Music for 5/13/24!!! Les Savy Fav, Conrad Schnitzler

@@@ Les Savy Fav: OUI, LSF (Frenchkiss, 2024) Some medium bombastic rock that revolves around the male singer who has attitude but not so much that you want to slap him. Big rock drummer and a maelstrom of rock guitars. Not grunge, not super punk-y nor super classic rock either, just loud and I guess mostly punk/post punk. They have a lot of energy and I appreciate that. It all hinges on the singer, I like him, I’m not shitting my pants but he’s working hard. I like it more the more I listen to it but rock is a hard sell for me these days.

@@@ Conrad Schnitlzer: Slow Motion (Bureau B, 2024) Both listens today are off All Music’s notable releases of the week. This may be too slow motion for me at least the first track. It’s a noodling keyboard synth player doing his thing over a super simple beat with a short delay sound on it. It’s got Eastern flavors to it and the beat picks up a bit on the second track. I think it’s a synth redo of a classical Indian music record but with a drum machine and a keyboard. It’s not really my cup of tea.

Music for 5/2/24!!! Big Brave

@@@ Big Brave: A Chaos of Flowers (Thrill Jockey, 2024). I wouldn’t say that you should listen to this record solely because of the guitar player and the tones on offer here but the guitar tones here are pretty rare and really wash over you and kinda connect you to something larger than yourself because they’re so huge. I mean yuuuuuuggggeeee!!! I see from a quick perusal of GooglePimpTube that these guys have records out on Southern Lord which often puts out the massive rock records. The third tune, Chansons Pour Mon Ombre, switches it up with some spastic and wild acoustic guitar playing and singing in French. My basic complaint with a lot of rock music is how rote and superficial it is and this record is not that. I’m very much enjoying the female singing juxtaposed with the monster guitar tones. The tension of the combo mentioned as well as the combination of laidback rhythms and aggrovated distorted guitar is also compelling. Check it out, you might like it!

Music for 6/23/23!!! Mammal Hands, Let’s Eat Grandma

@@@ Mammal Hands: Gift from the Trees (Gondwana, 2023) Off an article in the Guardian with reader music recommendations. It’s jazz, I think it’s gonna be nerd jazz, and it opens with a piano working an imitation of a synth arpeggio then the sax comes in. I skipped to the second tune, not a great sign. This is jazz for people with jobs and that’s cool folks with jobs should listen to jazz. It’s got a very civilized and restrained feel to it.

@@@ Let’s Eat Grandma: Half Bad (Transgressive, 2023) I got to this record via this week’s All Music notable release email. It’s electronic music, pretty cinematic and ambient because it’s a soundtrack for a movie and I like it more than I thought I would. I would say the tunes I’ve heard to this point are dark without being crazy dark, a bunch of them sound like they would be used to crank up the tension and drama of a movie. A lot of the sounds are pretty processed and reverbed out but the end results sound pretty organic. I like this all right.

Music for 5/28/23!!! Groundation

@@@ Groundation and Brain Damage: Dreaming from an Iron Gate (Easy Star, 2023) I got to this record via a music and I almost never like what the publicists are selling but this is a cool record. It’s a hybrid roots reggae/dub record with a medium schmear of jazz/improv and a unique sounding singer. I was listening to stretches of the record yesterday while I was doing some shit around the house and it has an interesting flow to it — the jammy, jazz-ish slice of the pie usually doesn’t work for me but it does on this record. Some nice horn playing as well as keyboard feels. If you don’t like the opening track, Between Earth and Zion then you’re probably not going to like the rest of the record but in my opinion it’s a great example of taking a longstanding sub genre and pushing it a little while honoring the original spirit of it.

Music for 5/25/23!!! LCY, Midwife

@@@ LCY: He/Hymns EP (Fabric, 2023) The first track off this dance record is a thick ass hot dancefloor banger with a stylish arrangement and healthy amounts of dub sounds. It has a chopped feeling that a lot of dance remix records have but I don’t think it’s a dance record. Let’s peep more. The Apple Music blurb uses the word brooding but I think it’s more thick, funky and substantial. A lot of dance music is extremely shallow but I don’t think this is, it has intelligence to it. The contrast between the skittering beats, the chopped female vocals, and the bass pulsing on the second track is borderline exquisite. Someone spent a long ass time hooking these beats up and I appreciate their effort. This is wickedness and folks should check it out.

@@@ Midwife: Orbweaving (The Flenser, 2023). Another listen off this week’s 10 most reviewed albums on Pitchfork. Unfortunately it doesn’t bubble over with the creativity and energy of the record above. The intro to the first tune is an extended guitar arpeggio and whispery female vocals that you can understand but you have to try to understand. I had to click through to the second track The Hounds of Heaven which opens with a drum machine rock beat (maybe played by a drummer) and some medium and melancholy distorted guitar. The same whispery, angel vocals so it looks to be the formula from here on out. I’m pretty much done with the sad white people rock unless it’s done in a new way. And it is somewhat new with the way the vocals are framed but I’m agnostic on the record.

Music for 5/24/23!!! Blawan

@@@ Blawan: Dismantled Into Juice (XL, 2023). From the opening bits of the first track Toast, I felt the rush of Blawan’s distinctive sonic formula. Ultra composed but with a healthy ass, more than a healthy ass heaping of grit and muscle. Homie got it going on. The second tune, Panic, heads out into a different direction with a whispery vocal sample and thicker car bouncing vibe but the same excellent arranging skills on display. The EP is only 18 minutes long composed of five tracks and it’s got strong feels, it’s focused and I think if folks dig really well put together music this is right up there. The idea that electronic music is somehow a replacement for musicians playing music is a ridiculous notion and a record like this shows how electronic music can produce a really great listening experience using a completely different set of tools. It’s a cut above.

