The Jesus and Mary Chain’s first hit, Just Like Honey, is one of the greatest rock songs of all time. This is as close to objective fact as you can get in the music world.
If you’re not familiar, you’ll know what I mean:
Music
Wim Mertens – Maximizing The Audience
Wim Mertens’ incredible album has been lodged in my brain for a few weeks now, settling into those neuronal corners usually reserved for longtime favorites. It would feel like cheating if Maximizing The Audience weren’t such a perfectly realized slice of modern classical music.
When I hit play here, I’m pulled back to my oldest memories of hearing Philip Glass as a child, realizing that this genre felt like a core component of my musical identity. Listening to this feels like brave new territory overlaid on some nostalgic memory of home.
What I’m Into This Week (4/10 – 4/16)
This week felt heavy, swallowed by darkness, but I worked through it and kept pushing. I climbed up until I felt the final warmth of the sun on my skin. I got on my bike and kept going, further every day. I had some hard talks with those closest to me, and I now feel a peaceful sense of clarity about this moment in life.
I also listened to some amazing new music that both eased and enhanced my journey.
Aziz Ansari and Eric Wareheim made a video for Kanye West’s Famous
Eric Wareheim and Aziz Ansari went to Italy and fucked around to the beat of Kanye’s infamous tune Famous. Thankfully they recorded it all, because this is some infectious fun.
The results speak for themselves:
Taylor Swift – Out of the Woods
When Taylor Swift dropped 1989 a year and a half ago, I was kind of awestruck. I’d enjoyed a few songs of hers before, but now she was onto a whole new level. While the entire album isn’t perfect, the first half is a breathtaking run of near-perfect pop gems.
At the center lies Out of the Woods, a song that gripped me immediately and never let go. I tried to share it before, but her record label was way too good at getting streams taken down. However, just this week someone pointed out that she finally made a video for the song. So here it is in all its glorious, wolf-chasing, hot nonsense:
Deadbeat – Walls and Dimensions
Deadbeat, aka Scott Monteith, is a dub techno artist from Montreal, perpetually approaching the genre with an outsider ear. Although he currently resides in frosty genre mecca Berlin, his music is still refreshingly focused, strange, warped fingerprints everywhere.
Qluster – Echtzeit
Qluster is the current incarnation of one of the longest-running acts on the planet, continually vibrant and productive from 1971 onward. In this possibly final form, the band once known as Cluster has mellowed some of the rough edges and grown subtly complex, losing none of that original alien magic they’ve conjured for 45 years running.
Swapping a C for a Q seems relatively minor, but the twist it signifies has been significant. Since 2011, the band has been incredibly prolific, dropping more than one album per year. The latest, Echtzeit, is the most vibrant yet.
Optimistic Underground 