lol helium— that would be satomi

but yeah great great drummer

i don’t hate them— just seriously stopped liking them at some point. i think it was mainly because the drummer stopped drumming so much.and that may be the democratic thing to do but not so great for the music.

but things are always changing— i’ll have to listen to the newer stuff

This morning it's Endless Boogie - Focus Level, which I miraculously found a perfect condition used copy of at a store that wouldn't normally carry this sort of thing.

The Midnight- Nocturnal (EP). Been listening to all of 3 of their releases, and some other synthwave stuff too. I'm loving it!

Whatever bits and pieces I can find of the music Stephen Malkmus composed for the Netflix show “Flaked.” Some of it is *really* fucking good. I’d absolutely buy a soundtrack companion album if they released one. A fair amount of the show is just songs by sad-sack indie rock artists like Youth Lagoon and S. Carey, but Malkmus wrote some instrumental incidental music that’s certainly goddam good enough for wide release.

Loving the Synthwave lately. Going to see Carpenter Brut in a few months, and making the trip last year to see Perturbator in Chicago was one of my best show memories of the year. "The Uncanny Valley" still gets quite a bit of turntable time around these parts.

thomas ankersmit - live in utrecht
saxophone and modular synth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r19M6MNutOE

- this album i'm not going to attemp to spell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxdMFzae-mE


claire m singer - live at union chapel
radical pipe organ drone, taking advantage of all those knobs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kblgJCbNiKw

Beck
Mutations
1998, Beck's follow-up to the insanely successful Odelay was a smart one. At least to this listener. Instead of going down that same everything-but-the-kitchen-sink approach he took a sharp turn for a detour. He hooked up with Nigel Godrich and decided to just pull some songs out of his notebooks and bang them out in short time. No crazy samples. No bells and whistles. What this results in - and probably why I've always been so drawn to Mutations - is an album that sounds like the same guy who recorded One Foot In The Grave suddenly had access to a an expensive studio and a producer who had worked with Radiohead. Because that's totally what this album is. While some might write this one off as less adventurous or even boring, I hear it as ballsy. And to my own ears Mutations is the one that's stood the test of time better. Or rather it sounds more timeless. There's the solid folk-rock of "Cold Brains" and "Lazy Flies," the baroque majesty of "We Live Again," and the tropicalia of well, "Tropicalia." There's experimentation in songs like "Sing It Again," "O Maria" and "Bottle Of Blues," it's just that doing something so traditional is the experiment when you're an artist who had spent his career doing much weirder shit. For my money the standout track is "Nobody's Fault But My Own," with its droning drumless atmosphere, it's a gorgeous dirge of a ballad. Mutations is a wonderful stripped down record, and its theme is one that Beck will return to later in his career perhaps when he feels the need to cleanse pallets or just clean out old notebooks.


The Lemonheads
Lovey
1990, The fourth Lemonheads album is a bit like a debut. It's their first on a major label; first without Ben Deily, which left Evan Dando as sole singer-songwriter; and first to pretty much completely ditch any of the punk roots of the earlier incarnation of the band. Lovey is far from perfect but totally sets the stage for the kind of material the band would be best known for on the next few albums. The difference being that Lovey is a pretty unfocused album. It's clearly a band in transition. Opener "Ballarat" is fucking weird, but I love it. I have no idea what any of the lyrics even are as they're so drenched in effects. I think the chorus pleads "give me all of your fear," but I'm not even sure. And then there's cheerleaders. I don't even know. And then "Half The Time" goes in a totally different direction - it's almost like a country ballad. Reminds me a bit of something like Whiskeytown. "Ride With Me" is probably the best known track here - a gentle ballad that seems inspired by a bumper sticker and found itself appearing on band's Best Of in acoustic form later on. "That pencil smell reminds me of school / That clock on the wall, I can no longer fool," it's good stuff. "Stove" is a pop-punk story about the gas-man taking out Evan's electric stove, and is probably the closest thing here to the It's A Shame About Ray/Come On Feel sound. "Left For Dead" is actually just a re-recording of "Clang Bang Clang" from 1988's Creator (for some reason). Then there's "Brass Buttons" - a Graham Parsons cover that sticks out like a sore thumb, but still kind of makes sense? Finally "The Door" closes things out and it's this huge melodramatic power ballad thing that straddles the line between sincerity and absurdity with impressive results. I don't know. Lovey is kind of a mess, but it's an interesting mess indeed.


