Last Album you listened through

• The Drones, Feelin' Kinda Free—WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE?!

Mike Oldfield - "Tubular Bells".

The Beatles - Help!

A facebook friend of mine started pursuing an idea I decided to borrow because it seems like a fun way to get into music you wouldn't have gone out of your way to find otherwise: 1) pick a span of three or more decades, say the 60's-the 90's. 2) write every year occurring in that span on a piece of paper and cut it out (so 1960, 1961, etc). 3) put all those slips in a hat or a bag, shake it up, and pull out a year. 4) Listen to only music from that year until you get bored/have exhausted your options. Anyway, I went with the years 1960-2000, and got 1965 as a first draw. Rubber Soul came out later the same year, so I'll be listening to that later too, but I was interested in Help! because I'd never heard it before in full. Rubber Soul is the superior of the two "proper" albums they put out that year, but that just means instead of a great Beatles album it's merely a really good one.

Graveyard Train - The Serpent & The Crow

Australian horror country. That it exists is awesome enough. And it's a lot more country than the pop-country you'd hear on the radio here in Texas

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.

This album literally pushed the limit for what hip-hop could do. Who else would use such lush production in every song in this album? Only one man does.

"Dark Fantasy", the opening track in the album, perfectly sets up the tone and themes prevalent in this work. I mean, it's just great in general. Seriously, go listen to it on You Tube. Kanye makes a pun about Steve Urkel, after all.

Clocking in at 5:58, "Gorgeous" is simply, well, gorgeous. It uses a rock sample from "You Showed Me", and makes it the constant melody you hear throughout. Kid Cudi's singing isn't pleasant, but is rather hyponic and really immersive. Kanye's rapping is pretty much solid. He talks about poverty and the school system in general, including a jab at the government and how it "treats AIDS". Well, I guess Kanye really sticks to his beliefs, huh? Overall, this song is chill and the recurring hooks are simply memorable.

Those are the first two songs in the album, but I assure you that the rest is simply gold. Especially the tenth track. This is West's most ambitious effort to date, with so many styles being demonstrated and executed so well.

• The Greatest Show Unearthed- Creature Feature. As the band's debut into the world, they certainly made the effort and put their best foot forward. This album is a collection of stories ranging from a Circus of Fear to a Zombie Apocalypse to undead dinner parties about reciting the obituaries via the alphabet to cannibalism to kidnappings most foul.
• It Was a Dark and Stormy Night...- Creature Feature. Much the same as the above-mentioned The Greatest Show Unearthed, with tales about a seemingly normal bed-and-breakfast infested with bloodthirsty monsters, a man being tormented in death after being Barred from the Afterlife, the Elder Gods descending from space to wreak havoc on humanity, and the gruesome, horrific ways that a person can die, but still acknowledging the existence of a Fate Worse than Death. Despite this, the album has the most amount of Lyrical Dissonance, providing the band with their reputation of songs mixing cheerful tunes with senseless violence.
• American Gothic- Creature Feature. Much unlike the previous two albums, American Gothic contains surprisingly small amounts of Lyrical Dissonance. Most of them have either the dark ambiance to match the lyrics, or they blend the old and new styles, with a bouncy yet still sinister backing track. Oh, sure, there's Lyrical Dissonance to be had, but it's great to see a band mature and take a new direction.
• Dead Beat- Rufus Rex. From the lead singer behind Creature Feature, I give you Rufus Rex! As a Solo Side Project by Curtis Rx, it has much of the same Lyrical Dissonance found in his main band. Unlike Creature Feature, though, this is a Concept Album that tells the story of a man seeking immortality through resurrection, which causes him to summon an Eldritch Abomination and ultimately finds himself as the last living person on earth. As far as stories go, while I've heard scarier, I find the idea of resurrection fascinating, as well as the thought that one simple mistake or plain curiosity can lead to a downward spiral and cause unintended, horrific consequences.
• Dawn- American Murder Song. Hear! One incantation of murder most foul. Three tales each of a childe gone awry. One tale more of a childe’s murder’d youth. Fit for thy campfire and dark, twist’d road.
• Providence- American Murder Song. Hear! Four drunken tales of American cutthroats and murderesses. And one tale more, sung for the Blessed Mothær what bore us drunks. Pull up a good, dusty barstool for an aged barrel of bloody ballads and new fashioned old drinkin’ songs.
• The Reckoning- American Murder Song. Hear! One incantation to ward off the cruel summer blizzard. And four tales of fam’lies cold to the bone. Start a fire and pray that this Reckoning passes o’er thee. For that fire is sure to die quick.

edited 2nd Oct '16 7:04:31 PM by Blazer_the_Delphox

Strange Cargo by William Orbit (& Laurie Mayer)

The entirety of Jak X soundtrack.

Listened to Charm by Intimate Strangers (a short-lived project from the 80s) 2 days ago.

Re-listening again today, and it refuses to stop being brilliant.

(it used to be on YT, and I downloaded the thing right before it disappeared)

Since [the sentence above], here are two examples of the songs from the album.

edited 30th Sep '16 1:35:31 PM by KlarkKentThe3rd

Space is Only Noise by Nicolas Jaar. Perfect dreary music for a dreary day.

• Wailing Bones, Volume Eleven—Part of a fourteen-instalment compilation from the Foxglove imprint of the late, lamented Digitalis Recordings. As one might expect given the label's pedigree, it's an eclectic mix of longform experimental pieces. My favourite is Jeff Gburek's contribution, a glitchy abstract electronic piece like a less minimalistic Steve Roden.
• Alial Straa, The Lumbering Intransitive Dream of the Alial Straa—Some excellent dark ambient/electroacoustic soundscaping here. Kind of curious about the B-side from the cassette edition; the CD has a fairly different tracklist.

