Only an Angel may fly

the things that i listen and hear

Not a man, just a pillar of salt on the ground

/I DON'T NEED YOUTO LOVE MY SOUL, I NEED YOU TO LOVE MY BODY/

these lips will find
strawberry wine

06/09/23

i fell into a depression after that and didnt rly feel like coming back to this site. the holiday sucked. enjoyed the music tho, or well i enjoyed listening to pavement and coldplay over and over again LOL. otherwise though i am fascinated by david bowie earthling. i obviously knew it was an alt-dance record but i dont think i had fully engaged with the fact it was an alt dance record like with breakbeats and the lot. hearing bowie over breakbeats was just a lot for me. i enjoyed it tho? more than i expected

25/08/23

on an experiment. going away and only able to bring 12 CDs with me. choosing to force myself only to listen to what i have brought + if i buy things out here. the 12 i brought are as followed:
david bowie - aladdin sane
david bowie - 1974-79 comp
lou reed - berlin
bright eyes - i’m wide awake it’s morning
beatles - 1967-70 comp disc 1
pavement - slanted and enchanted
my bloody valentine - m b v
the smiths - singles comp
bolt thrower - realm of chaos
coldplay - viva la vida or death and all his friends
jesus and mary chain - live at barrowlands
have a nice life - deathconsciousness (pt. 2; the future)
i have heard the bowie comp, bolt thrower, coldplay, have a nice life and deathcon in full today. the bowie comp was most enlightening, containing a few songs i hadn't heard before, from an era of his i am less familiar with than his glam era. boys keep swinging especially as a garage rock influenced track about young gay men was a wonderful listen. otherwise i have been very busy today but i feel a little more connected with deathcon and coldplay certainly. feels like each song resonates with me a lot, deathcon especially i am noticing more and more details. i will force intense appreciation of all these songs. i also return to bright eyes; clara gave me a song of theirs long ago for a playlist but it didnt click. i intend to use this break to force it to. first listen i did not do anything special but as a piece i get it a bit more. it has fun melody and definitely good singing, nice lyricism. i will try to pick a favourite song next, or play it whilst thinking a bit more of what it is my darling may love of it. it was nice though, definite 4.
definitely excited to dive into live in barrowlands a bit more, and also excited because i picked up copies of mbv isnt anything and the entire discography of the velvet underground. record fair on tomorrow which i will be going to to see if i can find anything else fun :3. tomorrow i would like to instead of just listening and loving whilst travelling actually engage on a deeper level and come to a new conclusion about at least One of these discs. probably barrowlands but maybe slanted and enchanted, or see something new and beautiful in a smiths song.

i’m having a bit of a moment abt how passively everyone listens to music these days rather than treating listening to music as an activity in itself and a brief return to physical media represents reclaiming listening to music as a hobby/pastime in itself for me. given i think the dominance of the shuffle button and services like spotify i think are in large part to blame for it. like even music hipsters who listen to what is broadly considered Cool Music often seem to fall into the trap of only ever using music for background noise and it very slightly horrifies me. in removing the ritualisation of the actual physical process of picking out a CD, taking it out the case and putting it in the player, or like even putting the needle down on a vinyl record, and replacing it with just Shuffling A Playlist or what have you, is a big factor in what has turned music into a more passive pursuit for so many nowadays. also there’s the aspect of like liner notes and album arts that i am more compelled to engage with when i spent time and effort acquiring them, i bought a copy of beach boys - pet sounds on CD yday (<— #1 guitar pop fan) and the attached booklet was an entire story about the state of the band when they recorded the album, the process of creation, and reception/legacy on music as a whole, told through a bunch of interviews and testimonials from other artists. and like i bought it in birmingham with ji and he was laughing at me when i was picking it out bc i spent like 5 minutes agonising over which copy i’d buy bc they each contained a tiny bit different on the track list. the story in my head of how i got it + the physical process involved in listening to it + the additional engagement i had with the the music due to the case booklet enhanced the experience of the album immeasurably. and like even tho i kno i’d have loved it either way (it’s sick) the additional interface with it is a rly important way i feel i need to experience art (copied from dms with my beloved).

22/08/23

decided that coldplay are insanely overhated. i heard viva la vida album in full and it was quite genuienly very good. the random shoegaze bonus song was predictably my favourite but honestly there wasn't a bad song on it, it makes a weak 4.5 easily, definitely deserves revisiting. some really interesting instrument textures, great vocal pop melodies, art pop energy is imbued within the whole damn thing. pretty good. also heard slowdive - souvlaki for the first time; it was fine. had it's awesome moments but i don't know, the whole thing failed to truly WOW me in the way it seems so many people. definitely enjoyed it but yeah. will need to revisit this one too to see what it is people so adore about it.
i will however probably have a dream pop phase soon if i do that and it'll click then.

until today, i had never clicked with pet sounds. i am pleased that it finally has. everything about this is gorgeous. there's so much to peel back and examine, so much is layered and frankly none of it sounds human. this is such an eclectic mix of progressive and psychadelic recording style and playing that mixes in such a bizarre way with sunshiney and even traditionalist pre-rock pop stylisations. it feels like there are fifteen orchestras playing in each of these songs and none of them are from earth. probably the objectively best produced album i have heard in my life
the whole ass story in the liner notes is great too. i love physical media. this album was partially responsible for the very concept of an Album. ""A whole album with all good stuff" he marveled", fascinating!
if i get super into this album i may wanna track down the boxset. the liner notes are p much just an advertisement but it seems worth ngl.

21/08/23

the new mbv record is really good. it doesnt quite have the noise pop genius songwriting present in loveless but the textural work and dreamy serenity it employs is actually in my opinion superior to loveless. definitely stands far and above the rest of their catalog in its maturity, which ofc makes sense. it does really feel like an album that took 16 years to record

lou reed words and music is worth buying just for this version of heroin which is like sex. the emotional attachment i feel to lou reed cannot be understated.

20/08/23

heroes is not my favourite david bowie record but i do think it may be the ultimate maturation of his style, and furthermore the area in which he was the most influential and prescient. heroes writes music in a style that would stylistically not truly be realised until over a decade later (with the title track having what really is only shoegaze textures), the janky and melodic art rock was a heavy inspiration upon post-punk, new wave and the entirety of 80s rock music. in his glam rock work i adore him but don't consider him to be wholly influential, i believe he took what people like lou reed and marc bolan were working on already and made it his own (taking especially ziggy stardust here), and aladdin sane whilst derivative both of that same glam style and also hard rocking american music (with his own insanely eclectic art rock stylings still in germination) demonstrates him starting to realise that he has a vision to realise of his own. the proceeding plastic soul era was arguably a misfire but i think that by station to station he'd truly happened upon a uniqueness that he realised fully in his berlin trio.
originality is of no inherent value and i think on a pure level that ziggy stardust and aladdin sane are his strongest albums, but they are not prescient. they looked back, they saw a style that his contemporaries were playing and did it himself, in an utterly glorious way. station to station and the berlin trio (especially the first two) predicted lthe future, and deserve their inclusion within the musical canon far more than they are given, with people deriding station to station as merely being the side effects of the cocaine, and essentially not ever talking about heroes for some damn reason

this btw is not even beginning upon the ambient/progressive electronics work that existed in this era too. it's not something i understand as well so i couldn't really discuss it but to me it is sublime

19/08/23

i always love godflesh but it feels like i dont know anything abt them until im actually listening to them. have they always been this groovy??? it feels like theyre just so cool and suffocating that they cant fit in my head

made myself some mbv bootleg cds to match the 1988-91 official one, everything they ever made including the weird ass psychobilly stuff which is great but their indie pop era starting at the new record and ending in ecstasy is so sublime. definitely getting into shoegaze anyway - deathconsciousness is constantly in my head, esp the second side of it, it's just so gorgeous and heartbreakingly intense.

the fact im not properly an art rock kid yet is so fucked up. lou reed berlin is blowing my absolute mind

music being a ritual, the act of Listening to music as in on physical media and paying attention to it, rather than just as a passive thing, is such a sadly departed art. it doesnt even have to be good; im sat here listening and singing along to cheesy mission songs, but the idea of listening only to things i can play physically, whilst nothing but a restriction, feels so so freeing. waiting for records in the mail teaches patience etc.

14/08/23

listening to the recent album by anonhi and the johnsons. the amount of trans and gay strife and pain imbued into this album is insanely affecting. "sliver of ice" being penned direct from some of the last words lou reed ever spoke to anonhi, and "scapegoat" being dualistically written from the perspective of a hateful society speaking to those it oppresses and also in my opinion a trans person speaking about their own body is so fascinating and deeply, deeply affecting to me.

slanted and enchanted by pavement is an odd album for me bc i feel intimately familiar with it in spite of the fact i may only have heard it perhaps 3 times but i feel intimately familiar with it. i recognise many many lyrics and definitely many riffs, it is an album that to me feels like a nostalgic childhood album in spite of my relative unfamiliarity with it. pavement in general are a fantastic band that i need to like more - i feel like them and my bloody valentine are the bands that truly carry the torch on from the mary chain, pavement especially (mbv carry a pretentious, dreamy and artistic nature to them that i think the mary chain pretty much entirely eschewed in their nature as simplistic rockstar popstars even when taking into account their broadly comparable sound). another example of guitar pop champions....
i need to decide for myself what i mean by and who exemplifies this broad and amorphous concept of guitar pop that i have. there is need for development on what i mean given most of the artists i decree here do not fall into the remit of """pop""" by mainstream opinion (that renders pop largely characterised by vocal focused r&b and dance pop) and covers an amount of the early punk and metal influencers (sheer heart attack era queen more exemplary of it for example). i suppose i should draw up some candidates. i quite like the idea of a persistent metaphor about the torch being passed down but im not sure i can effectively do that given i certainly need the byrds in there and i believe they were broadly contempary with the beatles.

pretty girls make graves being another ppr band im fucking with, with more of an indietronica and even phc edge to them. ppr appears to be a genre i enjoy. angular indie rock does certainly make sense for me

13/08/23

british sea power are a cool band - they feel like the smiths played by a huge pavement fan, it's rather delightful. their debut album was fantastic and i feel compelled to go back to it even. definitely worth the 99p i spent on it lol.

i saw fucking candlemass live and got ridiculously high i couldn't even keep track of which direction was forward. crystal ball, bewitched, demon's gate and fucking SOLITUDE were so intensely good. the friend i went to see them with who is also a colossal candlemass fan wept with me at the beauty of it. never has music affected me in this specific way before. i felt as if my soul left my body and joined them onstage
the whole festival was great tbh. in flames got a guy from the crowd onstage to play trumpet w them LOL. also a brummy doom metal two-piece who sounded like a metallic white stripes was very fun - "this summit fever".

