April 1, 2024 -- MESSLURE - SUITE -- I'll get back to posting on this come summer. This semester's a bummer. I'm so excited for the world to hear this. Also, I was going to post something a month ago about how THE PINE - DEMO TAPE has some of the best performances ever and feels like defeat. I'm doing slightly better now. Also the promo video for this on the Messlure Instagram is one of the most embarassing things I've ever done, laugh out loud, Larry.

February 23, 2024 -- THE CONEHEADS - COLEKTED MIX -- Mark Winter is the last punk alive. (I say, as I live in the suburbs.) So tired of social-climber metalcore and jock-twinkle appropriations of The Ergs!, music either fully dissonant or fully melodic. Punk is just a bit of misanthropy. Hardcore is everything else. Maybe I agree with Mark McCoy, punk should be more insular. And it should be more weird and bands should be bands and nothing more. Fuck subgenre. Make it rock, make it yourself. And then, if it's not interesting, that's on you, and that's fine. All the interesting music was made by the guys in wigs, or at least, the interesting music was not punk. Highly recommended.

February 22, 2024 -- ALAMODALITY - COUNTY -- I was listening back to my own album loudly on over-ear headphones home on my reading week while doing work just reflecting on it and then my mom not knowing it was my own music but being distracted by the headphone bleed told me to turn it down or listen to something else and I love my mom and she supports me uniformly in whatever I create and choose to create but I have never felt more liberated -- and I know all it was was just distracting her from doing her work. But it's weird to hear what someone actually thinks. And that's what I have wanted to hear all along.

February 20, 2024 -- DEEP TURTLE - RIP-OFF DOKUMENTO -- I miss when rock music was on any edge of innovation. I'm listening to EvilGiane and EERA's mix for NTS from a couple years back, the one with a frowny face on the SoundCloud cover. I remember the massive wave of hype these guys had. Throwing skatepark shows when COVID was lifting slowly. Realistically this trap, trap same as ever, with weirder drums -- plugg-derived but not plugg, enough different that it was its 'own' thing. Using a lot more samples than the dominant stock-plugin ethereal melodies -- returning to the sample-based roots of hiphop. It does feel like a new combination, but more importantly, it was somewhat of an event -- EvilGiane has gone off to more successful ventures, my beloved Moh Baretta is not really affiliated with these guys anymore. It is weird to think that all art, all things, are, or were, events. This is my central thesis being a record enthusiast -- I am merely a librarian among dilapidated shelves of MP3s. I more remember the energy, the wave that Surf Gang had when there was hype surrounding it -- they are still around of course, but the Rolling Stone and Vice articles coupled with this mix -- which did feel like, to certain overly analytical (white) internet rap fans, an updated TREAD MIXXX by Working on Dying -- a manifesto, a "fuck you, we're here". But now EVILGIANE AND EERA NTS MIX #SURFGANG is another entry in the infinite library of MP3s -- and if you don't read the room (the comments, a Google search, etc. -- the internet's response to liner notes), this may be just a weird mix of rap music. Such is the fate of many meritous works -- they are contextual, not by any fault of their own. Is it possible to make something exist in a vacuum? Unless you live within the pure logic of Bach's sheet music, or the pure illogic of Beefheart's screams and improvised composition, no (the making of TMR is really inspiring). So as a good procrastinator primarily and as an attempt to perform my custodial duties, I often look up the release or the artist and try to find stuff. If I find the music doesn't do much for me, it's transient text, wasted time. But when its a document, a record that stands on its own, I immediately start scouring. And the weirdest thing is that it's just people that make records, no savants, nothing. There are so few geniuses. I think they're all math framework builders, the Galois' and Grothendieck's of the world. There are good musicians who put consideration into their composition, and there are some that don't and turn out just great. And they are just people. I'm thinking of looking for stuff on STABSCOTCH and they are just guys. They have chemistry degrees. (Well maybe that explains something). Deep Turtle, for being both technically and practically one of the best bands to ever exist, have little legacy to leave behind -- well, a Peel Session, so they are not bedroom toilers or lightning-strikers, not Heaviside's. Any interviews probably just exist in zines whose limited editions languish slovenly in basement, attic storage. I look them up and find deadlink blogspots, a horrible, suburbian band of blues covers, and about three photos. This is perfect, or near. And it's mostly forgotten, except by a weird ring of pirates online and nerds of the 90s (with some overlap) who care to be librarians. But it's not that prestigious, this job of un-forgetting and retromania -- but its the redundancy of the internet, this the fact that it casts such a wide net, this un-forgetting and retromania, that one is able to, off of purely secondary sources, cobble together a story. That is so weird, but I'm thankful because things like this exist and are un-forgotten, and I am able to witness their splendor. And we know of so many things throughout history -- especially medieval stuff -- purely off of secondary sources. The internet is like a medieval monastic library -- but more like the Library of Babel. There are many meritous works that are contextual. But history favours those that have that power, whatever that immortal power is contained in great works that you feel right down to the quick, that it's speaking to you away from history, personally, like it is a whole world, something innate about it, despite all the contextual power that's been lost -- context is used to explain certain turns of phrase in Plato, but we do not read Plato for context, we read it because it is Plato and countless generations have learned to fall in love with it (but I'm a tough crowd). And Deep Turtle, for how great they are in this way that feels timeless -- yet still very early 90s -- love to push up against things. I found this and its textual merit precisely because it feels radical. And I feel most works of said immortal power have this aswell. And that is why it is so hard to make anything of that stature -- accessible and radical, in other words, new. And there are so few ideas. Especially with guitars anymore. Pat Flegel probably has the rest, don't quote me. People are so afraid to try anything new, and try anything new not because they have to, but because they want to and it makes sense, ie. the way personal progress happens. Me too. I just want to be the bassist in a Deep Turtle cover band. Highly recommended.

