i've been stuck here for a couple days, trying to figure out how i feel about the opening song on here, but the only concrete feeling i get is that this shouldn't be here. like this cassette art is very adorable, but damn if it doesn't also have that "i made this :)" look to it. but then you put in the cassette, and listen to the first track, and get hit with this densely-arranged belle & sebastian-y jewel of twee pop.
the songs on here would get rerecorded and released on cd later that year (which can be yours right now for only $150!), so i guess it did find a more fitting home for it in time, though the arrangements on those kinda drown out her voice…
Recent Albums
Re: Recent Albums
im a fan of shudder to think's album Funeral at the Movies and I think it is almost end to end great songs, but, the album they released after it might be better?? I am still digesting it, but Get Your Goat is so weird and unusual with these crazy moments of dissonance but also very pretty harmony and this clean integration of synth stuff very briefly, its so unique. I love it ...
For the past month or so I have been getting up to speed with the american industrial scene: factrix, minimal man, tuxedomoon (as a sort of secondary), ike yard and controlled bleeding.. all good, but my favorite so far might be Robert Turman and his record Way Down. it kinda sounds like a precursor to fourth world magazine/monopoly child star searches spencer clark and by extension the skaters' whole thing. idk though, because the compositional ideas and ideals i think are pretty different and it is maybe more by happenstance it sounds like it was recorded thru an ass than by intention. I could be wrong, though. his wife is in the comments of this yt video maybe!!
https://robertturman.bandcamp.com/album/way-down
For the past month or so I have been getting up to speed with the american industrial scene: factrix, minimal man, tuxedomoon (as a sort of secondary), ike yard and controlled bleeding.. all good, but my favorite so far might be Robert Turman and his record Way Down. it kinda sounds like a precursor to fourth world magazine/monopoly child star searches spencer clark and by extension the skaters' whole thing. idk though, because the compositional ideas and ideals i think are pretty different and it is maybe more by happenstance it sounds like it was recorded thru an ass than by intention. I could be wrong, though. his wife is in the comments of this yt video maybe!!
https://robertturman.bandcamp.com/album/way-down
are the party rockers in the room with us right now?
Re: Recent Albums
Some newer additions I quite like.
Colour Yes by Matthew Halsall — I'm a little stuck on Bill Evans. Modal jazz, cool jazz, slower and atmospheric stuff. This particular record is quite moving, often slow. It's not bopping hard, but Halsall as a trumpeter is beautiful and there's a strangely high amount of harp being used in the interplay between phrases here. Trumpet and harp trade off a lot.
Tokyo Classic by Rip Slyme — Picked up in Japan. I only really knew Funkastic from the Earth vs. Funk animutation video, but a lot of this record is actually a bit more slower and contemplative in its melodies. The uptempo numbers are catchy as hell. As far as Japanese rap goes, I don't necessarily listen to a lot, but Rip Slyme has always appealed to me.
Boo-Boo by Flin Flon — Got on recommendation from sinku dearest, it's grown on me over time. I liked its dry dance punk but eventually came to find the vocals endearing. I can't put my finger on it — why does he sound like Neil Cicierega sometimes? The back half is solid as hell; Virgin Arm, Leading Tickles and Happy Adventure are a great trio.
LC by the Durutti Column — I dug it up after finding it on Wikipedia one day as Eno's favourite record, and the entire record is quite moving melancholic postpunk guitar snippets that still sound modern. Though I think my definition of "modern" is ageing; all I mean is, I wouldn't be surprised hearing some of these melodies off The XX, though their debut was in 2009 or so, right?
Colour Yes by Matthew Halsall — I'm a little stuck on Bill Evans. Modal jazz, cool jazz, slower and atmospheric stuff. This particular record is quite moving, often slow. It's not bopping hard, but Halsall as a trumpeter is beautiful and there's a strangely high amount of harp being used in the interplay between phrases here. Trumpet and harp trade off a lot.
Tokyo Classic by Rip Slyme — Picked up in Japan. I only really knew Funkastic from the Earth vs. Funk animutation video, but a lot of this record is actually a bit more slower and contemplative in its melodies. The uptempo numbers are catchy as hell. As far as Japanese rap goes, I don't necessarily listen to a lot, but Rip Slyme has always appealed to me.
Boo-Boo by Flin Flon — Got on recommendation from sinku dearest, it's grown on me over time. I liked its dry dance punk but eventually came to find the vocals endearing. I can't put my finger on it — why does he sound like Neil Cicierega sometimes? The back half is solid as hell; Virgin Arm, Leading Tickles and Happy Adventure are a great trio.
