viddy well, little brother

People still make music videos. Did you know? I was surprised, really; thought that it was a bit of an anachronism in an age when people can't be bothered to look at an album cover, never mind commit themselves to a video. But they're happening, and they land in my inbox from time to time, and it's the holidays, and I'm still behind, so let's both take it easy then, right?

Mickey Brown - Soul Glo promo

Mickey Mickey Rourke- "Glo" from A.P. Fischer on Vimeo.

I can barely keep up with the emails I get, so I've fallen really behind on Mickey Mickey Rourke's manic release schedule (here as Mickey Brown, collaborating with Lester Brown). Which is really lame on my part, because his material is some of my favourite in "the genre", whatever it is. Droney, noisy, ambient, electronic, whatever. Y'know, that Oneohtrix Point Never / Emeralds / whatever psychedelic swath of sound. Fantastic stuff.

Listen to all of "Soul Glo".

Keith Canisuis - Inner blue, outer red

Keith Canisius - Inner blue, outer red from Keith Canisius on Vimeo

Speaking of psychedelic mess, good lord - I feel like should be dancing to this track but I'm afraid of my brain leaking out. So just sit tight at let this vaguely catchy, maybe danceable, wash over your ears/eyes. Very cool, lush electronic beats and synths practically drowned in delay and reverb. Almost like Panda Bear, only I promise you it's not nearly as boring.

More tracks/more albums and some of them are even free

Pregnant - Wiff of Father

Pregnant - Wiff of Father from Cinema Caldera on Vimeo

Very slick, even professional-looking video: the kind of which you might have actually seen on TV in an era gone by. Story-telling intercut with "performance" footage & what-have-you. Incredibly tight song, too, with hypnotically minimal guitar work and enthralling repetition that really hits its stride when the vocals come in. Lots of layers all barely fitting together, as maximal as minimal can get. I'm also super late on this one, so, like, is this guy popular yet? He should be. I'll definitely be writing more about this.

Hear more/buy more.

Hear Hums - Cerebellum/Woo

Cerebellum/Woo - Hear Hums from Hear Hums on Vimeo

Young Pilot Astray: getting to you two months late or within the day. No compromise. I guess Hear Hum lucked out, emailing me the same day I planned on updating. Or, rather, I guess I lucked out that such a fantastic band emailed me. I hate to equate bands with other bands other than for the sake of "check this out if you like x" (what no I didn't already do it in this exact post what are you talking about no), but I am obligated, personally, to carry this one out: this is the band I wanted Animal Collective to be. This is what they hinted at on Feels, this is the sort of sound they fleetingly held dear, and that is what really breaks my heart about that band is that they were so close to being something really cool. Instead, bless 'em, we have Hear Hum, who don't exactly reference that per se (ok ok Avey Tare comparisons will be made in the vocals, ok ok that's it, sorry), but have the same essence if I may be a complete jerk-off and use a word like that. It's a huge sound, it's an organic sound, it's full of discovery and wonder and bombast and between the introduction and the climax is all fits so remarkably naturally. Incredible. Definitely going to post their LP here ASAP.

pretend nothing happened oh wait it didn't

Planning For Burial/Lonesummer - Split

[black metal/doomgaze/whatever]

Recommended if you like: the colour black, emotions [negative]



Preview for Planning For Burial Lonesummer Split by Planning For Burial

OR stream/download/buy the whole thing here.

If you're anything like me - and I daresay any casual readers here are - then genre-blending (done correctly) is something that probably tickles you in a way. Mount Eerie's Wind's Poem, for instance, was my favourite album last year thanks in no small part to its sublime and entirely natural fusion of black metal and Elverum's trademark timid folk. Now if we could just get John Darnielle to drop a hyperliterate death metal opus, we can officially be done with music. But until then, I guess, the search goes on.

Planning For Burial should be familiar as the project that released one of my other favourites from last year, Leaving, which melted together some of my favourite things in the world (post-rock, shoegaze, doom, black metal) into a lurching beast of a record. He's back, with no-fi necromancer Lonesummer, who plays bedroom black metal with a big helping of sad on top, and together they've put out a fucking downer of a record which, of course, I implore you to buy.

