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Content Starts june & july 2023 music chat

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summer has always had this tendency to get away from me; especially now that i’m in washington where one must gather all the sunlight they can in order to stave off the deleterious effects of The Long Cold Dark of Winter.

and so i did! except for the days where i didn’t. despite taking some time off work i still worked a lot, at a job that is already a lot. but i was able to spend more time out and about than years previous, which feels better than rotting away at home (most of the time).

been climbing twice weekly, getting better at climbing, feeling good about my own capacity for physicality. been climbing with friends most often, which is great, except for that climbing alone was one of the main vectors by which i took in new music, so i’ve had to find other means.

now that i’m falling back into the normal patterns of my life i’m hoping to get back to writing, maintaining this website, working on … hm any of the thousands of projects i have started and left half-done. anything is possible!


june~☆*: .。. . .

top 3

{as dictated by my last.fm stats}

Expert In A Dying Field – The Beths

i didn’t find out about the beths until june!! my partner and i were on a lil road trip and she played them for me and now i’m obsessed. i think it’s awesome when music is fun, and that’s what this album is! exemplars of the technical processes of pop rock, this album hits all the beats that 2010-me would have gone absolutely crazy for, and in many ways still do now.

great music for: going on a walk, driving a car, taking the train, rock climbing. music to make you move a bit. really looking forward to continuing to listen to this album all the time.

⭐ ‘Expert In A Dying Field‘, ‘Silence Is Golden‘, ‘I Want to Listen’

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Original Score) – Daniel Pemberton

obligatory moment to talk about the new spider-verse. if you know me at all you know that I Do Not Really Watch Movies. i’m bad at it, it’s nothing to do with the movies themselves, it just takes a lot for a movie to pull me in. this one did, immediately! i easily could have sat there for another 2 hours.

part of what makes a movie stick with me is the soundtrack, and i really enjoyed this one! i listened to the whole thing a few times, but most of the plays are definitely ‘Guggenheim Assemble’. that entire sequence had me nearly shouting in the theater i was so pumped! can’t wait for it to pop up on 🏴‍☠️ so that i can parse through it frame by frame in 4k.

⭐ ‘Guggenheim Assemble‘, ‘My Name Is… Miles Morales‘, ‘Spider Punk

Jump Rope Gazers – The Beths

near-beths sweep…. their power! i don’t have a ton to say about this album that i didn’t already say about the other. oh i guess i should mention that i love The Boys (which is what my partner and i call the backup singers). they bring me life every time i hear their voices. i hope they’re nice irl (i’ve heard they are).

‘I’m Not Getting Excited’, ‘Do You Want Me Now‘, ‘Mars, the God of War

fav 5

{5 songs i really liked this month}

Chipped Nails – Noa Mal

i found noa mal artist through this bandcamp daily post and didn’t give her too in depth of a listen, but this song hooked me on the first play and i added it to a playlist where i went on to listen to it a dozen more times.

it’s good! but i feel like this more grungy pop gets better the closer you get to fall, so i’m waiting until the leaves turn to really dive in. (it comes on cassette too, which is knowledge which may go on to fuel one of my more insufferable character arcs (getting a cassette player))

Cat Horn (Good Night) – Pervenche

another artist pulled from the aforementioned bandcamp daily!

i have no idea what they’re saying in this song, and a surface-level search did not reveal any translated lyrics so i am choosing to believe it’s all very nice! this song immediately went on my “hanging out with friends on a warm day as the sun goes down” playlist. it’s just nice! (:

Dizzy – Bedouine

i’ve had this album downloaded for a while because i liked the album art, and what i’ve discovered is that you can in fact sometimes judge things by their covers. statistically it has to work sometimes.

this album has a sort of Carol King feel to it, and this song starts similarly but then transcends into … something totally other than that, in a way that really really works for me. after the 2 minute mark it just becomes a prolonged instrumental breakdown with lots of revolving and repeating sounds overlapped in a way that might make one feel dizzy!

Garden of Birdly Delights – Leon Chang

this album is in no way new to me (and is in fact my top played album of 2020) but, to be honest, most of that time was spent listening to the tale of bird world on repeat — i think, as a way to try and stave off my looming mental breakdown from working hospital during covid.

anyhow. the garden of birdly delights is a really good song. if you don’t know the whole bit behind return to bird world, it’s the soundtrack to a sequel of a video game that never existed. if you purchase it on bandcamp (as you should) you get a little bit of lore about the game, enough to help you fill in the details of what might be going on in each song.

long story short, i’d like to go to the garden of birdly delights.

A Dry Red – Janelle Monáe

ok i don’t want anyone to accuse me of besmirching the good name of janelle monáe. i would never do that.

but what i will say, overall, is that this album didn’t really hit for me. it’s not that it’s bad it’s just…. they put out an album about a messianic android traveling through time to liberate people in the name of freedom and love. and that was exactly 100% my shit. this newer work, while good, feels like music for normies a bit i fear.

this song, coming in at the tail end, does really work for me tho. all of their downtempo work really shows off the best parts about their voice imo, and the tone fits the idea of the age of pleasure quite well.

