Tuesday, December 17, 2024

My 10 Favorite Non-Black Metal Records of 2024


That up there is Scene from a Deluge by Anne-Louis Girodet. I saw it in the Louvre when I was 13, and something about it must have really captured my little imagination, because for years afterwards, I called it my favorite painting. This was before the internet, and my parents didn't buy the art book, so I didn't lay eyes on it again for literally about 2 decades, when I took an art class and something we were learning about it made me remember it.

That has nothing to with this post; I just thought I'd mention it. Here are 10 records that I could not, in good conscience, leave out of the 2024 conversation. My tastes have always been on the dark/morose side, but looking at it, Christ, even by my own standards, this is a pretty bleak top 10. That's where I'm at, clearly. As some of you commented on my previous list: here's hoping that 2025 is at least a little better than 2024. Thanks to y'all, I keep getting "A Long December" by Counting Crows stuck in my head because of that line about "maybe this year will be better than the last."

Also, I know how this all might look -- the intro to my black metal top 20 kinda reads like a suicide note -- but I swear, I'm gonna be fine. A lot of things have gone/stayed right for me this year. My job, as busy as it keeps me, is great; I still have a wonderful, hilarious wife who loves and supports me; I have great friends and family in my corner; and music, even the bleakest of it, continues to bring me joy. Life is an endless parade of chaos and grotesqueries, but that's nothing new, right?

So now that I've been neurotic a bit more, and mentioned Counting Crows, let's get on with the list!





#10
Total Blue
Total Blue

Total Blue sounds like a lost ECM ambient-jazz gem from the early 80s. From top to bottom, at no point does Total Blue break the enchanting, time capsule-like vibe -- just soft, echoing synths, fretless bass, sporadic percussion, gentle saxophone, and the like, all melting into a nice, warm musical bath.





#9
Keeley Forsyth
The Hollow

The second coming of Tilt-era Scott Walker. Haunting, sparse compositions made up of organ, strings, horns/woodwinds, and sputtering percussion, with Forsyth's entrancing vocals at the center, offering comforting affirmations like, "Shake my life out of my mouth" and "Let the body lay down and die." Not an easy listen.





#8
Cabinet
Hydrolysated Ordination

Disgusting, muddy, experimental death metal encased in hovering, ghostly, atmospheric guitar figures. Kinda feels like the album itself is decomposing in real time as you listen to it.





#7
bnny
One Million Love Songs

"I'm hanging on to the good stuff / I'm hanging on to my big love."

An indie rock breakup record that I willfully misinterpret as a grief record. For instance, the first track, "Missing", plays as a sweet, dreamy reverie, until the final gut-punch: "When I'm with you, I almost forget / That he's missing." I understand the intention, but it's so easy to hear it as describing grief's tendency to stick around in the peripherals, even in our most joyful moments.




#6
Cosmic Putrefaction
Emerald Fires Atop the Farewell Mountains

Lysergic death metal -- in space! Honestly, the band name pretty much has it covered. Brutal and gross, with cool, angular solos and reverb-y death growl, plus a bunch of dissonant clean guitars and even some synth to flesh out the cosmic atmospheres. If this record hadn't come out this year, maybe I would've liked the new Blood Incantation more, because I wouldn't have had such a perfect counterpoint locked and loaded. Whoops!




#5
Grandaddy
Blu Wav

Grandaddy goes country -- in space! Nothing but slow-to-midtempo sadboi ballads, with a glimmering sheen of pedal steel and bright, gauzy synths. The vibe is there, but what really matters is that these are truly phenomenal, interesting songs with unorthodox subjects, like doomed inter-office romance and torturing an ex-lover with remote jukebox selections. Easily the most I have enjoyed a Grandaddy record since The Sophtware Slump.




#4
Lætitia Sadier
Rooting for Love

I have a friend who lives in another city and, bless him, listens to a lot of what I consider to be pretty boring music. It's not terrible, just not my thing: faceless neo-garage rock and polite, vibe-y, Spotify-approved R&B/pop. And earlier this year, he sent me a link to Billie Eilish's then-new album, which I'd already heard, and sure, it's fine. If you like it, I'm not trying to yuck your yum. But for me, it felt emblematic of many of the things that turn me off about pop music circa 2024 -- it's glum, musically bland, and you have to actually care about the artist's personal story to engage with it. And I do not care about Billie Eilish's personal story. She is rich beyond my wildest dreams, her life looks nothing like mine, and I couldn't give less of a shit about whether or not fame is hard for her, or she just figured out that she likes to eat pussy. (This is true of all pop stars btw, Billie Eilish just happens to be the one I'm talking about right now. I still like "Bad Guy".)

