Last Album you listened through

Lady Gaga's The Fame Monster Deluxe Edition.

Hordes of the Morning Star — Torture and Throne EPs. Underground Black Metal group from Texas.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Vex'd - Cloud Seed

A must listen.

The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.

Last one was... Britney Spears - Circus

Yes, I am aware of my peculiar taste in music.

Estimated shipping time: 2-4 weeks.

The Residents — Duck Stab/Buster & Glen

On the whole, it’s a deliciously messed-up album that’s surprisingly catchy. I am definitely going to have to check out more Residents albums one of these days.

edited 31st Jan '12 9:53:09 AM by Section42L

And there ain't no one goin' to turn me 'round.

Britney Spears is hated without people willing to enjoy her for what she is; great pop music with expert production that, outside of her first two albums, doesn't age. Pop music, in my opinion, is more relevant and allows you to understand a culture far more than any other genre.

Circus is a great album. I'd rate it 4.5; "Kill the Lights" is a pretty fucking awesome song.

edited 31st Jan '12 2:47:56 PM by Completion

The Slackers - Open My Eyes, They sort of start getting a bit more serious and occasionally political during this period (the most overt example of the latter being "Real War"), but it still works overall, because they manage to avoid either ruining the overall good time vibe or causing some massive Lyrical Dissonance. Oh, and just a little bit of the dub influence is back.

The Slackers / Pulley - Split EP. Most of the Slackers material apparently later showed up on an album I don't have called Peculiar. The highlights on their side are the latin-flavored "Oonde Fue" and a great version of 'I Shall Be Released'. The Pulley side consists of two Minor Threat covers ("Stumped", "Salad Days"), a cover of Minor Threat's cover of The Standells ("Good Guys Don't Wear White"), and a noisy throwaway instrumental ("Speakeasy"). The Minor Threat covers are well-played and obviously done with a lot of respect, but I just don't think their singer's Pop Punk-ish vocal style really fits the material. Bonus points for replicating the Studio Chatter at the end of "Stumped" though ("Is that good enough? I think so...")

edited 31st Jan '12 4:54:26 PM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

µ-Ziq - Lunatic Harness

Best 94 cents I've ever spent, one of the best Drill 'n' Bass albums ever.

The 5 geek social fallacies. Know them well.

Sigh — Gallows Gallery, the reissue on The End Records. Has two of my favorite Sigh songs ("Silver Universe" and "Messiahplan") on it, but on the whole I kinda like their other recent albums better.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Last listened to: Pesniary: Zacharovannaya moya (The Enchanted One). Large Belarussian pop-folk combo popular during the Soviet era. A double live album heavy on the ballads, this has to be the mellowest album I’ve ever heard that features a drum solo. It’s very, very Slavic. Some nice vocal harmonies, folkish bits and (despite being made in 1983) 70s analog synth sounds (there’s even a Mini-Moog prominently pictured on the back cover). At least one of the songs here (“Ya ne mogu inache,” in English: “I Can’t Help It”) is considered a “standard,” with female singer Valentina Tolkunova famous for her version (released circa 1982).

Also: Tempest: Living in Fear. Second album by this British hard-rock group starring the talented British multi-instrumentalist Ollie Halsall, who I find to be as underrated as original Tempest guitarist Allan Holdsworth is overrated. Actually, this album, like the first Tempest album, is rather hit-and-miss, but the high points (“Dance to My Tune,” “Turn Around”) are very high indeed. This was actually John Hiseman’s post-Colosseum project and this second album is less jazzy than the first (but I’d call both of them “hard rock” albums). Halsall not only plays guitar (he’s one of my favourite lefty guitarists, alongside you-know-who) but also keyboards (lots of Moog) and sings most of the lead vocals.

N.P.: Angel: On Earth as It Is in Heaven. Jump the Shark moment for the pioneering “pomp rock” band. Picks up on the B-side, but the damage has been done.