▣世界から解放され▣ by ░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░. Probably the weirdest vaporwave album out there. To call it music would be a stretch. It's more of a sound collage of bizarre Japanese sound bytes glued together to create one strange experience. Still, pretty interesting stuff. Best listened to alone at 1 in the morning.

edited 7th Oct '16 2:52:23 PM by Sedmikrasky

Aviation Weather by Boreal Network. The album sounds almost exactly like the album cover looks. Imagine your watching the weather channel at midnight in the 90's and that's what this album feels like. Oddly relaxing.

I've been switching between Neurosis - Fires Within Fires and Dance Gavin Dance - Mothership.

Seriously though. This year for music is incredible. Like daily repeat listens is ALWAYS a good sign.

Today I listened through Fire From The Evening Sun by Philm and I just finished listening to The Last Sucker by Ministry.

MEGA by Blank Banshee. Their new album is finally out and it's pretty damn good. The usage of original lyrics is pretty interesting for a vaportrap album.

edited 10th Oct '16 1:51:10 PM by Sedmikrasky

Retrodemon 263- Creature Feature (No, not that one): Honestly, when I first listened to it, I knew it was not going to be what I was used to, and for good reason. While the backing tracks range from So Okay, It's Average to So Cool Its Awesome, the vocals are what really got me. The first track, "Virus", had me laughing so hard at how Narmy its delivery was. But, in all seriousness, the vocals can vary just as wildly as the instrumentation, with some being surprisingly calming, such as the majority of "Tigerlilly" and parts of "Healing Tide", to stepping-on-Legos-style, So Bad, It's Good singing, such as the aforementioned "Virus", and even So Cool Its Awesome, such as with "Hypocrite". Overall, however, this album tended to be So Okay, It's Average to me. I even spaced out at some points because I just wasn't engaged anymore. There are some songs that I genuinely enjoyed, but they're not enough to justify buying the entire album for me. I'll stick to separately-bought tracks on iTunes, really.

Nonagon Infinity by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. How have I not listened to this yet? That was fucking awesome! A nonstop adrenaline rush from start to finish.

The entire Titan A.E. score by Graeme Revell.

The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour.

Sorceess by Opeth, it was a pretty good Progressive Rock album, the inclusion of Progressive Metal elements worked well.

Oh, hey, the guy from SPK scored that film. Weird.

Anyway:

• Nurse With Wound, Spiral Insana—**BIG ORGAN CHORD** ~ominous distorted bassy noise growing louder~ ...unsettling digression...

Musical selections getting increasingly eclectic because I was given a small box of random old cd's by a friend of mine and I'm just gradually working through them:

Various - Hillbilly Music... Thank God! Volume 1. A compilation of country/honky tonk music of the 1940's-1950's. The only other country music of the same era I'm too familiar with is Hank Williams and a little early Johnny Cash, and while it's not for all moods, I can kind of see myself becoming a bit of a fan.

Prince/various - Graffiti Bridge. The movie of the same name seems to have been poorly received, but the music is pretty good for 90's Prince. The "various" tag is in there because unlike Purple Rain, he doesn't perform on every song on the album, though he wrote and produced them all: The Time get a handful of tracks to themselves and Tevin Campbell and Mavis Staples get one each. Oddly, the Tevin Campbell track ("Round And Round") was the song I ended up being the most familiar with, though "Thieves In The Temple" was on the compilation The Hits/The B-Sides and was apparently the lead single.

I never knew he was a member of anything.

All I know is he was the one member of the production team to really like the project, whereas everyone else had some problem with it.

Doing the "pull a year in music out of a hat" thing for what might be the last time this year, I ended up with 1976. Here's how that's gone so far:

Ramones – Ramones
The Runaways – The Runaways
Bob Dylan – Desire
AC/DC – Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
Aerosmith - Rocks
Steely Dan – The Royal Scam
David Bowie – Station To Station
The Residents – The Third Reich ‘n’ Roll
Kiss – Destroyer
Heart – Dreamboat Annie
Tom Waits – Small Change
Paul McCartney & Wings – At The Speed Of Sound
Modern Lovers – Modern Lovers
Blondie – Blondie
Boston – Boston
Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Frank Zappa – Zoot Allures
Judas Priest – Sad Wings of Destiny
Peter Frampton – Frampton Comes Alive
Parliament – The Clones Of Dr. Funkenstein

Some brief thoughts:

- Revisiting The Residents album after about a decade, and I get more of the juxtapositions/deconstructions because I've listened to more 60's pop/rock.

- This is kind of the "comfort zone" phase of this project, which turns out to mean lots of classic rock. Going forward I want to delve into some of the funk, disco, soul, and jazz that was going on at the time.

- I have the additional goal to listen to every album I own on vinyl that came out in 1976, which is a surprisingly high amount: AC/DC, Aerosmith, Paul McCartney, Boston and Thin Lizzy were all listened to via turntable... And I still have records by Electric Light Orchestra, The Steve Miller Band, The Beach Boys, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Warren Zevon to listen to.

- There's certain artists where every time I pick a year out of a hat, I'm going to consistently include something they've done if it exists. Right now that list consists of David Bowie, "Weird Al" Yankovic ^note with the justification that his albums are kind of a snapshot of whatever musical/pop cultural trends were in place that year, and The Beatles (or if not applicable, at least one ex-Beatle solo album).

edited 8th Dec '16 5:23:49 PM by MikeK