So I essentially say all that to my friend, because I know he can take it because he's secure in his own tastes -- an admirable trait -- and he's like, "Fine, dickhead, what are you listening to that's so great?" And what's the first album that pops into my head? Rooting for Love by Lætitia Sadier, which is now officially my favorite of Sadier's solo records. Like everything she does, it's bittersweet and subtle, with an undercurrent of unease. It pulls from jazz, fusion, chanson, post-rock, trip-hop, and bachelor pad music -- difficult, knotty music that is somehow all very easy on the ears. And it has one of my all-time favorite album closers.

What did my friend think? He said, "damn, this is really good," then we never talked about it again. I'm guessing he listened for about 30 seconds then put something else on. Probably thought, "huh, not terrible, just not my thing." He still sends me links to "grown folks music" pretty regularly, despite my telling him that all I listen to is "morose bullshit for cranky nerds", and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Previously:




#3
meth.
Shame

Unrelentingly ugly noise-rock-sludge-metal. Very reminiscent of early Swans, but with high and low-register growls, blast beats, and the kind of crushing heaviness that can only come from the realms of extreme metal. I was still in the depths of acute mourning for my friend the first time I heard this -- according to metadata, it was a week and one day after he passed -- and I played it so fucking loud I'm pretty sure I damaged my hearing. This record is a 43-minute-long panic attack, and it's been extremely cathartic to repeatedly almost level my house by blasting it while I do pushups.




#2
Itasca
Imitation of War

It's honestly going to be hard for me to talk about this record as a collection of music, as it has meant a great deal more to me than that since my friend Danny's passing. But I'll try. The watery, wandering guitars suggest to me a more meditative take on Meat Puppets circa Up on the Sun (one of my all-time favorite records, don't think it's ever come up on here), with just a touch of the icy shimmer of Joni Mitchell circa Night Ride Home. Vocally, Itasca (actual name: Kayla Cohen) is gentle, warm, and borderline conversational -- in places, the line between singing and speaking becomes blurred. Her lyrics are naturalistic, psychedelic, impressionistic, even fantastical, but grounded in very real emotion that often, to me, feels like grief; in fact, the last lines of the opening track, "Milk", go: "With my walking stick / I check the depths of my grief / Standing as water / I must dive down."

I had a whole story I was planning to tell about the first time I listened to it, but ultimately it's not that interesting: I was walking to meet my friends, still really going through the grieving process, it was sunny, I put this on, it touched my soul. I wish I could describe that feeling better, but words fail me. Itasca, play me out:

"Misguided wish for fire’s song
Chaos in the veil that we’re walking upon
My prayer is tired but my rosary is long
That’s the effigy I’ll hold 'til the shadow’s gone."





#1
Ingurgitating Oblivion
Ontology of Nought

Jazz and technical death metal have a lot in common. Both require considerable chops; favor angular, dissonant themes; and thrive in a near-constant state of barely controlled chaos. On paper, it's as intuitive a mix as black metal and shoegaze. However, unlike shoegaze, which is about 95% buying the right pedals and tweaking the vocal reverb, jazz requires a ton of training and practice to get right. And there is one key core difference: jazz is inherently loose in both composition and execution, and technical death metal is, conversely, extremely rigid in both areas.

Ingurgitating Oblivion is not the first band to merge the two (shout out Cephalic Carnage, who kinda sucked at it but bless them for trying, and who are somehow now coming up in my year-end content for the second time -- see #5) but they are by far the most successful. Ontology of Nought is an absolute mammoth of a record. It consists of five massive, amorphous pieces of experimental technical death metal played with the loose, explorative feel of avant-garde jazz, rich with non-metal flourishes -- vibraphone, sample manipulation, choral vocals, singing bowls -- and free-floating in pitch-black atmosphere. I've never heard anything like it.

