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What sort of stuff are you listening to at the minute?

Started by Neil, February 05, 2013, 11:10:26 PM

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Neil

Just a little listening diary type of thing.  I've been tracking down The Homosexuals stuff again - NoSleep first got me into them when CaB Radio started up, I think I remember being in the bath stoned listening to his mix, and staying completely motionless when Soft South Africans came on.  So I've also been tracking down all the dozens of off-shoot bands, such as Gus Coma, Sara Goes Pop, L. Voag, the Amos and Sara stuff, Milk From Cheltenham (apparently a big influence on Nurse With Wound.)  Plus the more up-to-date Die Trip Computer Die.  Oh, and Bing Selfish.  I've grabbed 1.7 gigs of Homosexuals-related stuff this week, fuck knows when I'll get to hear it all, but I know there are many gems contained therein.

This manic hunt, and the assistance of the excellent DIE or DIY blog has also sent me off on a tangent of home-made stuff like Tuning Circuits and cassette scene bands like The Digital Dinosaurs.

Other than that, I've been relistening to a lot of No Wave bands after recently rewatching my Kill Your Idols DVD - this prompted me to get hold of the entire Sonic Youth discography, as there's still a lot of stuff there I need to hear.  Been trying to find The Bloods tonight, but they're quite elusive.  Loving hearing the funky rhythms of ESG again, an unbeatable and massively influential group.  That also sent me off looking for Kleenex/LiLiPUT and Delta 5, and I'm sure I'll end up digging out the Raincoats and Slits stuff again. 

So mostly punky stuff, and music centering around that liberating explosion of creativity, but been mixing it up with The Incredible String Band, bit of Jónsi & Alex, and just grabbed Actress tonight after seeing him on Retinend's last.fm.  Still hammering away at Liz Phair too, returning to more of the Girly Sound era given my current lust for lo-fi. 

Oh, also some avant rock like Alvaro the Chilean with the singing nose, his Drinkin My Own Sperm record sounds like it's gonna be a winner.  Also loving the PFFR music output, especially their "commentary" on the season 1 Wonder Showzen DVD, and also checking out Adrian Borland's oeuvre.

Really looking forward to ditching a lot of the music that's currently on my phone, and putting a whole bunch of new stuff on there.

How about you?

dr_christian_troy

I'm considering revisiting My Bloody Valentine, what with the new album out (which I haven't heard yet), but I've always enjoyed Kevin Shields solo work that I've heard in the meantime.

I recently starting getting into Peder - I was familiar with the one track Timetakesthetimetimetakes from the soundtrack to Breaking Bad, and finally decided to investigate them properly, and as it happens there's a fair abundance of experimental oddities in their back catalogue.

I keep digging deeper into DEVO. I'm yet to find a track that I've been compelled to turn off, which I can assume only be a good thing. Even more enthralled by them since discovering the connection to the Church of the SubGenius.

I'm also utterly obsessed with entire album Rome, from Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi. Featuring the likes of Norah Jones and Jack White, it plays out like the soundtrack to a Western that was never made.

I'm loving Feel It All Around by Washed Out. Having not been abroad for some time, it makes me yearn to be away in a nostalgic and slightly emotive sense (it also happens to be the title theme from Portlandia - this is how I end up discovering a fair amount of music).

In regards to recent albums I'm enjoying: The Seer by Swans is one hell of a fucking dark journey; Kill For Love by The Chromatics makes me shoe gaze, and The Idler Wheel Is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do by Fiona Apple is the right kind of cynicism for me to embrace.

Neil

I've barely had time for the new MBV, stuck it on while I was going to sleep last night.  The PFFR stuff wants me to go back to Negativland and The Residents, been neglecting them for the last few years. 

Also enjoying Robert Rental at the minute, an accidental download when I was grabbing PFFR.  Eyeless In Gaza, Ducktails and The Gun Club are all new to me acts that I'll be checking out.  Oh, and Dan Deacon, as he'll be playing here soon. 

Rascal Reporters are another random grab from this major Homosexuals fan on Soulseek - that's what I still love about Slsk, the personal touch.  You'll meet people on your wavelength, and who have a great collection to dig through (grabbed Rascal Repeaters on a whim because of this, and really enjoying them), and sometimes you'll have a chat with them that'll open up whole new areas of interest.  That's how I first got into Dogbowl, I think. 

Argh, too much music, and I want to listen to it all, now, at the same time.

mark ramsden

The music to Channel 4's Utopia is pretty good. Avant ambient production, jazzy harmonies, very trippy. As impressive as the camera work.