09/08/23

trip hop and noise pop play in my head constantly. i am so fucking drenched in reverb and distortion and just the most gorgeous melodies

07/08/23

listening to the early rehearsal tapes of and reading attached interviews from suicide is so fascinating. seeing how inundated they were with the NY punk scene at large (contemparies with the new york dolls and the ramones!) is so interesting, and the fact that they were going as early as maybe 1970 with just electronics and a vocalist in an era where punk was still pretty much all just sped up chuck berry riffs is rly cool. given how heavy synth usage is now with the new wave scene and synthpop scenes etc all really taking off abt a decade after suicide started it is definitely visible how truly important a band this is. listening to them as a punk band is important; the mindset here matters, you have to listen to this band in the same way you would the buzzcocks and then become amazed at how truly ODD it is. synth punk in general is truly so fascinating and the debut, sophomore and rehearsal demos by suicide are the perfect primer in it

06/08/23

listening to the second suicide album and reading around the principles that underpin synth-punk as a genre and becoming fascinated. the rym genre page has some intriguing wording to me:
"Appropriates the harsh elements of Punk Rock but replaces the predominance of guitars with synthesizers and drum machines."
the idea of "appropriation" becoming an underpinning nature within the approach of the art draws to mind certain situationist principles for me, and for suicide especially this is well demonstrated by their deep connection with their contemporaries in the no wave scene (a scene they're often considered part of indeed). the sheer committment to minimalism whilst retaining an appropriative approach to melody, musicalism and art in general is fascinating to me. there is a comment to be made of course about yeah there's a lot that can be done with just a drum machine, a synth and vocals, but i think the more interesting concept in suicide's case is why such a small array of instruments was chosen. also draws to mind the fact that a great deal of the no-wave scene was instrumentally minimal in this sense - despite being a wildly experimental scene, it was ime rarely seen for the music to branch tooooo far beyond classical "rock band" and also the introduction of synthesiser. the avant-gardism comes from the stylistic approach and philosophy underpinning the music rather than the actual physical experimentation that may be found in bands that introduce non-traditional instrumentation to their music.
as a footnote, this is also an interesting point to make when it comes to the differentiation between noise rock and no-wave on a stylistic level, with noise rock being an incredibly textural genre that uses simplistic indie rock stylings with a reliance on distortion, feedback etc, whereas classical (DNA/Teenage Jesus style) no wave focus on the playing style whilst if anything being rather texturally clean (arto lindsay would sound strange using too much guitar distortion)

05/08/23

i have success with the secondhand cd journey. heard a lot of music recently, but sticking out is a "new"found ADORATION of the jesus and mary chain, as in as well as psychocandy ive heard their other albums a lot too and bought some singles/b-sides comps to hear and enjoy. i also find myself wanting to get more into trip hop after hearing the massive attack debut record since i bought it for a quid. buying random stuff i dont even know the band of is a fun little adventure, i heard some synthpop/power pop band called hellogoodbye who i actually quite enjoyed. i will perhaps one day make a page for my CD collection.

jesus and mary chain's automatic is a delightful little record too. oozing blues rock influenced alt rock charm and re-introducing the feedback and distortion from their debut after taking it off for darklands. i prefer it with the distortion for sure but i think it's a nice developmental trend. it doesn't come close to psychocandy but very little does. i will definitely find myself revisiting it for these fun little alt rock hooks. jamc will quickly become one of my favourite bands ever i think
automatic honestly intrigues me so much. not bc it’s like, insanely good but it’s worth revisiting and i rly enjoyed it. a band having that consistent a vibe is rare for me. 3 albums in a similar vibe that each serve a unique purpose. rare as hell. definite arguments for fav band. if the remaining 4 are on a level of good then that will be amazing.

02/08/23

CD journey has already proven its worth with the primal scream cd. having all these recordings is so truly meaningful to me. my review for rym which sums up my thoughts:
Primal Scream have always been a bit of an odd band for me. They are, most likely, one of my favourite bands - very few songs are as wonderful to me as Crystal Crescent and Velocity Girl, I’m indeed not sure if I’m physically capable of hearing them without singing along in my best (and likely quite embarrassing) impression of Bobby Gillespie’s muted Glaswegian take on Morrissey’s vocal stylings. However, their two Creation Records singles do rather tend to both be where my adoration for this band begins and ends. For a band to have such an impact on me with such a small number of songs is a feat in itself, but it has left me with a bitter sense of grief for what I consider to be the true Primal Scream sound. Following a lacklustre and poorly produced debut album, they moved almost entirely away from their pop sound, eventually settling into some type of a dance influenced sound that never interested me. I have spent all the time I cared about Primal Scream mourning the releases in their original sound that apparently never were.
This compilation has saved me from this fate. It collects sublime remasterings (those drums! those horns!) of the aforementioned creation records singles which defined the more saccharine and jangly side of the C86 sound, which would very easily justify the purchase in itself, but also allows us to hear the true Primal Scream sound, as it might’ve been. It compiles BBC sessions recorded for the Janice Long (tracks 1-4) and John Peel (tracks 5-11) shows, produced by David Griffin (of Mott the Hoople) at the fabled Maida Vale studios. They were recorded in a beautiful and raw period fo the band, in 1985/86 as contempary recordings with their two Creation Records singles, where they had truly captured the peak of this beautiful epoch of guitar pop. With them now compiled in full, Reverberations feels like more of a debut album than Primal Scream ever properly got. The sound on here is a real flavour of the utterly gorgeous, tastefully twee and frighteningly powerful jangle pop sound that birthed the C86 sound as we remember it now. These sessions never really reached much acclaim (the band apparently had only heard them once or twice prior to this compilation’s inception in late 2022 - nearly 40 years!)
Bobby Gillespie says in the included essays packaged within the CD of his sound that he was attempting to create something so beautiful so as to scramble the senses of the listeners, to create a “soft revolution” via expressing his true and soulful poetry in a whipsered confession wrapped in the charming and effortless melodies Jim Beattie and Robert Young were writing for him. Whilst he doesn’t seem to have much pride in these early recordings of his, they are nothing short of sublime. Guitar music reaches one of its peaks here, melodies fall of eachother like from the most picturesque scene of a waterfall imaginable, and all of the music contains this tantalising youthful energy of a group of beloved friends trying and succeeding to infuse the most amount of beauty and joy into the world via music as they possibly could.
It is rare for me to award a 5 star rating so quickly, and I do believe this may indeed be the first time I’ve ever awarded a 5 star rating before I even finished an album (especially given I religiously stick to having only 25 5s - sorry to push you out, Nirvana!), but to me this is the perfect album. I carry an excited and potentially giddy energy through this whole review because I am just so truly excited to finally have these recordings in their truest form (following a remaster that I must say is a true work of art). I haven’t the words to describe how amazing these recordings sounds, so I will paraphrase Gillespie again - contained herein are the most beautiful melodies one could ever summon from their soul. I am brought to tears by how important a set of recordings this is, both for me personally and for the world of guitar music. Listen to this, and feel in a primal (♡) sense how it feels to love another person :].
otherwise have been sourcing lots of cds, a lot of compilations and some favourite albums. i managed to find every jamc album for very cheap which was a stunning piece of good luck, as well as several other superfluous albums ive heard before and loved. listened to a buzzcocks compilation which i knew id like but honestly loved more than i expected. the fucking SOUND quality on this is amazing, i honestly thought CD quality was a myth but dear god it is not. soon i shall challenge myself to spend some time not streaming music at all and only listening via physical media - that will be fun. i will hear a lot of beatles and the smiths i imagine LMFAO. i am the worlds #1 guitar pop lover.

31/07/23

been gone a while so i'm gonna do another little overview of what i've been doing musically lately. in short i've been on a noise pop journey still tho :)

women: public strain is a really weird little indie post-punk vibe that i can feel i don't quite get. i have to revisit it sometime soon
wavves are a fun band that i listened to because "shitgaze" is a thing now
teenage fanclub - bandwagonesque's highs are HIGH as fuck like i adored them but they were far too far and few in between sadly.
soul media's funky stuff is a great japanese jazz record that clara had me listen to that has made me want to start a jazz phase but she HASNT SENT ME MORE ALBUMS! >:(
the strawberry switchblade 7 minute 3 track demo was so fucking good and i am so sad it wasn't longer. i need that sound injected into my fucking brain
moss icon and one last wish are going to start my emo journey. the truly obvious influence from british jangle pop is so delightful when properly synthesised with an emocore sound and i want more of it lol. not rn bc im still on the noise pop vibe but soon... emo rose
the flaming lips, skip skip ben ben and early pavement all fill a similar hole as psychocandy for bubblegum pop with huge huge noise textures. so much of what i am listening to lately is just fulfilling that NEED (and it is a need not a want).
big fun and VVV are part of a synth punk vibe i think i'm going to start. the true aggression and punk vibe carried off in this coldwave tinged gothic vibe is just. UGH. bellisimo!! exploration around various post-punk genres like coldwave and dance-punk is doing me a lot of good lately
finally listened to all of the mbv rare tracks comp. all as amazing as i expected. instrumental (1) is a standout for me just for an amazing alt rock style shoegaze vibe. hearing the mfuck with samplers is so fun. my bloody valentine are def becoming one of my fav ever bands lol

otherwise, as for today, i am becoming a CDhead. bought a portable cd player, 4 smiths CDs and the aforementioned mbv cd, going to run into town to have a look at some music shops to see if i can't get a copy of mcr bullets, psychocandy and some other cool stuff that i would like. the primal scream "reverberations" comp has been released recently which i am hyped for - both of theircreation records singles AND 11(!) previously unreleased recordings, including versions of crystal crescent and velocity girl that were previously unheard, from i think john peel sessions. i am beyond excited about this and it will arrive soon and AGH
for CD purposes i think i will be buying a lot of compilations. singles compilations from bands i love. i think that is how its going to go :3 also fsr i feel drawn to filling my cd collection with the jangliest and sweetest guitar pop possible. who am i to say no to myself!

18/07/23

think i just need to start admitting i'm a shoegaze fan. that's cringe asf but i like too much shoegaze primary to not be a shoegaze fan by now. i just love those walls of guitars man. listened to band of susans yday and realised i'm pretty much just a shoegaze fan as long as it has a bit of noise/bite to it.
also listened to th faith healers and free refills, respectively decent noise rock/pop and synth punk with a noise pop attitude. enjoyed both, especially the latter. and spun some death doom ritual ass album before i slept. had a lot of an ambient feel to it in parts which i appreciated

tuxedomoon's desire may be one of the best post-punk records i have ever listened to. classic post punk with an artful jazz and minimal synth influence to it. sounds as if someone took the title track on david bowie's station to station and then decided they wanted to make that but with a jazz influence instead of funk and more overtly post-punk. their debut ep was included on the end and includes a much rockier synth punk number. works rly well although not quite as transcendentally good as desire.

lcd soundsystem seem to fall into the overhyped category - sound of silver was a very good dance punk record, i'd even say one of the better i heard, but by 2007 this had been done befoer and i dont feel compelled to hear more by them, and even feel it drags towards the end. it is good but i feel compelled to criticise bc i dont feel it earns its godlike reputation

finishing off my day by accidentally dipping my toe into the weird phc/mxc/shoegaze scene with parting gift. to be compared with bands like loathe and such, that blend shoegaze sounds with melodic metalcore style stuff by way of post-metal stylings. v much not sth id usually be interested in but im giving it a go
it's distinctly fine. not sth id ever revisit

16/07/23

spent all day listening to the post-rock album my buddy made a while ago to write a review for her. it was good - vibrant monochrome on bandcamp. some of the most fascinating textural approaches to guitar that i've heard before