At full-tilt, it's utterly disorienting. There's no obvious time signature or structure, no light or point on the horizon on which to affix your gaze; you're alone, treading water in the middle of the ocean in the dead of night, with no sense of space or time, getting pummeled by waves that you can't see or brace yourself for. And these moments are not brief -- the shortest song is just over 10 minutes long, and two songs top 18 minutes. However, the listener is offered respite in the form of extended denouements at the end of every track, wherein dark ambient and neoclassical elements are pushed to the forefront. I'm particularly fond of the end of "The Blossoms of Your Tomorrow Shall Unfold in My Heart", in which a choir of demonic angels repeatedly insists: "It does not have an essence / It will cease and be no more" as the music fades, until it's just a single speaking voice, repeating "no more" against a minimal, pulsing drone.

Just imagine that happening at the end of this list. That way, I don't have to come up with a proper ending.


at 10 comments:

Saturday, December 14, 2024

My 20 Favorite Black Metal Albums of 2024


I'm gonna be totally honest with the five of you: 2024 was a shit year for ol' DEAR_SPIRIT. Between my friend dying, my cat dying, and the general states of culture, economics, politics, and society, it's been a truly disheartening soul-fuck of a year, and I have fucking hated every second of it. These year-end lists of mine always start with some kind of glib pronouncement about how awful everything is, but this year, I truly, truly mean it. Fuck this fucking year.

Of course, the near-constant mix of anger, sorrow, dejection, alienation, shame, disgust, and misanthropy I've been feeling can only mean one thing: that my love for black metal has never been stronger! As with last year, this easily could have been a top 50 if I had more time, but I don't, so 20 will have to do. Spoiler alert: Paysage d'Hiver is not on here. I liked that record a lot, just not as much as you do, probably.

To anyone who's left out there: thanks for sticking around to witness the final gasps of a dying mp3 blog. It's had a great/OK/passable run, and I'm not sure if I'm ever going to 'officially' put this thing to bed, but every post I make feels like it might be the last. To be clear, I'm not PLANNING for this post to be the last one -- I'm just saying, it might be, who the fuck knows. So if this is the last time you hear from me on here: you better listen to every single album I've ever posted from front to back, or I will find you and kill you.


#20
Dead Flesh Stigma
Necrocosmic Death Ritual

Industrial-infused madness courtesy of V-KhaoZ, an extremely prolific Fin with a bunch of other solo projects. Necrocosmic Death Ritual harkens back to a time -- the 90s -- when industrial black metal didn't have to be all cyber-future-digital-cyborg-dystopian, and could just be Satanic black metal with EBM-type drum machines and synths.




#19
Eschatologia
Transcendence

Queasy, dissonant sounds that have plenty in common with Moon, I Shalt Become, Velvet Cacoon, Xasthur, etc. There's a bit more spring in Eschatologia's step than those bands, but they're hovering around in the same tormented, spectral space.




#18
Nimbifer
Der böse Geist

German raw black metal that, for all its ferocity, maintains a sense of fragility and sorrow throughout. This is in no small part due to the recurring presence of ethereal, hovering guitar feedback. Unlike most raw BM, which typically has the feel of being shackled and whipped in a dripping dungeon, Der böse Geist sounds like it's constantly being pulled heavenward.




#17
Horn
Daudswiärk

Topnotch pagan black metal from a German institution. Runs the gamut of mid-paced, Nordland-esque atmosphere, blasting ferocity, and even what sounds to me like a bit of post-punk -- see the chiming guitar refrain of "Broth" -- but ultimately, you're just looking at majestic, melodic, folk-infused pagan BM at its finest.




#16
Solbrud
IIII

A double album of sprawling, earthy atmospheric BM that has unfortunately turned out to be the swansong from this excellent, underrated Danish band. In retrospect, the writing was on the wall: the central conceit of IIII is that it is divided into four parts, each representing a different element of nature, and each solely composed by one of the band's four members. However, this somewhat fractured approach resulted in the band's most diverse set -- see the unexpected pivot into glacial, Floydian psychedelia on "Sjælskrig" -- and as definitive a closing statement as one could have hoped for.

Previously:




#15
Howl
Drought

Beastly caveman solo BM from Estonia of all places. Gnarly power-chord riffs, echoing rasps, and dive bombing solos, all encased in tastefully cavernous production. Great promo pic, too.




#14
Gråt Strigoi
The Prophetic Silence

Probably the best explicitly anti-fascist black metal I've ever heard -- maybe I'm forgetting something. Furious, heavy, and raw, with under/overtones of DSBM, dissonant post-sludge, and harsh noise-drone, the latter of which practically subsumes monolithic album closer "For the Blood Made Ruins".