February 17, 2024 -- A CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES, by JOHN TOOLE -- Amazing that the definitive document on 4chan was written 40 years before its existence. But more importantly, it is fun. A lot of fun. Like the platonic ideal sitcom-farce season. Everything is ludicrous. Highly recommended.

February 16, 2024 -- BAD LUCK BANGING, OR LOONY PORN dir. Radu Jude, 2021 -- Really, really good. Not perfect, but it would be lesser if it was. A message at once beaten over your head yet you have to think to grasp the subtleties. At this point in recent memory, this is a throwback film as well -- to when masks were cultural, people had customized, stupid ones, and also a throwback to the political effect that lockdowns and COVID had, the moment that everything was finally, fully moved online. And this film, to act out its great politi-Kafka debate scene, has to define its terms through part II -- a very aphoristic video essay, which I had heard was compared to an art documentary -- really, Jude manages to convey his thoughts about all of the 'signs' or terms through a very blunt, oblique and erudite way, largely through metaphor, aphorism, or brutal literalism and honesty -- but, so as to not get full of itself, is quite low-brow aswell, featuring multiple vertical videos, it reminds you that it is, after all, about pornography -- not without a certain sadness (Jude's previous films dealt much more directly with the abuses of power and history and this one is no exception). And the first part -- you do figure out the story, but dialogue is sparse and utilitarian -- you figure out that Emi (played with insane commitment by Katia Pascariu) is an upright, if imperfect citizen after seeing her go about her day -- she wears her blazer with professionalism. Showing, not telling, and shots linger, allowing you to question (but never really -- you know this film is smart) the intentionality of the shots -- is this supposed to be commentary on Paw Patrol? This film uses its devices wisely, well and creatively, for example the use of only subtitles during Part 2 -- the thoughts imposing themselves on the images; the inspired use of editing and montage throughout warrant the Godard comparisons. Similarly, this is a film that is not perfect, very much not so, but like Godard's films, its imperfection is a spirit, an alive spirit, that may make it a favourite for the same reason some of Godard's are favourites. Recommended.