15/07/23

new band i found, "cursetheknife", who appear to make a form of deftones influenced altish shoegaze with a lot of noise in it. top review for their debut album (which was actually an ep/demo comp but?) says "i feel like this is one of those bands that i get into before they make it real big" and for herd mentality purposes i honestly feel compelled to enjoy them because of that. i will renege on a true judgement until i hear everything (which handily is just this album) but given the intro was a really interesting riffy modern classical piece with some great orchestration, and the second song is an early MBV style shoegaze run mixed with deftones, i feel optimistic about my liking them lol. they have a new album out in september either way. loving to see fifth wave emo's many heads...... i am alpharius.
EDIT: this doesn't actually seem all too emo, but i'd be unsurprised to see this band play the same festival as someone like weatherday. emo adjacent perhaps
finishing the part of the album that makes up their first ep, i enjoyed it but it feels a little juvenile. like a band that hasn't yet put itself togehter and understood exactly what makes itself great, if that makes sense. but a band deveoloping its ability to write catchy tunes and then entering the avant-garde is nice. will see how ep no. 2 tickles me

yes, yes, the second ep has something new to it. more maturity in songwriting, more of a sophisticated energy to it. the rym review i'm reading along as i listen is definitely helping me, as it appears to be a longtime fan of theirs. from the first song the musicianship shows a stark improvement and there's a real sense of depressed aggression behind it. the guitar solo splitting really well done alt rock and blackgaze solo energy and really building the strength of the core mbv-cum-deftones riffing they build everything on. gorgeous
the second song does one of my guilty pleasures in heavy music - adding in a TOTALLY UNEARNT ballad. it's objectively not good or the way they needed to go probably (judging from how it seems laigned by the fans especially) but i'm here for it. depressed bassy vibes with a totally unapologetic emo vocal style LOL ...... actually no on reflection as the track kept going this is just really good. noisy and soulful. this earning a bad rep is just a lack of patience. anticlimactic end tho. really felt like it could've done with 30 seconds more heavy riffing and then a fade out rather than the soft ending
THE THIRD TRACK INTRODUCES A D&B INFLUENCE THAT SOUNDS SUSPICIOUSLY BIG BEATS ESQUE. okay i can really see why people bump this track so much, it's fascinating. it honestly hasn't been my favourite on the album but it was an interesting prospect that i'd like to see explored more. also the modern classical-esque interludes they're doing with the washes of sound and string sections are utterly delightful, they work incredibly well for me. dreamy little washes of sound that blend seamlessly into the annhilation
in any case, as suspected, the second ep showed a maturity in songwriting and influence that impressed me a lot more. frontloaded with their deftonesgaze approaches but then it almost seems to mellow out and approach more of a soft, emo-tinged approach with just as much edge. really interesting and i'm pleased to have discovered them - hopefully that rymer is correct re: their getting big soon. the last song reaches heights of emotional riffing that surprised me a bit, in a very positive way.

the album ends with a few demos. the first four were on the other eps so they were just more nice shoegaze with a bit of a lo-fi, noisy and stripped down vibe that i appreciate a lot, some of the tracks being fully acoustic versions that actually sound completely gorgeous. the final track is a cutting room floor track that was apparently scrapped. it is good, more of their deftones style alt metal approach than their shoegaze, but it was good. all in all a fantastic album that only makes me super excited for the upcoming full length :]

14/07/23

so utterly entranced by station to station for reasons i cant even really comprehend. something about the actual essence infused within the music just makes my hair stand on end. i cannot give concrete reason as to why but it is just utterly sublime. it probably is, in fairness, the side effects of the cocaine

also i finally got round to listening to ausgang. noisy and dissonant deathrock is something im always here for!

the more i listen to brave murder day the more i like it. i feel like it's going to become more and more important to me on some type of cumulative level the more familiar with it i get. this is true of most music but with bmd and station to station i especially feel drawn to them

12/07/23

explosions in the sky is a silly fun little thing. its derisively called "crescendo-core" but honestly i like it. it's simple, melodic and pretty, likely to a post-rock fan like mcdonalds but i think it is fascinating to see rock music so utterly destroyed and deconstructed into post-rock but retain an almost pop-like, accessible bent to it. that's reall fun and quite an interesting way of seeing music develop. two extremes blending and what does it tell us? well that trem picking is the best way to play guitar but ygm

also people get the smiths soooooo wrong. 1. they are DEFINITELY part of the post-punk canon like.... cmon their debut single was hand in glove and handsome devil, those are like, jangly post-punk songs. cmon. CMON. and then also 2. THEY AREN'T FUCKING WHINY AND DEPRESSIVE. THEY'RE SARCASTIC AND SARDONIC AND GORGEOUS. theres a few super sad songs but even sth like there is a light that never goes out is deadly fun and silly. "to die by your side, well the pleasure, the privilege is mine" is a fucking JOKE!!!! that's why its so easily parodied. we went fucking backwards and people blamed morrissey rather than ezra miller
explanation: i think the smiths were aware of their own irony but the ezra miller film where asleep was used as a meme wasn't

lots of gerard way singles i slept on tbh? the pinkish/don't try single is sublime

11/07/23

listened to a nice shoegaze album today which was pretty baller, lots of fuzzed out alt rock riffs and dream pop sections, but more importantly i finally listened to deathconsciousness and holy fucking shit this album is insanely good. 80 minute album that does not even BROACH on overdoing it or not earning its runtime. sublime. the fuzzed out guitar sections feel like orgasm in terms of how much they were built up via suspense and careful planning. the final 5 minutes of the album feel like a drug overdose in a good way. i see now why this has such acute cult status

10/07/23

listened to a midori album (j-punk/jazz) which was really great but i apparently heard their debut too? and enjoyed it? i mean unsurprising but that is worth a revisit. really good tho yeah - awesome avant-punk piano. also checking out times new viking - noise pop that veers in the slackerish direction rather than the shoegaze/emo direction i tend to fuck with. has a lovely, low energy but joyful feel to it.

searched for the perfect album to finish my day with and it eluded me until i found FORGET by xiu xiu. this is the perfect thing for me rn. artistic noise pop with an INCREDIBLY harsh (suicide inspired synth punk) undertone. mmf.
WOOF that was good. the perfect music for some weird, unspeakable anxieties that i cant even understand or vocalise. dark and brooding yet implacably lilting. very delightful. the artist apparently makes a lot of more pure noise and avant-garde coded things, which i shall have to dive into. as well as a cover album of the twin peaks soundtrack which i just MUST listen to.

09/07/23

nomenmortis, decent melodic brutal death. more than decent actually. really quite good. the type of thing that could only occur in the late 90s/early 2000s period whilst the melodeath and brutaldeath booms were concurrent with eachother. the time where at the gates and afterbirth had the same fans. also advantage lucy was utterly adorable.

08/07/23

definitely turning into a bit of an emo lately. parannoul was pretty fun and lovely. also listened to david bowie lets dance and honestly very unfairly maligned. it wasn't anywhere near as good as the prior albums but it was a fun little disco romp. i think i will go a bit deeper now and touch on the stuff that people srsly hate.

07/07/23

apparently the emo style ive fallen in love with is called "fifth wave emo". good to know. heard some fun stuff in it by a band called "Hey, Ily!" which is an adorable name for a weird bitpop aesthetic power emo(?) thing. very internet core, only 17 minutes but its a lot of fun, adorable. it falls short of great but its good

birds fear death. might get super into this artist lol. sad asf.

I GET MIDWEST EMO NOW!
"listening to some singles i had on wishlist before i sleep and i think hearing this song + your words on it from the other day have finally got me to understand wtf the midwest emo sound is characterised by. this is mixed with a lot of more hardcore oriented screamo stuff but that nice twinkly clean melody running in the background of the whole song does feel a lot like a synthesis of classic pretty indie stuff with a more modern emo feel"
I GET IT! it's like pretty and twinkly and sliiightly recalls jangle era stuff but its also acoustic sadboy slacker rock. im with it now. early sunsets over monroeville and also the stomach book side project have got it in me now.

06/07/23

heroes a bit more conventional than low i think on the a side? i enjoyed it but it was a lot more of the standard bowie art rock fare, which is by no means a bad thing but im wondering if perhaps of the berlin trio, heroes is the accessible one. the b side has some lovely more experimental and avant-garde stuff, ambience and even a weird instrumental art rock track which rly fucked. i love the setup of these two albums, the ambience lulls you away and really compels you to think about what you just heard. the two sides essentially stand alone but put together they really really strengthen eachother. brian eno you utter god!
lodger is just super odd in a good way. feels like a much more raw and tentative experimentation with the ideas he'd later perfect with his artsy new wave scary monsters record. the new wave/post punk inspiration oozes out but it sounds nothing like other post punk records, its honestly quite delightful. this is the last of the "great bowie albums" i have yet to listen to tbh so i think i may pause the discography run rn but it was very nice."boys keep swinging" on lodger was fucking amazing, probably one of his best songs

05/07/23

finished young americans. very good and funky. i enjoyed it more than diamond dogs even just because of the unique sound. now to station to station - im starting to feel a bit of bowie's degredation tbh

station to station now and by god yes i can hear bowie's degredation. this feels like the kind of album one makes before dying, very akin to jeff buckley's grace or something. conventional blue eyed soul style funk rock mixed with schizophrenic art rock. the kind of mixture that one can only make on drug fuelled autopilot (which well yeah). bowie is such a fascinating individual.

onto the berlin trio! low was fantastic. kooky art rock on one side and really quite engaging pop-ambient on the other. it wasn't as strange as station to station but it was really quite delightful. also has utterly GORGEOUS mixing, be my wife's piano sound was just unparalleled levels of utter amazing.

