another batch. Arrrrhhhhhhhhhhhhh
Bill Orcutt kind of sat with prestige in my mind as one of these really interesting avant garde improviser types with his own quartet and shit, but then I learned he came from a noise rock background and wow thats Wayyy more interesting. This band is one of the few noise rock bands that are actually equal parts noise and rock with how lofi some of these songs get. I think the most amusing thing about this is how the guitar style still sounds like Orcutt’s later stuff, his sense of melody remains firm and is what I find to be the thing drawing me in the most. With their free improvisation style they manage to hit upon some cool places throughout but my favorite has to be ‘I Don’t Care About Sleep Anymore’, the title is really fitting with how tired and strained the entire piece sounds. damn.
A lovely recommendation from Heather, this one is very straightforwardly killer. Made up of long continuous jams that are full of hard hitting grooves and incredible drum production, this album is a lesson in how to blend funk with a post-rock sensibility. It definitely follows in the lineage of krautrock like Can and also reminds me of The Psychic Paramount who would come about at a similar-ish time. My only real critique of this band and those like them is that due to their jammy nature, many of the songs can feel very single minded and the melodies tend to wash over me as sort of dressing for the correctly emphasized drumming. On the whole though there is a lot to be learned and best believe I’m going to be adding some of these grooves to my bag...
This one is so nice and peaceful, I most closely associate it with the more sparse aspects of velocity design comfort. The motifs loosely tie sections together, fluttering in and out while the vast array of instrumentation choices build out the soundscapes this world holds. Exploratory. Sound Collage. Field Recording. Yup. We in there. This album has accompanied me many times this month when silence was too little and music was too much. Perfect for a walk–especially in this weather!!! I recommend!!!!!
I can only really describe this album as extremely satisfying. There are a few skips but this was just an expansion of the stuff I loved from One Death. The modular synth esque beats paired with his autotune put very vivid images of arctic winters in my mind. One of the few ug rappers that make me feel good? I could only chuckle at some of these beats because of their iconic status as tiktok background music. Honestly like half of the production has unfortunately been co opted into Kevin Macleod type music in my mind. Love this sound.
This release was quite the struggle to grapple with. Just last month I heralded this band as the saviors of screamo revival due to their chilling atmosphere and stream of consciousness composition style, and now they’ve gone and made chuggy metallic screamo breakdownslop as the direct follow up??? These were my immediate thoughts but something about these songs confounded me to the point of intrigue so I kept listening. And listening. And now I understand. It’s like satire or something, at the very least it feels like they’re intentionally playing with the form of the trendy 808 breakdowns and whatnot. But it’s almost like you took one of those songs and shattered them and pieced them back together incorrectly. I can’t even imagine how they wrote this, the direction of the songs keep turning and twisting in the wrong ways, breakdowns coming in out of nowhere and comedically incessant, on the whole it just refuses logic completely. The absurdity of it all is pulled off really tightly which also adds a level of confusion, it’s far too much effort and technicality for a shitpost which makes it that much more interesting. This band is shaping up to be something really unique so I’m hedging my bets, really excited for what comes next.