#13
Leprous Vortex Sun
Ш​у​м н​е​б​ы​т​и​я

A gnarled, dissonant, nightmare-ish cacophony with no light and, save for a few pockets of rumbling dark ambience, no respite. Upping the chaos ante is the band's tendency to start songs at full-tilt -- almost in media res -- then ending them just as abruptly. There is little to no space between tracks, and often the only discernible shifts are textural or tonal. An excellent entry in the Deathspell Omega/Portal pantheon.




#12
Black Curse
Burning in Celestial Poison

Unrelenting black-death madness from a formidable lineup. Every time it seems like they're gonna take a second to breathe, it's as if they get injected with Bane juice and start raging all over again. A top-to-bottom kick in the teeth.




#11
Possessive
Res Ipsa Loquitur

Punishing, heavy, and straight-up cruel sludge/black/death. Res Ipsa Loquitur absolutely fucking hates you. It's honestly barely black metal, but close enough.




#10
Austere
Beneath the Threshold

Having returned last year with arguably their best album yet, Austere kept the miserable momentum going in 2024 by charging headlong into the melodic, mid-paced kingdoms of Katatonia and early Anathema. Their knack for beautifully downcast, simple yet memorable melodic themes remains, and provides a through-line to their droning DSBM past.

Previously:




#9
Ildganger
For Hver Tanke Mister Sj​æ​len Atter Farve

Raw, ghostly atmospheric BM. There's a lot of intermingling of seemingly opposed elements here -- clean and distorted guitars, dissonant and melodic guitar lines, blasting ice-storms bumping up against still, minimal sorrow -- that really spoke to me in the aftermath of losing my friend, and that's the kind of emotional resonance that tends to stick with you. Two albums in, Ildganger's batting 100.

Previously:




#8
Hässlig
Apex Predator

Hateful, nasty-ass Ildjarn-core for crushing and consuming the weak. I feel a weird kinship with this band because they sound not at all unlike my old band, just way more dialed in, and obviously, that also means that their sound is just way, way up my alley. If this list was ordered by how much iron I've pumped while listening to them, Apex Predator would be at #1 by a comfortable margin.




#7
Astral Lore
Astral Lore

Three beautiful, sprawling pieces of black metal majesty from a band that seemingly sprung from out of nowhere, fully formed. Riffs often recall the droning fury of Ukranian BM, while the leads tend to have a more forlorn, funereal quality. In spite of the somewhat lo-fi, ‘live' (read: not individually tracked) recording, Astral Lore clearly have given a lot of thought to composition here, as each track tells its own story -- even with quite limited sonic ingredients. Fans of early Paysage d'Hiver, Drudkh, and maybe even Weakling should check in.




#6
Verberis
The Apophatic Wilderness

Two years removed from the creative breakthrough of Adumbration of the Veiled Logos, Verberis have reemerged both leaner and more cerebral. The guitars are cleaner and the writing is knottier -- at times bordering on math-y -- and the end result is shimmering, thematically esoteric, and utterly enthralling.

Previously:




#5
Scarcity
The Promise of Rain

Eventually, for a time, The Promise of Rain settles down a bit. But it starts with, without a doubt, some of the most batshit insane guitars I have ever heard on what's ostensibly a black metal record. Just utterly dissonant and ugly, but with this chiming, minimal, almost playful approach. Truly unhinged. Almost sounds like Drive Like Jehu tried their hand at black metal. It reminds me of the first time I heard "Pseudo" by Cephalic Carnage and I kept thinking about the guitarist showing up at band practice like, "Guys, check out this awesome riff I wrote!", then proceeding to play the most unintelligible sequence of garbled nonsense imaginable while looking at them expectantly.

Previously:




#4
Thy Woe
To Soothe the Torment Etched on Thy Solemn Face

Based on the cover, I was definitely expecting this to be dungeon synth-y raw BM for creeping through the shadows with a candelabra in your hand. (Or maybe amateurish DSBM.) And while that assessment wasn't completely off, it greatly undersells what's arguably the platonic ideal of second-wave black metal in 2024. You can headbang to it, you can cut yourself to it, you can worship Satan to it -- often all at once. Plus, from Bathory to Tragedy, I've always been a huge proponent of a well-placed bell chime, and Thy Woe's contribution to this storied lineage, "Cruel Fate's Design", is more than worthy.