04/07/23

basically just listening to noise pop and boris lately. entering into a very specific era. the old mbv singles are really fucking good, esp strawberry wine and you made me realise, as was their debut actually. boris flood is SUBLIME, altar is decent but her lips were wet with venom really ups the quality just for the sheer intensity. also rn listening to sth by a band called "citrus" called "wispy, no mercy" which is just the most delightful sugary noise pop BUT WITH BREAKBEAT influence which is so cool and it gels so well. sadly its only 10 minutes but in fairness its also probably the perfect length to just belt all these ideas out. lovely!

black tambourine - complete recordings, 22 minutes, which is lol but also pretty pleased to have found some real good JaMC worship since i basically just want to listen to psychocandy again and again and again. it withers under the lights a bit given its a compilation album rather than put together neatly but i like it

absolutego was okay. doesnt hold a candle to anything else boris does is the issue

much as i am a bowie superfan based on scary monsters and his classic glam era, i haven't actually heard all his essential albums. i'm rn beginning my foray into his weird plastic soul era and then i'll head into the thin white duke, then finally properly engage with the berlin trilogy. i will become so annoying abt bavid dowie
on that note, diamond dogs. it's very pleasant. good little glam rock thing with cool little undertones. feels very much either like a transitory period or the death of an artist tho - fortunately its obviously transitory. standout tracks for me are 1984 and ofc rebel rebel. i cant be arsed w the weird rock opera side of this rn tho im just going to assume its worse than ziggy luh mao. but yes, enjoyed it but nothing special.

now, young americans. not a clue what to expect from this one rly? from what i gather its an attempt to play white guy soul music with some glam and funk too?
having to pause this for tonight but it started to click with me. the funk influence rly surprisingly worked

01/07/23

a lot of my listening to music lately comes from making friends playlists and being made playlists by friends lately - it's a delightful way to listen to music actually. having it handpicked by someone else is really really interesting. been too tired and busy lately to really get into much music, but i heard jamc darklands. it wasnt anywhere near the level of psychocandy but it was good - going to go through their whole discography i think. also heard a twinkle park album, who are? apparently vocaloid producers. emo pop with noise undertones which is my favourite thing lately (next to noise pop with emo undertones :p), and after a bit of adjusting to the vocaloid idea i actually came to like it. it fills a gap between hugely treated vocals and synthesiser whilst not really being one of either. realised i was approaching vocaloid wrong anyway - it isn't a genre. the same way my search for violin metal would be remiss if i was to only listen to gothic metal

listening now to my dead girlfriend, jrock tinged noise pop and shoegaze, seems really awesomely good. apparently also has a bit of a blackgaze/post metal influence which could be a fun synthesis. gorgeous vocals and really classic jamc guitar lines mixed with a bit of slowdive. might dive further into the whole noise pop/emo synthesis otherwise today as im really bumping it. oh also i swthced to apple music which is cool. miniplayer!

kmsing bc i just heard and loved an album called dysfunctional bunnygirl. it was so good and it made me cry. transphobically hatecriming myself rn.
no but rly it was good, essentially the same format as the noisy emo ive been rly enjoying but take that formula and apply it to a very pop-punk/emopop vibe rather than a more morose/midwest emo approach. power noise pop!!! real fun. also the artist is a rym-er which is always fun lol.

27/06/23

sufjan stevens illinois is as good as people say it is. needs a lot of revisiting but it has such utterly gorgeous string sections. well outside of my comfort zome too
making playlists for friends is a real fun vibe ♡

also the jesus and mary chain continue to live on rent free in my head. this is just the perfect synthesis of fucking raw and dirty guitar music and really lovely and sweet pop music. its exactly what i need
apparently their later albums may be worth checking out too? darklands drops the noise but keeps the gorgeous melody which could be something, then later they veer into a more noisy and fuzzed up alt rock approach :o which would be wonderful i think? i shall have to see.

26/06/23

my "actually listening to music" crusade is really going well, this is delightful. finally spinning the third wedding present album at long last. noise pop! but like, jangly and with a post punk bent. kind of like if steve albini produced the smiths (and given this is an albini album that scans). not sure if itll keep my attention though
also heard a very forgettable gothic metal album today which was resoundingly fine. didn't want to turn it off. did make me relisten to dance of december souls though - it concerns me that i no longer enjoy that album as much as i initially did. what changed?
the drum production on "blonde" by the wedding present here is? sublime. this song is utterly gorgeous from a production pov, steve albini surely has earnt his reputation. if i could do drum production like that then i'd definitely want to be a recording engineer LOL. would love to see how he did it

it was fun. i thiiink its a strong 4 bc parts of it rly do sag but i will likely end up revisiting it. sophomore record is still my favourite i think just bc of its rly fun overdriven jangle

finished off today with a couple of interesting ones - one noise pop album that is much loved by all by a band called "nouns", was cool, i like this type of emo noise pop, it honestly didn't grab me as much as i felt it should, but i will return to it. then relistened to the suicide s/t LP, which was probably necessary for my no wave journey. it is..... challenging. a lot of comments refer to it as "rock music in a frightening alternate universe where guitars were never invented" and i think it is a good point. it has a powerful frightening energy and i really feel like there is a lot more to dig at beneath the surface
as is common for me when i listen to these rather avant-garde stylised albums anyway i find myself drawn to the one that recontextualises its weirdness within a conventional pop melody etc, thus i find myself loving "johnny" and "rocket usa" a LOT. but it's all good. additionally whilst listening my dog ran in and scared the shit out of me bc the atmosphere on the album is just so stressful and anxious and i didnt need more stimuli XDDDD its working i suppose

25/06/23

jesus i've been tired as hell lately but i have been listening to music. in lieu of going through each one in turn i will just list the pertinent things i've thought of re: music

dragged into sunlight - hatred for mankind is ofc really good it's like one of my fav albums but people need to fucking accept! how it has a grind influence. like obviously too hieron is a straight terrorizer deathgrind track through stifling production but buried with leeches and lashed to the grinder both have clear blackened grind passages, a deathgrind influence can be heard throughout the whole album, some of these blasting death passages end up way too fast and punkish to be straight death, and pointing out the sludge influence is insufficient when some of this is straight up terrorizer influenced. bolt thrower riffs going into this kind of breakneck territory is how deathgrind started lol

sonic youth's debut is incredible but also bad moon rising is SO compelling it's insane. gothic no wave is intensely good and i wish more of it existed.

WEATHERDAY!!! weatherday - come in. holy shit what beautiful emo/noise pop. this is exactly what i needed, god it was just utterly gorgeous. will still return to some other noise pop stuff but that was just incredible. need myself some more good emo ngl. maybe american football deserves a re-re-revisit (since i tried and didnt enjoy them three times LOL)
i also listened today to the split album they and asian glow did - i am in love with this style of modern emoish indie pop, also promoted by bands like floral tattoo (new album this year for them too!), characterised by frequent melancholic punk tracks puncutating incredibly aggressive overdriven chordal passages - "Melt a Bed" on aforementioned split ep shows it really well. feels like spoon and the jesus and mary chain had a baby.

no wave in general is a real fun genre, it's most of what i've been exploring these past few days. i honestly think that press color by lizzy descloux, which veers more into the dance punk/mutant disco vibe, is my favourite thusfar? it just has such a fun danceable but still so strange and eerie vibe to it. but i haven't explored enough yet. still, fire!

read this on rym:
"Are people allowed to talk about promos that they've received? Cause I've got my hands on a promo of Asphodelus' Sculpting From Time and although I don't like to say it, it doesn't click at all. The Hellenic riffs are no longer present; instead the band aims for more of a lead-driven, quasi-progressive take on this style and with the exception of the vocals, I'm not really reminded of early Katatonia anymore, either. It's just too much of a sugary melodic doom/death metal album that I wasn't expecting of this band."
that's very disappointing and disheartening to hear. i'll still give it a go ofc but i really wanted more of that hellenic katatonia stuff that was on their first album, like, i was very strongly wanting more and i was excited to hear it, but ig not

sent this message to a rymer based on a comment he made:
hi there, i do apologise for the imprompto message, but i read your comment on A Series of Sneaks lately from a few years back:
"Fun fact, Britt Daniel recorded this using an amped up gainy acoustic guitar, giving it that super bright and poppy sound."
this is a super duper fun fact and i was just wondering where you found this out?? a series of sneaks is one of my favourite albums of all time and now you've said it it really sticks out to me in the sound and i just think it's a fantastic way to have recorded it, but i'm struggling to find any details. would just love to know what model he used and what effects he used to get this specific sound. thanks in advance and also thanks for posting it, it's really made me appreciate the album even more!
isn't that cool? i love a series of sneaks so goddamn much

i heard deafhaven - sunbather for the first time - definitely the kind of thing designed for me that i love. surprisingly good riffs at play here too, esp on the opening track theres some fucking earnt chugging. it'd be so easy to fill this album with brvtal trem just to create interest artificially, so the use of a non-black metal technique to add a bit of a heavier texture is a fun one. feels incredibly well intentioned and thoughtful, and definitely not overused - always leave the listener wanting more, i guess :)
i do find myself enjoying one of the post-rocky interlude tracks - "please remember" - the most actually, surprisingly. beautiful acoustic dream pop thing with an awesome noise section, and thought provoking lyricism. posted here in full:
Twisting and turning beside the slumbering Tereza
He recalled something she had told him a long time before
In the course of an insignificant conversation
They had been talking about his friend Z, when she announced
"If I hadn't met you, I'd certainly have fallen in love with him"
Even then, her words had left Tomas in a strange state of melancholy
And now he realized it was only a matter of chance
That Tereza loved him and not his friend Z
Apart from her consummated love for Tomas, there were
In the realm of possibility, an infinite number of unconsummated loves for other men
We all reject out of hand the idea
That the love of our life may be something light or weightless
We presume our love is what must be
That without it our life would no longer be the same
We feel Beethoven himself
Gloomy and awe-inspiring
Is playing to our own great love
very nice very nice!! also the album turned 10 recently apparently, like earlier this month, which is a serendipitous time to listen to it, though completely accidental

21/06/23

japanese hardcore is so fucking good, bastard - wind of pain is fantastic, buzzsaw guitar riffs and just SO much energy. it appeals to me in the same way comic book superhero shit does. its just so wilfully gloriously over the top. been listening to boris too and jesus christ i am just in love with heavy rocks, feedbacker is fantastic too. my review for heavy rocks 2002:
not the most complex, not the most avant-garde, and quite possibly the most accessible boris album. not exactly the points that make up a music nerd's 5-star rating but it's just... perfect. this was a post flood boris saying to the rest of the world that whilst they will be spending most of their career using their particular understanding of drone and ambience to destroy boundaries, that they're only doing this because in heavy rocks they completely surpassed all mountains that metal music could ever hope to. every riff a sledghammer, every solo a straight inferno piercing through this suffocating bass. the vocals carry this utterly joyous energy that complements the 3000 degrees of energy that infuse every bit of doom goodness that is fermenting in this album. dropping all pretension about drone and patient songwriting, boris channel every piece of energy in the universe to deliver the perfect synthesis of crushing doom and joyful songwriting. in the overt accessibility of this album, boris create some of the most purely beautiful music ever to exist.
black sabbath created the first ever heavy metal album. on heavy rocks, boris complete the formula that was set out. heavy rocks was not the final metal album ever created, but if it had been, metal would have been a success. this is the complete platonic perfection of what metal can and should look like. nothing else can develop upon or surpass this. dirty riffs with a sludgy psych tone all delivered with a fucking mischevious smile. this, more than anything, is the truest expression of what heavy music is.
from the youtube comments of ワレルライド, "This cocaine makes me feel like I'm on this song".
so fucking good. so so so fucking good

