So my Winter Break started on Saturday and before I left school I took about 35 albums from the radio station library and bought another 12 for really cheap on the Amazon Marketplace (great stuff, some of the CDs were less than a dollar plus shipping). I'm planning on listening to all of them over the next month so I can find some good, lesser-known stuff to play on the next season of our show. Basically I used allmusic.com to find artists similar to some of my favorite bizarre-sounding bands like
Animal Collective, Frog Eyes, Grizzly Bear, Dan Deacon, Dirty Projectors, Deerhoof, etc. and took any albums that got good ratings to give them a try.
I know it sounds ambitious, but I was already able to listen to eight albums on the train home and I've scheduled it so that I spare about an hour or so each day to just sit and listen to new stuff, so hopefully I can push through the massive mountain of new music. So far I've heard
Crystal Stilts, The High Llamas, Bearsuit, Alaska In Winter, Daedalus, Mercury Rev, Piano Magic, Fennesz, and
Fridge, all of which were fairly good and deserve some attention. A list of my favorites follows:
1.
Alight of Night by
Crystal Stilts (Distorted noise pop like
The Jesus & Mary Chain)
2.
Beet, Maize, & Corn by
The High Llamas (Honest folk/pop similar to
Brian Wilson)
3.
Denies The Day's Demise by
Daedalus (Electronica with scratching and exotica beats)
4.
Deserter's Songs by
Mercury Rev (Experimental 90s pop a la
The Flaming Lips)
5.
Endless Summer by
Fennesz (Beautiful ambient glitch pieces, found through my Computers & Music class)
Other notables: The track
"Close Your Eyes - We Are Blind" on
Alaska In Winter's
Dance Party In The Balkans features
Zach Condon of
Beirut. The title track on
Disaffected by
Piano Magic, the only track worth a listen in my opinion, is similarly fantastic.
In case you haven't noticed, I've been going through the stuff alphabetically by album name. I'll probably interject some random ones once my CDs come in the mail (5 of them arrived yesterday!)
Today's album was Es Tiempo by Alla (right), which sounded like a psych-folksy, Spanish version of Portishead's Dummy. Some good stuff, especially the intro "Un Dia Otra Noche" and the title track.
Finally, I'll leave you with a link to one of the best tracks I've discovered so far. Click
here to see a fan video accompaniment to
"Endlessly" by
Mercury Rev (who you'll definitely be hearing more about in the near future.) Enjoy (and check out the wonderful use of theremin in the background!)
Prompted by its surprise appearance in a very vivid dream, I gave another listen to Endless Summer by Christian Fennesz, considered one of the masterpieces of the glitch genre. As I usually am when something inexplicable compels me to listen to something, I was blown away. The album is subtle genius: it combines fuzzy glitch electronics with acoustic guitar strumming to create something that is both artificial and yet deeply human. The result is an awe-inspiring soundscape of pure nostalgia, for what I can't quite place. All I know is that this music perfectly expresses the same feeling of bittersweet hopelessness that settles in when something reminds me of times past. I don't know how Fennesz captures the feeling of good things coming to an end (hence the title) so well, but it's really beautiful.
Another intriguing album I revisited toward the end of my winter break was Kelley Polar's I Need You To Hold On When The Sky Is Falling. When I first listened, I was surprised by 1) the fact that Kelley Polar is actually a man named Michael Kelley and 2) the sparseness of what I thought was going to be a lush album of layered electronics. Having been compared to Junior Boys, it deserved another chance to really sink in, so I gave it one to no disappointment. The songs, like those of Fennesz described above, are bittersweet in that they have dance synths and club beats but also evoke melancholic feelings of emptiness and isolation. Despite the colors of the album cover, the album is actually quite dark and a bit disturbing, especially the track "Chrysanthemum." But the music is still really affecting throughout, just not in the way I initially expected.
