Glyph
Glyph is worse than some and better than others. He believes that life is just one damned thing after another, that only pop music can save us now, and that mercy is the mark of a great man (but he's just all right). Nothing he writes here should be taken as an indication that he knows anything about anything.
Thanks to your generosity, we were able to upgrade our service plan. Hopefully this will help us address some of our performance issues.
Devcat is done with rearranging local software extensions. If anyone notices any problems, say so :^)
on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024If your band is named Unto Others, you have some cheesy pickup lines for groupies ready-made. “Hey b… on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024Ah, good to know. Thanks!
on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024It has been as messy around here as I can remember in years, especially with the temps staying so lo… on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024In 2024 I enjoyed Unto Others and their mission to bring some goth rock in the 21st century. Video i…
on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024If a comment with a link is edited, WordPress automatically throws the comment into moderation. This… on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024Guessed what this was before I clicked. I need to see if I can find a way into it - I listened to it… on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024Thanks. I think what might have happened was I was editing one of the YT links to a shorter one, and…
on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024A local record shop said their favorite album was this double album and I thought well, maybe it’ll…
on President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERAThe bill that passed the ERA in Congress specified a seven-year deadline for ratification. That expi…
on President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERACan someone explain this for a foreigner? As I understand it, an amendment has either been ratified…
January 17, 2025
January 16, 2025
January 15, 2025
Moving Picture of a Cartoonist Concocting a War Cartoon
January 14, 2025
on President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERA
on SCOTUS Upholds TikTok Ban: Read It For Yourself
on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024 on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024
on President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERA on Short Status Report on the Abilities of AI on Short Status Report on the Abilities of AI on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024
on Greenland Won’t Be Red, White, and Blue
on President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERA on President Biden Affirms the Passage of the ERA
on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024 on Greenland Won’t Be Red, White, and Blue on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024 on Weekend Plans Post: One Single Good Song in 2024
electronic shoegaze and no mention of fck buttons? (not sure if the no cursing thing is still in effect)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hQXSsbQCMs
good post though.
somewhat related: when a band i don’t care for releases a really good video i’m never sure if it enhances the music or merely dials down whatever it is i find objectionable.Report
Oooh, dangit, good catch. I should have included them, I forgot. I really like Tarot Sport (and the first one is decent), but the new one is kind of dull to me.
But I seem to be in the minority….I know you and BP both said you were digging it.
Report
And forgot to ask – which one is the objectionable band/good video?
I have to include this Motor video. I thought the track I included above was slightly catchier, but this no-budget video is great (it took me a minute to figure out why the “German” was holding his hands that way, but once you look up a picture of the titular plane, it becomes obvious, and hilarious).
(Though I would have gone with labeling the bottle “Stuk-Away”).Report
purity ring and teflon tel aviv are both things i recognize as being at least somewhat well made but find no cheddar in.Report
Ah, gotcha. On the PR front, that’s not surprising, since to me they sound sort of similar to Grimes (to whom you’ve already said “no thanks”), and Chvrches, for whom everybody is going crazy, but I find a bit busy (and, very similar-sounding to the preceding two artists).Report
“Ah, gotcha. On the PR front, that’s not surprising, since to me they sound sort of similar to Grimes (to whom you’ve already said “no thanks”), and Chvrches, for whom everybody is going crazy, but I find a bit busy (and, very similar-sounding to the preceding two artists).”
yeah to be honest them and the other 50 bands in brooklyn that have sounded like them for the past five years are pretty interchangeable.
that said, there are worse things to rehash than 4ad, right?Report
oh also forgot this 80s meets the aughties by way of the 90s classic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sR7eADGQYg8
hey do you like the sight below? (the new album by the fields is good as well)Report
Heh…I didn’t forget OPN, I just had a different track slotted under a different header in next week’s post.
AFAIK, never listened to The Sight Below…any tracks you’d recommend?
And I find The Field dull, dull, dull. Which is weird, since I like the whole Kompakt/Gas thing. Couldn’t tell you why Field doesn’t work for me. Matthew Dear is similar – on paper, sounds like my deal…in practice, aside from a couple tracks, meh.
I even went to the Field show to see if it would click live, and ended up drinking and chatting outside on the patio instead.
I saw the P4k review that seemed to say the new one is a little darker/more aggressive? That could work.Report
I guess I slightly lied on The Sight Below…now that I am back at my computer, I apparently have 1 track – a cover of “New Dawn Fades”.Report
i liked glider (the album) quite a bit
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL95F26C5804A41443
i like the new fields album, it’s far more “composed” if that makes any sense. plus the first track is a banger.
matthew dear always sounded like he was kidding.Report
Hey, I like that! Added to my list. Definitely Gassy. 🙂
Playing The Field’s From Here We Go Sublime again, it occurs to me that in comparison to Gas or TSB, Willner foregrounds or emphasizes certain elements that more traditionally signify “time to dance!” – the tempos are little faster, the rhythm elements are less vaporous and “sharper” (like the off-beat hi-hat sounds); yet like Gas, he remains committed to stasis – the songs seemingly never really progress much past their initial states to any sort of peak. I think my brain finds something about that contradiction frustrating.