Music for 5/23/23!! Cusp, Mandy Indiana

@@@ Cusp: You Can Do It All (N/A, 2023) Off this week’s 10 most reviewed albums via Pitchfork. I see the video clip below is You Can’t Do It All and the title of the record is You Can Do It All and it’s confusing but that’s where we are at. The record opens with a lopsided loop and a long tone and a small piano figure and it’s mesmerizing and then the guitar goes and ruins it. Ha, not really, now it’s a band with a female singer. Then the band takes it down while the strings come in and that’s always a move towards the epic, at least partially and that was all a bit of a head fake intro because it clicks through to the second tune and it’s all indie rock, bright and guitar-y and it’s ’90s clean guitar indie time all over again!! It’s way more than competent and it’s a question of whether folks are into it. On the tune Limited Edition they bring out the distortion pedals and it’s cool except I’ve heard it a whole bunch. And when I say a whole bunch I mean it. This one all depends on the listener.

@@@ Mandy, Indiana: I’ve Seen a Way (Fire Talk, 2023) Another listen off the Pitchfork 10 Most reviewed albums of the week and this is epic, arpeggiated stuff on the opener, not particularly square and not particularly funky. The second tune (clipped below) opens quite differently with a fast, blasting kick drum before the techno-ish hi hats hit with some wooden mallet action to go with it. Vocals, arrgh, vocals!!!! I’m giving the fourth track, Injury Detail a quick peep before I post this post and it’s clearly half frat boy electro with a schmear of arena rock and a tad of Nine Inch Nails. It’s pretty well arranged but you’re gonna need to be hungry for a bit of cheese to enjoy this sandwich.

Music for 5/18/23!!! Westerman, Beta Librae

@@@ Westerman: An Inbuilt Fault (Partisan, 2023) Off this week’s Pitchfork 10 most reviewed albums. The first tune is an updated Crosby, Stills, and Nash mellow California rock. It’s easy for these kinds of hippy/post hippy big ’70s sound records to collapse into a bogus sense of epicness but so far not here, he plays it pretty straight. Lots of layers of vocals, some harmonized some just doubled. The arrangements are not jumping out at you but there’s stuff in there to listen to and a lot of folks I think could get into this record.

@@@ Beta Librae: Late At Night (Incensio, 2023) Another listen off this week’s Pitchfork’s 10 most reviewed albums of the week. It opens up with a pretty funk techno beat but not quite standard techno beat in a track called Penny Universities. It’s got a shade of dub in the break down section and there’s plenty of coming and going in the arrangement as it defies a groove and returns to it. I’m not a huge fan of the 1980’s bits of drum rolls in the opener and I clicked through to the second track. The second tune sports a female vocalist and it’s pretty standard. The third track brings the tempo up with a basket of modulated squiggles and diving tones and it’s wave your hands in the air time, you go boys and girls. I’m stopping my listening at the fourth track, The Dance Class, and it’s the best of what I’ve heard on this record. This is very solid techno really well arranged for your earholes.

Music for 5/16/23!!! Tolerance, Bernice

@@@ Tolerance: Anonym (Mesh-Key Records, 2023) I got to this jammy, free-ish alternative record via PItchfork’s 10 most reviewed albums of the week. It’s keyboard centric affair with guitars and shakers on this here second track, I Wanna Be a Homicide which I thought would be more energetic given the title. But alas. I like the spaciousness of it to be sure and to an extent I like the devil may care flow but I wish it was doing more, it’s sorta power floundering. There are some spoken word parts and processed chunks of voices in places which adds to the flatness of the proceedings. Flatness as in alienation and detachment, America’s condiments, alienation and detachment.

@@@ Bernice: Cruisin’ (Telephone Explosion, 2023) This is a pear shaped electro pop record where all is not right. I’m on the second track, Second Judy and it’s a blend of abrupt changes and sounds and lounge-y flavors, it’s quite wild. I like the random sounds and I don’t think they are super random. It’s a female singer and for the most part she plays it straight and the instruments are varied and they just dropped into a smooth funk mode, it’s pretty interesting. I like this record, it’s got an interesting spirit to it. I’ve returned to finish up today’s reviews and will be going out on track 6, well maybe not, it’s a sleeper. I clicked through to track 7 and it’s another mostly indie type track. They seemed to have a split record going on with funk and lounge in the beginning of the record and then into the indie business.. Ah well I will remember the good times we had in the early part of the record.

Music for 5/14/23!!! James Ellis Ford, Oval

@@@ James Ellis Ford: The Hum (Warp, 2023) Off this week’s All Music notable release email and at first blush it sounds like a an ambient jam record with abstract guitar playing, at least the first tune does. The second tune brings on the melodic basslines and it’s ‘this is the end’ from the Doors. I like it all right and I like how the melodies bust out into something slightly different. This is for normies who think they’re really cool, it’s okay but a bit on the sleepy predictable side.

@@@ Oval: Romantiq (Thrill Jockey, 2023) I’m a huge Oval fan, he does something all his own, a blend of ambient and glitch and a bit of strutured stuff but I love his shit, his shit slaps big time. I’m on the third tune Cresta and thus far it’s been a bit more New Age than I would like but there’s some engaging stuff here and there. My favorite Oval record is O from 2010, it stands above this decent effort.