also ranked my fav albums per year from 1965-2023. also includes some explanation and discussion to my buddy:
1965: Nina Simone - Pastel Blues
1966: The Beatles - Revolver
1967: The Velvet Underground and Nico
1968: The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat
1969: The Velvet Underground - S/T
1970: Black Sabbath - S/T
1971: Black Sabbath - Master of Reality
1972: David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars
1973: David Bowie - Aladdin Sane
1974: Queen - Sheer Heart Attack
1975: Pink Floyd - Wish You Were Here
1976: David Bowie - Station to Station
1977: Suicide - S/T
1978: Rosa Yemen - S/T
1979: Bauhaus - Bela Lugosi’s Dead (single)
1980: Bauhaus - In The Flat Field
1981: The Lounge Lizards - S/T
1982: Christian Death - Only Theatre of Pain
1983: The Smiths - Hand in Glove (single)
1984: The Smiths - S/T
1985: The Jesus and Mary Chain - Psychocandy
1986: Ivo Partizan - Jarocin ‘86 (live)
1987: Necrovore - Divuus de Mortuus (bootleg)
1988: Bolt Thrower - In Battle There Is No Law!
1989: Bolt Thrower - Realm of Chaos
1990: Sonic Youth - Goo
1991: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless
1992: Carcinogen - Kure (demo)(pre-Dystopia)
1993: My Dying Bride - Turn Loose the Swans
1994: Jeff Buckley - Grace
1995: Dusk - …Majestic Thou in Ruin
1996: Cryptopsy - None So Vile
1997: Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West
1998: Spoon - A Series of Sneaks
1999: Built to Spill - Keep it Like a Secret
2000: Black Mass of Absu - Looting the Tomb of Aramathean With…
2001: Muse - Origin of Symmetry
2002: Boris - Heavy Rocks
2003: Boris - Boris at Last -Feedbacker-
2004: My Chemical Romance - Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge
2005: Panic! at the Disco - A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out
2006: My Chemical Romance - The Black Parade
2007: Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank
2008: Ehnahre - The Man Closing Up
2009: Dragged Into Sunlight - Hatred for Mankind
2010: Thorns of Hate - Abominable Triumph of Heresy
2011: Death Cab for Cutie - Codes and Keys
2012: Mother Mother - The Sticks
2013: Crywank - Tomorrow Is Nearly Yesterday and Everyday is Stupid
2014: Excoriation - S/T
2015: Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp a Butterfly
2016: Deftones - Gore
2017: Antichrist Siege Machine - Morbid Triumph
2018: Flesh - S/T
2019: Asphodelus - Stygian Dreams
2020: Dragged Into Sunlight - Terminal Aggressor II
2021: Yith - Passage
2022: Alvvays - Blue Rev
2023: Grave Pleasures - Plagueboys
"the velvet underground make up most of my stuff from the 60s bc they are just incredible, white light/white heat is far and away one of my fav albums ever and is also where my current usn (sister ray) comes from. they r like the earliest band i like and definitely one of the best, they may as well have created music for me
sabbath and bowie make up the 70s bc theyre both super meaningful artists to me, and they represent the pinnacle of their respective areas in music. ziggy stardust especially was one of the first albums i ever got into and remains to this day one of my alltime favs
1983 was a tough year since the smiths compete with my fav japanese hardcore band but ultimately hand in glove is just. the perfect debut single (remember i had u listen to it recently) and its meaningful as hell given its a song abt suffering under homophbia, and the b side is the best best best recording of handsome devil ever
the jarocin 86 recording is the weirdest one on here bc its just some live recording of a random polish band that ari sent me but its just. PERFECT. it is the pinnacle of all gothic rock and post-punk, every inch of its sound is just dripping with pure coldwave goodness i fucking LOVE it
necrovore in 87 is a similar one, its a bootleg of some rehearsal the band did but its like, very very loved among metal fans, given it was released in 1987 which was a few years before the real death metal boom and still fucking ace in spite of that. there afaik only exist these 4 songs of their classic recordings too so its a super cared for demo release among metal nerds like me
bolt thrower make up 1988 and 89 bc they are the single best band ever to exist. uncomparable. fucking AMAZING
my dying bride, jeff buckley, cryptopsy, spoon and modest mouse are all some of my fav bands and are included bc theyre just unparalleled no matter what era theyre in. the early 2000s and late 90s arent generally an area i love musically so they rly save that era for me
MCR being there is like. standard for me too bc theyre fucking ace. i actually recently upped their debut single (vampires will never hurt you) to a top 10 list but boris - heavy rocks (that u read the review for earlier) just about beats them
2009 was an INCREDIBLY tough year for me since dragged into sunlight compete with the paper chase, which is band that clara introduced me to who are just the perfect synthesis of all kinds of indie and avant garde rock, seriously some of the best songwriting ive ever heard. but dragged into sunlight are just. a very special band to me, i dont think any other band rly gets close to them
2010 was a weird year since there was nothing there i rly cared abt?? thorns of hate are just, decent to me but theyre not super meaningful
flesh from 2018 is like, a really random one but sth abt it just GRABS me. ill grab the review i wrote for it when i first heard it now actually hang on
a lot of the years are just. casual favourites, like excoriation, deftones, asphodelus and carcinogen arent suuuuuper meaningful to me but theyre just. the best of that year"

20/06/23

may get myself more into the no wave scene; the old sonic youth no wave albums are awesome. also noise pop is becoming more pronounced in my rotations, primarily by way of psychocandy but also i hear the old random noise pop release and REALLY like it. the jangle pop history of mbv deserves a mention here too. for continuation of this journey i must hear:
the MBV debut
public strain - women
in the marshes - for against (not noise pop but it is post-punk with a dream pop and coldwave bent that may fulfil a similar niche)
seamonsters - the wedding present (i already love some other wedding present releases so this will be a treat)
come in - weatherday

with these i will develop more of an understanding of what makes noise pop interesting to me. on the topic of no wave though, rosa yemen was really good and i wanna explore decloux's work a bit more when i can.

addendum to this, i heard this single by a very early noise pop primary band called "buba and the shop assistants" and it is just adorable and perfect. very much rooted in the early jangly indie scene but still

19/06/23

the black parade era b-sides shouldve been album tracks man. well they were on at least one issuing. got rly into caring abt issue details for old mcr singles today; i NEED TO FUCKING own a copy of the vampires will never hurt you single like it is not a want it is a need. tho i strongly prefer the original cd-r art and dont know how ifeel abt buying the reprise reissue vinyl. hm.
that may btw enter into my 5/5s for singles. i was thinking abt whether transmission by joy division deserves to be there. i mean its good but is it vampires will never hurt you good?

17/06/23

turning into a lingua ignota fan. caligula fucked hard, really moved me at some parts and the whole industrialised noise approach is really enticing to me. will dig more into her music

also heard something by king krule, i might get myself more into neo-psychadelia. it has a slowcore influence so i was interested but yeah

jesus christ macabre omen is so good too. just absolutely MASTERFUL. the riffwork is simply unparalleled in black metal

16/06/23

really back into the swing of listening to new music lately which is awesome
happened upon an album that i had wishlisted several years ago - "watching from a distance", by warning. an apparent straight doom record that draws inspirations from sadboy style slowcore stuff and it was transcendental. i enjoyed it a lot more than i expected, absolutely punishing doom riffage synthesises perfectly with really mentally ill but soulful lyricism. rare for me to appreciate lyricism ngl but this just called for it. "Can someone feel too much? // I wish you were here with me tonight" i think this is just the perfect time in my life for me to find this, despite having had it wishlisted for years. things happen for a reason ig.

the boris/uniform collaboration was... good. felt very safe though. like yeah that is exactly what boris and uniform both sound like, congrats. the japanese hardcore bent was really cool but it just feels like a lot of lack of risk - the seventh(?) track dipping heavy into industrial synthpop was really cool but they just seemed so nervous to really explore it. still fun, but not one i'll revisit

marquis de sade - rue de siam is a lovely little danceable slice of french coldwave. that one does ask for a revisit, especially the standout tracks at least. maybe make a bit of a coldwave playlist finally?

spun some trip hoppy acid jazz band; red snapper. liked it but i think engaging w this kinda stuff having started with the lounge lizards and mezzanine. starting at the highs makes listening to the 4s kinda boring. enjoyable stuff in either case tho, just doesn't have the staying power u need for repetitive stuff like this
i am perhaps just displaying a philistinical lack of understanding of the genre tho. dumbass metalheads!

14/06/23

listened to pom poko! was real good. been done before but some really well done noise pop. noise pop is my JAM lately ig. also relistened to turn loose the swans which put me in an absolutely spiritual position.

13/06/23

spent all day autistically arranging my 5/5 list lol. honestly not productive but i had fun. also wtf why don't people like codes and keys death cab???? its such a good little album....
in any case becoming a singles person is actually a lot of fun; feels a lot more like interfacing with history. i must see if i'm able to track down a copy of the original hand in glove 7" - that fucking version of handsome devil is INTENSELY good. using tidal is fun too although having a number of my 5/5s just not be on the site is kind of irritating? wish they could do local files like spotify. tho otoh it does make listening to them more meaningful!

also the jesus and mary chain are so fucking sex. always been a casual fan but listening to psychocandy in a shed laying down on a couch whilst madly overheating and fantasising about a special someone was a fucking lifechanging spiritual experience. tbh i should have a lifechanging experience with all of my 5/5s, the albums at very least. that's how i will cement them.

LISTEN TO POM POKO TOMORROW.

12/06/23

think i've decided fully that strangeways here we come is my fav/the best smiths album. johnny marr agrees and idk. it just has the perfect and most tasteful amount of c86 style jangle pop, along with joyous neo-acoustic approaches to vocal pop, as well as a borderline gothic approach to new-wave/post-punk musicianship. it may not have the glorious highs of handsome devil or bigmouth strikes again but as a piece it is just the best i think. i wish i wasn't so silly and could have two releases by them as my perfects. maybe i will.
also strongly considering whether dark side of the moon makes it as a 5/5

restructuring my top albums list; will have 25 'proper releases, then 5 rough demos, singles or eps that don't have the substance for 25 but are incredibly worthwhile - see the day man lost or velocity girl

11/06/23

lying awake listening to the smiths, thinking about something. someone. i am so shockingly a stereotype

09/06/23

katatonia discouraged ones is barely goth metal but its also a lot more than just alt metal. rym fixes that by primary tagging it gothic metal but then also adding shoegaze, alt metal and alt rock as secondary tags which.i agree with (some of these are straight up tool/staind songs and ik tool influence katatonia a lot). saw someone else say this necessitates the existence of a "depressive rock" or "atmospheric rock" genre tag which takes from shoegaze, alt metal, HIM and katatonia style gothic-ism and honestly i see it

09/06/23

saw carcass with unto others today which was fucking awesome, unto others were SO fun and cheesy and they really knew how to drive a crowd and carcass are just absolutely amazing and need no introduction. more excitingly tho after the show i saw KARL FUCKING WILLETS FROM BOLT THROWER. JUST AT THE BAR. he was so lovely and friendly and he made jokes and complimented my shirt. i have no idea how to explain quite how meaningful and important him and his band are/were to me christ alive

08/06/23

made a rym list explaining a little playlist i made synthesising some of my feelings of love lately, inspired by the mixtape format of a now sadly bygone era. not sure why i did this but it was fun

07/06/23

listened to joy division a bit today. my hot asf take is that they were honestly only good during their pre-unknown pleasures singles era - love will tear us apart is alright, but most importantly transmission, the pre-album she’s lost control and as you said (unlisted minimal synth track on the komakino single) are all fantastic. but unknown pleasures just isn’t great. made myself a tidal playlist of all the pre-UP material to love it
honestly though they’d still be better if they had a different vocalist from ian curtis. not that i hate him or have anything against him but he just caaaaant rly sing. but yeah there’s a fantastic 10-15 minute coldwave mixtape in their pre album material but as a band i just cant get behind them. warsaw from their first ep is awesome tho, great little post-punk track with the emphasis on PUNK

also heard funereum’s re-velatio. not as good as the rest of the gothic stuff ive been spinning but it did have some awesome death metal material, i liked the synthwork. need to re-spin carnun sometime soon too - i heard half of it and reinstated my ADORATION but i didnt get to finish sadly

05/06/23

the Goth Quest goes strong but i did also take a break in orde rto listen to kekht arakh's "pale swordsman", a soundcloud style mixture of romanticism and second wave larping bm. really really enjoyed it - heartbreakingly beautiful and the vocalist is gorgeous (people say "femboy metal - apparently he was a meme for a while). will need to revisit this and also listen to what other work hes done. not quite gothic but definitely in the same vein of romanticism

03/06/23

would kill so many people to know how my dying bride recorded the piano on the angel and the dark river.
also listened to turn loose the swans with ari and he got to listen to be me insanely autistic the whole time and we also discussed what areas were so beautiful (most of them). now we r listening to a live recording by one of his fav bands :).

