30.3.12

memory isblank and the amnesiacs - hollow mind in the century of the self


2012; 9 tracks


this is the greatest thing i have heard all year, and it was only released 9 days ago on bandcamp. please listen to it.

information on the album itself:

"Recorded in San Francisco, California from 2005 to 2009. Drum machine, records, field mics, dat, guitar, synths, and found objects. This album was created with pagan story-telling structure, hip hop bass, and punk diy ethics. Witchbeat-Noisepunk for the kids."

bandcamp
soundcloud

26.3.12

jewels in girls' hair

If you didn't know, Why? is an incredible band.

I have been a huge fan of theirs for almost 5 years, which for an 18-year old seems like forever.

A lot of people dismiss them as hipster garbage, but these are people who have listened to either 1-2 songs or none at all. Every time. The truth is, Why? are lyricists and musicians who thrive and produce meaningful expression on the furthest existing plane from pretentiousness. On this plane, the foliage is greener than all of Ireland's hues mixed on an astronomical pallet, and the rain is a collection of unsaid words and unused thoughts captured in millions of tiny speech bubbles.

In a word: paradise.

The day when I will grow tired of Yoni Wolf's nasal voice spitting out his inner thoughts like blood pouring from a writer's pen will never come, I am sure of this as I am sure the sun will rise tomorrow. Pretty sure. His words and his tiny orchestrations have followed me in my life only as unfailingly as a blue sky, and even then I can count more on him.

The first time those lyrics made sense to me all those years ago, made my mind explode in wonder at the utterly perfect juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated pictures and emotions, made me smile or cry or painfully remember, haven't lost a single dripping ounce of their meaning. The same exact tears shed all those years ago are easily shed again, the same feelings resurrected only in the memory called to life by the same exact progression of notes and sounds and words.

All of those rooms in my house I spent feeling this or that, all of those thoughts that sped through my head, in and out and in and out into oblivion, all of those slants of light that hit here or there in such beauty or such ugliness.

Memories are constantly unfolding in an endless cycle of remembrance, and there are unimaginable infinities that can spark this cycle. I am sure of that now.

24.3.12

Aleksander Szram - Into the 21st Century




 
2006; 10 tracks
Aleksander Szram, pianist


My mom was very kind and bought me a CD of modern classical piano music performed by a talented young pianist.

Comments by the composers:

01 Dai Fujikura - Echo Within (2003)

I find this piece very romantic, although it is imbued with a contrary atmosphere, more as though romanticism is experiencing claustrophobia; and I like that. It almost has the lyricism of Takeshi Kitano's film Hana-bi.

02 - 06 Basil Athanasiadis - Anamnisis (2003)

I composed Anamnisis (Greek for "memories") after reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (sidenote by allie: FUCKING YES!!). This title recalls the way in which the narrator of the novel embarks on his tale of twenty years past only after his memory is sparked by hearing a song on an aeroplane. I tried to convey the sense of memory in "Anamnisis" by using the opening 5-note melody as a recurrent yet ever-varying leitmotif in the rest of the piece.

07 Haris Kittos - Átropo (2001, rev. 2002)

"Átropo" means "with no mode/system." It was freely composed by ear and mainly on the piano. Of course there is a structure, a small development of the ideas and whatever I felt as being necessary to use for the production of an effective little piece...

08 Michael Spencer - The Eemis Stane - Hommage to Kakihosru Shapurji Sorabji (2001)

Helmut Lachenmann has referred to the notion of "sounds pointing away from themselves... towards the precondition of their production" (Lachenmann, Helmut, Seminar with Helmut Lachenmann - Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival, 2000).

Taking this as a starting point, "The Eemis Stane" begins with the sounds "pointing away from themselves" (the various extended performance techniques) and gradually develop towards the more familiar aural landscapes of the conclusion. On a poetic level, this concept related to the poem from which the title is taken: Hugh MacDiarmid presents the Earth of the future as an unfamiliar dead rock, covered by the lichen of time and the fog of history, yet underneath, the poet can sense the residue of mankind, the familiarity of something essentially human that is buried. The work is dedicated to Pete Mumford who commissioned it in 2001.

