atmospheric

Belong – Common Era

/ David James / 1 Comment

So this happened today.

I’m listening to that Belong album from last year and thinking, I really enjoy this.  Syrupy sweet drone-gaze pop, it’s like the ending to every JAMC song stretched out in slow motion.

I left that comment in an unrelated discussion and realized how taken I am with this sound and that I should probably share the sentiment.  So here it is.   As a fan of the band’s debut, October Language, I felt underwhelmed with the relatively more “conventional” approach of Common Era – at first.  The debut imagines a warm embrace between Fennesz style digital grain waves and the melodic structure of noise pop like My Bloody Valentine; there’s a romantic swoon to its rolling feedback clouds.  This newer album had the bald audacity to add drums, trim song lengths, and nearly decipherable vocals.  What were they thinking?  On second listen, possibly a year later, the true beauty of this work is finally hitting me.  I’m thankful the context had time to dissipate, that I could hear it with fresh ears.

There’s the propulsive kick of Joy Division and the roar of Boris in every track.  There’s a cumulative effect to the song craft in the way a sense of melody and narrative build up over the course of several minutes.  The mirage of canned drums behind a wall of brazen feedback fades to reveal ragged pop anthems and yearning dream time vocals.  It’s not revolutionary; it’s just executed perfectly.

Lead single Perfect Life.  Probably the catchiest track, but make sure to hear it all.  Some moments here stretch into bliss.

For fans of: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Fennesz, Joy Division, Tim Hecker, drone, rain

The Weeknd – The Knowing

/ David James / 6 Comments

So I’ve had the album for a year now.  We’ve had the entire trilogy for a while, in fact.  Only just now I realized there are videos: this one is compellingly odd and surprisingly fun for those with an eye for cinema.

Watch the entire video for an indulgent mini-opera of how singer Abel Tesfaye compares a messy breakup with the violent overthrow of an Ethiopian king, while the lyrics paint an unflattering story of misbegotten sexual revenge.  Honestly, it’s a lot more fun than that sounds.  The song is a crumbling finale on his first album, House of Balloons; although not my favorite, it’s a perfect end to the party-life-gone-to-seed theme of his work.

But for certain people (me) the highlight appears around 2:20 with a direct reference to one of the greatest films of all time.  You may recognize it from the little image appearing next to the address bar in your browser right now.

If you aren’t yet familiar with this artist, I suggest you hit the-weeknd.com where all three of his albums are available completely free and are, to my ears, nearly equally brilliant.

CFCF – Night Bus II

/ David James / 2 Comments

One of the most addictive pieces of music I’ve heard all year is the Night Bus II mixtape, by CFCF.

Continue reading →

ATTN: unintentional hiatus.

/ David James / 3 Comments

Or: I will not have much opportunity for internet-related anything for the next month, but would love if any of you friendly charitable readers / friends / good samaratins could help keep me up to date on great music still being released in the late hours of this year.

So please, leave a comment here and let me know what you’re into, the triumphs and sure shots and surprise masterpieces I’m missing out on.  I promise to get myself caught up in due time and come roaring back with a vengeance.  This is a time of patience and focus for me, and the words are building up.

For now, I leave you with one of the greatest pieces of music ever recorded: After The Flood, by Talk Talk.

I once said “This song is a sentient being,” and I still stand by that statement.

Found A Job

/ David James / 5 Comments

First: sorry I’ve been sort of quiet for a few weeks.

Second:  this.

It’s true.  This one pays far more than my prior occupation so it’s worth the being-busy-all-the-time aspect.  However I have not – cannot – neglect music and thus always have something worth sharing with the world.  Every commute, every bicycle ride, every nighttime book devouring session is accompanied by something new, expansive, exciting…  punctuated by old favorites I find myself doubled over with joy upon re-hearing.  So I’ve got something to say.

Unfortunately I worked my brains out today and must save the in-depth breathless praise and wild exhortations to purchase vinyl for the remainder of the weekend.  I will simply state that there are a few albums I’m quite taken with, continually listen to, and wish that more people would get familiar with.  These are a few of them:

United Waters – Your First Ever River

Sensations’ Fix – Fragments of Light

Robert Fripp – Let The Power Fall

Fleetwood Mac – Tusk

Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Thundercat – Golden Age of the Apocalypse

and finally, with apologies to the artist herself:

Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Colour Libres

Because this is, by some distance, one of the most powerful and heartfelt albums of 2011 and I really should have shared all about it when I got it months ago.  I promise – I swear – I will soon.  Keep an eye on this page, and stay ready for the deluge.

Albums I Missed: 2010, part 2

/ David James / 2 Comments

Here’s another set of essential 2010 albums unfortunately left by the wayside.  Witness their excellence.

  • Mark Van Hoen – Where Is The Truth

Beauty.  Just, pure fragile beauty.  Floating like a spiderweb made of static, hung with fragments of shattered dreampop.  Van Hoen, who started out in Seefeel and ferried the shoegaze & idm Locust through the next decade, knows a thing or two about prismatic blissouts.  Being unfamiliar with his past solo work, I won’t remark on how this is a more personal statement or not; I will simply say that, as a *huge* fan of Seefeel, a longtime admirer of Locust (especially Truth Is Born of Arguments – an essential document), and an eternal seeker of alluring disintegration, this album hits the spot.