I FUCKING LOVE DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT I FUCKING LOVE DRAGGED INTO SUNLIGHT

i listened to crowbar's "sonic excess in its purest form" and despite it being generally just fantastic, i was surprised how much it flirts with a gothic metal sound? the first song is straight up a TON ripoff and the riffing in general has this awesome kind of romantic, grandiose and indulgent feel to it, with the vocals being morose as hell in that right style. someone in the comment box suggests a gothic metal secondary and yeah. honestly this couldnt be my 5/5 but it could be a 5/5 in the future. needs EXTENSIVE revisiting, this is incredible.

31/05/23

getting real ear fatigue. did hear some cool stufff, and am going to listen to turn loose the swans with ari soon which will be delightful.
have also been re-examining what my fav velvet underground album is. white light/white heat is amazing but im essentially 5-ing it out of 3 songs, given the gift and sister ray aren't exactly casual listening thing (tho theyre awesome) and here she comes or w/e isn't any better than anything on nico or s/t.

also may write some music tbh

29/05/23

everything musical i have done today is in that page linked below. i am going insane. turn loose the swans is so good and the vocalist is actually soooooo adorable i feel like a boycrazy teen girl rn.
also i really need to listen to more celtic frost. whenever i hear them their particular brand of doomy thrash just absolutely blows my mind but then i dont keep up w them. so glad they did a bit of gothic stuff so i had an excuse to spin them again.

this whole thing may send me insane but im having SO much fucking fun i love autism. funny too bc i almost just put bmd at the 5/5 spot and leave it at that, and only got deterred bc akerfeldt really did not do it for me. and now im doing this weird shit. funny that i almost didnt lose myself for however many days

28/05/23

more work... i am developing a repertoire of albums i need to keep in mind to decide upon. as i type this i am spinning anathema's "pentecost III", gothic metal and death doom metal primaries, though the credits list lacking any form of dedicated classical musician doesn't exactly enamour me. what i need is something to combine the absolutely divine structure and songwriting of brave murder day, the virtuosic playing on dance of december souls, the heaviness on turn loose the swans and the absolute gothic splendour in the dark river and the angel, as well as ideally the production style of some of anathema's work. the following is a list of albums i think may be ideal:

it is my belief that any one of these albums, whilst itd be some more than others, has the potential to be the most glorious synthesis of gothic romanticism, intelligent doom metal, and punishing death metal. it is my quest to find out which one! i WILL find the perfect gothic doom album even if it ends up killing me

me when i listen to music like a normal person. i got mocked once by a "friend" bc i was being silly by claiming to be more engaged in music than is conventional. I AM NOT TRYING TO BRAG ABOUT THIS FFS IT'S JUST I WROTE A WHOLE WEBPAGE ABOUT THE CONCEPT OF LISTENING TO MUSIC. THAT IS OBJECTIVELY NOT AVERAGE. I WISH I COULD LIKE MUSIC NORMALLY TOO IT'D MAKE MY LIFE EASIER LOL

27/05/23

katatonia today, i think these are the answers to what i crave. so many GLORIOUS riffs. need to decide which album i’m gonna get super annoying over
OK NVM IT’S DEFINITELY BMD WHAT THE FUCKKKKK. FROM THE FIRST SONG. THE RECAPITULATION OF THE FIRST RIFF ALMOST MADE ME FUCKING SOB. THIS IS UNFAIRLY GOOD. as the rym comment box for dods says, best sad gay metal ♡ but no holy shit every single song on this album does something uniquely incredible from what i’m hearing. the opener is a perfect synthesis of shoegaze and metal, 12 is this fantastically artistic death doom symphony, and there’s even an ethereal post punk track that borrows incredibly hard from artists like the cure and the cocteau twins. i think the individual instrumentation skill went slightly down from the debut but the songwriting is unchallenged. this may be ending up on a 5/5 spot :3 seriously tho 12 is playing rn and it’s just so fucking heavy. so much is being done across this whole album just with power chords
love bands that repeat their own riffs enough that i can digest them. hate when awesome riffs are only played for a few seconds. this is why i’m a doom fan.

having listened to some more and digested katatonia a little, i am no less in love, but i think i need to do some more thinking to what i will crown the golden idol of my gothic doom fantaticism. turn loose the swans from mdb is definitely worth considering too - ISN’T HAVING A DEDICATED VIOLIN PLAYER SO COOL? and also the angel and the lake or w/e its called, i heard a few tracks from it and it sounded incredible, i just haven’t had the time to listen to it all through yet. in any case, today i heard the first three katatonia albums (that is, dance of december souls, brave murder day, and also the demo for funerals to come). bmd is a…. weird one, it’s an incredibly compelling album but i’m unsure if itll keep me, whereas dance and funeral are both so fucking deep i am in danger of drowning in them before i get bored. i will have to see if bmd keeps my attention, and also where my dying bride end up falling for me - i am biased against them bc they dropped the violin player! poor little dude. but the angel and the dark river is an album that could entice me wildly by surprise, i’m just spinning a little right now tho i’m unsure i’ll be able to finish it all. i’m cheating a little with it too since i’m choosing to hear a version with sexuality of bereavement on it, which i believe was an exclusive single release, but i rly rly love it, so itll bump mdb up for me. 

anyway. my 25th fav album approaches….. we shall see……

finally, seemingly everytime i hear angel and the dark river i get interrupted by something, meaning i don't get to finish it. going to take the inadvisable path and finish it before i sleep even tho its 6am LOL. it is really good tho. the violin is perfect and also the synth(?) piano is just gorgeous, complements the doom fantastically. i almost get sad when the doom starts bc i wanna hear more neoclassical darkwave style stuff. tomorrow! i must relisten to arcane rain fell, and a tristania album maybe? anyway the final track on angel and river has this awesome feeling that its a conventional late 70s doom track in the guitar that is being forced into being gothic doom by the backing guitar and atmosphere, it's really cool, fucking stonking heavy riffs too. definitely keeping a hold of their doom roots

26/05/23

ttinity was fine, had ups and downs but a very good theatrical doom effort in all. still i search for the perfect violin death doom........ next, phlebotomized! (editor's note: i did not end up listening to them anytime soon after i wrote this entry LOL)

25/05/23

spinning my dying bride's "trinity" today, the bonus track version. was a bit of a trek to get my head around what is actually on the release, but it appears its the first two EPs in the order of their recording (showcasing some very endearing immature songwriting that touches on the gothic-isms of the band later whilst still being VERY death metal, the first track has a lot of straight scream bloody gore riffs lol), and then the third ep in a... weird state? in that it removes one track which was an industrial metal tinged remix of some of their turn loose the swans material, which i assume was released during their weird 34% complete experimental era, and replaces it with a popular single release in "the sexuality of bereavement". weird but i suppose posthumously it creates a better picture of them as gothic metal pioneers. i love archival work! and i also love death metal!
worth noting that thrash of naked limbs was also apparently the second ep? even though it shows up as the first on rym? but i believe it was also the first ep that contained a consistent band member on violin. at time of writing i am still on the first ep but i am excited to hear the breadth of the band. it appears that this trinity release allows a full history of the band, if a little As Told By Them given the cutting of their (embarassing?) industrial metal past

ah, the bonus tracks seem to be from their "towards the sinister" demo. also wash my mouth out with soap regarding the band's embarassment towards their industrial era - i was a decade off with when this was released - it was predating their experimental era. perhaps they just cut it off due to a general dislike? i will be sure to spin it following finishing the collection just for completeness' sake, though i'm being lead to believe its genreally just nothing special, which i suppose is why it hasn't been included
actually yeah i skimmed it and its shit LOL. weird production and absolutely crappily weak industrial influences. i would also not include this LMFAO

24/05/23

getting wildly wildly into gothic metal ig. tiamat are awesome (DUDE ALSO THEY'RE TREBLINKA??? I DIDN'T KNOW THIS!!!!), super romantic and fundamentally gay stuff. issue is there's a lot of horribly boring shit (*cough* paradise lost icon) to wade through, moreso than with other genres. but it does feel worth it. the guirar solo on 'whatever that hurts' was a piece of unreserved divinity. perfectly executed virtuosity in a song that really did not need it to be amazing

xenon by deftones ended up sounding better through the handsfree mode on my headphones - compression made the synth part more audible? i think this is going to tell me something about deftones gore in general - going to listen to some of it whilst i update my diary whilst jumping in and out of a call in a server

also i may get into the gazette

23/05/23

heard an album by the necromancers - really good doom stuff, i think i may have heard a bit of a gothic influence too? very reminiscient of this new wave of like, grave pleasures/beastmilk style deathrock/hard rock. the rym page doesnt reflect it but i will do some more thought on it. gonna listen to baxaxaxa today too.

chilly gonzales has a lovely way of playing piano but i'm not certain on the production. id do it differently

did not end up listening to baxaxaxa bc sth keeps stopping me, internet etc always gets inthe way. did chill to some my dying bride tho. lovely little band - sad gay bolt thrower or w/e. they may be my next obsession

19/05/23

listening to more of these lounge lizards - very interesting band. their fourth album (though according to tidal second!!) drops the no-wave influence in favour of what feels like a jazz-rock/world influence? though i'm honestly not certain anymore that this can be referred to as "avant-garde" jazz. it's certainly very good, and the production style is a huge step up; these drums sound divine when they're given room to breathe - the reverb tail on the toms towards the end of track 6 make an ambience of their own. DRUMS SHOULDN'T BE ABLE TO MAKE AMBIENCE IN NORMAL JAZZ BUT HERE WE ARE! this entire track is a production masterclass, the sax sounds absolutely gorgeous alongside it, and the way they're balanced together it feels as if it is so delicately floating atop the drums. but yes, aside from production improvements, this has "devolved" into far more of a conventional jazz album. a very good jazz album, certainly! with hints of the avant-garde here and there, little nods to their roots, but the loss of Arto Lindsay's frenetic guitar work actually affected the overall content far more than i expected. indeed it means i am compelled to return to the s/t album eventually to re-examine what i felt about the guitar. but yes, even in spite of the awesome blues influenced guitar lines and stabs present in voice of chunk's music, it is generally a very good but far less challenging slab of jazz. though, that may be a little unfair, as were i to hear this without the context of the debut album, i'd likely notice the avant-garde tinges far more.
this all counts for all the tracks besides sharks btw. that is awesome and on a tier with s/t for weirdness, even midlly has the no-wave influence. i suppose they matured a bit past that for the rest of the album though?

