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Post by Mezzaphor on Jan 5, 2019 7:12:10 GMT
Earlier today, I got an email from Miwa Gemini, a musician from New York. She was wondering if I had actually received the two CDs I ordered from her Bandcamp page. This was because she'd just logged into her Bandcamp account for the first time in a while, saw my order, and had no idea if she'd sent me the CDs or not. I ordered them back in 2014. And I got them pretty promptly, so Miwa had nothing to worry about. Still, this was a good reminder to listen to all her albums again. They're still good. I'm a little surprised that she still handles the logistics of mailing off her CDs and merch by herself, but I guess she isn't big enough to need help with all that yet.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Jan 5, 2019 15:57:17 GMT
Pretty cool that she went through the trouble of checking on that. What kind of music does she do?
The main new thing I've been listening to lately is mewithoutYou, which is really unique, both in terms of style and lyrical content. It's one of those "I can't believe I didn't look into this sooner" types of things.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Jan 6, 2019 5:31:38 GMT
Yeah, mewithoutYou are really something special. My favorites by them are Catch for Us the Foxes and It's All Crazy! It's All False! It's All a Dream! It's Alright. I just got [untitled] as a Christmas present, and it may be up there with those two. I'll need to give it a few more listens before I can say. What kind of music does she do? Miwa's first two albums, Forgetful Ocean and This Is How I Found You, are a slightly off-kilter take on poppy blues and folk rock. Then for her third album, Fantastic Lies of Grizzly Rose, she turned into a "sonic carnival", incorporating waltzes and western music and adding an accordion, trumpet, and xylophone to her ensemble. You can stream all of her albums on Bandcamp: miwagemini.bandcamp.com/music
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Post by japaneseteeth on Jan 6, 2019 15:14:52 GMT
Heh, I actually got [untitled] for Christmas as well, along with Brother, Sister. Definitely going to pick up some of the other ones at some point, though I'll probably want to soak up these two a bit more first.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Jan 6, 2019 18:49:40 GMT
The thing about mwY is that the overall sound of their albums has kind of been swinging back and forth like a pendulum, with heavy post-hardcore on one end (like on [A-->B] Life and Pale Horses) and indie-folk on the other end (like It's All Crazy!). They're all good, but some take a little more getting used to than others. The two albums you got are near the middle, with Brother, Sister leaning a little more towards the indie-folk side, and [untitled] leaning a little more to the heavy side. (Also, [untitled] occupies roughly the same place on the pendulum as my other fave by them, Catch for Us the Foxes.)
Also I gotta take the chance to shill one of my favorite bands. The guest musicians playing brass on Brother, Sister were members of Anathallo, another band that was similarly passionate and weird, though never as aggressive as mwY.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Jan 7, 2019 1:39:18 GMT
I'll have to check them out. It's always fun to find bands who are constantly experimenting with their sound.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Jan 18, 2019 7:15:05 GMT
After listening to [untitled] several more times, it's really grown on me. It's definitely up with my other favorite mwY albums.
In other news, I finally got an actual CD copy of The Tick Tock Companion by Joy Electric. It's a limited-edition side album Ronnie Martin did, and rare enough that Ronnie himself doesn't have a copy anymore. I was super lucky to find a guy selling a copy through Discogs for a reasonable price—rather than auctioning it off on Ebay, where it could have sold for hundreds of dollars. The music itself is an oddity in Joy Electric's discography. Ronnie normally played synthpop, but for Companion he abandoned the "pop" completely and just recorded an hour of abstract synthesizer sounds. I believe the entire thing was improvised live in the studio; in any case it kinda sounds like the Forbidden Planet soundtrack, or something by Tangerine Dream.
I dig it. The complete lack of anything resembling "songs" means I won't be listening to this one super often, but the vintage synthesizers sound great. It's a lovely soundscape to get lost in.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Jan 18, 2019 21:20:07 GMT
Sounds like the kind of thing to have playing in the background to just chill, rather than to listen to on its own.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 27, 2019 2:53:58 GMT
Mark Hollis, former frontman of Talk Talk, just died. Listening to Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock in memory.
I've also got Richard Swift's The Hex in my CD changer, recorded just a few months before his untimely passing last year and released posthumously. Maybe I should add Bowie's Blackstar to the mix and make this a proper death album collection.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Feb 27, 2019 3:55:13 GMT
Outside of Bowie, can't say I'm all that familiar with those. I've heard of Talk Talk, but that's about it unfortunately
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 28, 2019 5:48:16 GMT
Talk Talk was one of those 80s new wave / synthpop groups, but unlike most of their peers, they mostly used keyboards because they couldn't afford the acoustic instruments they really wanted. So after their first two albums got them a few hits and enough clout to start asking for favors from their record label, they hired a bunch of guest musicians to make their third album The Colour of Spring sound more acoustic than electronic. That wound up being their best-reviewed and best-selling album ever. So Mark Hollis went mad with power and created the two albums that would guarantee Talk Talk's rock immortality. The band just set up jam sessions to improvise for hours or days on end, with a bunch of guest musicians joining in again, then Hollis and producer Tim Friese-Greene edited the recordings into something that kind of sounded like songs. The resulting album, Spirit of Eden, was an aggressively unmarketable piece that drew from rock, jazz, and classical, but didn't fit into any category. And then they did exactly the same thing again for Laughing Stock, and it was even better.
Those last two albums (plus Slint's album Spiderland) are basically ground zero for the whole post-rock genre. The likes of Sigur Ros, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky probably wouldn't exist without Talk Talk, or at least they'd sound completely different.
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Post by Mezzaphor on Feb 28, 2019 7:31:33 GMT
As for Richard Swift, he was a singer-songwriter type, but was also really busy as a producer and studio musician (particularly as a keyboard wizard) for other people's albums. At various points he was a member of The Shins, The Arcs, The Black Keys, and (most importantly to me) Starflyer 59. His solo albums were a smorgasbord of American pop styles, mainly pre-Beatles stuff like doo-wop, garage rock, surf, and Tin Pan Alley. I think the high points of his discography were Walking Without Effort, The Novelist, and Dressed Up for the Letdown. I lost interest in Swift's stuff after Dressed Up (and that was also when he seemed to spend more time producing other people's music than making his own). But his unfortunate death finally got Swift some attention in the music press, and the writeups convinced me to give his final album a chance. It's good stuff, but I'm not sure yet if it's on the same level as the aforementioned high points. Still need some more listens. Also I'm not sure how much of my reaction is based on the music itself, and how much is based on the real-life context behind the album. "Nancy" at least is a song for the ages, even if it's a depressing one. In other news: Speaking of Starflyer 59, HOLY CARP THEY'RE PUTTING OUT A NEW ALBUM IN APRIL!
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Post by japaneseteeth on Feb 28, 2019 21:10:57 GMT
Hmmm, sounds pretty interesting. Not a lot of bands can get away with the "jam endlessly until we can pick some songs out of it" unless the genre is known for that sort of thing.
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Post by Applelight Limited on Apr 4, 2019 2:00:01 GMT
Hey guys. I’ve been on a mad painting binge lately, trying to clear a back log of minis so that I can concentrate on ponies come summer. And since it helps to have some music playing whilst painting, I’d thought I’d share a little section of my favourite playlist, 90s rave:
All huge hits here in the uk back in the day, and thanks to my cousins they’re ingrained in my head. Reminds me of summers in Donegal in the mid nineties, playing on the beach or the fields during the day and Super NES at night.
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Post by japaneseteeth on Apr 4, 2019 20:15:25 GMT
I don't really know much about rave, but that's definitely 90's.
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