pause the orchestra 10/19
beep bop
hey guys. recently i broke out tago mago and the new abnormal again, meaning i’ve been wallowing frequently and also doing a lot of painful and ultimately impotent self-reflection. also, i recently came across a bar that was advertising pumpkin spice martinis which is a concept that i’ve really been reckoning with ever since. just making a lot of tough discoveries lately. another discovery is only realizing halfway through the magus that the brooklyn public library is renting out truncated digital copies, which i guess is yet another reason to hate digital reading. i sound old. i used that as an excuse to treat myself to a pretty delicious thriftbooks haul – do you know how hard it is to spend $100 on thriftbooks? also isn’t it awesome when you buy secondhand books and they have little notes in them? there are actually times i’ve better understood material or been able to catch allegories only because a previous owner took notes themselves. it’s like a literary conversation taking place through little interior notes over a span of years……i always take notes in my books, partially because i don’t want to forget the good stuff, and partially because i love the idea of my books’ next owner finding meaning in something i found meaning in. anyways, i guess i always start these with meaningless soliloquizing, but let’s get into some music! because there’s always music to listen to and new music to find and old music to rediscover and that’s pretty much the only thing that makes life good! gonna do all albums this week.
as per usual, playlist of everything mentioned here. also here’s my little annual fall playlist that i’m currently working on: frostbite.
so here’s some stuff:
i first encountered prefuse 73 when i was curating a radio show based on warp records’ influence on electronic music and have been a fan ever since. to me, prefuse 73’s glitchy electronica bridges a gap between boards of canada’s wistful IDM and mr. oizo’s wonky techno (and could quite possibly be an inspiration behind some of these artists’ discography), and his 2003 release one word extinguisher is the best summary of his work. one of my favorite tracks, busy signal, leans more on that techno note, whereas another one of my favorites, the color of tempo, plays more with the rhythmic glitch-pop of squarepusher. i also love storm returns and styles that fade with a collonade reprise, two more melodic coffee shop tracks that are very 2003, evocative of the spate of ambient pop and lounge music that emerged in the wake of 90s dream pop and downtempo (although styles that fade with a collonade reprise dips into some flying lotus glitch at the end).
folly group is new to me, but their 2021 post-punk revival EP is addictive – energetic, brash, and a little impatient, it should sate both post-punk purists (the clockwork patron who yelled at me for saying the strokes are kinda post-punk) and IDLES converts alike. it opens on a moody note with awake and hungry and four wheel drive, featuring a throbbing bass and exasperated vocals that fall in line with the avant-prog of black midi. then there’s the loopy lyric-play and surf punk undertones of ripples and the proggy riffs of butt no rifle, each track differing a bit from the last but never deviating too far from folly group’s post-punk roots. i also love the streets-esque zeal of sand fight, which is a little more upbeat than the majority of the EP and might appeal to parquet courts listeners.
dusting off one of my favorite jazz-funk albums! magnum’s 1974 album fully loaded is a groovy synthesis of bitches-brew-era davis and george clinton funk. funky junky and evolution are perhaps the most upbeat and classically funk songs on the album, but there’s forays into avant garde jazz scattered throughout. instrumental tracks like natural juices are sexy entries into the world of 70s jazz-funk, whereas tracks like your mind are imbued with a little gil scott-heron soul. there’s even a little psychedelic spin on tracks like composition seven. fully loaded doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a well-rounded easy listen.
i can’t find the whole album on youtube but i love this live performance of older hands prevail, my favorite song on midnight opera’s 2017 EP the mesmerist. midnight opera is dallas-based (texas girls rise) and combines gauzy feminine vocals with lusty guitar and drum stylings to create an EP that treads the line between indie rock, art pop, and dream pop. i love hounds of sunset, which reminds me a bit of broadcast and plays on the wall-of-sound noise that shoegaze is predicated on. and speaking of shoegaze, party alone is a barrage of a song, starting with muted shoegaze-y indistinguishable instruments and building into a musical catharsis. then there are tracks like chromatose, which is a little more archetypal art pop for the kate bush girlies.
for some reason, autumn always makes me crave a good soundtrack – antonio sánchez’s birdman, thom yorke’s suspiria – and piero piccioni’s soundtrack for piero zuffi’s 1970 giallo film colpo rovente has made its way into my soundtrack rotation. piccioni is an italian composer who mostly scored 60s-70s yellow films and spaghetti westerns – his jazz ensemble was actually the first jazz band aired on italian radio after mussolini’s fall from power – and the colpo rovente soundtrack has that resplendent, lounge-y, occasionally gritty sound to match the aesthetic of the film it was written for. i love the epic cinematic instrumentals on easy dreamer, which makes me feel like i’m driving a topdown convertible through busy city, and the sexy, slinky detective-movie-sound of identikit. the alternate live version of the soundtrack’s title track is delicious – i actually think i might like the live version better than the normal one – and i especially love the triumphant brass on fuoco.
thanks for reading! will see you guys next week and will try not to mention how it’s getting cold out 5 million times in the next post. but it’s possible it may happen because i am seasonally affected and my daily mood is pretty much dependent on the cloud cover percentage on any given day. have a good week and tell your friends you love them! in case you missed it, playlist of everything mentioned here!
okayyeahthanksbye.
{{{my daily 3x3, as per usual….the stooges back on the rotation it’s true……}}}