With Gas I am willing to stay and luxuriate in the atmosphere indefinitely; but with The Field I feel like I’m on a train that just never gets going.
I was really excited about everything I read about Matthew Dear back in the beginning, but I gave up on him after buying two albums and an EP under his own name, plus an Audion album. None of them ever grabbed me. I liked “Dog Days” and a few other tracks, but like I said that Alex Smoke album, on first play, was the album I had been hearing in my head and wanting since reading about Dear.
It even has a track that beats “Dog Days” at its own game (“Don’t See The Point” – I’d include a link, but the one that is on YT has something wrong with the sound file, it doesn’t sound right).Report
i definitely see what you’re saying, but i feel it’s unfair to compare anything to gas. those albums are sick as hell. sure, on one level they’re just the orb meets basic channel, but it’s so dang sublime, especially on a good pa in a large club.
i like that alex smoke track, i’ll have to track some other stuff down.
but yeah matthew dear is exciting to someone i guess, i dunno. i think it’s the same folk who decided herbert was jesus.Report
Awright, Amazon had the new Field for stupid-cheap (like, possibly-mispriced-sub-$3-cheap) download, so I picked it up. Listening now…Report
That song is really about as warm as Ladytron ever sounds, isn’t it? The cold monotone is part of what makes them cool, though.
Felix da Housecat reminds me of when MARS-FM was still a thing here in Los
SantosAngeles. I freaking loved MARS-FM. And I liked the Alex Smith song that drove me mad trying to remember the German electronica band that made similarly spacey-sounding dance tracks. The Motor song (is “song” the right word? Songs have lyrics.) reminds me a little bit of Underworld with its powerful bass. Maybe without the unintelligibly distorted lyrics.I almost skipped over the song with Robert Smith on vocals because I didn’t think the old 10cc song needed to be remade in electronica style any more after Olive did it so nicely. But it turned out to be a different song altogether, worth my time, so thanks for that.
Sorry, but I thought the Nathan Pink and M83 numbers were uninteresting. The Ulrich Schnauss was not, although I’d need to be in the right mood to bother with it again as anything other than background music. The Jatun track — you’re sure that’s not a guitar?
Love this stuff. Keep it coming!Report
@burt-likko
Thanks Burt!
If “song” doesn’t feel right, go with “track” or “tune” (but I won’t judge you, any way you go).
The Ladytron album (Witching Hour) that song comes from is really good (I highly recommend it), but I am not otherwise a huge fan of their records, and having seen them twice – save your cash if they come around, they are not great live.
That Felix album is a ridiculous amount of fun. I played the heck out of that for a long time.
That Motor record, I bought strictly on the basis of its cover/font. I could just tell what was inside, and I was right. I was expecting stripped-down, single-minded Nitzer Ebb-style proto-techno; one of the Nitzer Ebb guys actually guests on one track, a fact I just found out while I was putting the post together. It’s refreshingly, unpretentiously intense – it just wants to move, like a shark (with frickin’ lasers on its head).
I HATE that 10cc song. The most amazing production, in the service of the worst lyrics.
Weirdly, though I originally had assumed Robert Smith wrote the lyrics to THIS “Not In Love” (they sound like the kind of lyrics he could write in his sleep – particularly the way he draws out “fasc-i-na-tion”) – it is apparently a cover.
This band looks like some 80’s hair band that heard U2 and The Call, and was desperately trying to change direction.
We’d have to ask our Canadian contacts for more info:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1_PM5nLZeIReport
I love every single one of these tracks. Ulrich Schnauss is what dreams sound like.Report
I’m with Jay. I skipped ahead to the Crystal Castles and M83 songs, because I already like those bands, but then went back and liked everything. MOTOR is going on my list.Report
Thanks guys!
It means a lot, seriously, to hear that people enjoy these.
I used to fake-DJ on Fridays – they were just two consumer-type CD decks, with a crappy cheap mixer between them, and it was a funky little late-night coffee shop, and I got “paid” in free chocolate-covered espresso beans and under-the-counter booze.
And it was a *great* time – I figured hey, I’d probably be drinking and listening to records on a Friday night anyway – so why not do it there? And it sort of scratched the same itch these posts do.
Hangin’ out, playing tunes, trying to link & assemble them into some sort of narrative.
With these posts, I can explain my thought process, plus I don’t have to mix at all – which mitigates some of the more egregious “WTF?!” random awkward whiplash “transitions” I perpetrated on the poor customers, who often had no idea what theme I was running in my head.
Music is better when you share it.
I also liked this CC remix:
Report
Dude, I look forward to hump days because of your posts.
And since I have basically been listening to nothing but hip hop and electronic music for like 3 months now, these last two have definitely hit the spot.Report
I don’t know about you, but that Telefon Tel Aviv video (which was unofficial – I just checked the guys who did it, and they also did that really great-yet-sad animated Burial video I used in that post) is one of the most poetic-yet-accurate visual depictions of depression (as I’ve experienced it) that I’ve ever seen – what it feels like to be in that mental state (being present, and yet not, in the middle of your own life – everything seems impossibly distant, objects and people alternating between looking grotesquely ugly and heartbreakingly beautiful), and wanting to just blow everything away.
