortune 391 chain cult 392 empty set 393 big thief (2 lp's) 394 laura cannell [and polly wright album ?] or is there just a laura c album too ? }} 395 froth 396 thugwidow 397 organ tapes 398 the new pornographers 399 zonal 400 bbg baby joe 401 whitney 402 guards 403 anemone 404 sheer mag 405 nots 406 fujiya & miyag 407 kool aid, family portrait ep 408 frankie cosmos 409 kaputt 410 quelle chris 411 operators 412 marco benevento 413 elvis depressedly 414 school of language, 45 415 rob burger 416 pozi 417 redd kross 418 randy randall 419 yatta 420 hide, hell is here 421 bobby krlic, midsommar ost 422 planet england 423 kev brown 424 robedoor 425 tropical fuck storm 426 haram, 9/11 ep 427 candy, super-stare single 428 sly and the family drone 429 kevin morby 430 porches, rangerover [single] 431 odae 432 pottery 433 saint pepsi 434 slowthai 435 iggy pop 436 swans 437 iLOVEMAKONNEN 438 mukqs 439 feels 440 luke temple 441 oli xl 442 orphan swords 443 post pink 444 deli girls 445 nilüfer yanya 446 idk, is he real? 447 interpol 448 priests 449 galcher lustwerk 450 smokepurpp, various? 451 kindness 452 ex hex 453 sampa the great 454 methyl ethel 455 ellis, the fuzz ep 456 jeanines s/t 457 water from your eyes 458 twin peaks 459 sam cohen 460 fontaines dc 461 spiral stairs 462 the hecks 463 nicola ratti 464 four tet, various (inc. "wingdings" alter ego side proj) 465 holy ghost 466 half stack 467 cherubs 468 juana molina, forfun EP 469 jpegmafia 470 bedouine 471 fury 472 melvins/flipper 473 the curls 474 izambard 475 heart eyes 476 drinking boys and girls choir 477 big search 478 glenn branca 479 rose elinor dougall 480 bat for lashes 481 young knives, [single, more? 482 hot chip 483 alex lahey 484 hemlock ernst & kenny segal 485 dj seinfeld 486 joni void 487 rema rema 488 spencer tweedy 489 trash kit 490 dry cleaning [2 ep's] 491 mega bog *** 492 saudade 493 monster rally 494 wilco 495 chromatics, LP + EP 496 slayyyter 497 maral 498 blarf 499 pernice brothers 500 la neve 501 marie davidson 502 tredici bacci 503 deathprod 504 lowly 505 russian circles 506 angel witch 507 fires were shot 508 amy o 509 q da fool 510 clams casino 511 automelodi 512 paradox 513 dababy (2) 514 david kilgour 515 missy elliot 516 baby smoove 517 boris 518 thanks for coming 519 yves tumor [single w/] 520 ΜΜΜΔ 521 falcon/falkland 522 noel wells 523 ecstatic vision 524 amyl & the sniffers 525 barrie 526 bianca scout 527 katie dey 528 prince rama 529 control top 530 duster, comp + new LP 531 foxes in fiction 532 slowthai x denzel curry [single] 533 the murlocs 534 plaid 535 ela orleans 536 gobby 537 cfm 538 carla del forna 539 pale spring 540 pixx 541 širom 542 lightning bolt 543 cate lebon & deerhunter 544 channel tres 545 sigrid 546 help, s/t 547 shellac, live 548 crack cloud, pain olympics (ongoing) / s/t (2018) 549 notes underground 550 fat white family *** 551 gloop 552 equiknoxx 553 nakhane 554 czarface meets ghostface 555 the rubinoos 556 shannon lay 557 tim heidecker 558 droneflower 559 john vanderslice 560 your old droog 561 bats, alter nature 562 zvi 563 justus proffit 564 lower dens 565 anna of the north 566 yg 567 holly herndon 568 good fuck 569 clark, single 570 charli xcx 