[2011] Evenings - Lately

Oh hey, this is still here

Oh hey, Evenings released their (his?) first full-length at some point this year and I just noticed.

[2011] Chapelier Fou - Al Abama EP

Holy crap I love everything about this.

[2011] John Maus - We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves

I have been waiting my whole life (I think?) for someone to make an album of meaty songs that bridges the gap between cold-wave and space disco, so thank you John Maus. In his newest We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (I don't think I'll ever remember that title, I keep typing Ancestors instead of Censors) we are given layers of murky synths, cheesy synths, raw synths, sexy synths, and other kinds of synths. The key thing to remember is "synths."

The opening track "Streetlight" is practically a brightly lit flashing sign of what's to come, brazenly announcing that if you in any way shape or form have been dreading the day that the Ghostbusters soundtrack become something worth mining for musical gold, now is the time to walk away. "Quantum Leap" is upbeat, hooky and reminds me of last year's hit Gary War single "Born of Light." I want to believe that "Head for the Country" is an ode to Tears for Fears, specifically "Head Over Heels" the video of which I couldn't get out of my head listening to the Maus track. As "retro" as it is, it also feels brand new to me and I won't bother reconciling that unless someone makes me.

The vocals are entrancing throughout the album (particularly in "Cop Killer" and "We Can Breakthrough"), and I can only try to sum the sound up as "Ariel Pink forcing Gregorian monks at gunpoint to sing Big Country covers." However, the final track "Believer" strikes a much different chord, and has an aimless "best of: shoegaze" thing going on, and seems much shorter than it is because you don't want it to end. Try both Quantum Leap and Believer below:

John Maus - Quantum Leap by RibbonMusic

John Maus - Believer by RibbonMusic

[2011] Medication - Judgment Day

Remember Lo-Fi? Me neither. Maybe this will jog your memory. The vocals are low and dispassionate, the songs well written and dramatic. Everything I try to write to describe it sounds stupid so I'm just gonna stop there. It's short and it wouldn't kill you to just listen to it, you know. Do you want to hurt me? You know you're killing your mother, right? She just wants what's best for you. I couldn't find any sort of streaming link so click here to buy or maybe try spotify? link to try removed because I am a pussy.

p.s. I swear I listen to bands whose names don't begin with 'M' from time to time.

[2011] Melodium - Petit Jama

For fans of Múm. No vocals though. It's a tad sugary, at times, but I like that shit.

[2011] M△S▴C△RA - Silver Knight Gothic EP

Entirely instrumental, dark and weird and soothing with a tasty beat. not sure what else to say. witch house ep is witch housey. check out the track below.

I'm really into short records lately, not sure why. Too also, the EP just makes a lot of sense to me as a release format. A lot of musical ideas shouldn't be stretched out over more than 20 to 30-odd minutes, else they get tiresome. But they're still cool ideas and I want to hear them. I probably heard that in an interview somewhere and have just confused it for an original thought.

Shadow of Tonight by MASCARA

[2001] BOaT - RoRo

I almost never post about old music here. I've been sitting here, stuck for something to listen to for an hour or more, and came back to this album on a whim. After finding it on the excellent WE FUCKING LOVE MUSIC a few years ago I'd had it on constant repeat, then put it away until now. It's better than I remember. I don't know anything about the band except that they appear to be Japanese, this was their last record, and they're NOT the similarly named "Boat".

I don't really know how to describe the music in terms of identifiable genres. Lots of long stretches of nothing but guitar and drums. Some of it is quite twee, but not as twee as japrock can get. It's definitely sentimental, not that there are any lyrics I can understand. there's a pop song or two. let's just call it "rock". Just listen to it.

[2011] Arctic Whisperings - óvænt lán

For fans of hauschka, sigur ros, and the minecraft volume alpha album (which I simply cannot put down, lately). some minimal stuff, some thick postrock, all points between, all twinkly. I'm gonna buy this. Found it on Musical Coma.

[2011] Wye Oak - Civillian

This is a much more mature release from the Baltimore duo, reflecting the improvements they hinted at on last year's My Neighbor/My Creator EP. Their first full length, while one of my favorite albums, lacks a certain degree of proper execution. The band really seems to have found their footing in the studio now. There's a lot of attention to detail on this new release. I imagine that live, without additional personal, the songs will sounds rather different than they do here. I mean, the drummer already plays synths and sings while drumming. Unless Jenn Wasner learns to play three guitars at once I don't see them pulling off these songs without stripping them down. Like before, the 90's influences are everywhere. Also like before, we can hear both a little neil young and a little my bloody valentine in these songs. The album is available now from the band's website.