#3
Oranssi Pazuzu
Muuntautuja

Oranssi Pazuzu have almost completely left black metal behind at this point. Muuntautuja is a chaotic, dense amalgamation of horror soundtracks, drone rock, and trip-hop -- at least two songs on here made me think of Subliminal Sandwich -- all twisted, beaten, burnt, sliced, stretched, and finessed into the band's skewed vision for the genre.

Previously:




#2
Akhlys
House of the Black Geminus

House of the Black Geminus hits like a fucking pitch-black tsunami. It's dense, impossibly heavy, and awe-inspiringly massive. Played at even moderate volumes, it feels like it takes on a psychical presence in the room. And that's just the sonics of it. Musically, this is the stuff of nightmares, with echoing guitar lines and thick-ass synths that sound like something John Carpenter and Alan Howarth might've come up with in their prime, compositions that start at a 10 on the anxiety scale then somehow build up from there, and unrelenting viciousness and brutality.

Previously:




#1
Givre
Le Cloître

It starts with a whisper -- a graceful, descending guitar figure. A second guitar comes in, initially mirroring the first, then dropping lower to tap into an unexpected clashing of chords. It feels like foreshadowing -- the listener is immersed in this gentle, chiming guitar, but with periodic glimpses of dissonance that suggest that this tranquility is too fragile to last.

Le Cloître is a concept album, with each of its six tracks discussing the story of a different female Catholic saint. (Givre may or may not be Catholic themselves -- they're a bit elusive in interviews.) It covers a lot of terrain -- queasy orthodox BM, churning post-metal, atmos-sludge, and more traditional, epic BM -- but it all feels like it's flowing from the same sorrowful, tormented, blood-red river. It's the kind of emotional, singular listening experience that I've always found difficult to describe -- that's what music is for, right? But I can say, definitively, that Le Cloître is one of my favorite black metal records in existence.


at 28 comments:

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Ætheria Conscientia - The Blossoming (2024)


French progressive/psychedelic black metal. Saxophone and synth factor in pretty heavily. The second entry in my unofficial series "A Lot of the Year's Best Black Metal Records Are Free to Download on Bandcamp."

Track listing:
1. Astral Choir
2. Haesperadh
3. Wrath of the Virikoï
4. Daimu Kadasdra Ko Antall
5. Endless Cycle
6. The Blossoming


If you like this, check out:
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Saturday, October 26, 2024

Déçu - ..Whirlwind (2024)


French raw DSBM. ..Whirlwind is a great example of how production can absolutely make or break a black metal record. It's compositionally minimal, often to an extreme -- there are songs made up entirely of cycling back and forth between a pair of two-chord 'riffs' -- and with big, polished production, they'd probably drag. And yet, the warm, distorted, analogue wall of sound makes it feel like it's the end of the fucking world. When it first hit, it honestly reminded me of the first time I heard "Only Shallow" -- not so much in sound but pure, visceral impact.

Perhaps most importantly, though: you can just feel how real it is. No one makes a track like "Glacial Décadence des Lamentations." unless they're really going through it.

Free/name your price via bandcamp.

Track listing:
1. Être dans tes bras.
2. Dors, ne souffre plus.
3. Morose Regret & Malheur Éternel.
4. Dormir sous les sanglots. (Berceuse I)
5. Today I realized how much destruction reminded me of you.
6. Glacial Décadence des Lamentations.

at 4 comments:

Tuesday, October 22, 2024

Twelfth Night - Fact and Fiction (1982)


Weird, dystopian prog rock for creeps. Like early Marillion but with a lower budget and a darker worldview.

Track listing:
1. We Are Sane
2. Human Being
3. This City
4. World Without End
5. Face and Fiction
6. The Poet Sniffs a Flower
7. Creepshow
8. Love Song


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Saturday, October 12, 2024

Funereal Moon - Beneath the Cursed Light of a Spectral Moon (1996)


Black metal as ritual dark ambient as scary sounds tape. The album starts as a fog of synth figures, haunted house sound effects, and rasping vocals. Midway through, the fog begins to intermittently morph into the more identifiable shapes of queasy, droning black metal filth. The rest of the album's runtime is spent back, forth, and on the line between these two realms. Supplicate yourself to true underground goblin supremacy.