February 8, 2024 -- FAUST - THE FAUST TAPES -- Whoa. I don't know why this clicks with my brain so much. I can only take so much wank. This is like a less dissonant (except for the noise), more playful version of their self-titled. It reminds me in a way of Brigitte Fontaine, one of my favourite artists, and her experimentation that is so a/effecting because it feels so basal and weird -- let's take our voices and one guitar and whatever we have around and play and record it. If we take the phylogeny example further, you can only do so much variation within a more specified subgenre -- homoplasy, of course, is not parsimonous -- and entirely runs the risk of feeling extremely forced (I remember turning off The Chariot's One Wing due to its utterly pariodic attempt to fuse genres, and doing so at a higher level of collage rather than actually mixing, changing the DNA of songs -- and for this to happen, you often have to break out of traditional song structure (see Hairdryer Peace), but then you run the risk of just jamming, signifying nothing -- that's why I love Brigitte Fontaine, Araçá Azul, Danse Manatee etc). This seems like a mixtape of weird shit Faust was doing at the time, and that's why I love it so much. And when they decide to do Can (J'ai mal aux dents) or Floyd (Flashback Caruso) they do it so well, but it never feels like they're doing that as much as they are doing Faust -- something totally unto themselves. This was a whole bunch of artists on the payroll of some rich guy to record tapes in one of the most serendipitous times in history, when everyone could have a record deal, and although that meant a lot, a lot of shit, due to its time in the history of rock music the experimentation was not channeling something as much as it was experimenting, feeling out the boundaries and sidestepping them. Now, you can do everything, you can make a wall of noise (and several people are famous for doing so) or a Bandcamp opera for ferns, but that's no fun because you're not interested in misusing rich people's money for your weird sound experiments with rock instruments as much as now, everyone is channeling something. I'm thinking about how Simon Reynolds describes the lack of depth in today's listening -- it used to be, you couldn't afford records, each record damn well meant something, or you had to catch John Peel and be like what the fuck was that. You had to find a skeleton key into everything you listened to if you wanted your money's worth -- hence, the hyper-derivation and regionality of local music scenes -- not saying the derivativeness is a bad thing. The Pine is great even if they're practically fan-fiction of the band Evergreen -- again, things take on different contexts due to the lack of context when you acquire a regional record outta context. Before it was driven underground, experimental rock music -- this included -- at its infancy was not regional at all. The international cross-pollination that resulted from this being in record stores and grad-students like Henry Cow being on Virgin Records was, in retrospect, a beautiful thing that will never happen again. Because now, you don't have to force yourself to love this or Henry Cow like you did back then when any-one could buy this, you can continue down your comfortable niche. And I think that even the most irredeemable noise -- if genuine -- ought to be burrowed in, but few pieces of mixtape-like irredeemable noise are as potent with ideas (due to again how primordial this is) as this one is, and moreover, it may have encouraged someone to create something not channeling any music noun, but some feeling or drive to experiment. Also, read Retromania by Simon Reynolds if you consider yourself an active music listener at all, please. Highly recommended.

February 3, 2024 -- BUILT TO SPILL - PERFECT FROM NOW ON -- Real good and in a strange place. 90's indie is the death of history to me. A lot of shit got weird but the front edge was pushed much more to the boundaries and sequestered into things, scenes, subgenres of derivation after this -- and with the underground, there was stuff pushed down so far it became diamonds like Animal Collective or The Pine, or simply masters of a derivative craft -- I love Trapped Under Ice. And record labels were complicit in this because they didn't want another Kurt Cobain on their payroll, but still, for a brief time after the wall-painting incident, before the typification of 'hardcore', 'indie', 'grunge', into Spotify algorithms etc., record labels took chances with 2-album deals with inoffensive little bands from college towns -- some of whom harbored potential genius, and benefitted from studio time from someone else's bank. This is Doug Martsch's big swing and a hit for something like a magnum opus, and he almost struck out: it took three separate album-recordings to get an album out of his ideas (and I love how he said, in a retrosepctive interview, that he's not that great of a guitarist -- normalize world-class songwriters who suck at their instruments! not like any of the playing here sucks, it's prettay, prettay good). And yet I'm most enthralled with something like the most traditional song on here, the one whose structure was first affirmed (the first recording made the final cut): Made-Up Dreams, which is maybe not the blue-sky highway perfection of Carry the Zero, but at the very least is a ballad for plenty of times, and that time he hits the high-note is what Glass Beach has derived their entire career from, and he knew when to end this song too (unlike them - yeah owned) -- it just does. It took me so long to learn -- you don't need an epic bridge in every song. This song has a peak and then a denoutment and calls it quits, which is beautiful. But the rest of the songs are strange suites and pop songs with slacker Hendrix addendums -- awesome. So melancholy. Or the time changes on Out of Sight/Site, and the Nirvana reference. I don't know, speaking of call-backs, I think as a 15-year-old I was so taken aback at Randy Described Eternity (which to me, fills the niche that some get from Leaves Turn Inside You, in a fraction of the runtime) and its beginning metaphor -- a sunday-school explanation of forever (recurring themes in this blog, oh horrors!) that is backed by a great central guitar line, and so great, you fail to realize, most of the song is two chords -- that I failed to listen listen to the rest of the album, and it is probably the best possible form of the 'indie' balladry of pasty 90's white guys afraid of power chords -- the songcraft on this is great, as the drums, as the atmosphere, as Martsch's voice, as the lyrics, as it all. It's real good, and the type of real good where you have to think about what's being thrown at you, realizing it's not some random thing, this is orchestrated and intentioned. Highly recommended.