09 Dai Fujikura - Sleeping Ashes (2002)

"Sleeping Ashes" was written as a response to the Bali terrorist attack of the 12 October 2022. The episodes of tranquility are shattered by the sound of breaking glass.

10 Haris Kittos - Athrós (2001)

"Athrós" (from the Greek word árthrosis which means "articulation/joint") is someone/something whose purpose/function is to produce phrases/shapes/form/language and express him/itself. After a struggle which brings a state of chaos and mania, he/it finally relaxes, releases the tension and starts talking/singing, but exhaustion does not allow him/it to continue...


Download.

How's life?

Recently downloaded:

Luxurious Bags - Frayed Knots EP
White Lung - Atlanta
Brainiac - Electro-Shock for President EP
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 - Mother of all Saints
Chopin Preludes (read this oh my god).

Currently listening:

p.Wrecks & Xrin Arms - Underfunded Forever Vol. 2 (Tighter Than Nuns) The Mixtape



Cut off contact with approximately five people that I used to talk to. Why? Because I am fucked up. I miss them, sometimes, but I am trying not to dwell on it.

17.3.12

Dreamcrusher


cover of 2012 release soshite anata wa watashi no shidesu (link)

i just found about this dude and his music is seriously amazing

last.fm
bandcamp
tumblr
facebook

highly saturated experimental noise/idm

The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa - Pigment EP


1991; 4 tracks


This is too goddamn good for me not to post.

The Ecstasy of Saint Theresa was a Czech shoegaze band formed in 1990 who released a number of albums until a few years ago, but I've heard that their latest stuff is pretty horrible. Disregarding that, this is one of the most perfect EPs in existence.

"Honeyrain" is heaven.

Download.

9.3.12

Mix No. 16 - G.Y.K.F.A. (grab your knees fall asleep)







01 Six Finger Satellite - White Queen to Black Knight
02 DJ Scotch Egg - Extract the Marrow
03 Steaming Coils - Intents and Purposes
04 魏如萱 - 我在想唱一首歌
05 Mr. Epp & the Calculations - Acceptance 2
06 cLOUDDEAD - Electricity, Metal, and Water Never Mix
07 The Fugs - CIA Man



Download.


SPECIAL NOTES:
- DJ Scotch Egg track is an excerpt from a live session recorded in 2006 in a corridor outside the Subcity studio in the John McIntyre Building for ASCII.
- Steaming Coils track recorded live 3/14/87 at the Lhasa Club in Los Angeles.
- Mr. Epp track recorded live at the Metropolis 8/12/83.
- The title of 魏如萱's track means "I want to sing a song" in Chinese, but she is from Taiwan. My attempt at an English translation:

"These days I have a steady job but when there is little love it is very easy to find life empty.

Cooking is the same as falling in love, like different ingredients with different tastes.

Your taste buds are keen senses that emerge from the taste that will make you nostalgic.

Madame, how much?
220.
Ah.

Wow, you can see what other people are thinking!
What are you thinking?
I was just thinking of a song...
Do you want to sing for me?"

- cLOUDDEAD track extracted from the closer on their 2004 album Ten.

7.3.12

when you meet someone in real life and try to explain to them the music you like

you probably shouldn't mention have a nice life or the word "noise rock" or even the word "fuzzy"

you probably shouldn't try to explain how you like music that is very sad and possibly suicidal... then you just get a fucking weird look from them

no actually fuck you you don't know anything

4.3.12

mermaidbear

last.fm/music/mermaidbear

today i improvised on the piano and came out with four tracks that i cannot really describe

uploaded them to last.fm because i am awesome

listen if you're interested, or don't that is cool too

anyway...

thank you if you cared at all about this blog, i have gotten many nice emails from people over the years and also some mean ones but we won't talk about those

i do not claim to have amazing music taste but i believe that it is pretty goddamn awesome

compared to the rest of the bitches

in the world



in reference to my blog, here is a fairly relevant quote~

it's too bad she won't live! but then again, who does?
well this was fun while it lasted

no i'm not gonna waste time re-uploading everything

long live music

fuck the internet

au revoir