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

• Arcade Fire, Arcade Fire EP—"Vampire/Forest Fire" speaks for itself... Great.
• Arcade Fire, Neon Bible—...and "My Body Is A Cage" does, too. Classic.
• The Gerbils, Are You Sleepy?—An immaculate middle stretch flanked by sleeper tracks. Great.
• Merzbow, Cycle—Akita at his most "musical." Great.
• Sufjan Stevens, A Sun Came!—A strange admixture of unpolished diamonds and failed alchemy. Mediocre ("Dumb I Sound") to Great ("Jason").

edited 2nd Feb '12 8:20:55 AM by JHM

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

Latest listens:

• Schnell Fenster: The Sound of Trees. Featuring three ex-members of Split Enz (Phil Judd, Noel Crombie and Nigel Griggs), this sounds, not surprisingly, like one would imagine the Enz would sound had Tim Finn, rather than Phil Judd, left the band in the early days. Lacking in the theatricality of the early days, this actually sounds rather like the True Colours-era Enz with the zaniness quotient cranked up. Also, less synths (unsurprising, since the band lacks a proper keyboardist, though lead guitarist Michael den Elzen contributes some guitar synth here and there). If you like Judd’s work in general, this is a must.
• Cast: Four Aces. Mexican neo-prog. They’d improve over the next several albums, with Alfonso Vidales neo-classical piano/keyboard work to the fore, but this early release shows promise, even if “In the Light of Darkness” is the only really great thing here. Hideous cover art, incidentally. Somewhat related pet peeve: I really wish last.fm had some sort of disambiguation system for similarly-named bands. I’m sick of images of the Britpop band coming up every time I listen to this band.

N.P.: self-titled release by Samadhi. Underrated Italian prog from the classic era (1974).

edited 2nd Feb '12 2:30:28 PM by Bananaquit

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

Recent listens:

• Wallenstein: Cosmic Century. These guys get a lot of invective for what they are not rather than what they are (i.e.: “They’re not Krautrock, so they suck”). I have no idea what precipitated this attitude (probably the label that they’re on, coupled with the fact that they keyboardist and drummer took part in the Cosmic Jokers sessions) but I think it’s blatantly unfair, as taken for what they are (i.e.: purely symphonic progressive rock), they’re very good. In fact, their debut (Blitzkrieg) has to be one of the earliest examples (1971) of this sort of music in Germany and it’s very well-done. I think this is probably their second-best album; by now, they added a violinist to the lineup and billed themselves as “The Symphonic Rock Orchestra,” so there could be no question as to their musical direction. Some cheesy moments (like the clichéd “50s rock & roll” ending to “The Marvellous Child”) but otherwise very good, the violin integrating very well alongside the classically-inspired piano the band is famous for. The early King Crimson influence, so prevalent on Blitzkrieg, is more well-integrated here; by now they definitely had their own sound.
• Banzaï: Hora Nata. Belgian band that sound like early Yes with a crazy percussionist splashing everything with tympani, wood-blocks, “tumbas” (congas), etc. That’s the story for the album proper, anyway. There’s a mess of bonus tracks taken from singles and while the first two (which pre-date the album) are pretty good, the rest are as cheesy Europop as you could imagine, file alongside Teach-In and BZN.

N.P.—Carmen: The Gypsies. Third album by this Anglo-American-Mexican “flamenco-rock” act. This third album reined in the rather campy “gypsy lover” shtick that some folks found unbearable on the first two albums. More folky and sedate than the first two. Not as much of a standout, either, but I still like it. Bass player John Glascock married keyboardist Angela Allen then joined Jethro Tull prior to his tragic death in 1979.

edited 3rd Feb '12 3:08:58 PM by Bananaquit

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

Listened to:

• Anamanaguchi: Power Supply. Fun chiptune rock.
• Danielson: Ships. Absolutely without doubt Daniel Smith's freak-folk magnum opus (to date at least). More musicians than any of their other albums, stronger songs, and it's one of their releases that's least likely to send new listeners fleeing in terror.
• Cave Story 3D OST. No replacement for the original chiptune ST, of course, but a quite faithful translation of the melodies into a Rave-influenced style that fits surprisingly well.

Currently listening to Doug Burr: O Ye Devastator. Folk/alt-country. Not as dark (and a heck of a lot less Wurlitzer and/or Fender Rhodes) as the wonderful On Promenade. Still some great melodies and lyrics in the first two-thirds; pity the ending couldn't be as strong.

I didn't write any of that.

Deathspell Omega — Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice. First concept album in a trilogy by one of my favorite black metal groups. In my opinion the stand-out tracks are "Sola Fide" (parts I & II), "Jubilate Deo (O be joyful in the Lord)", and "Carnal Malefactor"; the latter especially, which in the middle of the song suddenly cuts to three and a half minutes of Ominous Latin Chanting then explodes without warning back into blasting black metal again. This group also has some of the most well-written lyrics you'll ever find in black metal.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Dream Theater's Metropolis Part 2: Scenes from a Memory. Now that was a project. I'm currently working on their album Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence, both cds. Over 90 minutes of awesome about halfway done, wow.

