august 2023 music chat

top 3

{as dictated by my last.fm stats}

Sundial – Noname

i would have posted this a few days ago if not for this album. i’ve been a huge noname fan since she was using her old moniker and featuring on the tracks of other artists, i’ve loved all of her previous work and there are many parts of this album i really enjoy! obviously, it was my most listened to in august. but there’s that one jay elec verse…..

for those that don’t know, jay electronica has a habit of spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories, and he does so again on his verse in ‘Balloons’, the third track of the album. i didn’t find this out until i started writing my post for the month, and because that track wasn’t quite hitting for me already i hadn’t given it many listens past the first one, but it’s really clear once you listen to the words he says!

i think the production of this album is really strong, and the themes of corporate expectation vs individual artistry, selling out, policing and its inherent connection to imperialism, liberal pacification of revolutionary elements, etc., all really resonate with me. i see the frustration that noname is clearly dealing with in the process of making this album. but all of those themes sort of fall apart for me when i think about the verse in question, and her response to it.

i can’t square the idea that noname takes umbrage with black billionaires selling out the community for their own gain when she is willing to work with an antisemite and further perpetuate ideas that uphold white supremacy to make some sort of point— the parallels are pretty clear.

i hope she eventually comes to realize this was a bad move, but based on her response so far it’s not seeming likely. sorry girlie but i’m glad i torrented this one.

Mr Big Shot – Wallice

oooooooo ya we’re on the cusp of fall now babes!! loud, melancholic tracks with lots of crisp drums and blown out guitars. i’m in the car driving in the rain shouting along and i’m having a fucking great time.

this EP particularly hits for the the version of me that existed before i moved to seattle from {REDACTED}, especially ‘Quarterlife’. i was living in a town that was more or less all i knew, and everyone there had a very specific notion of who i was. i was working a job that i hated but was good at, and could have made a lifelong career of. i was in a trap that i had made for myself, or rather, had constructed without even knowing. and the moment i had that realization i jumped into the deep end: i quit my job, sold or threw away nearly everything i owned, packed my car and drove to Washington. and it was the right move!!

⭐: ‘Quarterlife’, ‘Disappear’, ‘Why Do You Love Me?’

KNOWER FOREVER – KNOWER

this is my first KNOWER album, and i’m wondering why no one told me about them before? i found out about this album from, you guessed it, bandcamp dot com, one of the last good websites on this bitch of an internet. i can draw lots of connecting lines between this album and Fievel Is Glauque’s “Flaming Swords”— just some weird funky jazz style music that sometimes goes outside of the normal bounds of what we consider listenable. and to me, that’s what makes good music!

i will admit that a lot of my plays here are relistening to ‘Same Smile, Different Face’ many many times, a song that feels like it would fit in the downbeat moment of an anime like Big O or Cowboy Bebop.

⭐: ‘I’m the President’, ‘Same Smile, Different Face’, ‘Crash the Car’

Under The Sun – SPELLING & the Mystery School

i have been reading, and rereading, Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun this year and if i was making some sort of early-2000s era AMV for the fictional character Severian of Nessus this might be the song i use. similar to Severian, i often get lost in the reverie imagining the narratives drawn out from works of music. this song has so much in it!!

when this came on at the climbing gym i had to hop off the wall, sit down, restart the track, and listen to it 3 times in a row. proper witchy vibes from Spellling as always, but this track takes it to the next level.

Speed Love – tripleS

i’ve never heard of this group before, but the sort of chiptuney sound that many of their tracks have reaaaally does it for me, and this one REALLY does it for me. i know i just said that the last track would be a good AMV song but this one would be too! probably not for the same sort of content as the previous, but maybe something like Inuyasha or Escaflowne.

Love is a Garden – Mort Garson

classic Mort Garson sounds. a song you might expect to play during an interlude section of Undertale. perhaps it’s just because the song mentions gardens but the soundscape conjured here makes me imagine a scenario where bizarre otherworldly plants are the ones who create the song we’re listening to. i would gladly get high and watch that music video on repeat (or, more likely, add it to a tabletop game)

in a room7 F760 – Aphex Twin

drill n bass in 2023?? let’s go aphex!! i’ve been playing a lot of Bomb Rush Cyberfunk recently (which you absolutely should play) and i would love to hear this track on there sooo bad. it sits in my mind as a midpoint between “transistor soundtrack” and “sega genesis game boss battle”. as you might expect this song has me geeked when i’m climbing a really challenging route at the gym.

Downpour – Leah Senior

this is the type of song that plays in a video game while your party is resting around the campfire. so i wrote a little smth with that in mind

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Long weeks we traveled under the baneful gaze of the sun— it was not until we reached the old stone town that the sky granted us some reprieve. Our camp that night was set up in the central structure of the place, in what I thought at the time was some sort of assembly hall. We were low on water and tired from the many miles we carried with us from far Ubas; there was little joy to be found among our ranks.

As can often be the case in these matters it was the animals who noticed first: barking and bleating from the packbeasts outside spurred their handler to rise to see what had caused the disturbance. They returned but a moment later, clothes and face bearing witness to the rain.

We flooded out into the night then, all twenty seven of us, capering and exulting under the light of a blue moon. One of the older fellows, a translator, brought out a kithara and played for us a few Londish folk songs from under the overhang. I did not understand the words themselves but grasped something of their meaning in the moment, each of us singing out together in joyful chorus.

That night it rained without grace. The channels and grooves that adorned each building, which because of the arid climate I had considered a stylistic choice rather than a practical one, diverted the accumulated rain to a central cistern which resided below the room we lodged in. Through small vents in the floor you could hear the water slosh as yet more rain pooled within the reservoir.

I retired earlier than the others, needing to wake around dawn and chart out our path for the next day. From where I lay I could still hear the rain and the faint sound of the translator’s kithara, perhaps the finest lullaby I had during this entire ordeal. In the haze of near-sleep it felt as though I had returned to my room back in Ubas, where it often rained, and where at dusk one could hear the gentle tones of the campanile as it greeted the rising moon.