Messages

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: March 04, 2015, 12:28:14 AM »

JC Hopkins was in Flophouse.  Went on to Co-write some songs on that Norah Jones record that sold a bazillion copies if I remember correctly.  Barbara Manning is on that "Athens By Night" record and Flophouse backed her on the Teenbeat 7".

Thanks Dave! Where would you recommend I start with Flophouse?

I'm the world's biggest Flop (Rusty Willoughby band) fan, but never listened to Flophouse.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: March 02, 2015, 04:35:15 AM »

Chico Freeman - Chico
Dump - Superpowerless and I Can Hear Music
Rocket from the Crypt - Paint as a Fragrance
Viet Cong - s/t
J.C. Hopkins - Athens by Night - anything know much about this guy? I heard a track on WFMU and liked it (it reminded me of East River Pipe or other 90s indie stuff) and I got the whole album on Soulseek.

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Music Shit / Re: School me on Saccharine Trust

« on: February 09, 2015, 12:47:25 PM »

Amazing band, really. I wish I would have been able to dig into this stuff when I was young instead of thinking it was 'weird'. I only know Paganicons, Surviving and We Became Snakes... what's Worldbroken like?

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: February 09, 2015, 12:42:22 PM »

Mount Eerie - Wind's Poem - Been trying to immerse myself in post Mount Eerie  Mount Eerie (meaning everything since he stopped being called The Microphones). I like it all but somehow it never jumps out and sticks. This is the black metal-influenced one but it's nothing really like black metal, rather just applying some of the edgy sonorities to his songs which are still as mellow as usual. It works well, yet it doesn't really stay after I stop listening to it, which is my criticism of all of these recent things he's done. And I always just want to stop listening to it and instead put on ....
The Microphones - The Glow, pt. 2 -  which is so fucking good, still.
Flying Luttenbachers - Destroy All Music - I don't think I've been fair to the Luttenbachers. After all these years this sounds kind of great - more silly and Monty Python than I remembered it being.
Autistic Daughters - Uneasy Flowers] - Dean Roberts is one of those guys I really like but never think about.
Cleaners from Venus - The Late District - so fucking good!

Glad to hear Mr. KRaPo also digs the Honeymoon Killers album. I love that record.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: January 20, 2015, 01:04:56 PM »

Weird Paul! My first band was a forgotten late-90s band Weird Paul led called The Blazing Bulkheads. http://weirdpaul.bandcamp.com/album/the-blazing-bulkheads but leave me alone, guys, I was 16. I'm in the documentary about him which landed me my only IMDB credit to date.

Listening:

Jacobites - Robespierre's Velvet Basement
Jandek - Later On
Vermillion Sands - Summer Melody
Loren Mazzacane & Kath Bloom - Sing the Children Over and Moonlight
David Jackman - Solmara

I've never listened to these Bloom/Mazzacane records before, but, holy shit. (Downloaded of course, the originals are mega-rare). This feels like some sort of revelation. I've never known what to think of Mazzacane Connors. I saw him live 2 or 3 times over the years and it never did anything for me; always sort of aware of his recordings and heard a few but never dived deep into them. These records w/Bloom are a total acoustic folk thing which I didn't expect, but there's some wavering fragility in them that I find incredible.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: January 02, 2015, 01:01:40 AM »

Blue Note issued Ornette's Golden Circle Vols. 1 & 2

Just remembered those before I read your reply. They might be my fave Ornette albums. Last time I heard them was at least 10 years ago and I remember being floored by the drums, specifically.

Amen. Moffet and Izenzon are my favourite rhythm section ever; so underrated! They're on a handful of other Coleman records and Izenzon (who was from my hometown of Pittsburgh) is on a spattering of other records - Shepp's Fire Music and even the Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band!

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: December 26, 2014, 03:20:04 PM »

Been grinding my way through tons of downloaded 2014 albums from all the various lists, here and otherwise. Hoping to find some things that stick, inspire and excite - and to feel connected, and relevant, and engaged with music again!

Some things that everyone else has listed that I'm late to the party on but have been cranking a lot during this solitary holiday week:

Ultimate Painting
Gem Jones - Admiral Frenchkiss
Eye - Winterwork
Arnold Dreyblatt - Choice (this and the Eye have been so so awesome on headphones while walking through the snowy Finnish woods)
Officer! - Dead Unique
Iceage - new one - finally clicked with me after not being so into it originally. Makes a nice pair with the Protomartyr

Also some old random stuff tonight:

Tim Buckley - Goodbye and Hello
Shrimp Boat - Speckly
XTC - singles comp
Liz Phair - Exile on Guyville (don't know why I was in the mood to hear this - it's been easily a decade. a lot of filler but some great great stuff on it)

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Music Shit / Re: New Zealand in 2014

« on: December 26, 2014, 02:27:07 PM »

Thank you, thank you soooo sooo much for this.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: December 11, 2014, 12:19:23 AM »

Been randomly checking out things from all the year-end lists that are popping up....