Track listing:
1. Revelation (Intro)
2. Where Shadows of Decadence Dwell
3. Beneath the Cursed Light of a Spectral Moon (An Ancient Incantation)
4. Funeral Litanies from the Graves
5. The Howl of the Black Witch
6. Death, War and Hate (Extermination of All Forms of Life)
7. Vrykolkas
8. Lucifer's Throne of Temptation
9. I Came from Darkness to Conquer
10. Werewolf Nightmare
11. The Sign of the End of Time (Outro)


Similar vibes:
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Thursday, October 10, 2024

Klaus Schulze - Angst (1983)


Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Synth legend Klaus Schulze's excellent soundtrack to the supremely dark Angst, which, hey! You can watch it right now if you fancy a slow-burning portrait of a psychopath on a bad day.

Track listing:
1. Freeze
2. Pain
3. Memory
4. Surrender
5. Beyond
6. Silent Survivor [Bonus]


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Sunday, October 6, 2024

Dimensional Psychosis - Magical Matrix of Dimensional Continuum (2002)


It's black metal. Not trance, not techno. Despite what that album cover is telling you, I swear to god, it's black metal. It's dense, hyper-speed, industrial-powered cosmic black metal from a time before that had become a fully-formed micro-genre unto itself. This shit fucking rules. I hope to get my ass in gear and do some Spooky Season posting in the coming weeks, but who knows if I will; I am a dumb piece of shit, after all.

Track listing:
1. Matrix Mindscan Transition (Wormed Beyond)
2. Psychedelic Blackish Psychosis (Eternal Magick Unfolds)
3. Paradoxal Hologram from Sirius I AM (Universal Symbiosis)
4. Eerie Spiritual Vulture (Disconnected from Gravity)
5. Trapped in the Infinity of Limbo-Dimensionism (Humanoid Limits Erased)
6. Virtual Spectrum of Extensive Transparency (Visualize Transcendental Dreamscapes)
7. Choronzonic Evilution of Genius Dementia (Futuristic Intelligence of Ancientness)
8. I Am the Cosmic Storm Raging (Ultimate Chaos in Infinity)
9. Intermezzo & Mensenhaat (Remix)
10. End


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Saturday, September 14, 2024

Social Unrest - Now and Forever (1988)


Melodic CA punk/hardcore that often crosses over into post-punk territory. I bought Now and Forever on cassette when I was a baby punk from some junk shop in Fells Point. I also bought this shitty thrash tape and Lita by Lita Ford on LP, which really impressed the middle-aged butt-rocker dude who stopped me on the sidewalk by pointing at the Lisa Ford record and shouting "now THAT's a woman!" Still hilarious.

Social Unrest/Now and Forever: I honestly wasn't that into it at the time. Too melodic, too melancholic. I like it OK, but between them and Minor Threat, who I was also just getting into at the time, it was no contest. My favorite song by far was "Handcuffs Too Tight", the most straightforward hardcore song on here. So I completely forgot about the band and album until a few months back, when I sold a bunch of old cassettes, noticed this one as I packed it up, and tracked it down on the internet. I like it way more this time around.

Track listing:
1. Katarina Witt
2. Now and Forever
3. I Am the Nation
4. Sexboy
5. Club 4
6. Crisis in Black and White
7. Red Army Drug War
8. Handcuffs Too Tight
9. Sins of Paris
10. Ever Fallen in Love?
11. Highroller Desolation Angels


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Saturday, August 17, 2024

Caustic Resin - Fly Me to the Moon (1995)


Indie rock gone drone. Caustic Resin takes the stoned, bemused mindset of 90s alt/indie and pumps it full of the heavier, darker-tinted sounds of drone, garage, psych, and noise rock. I've been on a major 90s kick for the past few months, but due to my extremely sporadic posting, this is the first y'all are hearing about it. More to come?

Track listing:
1. Spore
2. Kill You If You Want Me To
3. Water Moccasin
4. Alien Fugue
5. Cancerous Eye
6. Healing Cough
7. The End of Betrayal
8. Damaged Animal
9. Summertime of Your Life
10. I Feel
11. A Fistful of Violence
12. Golden Hours
13. Calling Off the Dogs
14. White Box
15. Alien Fugue (Slight Return)
16. Station Wagon



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Monday, August 12, 2024

Angra Mainyu - Versunkenheit (2007)


A commenter just pointed out that my most recent black metal post was way back in January. This is unacceptable, especially considering that I've been listening to a shit-ton of it. So to rectify that -- and to start your week off on a bright note -- here's some cold, bleak, droning, minimal, miserable German DSBM. 