The Smashing Pumpkins
Machina/The Machines Of God
2000, I think it's fair to say that Machina was a divisive album amongst fans. Some looked at it as a welcome return to a more guitar-oriented sound (plus a reunion with Jimmy on drums) after the mostly electronic Adore, while others lamented that it wasn't guitar-oriented enough and just felt a bit too much like Adore. And both sides were basically right. There's no denying that nostalgia plays a huge role in my affinity for the Pumpkins. And while Machina was never an album that I thought was as strong as the string of records that came before it, I still kind of love it in a weird way. Like other albums released from late 1999 through early 2000, this one has a special place in my heart because it reminds me of being fresh out of high school and in that magical time when you're exploring college and trying to figure out how life works as a so-called adult. At that time something like this - that was equally familiar as well as new was probably exactly what I needed to hear. First single "Everlasting Gaze" was all I needed to hear to be on board with this one. And weirdly, while I've said that I don't think Machina is as good as its predecessors, I've grown increasingly fascinated with this record in the years since its release - partly because of the saga of Machina II, the break-up of the band, and the brief forming of Zwan before SP would kinda sorta reform. I guess in my mind I just see Machina as the beginning of a very interesting era for the band.

There are a few Beck songs I like--almost all can be found on One Foot--but this is the only one I consider truly "great."

I mostly dislike Beck. People that cool just annoy me. But I lived with someone who played this album over and over, and I had to eventually admit it wasn't too bad. I might spin it again in the near future. Might. Probably won't. But might.

nice! It really is just an insanely amazing song. And I think that this sort of songwriting was there all along buried under tracks like "Steal My Body Home," but I don't know. There's something just really striking about the arrangement and simplicity of this one.

I loved Mutations when it first dropped. Seemed like a very Bowie-esque move to follow up Odelay with such a comparatively mellow, weirdo folk-ish album. “Lazy Flies” has a total Donovan feel to it, and it was a nice change of pace.

Lost a Grammy to Tori Amos I think.

Still, Odelay is just the tits. I know it’s the most popular, but that’s for goddamn good reason. Everything sounds a little disappointing by comparison, except for his pre-Odelay stuff, which now sounds like a gradual lead-up to ... Odelay.

Odelay.

Yeah we've had this disagreement before. I think Odelay is great... But not as great as basically all the albums before it, or Mutations.

Nice! Yeah I really love the sound, and I've just started listening, and realizing there is a whole bunch of stuff out there. I'll have to check out those bands you mentioned :)

profligate's new album is great. noah anthony used to post here in 2000-2005ish. he was social junk back then. social junk was pretty heavily sonic youth influenced starting out, then they became progressively more noise. they were amazing live. then as night burger he started working in electronics, and now profligate is almost entirely electronic. awesome dude. he's from near my hometown and we saw some shows together, including sy. he's been on a ton of great labels like not not fun, digitalis, and night people.

Caspar Brötzmann Massaker - Schlaf

i never get tired of this

Goddamn right you won’t and you never EVER should.

Interesting choice for Christmas though. :D

i had to clean out my ears from all the holiday garbage i had to suffer at the supermarket and places like that

Great fucking choice.

Bleeder's Digest- Say Hi

Sometimes I think, I get why some indie rock bands aren't that well known, why they remain niche. But then I think, some people are really missing out on some good stuff.

Anyway, this is an awesome album.

so a while back I started doing this kind of weird and arbitrary thing - I made a list of all the books that were released as part of that 33 1/3 series and decided I'd listen/re-listen to all of those albums. Not something I'm like binge-listening or whatever, but just if I'm like "hey I don't know what I feel like listening to" I have this list as a prompt for something random.