571 the nativist 572 low life 573 jonsi & alex somers 574 kazu 575 günter schickert 576 odonis odonis 577 kelsey lu (+ remix EP) 578 young thug 579 thaiboy digital 580 hatchie 581 hiro kone 582 cocorosie 583 sabiwa 584 oh sees 585 rex orange county 586 311 587 erland cooper 588 jtamul 589 the brilliant tabernacle 590 free love, extreme dance anthems 591 jeff lynne's elo 592 dutch courage 593 booji boys 594 giggs 595 ceschi 596 inter arma 597 psychic sounds ensemble 598 eli kezsler EP 599 thelma 600 haiku salut 601 julia jacklin 602 otoboke beaver 603 colin self 604 mark mulcahy 605 rosalia, single "a pale" more? 606 chris lott 607 royal trux 608 weyes blood 609 mikal cronin 610 hissing tiles 611 grace ives 612 vic bang 613 nick cave 614 sugar world [single] 615 herzog 616 offset 617 mike adams at his honest weight 618 real life buildings 619 aldous harding 620 pye corner audio 621 doja cat 622 bleached 623 book of shame 624 kate davis 625 i was a king 626 pendant, through a coil 627 joseph arthur 628 great grandpa, four of arrows 629 modern nature 630 stef chura 631 spaza, s/t great 632 the alchemist 633 pond 634 aiden baker, etc 635 kirin j. Callinan 636 possible humans 637 greys 638 kizuna ai 639 little simz 640 big bend 641 membranes, what nature gives… 642 young nudy 643 car seat headrest (live) 644 seahawks 645 dumbhop's party 646 julien chang 647 pacific yew 648 pharmakon 649 lomelda 650 versing 651 olden yolk 652 mekons 653 the dream syndicate 654 the gotobeds 655 amy klein 656 bABii 657 bill callahan 658 grlwood 659 van dale 660 ziúr 661 delicate steve 662 debby friday 663 dehd 664 south city hardware 665 kesha 666 (sandy) alex g 667 computer slime 668 fka twigs 669 rob halford, celestial 670 dean hurley 671 school of language 672 nicolas godin 673 blue hawaii 674 leggy 675 ceremony 676 his name is alive 677 third eye blind 678 sadgirl 679 ariana grande 680 skepta 681 dylan moon 682 jay mitta 683 the drums 684 kero kero bonito, ep 685 charly bliss 686 lee renaldo etc 687 rina mushonga 688 ulla straus 689 cherushii & maria minerva 690 slaughter beach, dog 691 maps 692 dj shadow 693 tool LOL 694 diiv 695 pixies 696 cuco 697 black peaches 698 subhumans 699 gurr 700 cashmere cat 701 brockhampton 702 fire-toolz 703 lambchop, LP + EP 704 messthetics 705 neuland 706 westkust 707 haelos 708 sturgill simpson 709 maria usbeck 710 king gizzard (2) 711 earthgang 712 paranoid london 713 fet.nat 714 bethlehem steel 715 neil young with crazy horse 716 tengger 717 guerilla toss 718 spelling 719 lizzo 720 wiki 721 dr00p, mkULTRAHD 722 ghost orchard 723 jane weaver 724 usa/mexico 725 carl stone 726 richard dawson *** 727 rafael toral 728 test dept 729 sacred paws 730 big krit 731 mallrat 732 jenn champion 733 moE/Mette Rasmussen, tolerancia picante 734 facs 735 yung lean, single (blue cup) and ep, more? 736 pissgrave 737 moodyman 738 sing sinck, sing 739 tyler the creator 740 sleater-kinney 741 dean blunt, zushi 742 cursive 743 barker, utlity 744 gemma 745 octavian 746 pronoun 747 girl ray 748 julia shapiro 749 nodding god 750 daniel saylor 751 jakob ogawa 752 richard youngs 753 diät 754 w00dy 755 omar souleyman 756 vōx EP 757 topdown dialectic 758 penelope