Last Album you listened through

Last album I gave a complete listen to was Return Of The Boom Bap by KRS One.

Times Like This ... A Comedy of Eras.

Tom Petty - "Full Moon Fever" (I needed some heartland-rock in my collection).

It was an interesting listen, probably folkier than I'm used to. I don't like buying for the singles, so I try to appreciate the entire work (get into the head-space the artist was at when they wrote it).

I thought it was a nice touch to leave in that part after "Runnin Down A Dream" where Tom addresses the cassette tape listeners by giving them a chance to switch to the B-Side.

I suppose my only complaint was how short all the songs were; I find that length can give a song more identity in an album-work, but maybe I don't listen to this sort of music enough to get an idea for how long their songs should be (maybe it doesn't benefit the genre the way I think it will).

It was a worthwhile buy outside the singles. That's all I ask for in an album.

edited 9th Feb '13 9:25:47 PM by Alucard

That was also my first "real" Tom Petty album (though I had a Greatest Hits Album first) and I agree it's a pretty good one. I also recommend Damn The Torpedoes, which I'd call just the tiniest bit more rock and less folk.

edited 10th Feb '13 12:03:01 AM by MikeK

Vladimir Ussachevsky's Film Music - Intense psychological soundscapes from one of the masters of early electronic music and tape music. Definitely recommended.

yeah man lowercase

Will check out.

A few more recent ones:

• Flux Of Pink Indians, Neu Smell EP—Three songs and nine minutes of post-punk-inflected anarchic anarchist hectoring. Good stuff, particularly with the weird poetic bits, but still not half as interesting as their later, more deranged work.
• Matmos, Matmos—Matmos' début is peculiarly hip-hop inflected in places; "Lunaire", in particular, has a very dark but elegant breakbeat groove propelling it. Surprising, but ultimately not shocking. "...And Silver Light Popped In His Eyes" is a treat.
• Scott Walker, Bish Bosch—I believe that this may be my favourite of the trilogy, if only for the strength of the middle stretch of the album ("Phrasing" through "Epizootics!"). Hilarious and monstrous all at once, with some incredibly innovative use of instrumental timbre.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Dahlia's Tear ‎– Dreamsphere

Arthemis-back from the heat

edited 10th Feb '13 6:07:12 AM by dronepeanut

formaldehyde-dronepeanut was the best poster :3

Daft Punk - Discovery. It took me a lot longer to get around to listening to this than it should have. All I know is I liked "One More Time" and "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" when I heard them, but I didn't think I'd be able to listen to an entire hour of that kind of music because repetitive lyrics are a pet peeve of mine if a band or artist is too reliant on that. Then I learned that half of the songs are instrumental and the lyrics to some of the songs like "Digital Love" actually aren't too repetitive. One of the best house albums I've heard, although I admit my experience with house is limited compared to other genres of electronic music.

Dntel - Life Is Full Of Possibilities. Dntel is the solo project of Jimmy Tamborello, also of The Postal Service. In fact, there's a song on this album called "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" that was basically the precursor to The Postal Service itself, as Ben Gibbard provided lead vocals. However, don't expect it to sound much like The Postal Service - it's got much more of a slow-paced, ambient feel *

.

Last listened to the self-titled debut album by Hinn Íslenski ursaflokkur, which is largely traditional Icelandic folk songs done in “rock” style. They get compared to Gryphon a lot as both were intepreters of medieval music and, more bizarrely, both groups had a bassoon player, but they really don’t remind me much of Gryphon. There seems to be a jazzy undercurrent to their music which I find appealing. I used to prefer their second album (ursabit) but now I tend to gravitate towards this one a bit more. There’s an instrumental (“Sólnes”) with a great “weeping” guitar line which strikes a very emotional chord in me.

EDIT: the formatting seems to dislike the Icelandic “thorn” character.

edited 17th Feb '13 2:23:59 PM by Bananaquit

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

Electric Six - Fire. I think they got a lot more interesting and varied after this, but this is the album of theirs I go to when I want to hear something "dancey".

Petra Haden - Petra Goes To The Movies. One-woman a capella covers of film music - that is, she's replaced every instrument with overdubs of her own voice *

. She famously took the same approach to a cover album of The Who Sell Out several years back, but this is a much more impressive, complex take on the idea. The songs are all really well arranged, and she's pretty great at imitating instruments - two things that stand out are the "horns" in "A Fistful Of Dollars" and the industrial drones from "Hand Covers Bruise" (from The Social Network). The only real misstep is the cover of "Goldfinger" - the all-vocal arrangement is still great, but she sounds too low-key singing the actual lead vocal.

L.E.O. - Alpacas Ogling. Basically an album-length love letter to Electric Light Orchestra (hence the band name being two swapped letters away from "ELO" of course). For the most part they seem to be going for mid-70's ELO, but "Ya Had Me Goin'" nods to their more disco-influenced period, and "Money And Music" even has the drum machines and synthesizers of their eighties albums. It can get a little too self-consciously cheesy, but for the most part it's a really fun throwback - they do a good job of mimicking the production and arrangements of ELO, and it's got the big pop hooks to make the style work.

Liquid Liquid - Liquid Liquid. These guys were pretty obviously Can-influenced, but funkier and more bass-oriented. "Cavern" was famously Sampled Up by Grandmaster Flash (though it's a re-recording of the bass line, rather than a sample).

edited 19th Feb '13 5:17:22 PM by MikeK

Accept's "Balls to the Wall"

You know, I didn't expect it to get as heavy as it did at times (especially the solos). This one is loaded front to back with infectious riffs, dynamic gang-shouting and all-round epic metal anthems (too bad the title track gets all the attention). Some of the major gems included "Head Over Heels," "Losing More Than You've Ever Had," "Love Child" and "Losers and Winners." I didn't see much reason for them to slow down as much as they did on the final track ("Winterdreams") but I guess every rock album at the time had to have at least one ballad.