Mildly Diverting

Quote from: Neil on February 05, 2013, 11:48:16 PM
I've barely had time for the new MBV, stuck it on while I was going to sleep last night.
Now, going to sleep with MBV is a new one on me:)

Quote from: Neil on February 05, 2013, 11:48:16 PM
Oh, and Dan Deacon, as he'll be playing here soon.

I can't remember who recommended it in albums of the year, but I got America because of them, and it is just an astonishing album. "Is a monster" being my particular favourite.

Aside from that, loving the new Eels and revisiting and loving Tallulah Gosh! all over again.

vrailaine

Lately I've been absolutely loving:
Shabazz Palaces: Big big fan of Blowout Comb by Digable Planets. Had no clue yer man from them had reemerged with something new, let alone something this brilliant. The album and the EPs are right up my alley. Surprised I missed them on release.
Chromatics: Em, don't absolutely love the albums, a bit too long so it all kinda blurs together. Which is a shame because some of the songs individually are pretty great.
Andy Stott: Loving the album, saving the EPs until I've a pair of headphones that will do them justice. Was initially just a thing to fall asleep to, but I've really gotten into it.
Rustie and Holy Other too, but I don't know what to say about the two of them.


I wind up listening to so many podcasts that the only music I can really listen to any more is stuff that won't require too much of my... eh... my conscious attention? ...rather than my subconscious attention?
It's really weird looking at my listening habits from 5 years ago, my old last.fm hasn't much in common with my new one at all. Only got Very High compatibility.

rudi

Prince and Stereolab's discographies. No idea why those two at the same time (not literally, taht would be hideous) but there you have it.

one_sharper

Quote from: mark ramsden on February 05, 2013, 11:52:54 PM
The music to Channel 4's Utopia is pretty good. Avant ambient production, jazzy harmonies, very trippy. As impressive as the camera work.

This week's OST show had the director and composer guesting.
https://soundcloud.com/resonance-fm/16-30-00-the-o-s-t-show-2

Neville Chamberlain

#8
I made a thread about them, but every blighter ignored it, so instead of reviving it, I'll mention them here again: First, Host: apparently from Northampton, they popped up during the post-punk revival of the early to mid-00s (along with yer Franz Ferdinands and what-not), but were comprehensively ignored. Cloth-eared cynics would say this is because they were rubbish; the more discerning, however, would say it was because their music was just a little bit too off-the-wall. With Host, the angular but radio-friendly hooks of Franz Ferdinand (whom I'm very fond of, by the way!) were made just that little bit more angular. The verse-chorus-verse arrangements were torn apart, and very often they channeled the spirit of Gentle Giant. It's vivid, colourful, adventurous progressive pop. Two-thirds of this band went on to form the arguably even better Dora Brilliant, whom I've banged on about here before in callously, cynically, deliberately ignored threads.

Other new bands I've been listening to are San Francisco-based experimental/psyche popsters Inner Ear Brigade, local Nottingham/Ilkeston/Derby-based instrumental 'math-rock' band Alright the Captain, and the excellent PLANK!, who sort of overlay 'motorik' beats with jagged guitary stuff. OK, this paragraph might explain things a bit better...

QuoteOh yes. In approximate order of appearance, I'm hearing fellow North-Western Kraut-reffing fellow travellers Kling Klang, the reconstructed unreconstructed Seventies synth-rock of the second Justice album, mid-Eighties Sonic Youth with added analogue, Arthur Brown's Kingdom Come, David Gilmour jamming an intro out with The Ex, the ectoplasmic guitar genius of Alan Rankine, 'Moby Octopad' (some of Yo La Tengo's sprawlier excursions being a good primer on how to be influenced by Neu! without looking as if you'd actually like to be Neu!), Belew-era Crimson, XTC circa English Settlement, Boards of Canada, the less irritating portions of Kid A, bits of Tool and Battles. As ingredients for an album, unimpeachable. As ingredients for a paragraph, perhaps less so. Hey ho.

So yes, lots of new stuff out there. Music gets better and better and more diverse all the time. As for new releases by more 'mainstream' bands, I wasn't overly impressed with the new Dutch Uncles album - it just seems to lack the oomph of Cadenza and their eponymous debut. All those interlocking guitar lines and off-kilter rhythms that made up their colourful brand of wonky pop seem to be missing here. Maybe it needs to grow on me a bit...

Oh, and there's Bunty Chunks, a short-lived, mid-90s band who produced the very definition of bendy music, like a more punked-up, condensed version of Slapp Happy.

I also acquired this from the ever-fascinating world of Bob Drake. I initially heard about it from Cardiacs/Knifeworld guitarist and all-round good bloke Kavus Torabi, who plays on it.

alan nagsworth

^ Thanks Nev for providing me yet another number of interesting avenues to lead my ears down!