Message: From Books and Dreams. This is better than I remembered it being but I still prefer this British/German group when they ditched the heavy psychedelic trip and went jazzy. I guess that makes me uncool in this “acid drenched fuzz leads or it’s not worth listening to” age.

N.P.: Ramses: Light Fantastic. Another shark-jumper of an album that’s...less awful than I remember it being. There’s actually some nice, somewhat spacey moments on this. It’s still full of obviously commercially-geared moments and chintzy, thin sounding synths. And the replacement singer is...just OK.

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

Hey, Synthesizeritis was cut. Good riddance.

Huh. I'm kind of ambiguous about it myself, seeing as while the introduction of synthesised sound into a more "organic" band's music can be a wonderful thing—Wire's Chairs Missing and 154, for example—it can also be a cavalcade of horror—Wire's Manscape, for example.

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

From the Entrails to the Dirt, a compilation featuring a few different French black metal bands. Originally released as a series of three vinyl splits, then collected on one CD. In my opinion, the Deathspell Omega song (yes, I'm on a DSO binge right now) is the only one that's really any good, but there's also a raw black metal version of the classic pop song "My Way" that must be heard to be believed.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Lotsa stuff to catch up on:

• Stern-Combo Meissen: Weisses Gold. The DDR’s answer to...well, I’m not so sure, exactly. Eela Craig? They had three keyboard players. Three! So, yes...symphonic progressive with synths and synths for days. The concept to this is so hilariously “approved by the State”: real-life alchemist Friedrich Böttger seeks to change base metal to gold, instead stumbles across the formula for Meissen porcelain. Musically this is first-rate stuff, but the choir parts cheese things up a bit and the stuffy German narration frequently brings proceedings to a screeching halt. I actually prefer their later album, Reise zum Mittelpunkt des Menschen.
• Golden Earring: Contraband. The Earrings were entering their Dork Age with this album; a pity, because the idea of Golden Earring with two lead guitarists sounds too good to be true. Unfortunately, they were entering a bit of a songwriting slump, so this album is pretty damned forgettable as a whole. Of course, it also contains “Mad Love’s Comin’,” one of the greatest songs of their career with an infectious, urgent guitar riff to die for. That alone makes the album worth owning.
• Cos: Postaeolian Train Robbery. Crazy Belgian avant-garde jazz-fusion with wacky female scat-singing, a drum/vocal duet, etc. Love this one to pieces.
• Manfred Mann’s Earth Band: Solar Fire. I don’t like this one as much as a lot of fans. Mainly because I find Mick Rogers’ voice on this LP kind of annoying. Apparently, this was supposed to include a rocked-up version of Holst’s The Planets suite but they couldn’t get the rights, so they did an original, mostly instrumental suite instead (“Pluto the Dog”?).
• Delirium: Primer diálogo. Originally released as self-titled in 1985. Mexican instrumental band with some nice violin playing and cheap, Crumar-sounding keyboards.

Confirmed Bachelors: the dramedy hit of 1883!

Deathspell Omega — Paracletus. (also a bunch of other DSO stuff between that and my previous post, but that would take too long to write about) The conclusion to their concept album trilogy, and in my opinion the best part of it.

Somehow you know that the time is right.

Pearl Jam - Ten. Sort of like Nevermind in that if I wanted to listen to it I could just turn on a modern rock station for a couple of hours, and yet I still put it on once in a great while. I do still kind of like it, and I can tell how this album could have meant a lot to me if I heard it in full at the right time, but it's not quite up with my favorite commercial grunge albums.

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.

Alpha Charlie: ...And I Wait. A fine pop-rock album, but I can't help wondering: What if Andy Scharr and Courtney Stubbart's first band hadn't broken up? Would these same songs have been on the third album by The W's?

I didn't write any of that.

The Fall - Ersatz GB. If you already like The Fall, you're probably going to like this. I particularly like that it's a fairly diverse album: The main influence this time out seems to be krautrock, but there's also rockabilly / garage rock, heavy metal *

, a mellow, surprisingly Yo La Tengo-ish Step Up to the Microphone moment for keyboardist Eleni Poulou, etc. However, I wouldn't call it a starting point because it's not really one of their more melodic albums - basically if you've never heard The Fall before, this will just sound like some crazy old guy ranting over cool but repetitive music. Which it is.

edited 6th Feb '12 3:28:59 PM by MikeK

Earth is the only planet inhabitable by Nicolas Cage.