January 31, 2024 -- SHELLAC - THE RUDE GESTURE: A PICTORAL HISTORY -- Damn fine. Shellac can be one note (and they have played with more breadth and depth with that one note than most bands will ever) and their albums -- I fall into first-track syndrome with. I love 'My Black Ass' and 'Pull the Cup', but could not tell you what comes next. It is easy to forget that sometimes bands will put all of their effort into an EP or single quite regularly and usually with more frequency -- less time, space to fuck up. And Shellac offers a charcuterie of styles here -- the dread of The Man Who Invented Fire, the stomp of Rambler Song, and the -- emotional sensitivity? beauty? ..wait, I'm talking about SHELLAC, right? Steve Albini, Mr. Anemic Fedora Big Black Northwestern Plexiglass Peter Sotos Associate Big Mac Plumber Pragmatic Proto-Edgelord Steve [none] Albini? ...Yeah, I am. That's why I am so enthralled with Billiard Player Song, which to me, and maybe only me, sounds like one of the best forgotten emo songs of the 90s that just happened to be written by Steve Albini. And it reminds me, that sometimes, like with the phylogeny of history, of ideas, some tossed off idea by a master forms a discipline -- the footnotes to Plato hypothesis. Except this isn't preceeding (edit: I looked at the dates, it sorta is? Or I feel like a lot of the classics of this type of emo song were written kinda contemporary to this, or slightly after. Anywho), this just happens to be, hey, I'm going to write a song like this in my band that writes music within the same clade, the 90s ("post"-"hardcore") alternative guitar music tradition. And there are bands where you wish you could browse an infinite library of songs of their one style because it's so good and so limited, and there are bands of each song is a new plunge, each song is a new idea, not like the last one. And Shellac didn't strike me as that band -- they play such a strange brand of noise rock that I might call post-rock, better than the crescendocore-o'-yore. Their albums are a good kind of redundant but do strike me as somewhat redundant -- sure, with some variations, but they have a style. This EP is a great distillation because it is a charcuterie -- hey, look, we can write a song like this, we can write a song like this, and we can write a song like this (the bolded one, of course, being Billiard Player Song.) I don't know. I think of that Bolano quote where he talks of the miracle that I will ascribe to the survival of the classics -- (I'm paraphrasing, to be clear) -- where to be sure a work is great, translate it, rip it up, lose it, put it in an attic -- and if it is found dilapidated like that, and someone still falls in love with it, someone still puts it up and takes it within themselves, adds to it some value, or just lets it be unforgotten for another day, then it is great. And maybe that is the value of the EP within punk circles, and especially within emo circles, where we don't want too many rarities comps coming out. We like the abstrusity, mythology, false scarcity of something that may be great, and can speak to us, but like all great works, partially keeps living because people keep appropriating it into their image. And is love not a bit of appropriation of carbon? Depends on who you ask -- and I'm sure whichever piece of Albini that made Billiard Player Song would have a different answer than the one that produced Kerosene. And I wish that piece got let out more, or maybe it does, a lot, and he's just as great a contortionist as anything else. For all his pragmaticism, all artists gotta lie. Recommended.