Overall I was pretty impressed. This was the first Accept album I've ever owned, and I don't think it'll be the last.

Raindancer, by Erutan. Absolutely beautiful.

I'm in the process of listening to The Eyes of Tomorrow, by Broken Iris. They've got one album on iTunes, and it looks like they're an indie band. It's quite good so far.

This is merely a matter of curiosity, but how do you define "heavy"?

Just one today:

• Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Slow Riot for New Zero Kanada—Beautifully detailed and structured compositions with some fascinating tapes. Surprisingly delicate for Godspeed, with an almost verse-chorus structure coming in on "Blaise Bailey Finnegan III", but not too out of the ordinary—which, in this case, really isn't a bad thing.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Godspeed you Black Empereor- F# A# Infinity, I'm trying to get into post rock, any other good albums besides this and sigur ros?

Gang of Four- Entertainment!

Television- Marquee Moon

Bossanova- Pixies

Trascendental Youth- The mountain Goats

edited 22nd Feb '13 12:53:54 PM by MGHBC

Try some Slint or Stereolab's early stuff.

Fuck yeah, Gang of Four!

There's another thread about post rock.

For whatever reason, I can't really get into GYBE or Sigur Ros. My preferences are more along the lines of Talk Talk's Laughing Stock, Stereolab's Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements, Calexico's Hot Rail, and Jaga Jazzist's What We Must and One-Armed Bandit (A Livingroom Hush and The Styx are even better, but they're futurejazz instead of post-rock).

A modified version of my suggestion list from the post-rock thread to account for what has already been mentioned, plus a few borderline and out-of-genre inclusions (Krautrock, progressive hardcore, jazz fusion, post-punk) that are directly relevant to the genre in some way:

• Band Of Susans, Here Comes Success
• Bark Psychosis, Hex
• Bitch Magnet, Ben-Hur
• Boredoms, Vision Creation Newsun or Super Æ
• Brian Eno, Another Green World
• Bügsküll, Snakland or Phantasies and Senseitions
• Can, Tago Mago and/or Ege Bamyasi
• Explosions In The Sky, How Strange, Innocence
• Faust, So Far and/or Faust IV
• Gastr Del Sol, The Serpentine Similar
• Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Tatay
• Have a Nice Life, Deathconsciousness
• King Crimson, Red
• Kraftwerk, Kraftwerk 2
• Jackie-O Motherfucker, Fig. 5 or Ballads of the Revolution
• Jesu, Jesu
• Mogwai, Young Team
• Mono, Under the Pipal Tree
• My Bloody Valentine, Isn't Anything
• NEU!, NEU! or NEU! '75
• Shining, Blackjazz
• Sigur Rós, Ágætis byrjun
• Slint, Spiderland
• Soft Machine, Third
• Sonic Youth, Washing Machine and/or A Thousand Leaves
• Spacemen 3, The Perfect Prescription
• Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen, We are Now Floating in Space
• Swans, The Great Annihilator and/or The Seer
• This Heat, Deceit
• They Promised Us Jetpacks, In the Pit of the Stomach
• Throbbing Gristle, D.O.A.: The Third and Final Annual Report
• Tortoise, Millions Now Living Will Never Die
• Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass

edited 22nd Feb '13 3:36:27 PM by JHM

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

well, thanks for the recommendations, I'll go check some of those out

Cool. Love the Arthur Frayn avatar, by the way.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Pretty much anything that makes it into an 8 on the Mohs Scale Of Rock And Metal Hardness.

I mean, how do you personally define that? What entail heaviness to you, I mean?

I ask because I kind of have an idiosyncratic definition of it myself and I like to compare and contrast.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Well for one, I think same-iness is in opposition with heaviness. I believe the brain needs variation, as to prevent a heavy sound from becoming routine or losing impact (I forgot the term for this).

Other than that, I'm pretty sure speed, distortion, guttural singing and the like are the scientific definition of how humans achieve the release needed for something to be considered heavy (i.e. the mind's sense of inhibition is surrendered to animal instinct, thus creating the rush).

Latest that I've listened through: fun.'s Aim and Ignite. Considering I heard Some Nights first and everyone had been telling me that Some Nights is a huge change in sound from Aim and Ignite, I didn't know what to expect. And, yeah, they sound pretty different. Not a 180 degree flip, that's for certain, but there is a huge, distinct ELO influence in Aim and Ignite that seems to be missing from Some Nights. I do like both albums, and I need to listen to Aim and Ignite probably a few times more before deciding which I like better, but they definitely do have different sounds to them.

edited 22nd Feb '13 9:20:14 PM by 0dd1

Insert witty and clever quip here. My page, as the database hates my handle.

Kent - Verkligen. Second album by one of the biggest Swedish indie pop bands. This album in particular has some very good songs but is a bit too bombastic and clearly Radiohead-derived to ever reach anything beyond "solid".

yeah man lowercase

Hmm...

I have a pretty different definition of heaviness. To my mind, heaviness requires exactly what the word entails: Weight. Forceful low end and a vast yet claustrophobic quality. But more than anything, I think that a degree of menace is crucial to something being heavy. Fun music tends to be less heavy than ugly music because it lacks that predatory vibe. To use Black Flag as an example, the frantic hop of "Nervous Breakdown" is not particularly heavy, but the demoniac lope of "Three Nights" definitely is. Listening to truly heavy music should be like being stalked in the dark by a huge and deadly animal, unseen but undeniably present. Fast, detailed things can be heavy, but I think that slow and monolithic lends itself better to the purpose of heaviness.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.