their final album seems a bit more clearly in the style they set out in the prior album - more experiementation and avant-garde touches but in a much different way to the debut. what a band!
yas the final album was surreal and full of bizareness of a much different variety than the debut. i favour the debut due to thinking the sax work and piano playing was at its peak there but theres certainly no bad album

18/05/23

the cure and bauhaus are the superman and batman of the goth rock world, respectively

17/05/23

new impetuous ritual album is p good. lots of dramatism. dissodeath i’m not sure is a genre that i enjoy but the weird frenetic black/death riffing is a proven winner and i’m actually a big fan of the guitar tone. draws comparison to portal for obvious reasons but i’ve always liked impetuous ritual more
cool guitar on ‘psychic necrosis’! nice riffs, best song on the album probs
actually having said that the whole second half is p strong? second backloaded album i heard recently. also the whispered vocals and black influence give a real war metal vibe. maybe secondary barely. interesting ways these two areas cross over tbh bc on paper they’re sisters but there’s such a different approach.
man i gotta visit ross bay cemetery

ya this was cool. love their band name. they sure are doing rituals lol. also some of the closing riffs on the last song are disgustingly hood.

my review for rym:

listened as well to the latest chained to the bottom of the ocean album. not entirely crazy about the production style but I think the musicianship is absolutely phenomenal, especially the third song hole in my head which is displaying some real awesome eyehategod punky vibes, whereas the recent sludge movement is really headed more into the atmospheric area and, in my opinion, betraying its roots. there is a reason that chained to the bottom of the ocean are one of my favourite modern sludge bands, just because they really seem to understand the classics of the genre, even when they are stuck in a horrible album art and atmospheric wankery that I kinda dislike in modern sludge movement. they seem to properly understand the importance of doom metal and hardcore to the genre. they’re pretentious poets but the music has this real desolate feeling of hatred and real sensitive kind of doom riffing that is so necessary for sludge music, as opposed to primitive man style drone atmosludge. these riffs have real movement. would love to see them live.
as i say tho the album art is horrible. i find their whole artistic vibe so compelling though. they inspire some of my own poetry

actually nah the album art is fine i’m just a hater

16/05/23

miiraposa completely fails to miss this woman is a genius! anyway buying myseflf an mp3 player was SUCH a correct move. lil dedicated tech is so fun also now i hear so much more rnadom music

listened to the debut album by a no-wave jazz band from the 80s today, the lounge lizards s/t. enjoyed it - i’m an overly critical grump about jazz recordings bc of my expertise but no it was rly good. awesome instrumentation and some pretty eclectic approaches to songwriting. the guitar was very attention grabby, as-per with this style, but honestly the amount the bass and piano rly drove it all www my favourite part of it, the rhythm section was crazy good, esp when the keys player took out their more out there synth sounds it sounded almost noise texturish. real artful stuff !

13/05/23

miiraposa sent me a new album, i must listen to it ASAP.

04/05/23

relistened to the paper chase someday this can all be yours last night. good fucking god that album is amazing. i think 5 stars lay in its future! also in my effort as a audio student, i have been doing some recording, and i have fell head over absolute heels in love with distressors. the amount of control and focus i can exert over a specific sound when i tailor the eq alongside it is just fantastic. also recorded some flute, i intend on getting some more flute and some oboe soon. recording isnt where i wish to spend my life but i do enjoy it whilst i am engaged in it for educational purposes.

01/05/23

listening to impaled nazarene. theyre actually like orgasmic when they get all hellenic ngl

30/04/23

mp3 player is rly fun to casually listen with over the day constantly. removes ear fatigue. also its then awesome to get some proper bass response when i listen to music properly

29/04/23

fucking around with an mp3 player now. like a physical one. its fun! put all the old cool demos i used to listen to on there.

29/04/23

people who do shitty acoustic covers of pop songs at bars should be fucking shot or just attacked until they stop existing. THEYRE SO BAD AND THEY REMOVE EVERYTHING FROM THE SONGS. the fucker who popularised the ‘omg all pop music is 4 chords!!!’ needs to be shot. HARMONICALLY YES BUT THERE IS MORE TO IT THAN THAT YOU CANT PLAY EVERYTHING WITH A SHITTY VOICE AND A CRAPPY YAMAHA ACOUSTIC KYS KYS KYS

ed sheeran. him. he did it. he went on some jimmy fallon and played a bunch of songs and bc his songs sound like utter shit it sounded like. his music. now every 2 bit fucking moron with a £70 yamaha acoustic turns the presence up on their amp and thinks they’re going somewhere. KILL. YOUR. SELF.

28/04/23

the new grave pleasures album is better on relisten. just wow. when the shooting stops is ♥♥

25/04/23

heard their most recent album. nowhere near as good as gore, still some merit though, esp the title track. i still have the debut to listen to before i have done a true discography listen but honestly i hear its even more nu metal than around the fur so idk if i'll like it

spinnning some plasma. creeping... crushing... crawling!

24/04/23

deftones definitely aged like wine. their albums just keep getting better. they definitely earn their stay. lots of post-rock bleeds into their work.
seeing a bit more where the resistance to calling them nu metal comes from though. whilst they were certainly nu up until and including white pony, they deviate heavily following that, so whilst theyre still def a nu metal band i can see why people would say not

hearing gore - holy shoegaze and vocal melodies batman! people complain abt deftones being called nu metal and then hate this album. its fucking huge but mellow too. love.

22/04/23

jesus yesterday was SO TIRING. fun but SO SO SO TIRING

its nice of grave pleasures to write disintegration girl about me. i AM the end of the world in the form of a girl, thanks mister pleasures for noticing! also lead balloons is something of a goth rock ballad and i really like it. this guy's voice is bloody amazing.

20/04/23

jamiroquai appear to be a singles band for me unfortunately. will try again with an album sometime tho. in other news im forging ahead through the deftones discog. its cool

tomorrow going to be doing some recording. sound engineering is kinda fun sometimes

19/04/23

i bought the deftones hoodie it’s so cute :3
not sure how people claim them not to be numetal though? they have more of a shoegaze influence than a band like korn but they're still pretty non negotiably nu metal. they use the jumpdafuckup riffs and vibes and even have a bit of a hip-hop influence sometimes. is it just an elitism thing? silly.

18/04/23

listened to bethlehem dark metal on way to uni this morning, was good, classic blackened doom, prefer their later work but it was enjoyable. more importantly though, it lasted the EXACT time i needed to get to uni, like, the final 10 seconds were playing right as i got out of the elevator in my building. absolutely perfect timing that enhanced how much i enjoyed it for sure

bought myself a velvet underground s/t vinyl today, i think i shall go back and also get a white light white heat, maybe grace by jeff buckley, AND ALSO THIS SUPER COMFY DEFTONES HOODIE THAT I DIDNT BUY BUT NOW I REALISE I NEED IT. im going to not get overexcited and acutally decide whether or not i like that band tonight then take a view as to whether i wanna go buy that hoodie afterwards.
yeah i'm a deftones fan now. theyre like if tool were good.

17/04/23

found out that i followed an absolutely awesome musician on instagram, miiraposa. talking to her now shes sweet but more importantly her music is fucking insane style good

12/04/23

started working on a cover of lady godiva's operation today, recorded the guitar tracks at least. hoping to get a friend of mine onboard to do the vocals for me as i cannot sing and she has a wonderful voice. have consequently been singing that damn song all day after spending five fucking hours listening to it straight. i may be a little insane rn

11/04/23

the paper chase are so intensely good. also placebo are back on my radar

09/04/23

i am collating songs that make me think about love and feel a certain type of melancholic warmth. genocidal crush, be my hiroshima, beautiful james, be my druidess (lol), pretty much anything by the smiths. something happening in my BRAIN

the latest full of hell/primitive man collab is good. the dark ambient parts end up very welcome and the sludge metal is top tier. it’s short length is becoming too, this style of music often seems artificially forced into crossing the rubicon of an hour’s length so a 40 minute effort with just as much intensity and drone is refreshing. full of hell remain a consistently good name inthe modern extremity scene
the last track rly elevates it. the opening salvo of dark ambient is really horribly dread inducing and it makes the stilted, hateful doom passages all the more intense via their delay. love to see a band know when to hold back. also jesus that guitar tone is INTENSE. the panning makes everything so pronounced and laboured, this last track even made it onto my playlist

I WANNA KISS YOUR PRETTY FACE

06/04/23

fuck suede tbh

03/04/23

today i am listening to the elysian fields, another hellenic black metal that apparently mixes in classical riffing and folk influenecs. this is super apparent from the first song and it really adds to the hellenic energy. this is going to be good.
I LEFT IT ON SHUFFLE AGAIN REEEEEEEEEEEEEE. THE WORST THING THAT HAS EVER HAPPENED TO ANYONE. ig i start from the beginning ._.
in any case this is a fantastic album. And The Everdawn Faded Away is an example of some genuine melodic apotheosis. the guitars combine in such a way to create such a constructive interference between the melodic content in guitar lines is nothing short of pure beauty. cudownie!

THATS AN INTERESTING IDEA ACTUALLY. MELODY AS A UNIQUE AUDIO CONCEPT THAT CAN BE MEASURED. thats another cool insane idea. perhaps if as i surmise that there are metaphysical constructs created by art and love, perhaps these placed into an audio field represent their own physical qualities, especially in terms of the resonance it creates in a human body. i will think more on this if i dont forget.

i also listened to a band called as serenity fades, a finnish melodeath/death doom act. i think it actually demonstrates the interesting parallels between finnish extreme and hellenic extreme metal. it was unmistably a finnish death metal album but it bore a resemblance to some hellenic metal i enjoy recently.

02/04/23

not exactly sure how i've been talking about this idea of songwriting and the importance of controlling the energy of a song well enough without thinking of jeff buckley. every song he wrote is a perfect example. especially mojo pin.

also i have insane clown posse to catch a predator in my head a lot today
...that one perhaps isn't as fantastic from a songwriting perspective

01/04/23

a friend of mine has been mildly bullied lately for liking halsey, by someone who loves suede and positions them as the cornerstone of Interesting And Good Music. whilst i'm no suede hater, i think animal nitrate is great and the beautiful ones is... okay, i think that is very silly. they're by no means haute couture, they're merely decent pop music, and laughing at someone for liking halsey is so ridiculous. i am beyond sick of this trend of hating on female pop artists for the crime of being accessible fun music. it must end! female pop musicians are by and large wonderful and pop music has so much to love. toxic by britney spears is quite genuinely an awesome song with so so much going on from an engineering pov, i can call it nothing but misogyny that it and things of its ken get denigrated so much.

30/03/23

why on earth have catacomb of all people released new music. that is the more shocking part, it being bad is pretty expected but why has it even happened?