. . .。.:*☆~july

top 3

Why Does The Earth Give Us People To Love? – Kara Jackson

since i don’t use any streaming services it can be a little hard to find new music. last.fm, the last good website on earth, unfortunately is winding down in its usefulness as it is often prone to breaking. i found this album on rateyourmusic, and have been using their ‘best albums of 2023’ chart a lot recently to find new stuff.

kara jackson was the (a?) National Youth Poet Laureate from 2019 – 2020. as such, it’s useful to think of this album as poetry with music rather than expecting something you would hear played on the radio (except for pawnshop, which i hope does get some radio play). each song is fairly long, meanders a bit, and is often light on instrumentation.

it’s emotionally devastating at times and requires a lot of attention while listening, but i think it’s very worth it if you’ve got the hour and the emotional capacity.

⭐ ‘no fun/party‘, ‘dickhead blues‘, ‘rat‘, ‘liquor

MYCELiUM – Aluna

a while ago a younger coworker asked me if i ever went to the club and i laughed with such a sudden intensity that i startled even myself. i don’t “go to the club”, but if i did and this album came on i would probably have a really good time. for me it’s music for a certain type of mood, like when i get the perfect ratio of caffeine:weed and have a really good time doing the dishes.

i don’t know anything about music production, truly. every few years i torrent whatever DAW is “the good one” is (all i know is that it’s not audacity) and fiddle around with it for a while — and then quickly lose interest. i don’t really have the vocabulary for what techniques are employed when making this style of music short of “when it sounds good it sounds good” and this album sounds good! it uses a lot of repeating ambient background sounds that zap the brain in just that way that makes this genre work for me.

⭐ ‘Supernova’, ‘Killing Me’, ‘Kiss It Better

Alchemy – Disclosure

it’s funny, i downloaded ENERGY a while ago, had a song come up on shuffle, thought “i need to listen to this album” and then never did. this is a common problem w/ me by the way: i have this habit of downloading 10-15 albums at a time and then listening to all of them in a playlist on shuffle. people i’ve told this have never liked it, which is probably part of why i keep doing it. (i’m developing another better system for the long term project of eventually listening to everything on my hard drive (23,424 songs currently)).

i’m going to go back and listen to ENERGY now because i really enjoy Alchemy a lot, though from what i’ve read this album is a bit different than their previous work. again, i don’t have a real vocabulary for this, though maybe i should develop one, but this album feels very technically masterful to me – they cover a lot of different electronic genres over the course of the album and each is a solid representation of that genre by its own right.

⭐ ‘Looking for Love‘, ‘Higher Than Ever Before‘, ‘Purify

fav 5

{5 songs i really liked this month}

rat – Kara Jackson

dwbudgvbawjdvhawhjdawjbdjawghjbdfaw

FUCK man

this song

the perfect song, to me, is nearly 8 minutes long and is a story about a fucked up little guy constantly fucking up his life over and over again. i don’t know why i’m this way but it’s simply how things are.

perhaps its because i’ve been re-reading Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun but i always envision this song taking place in a later, post-apocalyptic earth. Rat is a Fallout character if i’ve ever heard of one.

i’ve talked before about how specific sections of songs take over my brain, and that’s the case here with the segment from 05:08 – 06:13. i just listened to it again and i’m giggin out about it. go listen to this song now!!

Super Shy – NewJeans

i don’t know what the prevailing opinion is on newjeans, i’ve seen a lot of people say a lot of things and they’re all very ????? i don’t wanna be like “i’m the only person who listens to k-pop in a normal way” but….

i like this song! it has a good groove to it, it’s catchy, and in the music video the girls do a cute dance and look like they’re having a good time. that’s all i know about them, and that works for me.

leikara Ijo​́​ð – Susanne Sundfør

6 minute 47 second song that sounds like norwegian Feist? let’s fucking go! i was annoying the shit out of my coworkers for a week as i hummed this to myself. i need to go back and listen to the rest of the album more, because it’s very good, but when i hit this track i put it on repeat for 2 hours before i told myself i had to move on.

Freak Me Now – Jessie Ware

solid future funk track from jessie, which was not something i knew i needed. this is the type of track i imagine myself listening to in a hover-car, if such a thing were ever invented. (and if it were, what a stupid thing to make. you’re telling me we cracked how to create hover-vehicle technology and the best we could come up with is “uhhh i guess we do cars again?” yes i’m looking at you mass effect)

Ethereal Remains – Samuel Organ

the name of the album is Guided By Horses and this is exactly the type of music i would want as background if i were to be guided by horses, for they are beautiful and terrifying creatures.

at 1:20 there is a lovely little violin (viola?) solo that makes my heart ache the way all such things do. i’m listening to it right now and trying not to cry at my desk. i could listen to it forever

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