I've been listening to a fuckload of noisy guitars recently. I've been absolutely loving the garage pop of Mikal Cronin, Ty Segall, White Fence, Thee Oh Sees and all of their associated bands and collaborations, such as Coachwhips, Epsilons and more. Segall, Cronin and TOS' John Dwyer are three of the most important heads in rock n' roll at the moment I think, the former two especially creating a straight-up earnest and unpretentious blast of pop guitar fuzz that is, to me at least, essential to rock music right now.

Delving into noisier territory I've also been loving Lightning Bolt, Melt-Banana, Japanese jazz-punk nutters Midori and the tremendously under appreciated Olneyville Soundsystem who were a huge influence on Lightning Bolt and have an unrelenting, angry bass stomp that brings to mind the sounds of bands like Big Black and Unsane. Shout outs are also due to Tourettes Lautrec, James Chance & The Contortions and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks.

Something I didn't expect to find myself enjoying any more but with which I recently became heavily reacquainted is black metal. I fucking love it. I've been playing a lot of Marduk, Burzum, Darkthrone and Emperor in particular, as well as discovering a whole host of fantastic dark ambient/industrial black metal bands from Europe such as England's own Anaal Nathrakh (who are quite easily one of the most brutal and energising extreme metal bands I have ever heard, their sound is unparalleled evil) and The Axis of Perdition, and the French band Blut Aus Nord.

I've been making lots of electronic music lately but I can't remember the last time I sat down and listened to any, aside from the odd track here and there.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

I've just finished replaying all the Sonic Youth albums (not in order, though I just did the post-95 stuff in one go). Controversial conclusion: they're actually really good, with lots of hidden gems I'd never heard properly before. Actually as good as the new MBV stuff, only suffering because it was all put out in instalmenets every 2-3 years and with no mystique about "lost albums" or any crap. Instead just shrugged off at the time as "just another SY album".

SteveDave

This week I've mostly been listening to the last "live in the studio" side of Something/Anything by Todd Rundgren & Maggot Brain by Funkadelic

benthalo

New and newish albums from Terror Danjah, Kevin Drumm, MBV and dusting down the last Killer Mike record ahead of his Dalston gig next week. Oh, and Merzbow's "Duo" box.

I've also spent the past six weeks pulling together a history of Radio 3's Mixing It which is nearly done. So lots and lots of late-90s radio recordings are getting transferred as part of that task and it's been fun. I still really miss that show.

CaledonianGonzo

Things Thread!

Albums of the last week or so are Born Sandy Devotional by The Triffids, Fakebook by Yo La Tengo, Stupidity by Dr Feelgood, the new album by Veronica Falls, Big Inner by Matthew E. White (still), m b v, the back-catalogue of Malian chanteause Rokia Traore, the new Flaming Lips single, the Inbetweens EP by Withered Hand, the Hermit EP by Randolph's Leap, Time Waits For No One and If You Really Want To Be My Friend by The Rolling Stones and an album of Ethiopian reggae by a geezer called Jah Lude.

Neil

Bladdy hell, listening to "Fire Of Love" by The Gun Club for the first time certainly makes the Pixies sound markedly less original!  This is wild. I never felt like this when listening to Hüsker Dü, despite their massive influence.  But with The Gun Club, it's like you're listening to whole Pixies songs, vocal stylings and all, it's ridiculous.

doppelkorn

Just any reggae really. Plus Hurts So Good by John Cougar Mellencamp and Dimitri From Paris' "remix" of Prince's I Wanna Be Your Lover.

QtheRaider

I've been meaning to listen to some of the new wave psychedelia for a while now and as luck would have it mojo put a comp together on this months issue, played it twice last night I think I might have to investigate further.

cosmic-hearse

Neil, in reference to the Homosexuals, if you haven't already then you should seek out the Messthetics compilations - hours of Scritti Politti/Swell Maps/TV Personalities-esque DIY fun, like the brilliant Rich & Famous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU2irBGKkuA

Plus they contain tracks by The Rejects, Bruno's pre-Homosexuals act.


copyingdogs

I've been going through a lot of Sly and the Family Stone stuff recently, and I'm stunned by how good it is. I can't believe its taken me this long to discover it to be honest, really great stuff.

daf

Tangerué / Strange Affair (Disco Recharge)
The Beautiful Bend  - Boris Midney (Disco Recharge)
Warner's Disco Party - Kai Warner (Jazz Club)
The Fantastic Sound Of Gunter Kallmann Choir (Jazz Club)
The In-Krauts series
Beat At Cinecitta - Music from Italian 60s & 70s Cinema
The Best Of Disco Demands - Al Kent
Wagner 'Rienzi' (Heinrich Hollreiser: Staatskapelle Dresden, Leipzig Radio Chorus - 1976)

Johnny Townmouse

As is obvious by my contributions to various threads, I have been listening to a lot of English folk revival music - Watersons and the Carthys and some recent work by various folkies that is a million miles away from Waistcoat Indie-Folk.

