october 2023 music chat

hi! this post has been cooking for a little while, but because we’re now deep into fall and the sun barely graces us with its presence (as opposed to the moon, which is impartial in its affection) i am operating solely on survival mode, which can make finding both the time and energy to write a bit more of a challenge. lots of this was written from my phone while riding the train to and from work, which you can definitely tell in my sporadic use of capitalization and punctuation.

work on a new form of the website is still coming along, hoping to have that done at the beginning of the year (but, looking at my calendar, having no idea when that will happen). the nice part is that it doesn’t really matter! i can do whatever i want.

listened to quite a bit of music this month tho, interspersed with episodes of Too Much Future and Mages and Murderdads when i’m doing the dishes or on walks with the dog. anyway……………. bye!

these are the albums i listened to the most this month

the land is inhospitable and so are we – mitski

not normally a big mitskihead, had a few songs i enjoyed but otherwise not really my bag. this album got me. not sure exactly what it was, perhaps it’s the time of life and time of year, my specific brand of melancholic brooding, the song about the moon’s light and how our love is the only thing that we bring into this world that is uniquely ours; how we yearn for it to persist long after we’re gone in the memories of the ones we loved. i’m not sure.

actually i do know, it’s the line “you believe me like a god, i destroy you like i am” from I’m Your Man, which was the song that finally made it click for me. i just had to turn on the part of my brain that was obsessed with City & Colour in high school and suddenly it all made sense. this is not an exhaustive comparison and i don’t seek to discount Mitski’s talent in saying so, it’s just the parallel that was necessary for me to understand what i was getting from the album.

⭐️: ‘The Deal‘, ‘I’m Your Man‘, ‘Love Me After You‘, ‘My Love Mine All Mine‘

ANTIHERO – ahn dayoung

a strange thing where one of my favorite albums of the last 5 years is in a language i don’t understand at all. can’t even begin to tell you what any of these songs are about; maybe that’s on me for never learning korean.

all that to say: this is some damn fine music. at times it sounds like music sitting in a dark, smoke-filled parlor, and at other times it feels like i am ascending through space to a higher plane of reality. despite such swings in the conjured imaginary brought to mind the album feels cohesive, each song flowing into the next rather neatly. the final track “intro”, a quiet musicbox melody, mirrors the album’s opener in such a way that creates a nice little auditory loop for those of us that listen to albums on repeat (as i often do). there are many throughlines across tracks where you might feel like it’s one long song building and deconstructing itself until it ends right back at the beginning.

it’s all so perfectly contained, it displays an intentionality that not every album is able to demonstrate.

can’t recommend this one enough.

⭐️: ‘Zini‘, ‘Usual Person‘, ‘Moss‘, ‘Revolver‘

strawberries in rain – euglossine

originally found this album on bandcamp after being entranced by the album art for euglossine’s newest album “Bug Planet Is The Current Timeline” but, as often is the case, i was then further distracted by this album’s fetching art of a big strawberry. these things happen. it is my understanding that this album is far different than most of euglossine’s work, but i haven’t quite gotten to listen to the other stuff yet, so i can’t really say exactly how it’s different.

strawberries in rain is almost entirely just fingerpicked acoustic guitar, with songs that sound rather simple and meandering at first but are delightfully complex on repeat listens and with good headphones. perfect background music for a tabletop game, a nice spring jaunt, or for when you need to knuckle down and finish a blog that you first started writing over a week ago.

⭐️: ‘Hilltop Shadow‘, ‘In a Fetching Hat‘, ‘Tapestries of Time‘, ‘Pallas‘

here are 5 songs i couldn’t stop listening to

my love mine all mine – mitski

i am, categorically and without any shame, the type of girlie to say “i love the moon” every single time i see it. any time she’s visible i snap a quick pic and add it to the sprawling mess of images i keep on my phone, unsorted and without any intention to post them anywhere.

its just that …. well, the moon is up there. and we’re down here. isn’t that amazing? there are other things out there, other worlds that aren’t earth, possibly other stuff going on!! it’s not just this!!!! it’s immensely relieving to me, having grown up in the christian church and being instilled with belief that this world was all that there was, that it was the most important thing in all the cosmos, that all of history would ultimately come down to us.

but it doesn’t! in fact, what we do doesn’t matter!!! it allows “meaning” to be something more personal, the worlds we inhabit are ones of interpersonal connection; almost any change we manage to effect only matters to us and the ones we love. i hope that the echoes of that love continue long after i am gone.

capable of love – pinkpantheress

AMV MUSIC!!! putting this track over my Yorknew City Arc Kurapika x Leorio fan video (because they’re husbands) and posting it in crunchy 360p with the lyrics edited over it in a way that renders the entire thing visually incomprehensible.

she’s tapping into a couple different genres with some of her recent singles, but all of them are pretty firmly rooted around late 90s/early 2000s music trends but with more modern design capability . she pulls it off really well imo and i’m excited to see what sort of album that ends up producing.

part of the madness – rebecca sugar

do you ever feel like some part of you got lost along the way? that you grew and changed and, possibly, got better at being a person, but despite that something isn’t quite right? that without the missing piece, the version of you that people like and want to be around doesn’t exist anymore, and one day everyone will find out and you’ll end up alone?

i get like that sometimes. it’s not wholly rational, as i am surrounded by great networks of friends who all care very much for me and let me know rather frequently. but the thought still lingers, and as summer turns to fall and it starts to get darker earlier and earlier i can only do so much to keep them from rising to the surface.

so i spend a few weeks feeling really low, in a pit of melancholy that i’ve dug for myself, and wonder a lot about what makes “me” me. and maybe i listen to this song on repeat while staring out the train window, watching dark clouds become yet darker, as late-autumn rain washes away the world that once was.

she shines – darren korb and ashley barett

she SHINES!!!!! i am not really the type of person to express “loyalty” to a “brand” but Supergiant Games might be my main exception. i love everything they’ve produced, both in terms of games as objects and the soundtracks which accompany them.

transistor came out at a time in my life where i was going through a lot, not sleeping, possibly abusing dextromethorphan, and otherwise just being miserable. so i played, and replayed, transistor over and over until i 100%’d it, and possibly a bit more after that too.

currently im working on a blades in the dark hack that is inspired by the transistor world, or i suppose what i can infer about it. expect that to come out in hmmmm maybe 2026? in the process i have listened to this song possibly hundreds of times, but on a separate account that i use for when im writing so that my scrobbles don’t get absolutely fucked. did i actually talk about the contents of this song at all? no? well,

lunar distance – sven wunder

stellar jazz: as in, jazz that evokes feelings of traveling to faraway stars. also: it’s just good. been a Sven Wunder fan since i listened to their Natura Morta which fully took over my life in 2021 (please, at least listen to Reprise it’s sooooo so good.) there is something in here that feels reminiscent of the Mermaid Song from the Stardew Valley soundtrack, especially around the 2:10 mark with the ghostly vocalizing background.

this song has a sort of traveling quality to it, moving through the big city and night kind of vibe. i’m not sure if this just a feature of how i process music but i can see how you could take parts of this song and turn it into a short story. it’s all in there!