Track listing:
1. Entfremdung
2. Nachthimmel
3. Worte sind nichts
4. Schweigen
5. Kälteemission
6. Lethargie
7. Abschied


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Thursday, August 8, 2024

Tom Kazas - Deliquescence (1989)


Lovely, often quite emotive new age sounds from down under. Synths and programmed rhythms intermixed with longing, ethereal guitars. Something about this record really taps into my big ol' well of grief, but so does pretty much everything these days.

Track listing:
1. Eyes of a Bird
2. Someday That Is Saturday
3. Heavenly Transport
4. Blankets of Ice
5. Vision of Serenity
6. On Endless Nights
7. Unseen Passage
8. Mediterranean Move
9. Journey of the Whales


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Friday, July 12, 2024

Twisted Science - Blown (1997)


Heady electronic sounds spanning distorted breaks, echoing downtempo quasi-grooves, and uneasy noise/ambient spells, with very little in terms of anything approaching melody. However, if you're like me, you've listened to White Zombie's La Sexorcisto about 500 times, and you'll recognize that "Beady Eye" shares a sampled arpeggiating drone with "Welcome to Planet Motherfucker" -- anyone know what that's from?

Track listing:
1. Sex, Drugs and Science
2. Bender
3. Beady Eye
4. Bad Head
5. Laptop Swine
6. Theme from Slow Blow
7. Magma Hum
8. Intermission
9. Lube
10. Bad Kabuki
11. Mr Ray Gone
12. Horn
13. Here Come the Pigs
14. Fryed
15. Fin


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Monday, July 1, 2024

Juana Molina - Segundo (2000)


Dreamy, abstract Argentinian indie-folk against a backdrop of minimal electronic textures and pulses. If you're a fan of Vespertine -- which, statistically speaking, you are -- you should find a lot to love here.

Track listing:
1. Martín Fierro
2. ¿Quién?
3. El Perro
4. ¡Que llueva!
5. La visita
6. Quiero
7. Mantra del bicho feo
8. El desconfiado
9. El zorzal
10. El pastor mentiroso
11. Misterio uruguayo
12. Vaca que cambia de querencia
13. MedDlong
14. Sonamos
15. The Wrong Song [hidden track]


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Monday, May 27, 2024

Various Artists - Misguided Wish for Fire's Song - 2024 Pt. 1 (2024)


My car is an '04 Corolla that has no Bluetooth and no AUX. It has the radio and a CD player. Sure, I could get a new stereo system installed, but I've weirdly fallen back in love with the art of the mix CD. No matter how well they come together, Spotify playlists always feel unfinished to me, whereas with a mix CD, you finalize a playlist and actually create a physical artifact of it. Much more satisfying. Less practical, of course, but more satisfying.

So this is the most recent one that I've made, and it's a collection of some of my favorite songs that have been released this year so far. It's not comprehensive, and it definitely wasn't made for public consumption, but it hasn't left my CD player for two weeks now, and it's what I have for you. Here's a quick rundown of the track list. Sorry if this is weird, I don't know what the hell life is anymore.

1. Lætitia Sadier - "Cloud 6"
The last song on Rooting for Love, which is probably my favorite Sadier solo record. The abrupt, borderline jump-scare ending is brilliant.
2. Amaro Freitas - "Sonho Ancestral"
Brazilian jazz piano. Buoyant and reflective.
3. Grandaddy - "Long as I'm Not the One"
A shiny, mid-paced sad-sack ballad among a collection of shiny, mid-paced sad-sack ballads.
4. Gesaffelstein - "Hard Dreams"
Reminds me of the golden age of electroclash.
5. Chelsea Wolfe - "Whispers in the Echo Chamber"
From the whispered breakdown to the riff-y ending that quickly redlines: she's in her NIN era.
6. meth. - "Shame"
Devastating, merciless noise-sludge. Title track from what's probably my AOTY at the moment.
7. Mizu - "Pump"
Ambient cello/electronics/field recordings.
8. Itasca - "Tears on Sky Mountain"
Weightless, gently psychedelic folk rock. The song from which I lifted the pretentious name for this mix. Again, I wasn't planning on sharing this when I made it.
9. Julia Holter - "Something in the Room She Moves"
Y'all probably know this one.
10. Kelly Moran - "Dancer Polynomials"
Hypnotic, cascading piano.
11. Ildganger - "Dans Om Tomhedens Mund"
Depressive, atmospheric, anxious yet majestic, raw-ish black metal.
12. Elegý - "Ship of Hopes"
Melodic, epic DSBM/post-BM.
13. Lila Ehjä - "Rust"
Slow-burning electro-darkwave track that takes on a shoegaze-like wall of guitar as it progresses.
14. Six Organs of Admittance - "Slip Away"
A spacious, haunting, acoustic-led psych-folk elegy that tends to make me cry.