LC by the Durutti Column — I dug it up after finding it on Wikipedia one day as Eno's favourite record, and the entire record is quite moving melancholic postpunk guitar snippets that still sound modern. Though I think my definition of "modern" is ageing; all I mean is, I wouldn't be surprised hearing some of these melodies off The XX, though their debut was in 2009 or so, right?
We don't care what you say but we care what you do.
We’re the invisible entity that looks out for you.
Re: Recent Albums
Been flipping through a few more records passively. Marking them here because maybe you will want to listen to them!
Musik for Insomniaks, vol. 1 by Mark Mothersbaugh — listened to it in the wee hours and found it intriguing and strange. Almost like Circa 2000 by Deporitaz, though I suppose both are sample-based MIDI tracks. The thing is that a lot of tracks off Musik sound strikingly like SNES soundtrack scores, specifically when you get to the XP tracks. Honestly though, over time I came to really like it. I think Lifelong sticks out to me as a favourite here.
Foam by Ulla — Glitch ambient? Sure is. Kinda reminds me of Fuji Grid TV by Vektroid. Didn't keep this, just didn't stick well. I'm working my way through some of this list, backwards.
cendre by fennesz + sakamoto — Ryuichi Sakamoto did a lot of electroacoustic ambient collabs in the mid-00s. This is one of them. Yet it doesn't really cohere the way a good Harold Budd might or Brian Eno's Installations record did, most recently. It ends up being disparate textures coexisting.
かがやき (Kagayaki) by Masakatsu Takagi — This is top of the charts for New Age! And why is that? It's pretty stuff, but it didn't stick with me at all. Like, I wish I liked this record. I want to be the kind of person who likes this record. But in the same way I don't even really like Studio Ghibli, or Mamoru Hosoda (literally, I think I've seen all his movies and remember 0% of any of them, the worst thing I could ever say) — I don't think I'm going to remember this record at all. It's just like pretty smears on a wall.
Vision Creation Newsun by Boredoms — at least the first third of it. It's a little too intense for me, though it's clearly a really competent and exciting record. The more you look into Boredoms, the more intriguing this record is.
The Ambient Collection by the Art of Noise — I found this at a thrift store and the reviews on rym were good, "better than a compilation" — and it really is! It's a really great mix of field noise, downtempo jams on piano, ambient pieces ... it flows together superbly. The Art of Noise have felt quintessentially British to me — I think of Britain in a crisp clean Gill Sans in this record, the same way I think of Britain's countryside with From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.
I've started just bantering with Seraphine about this stuff and exploring suggested catalogues from there. There's really so much music in the world.
Musik for Insomniaks, vol. 1 by Mark Mothersbaugh — listened to it in the wee hours and found it intriguing and strange. Almost like Circa 2000 by Deporitaz, though I suppose both are sample-based MIDI tracks. The thing is that a lot of tracks off Musik sound strikingly like SNES soundtrack scores, specifically when you get to the XP tracks. Honestly though, over time I came to really like it. I think Lifelong sticks out to me as a favourite here.
Foam by Ulla — Glitch ambient? Sure is. Kinda reminds me of Fuji Grid TV by Vektroid. Didn't keep this, just didn't stick well. I'm working my way through some of this list, backwards.
cendre by fennesz + sakamoto — Ryuichi Sakamoto did a lot of electroacoustic ambient collabs in the mid-00s. This is one of them. Yet it doesn't really cohere the way a good Harold Budd might or Brian Eno's Installations record did, most recently. It ends up being disparate textures coexisting.
かがやき (Kagayaki) by Masakatsu Takagi — This is top of the charts for New Age! And why is that? It's pretty stuff, but it didn't stick with me at all. Like, I wish I liked this record. I want to be the kind of person who likes this record. But in the same way I don't even really like Studio Ghibli, or Mamoru Hosoda (literally, I think I've seen all his movies and remember 0% of any of them, the worst thing I could ever say) — I don't think I'm going to remember this record at all. It's just like pretty smears on a wall.
Vision Creation Newsun by Boredoms — at least the first third of it. It's a little too intense for me, though it's clearly a really competent and exciting record. The more you look into Boredoms, the more intriguing this record is.
The Ambient Collection by the Art of Noise — I found this at a thrift store and the reviews on rym were good, "better than a compilation" — and it really is! It's a really great mix of field noise, downtempo jams on piano, ambient pieces ... it flows together superbly. The Art of Noise have felt quintessentially British to me — I think of Britain in a crisp clean Gill Sans in this record, the same way I think of Britain's countryside with From Gardens Where We Feel Secure.
I've started just bantering with Seraphine about this stuff and exploring suggested catalogues from there. There's really so much music in the world.
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We don't care what you say but we care what you do.
We’re the invisible entity that looks out for you.
