Leaving

Oh yes, I've been waiting to talk about this record proper for a while. Planning for Burial has finally gotten a proper release for the full-length Leaving, which has been in the making for quite some time, apparently. And does it ever show.

Leaving first dropped, to my knowledge, towards the end of 2009 with a fairly quiet online release that didn't get to nearly enough people but nonetheless blew the minds of pretty much everyone who heard it (myself included, natch). Among those people was Dan Barrett, one half of Have a Nice Life and owner of Enemies List Home Recordings (HANL, Nahvalr, American Addio, Afterlives, etc.). So rather than a modest online release and quiet home-pressing, Leaving got the EL Treatment, meaning: a) super-enthusiastic label support, and b) super-fantastic packaging. Seriously, if nothing else, this is a strong case for why you buy your goddamn music: hand-numbered, hand-assembled, stark but beautifully presented.



And yet there isn't nothing else, there's so much else, much more than this clumsy segue would have you believe. Hyperdespressive doomgaze, heavy in all the right places and impenetrable atmosphere throughout. It occupies much of the same ideological space of its labelmates, which is not to say it sounds like Have a Nice Life, but it's similarly fashioned faux-black metal aesthetics with doomy rumblings and shoegaze density (can I go ahead and coin "doomgaze" as a genre already? It sounds right. It feels right.) Really the whole thing is stellar throughout, but if you need to be convinced in the next five minutes that you need to own this, go ahead and check out "Memories You'll Never Feel Again", which is probably the heaviest waltz I've heard in a while. Heavy, heavy guitar work, enthralling piano banging, soaring melodies on top of it all before it collapses under its own weight into listless groaning and xylophone. Killer, killer stuff.

Planning for Burial - Memories You'll Never Feel Again

Buy it now while you still can.

This used to be a free release, but it doesn't seem to be now that it's gotten an official release, so I'm going to respect that (oh shut up) and point you towards this preview track and some Planning for Burial b-sides.

Please buy this, though. Really. Both the artist and the label deserve your support fully.

Next up: New stuff from Silber Media, who have also done a lot to get a bit of your hard-earned money.

My favourite nuts beginning with the letter "P"

1. Pecans
2. Peanuts
3. Pistachios

Pecans are the obvious choice, naturally, but the rest of the list was a bit difficult. The pistachio is a fantastic nut, don't get me wrong, but eating the thing is a whole other story. The shells are sometimes entirely closed, not split open, making extracting the actual nut a chore. You can put in your mouth and bite it, sure, but then you have to spit out the shell, which is both a pain and rude, depending on the context in which you enjoy your nuts. All the salt also tends to stick to the shell, meaning you have to put the shell in your mouth anyway. Delicious, but is the payoff enough to warrant all that?

Even a perfectly prepared pistachio, however, will still lose out to the peanut, if only for the latter's versatility. It's sort of the "classic nut", the ubiquitous nut; you can't really hate on the peanut, unless you're allergic, but I get the impression that peanut allergy is sort of a fake idea. Peanut butter also does wonders to the peanut's score. It really stomps all over the other butter spin-offs. Almond butter is a fairly disgusting rendition.

In other, music related news: I've been a bit uninspired lately, and rather than rhyme off some schlock and post a link, I'd rather give you, the reader, something to read, though I reckon 9 times out of ten you're just looking for that bold, blue link. Hmpf.

In any case, things will be coming. Let me tell you about them: some cool new stuff from Silber and a proper presentation of Planning for Burial.

I would also like to take this time to remind you that I am 100% open to artist submissions. I even encourage it. Send me your stuff. I will listen. I will talk about. A couple dozen people might read it. Cool, huh?

Also, did you know that The North Sea wrote a song for me? It's true! And it's a doozy.

The North Sea - Calvin

Reading

Do you enjoy reading? In particular, words I have written? Then this might just tickle your fancy.

If it doesn't, I'll update this soon, pinky swear.

