soon it'll be December

not sure how I'll find time to go over everything

Shad - A Short Story About War (Secret City Records)

less and less interest in most rap, but this is actually interesting

favorite: The Revolution/The Establishment (especially the establishment)

Andrew Cyrille - Lebroba (ECM)

Cyrille, Smith and Frisell sound great together. The music is textural and contemplative but also melodic, which is an attempt at saying something but could really describe any music that's not hyperactive and has pitches. "Really nice."

Demdike Stare - Passion (Modern Love)

tear it apart, send it a signal-fed gate, rip it up. there's definitely still life here. curious about the cover. murk

Alexander Lonquich - Schubert 1828 (Outhere Music)

"total dedication to schubert"

Richard Devine - Sort/Lave (Timesig)

a welcome album return, sounds torn to shreds, from the sculptural to the track/narrative-oriented. Off-topic, but I loved that Lipswitch jacket back in high school.

Saloli - The Deep End (Kranky)

new age lullaby keyboard jams

Myra Melford's Snowy Egret - The Other Side of Air (Firehouse 12 Records)

A+ come to LA

Ian William Craig - Thresholder (Fat Cat Records)

grainy noisy patchy emotive edge

M. Geddes Gengras - Light Pipe

trip and trip

longtime

Subtle Degrees - A Dance that Empties (New Amsterdam)

Hypnotic sax & drum patterns from Travis Laplante & Gerald Cleaver.

Witnessed without knowledge of the project at Blue Whale a few weeks ago and was transported.

Yes, that’s all acoustic/played.

Forest Drive West - Apparitions (Livity Sound)

oh, right, I love techno, I forgot

just the essentials

Vril - Anima Mundi (Delsin)

speaking of which

Delsin redo

some unbeatable repetitive blissouts

Hotel Neon - Means of Knowing (ARCHIVES)

and speaking of blissing

Kenny Segal - Happy Little Trees

vibe. man behind some of the best//\\on his own

Eli Keszler - Stadium (Shelter Press)

very cool percussion, pads, bass

this morning listening to it again in the car I was thinking “this clicky thing right now reminds me of the drummer at the oneohtrix point never show on monday,” and now that I’m looking up a few background pieces of information that won’t really inform what’s here anyway I see this: "whilst this year he has toured with Oneohtrix Point Never’s MYRIAD live show”

so yeah, that's the guy

that was a pretty strange show btw... and (of course) completely different from the Stone show... but I guess that was 7 years ago

showers are great because I can think about stupid things I've said done or thought and hate myself

Fatima - And Yet It's All Love (Eglo Records)

like the songs and production. songs

Quatuor Voce - Itinéraire (Alpha)

really enjoyable / interesting quartet music pointing to/from different directions. alpha has been great

I ran into someone from high school.
No surprise that I was awkward.

If I followed my normal rules I'd still be stuck in revisions, but I adjusted the flow to clear some items out.
Some favorites.

Helios - Veriditas (Ghostly International)

Hey guys, let's make some gorgeous music.
Ok, cool, sounds good.

This One (ECM)

Three great musicians on an intimate recording. Beautiful, (mostly) calm music that intensifies in waves. Can't wait to see them next month.

JK Flesh - New Horizon (Electric Deluxe)

super heavy, lots of grain, has its waterfall moment (to sound like I was born yesterday). really good

Oliver Coates - Shelley's on Zenn-La (RVNG Intl.)

freshers. steps into more dance terrain with a unique sounding album on idm/techno tips but for anyone

Barbara Hannigan & Reinbert de Leeuw - Vienna: Fin de Siècle (Alpha)

Romantic, nature-infused (except for mr G who skips it), star-lit poetry, set to the music of a place and time. Schoenberg, Webern, Berg, Zemlinsky, Alma Mahler, Wolf. I might not be aware of this if not for BH's upcoming role but have really enjoyed listens both with and without the translations "in hand." recommend

Low - Double Neative(Sub Pop)

Washes of words, guitar, and textures. I love the weaving of not only melodic motifs but technical / timbral motifs (in the application of filters/distortion etc). Carries a quality that reminds me of some of Sylvain Chauveau's music that I've liked. Apparently I'm late to the show.