[2011] Radiohead - The King of Limbs tenth impression

I wasn't gonna do this. Review this album, I mean. I didn't feel like I had anything to say about it that other people wouldn't say. And then I started reading what other people, critics and fans alike, were saying. It's The Eraser part 2. It's the Thom and Jonny show. It's the Thom and Phil show. Seems like Ed and Colin spent a lot of time sitting in the other room listening again (like with kid A, ostensibly). Stuff like that. Never consistent, either, as if various critics have different blind spots to hearing certain members.

So I feel like getting a few things straight might be in order. This album has guitars. It features every member of the band in some capacity. It has live drums all over the place. In particular, "Magpie" has three guitars, albeit briefly. Are there guitars on every track? of course not. They haven't done that since The Bends. Since when were we expecting another guitar album? They just did one.

Is it short? yeah. It doesn't feel short, though. And this album has a lot of depth and subtlety that wasn't apparent to me on first listen, and not just in a "oh I hadn't noticed that particular funny noise before" kind of way.

As a fan, I'm satisfied. As someone who feigns writing about music, I'm confused. It's almost as if music journalism has been faking their art for so long, saying what they think people expect to read, playing it safe, that music writers have forgotten how to listen to an album and form an opinion and then express it. I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing. It's why I'm voicing mine, because I haven't seen it reflected in the press. Sure, the things people are saying are unrefined and knee-jerk, and they're understandably used to having more lead time in writing about big acts. But new music is already moving in a cycle that's this fast. It's not humanly possible to keep up with the flow of new releases from interesting new acts, and the publicity and touring cycles of bands have changed drastically over the past ten years or so. And the lack of research in some articles astounds me. As perhaps the best example I can find of the malaise pervading the coverage of this album, the New York Times put up an article today that stated only one song on the new record was known about prior to release, when in fact four songs, fully half the album, had been played live in the past. It can't be a difficult fact to dig up. Three of the song titles are even the same as when they were played live. The old songs, by the way, are "Magpie", "Lotus Flower", "Give up the Ghost", and "Separator" which used to be known as "Mouse Dog Bird". Magpie was played on a webcast almost a decade ago. Lotus Flower at an Atoms for Peace show in LA. The last two at the Cambridge Corn Exchange UK Green Party benefit show. Check youtube. There's your research, done cheap and easy.

TL;DR: how hard is it to hear what instruments are on an album? not this hard.

Radiohead Live 1992-1996 (again)

Links updated, tracklist now complete with date, venue, and source information. Read the post below this one if this is the first you're reading about this mix.

I highly recommend you visit I Am Not Rock via this link to read my friend lucy's diaries of Radiohead's early shows, perhaps as you listen. I believe there are entries on more than one of the dates from which performances were used on the mix. It's an excellent read and can help provide context for what you're listening to. 

the updated links again:
mp3 V0 (lossy)
flac (lossless)
flac (lossless) alt link

flac + foobar (windows users)
flac + vlc (mac users)

megaupload is my only friend, dropbox a fickle lover.

Key: SBD = Soundboard (of some type) AUD = Audience and the rest are kinda obvious.

01 Intro - 1995.03.24 Kentish Town Forum London UK FM
02 You - 1996.05.27 Pinkpop Festival Landgraaf Netherlands FM
03 The Bends - 1997.07.04 Les Eurockéennes Festival Belfort France SBD
04 Planet Telex - 1995.07.30 National Bowl Milton Keynes UK SBD
05 Million Dollar Question - 1993.06.04 Maginset Goteborg Sweden FM
06 High and Dry - 1996.07.13 T in the Park Festival Strathclyde Scotland FM
07 Lift - 1996.04.04 JBTV Metro Chicago IL TV
08 Yes I Am - 1993.09.03 Barrowlands Glasgow Scotland FM
09 True Love Waits - 1995.12.05 Luna Theater Brussels Belgium VHS
10 Nobody Does it Better - 1996.04.12 Roseland Ballroom NYC AUD
11 Creep - 2003.11.27 Earl's Court London UK XFM
12 Fake Plastic Trees - 2006.06.08 Hummingbird Center Toronto Ontario AUD
13 Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong - 1994.12.02 Melkweg Amsterdam Netherlands AUD
14 I Promise - 1996.04.16 La Cigale Paris France AUD
15 Nothing Touches Me - 1992.06.13 BBC Evening Sessions London UK FM
16 Maquiladora - 1994.07.02 Roskilde Festival Roskilde Denmark SBD
17 Big Boots - 1995.11.10 Cafe De La Danse Paris France AUD
18 Inside My Head - 1994.08.27 Reading Festival Reading UK FM
19 Bulletproof - 2004.04.18 Makuhari Messe Tokyo Japan SBD
20 Talk Show Host - 1998.12.10 Amnesty International FM
21 Stop Whispering - 1995.06.06 RPM Club Toronto Ontario SBD
22 Just - 2001.06.01 Rock Am Ring Festival Nürburgring Germany FM
23 The Trickster - 1998.04.02 Bill Graham Civic Center San Francisco CA AUD
24 Lurgee - 1996.04.13 Avalon Ballroom Boston Massachusetts FM
25 Permanent Daylight - 2001.09.30 Castle Hall Osaka Japan AUD
26 Nice Dream - 2000.07.04 SFB Sendesaal Berlin Germany FM
27 Anyone Can Play Guitar - 1995.02.27 2 Meter Sessions Netherlands SBD
28 Black Star - 1995.12.01 Gino Stockholm Sweden FM
29 My Iron Lung - 1997.06.24 Muziekcentrum Vredenburg Utrecht Netherlands FM
30 Blow Out - 1993.07.12 The Whiskey A-Go-Go Los Angeles CA SBD