Oh wait, here I am

Yeah, ok, the quasi-habitual bimonthly "here I am back to blog etc" obligatory whatsit. No really. I think I mean it this time. (Maybe.) There's been hell of circumstances, plus being all busy with my quote/unquote day job and my quote/unquote day life.

Speaking of tangents, I also thought, maybe, since music is all so totally my entire life (refers to generic treble clef tattooed on wrist and/or ankle, hearts and stars all surrounding it) that using it as an aid in brooding and mulling and other more foreboding ways of thinking that maybe just maybe that is something I shouldn't, y'know, do. Maybe it ain't good for me to have men who want to be suiciding or already have to be whispering sweet nothings in my ear[phones]. Maybe I need to be put in a more positive mind frame. Maybe less Joy Division, Giles Corey, Jandek, Scott Walker, Swans, Zola Jesus, Death in June, Former Ghosts, Hrsta, etc, etc, etc.

Run-on sentences and general blubbering aside, what do we do about this?



oh hell yes

Husker Du is what we do about this. New Day Rising is what we do about this. Sure, there are definitely some downers on here ("If I Told You"), but in terms of sound it's an incredibly life-affirming album. It's also perfectly acceptable to leave the title track on repeat for 15 times and call it a day, because goddamn, "New Day Rising" is as fierce and ambiguously hopeful/hopeless in its simplicity as anything on the album; really, the perfect title track/opening number.

New music, new attitude?

Maybe.

Whatever, Husker Du rules.

DOWNLOAD "NEW DAY RISING".

In case you haven't heard:

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR REUNION


Get yourself some live bootlegs to tide you over until you find out if you live in or near one of the "9 American towns" they'll be playing come winter.

I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day

"Excuse" is an ugly word; it has connotations of lie, like a reason that is a lie, at least partially. But "I've been busy" isn't a lie, per se, it's just such a bad reason that it feels excuse-esque. So there's my reason (however poor) for not keeping up with this, though I'm sure it must feel like an excuse to one Devin Hildebrand who emailed me a few weeks back about his sound-collage project Dth. Excuse me.

A lot of this new EP seems to stem from forlorn distress, from the slightly heartbreaking title I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day to the individual songs ("I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom) is a knee-jerk " :'( "), but musically it isn't quite so hyper-depressive, nor is it as explicitly annoying/boring as sound collage can be. After the clusterfuck and appropriately titled opener "[!]" the album unscrambles and is surprisingly delicate and deeply personal, culling samples not just from random found-sounds but "From our VHS labelled "X-mas '95 / Jodi". It's all set to understated ambient instrumentation, some synth drones and acoustic guitar mostly, it seems, but nothing to overpower the star(s) of the show here (though that being said, cut-up sample set to a live drum beat at the end of the title track is a definite highlight). The whole album is beautifully balanced, between collage and composition, between the vaguely hopeful and the utter despair, between cacophony and ambiance but, somehow, it always ends up an entirely compelling and a quietly disturbing experience.

The highlight here is probably the closer, "Humans are like Ripples", which is probably the simplest in terms of structure and use of samples, but is strangely hypnotic as a whole crowd of people is asked "how was your day?". It sort of epitomizes the forces at work on the album, as the answers range from humorous to somewhat worrisome (sometimes simultaneously) and the music fluctuates accordingly, apparently with some science behind it:
Notes on a set scale (0-20, including halves of numbers) droned accordingly to numbers spoken in spontaneous dialogue prompted by "how are you feeling today, 1-10?"

Basically, I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day is a wildly curious set of songs, which is meant entirely as a compliment. It's the sort of quiet headphone listening for one of those days. When you're not quite sure you want a pick-me-up or if you'd rather throw on Unknown Pleasures as a hold-me-down, then go ahead and try Dth. It'll kind of do both to you, and you'll like it, promise.



Click here to download/stream the whole thing.

I'm still alive.

Just sayin'.