The Lonesummer half is possibly my favourite Lonesummer material to date, opening with the absolutely punishing )ironic old-timey radio samples aside) "Joy is a Burden" and sort of pulls off a black metal/noise fusion that I really thought Wold were going to do after all this "herp derp My Bloody Valentine meets black metal" bullshit I read but no no no this is much better, don't let the Wold comparison scare you off; this is what I wish Wold were like. Elsewhere, "I Wish I Could Delete Last Night" is the poppiest black metal track this year and will make a really neat song for your Myspace profile. And yeah, "Your Eyes Always Shake Me" is nothing like either of those either - essentially the ballad of his batch - and yeah, yeah, and yeah. This is black metal loves black metal as much as it loves telling it to go fuck itself.

The flip side is the first new Planning for Burial material in too long and dials back the kitchen sink approach of Leaving into a more focused set of tracks, which is refreshing because it really makes this EP feel separate from the rest of his canon so far, as an EP should. Glacially paced, morbid and brooding and dense fog music that downplays the (comparative) bombast of the full-length. "Sleeping in Separate Rooms" is an entirely gorgeous daydream, all blurred and half-speed, and "If I Knew What to Say" eventually collects itself into a surreal, lush synth-heavy slowcore rumination.

Also worth mentioning is that Thom - Mr. Burial himself - put this split out on his Music Ruins Lives label, which is ideologically my best friend-turned-record company and has already put out a few really worthwhile releases (including a Have a Nice Life cassette and a full-length by blackened genre-mockers Airs), so pay attention and don't miss anything.

MUSIC RUINS LIVES

Yeah, we're doin' this

Oh man, what a month, man. And man, you would not believe the amount of things to which I had to attend. But, man, we're back, and thank you cats for keeping the submissions rolling in & I gotta say, the readership is on the small side but "quality of quantity" all the way because I haven't disliked a single thing I've been sent so far. I guess I'm not on the "master list" that gets a line every time a band drops an album, but instead I seem to get things on a case-by-case basis; people send things in after having read the blog & getting a feel for what I'll dig. & I dig it, cats, I dig it. So if you're in Cygnets, Mickey Mickey Rourke, Planning for Burial, Lonesummer, Bikini, Pre-compass, Dongles, Aura, The Slaves, or wow I am behind but I haven't forgotten.

True Womanhood - "Night Prowlers"

[dream pop, sort of]
Recommended if you like: reverb, beats, bass; all of the above but not in dance music



Download "Night Prowlers

nite prowlers by truewomanhood

If I can just quote the email I got from the band: "The song is almost entirely made up of samples we made by clanging pieces of metal around in a mile-long sewer tunnel + bass guitar, 808 drumz, and vocals- all run through a severely malfunctioning tape delay."... are you not already enthralled, allured, excited? This track really straddles the line between "totally bangin' good-time" and "dark experimental whatever", especially in the opening where the sewer-pipe Cthulhu beckons against ominous drones and drum machine clapdowns (of course). Then the whole thing eventually swells into throbbing basswork and that promised 808, which is I guess danceable but there's just so much going on all around the core here that it's hard to really tell what you're supposed to do. Well, to start, go download the track above & give it a couple listens, try to figure it out & grab the Last Rites 7" coming out soon.

TRUE WOMANHOOD

Hey folks, still here. Sorry if you've emailed me regarding wanting to be posted: it's actually super cool that I can't keep up with it. That sounds sarcastic, I admit, but I'm being serious. I'm now at the point where, if this pace keeps up, I'll be able to run this blog solely on artist submissions. So keep 'em coming. I've got a lot on the backburner right now, so if you've emailed me in the last couple weeks then just hang tight, it will be coming!

In the meantime, been five kinds of obsessed with this jam, so dig on it while I take care of life.

skinnypricks

High in One Eye - Skinnypricks
[noise rock, hardcore]
Recommended if you like: Lightning Bolt (but they feel too tame for you), Jesus Lizard (but they're not noisy enough for you)




















Download/stream here.