islea 759 gbv 760 glass beach 761 james hoff, hobo ufo 762 euglossine 763 dream ritual 764 terry allen 765 office culture 766 ghostie, devour 767 beat detectives 768 red channel 769 octo octa 770 julien baker [toyko single] 771 shackleton as "tunes of negation" 772 sons of raphael 773 lena raine 774 fitted, first fits 775 velf 776 cvn 777 black country, new road, [2 singles only?] 778 chief keef 779 andrew bird, LP and EP 780 tamaryn 781 vagabon 782 zelooperz 783 brian jonestown massacre 784 angel dust 785 pere ubu 786 vatican shadow, church... 787 spencer radcliffe 788 mr muthafuckin exquire 789 earth to mickey 790 beak> 791 byron westbrook 792 major murphy 793 nicole yun 794 the divine comedy 795 sote, parallel persiao 796 the radio dept. 797 prince daddy & the hyena 798 mudhoney 799 truth club 800 shura 801 underworld, drift 802 lil texas 803 that dog 804 gary wilson / r. stevie moore 805 divino nino 806 spiral heads 807 claire cronin 808 devendra banhart 809 c.y.m. EP 810 dude york 811 sangri 812 vegyn [2 lp's?] 813 brooke candy 814 caroline polachek 815 hurt valley 816 O.L.I.V.I.A, modo avion 817 ziúr 818 pepper mill rondo, it's christmas time 819 ben vida 820 nick hexum/george clanton 821 meara o'reilly 822 tyler holmes, devil 823 blood incantation 824 guenter schlienz 825 gavilán rayna russom 826 loraine james *** 827 lithics, Wendy Kraemer EP 828 navel, ambient 2, in space 829 the proper ornaments 830 jon hopkins & kelly lee owens, single 831 julianna barwick 832 park hye-jin 833 bea1991 834 men i trust 835 erika de casier 836 ducks unlimited 837 lyzza 838 refused 839 jim o'rourke, to magnetize ... 840 analemma, 2 singles on a comp? 841 zack fox, "the bean kicked in" 842 real life rock n roll band 843 prefab sprout 844 daniel lopatin, uncut gems ost 845 kaytranada 846 the voidz, 2 song single + video? 847 grandaddy, single (add scissors icon) 848 dark thoughts, must be nice 849 loose nukes 850 sam mallet 851 very good, adulthood 852 henge, nothing head 853 kaleidobolt 854 nebula, holy shit 855 terminal cheesecake 856 uzeda 857 wet tuna 858 sean mccann 859 black dresses, love and... (2nd LP) 860 nefew 861 taylor swift ??? 862 lala lala, the lamb 863 jenny lewis 864 33EMYBW 865 blood orange, angel's pulse 866 caterina barbieri *** 867 yusu 868 white reaper 869 rozi plain 870 bamboo, daughters of the sky 871 seragina steer 872 clear channel, hot fruit 873 patience, dizzy spells 874 mope grooves, desire 875 current affairs, object & subject 875 comfort, not passing 876 bill orcutt 877 bonnie baxter 878 carl stone 879 thurston moore 880 alameda 5 881 john zorn 882 the membranes, what nature gives... 883 meemo comma 884 ana roxannne 885 whistling arrow, s/t 886 dis fantasy 887 giant swan, s/t 888 buck young, buck ii 889 abdu ali 890 ifriqiyya électrique 891 $hit and $hine, doing drugs, selling drugs 892 ghold 893 theon cross 894 yao bobby & simon grab 895 solange *sure whatever ok 896 the comet is coming 897 the utopia strong, s/t 898 karenn, grapefruit regret 899 brìghde chaimbeul 900 nav, bad habits 901 chance, big day 902 nostalgia critic's the wall 903 uboa, the origin of my depression 904 hobo johnson 905 ana frango elétrico 906 dorian electra