Marc Baron -Hidden Tapes: electroacoustic collage from some jazz saxophonist. It moves between slicing, active tape flutter and deep reverb-heavy atmospheric sections, sometimes in what should be a sharp juxtaposition, but it feels very very fluid.
Matt DeMarco - Salad Days: didn't click with me yet; I liked his last one lots, though.
Nathan Bowles - Nansemond: solo album, the guy from Black Twig Pickers and I think he's on that Black Dirt Oak which might be my favourite album of 2014. This has some strummin' and some pickin' and some singin' and it's recorded in a nice, wooly way
Laetitia Sadier - Something Shines: I didn't make it all the way through this, not because it was bad (it sounds exactly like you'd expect it to) but because I wasn't in the mood.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: September 20, 2014, 01:34:13 AM »

Which Cerberus Shoal are you listening to? Their output is so diverse....

I downloaded that Owen Maercks, and holy fuck, it is something. It really stands out among all the other unearthed recordings from that time - there's a few songs in particular that make it feel so distinct, like 'Little Black Egg' - another example of something that is "of it's time" but simultaneously transcending the rest (like This Heat's Deceit for example). I'm going to order a copy as soon as the second pressing is out and I can find a good Euro distributor

I go back to Lower Plenty's Hard Rubbish more than probably anything else from the recent Australian wave; right now on a slightly hungover Saturday morning there is something perfect about it.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: September 15, 2014, 05:58:26 AM »

grant-writin' blues ....

Shrimp Boat - Volume One - I haven't thought about this band in at least ten years. They were good, too. This seems to be made up of early demos and is much more loose and open, with sloppy acoustics and half-formed songs. I might love it.

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass -This came out at the nadir of when I paid attention to all the bands I loved in the 90s, so I don't think I listened to it more than once then. Listening now, it's as solid as you'd expect; if it came out in 1999 I would probably love it. Now how to convince myself to listen a few more times and not just move past it?

Shoppers - Silver Year - I think I downloaded this from a Still Single recommendation. It's really good. I bet people on here know more about it.

Skygreen Leopards - Family Crimes - glad this exists, though I don't think I'll love it as much as Disciples of California

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Music Shit / Re: Forced Exposure mag and post-FE mags

« on: September 10, 2014, 01:55:05 AM »

Also to reminisce over: Nice Slacks!

Popwatch got very good - I remember thinking that it's last issue felt like it was picking up where FE left off.

Does anyone know if scanned/digitized/PDFs of Forced Exposure are out there anywhere?

The Fucking Record Reviews blog is great, but fragmentary (by design). I've thought about approaching whomever does it and proposing that we create a serious online archive of that stuff - taking his scans and providing full issues, and indexing it all by artist and writer. I'd be happy to write the code/content management system for it, as that's the type of thing I do for a living, but just finding the time would be the challenge....

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: September 07, 2014, 11:03:50 PM »

I've fallen out of touch with the Cerberus/Big Blood gang since I left the US. Is Cerberus Shoal still theoretically together? I saw them live in 2002 or so and it was totally brain-melting; the weirdest hybrid of folk-faux Americana, Beefheart and with some post-rock/emo residue that I had seen at the time. Their studio albums always felt a bit behind what they were doing live; the set I saw didn't turn up on record until Bastion of Itchy Preeves a few years later, but fuck; that's a record I still feel I haven't properly understood, maybe because it was built on fleeting memories of that live set, turned over in my head a few times.

Saw them a few more times and got to know 'em a bit - always enjoyable, but I was really psyched when those Big Blood discs started showing up (especially that one with the cover of 'Vitamin C'). Some of the songs are just so incredibly well-written, and they've released a torrent of CDrs in the past 7 years and all of them are pretty worthwhile.

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Music Shit / Re: What Are You Listening To And What Do You Have To Say About it? PART VI

« on: August 19, 2014, 02:13:32 AM »

Game Theory - Real Nighttime - never got as into this as their other albums (though it's better than Two Steps - I think I need to spend more time with this)
David Behrman - Leapday Night
Royal Trux - Accelerator - this was my starting point, and still my favourite one; I'm surprised I haven't seen it recommended more in the recent RT chatter on here.
Thuja - Suns - the whole jeweled antler thing kinda just faded away, didn't it?

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Music Shit / Re: Whatever happened to that Pennsylvania Record Hoard?

« on: August 11, 2014, 01:07:54 AM »

All of us from Pittsburgh cringe whenever that asshole Paul Mawhinney gets press for that shitty collection. Especially that horrible documentary that made him out to be some hero. Now it's Brasil's problem as if the shitty living conditions and IMF debt wasn't enough.