I have been on a massive Broadcast kick mainly since the BSS soundtrack came out which is a nice thing in its own right, but makes me long for Trish's voice. A few days ago I filtered the albums in chronological order and listened to their progression. There was no softening or attempts made to become famous, and Tender Buttons stands as an album by a band fully in control and with complete autonomy. The Focus Group co-album is stunning. I adore it.

Also listening to The Seer which  proves that once Gira has his hooks into an audience (thanks to the success of the last album) he will hammer them with some devestating turn of direction. It's a sprawling beast, that makes no concessions and is impossible toignore. It's not background music.

Other than those, I have been getting into Peaking Lights which is an odd little electronic/psychedelic band, I have been listening to a lot of early Sleater Kinney/Heaven's to Betsy, early Wire, and Neu!

The Βoston Crab

Basic Channel/Chain Reaction/Rhythm & Sound - all of it; it's all amazing. All of it.
All Burial albums & EPs - see above.
Art Tatum/Scott Joplin/Earl Hines - all the audiophile releases sound insane.

Spiteface

New MBV for me too.

It's weird how that album seems to evolve the further along you get through it. It sounds like "classic" Valentines at the beginning, then by the time "wonder 2" finishes, they've become something different, yet still them.

I do love the warm fuzzy guitar tones on "only tomorrow" though - I hope Kevin Shields does an interview in a guitar mag soon, so I can find out what pedal(s) that is. Sounds like it could be one of Devi Ever's fuzzboxes though.

paolozzi


holyzombiejesus

Got a few releases on the Portland based Mississippi Records. One compilation of "Pitch-dark American ballads recorded between 1927-1943. Murder, death, spiritual and emotional torment" and...



Some of the most incredifuckingble music I've ever heard; so joyous and brilliant. It leaves me breathless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWmCplTgflA

Neil

Quote from: cosmic-hearse on February 06, 2013, 05:11:46 PM
Neil, in reference to the Homosexuals, if you haven't already then you should seek out the Messthetics compilations - hours of Scritti Politti/Swell Maps/TV Personalities-esque DIY fun, like the brilliant Rich & Famous:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU2irBGKkuA

Plus they contain tracks by The Rejects, Bruno's pre-Homosexuals act.

Ta, already have "The Sounds Of DIY 1977 - 1980" as it has two of the four Rejects tracks on it, but I'll definitely check out the rest!  Nice to see Anorexia on this one, after just picking up their "Rapist In The Park" EP.  In terms of The Homos and related side-groups, the Sara Goes Pop EP is proving to be an absolute winner, can't get enough of that! 

Grabbed some The Desperate Bicycles music last night too, not really had a chance to check it yet.

Johnny Townmouse

Quote from: holyzombiejesus on February 06, 2013, 07:08:08 PM
Got a few releases on the Portland based Mississippi Records. One compilation of "Pitch-dark American ballads recorded between 1927-1943. Murder, death, spiritual and emotional torment" and...



Some of the most incredifuckingble music I've ever heard; so joyous and brilliant. It leaves me breathless.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWmCplTgflA

Thanks for giving me two new avenues to go down. The folk hymnody music is so complex and unusual - I can see how that would be really difficult to record.

What is the Mississippi records comp you are referring to above?

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on February 07, 2013, 02:02:03 PM
Thanks for giving me two new avenues to go down. The folk hymnody music is so complex and unusual - I can see how that would be really difficult to record.

What is the Mississippi records comp you are referring to above?

It's the one at the top of this page...

http://www.honestjons.com/shop.php?LabelID=15593

I heartily recommend most things on Mississippi; their releases are particularly cheap from HJ's too.

I got another really good sacred harp compilation on CD a few years ago called I Belong To This Band which is also brilliant.

http://www.dust-digital.com/sacred-harp/

There was also a documentary on Radio 4 a few months ago, presented by Cerys Matthews, but someone came into my office when it was on so I had to switch the radio off and forgot to listen again.

Johnny Townmouse

Nice one - I appreciate it. I can see myself getting immersed in this for the next month...

Head Gardener

had the new album by Tingle In The Netherlands on quite a bit recently
along with this new one by Dobie which is really sweet after a smoke


http://ninjatune.net/release/dobie/we-will-not-harm-you