not exactly denis lavant

Tim Hecker - Konoyo (Kranky)

brooding and detailed, not as fully-saturated-wash. he's good at {}---[]](

4 hours of great electronic music, from quiet passages to melodic IDM to downtempo techno to industrial power to dramatic, noisy mayhem, somehow all working together. "Girih" is a very cool title/concept for this compilation. Get it here>>

Opinions are unsafe.

stephan mathieu - radiance
john zorn - book of beriah

It is a common thing for me to have a spontaneous realization about music lyrics.
I might be in the shower. I might be driving to work. Without any clear motivation I'll think of a music lyric, followed by the thought of "oh!!!! that's what that means!" It happens with rap a lot, sometimes lyrics I've known for 20 years.

I've always been familiar with the "Hollywood" song. I'm not any particular fan of it or anything.
You know the one... Hollywood... da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da Hollywood...
Although I'm familiar with it, I know few of the lyrics. One that I've always (since I can remember, really) had in my head is "From Shirley Temple to Aimee Semple..."
I've always just sort of assumed I didn't really know that 2nd name or I remembered it wrong, since Aimee Semple isn't anyone I was familiar with. I've never been interested enough to look it up.
Aimee Semple is of course Sister Aimee McPherson, a totally fascinating person I learned more about a couple of years ago with this KCET article.
The sort of funny thing here is that I never connected those names until about five minutes ago.
It's 6:30 AM on a Saturday. I just woke up, got out of bed, picked up the already-filled laundry bag by the door, and exited my apartment to walk to the laundry room on the other side of the building. As I approached the laundry room, my eyes still gooey and gross (they still are), it all of a sudden hit me. "Aimee Semple!!! Aimee Semple McPherson!" Totally out of nowhere. So stupid and weird.

Great trio. Cool to see it on ECM. Looks like I'm early. How does this stuff get out?
Book LA.
Will be awhile until next time. Flooded with new music + listening inspired by the Chinen book.

oh and I'm bored of the tweet thing

"democratizing/nauseating"
Some gestures improve power structures. Some are just annoying. Not sure what this was about.

"aesthetic/ritual"
Not sure why I've set these two up against each other... really wish I could remember. "Ritual" is one of my interests. There are forms-of-being/doing that are patterned around a particular aesthetics, others (with overlap) that are ritual. Ritual helps provide comfort and community. Maybe this had to do with music events.

elizabeth swaney:

a few others were very close

Aphex Twin - Collapse (Warp)

scream in car

Sungjae Son - Near East Quartet (ECM)

jazz east rock great

"i love you preston"
I believe Preston is that kid who was like upset that a VA hospital didn't have flags and provided them with flags... or something like this.
or like he was upset that the veteran grave site didn't have flags

"rampant fetishism"
I strongly dislike fetishism. Particularly various forms of political or cultural fetishism. Goes hand-in-hand with essentialism. My Twitter feed is filled with furious positions mounted on this shaky ground. It's a challenge.

"alien"
I have no idea what this was, but I do love the Franco character.

"outrage capacity"
There's so much that I have so little room for outrage, and I'm impressed or annoyed by my feed.

"what good is"
on the question of quality

"firmament"
Firmament is an interesting word. "The heavens, the sky, especially when regarded as a tangible thing; a sphere or world viewed as a collection of people." I have this coffee table book on the universe that surveys artifacts related to astronomy/cosmology, and this notion comes up in a lot of older diagrams/depictions. How does this idea of "firmament" play into our consideration of society/societies?
or also
How might there still be some sort of firmament? (universe edge, between "dimensions," life/death)... and the idea of this being tangible is also interesting.
or not

"merry christmas america"
Pence on the tax cut.

"iwillreviewu"
No idea. Reviews with ratings can be silly.

"I don't get it."
Reading people online is frustrating. Twitter is frustrating. I fail to understand how people are so sure of their positions to take on their indignant tone. I often find myself watching stones being cast and reading these messages and thinking "yes, but..."

