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

This is really good. Techno, D&B, ambient elements all sounding amazing and working together well. Between this and Shred I'm a fan...

everyone is just so full of shit

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.