Less than 10 minutes of spontaneous, lo-fi aggression, apparently written and recorded in the space of two hours. This either is completely your thing or it is not at all, but it's free and less than ten minutes long, so make it your thing. It's surprisingly good for something more or less unplanned; there's a lot of really cool ideas going on. Especially in the drum-heavy assault and battery of "Tease" (best vocals on the EP?) or downright doom-laden "Jack-of-all-trades". Which eventually segues into 80's thrashy black metal worship before devolving into Daughters-esque dissonant riffing. But really, you saw that coming. Absolutely primal.

High in One Eye bandcamp page
(also includes another EP and a single up for free)

Neil Milton - Elements

[modern classical, ambient]

Recommended if you like: aching beautiful modern composition; elegant piano work; An Accidental Memory in the Case of Death by Eluvium

Neil Milton - elements (2mf012dd) by beneathusthewaves

Download "Air (or, The Dragonfly)”

Neil Milton is relaunching his label, Too Many Fireworks, with a personal EP dubbed Elements - devoting a track to each of the four elements and its finale to “Aether”- and talk about making a comeback: fans of Eluvium and early A Silver Mt Zion material should take note, because this is minimalist modern classical at its finest.

A brisk eighteen minutes divided into five tracks is ideal: enough time for thematic development and listener engagement without becoming rote like so much “ambient” music can. I'm not entirely sure if music this lovely can really command attention; I'd say it politely requests it and you'd have to be inhuman to say “no”. In any case, it never becomes background music, as each of the tracks does bring an idea to the table, like the fluttery “Air” or the appropriately weighty, tectonic “Earth”. Hands down the best part of the release is its subtle adherence to theme: “Air” doesn't begin with sampled wooshing and “Water” is entirely devoid of prefab waterfall recordings. Instead, a track like “Fire” excites with its vibrant strings and “Aether” is minimal, spacey and gorgeous. You're forgiven for your preconceptions, though, because such a broad and general subject matter could be handled entirely tactlessly. Thankfully (mercifully) Milton handled the concept wisely and colours his compositions with the concept instead of forcing them to fit it.

The whole thing streams for free right there, a few inches up, so you have no excuse to not already be listening to it. For your listening convenience, you can also download an MP3 of the first track. And if you're the type to do so, please support both Neil and his revived label. At the very least check out the stream: this is truly sincere and majestic music.

Buy the EP

Too Many Fireworks
Neil Milton

chin up

Former Ghosts - Welcome to Old Love
[electronic, synthpop, post-punk]
Recommended if you like: sad 80's bands (New Order, The Smiths), sad 00's bands that sound like sad 80's bands (Cold Cave)



Download.

I dare you to find an artist who is simultaneously as prolific while remaining as [relatively] unknown as Freddy Ruppert. This Song is a Mess But So Am I put out a ton of great, great music before he retired that moniker and started work on Former Ghosts, where he's finally beginning to get some of the attention he deserves.

TSIAMBSAI (oh, wow) was rightfully put to bed after it accomplished what it needed to, and its short but brilliant existence alluded to an incredibly heartfelt, sincere and disarmingly honest songwriter who, for a moment, seemed to have finished with music altogether. Luckily, he came back with Former Ghosts, which tackles much of the same musical territory but with perhaps a bit more reservedness, which is not meant to be a qualitative judgment in any sense. This Song was a deeply personal, cathartic outburst in the truest sense of the word: it was an outburst, it was violent, it was messy and noisy and tragic and equal parts full of energy and defeat.

Former Ghosts, by contrast, is more contemplative and refined, while retaining the personal intensity that Ruppert has become known for. And if the man has any other calling card, it's for working working working nonstop on whatever musical project he's invested in; I'd reckon Former Ghosts has more b-sides than album tracks. Welcome the Old Love culls together some outtakes from his forthcoming LP, New Love, again recorded with Xiu Xiu's Jamie Stewart and Zola Jesus, aka Nika Roza Danilova (who has since become a bit of a household name since the first Former Ghosts album dropped, I hear). Accompanying the b-sides are remixes and covers curated by Ruppert, highlighted by (personally speaking) "Chin Up" as remixed by Friendzone. Also worth noting is the unreleased "Old Love Introduction" featuring Sam Mickens and a blink-182 cover. Oh yeah.