I rarely tweet, and when I do it's usually fairly opaque.
I figured I might try using this space for some few-sentence elaborations on some of those tweets.

so let's see...

oh, K.K.
ha. "King Kendrick" Posted meaninglessly... nobody could possibly know what I meant there. Why do it?

"I was having a nightmare that I had tweeted something and had to wake up to make sure it wasn't something I had actually done..."
Unfortunately I can't remember what it was that I had a nightmare about tweeting but IIRC it related to an ex-girlfriend (funny of me to use the word "an" here).

"give me money tuesday"
Giving Tuesday is obnoxious. Everyone asks for money. How about just encouraging people to give to something without being that something asking for it.

ok, that's all for today

Semblance - Forma (Kranky)

sequencer workouts and washes of wind and piano, deed it

Tord Gustavsen Trio - The Other Side (ECM)

pretty moody goody
I'm early.

Nostrum Grocers - Nostrum Grocers (Ruby Yacht)

great voices and moods, fun to relisten, not always sure what's what. milo and elucid.
I think you mean tonkotsu...

Eiko Ishibashi & Darin Gray - Ichida (Black Truffle)

Excellent performance of pads, loops, horns, piano. Textures, rhythms, melodies stretched across the duration...

Jake Muir - Lady's Mantle ()

all the hazy feels you need

Oneohtrix Point Never - The Station ()

fantasy suite

I spent a week in Arizona.
It looked like this.

OZMOTIC - Elusive Balance (Touch)

drones, glitches and sax make it perfect
"I make it perfect."

Pariah - From Here Where We Are (Houndstooth)

Things have come a long way since bass/beat days of Detroit Falls (which was in my 2010 beat mix). We're more in like bee maskish drifto it's good.

Carl Stone - Electronic Music from the Eighties and Nineties (Unseen Worlds)

Another awesome Cstone compilation. Music that bleeds and bends and folds and blends and drifts. Process experiments and time-bending environments.

In 1994, D. C. United defender Bobby Boswell appeared on Nickelodeon GUTS, competing against Robin "The Lizard" Rexroat and Jennifer "The Jaguar" Barnes, and finished with the silver medal. He was known on the show as Bobby "Lightning" Boswell and won the soccer event "Shoot Out", just a hint of what was to come for his career. Boswell, who was dressed in purple, also won the Mega Crag event in that very same show.

Pitchfork begins many headlines with "watch" or "listen," and I find myself thinking "how about not" as a response.

Most of the time when I write something I decide five minutes later that it's stupid and delete it.

exm / Mitoma - I/O Disc (Kaer'Uiks)

I love being given recommendations. I love it even more when they're this good. Groans, whines, fractured beats.

Black Thought - Streams of Thought, Vol. 1 (Human Re Sources)

super solid. love that it's vol. 1. A friend last week prompted a discussion of daytona/ye/nasir.... "yes, but..."

John Coltrane - Both Directions at Once (Impulse!)

It's not some rando show bootleg remastered. It's not 12 takes of songs you've already heard. It's a no-joke Classic Quartet session from 1963. Does not disappoint on that heavy promise. Kind of amazing that this fell out the sky (or closet).

The Essential Anthony Braxton: The Arista Years

I'm supposedly not a huge fan of compilations, but I've loved listening to this collection of idiosyncratic, playful, exploratory pieces by Anthony Braxton. It's a more reasonable experience than the previously released "complete" Arista. Braxton's compositions and performances bear the weight of genre and practice influences but break through expected boundaries with confidence. Of course this sax-bass duet would be played this way. Why wouldn't it? The music is able to occupy strange and natural spheres at once. Some of the highlights for me are more obvious pieces: the deterioration and minimalism of 22-M, the power on H-46M, the solo Giant Steps rendition.

Abul Mogard - Above All Dreams (Ecstatic)

Outstanding gorgeous synthjourneymusic.

It's really cool that AOC won the primary.

So I have about 25 new albums that I'm listening to right now... more than usual, and it will take me awhile to work through them and come up with selects.

In the meantime I've been cheating my usual listening procedures and going back to one in particular.

Busdriver's new album is amazing.

election results
and turnout