A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
After an extended hiatus, Mt. Wolf, from London, England via Guernsey, Dorset, and Brighton, have decided to be a band again, and come back with Red, which is something of a haunted lullaby. It is but a taste of what will come in the new year.
And now, some synth-pop confection for Saturday night: Chemicals by Sirena, who claims both Stockholm and Barcelona as her home towns.
Because sometimes people are what they look like under the light of the disco ball, and sometimes that light (and other substances) plays tricks upon our eyes and hearts.
One of the many joys of Soundcloud is that you can press play on one song and then, left unchecked, it will play affiliated tunes. Sometimes that’s more work by the same artists, other times it’s other artists on the same label, other times it seems kind of random.
My Vinnie Ferra Voyage of Discovery was the first kind of situation: I listened to his current single, called God Forbid, and then it gave me his previous work.
This is God Forbid, which . . . I am going to be blunt, I’m not super excited about. It showcases his range, and objectively speaking it’s pretty, but it didn’t grab me and make me want to listen to it again.
On the other hand, Destroying Me, which popped up next: yeah this I’m into, because I’m always here for songs on the theme of “I love you and it is going to drive me around the twist” especially when I can sing along:
The third song I listened to was Bad For Business, from Man vs. Machine (2010), and at that point, I was in. This is good stuff.
Normally I use this feature for one song at a time, but I’m making an exception today, because Militia Vox has made a whole EP of covers, entitled Bait, and all of them are great.
I’m particularly fond of her take on Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears:
And her interpretation of Waiting for the Night by Depeche Mode is awesome:
A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
Because sometimes, twiddling knobs in the virtual garage, you get some static followed by atmospheric creaking followed by a roar straight from the dungeon. Or: “symphonic black metal” may initially sound like a contradiction in terms, but I promise it isn’t.
Unfathomed of the Abyss (Kevin Price) spent 14 years (!) working on Arisen Upon Oblivion and the result is a complex collection of sounds, some delicate, others more like a sledgehammer. That said, while it’s heavy, it isn’t suffocating.
For example, there’s To Unequal the Balance of the Cosmos, the first song on the record, which is fourteen minutes long, but not one single minute drags:
And then there’s The Figment Unadulated, the second song, which grinds on the bottom but soars at the top, and is what I would use to score a scene with a scrappy crew exploring a mysteriously abandoned spaceship:
And the rest of the record is much the same: loud, majestic, and cinematic in scope. For those of you busy NaNoWriMo-ing right now, it’s also good writing music.
So here is a story I have to tell you about Stay by Shakespeare’s Sister: The first time I heard it I was in the Arizona desert with my youth group, about three-fourths of the way through a week-long mission trip. We were out driving around looking at rocks, or something, I don’t remember, but it had been a long week. Tempers were fraying. Teeth were being firmly clenched. Required daily notes of affirmation to each other (yes, really) were becoming more difficult to compose.
But we had the radio on, a) because it was 1992 and b) I think choosing one tape or CD to listen to might have been the last straw for all of us, and – this song came on:
http://youtu.be/Tosky-ZNbRw
It was like someone had kicked down the door to a sex dungeon and it was full of fresh air. I didn’t quite understand what all was going on in there, but it surely was better than a car full of my seething peers.
I bought their CD as soon as I got home (as well as a Patty Smyth CD; I was looking for Patti Smith and missed) and had that song on repeat for some time.
Strangers have just released a cover of it, which is less sex dungeon and more new wave dance party, but still very good:
This year Mac McCaughan kept the Superchunk tradition of Halloween cover songs alive by taking on First and Last and Always by the Sisters of Mercy. The result is a mellow, reflective take on a classic.
Blooming, the new compilation from Fleeting Youth Records, is 33 songs/90+ minutes of occasionally fuzzy goodness. There really is something in there for everyone. Here are a couple tunes to whet your appetites:
Simple Syrup by Lurve: deceptively sweet, surprisingly heavy on the bottom end.
Sloppy Joes by Vomitface (nice name, guys): perfect for if you enjoy a good heavy metal headbang two-step but cannot be having with ogre roar. I’m swaying slowly in my chair as I type.
Philadelphia by Mumblr: Because they are my faaaaavorite, okay, and I’m more fond of this song than the city it’s about. They’ve written an anthem for one complex, gritty, sometimes ugly place but it’s universally applicable: your place might be a hot mess but it is your place, where-ever it is.
Tidal Grave by Assault Shaker: This one has, I think, I little bit more of a pop-industrial edge, what with the opening sample and droning vocals. But it’s good stuff.
Late Night Listening: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
Lunatic Soul is the solo project of Mariusz Duda of Riverside, and Walking On A Flashlight Beam is the most recent release. It’s ambient music, but it’s ambient music with muscle. If it was a film soundtrack – and it should be! someone use it! – it would be for a movie with a lot of fast cars flying through forbidding landscapes and fever dream sequences.
Here’s a selection of tracks as an enticement:
Late Night Listening: a home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
Pretty Marsh is the debut record from The Point, the newest project from Michael O’Neill (JD Samson & MEN, Ladybug Transistor) and Sammy Tunis (formerly of The Lisps). It’s a meditative record, and a complicated one. It’s dreamy, but it also sounds like soundtrack for an existential crisis:
And then there’s this cover of Thirteen, which caught me by surprise the first time I heard it, and about wrecked me:
