Wednesday, December 13, 2006

THE NOISES IN MY EARS THAT MAKE ME HAPPY (THIS WEEK)

My apologies for the lack of posts over the last few days but my life has been pretty boring this week. I have been buying and listening to a lot of music lately. Here's my current rotation--



Mice Parade, "Bem-Vinda Vontade" -- Upbeat & fantastical songs; great for putting on a pair of headphones & zoning out.








Mum, "Summer Make Good" -- Gorgeous; I have no idea why I didn't buy this album sooner. As much as I love "Finally We Are No One", I'm thinking "Summer Make Good" will be my favorite after a few more listens.








Boduf Songs, "Lion Devours The Sun" -- kind of reminds me of a Will Oldham/Calla lovechild. Dark and spooky, but not oppressively so. It's nice to see that Kranky is starting to expand their boundaries a bit. For awhile, I thought they were just going to ride the success of Godspeed You Black Emperor! and Low, but this album and the new Loscil album "Plume" have really changed my mind about them.






Jóhann Jóhannsson, "IBM 1401 - A User's Manual" -- A neat concept, but concepts don't interest me much. Too sappy & movie soundtrack-ish for my tastes; almost too pretty for its own good.






Panda Bear, "Young Prayer" -- Haunting and alienated; really makes me want to hear more solo stuff from Animal Collective's "quiet one". I think Panda's genius and contributions to AC are often overshadowed by Avey, but hopefully a couple more solo releases can cure that.






Wolf Eyes, "Human Animal" -- I always used to get Wolf Eyes mixed up with Wolf Parade. I never got into the latter, and since I always associated the former with them, I never bought a Wolf Eyes album. I decided to give them a shot during one of my latest spending sprees at Pure Pop (they're happening way too often lately), and I'm glad I did. Very industrial and weird; reminds me of some compositions I did for my Solah film series.






OOIOO, "Taiga" -- How many influences and genres can you stuff into a single album? Ask OOIOO. I can hear influences of Miles Davis, Tom Ze, John Zorn, tribal drumming, Tom Waits (listen to "UJA" and try to tell me it doesn't remind you of "Earth Died Screaming"), etc. Weird, wild stuff...






Black Dice, "Creature Comforts" --Nice, strange, sometimes goofy, sometimes angry noise compositions. Very abstract, but with an inherent cohesiveness. I've only had a single rush listening to their new album "Broken Ear Record", but from what I heard it sounds like they've evolved a bit in their sound.




Ok, these are admittedly half-assed reviews. But hopefully they might give some folks enough initiative to give one or two a listen. But if not, oh well--I'm not getting paid to do this thing so I can say whatever I want. Crap hell damn poop. Such overwhelming power....

**evil laughter ensues**

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great list :)

I've always enjoyed that panda bear album, but i remember alot of people saying it was too...waifish... I thought it was perfect morning coffee, ease into the day music.

Have you heard the story about his father?

jay said...

I heard that his father died shortly before he made the album--is that the story or is it more complicated?

Anonymous said...

I went to High School with Ed and for our Jr year we were best friends, I also robotripped with Ed he was a great guy I am saddened by his death I have a cassette of some of his work from high school. We grew apart our senior year but honestly he was my first "best friend"
Dylan

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