EDITED TO ADD: I could be reading the video that way because of the lyrics, which I can’t totally make out (and don’t want to look up, because I probably won’t like them as much, when it inevitably turns out I have been mishearing them all this time); the chorus (as I hear it) appears to contradict itself – “Life is beautiful…(I can’t see it that way)”Report
When it comes to recycling 70s and 80s thematically, few do it better than Steven Wilson.Report
That song just transported me to a strange alternate 1980s in which Rush was collaborating with Jan Hammer to score those car chases in Miami Vice.
Which sounds pretty cool, when you think about it.Report
Steven Wilson is an extraordinary mimic of all those odd 70s moments. Exquisite, proustian nostalgia in a long simmered stew. What Pink Floyd might have been if Roger Waters hadn’t been such a bitter, sweaty, unpleasant dick.Report
… thing is, I could never go back to this sort of thing. Like Lot’s Wife, if I ever turn back to look back at Sodom of the 60s and 70s burning, I will be turned to a pillar of salt. I’ve seen it happen to people. My brother is one. Now the silly man can’t listen to new music, still soulfully singing along to all that old shit. I can’t do it. I endured it once and would never return willingly. His son is a huge Rush fan, great guitarist. His son and I talk music a lot. Played together for quite a while. In some ways, I’m closer to him than anyone but my own children. Special bond. Kid just loves that stuff.
Late 60s, 70s, Steven Wilson can have ’em, my nephew, too. Lenny Kravitz could do a spot-on interpretation of those times, too. Someone else can still enjoy them, that’s great. But I have too many pins in the cork board from that era. Can’t dissociate the music from the era. Glyph, it was just a terrible time to be alive.
— this by way of explanation for being a jerk on your previous post.Report
No worries.
(and No Dubstep). 😉Report
I encounter people of my age, still trapped in the past, making stupid noises about Music These Days, especially about “Rap Music”. It’s alternately amusing and horrifying. Brrr! Just dying of The Stupids. But it’s equally embarrassing to find younger people discussing music and getting that weird look, “what’s a man your age know about Baths and Bassnectar and Zedd?” — well, li’l darlings, I can no more go without new music than clean clothes… and Bassnectar lifted all those neat little buzzy noises from square wave oscillators twice as old as you are.
Towards the end, my old man became progressively deafer. It was the saddest part of watching him grow old, for he was a great music lover. I got him a really good pair of over the ear headphones and a little ten band parametric equaliser / preamp setup.
People who won’t open their ears to new music might as well be deaf. Swear I’d rather be blind than deaf.Report
Baths is actually coming ’round my neck of the woods pretty soon. Thanks to you, if I can get out of the house for a few hours (always a dubious proposition at this point) I will probably try to get over there and check him out.Report
Speaking of deafness, if we can all hang on a little longer, they’ve gotten mice to regrow the necessary teensy ear hair follicles, and reversed their hearing loss.
Sure, it’ll probably go too far and we’ll all have hairy ears (and I am unsure if it will be able to do anything about this infernal ringing!), but it looks promising.Report
I’d take the hairy ears. Big old donkey ears if need be. It will be a mark of distinction. Hey, I have ears! And I have a brain to connect them to.
Oh yeah.
Just found this. Might tide you over till Will hits town.
May have linked this before. These guys are just down the road from me.Report
Do you suffer from tinnitus? Had it for years. Too long around artillery and amplifiers. The people I know who’ve dealt with it go down two routes, with varying degrees of success.
Route 1: sleep better, cut down on the caffeine and get some melatonin in your diet. Tinnitus is a teeny-tiny feedback loop in your head. You can hear it in an old amp left on, that same hum develops. Just three octaves down.
Route 2: meditation. Hard work, meditation. Sorta like going through the house at night, turning off all the extra lights you left on here and there. That was another thing I hated about the late 60s and 70s, this lah-dee-dah Eastern Mysticism bullshit which said this stuff is easy, just have a few tokes of good weed and bliss out. That’s not meditation. The weed, well, I have no problem with that. It’s a treat for me and I keep it that way. But I always clean up the house and get shit right before I indulge. But you can’t meditate stoned. Turns all my metaphorical lights on, so to speak.Report
You know the old “would you rather go deaf, or blind?” game? It always amazed me when people would choose “deaf” so quickly.
I mean, I would probably ultimately go that direction too…if nothing else, a deaf person can make their way around in the world more easily than can a blind one – but man, it should be a tough call, and many people didn’t act like it was.
To never hear music; or children’s laughter, or the voice of your beloved; or rain outside, when you are warm and dry somewhere; ever again?
That has got to be deeply depressing.Report
Well, for now the caffeine is here to stay. The ringing comes and goes, and I do know what you mean about it being a feedback loop. It’s almost like an earworm, except instead of a song it’s a tone.
I know many other people apparently can’t do this, but I am able, sometimes, to break it consciously. Stop thinking about it (admittedly, this can sometimes be hard) and it will often go away.
White noise also sometimes helps in this regard.Report