[ace-malarky]

ten songs tag #1

Rules: List the ten songs you’ve been listening to a lot lately and tag ten people.

 from @zmlorenz but hey listen mostly I’ve been listening to Panic! and FOB so like. we’re gonna switch it up just a little

 So just from the music that’s on my phone, on account of that’s where I mostly listen to music and so I probably have heard them all fairly recently and wow ok I need to go plug my phone in.

1. Pride, American Authors

2. Rich Youth, Haylel Kiyoko

3. Tamatoa’s Lair, Mark Mancina/Moana

4. Don’t You Know Who I Think I Am?, Fall Out Boy

5. Thunder, Imagine Dragons

6. What’s Going On, The Mowgli’s

7. Only Mama Knows, Paul McCartney

8. Celloopa, The Piano Guys

9. From A Mountain In The Middle Of The Cabins, Panic! at the Disco

10. The Robot Band Tune, Tomas Dvorak/Machinarium

 That’s fair. I seem to remember hearing some Skerryvore and Treacherous Orchestra in the last few days, but I can’t remember which songs and my phone is not elucidating me. Dumb apps unable to do everything I want them to.

[dustedmagazine]

Trash Kit — Horizon (Upset the Rhythm)

The title track for Horizon takes shape out of a mesh of trebly, hyper clear guitar, as Rachel Aggs executes complicated, off-kilter patterns that sound faintly West African. It’s joined by a syncopated, nearly melodic patter of drumming — that’s Rachel Horwood — that moves over skins of a variety of timbres, singing, if drums can sing, in a way that relates but doesn’t conform to what the guitar is doing. The actual singing, more of a chant though it blossoms sometimes into a dizzy, blurring harmony, slants the whole enterprise towards post-punk. It is a complicated, multi-layered, fascinating mix of styles, warmer and more spacious than post-punk, punchier and terser than afro-beat.

This is Trash Kit’s third album, recorded somehow in the intervals between other projects. (Aggs plays key roles in three very significant musical outfits — Shopping and Sacred Paws in addition to Trash Kit.) The bass player is new, with Gill Partington stepping in for Ros Murray, and the sound is tight and luminous. Its spare architectural framework fills out, at surprising intervals, by lush, intoxicating sounds: the string section at the end of “Coasting,” the exhilarating vocal harmonies of “Sunset.”

Often, the cuts start with bare drumming, elucidating an element of Trash Kit’s sound which is both foundation and embellishment. Horwood adds a djembe to her standard kit, giving her fills an extra bit of range and punch; there’s a sharp plinking resonance that pops out of skittering fills. That’s one reason certain songs sound African. The other is the warm, lucid lyricism of the guitar lines, which cascade in liquid waterfalls, curl under themselves and roll again. Aggs and Horwood both sing, sometimes playing catch with terse bits of wordplay (the call and response in “Dislocate”), others uniting in beguiling consonance, twining in and out of harmony (as in “Window”).

The songs often seem made up of sharp, conflicting parts, that come together at angles, fitting into the spaces left by one another. “Disco,” for instance, interposes a staccato dance of bass notes atop continuous rolls of drumming; you get the sense of the bass jumping from white space to white space like a hiker stepping rock to rock across a stream. The guitar, when it comes in, jitters and jangles in bright agitation. The saxophone blurts hot notes into the stops. The cut, which goes on for nearly seven minutes, feels almost acrobatic in the way it balances contradictory energies, letting each player pursue her own ends without stomping on anyone else. Yet while “Disco” is constructed of bright pointillist pin pricks, it has a warm swaying hedonism. And this is, maybe the thrill of Trash Kit, its knife edge balance of precision and sensuality. You want to dance. You’re afraid you’ll hurt yourself.  What could be more exciting than that?

[onestowatch]

30 Artists to Watch on Tour This Summer 2019

Break out your sunblock! The spring rains have gone, school is out, baseball season is in full swing, and the beach is calling your name. That’s right, it’s finally summertime. However, with all the barbecues and camping trips come some important decisions to make. Hundreds of killer up and coming artists are hitting the road to show their performance chops on the festival circuit or at your local rock club, and you only have about 90 days to squeeze in as much live music as you can before it’s time to buy your next set of textbooks. Lucky for you, we’ve got you covered. 