Hopefully this doesn't result in Google deleting my blog. Enjoy!

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Sunday, May 12, 2024

Bernhard Günter - Crossing the River (Night Music) (2001)


Minimal, sparse experimental sounds. The half-hour-plus title track is dedicated to then-recently deceased composer Iannis Xenakis, and is composed of dissonant strings, manipulated sources, and field recordings. "Haiku for Mu" is built on recordings of Günter's dog sleeping. A real party-starter, this one.

Track listing:
1. Crossing the River (Night Music)
2. Haiku for Mu


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Sunday, May 5, 2024

ROHIT - Trick (2013)


Last month -- in the evening, on Thursday, April 11 -- my friend Danny died. He had made plans with his girlfriend to go out, and he was supposed to meet her outside his apartment, but when she got there, he wasn't outside. Eventually, after not hearing from him, she went into his apartment and found him dead on the couch. He had one shoe on.

No one knows for sure what happened. One can certainly make assumptions or inferences, but his cause of death is still unknown, and depending on what his family chooses to do with the autopsy results, it might stay that way. The only thing I feel safe saying is that, whatever it was, it was sudden, and it was unintentional. He was putting his shoes on, getting ready to go out with his girlfriend. He had texted her half an hour before she found him. Danny didn't want to die.

The night of his memorial, I had a dream that I was driving to drop off this bag full of old 4-track recordings of his that he left at my house sometime during early Covid (that part is real). Just before I pulled up to his house I realized that I'd driven to the wrong house: I was at the first house where I had lived with him, way back in 2007-2008. So I think, "Wait a second, Danny doesn't live here. Where the fuck does Danny live?" And I'm all confused. Then, the thought hits me as I wake up with a stone in my throat: "Oh, that's right. Danny doesn't live anywhere anymore."

Danny and I were in a few bands together over the years, and ROHIT was where we really bonded. I had started it as a solo project, but midway through recording the first demo, I knew I had to bring him into it. I just knew he would get it. So I played it for him, and he loved it. ROHIT was now a two-piece. We used to play shows for largely indifferent crowds, and we'd walk away like, "holy shit, dude, we just fucking crushed it, we're so fucking good." We truly didn't care if other people liked it -- we were doing exactly what we wanted to. And he boosted me like no other bandmate ever had or has -- I have never felt as seen or respected, creatively, as I did working with Danny in those early years.

After a while, we decided we weren't heavy enough and we needed a bassist so we invited Ana, who was fresh off the boat from Sweden, to join. She was into it, and we immediately became the best version of ourselves. That's the version of the band that recorded Trick, which I still consider our definitive recording. We had zeroed in on what we were best at, which was an extremely minimal synthesis of Ildjarn, Eyehategod, and Swans. It's not for everyone, and it's really not the point of this post. Check it out if you like.

Over the first couple of weeks after Danny died, it felt I had something dead attached to me, like a phantom limb or a tumor or some kind of cold, gnawing growth. And I knew that I had to let it go or it would spread to the rest of my body, but I couldn't bring myself to, because that thing was Danny. And letting it go meant letting Danny die, and I wanted to hold onto him as hard as I could. Keep him from that void into which so many beautiful souls have already disappeared. Pull him back through the veil, downwards with the rain, through an open window into his living room. Safe again, on his couch, sliding that second shoe on.

We kinda grew apart over the years. We texted a lot, and I always figured we'd grow back together again some day. Start another band. Watch more horror movies and It's Always Sunny. Drink beers on the porch and argue about Neurosis. Listen to Bill Fay and watch the sun turn red and disappear behind the trees. There were times when we'd go months without seeing each other, and more than once, when we finally did hang out, he told me that he'd been reading my blog -- this stupid fucking blog -- because that way he could see that, even though we weren't together, I was still me, I was still funny, I was ok.

Maybe writing this, I'm hoping that he can still read it somehow. I love you, Danny. I'll miss you forever.




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