29/03/23

listened to the latest mystras album. it was good but it has so many interludes. 10 minutes of flute for every 20 minutes of black metal. enjoyable but got damn these greeks like their flutes

i've also been thinking about the concept of what is and isn't earnt in music. i recently went to a classical guitar concert for someone i know and it was crap but one thing i took note of was something he that happened when the guy did a cover of creep by radiohead, he likes to do acoustic covers of pop songs. in this cover, the big rousing moment was of course the pre-chorus into chorus, "cuz i'm a creep". but i absolutely hated it and i figured out why.
i'm not a big radiohead fan in general, i think they're pretty much clinically overrated (3 albums in the rym top 10 where the beatles have 0 is absolutely insane), but i think the relative success of creep as a song is in its buildup - the way the verse is light and airy with quite a light guitar tone and understated vocals and then the chorus transitions to quite a metred and heavy hitting guitar tone works so well because both sides work in unison - the payoff of the chorus is so effective because of the bed the verse set with its guitar tone and playing style sets is so. the version my acquaintance played had very standard picking for the verse and the transition to the chorus was essentially the same, but he played chords rather than with individual picking. the dynamics were totally lost between the two and thus the song, which was fundamentally built up off of the buildup and completely neutered it into a kidzbop version with the lyrics unchanged. obviously its old news about crap singer songwriters neutering songs like this but i think a lot of it is down to this principle of things being earnt in music. you can't expect things to be well received if you just constantly jump into the cool really soulful things, that is cheap. you need to make your audience want it and then give it to them. rather than just expect your audience to lap up any old climax that you haven't prepared them for. it's like foreplay. don't be a straight man musician. be a gay musician.
anyway contrast, with the mystras album i mentioned above, whilst its use of interludes bordered on the excessive, the fact it had them in the first place added SO MUCH to the album, and the song structure built off it. the songs gave the picture of a description of a dramatic battle - there was movement throughout it all and the great big climatic finishes felt earnt. when there are these huge dueling guitar sections or generically Massive Grecian Riffs then you have been built up to them with the flute interludes or the middle of the road decent riffage that dominates their album. it's why i'm obsessed with hearing "average" hellenic black metal - i want to hear things that make me enjoy the genre so that the really mindblowing shit will blow me away.
i think this is where some of the complaints about macabre omen's debut album come from - i disagree with them but a number of people said that it was disingenuous bc they frontloaded their songs with a catchy melody and then for the rest of the song they ended up being a little more boring. a number of people felt that it was a disingenuous way to grab attention and then not deliver on the rest of the song, hoping their prior steam would carry them through. whilst i disagree with this notion and think that macabre omen are the absolute champions of carrying and developing riffs for longer songs, i understand the criticism, and find it meaningful here. artists need to be more comfortable with not just constantly frontloading their output - with both albums and songs. allow some interesting riffs to be in the end of a song, allow your easy single tracks that everyone remembers to lie towards the end of the album - trust your fanbase to stick it through, and then appreciate the project more for rewarding their listening
on the other hand the cynic in me knows that its just because they want to squeeze the money out of relatively uninterested people who wont listen either way and may listne longer if they hear interesting stuff first but i think that's a pretty artistically weak way to make music. unironically another curse of capitalism. artists shouldn't feel the need to please people for anything but their own ego.

i also may be wrong about merzbow? i listened again to pulse demon and heard a lot more worthwhile than i remember from 2020 as a fledgling noise fan. perhaps i should revisit. until then, time to put some war metal into my ears. eggs of gomorrh consider their trend of being actually inventive for once

28/03/23

boris heavy rocksboris heavy rocks boris heavy rocks boris heavy rocks boris heavy rocks boris heavy rocks boris heavy rocks. fuck.

posthumous addition: i have since 5.0'd this. literally no one has understood music this well before

27/03/23

in my capacity as a sound engineering student, i am permitted to have access to a suite of very powerful and very awesome SSL desk studios. i was intending to record a harpist this past friday but she has unfortunately fell ill suffering from an RSI, so that will no longer be possible. i planned another session today in order to mix that recording but due to that recording not actually existing, i was left without a use for the studio
solution!
i am going to listen to boris - dronevil properly, through different sides of some very high quality speakers, having applied equalisation on the supplied desk, and then print it to a new track so i may have my own perfect version to own and listen to. this is such an exciting prospect and as i press play and start the printing process, i trul feel as if i am taking part in divinity. this is how i need to listen to music all the time
also on these desks the monitor level goes up to 11 which is rly funny. its one louder than 10!

THIS IS AN EXPERIENCE BEYOND SUBLIME. I AM LIVING INSIDE OF THE MUSIC. THIS IS WHAT BORIS WANTED

the dread and the intense doom is so fucking incredible. this was the best idea ive ever had. this is distinctly unbeatable. fuck. this is an exercise. all of my organs are SWITCHED ON.

god ear fatigue meet ear exhaustion. i accidentally fucking. i fucked it all up so i have to rerecord it LOL. but that's fine. i want to listen to this forever anyway. surprisngly though my favourite track was definitely the soft ambient one rather than the two heavy ones. weird

26/03/23

having such a problem lately where ill forget to turn off shuffle when i listen to an album and completely miss the flow. genuinely ruining my life

listening to a cool band called iceage. mix of 2000s post hardcore and early post-punk with a lot of good noisy shite thrown in. this is the type of music i should've known abt for ages now. also another based panning user. i commented on this to a friend lately when she recommended an album by the phenomenal paper chase, who are also effective users of panning in music. no one does it anymore. the sonic experience of having different sounds coming into either ear is just sublime! bands need to do it way more man. fuck the new wave of crap music that sends it all down one channel with the bus compressor turned up so all the loud notes sound like a fucking fart. i am so tired of soulless production
jesus i sound like a hipster. im fucking right tho

i also tried out the new liturgy album, which promised avant-garde black metal of a high calibre by a trans artist. this excited me. i both rly enjoy and rly despise it upon first listen. i almost threw it off in hatred but then it got me slightly. this is rly gonna take me on a journey. the fucking filth all over again. will report back on my final take o7 because i REALLY want to like it but im not sure i can. lead artist is part of the hyper rich and im not sure where i draw the line. hmmmmmm.
ok i haven't the energy to sit through this tonight but i shall return to it. perhaps this is a "walk to uni" album.

also finally tracked down something by the band "james dean driving experience", an old band ive long wanted to hear but could never track down recordings of. fun little jangle pop numbers! not quite as good as id hope but we can't always get what we want

ethereal tomb are a band to look out for. indiginous canadian doom peddlers who have a huge hardcore backgroun and harsh vocals, vocalist seems like a total sweetheart. fuck a cop, fuck a priest!

25/03/23

had a fucking wildly confusing moment today musically. i was listening to zemial's "For the Glory of Ur's" first track, an album that the rym list i linked yesterday and have been following for hellenic black metal, is the missing connection between bathory and rotting christ. the first track was an instrumental, and so i was getting into the mood for it. however, unbeknowst to me, i had queued from last night the new single by metalcore band jesus piece. so i finished the zemial track and then some pretty lo-fi hardcore chugging comes on and i was WILDLY confused that someone had written that as far back as the 80s, and why no one was mentioning it. then i checked and realised that i was listening to a different album entirely! silly of me.

otherise, this Zemial album is quite decent. indeed much closer to standard thrashy black metal a la bathory, but i feel the heart of triumphant hellenic black metal infusing it. worth exploring more, and good to link the gap between bathory and macabre omen!
now it is time for something by a much loved band called necromantia. i've certainly heard of them before, but i've never listened to them properly before. first thing i notice is the track names tbf, like look at this shit:

okkvlt titling aside, they're a bass only band but they've distorted the bass enough thta it basically doesn't matter. otherwise they seem very oldschool, further cry from the pagan stylings of a band like macabre omen. second track definitely has some trad metal in it. i'm not quite hearing the triumphant-ness but i'm assuming itll come in a bit later given these are trailblazers rather than genre peddlers. much fun!
i enjoyed it in the end, but found myself a little underwhelmed compared to how highly it is rated. is this another Television case? or perhaps I am simply a little burnt out on listening. still a strong album. after that came on "Blood is Thicker Than Water", by impaled nazarene. i was struck by the triumphant riffing also visible in that - given i also hear hellenic riffing in fellow finns in asphodelus, maybe there is a bit of similarities in the two country's musicality? much to think on - i must commit to listening to a full IN album tomorrow - suomi finland perkele is an option.

24/03/23

following being blown away by macabre omen once more yesterday, i have an intention to really go hard for listening to hellenic black metal. the more triumphant the better! i've found myself a good rym list to help me out, which contains 100 hellenic releases (including a list of influences, including my babies of macabre omen), and also potentially even more interesting, a list of pseudo-hellenic efforts that stride more into death/doom. as an avowed DoomFreak:tm:, that is an exciting prospect to me indeed. perhaps my finnish friends in asphodelus, who mixed a gothic doom sound with hellenic elements, are a worthwhile inclusion? finnish music :)
first on, "castles conquered and reclaimed" by a modern band called mystras.
a friend of mine from a while ago named nik used to adore hellenic black metal, i must see if i can remember anything he was into.

thinking of maybe writing a few short essays of love letters to certain styles of music i adore. hellenic black metal, finnish death metal, war metal etc. not sure if i could do it in such a way that would remain interesting.

mystras is good! very lo-fi but in a pleasing way. definitely captures the triumphant hellinistic approach; i think this is what i want, albums that are merely decent entries into the style, so that i can appreciate it in aggregate, as well as the fundamentally amazing efforts that stand up on their own
i also put on macabre omen's debut - nothing with such Clarity Of Riff:tm: as i see the sea but still good. a review said that they try to get out interesting ideas early in the song as a way to "catch" listeners and make them sit through the rest of the song being boring - i disagree with that. i think that they have a solid grasp of interesting riffage, and also a sonorous reverential feel of repeated melodies and such, hinting at a liiiiiittle bit of a doom influence which i love. i don't think they're trying to disguise a lack of songwriting - i think their songwriting knows exactly where to be engaging and where to rest on itself.

23/03/23

today i listened to marquee moon in full for the first time. it was good, i enjoyed it, but i do feel like its worth is overestimated due to how important it is to post-punk music as a whole.
on thinking about this however, i've started to wonder if that even does count for "overestimation"? perhaps it is right to consider marquee moon as "artificially" among the best despite it being outclassed in some ways musically by bands that developed its sound. maybe historical significance should make one like a band more. worth exploring as an idea, the way we can inflate enjoyment of a sound via its context. certainly i would not enjoy possessed if it weren't for their status as the first death metal band.
on reflection, is also possible that i just have an unpopular opinion on marquee moon.

'i see the sea' by macabre omen also came on today, and i think it was the best quality headphones i heard it in before. the balance between the kick drums and the bass on that song is absolutely fucking sublime. hellenic black metal is an area i could always do well with exploring more.

22/03/23

listened to the dead end by abandon today. it started off slow - the sonorous and depressing funereal passages didn't feel too earnt, which is a complaint i know im not in much company with among other doom freaks such as myself. it did in the end feel worth sticking out for though - the seventeen minute "its all gone" was awesome and well worth sitting around for. like much sludge metal it ends up being a worthwhile exercise in patience for me. also noteworthy was its usage of synth, which put me in a mind early in the album of horror films like alien, then later in the album of some more synth based ambient music. id like to relisten to it in order to completely decide how i feel about it, but its 2 hour length is unfortunately prohibitive for that. damn you black sabbath!

How's that for gratitude?

The end of the world, in the form of a girl.