I might tend to agree, but things aren't so simple and sure that I'm comfortable screaming and dancing. I guess somebody's going to do it.

wild techno and little details

I mean... Selections from April.

MAJ Battle of the Bands

wow, bands

Kristjan Randalu - Absence (ECM)

not just sustains and brushes, but tasteful feedback too
It's a warm amalgamation.
winner of the "That Beautiful Chamber Sound" Award

The Nels Cline 4 - Currents, Constellations (Blue Note)

nels cline, julian lage, scott colley, tom rainey
captivating set of songs, from the muscular to the sensitive
winner of the "I Uploaded River Mouth as an Example of a Sound to Go After for this Thing I'm Working on" Award

John Zorn - Insurrection

julian lage, matt hollenberg, kenny grohowski, trevor dunn
winner of the Grand Prize
Notice who's on two of these albums. This one opens with some wild macho mayhem before stepping into sweet Dreamer territory. Comparable to C,C above in its variety but goes further in most directions, perhaps a little less Americana-oriented. From sweet to droned-out to metal-hard to thrashed. It's a wild album. This time when the editor asks if they "really brought it" I won't tell him that the sound was crappy and I couldn't hear anything and I don't recommend ever visiting this venue. I'll tell him, "Yes, they really brought it."

oceans

Félicia Atkinson - Coyotes (Geographic North)

raft down a steaming river of tones, voicebitscrackles, bells

speaking of warmth

Saba - Care for Me (Saba Pivot)

emotional/expressive/interesting throughout
fits w TDE vibes IMO but maybe I just don't get out enough
broken girls

northern exposure

Grouper - Grid of Points (Kranky)

Unloading with less haze and more direct emotion. I think of evocative, bereft [it's not] dreampop.

okay, we can have fun too

Thomas Fehlmann & Terrence Dixon - We Take It From Here (Tresor)

Not your (my) typical austere techno. Develops into something totally fun and infectious. Sounds like it's being played.

In Living the True Gods

Autechre - NTS Sessions 1-4 (Warp Records)

nobody does it better
the greatest
"he's a thot..."
if you only have 8 hours this holiday season,

google hangouts broke the way I socialize

I guess it's just not for me.

Lucy Railton - Paradise 94 (Modern Love)

cellomachine

Electric Indigo - 5 1 1 5 9 3 (Imbalance Computer Music)

crisp, staged, dynamic electronic music

depths and surfaces

Park Jiha - Communion

this is cool. melodies, atmosphere, sounds. music stuff?

I love hearing the expression of instruments with which I'm generally unfamiliar.

Flux Quartet - Michael Hersch: Images from a Closed Ward (New Focus Recordings)

Sustained (a)harmonies, from slowly terrifying to stab-punctuated aggressive/frantic to heartbreaking.

Björk - Arisen My Senses (One Little Indian Records)

Lanark Artefax, Jlin, Kelly Lee Owens. What an awesome suite of refractions of this great song. Would love a 2.5-hour mix of a selection of Bjork remixes.

Tessela & Lanark Artefax - WHYTBLU01

two great tracks. put these in your set.

The Fear Ratio - Live EP (Skam Records)

cool set of live tracks, love the playful slam of repeating highs on the OOOOOOH that makes little sense out of that frame. ERA sounds like it's from tri repetae, which is great. would enjoy their show.

Dedekind Cut - Tahoe (Kranky)

t'challa on the ancestral plane

Yann Novak - The Future is a Forward Escape into the Past (Touch)

details

Brett Naucke - The Mansion (Spectrum Spools)

dense world

Pierre Henry - Polyphonies (Decca Records)

Excellent retrospective compilation documenting the genius of Pierre Henry. Highly recommended.

It's rarely as simple as the loudest people on either side seem to think.

Jerry Quickley - (american) FOOL (Temporary Whatever)

peel and repeat

Laurie Anderson & Kronos Quartet - Landfall (Nonesuch)

It's funny how sometimes I'm not inclined to check out what icons are doing because I feel like I've been there... and then I'm reminded. Also interesting to go back to that time and place.

Maelstrom - Alph4 (Central Processing Unit)

goes

Ryuichi Sakamoto - Async - Remodels (Commons)

great reworking. had the chance to lie down for the duration. difficult to choose between itunes classic and whitecap.

and... Victory Lap. can't lie

today I was so bold as to like a tweet

later on in the day I realized that I had conflated a couple of public figures in my mind, so I went looking for that tweet to remove my like

looks like the person who tweeted it had already removed it

I wonder if this person had the same confusion

Why is it so difficult to posit and commit?

Why can't I just share (here, to nobody) my answers to this question?

I've been going through a lot (of music). So many new releases at the start of the year.

Took awhile to rule things out and keep things in.

Good to clear stuff out in time for the feb16 explosion.

these are the most-loved

Metaphors (Selected Soundworks from the Cinema of Apichatpoing Weerasethakul) (Sub Rosa Label)

Engrossing concrete environments teeming with insect buzz and occasional wafts of serene guitar, romantic fragments and upfront pop. Cool highlight of the sound work of these films, of which I've only seen a few.

Sylvie Courvoisier Trio - D'Agala (Intakt Records)

Awesome interplay. Typically exploratory, sometimes heavy, sometimes knotty, always interesting. Great group. Would love to see.

Kit Downes - Obsidian (ECM)

Organ recording. Really cool stuff, from the exalted to the eerie. Had a chance to listen in the dark and get into each instrument. Recommended (redundant).

Matthewdavid - Time Flying Beats (Leaving Records)

What happened to "and now people need some healing?" Heavy in car.

Evidence - Weather or Not (Rhymesayers Entertainment)

Hard beats, great flow. Even some content.