Your friends over at Ones to Watch have compiled a list of 30 must-see acts on the road this season, so just pour yourself a glass of lemonade and decide which of these shows is going to be the highlight to your summer.

+ Follow & press play on our custom playlist before your next show!

PUP

Genre: Anthemic alt-rock that’ll have you throwing your middle fingers up

These Toronto rockers embody defiance in every facet of their being – in fact, their name is an acronym for “Pathetic Use of Potential.” How punk rock is that? Your mom might not understand you, but the crowd at these shows in the wake of their 2019 release Morbid Stuff sure will.

Grab tickets!

Jade Bird

Genre: Immaculately written folk-pop with entrancing vocals

The release of Jade Bird’s self-titled debut album in April 2019 had the indie music scene stunned by the unassuming Brit’s poignant lyrics and old soul vocals. The successful release saw the spunky 21-year-old landing a spot supporting Father John Misty and Jason Isbell and The 400 Unit on their co-headlining tour along with a slew of festival dates.

Grab tickets!

Moneybagg Yo

Genre: Hardcore rap over relentless trap beats

Memphis, Tennessee native Moneybagg Yo released his raucous sophomore 43VA HEARTLESS album in May 2019. Praised for his dedication to grinding out content (Moneybagg has released ten mixtapes with 12+ tracks each since 2016, in addition to his two LPs), the rapper landed a support slot on Wiz Khalifa’s 2019 ‘The Decent Exposure Tour’ alongside Playboi Carti and French Montana.

Grab tickets!

Denzel Curry

Genre: Fervent rap characterized by political lyrics and booming hooks

Denzel Curry has been bubbling under the surface of the rap scene since his first mixtapes dropped in 2012. Known to be outspoken on political issues like police brutality, the Floridian gained further notoriety with a viral cover of anti-establishment rock group Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls on Parade.” Curry has a jam-packed summer planned, with dates supporting Billie Eilish, festival appearances, and a series of shows with $uicideboy$.

Grab tickets!

Dead Horses

Genre: Down-home folk lush with vocal harmonies and springy mandolin

Dead Horses’ most recent album, My Mother the Moon, navigates a wealth of difficult topics like mental health, familial displacement, and opioid addiction via raw vocals and filigree strings. Having released two singles in 2019 to positive reviews, the folk duo is hitting the road for series of dates this summer, including one show supporting The Who on their ‘Moving On! Tour.’

Grab tickets!

Cuco

Genre: Bilingual dream pop perfect to ease your hangover

Los Angeles-based heartthrob Cuco is rising quickly to the top. After the release of his genre-bending Chiquito EP last year, the 19-year-old secured a high profile record deal with Interscope. Cuco has a busy summer planned, with 17 US headlining dates and one festival date, so be sure to catch his unique blend of hip-hop and dream pop while the sun is still shining.

Grab tickets!

Chase Atlantic

Genre: Titanic alt-pop imbued with hip-hop influence

Ones to Watch is beyond thrilled to present Australian powerhouse Chase Atlantic’s summer tour. The 3-piece band defies categorization, drawing influences from acts ranging from Tame Impala to The Weeknd. With three singles already released this year, you can be sure that Chase Atlantic is brewing up something exciting – see for yourself what they’ve got in the works when they stop by your city.

Grab tickets!

Kim Petras

Genre: High-energy pop that’s the soundtrack to Pride Month

German songstress Kim Petras has been on an absolute tear this year, releasing a whopping nine singles in the lead up to the release of her hotly-anticipated project, Clarity, hitting shelves on June 28. The ethereal seductress will be finishing up the US leg of her ‘Broken Tour’ at the beginning of this summer before returning home to Europe for a series of festival dates.

Grab tickets!

Sigrid

Genre: Inventive electro-pop drawing influence from disco and R&B

Sigrid KO’d the pop world this year with her banger-packed debut album Sucker Punch, which garnered critical acclaim from sources like Pitchfork and Rolling Stone. The rising star will be hopping across the Atlantic all summer, playing stints in the UK, the US, and her native Norway.

Grab tickets!