Re: Recent Albums
I went down a bit of a rabbit hole today. Paralogue user and friend @meri linked this record, ぱんださんようちえん, of which track 5 is doing its very best impression of the Alien 9 ED. It's kind of ... eclectic, though a few tracks I really liked, and I found that it's the product of a full doujin circle who have various attached records and all of whom seem to ended up getting credits as singers or composers in anime and more JP-centric games (Atelier series, etc) when you look at their respective discographies. The main composer died in 2014, kind of young ...
But then in the reviews I found this RYM user who was going through literally everything bermei.inazawa touched and inadvertently dug up this record, あさやけぼーだーらいん, and it's really pretty when you listen to it, though barely anyone has...
The main singer on it, who's been in these doujin circles for literally 20 years now!, mainly posts as a vtuber playing Pikmin or whatever, to 200 views per ep. And I just wondered what the life is like in these doujin circles ... just putting out this art to an unknown crowd, going on with life. There's so much beauty left undiscovered, beauty other people make in their own time, as side projects, for their own sake...
But then in the reviews I found this RYM user who was going through literally everything bermei.inazawa touched and inadvertently dug up this record, あさやけぼーだーらいん, and it's really pretty when you listen to it, though barely anyone has...
The main singer on it, who's been in these doujin circles for literally 20 years now!, mainly posts as a vtuber playing Pikmin or whatever, to 200 views per ep. And I just wondered what the life is like in these doujin circles ... just putting out this art to an unknown crowd, going on with life. There's so much beauty left undiscovered, beauty other people make in their own time, as side projects, for their own sake...
We don't care what you say but we care what you do.
We’re the invisible entity that looks out for you.
Re: Recent Albums
something old, something new…
“The future? Oh, that happened 20 years ago… don’t you remember?”
ever since i listened to usagi-chang superstar i've been poring through everyone that got a release on the short-lived label, and while i could go on about my feelings for all these albums and the artists who made them, i've become more than a bit fixated on this lovely picopop jewel, composed and produced by the creator of the label himself.
i've always adored the album format for how it can transcend simply being a collection of songs into being an experience in its own right, and suzuki akira absolutely gets this too, from the packaging to the flow between tracks. it's such a lightning bolt from start to finish, taking you by the hand and then dragging you along at 220 beats per minute without looking back.
it's so weird to think of this style as probably retrofuturistic by now, because to my y2k brain this is my future. but hey, i've always been a believer in "the future" as a demarcated imaginative space that one can always return to (fun, aesthetic, inextricably intertwined with the era of its birth) more than the consequence of time continuously ticking along (undefined). and i want this future to be mine. i want to stay in this place forever, glittery and sparkly and bondi blue translucent.
so, definitely a 5.0 if i ever come back to rym.
i wonder if i should…
i have plenty more 2s to inflict on the charts…
https://yusakuarai.bandcamp.com/album/-
speaking of album-as-places, this one has been mystifying me lately… even as someone who has listened to a weirdly large amount of ambient, i'm not quite sure how to place this… perhaps somewhere along the lines of saw ii meets montparnasse meets the OFF soundtrack meets suisou by test_void (do not research) but i think there's something more in here too…
in a just world this would be loved my more people, but i say that about a lot of things, huh?
“The future? Oh, that happened 20 years ago… don’t you remember?”
ever since i listened to usagi-chang superstar i've been poring through everyone that got a release on the short-lived label, and while i could go on about my feelings for all these albums and the artists who made them, i've become more than a bit fixated on this lovely picopop jewel, composed and produced by the creator of the label himself.
i've always adored the album format for how it can transcend simply being a collection of songs into being an experience in its own right, and suzuki akira absolutely gets this too, from the packaging to the flow between tracks. it's such a lightning bolt from start to finish, taking you by the hand and then dragging you along at 220 beats per minute without looking back.
it's so weird to think of this style as probably retrofuturistic by now, because to my y2k brain this is my future. but hey, i've always been a believer in "the future" as a demarcated imaginative space that one can always return to (fun, aesthetic, inextricably intertwined with the era of its birth) more than the consequence of time continuously ticking along (undefined). and i want this future to be mine. i want to stay in this place forever, glittery and sparkly and bondi blue translucent.
so, definitely a 5.0 if i ever come back to rym.
i wonder if i should…
i have plenty more 2s to inflict on the charts…
https://yusakuarai.bandcamp.com/album/-
speaking of album-as-places, this one has been mystifying me lately… even as someone who has listened to a weirdly large amount of ambient, i'm not quite sure how to place this… perhaps somewhere along the lines of saw ii meets montparnasse meets the OFF soundtrack meets suisou by test_void (do not research) but i think there's something more in here too…
in a just world this would be loved my more people, but i say that about a lot of things, huh?