Shuttle358 - Field (12k)

best droneycomputersounds great cover good one

Yves De Mey - Bleak Comfort (Latency)

awesome sound design on heavy rhythm

Natalia Lafourcade - Musas Vol. II (Sony Mexico)

In the words of S.R., "You've done it again."

is actually pretty difficult

I only trust two people.

heavily considering if I should try to get involved again
so many reasons not to
but still want to

AGF
SOLIDICITY
agf has been really good forever

do not open mouth

These are my favorite albums of 2017.

Tarkovsky Quartet - Nuit blanche (ECM)

soft and contemplative, moving between the composed and the improvised, hauntingly pretty, drifting through ephemera

Kendrick Lamar - DAMN. (TDE)

Sure I might have had enough of a few of the songs on the radio, but it's another great album with songs to immediately enjoy, rapping to relish, content to think about. Another entry in a catalog of outstanding releases that are also broadly popular.

Justin Walter - Unseen Forces (Kranky)

Directional flotation, serenity without stasis. Atmospheric without limiting itself.

Natalia Lafourcade - Musas (Columbia)

These songs are great. The performance is great. Los Macorinos are great. Her live performance was great. The videos are great:

Jefre Cantu-Ledesma - On the Echoing Green (Mexican Summer)

das erhabene

Sote - Sacred Horror in Design (Opal Tapes)

electro-acoustic magic

milo - who told you to think??!!?!?!?! (Ruby Yacht)

milo's works are better each time. banks is not the future milo the future

Sylvain Chauveau - Post-Everything (Brocoli)

very electronic music pop

Post-Everything by Sylvain Chauveau

Lee Gamble - Mnestic Pressure (Hyperdub)

d&b+ae?

Kassel Jaeger - Aster (Editions Mego)

Atmospheres, buzz evolutions, interruptions, darkness. Kind of scary. That release with Jim O'Rourke was also a good one.

Open Mike Eagle - Brick Body Kids Still Daydream (Mello Music Group)

I appreciate the layers and ambiguities, listening to it again and making more of it, reading interviews and making more of it. Some great quietly-spoken, close-mic moments.

Anouar Brahem - Blue Maqams (ECM)

quiet fire, need live, Y2B

Claire M Singer - Fairge (Touch Records)

where was this in the blade runner movie

Bjork - Utopia (One Little Indian)

blissing me

the things I hear.

I went to many music performances this year. Here's my top dozen, in chronological order... there's actually lots of singing.

Devendra Banhart @ The Mayan

Devendra Banhart is someone I hadn't really paid attention to ever, but whenever a song of his would show up somewhere, Diana would make note of it. So as a Christmas present I bought her tickets to this show and in the meantime familiarized myself with some of his music. For a weeknight about a week after the inauguration (which was addressed in a few ways at the concert), it was a moment of escape and comfort. The Mayan has seating on the balcony, so that's a plus.

Moderat + Hypoxia @ The Mayan

I think comfortably sitting at the front of a balcony might be the key here. In any case, for a few years I was resistant to Apparat's singing, not crazy about Moderat and its... singing, but eventually let it break through to me. Moderat is an expertly-crafted pop act by people who have a deep understanding and facility with some of my favorite music. Show is solid. Visuals are good. For the opening I finally got to see Moe perform as Hypoxia, which was moody and fantastic.

Bjork @ Walt Disney Concert Hall

untouchable

Ojai (Music Director Vijay Iyer)

This is kind of cheating, since this included several concerts over a period of a few days. I can't choose specifics from it, but I'll say it's the best music festival I've ever attended with an amazing program (the programming of material but also the actual physical program), and I'm looking forward to returning this June.

Planetarium @ Hollywood Forever Cemetery

Planetarium is a kind of strange concept work from Nico Muhly, Bryce Dessner and Sufjan Stevens, another person I sort of ignored until recently. This was my first time doing the whole cemetery picnic thing (though I had been to some shows at the lodge/hall), and again it was another kind of weeknight escape. I particularly liked the encores (Somewhere over the Rainbow, Space Oddity) done in the strange style of the project. Also enjoyed the opening performance of Angelo de Augustine.

Solange @ FYF

This performance was an outstanding realization of A Seat at the Table and a few additional songs. She got up close (arm's length) during F.U.B.U., which was cool.

Kendrick Lamar @ Staples Center

Have seen him a few times over the years, and this was the best. No full-song-recorded backing vocal. No rock-style band. A great album to tour with a catalogue to pull from. Adoration of a hyped arena.

St. Vincent @ Paramount

Have wanted to see her for awhile. First half a review of past work with new versions of the songs, 2nd half a play-through of the new album. A tightly produced show without a live band, in keeping with some of the themes of its promotion and the fun-and-weird setting, which was Paramount's NYC backlot. So it was like a fake block party. Kind of strange. We had to stand around for too long.

Natalia Lafourcade @ Walt Disney Concert Hall

This was so good. She is great. More magic.

Busdriver @ Zebulon

Busdriver deserves greater recognition/celebration for his art. This was a dynamic, fluid show with The Underground Railroad jazz ensemble. Cool to hear his songs in such a different context from the electronic presentation I saw at the Aesop Rock opening show last year. Also enjoyed Kenny Segal's beat set, and Jerry Quickley is awesome, both the writing and delivery. Zebulon has a good setup.

Bill Frisell Beautiful Dreamers Trio @ Moss Theater

Lovely music. Fits in with the name. I Loves You Porgy wins. Encore included What the World Needs Now Is Love.

Interface 58

This is a bit of an honorable mention. While I was there everything was on point. Everything I saw from afterward showed that it went off and went strong through the morning. Left early due to a disturbance in the force.

There was a time when I seemed to think offensiveness or lack of propriety correlated with how funny something was.
Awkward doesn't have to be offensive.

thank you