When I was much younger - like say jr high - I found all my parents' vinyl in the attic and decided to try to broaden my horizons a bit. They had The Wall by Pink Floyd and I don't think I made it through a single side before deciding this wasn't my thing. But a few years later a buddy of mine turned me on to Piper At The Gates of Dawn - or more specifically "Interstellar Overdrive." That song has remained one of my fav PF songs forever, and over the two decades since I've also become a much bigger fan of the band as a whole. (I went thru a pretty heavy phase in like 2008 or so actually). I digress tho. Piper is a super weird album, but it's awesome. One minute it's psychadelic, the next it's folky and the lyrics are almost always fucked. "Interstellar Overdrive" is still the HIGHEST of the high points for me here. But Piper is one of those albums I put on and then I'm like "oh man I just wanna listen to more Pink Floyd now."



It's really weird to me that someone would write a book about a Greatest Hits album. I mean if you're writing about an ALBUM then you'd think you'd be writing about something conceived in the album format, no? I'm certainly not an Abba fan. And I refuse to capitalize all the letters in their name as I'm not a fan of stylized band names. And we don't pronounce it Aye Be Be Aye. Anyway, I admit that some of these tunes are totally feel-good. Stuff like "Dancing Queen" and "Fernando" and all that. It's like the Bee Gees disco stuff where I'm like "well, I don't really like disco. But this is definitely tuneful." I totally forgot that Abba even did that "Take A Chance On Me" song, so that kind of grabbed me. "Knowing Me, Knowing You" is totally my favorite here. And my ears perked about a bit when I recognized that bit in "Gimme Gimme Gimme" that Madonna sampled a few years back. BUT... at 19 tracks - most of which focuses on their disco-leaning years, this is just too much Abba for me and mostly not my thing.

My urge is to be mean to you non-stop, but... these are some sweet picks. Goddammit.

I especially like that Headroom album.

This was reissued last year by SSR. Luuvverly.
https://soundcloud.com/s-srecords/se...erk-lp-sampler

WAS IT ON YOUR LIST THOUGH?????

Ugh.

Ashtray Navigations

this past week I was thinking about how - wow, before we know it the 2010's will be over. So this got me thinking about what my fav albums of the 2000's were since I've now had a lot more time to be removed and let those really sink in. Plus, the 2000's were me in my 20's. So the things that meant a lot to me then might not now. And the things I had no interest in then, I might love now.

So over the past week I've been spending a lot of time digging through and thinking about my NOW favorite records of 2000-2009. Some stuff is eternal, but some things def changed between then and now. I started building this big list and finally arrived at what I'm calling my Top 150 albums of the 2000's.

But right now, they're not ranked. So I've been going through and trying to make a ranked list. And in the meantime been noting what stuff isn't on Spotify and I don't have physical copies of anymore to track them down again.

Speaking of - c'mon Hova. Stop it w/ this flip flopping on Spotify. His albums are there. Then they're gone. Then they're back but not any of the Blueprints. Now they're gone again.

But yeah anyway. that's what I'm listening to right now. 150 albums from the 2000's. Haha.

^ I fear what's coming...

you should. Clearly I have terrible taste and I'm going to subject you guys to me talking about 150 horrible albums. Seriously. All 150 are just bad. And the worst part? There's no way that you can just ignore it when someone posts about something you don't like! You'll have no option but to sit there and read my thoughts on 150 wretched albums. Buckle up.

HEY, COOL IT, LADY! :) Alright, here's a little story that illustrates my ANTI-groovy, maaan, whatever floats your canoe approach:

Back when I was in college, some classmates got together to come up with a few coins to buy this other cat music for his birthday. Said cat was of that strange type liked by everybody: shy, never a ding dong to anyone, smart, always up for a bit of fútbol between classes, etc. So when I found out about the birthday operation, I said of course, very cool, here's what I can contribute — so pray tell, what music are you getting for him? The answer gave me the fucking willies: I won't name the bands because I would vomit all over the keyboard, but it was unacceptable repugnant wretched ultraderivative local SHIT. I told them, Christ on a stick, come on, why are you doing this to him?! And they said, well, THIS is what he likes! Which, unfortunately, was true.