moar comments !

Radiohead Live 1992-1996

So, I just finished this live Radiohead mix I've been working on for a very long time. Almost two years, in fact. Here's some background:

There will be four mixes highlighting different periods in Radiohead's live performances over the course of their career. Radiohead are somewhat unique in that most songs tend to evolve constantly and slowly the more they are played, some more drastically than others. As a result, some songs will appear more than once over the course of the mixes because they are performed in such different ways over the years. Each mix is set up to be mock-concert length and should feel sort of like any given show in the time period (at which they play a truly absurd number of awesome b-sides and new songs, of course).

Just in time for the 90's to be retro, this first mix covers 1992-1996 (with Talk Show Host wrangled in; it wasn't debuted live until early 1997 but there were good reasons to include it here). 29 songs, 2 hours. I did my best not to choose specific performances lots of folks may have already heard (for example, Lift performed at Pinkpop in 1996 does not appear on this mix, instead, Lift performed on JBTV will appear), though this was not always possible. Early shows were never this long, but I decided to go by current show length as a guideline. I also have only used the dates as a cutoff for what songs to include; I allowed myself to use performances of those songs from later shows, which I did in some cases where I do not plan to feature the songs again in a later mix. Some of these recordings are almost two decades old, and others are from shows as recent as 2006.

The mix is available as both a lossless (flac) and mp3 (V0) download. Additionally, I have bundled the lossless version with a program that will play flac files; foobar2000 for windows users and vlc for mac users, just in case you are new to the format. The mp3s sound great, but of course, I suggest you get the flacs. Only slight remastering was performed on most tracks, and nearly one-fourth of the tracks are taken from audience recordings. The date and venue for each track is part of the file name, in case anyone decides they want to find the bootleg that a song came from.

In sum, this is a must-have for Radiohead fans and perhaps a good thorough exposure to the band's early work for anyone who only knows the later albums. At the very least, it's something to listen to until the new album comes out!

Please enjoy with my best regards, and please, for the love of all that's holy, leave comments!

- fradleybox


links:

mp3 V0 (lossy) link fixed
flac (lossless)
flac (lossless) alt link



flac + foobar (windows users)
flac + vlc (mac users)


Tracklist:

01. Intro
02. You
03. The Bends
04. Planet Telex
05. Million Dollar Question
06. High and Dry
07. Lift
08. Yes I Am
09. True Love Waits
10. Nobody Does it Better
11. Creep
12. Fake Plastic Trees
13. Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong
14. I Promise
15. Nothing Touches Me
16. Maquiladora
17. Big Boots
18. Inside My Head
19. Bulletproof
20. Talk Show Host
21. Stop Whispering
22. Just
23. The Trickster
24. Lurgee
25. Permanent Daylight
26. Nice Dream
27. Anyone Can Play Guitar
28. Black Star
29. My Iron Lung
30. Blow Out

[2010] fr*dl*yb*x instrumental m*x (redux)

Boy Eats Drum Machine

There were so many great instrumental tracks leftover from my first mix and I heard a few more in the last quarter of the year, some of which have been recently blogged here, and I decided to go ahead and make another one. There are only a few bands in common with the first mix. Click the picture to listen.

01. Andr*w B*rd - Make Hay
02. Bl*ck Pra*rie - Full Moon in June
03. dné - Time Is Fabulous
04. Happenstance - Even My Goosebumps Shivered
05. Dalot - Infinite Window
06. Arandel - # 3
07. Asura - Asura III
08. James Stephen Finn - Twelfth Floor
09. Anenon - Damiel
10. Br**n En* - Flint March
11. Arcn Templ - Eighteen Steps Of Evil
12. Boy Eats Drum Machine - Battle Hymn
13. Dorian White - Luxated Hip
14. Balmorhea - Clamor
15. Dirk Geiger - Gewitterregen

[2010] fr*dl*yb*x m*x

DMCA'd motherfucker

 

That picture above is interactive! try to poke senator Turt L. Face's nose with your cursor. He makes a funny sound!