  • Solar Bears – She Was Coloured In

Being taken in by the line that their name is inspired by a certain Tarkovsky film and the fact that they employed old school synths in a more pop-friendly framework than Oneohtrix Point Never or Emeralds, I nevertheless held this one at arm’s length upon first listen.  The tones grabbed me, the melodies held me, the sheer variety kept my attention from wandering, but I was stopping short of truly absorbing it.  Second go-round, I realized it’s not made to dissect the individual tracks or feel around for a signature invention, something groundbreaking to hang its hat on.  This album is one to sit back (or walk or ride or whatever) and take in all at once.  Much like Teebs’ utopian fever dream Ardour, this 50 minute excursion is built carefully out of vignettes highlighting different facets of the sound until a wholly rounded picture is formed by the end.  I can hear Blade Runner and The Neverending Story and even the Terminator at times, but I can also sense the instructive warmth of Boards of Canada, fellow Scots with a penchant for playfully distracted, unpretentious psych explorations.  Where else would we find songs titled Head Supernova,  Primary Colours at the Back of my Mind, and Neon Colony?

  • Girls – Broken Dreams Club EP

Well this one snuck up on me.  I was never a fan of the debut LP, which swam in a torrent of praise in 2009.  Some songs caught my ear but the band simply didn’t hit those pleasure centers I need to truly enjoy an album.  Playing this lengthy EP on a blizzard bound morning while making pancakes turned out to be a shining revelation, and an arresting listen.  Moving beyond their Velvet Underground, jangly garage sound into the realm of earnest, intelligent, well written pop infused with more than a little  grit and gravitas, the band has officially released one of a literal handful of rock albums which I can admire, adore, and really sink my teeth into.  Biggest highlights are the title track, a stoned lament for the fractured state of our world today, and Caroline – a tune which steps out of any boundaries the band previously ruled, into pure psychedelic wanderlust.  It reveals itself slowly (at first echoing The Smashing Pumpkins‘ deep album cut Porcelina of the Vast Oceans), unwinding like a scarf caught on a fence, until it’s stretched to the point of abstraction and hanging in the air around you.  A cloud of a hazy rock dream, tugging upward.  A great way to end an album and point to an even brighter future for this duo.

Albums I Missed: 2010

/ David James / 14 Comments

So we all tend to discover some of our favorites of a given year immediately or long after it has passed.  I decided to share mine.  Despite being the first week of January, I’ve already discovered, revisited, and heard enough albums in a better light (courtesy of my brand new Sennheiser 280‘s) to start a list going.  This is the first in a series to unfold for the next month or so.  All I know for sure is that this music is at least as worthy of a listen as anything listed in Best of the Rest 2010, or even Best of 2010.

  • Forest Swords – Dagger Paths

This album I heard once, the moment it dropped.  Despite intriguing me somewhat, it managed to slip to the back of my must list and languished for the rest of the year.  Spotting its placement on several highly respectable year-end lists, I felt compelled to give it another chance.  So thank you, fellow list makers.  Especially my friend at Bubblegum Cage III.  What sets this material apart from the beat scene or the solo-psych-project folks – or anyone else for that matter – is the serpentine guitar work and murky, lived-in feel of every moment.  Lurching beats dangled around thunderous, bassy guitar melodies and an almost tribal, foot stomping ethos, this (frankly) astounding debut sounds like the work of an accomplished veteran, confidently going out on a limb, then rising, rising, rising.  The only direct reference point I have is Gang Gang Dance, live, lately.  Don’t look to their records for anything like this;  you had to be there.  Thankfully that ecstatic experience seems to be just what Forest Swords aims for and achieves on this album.

  • How To Dress Well – Love Remains

Honestly, I kept away from this one out of sheer knee-jerk hipster/pitchfork/etc rejection.  I shouldn’t have.  It’s so much more (and less, in a good way) than what it’s been sold as.  Far more psychedelic than any description employing “r&b” infers, it’s a syrupy miasma of primal notions and half-thoughts, the bits and bytes of heartache and longing twisted up in a melting dream logic David Lynch would be proud of.  This is drone music for the dance party comedown, dance music for the somnambulist, love songs for the fucked up.

  • Shackleton – Fabric 55

So I had the impression that Fabric mixes were simply a series in which an artist makes a DJ mix of other artists work.  Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they’re just alright.. but they’re never essential or brilliant like the artist’s own work.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Shackleton mines his own discography, past present and future, using elements of his Three EPs release as thematic glue to bind a striking set of 22 tracks that, to me, is possibly the final word on dubstep as we know it.  One listen through and I’m already confident that I’ll be spinning this more than his prior album – and I absolutely LOVE that album.  This one is simply more vibrant, active, playful.  It shuffles off on an oceanic dub odyssey, seamlessly whirling through almost 80 minutes of depth charge awe.  The fact that I ignored this profoundly satisfying set, from a personal favorite artist, makes my head spin.

If you’ve got suggestions for something I may fall in love with, please leave a comment.  We all benefit from hindsight.  MORE to come…