Re: Recent Albums
I miss seeing those 2s on rym, mizuki ...
I have a few things I've been paying attention to lately:
- I've been playing through How I Loved You by the Angels of Light. I like Swans, but I kind of prefer this low-key Neil Diamond style, this Gothic forlorn atonement. Several different songs on there brought me to tears at various times.
- I checked out the pre-Broken Social Scene KC Accidental records. The second record (6-12 here) is stronger, but the phone call jam on "Kev's Message for Charlie" has a nice atmosphere through those layers.
We don't care what you say but we care what you do.
We’re the invisible entity that looks out for you.
Re: Recent Albums
I gave some time to Techno Animal's Re-Entry and was disappointed. The first half is long and the beats are repetitive, things which I wouldn't ordinarily complain about. If the sampling didnt feel so dated, these detailed and worked over tracks wouldn't irritate me so much. But no, it blusters away for 10 or 20 minutes, track after track, on really lame or nondescript sounds. The second half with all the atmospheres was better, but not by too much. I feel like if I'd listened to this some years sooner I would have liked it much more. I can't even clearly describe it because it fell out of my mind so fast. I have impressions of a lot of dark atmosphere and noise but it blended together into soup. Sadly, that's how I feel about a lot of dark ambient I listen to nowadays. Never goes anywhere, never amounts to much. Bluh.
After that, I listened to the Porter Ricks/Techno Animal split Symbiotics and it was way, way better. I don't know where all this restraint came from. On Re-entry it felt like they were jerking off in the studio for the whole first hour. Or I suppose blazed out of their minds so they just didn't feel the time they were pissing away. Now they know when to stop a track? I feel like I have to fill in the gap between these releases to get the big picture. Either Porter Ricks enforced some ground rules or they simply got better in the four years between these two records. It's thrumming and minimal and bassy and quite unified, I had a hard time telling whose tracks were whose because I got so into it and had some pleasant surprises, Ionic was an especially good track.
Also I dunno if they were in on it but their record Brotherhood of the Bomb released on 9/11. I hope such a coincidence wasnt wasted.
After that, I listened to the Porter Ricks/Techno Animal split Symbiotics and it was way, way better. I don't know where all this restraint came from. On Re-entry it felt like they were jerking off in the studio for the whole first hour. Or I suppose blazed out of their minds so they just didn't feel the time they were pissing away. Now they know when to stop a track? I feel like I have to fill in the gap between these releases to get the big picture. Either Porter Ricks enforced some ground rules or they simply got better in the four years between these two records. It's thrumming and minimal and bassy and quite unified, I had a hard time telling whose tracks were whose because I got so into it and had some pleasant surprises, Ionic was an especially good track.
Also I dunno if they were in on it but their record Brotherhood of the Bomb released on 9/11. I hope such a coincidence wasnt wasted.
I change my ratings a lot on RYM so every time you see a 2 from me, it could always get better ... or worse ... I'll keep you guessing. Re-entry has lost a whole star since I first heard it!
are the party rockers in the room with us right now?
Re: Recent Albums
Okay, quick post because I'm astonished I'm finding that a proper new Field Mice record came out in 2022 and I missed it. Specifically Overwintering by Lightning in a Twilight Hour.
LiaTH is Wratten's latest rename after Northern Picture Library, Trembling Blue Stars, but the previous releases he did, the records and EPs, sort of only "hinted" at the personnel? Like who is on these? They sound almost like Field Mice but could be different musicians to fit the mold. But this time you look at the personnel and it's Anne-Mari Davies, Robert Wratten, Michael Hiscock. It's these people who defined the Field Mice sound: romantic, melancholic stuff, basic guitar chording on extremely melodic, high-fret basslines. Hiscock wasn't really in the Picture Library or Trembling era, and it was sort of implied he was around on earlier releases but not clear here too.
But in this record you hear it. This is the Field Mice. This is just straight up the Field Mice. Those guys dominate my listening habits, you know?
LiaTH is Wratten's latest rename after Northern Picture Library, Trembling Blue Stars, but the previous releases he did, the records and EPs, sort of only "hinted" at the personnel? Like who is on these? They sound almost like Field Mice but could be different musicians to fit the mold. But this time you look at the personnel and it's Anne-Mari Davies, Robert Wratten, Michael Hiscock. It's these people who defined the Field Mice sound: romantic, melancholic stuff, basic guitar chording on extremely melodic, high-fret basslines. Hiscock wasn't really in the Picture Library or Trembling era, and it was sort of implied he was around on earlier releases but not clear here too.
But in this record you hear it. This is the Field Mice. This is just straight up the Field Mice. Those guys dominate my listening habits, you know?
We don't care what you say but we care what you do.
We’re the invisible entity that looks out for you.