So I thought, fuck this. I'm not giving you any fucking money. I'm gonna make him my own fucking present. And from then on, I started giving him tapes (yes, cassette tapes, that's what we had back then, you Spotifuckers) regularly, twice a week or so, of sheer awesomeness. Guy didn't know anything outside the SHIT, so it had to be a mix between the then-recently (or recently-ish) released and the older building blocks. Pleased To Meet Me. Exile On Main St. Peel Slowly And See. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. Daydream Nation. Time Out Of Mind. Marquee Moon. Elvis' The Sun Sessions. Being There. Otis Redding's Live In Europe. Zen Arcade. John Coltrane's Impressions. Horses. Fear Of A Black Planet. Music For Airports. Dirty Mind. Eli And The Thirteenth Confession. Dig Me Out. And so on and so forth. My collection certainly wasn't as rich as it is today; I didn't have the lovely obscurities which also happen to be key to the cooliosity continuum, but I did what I could with what I had.

Fast-forward approximately two decades (yikes). He left the SHIT far behind. He developed his own fine taste. Like me, he doesn't stay in touch with the mediocrity perpetuators (OK, so they meant well, but they were mooks all the same). And even though we don't see each other that often (he's got a wife and a baby and a real job now, the silly man), we have attended several concerts together and we're still very good friends, better than we were back in the goddamn day.

good story. Thank you for the thoughtful response.

That said, you and I just have different taste (though, overlapping at times) and we think differently about well... I don't know how to phrase it. You see things as like "oh I used to like A, but then I heard B, so A became shit and I left it behind." But I'm the type that doesn't stop liking A or B or C just because I've gotten into D. I go through phases, sure. But I always value that everything I've liked led to something else. Like every song I've ever heard is part of my musical DNA.

SY is my fav band of all time. Wilco is probably my favorite active band in the world. But I also value equally all the 90's 'alternative' and hip hop that I grew up on; all the jazz that I've binged on off-and-on for 20 years; the more mainstream hip hop and pop that I've enjoyed in recent years and so on. It's all stuff that means something to me in some way.

I also think I'm just less judgmental than you are about music. That's not a knock in any way. But our personalities are different. It's pretty rare that you find me saying any music is "shit" really. Not that I don't hate anything. I think I just tend to ignore/not post about things that don't interest me is all.

noise- It's mostly just music, so what the fuck

soup- Some music can change lives

I think both points are valid at appropriate times.



Creed. I'm going with Creed.

Possibly Third Eye Blind.

Far worse. As I said, it was local stuff, and this part of the world can come up with SERIOUSLY putrid horseshit...

Absolutely amazing find on HDtracks.com. As far as Discogs is concerned, this one has never seen a CD release, but there it was in glorious 24/192! Bitchen... :cool:

I think we can all agree Creed sucks.

Good middle ground evollove. :)

to elaborate for a second, I guess sometimes I feel around here like I am berated for openly liking the things I like. And I don't expect anyone to like everthing I like. That's silly. I just like to think that all of our musical tastes are respected. Like, we all share a common interest in SY - presumably that's what brought us here. So in a sense our tastes all overlap and then diverge. But I respect what those divergences are. That's kind of all I'm ever trying to stress.

To use the example of me and Soup - we both love Wilco. A lot. But I love Ryan Adams and he hates him. And he probably loves stuff I hate. But whatever. That's what makes this board interesting - hopefully anyway. That we can all kind of weave in and out with our preferences and maybe even share some stuff.

Like evollove said - what the fuck. It's mostly just music. It's all just fun talk.

To be clear, I wasn't taking a side. Just interpreting both.

Some stuff is "just music," and some stuff can transform a person for the better.

To say it's all "just music" isn't always correct. Should Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" be used in a toilet paper commercial? Why not, if it's just music?

But to take all of it seriously seems like a waste of energy. Why get worked up about shitty music, unless it's really morally despicable?



hahahahahha

No

I swear, even after all these years, against my better judgement, I still really like Spice Girls "Wannabe." Gonna respect that? Hell, I don't even respect that.