Slayyyter

Genre: Unapologetically promiscuous pop made to shake the club

St. Louis native Slayyyter built herself a devoted following via SoundCloud and Twitter before gaining widespread acclaim for her earth-shaking style of dance pop. The femme fatale has already had momentous 2019, highlighted by her provocative singles “Mine” and “Daddy AF,” and an upcoming collaboration with Azealia Banks, on top of a nearly sold-out debut headline tour.

Grab tickets!

Snail Mail

Genre: Indie rock sporting dynamic vocals and shades of punk

Lindsey Jordan began her Snail Mail project while in high school, eventually leveraging her deft songwriting and entrancing voice to score a record deal at the tender age of 18. Having supported artists like Girlpool on tour, Snail Mail hits the road this summer as a headliner in order to steal hearts with her carefully curated brand of melodrama.

Grab tickets!

Matt Maeson

Genre: Soul-baring indie-folk that revels in grey areas

Nobody can tell a story quite like Matt Maeson. The singer-songwriter has had a tumultuous life, struggling with drug addiction and spending time in prison, but has emerged on the other side with a unique perspective on life that he expertly elucidates through his work. Ones to Watch is delighted to present his ‘The Day You Departed Tour’ this summer.

Grab tickets!

LANY

Genre: Hooky, synth-driven alternative pop

LANY has perfected the art of weaving together synths, vocals, and infectious beats to articulate emotions that words can’t describe. If their latest album, Malibu Nights, is anything to go by, experiencing their expansive wall of sound live should top your list of summer to-dos.

Grab tickets!

Clairo

Genre: Minimalist indie-pop with enchanting vocals

Clairo’s misty vocals and raw anecdotal lyrics have seen her quickly rise through the ranks of up-and-coming indie prospects. The Boston native released her most recent single “Bags” in May, laying the groundwork for her long-awaited full-length debut IMMUNITY, set to release this August. If you’re lucky enough, you might just get a peek at what’s to come during one of her live sets this summer.

Grab tickets!

Mansionair

Genre: Incorporeal indie-electronica that will have you floating

Mansionair gained notoriety for their live performances before the group was even officially formed, with frontman Jack Froggatt’s dreamy vocals drawing crowds to various Brooklyn and Paris clubs. With the addition Alex Nicholls and Lachlan Bostock, the group coalesced and built a resume that includes tours supporting Chvrches and London Grammar – so you can be certain that their live show is not something you want to miss.

Grab tickets!

Scarypoolparty

Genre: Emotive singer-songwriter backed by virtuosic guitar

Alejandro Aranda writes music under the moniker Scarypoolparty, piecing together immaculate vocals with a mosaic of expertly fingerpicked guitar. Gaining notoriety after a stint on the TV series American Idol, the young talent is setting out this July to play rooms across the United States. PLUS, he just announced a massive tour in the fall.

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Chloe Moriondo

Genre: Subdued indie sounds with shimmery vocals

Chloe Moriondo garnered the attention of indie fans everywhere via her YouTube channel, where she began by performing covers from the comfort of her bedroom. Having amassed a following on that platform totaling nearly two million users, the teen singer-songwriter is embarking on a US tour this summer in addition to playing two dates in London.

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HOMESHAKE

Genre: Atmospheric indie with lo-fi synths and R&B flavors

Montreal-based singer-songwriter Peter Sagar began his solo project, HOMESHAKE, in 2014 after performing as a touring member of Mac DeMarco’s band. The artist has since released four full-length albums packed with turgid but meticulous arrangements and complex, R&B-inspired instrumentation. You can catch HOMESHAKE across the western United States this August, touting tracks from his 2019 release Helium.

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Jakob Ogawa

Genre: Smoldering bedroom pop that oozes blissful sensuality

Norwegian crooner Jakob Ogawa specializes in making slow-burning, soulful music that will keep you warm even during a Scandinavian blizzard. Hear him perform his most recent single, “All I Wanna Do,” and other smooth bedroom jams when he plays 11 cities across the US this August.

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PENTAGON

Genre: Earth-shaking K-Pop that’s bringing back the boy band

We all know bands like BTS and BLΛƆKPIИK have shattered international barriers and brought Korean pop music to America. Rocketing up through the ranks of this newly popular genre is PENTAGON, a 9-piece boy band that delivers powerhouse vocals over massive dance beats. K-pop is known for its extravagant live production, so catching the band’s ‘PRISM’ concert tour this summer is a must.

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ViVii

Genre: Glistening indie-pop that builds impenetrable walls of sound

Consisting of husband and wife Emil and Caroline Jonsson, ViVii’s clever approach to songwriting is notable due to its use of instruments not usually heard in pop, including a zither the pair inherited from a deceased babysitter. If you want to see something totally different, catch ViVii on tour in the US or Norway.

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slowthai

Genre: Spitfire rap with no fear of confrontation

English rapper slowthai released his Nothing Great About Britain album this May, a powerful debut that relentlessly critiques an era of British politics marked by the country’s departure from the European Union. If you want a little history lesson on Brexit along with your hip-hop fix, make sure to snag some tickets for one of slowthai’s headline dates or festival appearances while he’s all over the world this summer.

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Ivy Sole and PARISALEXA

Genre: Sultry R&B to set the mood

We’d be remiss to miss either of these R&B queens this summer, so we were thrilled when we found out we could hear both of their silky vocal riffs at the same show. If you’re anywhere near the West Coast during the last week of June, cancel all your plans and bow down.

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Aries

Genre: West Coast hip-hop’s chilled-out cousin

Aries is the epitome of DIY success, growing a cult-like fanbase via his self-directed music videos on YouTube. Boasting earworm hooks and mellow beats, catch Aries live to see why Spotify decided to make him the poster boy of their popular Anti-Pop playlist.

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Jamila Woods

Genre: A verifiable emblem of modern soul

Jamila Woods made a splash before even releasing her debut album when she showcased her irresistibly smoky vocals on the hit track “Blessings” from Chance the Rapper’s GRAMMY-winning Coloring Book. Three years and two albums later, Woods is gearing up to drop some jaws with her lyrical flow on her West Coast summer tour.

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Koffee

Genre: A potent cocktail of Caribbean dancehall and American hip-hop

Koffee is Jamaica’s hottest export, breaking out with her rapturous debut EP in March of this year. Though the five-foot-nothing teen is endearingly bashful offstage, when you experience her authoritative flow this summer you’re going to learn firsthand that nobody knows how to party like a Caribbean.

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Ambar Lucid

Genre: Psychedelic indie with Latin influence

Ambar Lucid is a one-woman bastion of musical prowess, self-taught on a handful of instruments and credited as the sole producer and writer on each of her projects to date. Of New Jersey birth and Mexican/Dominican descent, Lucid often draws on her heritage as inspiration for her work. Catch her buttery vocals in both English and Spanish this summer while she’s on tour with Mon Laferte.

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half·alive

Genre: Alt-funk? Groovecore? You decide

Legend has it that if you cut open each of the members of Long Beach-based trio half·alive, funky jams leak out instead of blood. half·alive makes music that might defy genre, but it will definitely get anyone dancing. They’re playing dates across the US and Australia this summer, and if you happen to be at Lollapalooza, make sure to check out their Ones to Watch-presented aftershow.

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Hippo Campus

Genre: Hooky indie rock perfect for a scenic road trip

Minnesota four-piece group Hippo Campus has developed a recipe consisting of shimmery guitars, eclectic drum beats, and deliciously catchy vocals that will give you the tastiest indie-rock treat every time you switch them on. Go to their show and try not to sing along – we’ll bet the farm that you can’t.

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Alt Nation’s Advanced Placement Tour

Genre: The best in up-and-coming alternative acts

Live Nation and SiriusXM have partnered together to present a 15-city tour featuring our picks for alt-rock bands that are shaking things up in 2019. Starring Bloxx, Warbly Jets, and Hembree, this show will have you clearing out the garage to make space for your band.

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