January 27, 2024 -- GUITAR FIGHT FROM FOOLY COOLY - SOAK -- Great! Really! Much more than the name would have you believe. This is the kind of post-Heccra-post-HORSE The Band-punk-pop-power that makes driving more fun, similar vibe to Liquid Mike of this is the rush of really good live music on a record that isn't the reason I love the Brave Little Abacus, this is good beer music, again, as I repeat myself from the last entry. I wish more music that was this chuggy was this direct, the structures are oddly complex on this one, but still very poppy, and this is a band also knowing that one verse and a breakdown (if you have a good enough hook) is more than enough. stay hydrated, fuck em, for its meme anime single cover and equivalent title, is a great piece of writing. Same with Teens//Candle, which is a song deserving to be in the arsenal of many a bad 17 year old decision. I wish that this record was the current state of pop punk. That is all, probably one of the best possible debut albums from a punk band possible (the platonic ideal, of course, is Title Fight's Shed, or if you want to get weird then Shmap'n Shmazz).

January 24, 2024 -- TARANTEL - GHETTO BEATS FROM THE SURFACE OF THE SUN -- I'm thinking about a lot. Well, if you want to cap this paragraph with a word-opinion on Tarantel, Tarantel are fucking great, listen to them. I'm thinking about what Lester Bangs wrote for Peter Laughner, hating music in theory more than in practice, what is to be achieved in a day, Leucine zippers. I'm listening to Tarantel. I think of the actual reason why I don't like social media, and how much time I waste in spite, I guess to show my difference, my supposed betterness... Lester Bangs was realizing how Peter was also wasting his time with drugs, thinking it's the image and not that the image is quite coincedental (bands should not have TikTok -- the MESSLURE TikTok is a joke, and only Connor has the password) -- I don't need drugs to waste my time, but I get it, because I use caffeine similarly as (in alternating cycles) a life-defining excuse and aid in pursuits. And I either don't own up to myself or I hate myself. I'm listening to Tarantel, I have it on to read a textbook on molecular biology, something I am now realizing is a lot deeper than plants, and may be more interesting, or at least it would seem smarter to the exterior, -- but it is also interesting, I find, quite interesting, like taking biochem and realizing so that's the actual, actual mechanism, if you get any deeper than this it's all equations and powders, it all depends on this, I'm pissed off that Scaruffi spoiled a bit of 2666 for me, and that has shocked me -- temporarily, I'm sure -- out of browsing, out of reading nothing, because he's fine as a stats chart, but not as reading, it's not a chronology, or if it is one, not one focused on interrelationships, the connexions, the thinking-as-forgetting (of Funes, His Memory)that made the mind of Borges special, no, it's a chronology of information, the same information that makes Wikipedia not place on any list of great books, although it is pretty great and you can't say society is any worse for it, it's not what started the deficit model. That's just not how I see the world, my memory is too poor. I am a walking contradiction, and I can own up as much as I want, I will continue to be until something happens. I hate the sonambulism I'm in every day. Why must I look at the screen? Why can Cameron just sit down and read his textbook what makes me unable I don't know. The internet is an oracle, as going to it in a time of need is surely advisable, but people can get addicted to a fake future in a very futile manner similar to the internet. Tarantel sounds like the gaps between my grey matter. Tarantel sounds like the same doubt you comfort yourself with -- mood music -- but not vibe, mood. The texture on this album never ceases to amaze me, and the mixing, and the drumming! How much does one typically go back to a noise album like this? Or -- it's jazz musicians playing noise instruments. Drones that sound a lot more lifelike in their warped tonality, very acoustic, imperfect tonality. I feel like this music occupies not even a strata of emotion as much as a field recording of the unconcious -- with the words returned to their pre-lingual, animalian impulses. Like the Skaters and why we love them. I love phylogeny and protists -- most of them branched off so early, it's like they failed the audition to become a kingdom. This feels like a more focused Angus Maclise, who like a protist branched off so early in the Western noise tradition this kind of tonal noise, textural noise is rarer than it ought to be. It's not post-rock, fuck off. Recommended.

January 22, 2024 -- CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM S05E07 - THE SEDER -- Amazing. I think Larry David, in an alternate life, would have written short stories (good TV Writing and short stories are quite homologous) -- how everything perfectly coalesces into a comedy of manners reminds me acutely of Wodehouse. It is a bit more crass, sure, but he's writing from this side of history, the athlesiure side, not the learned 1900s Wodehouse writes from -- and the character of Larry David is the crass one, he would blow up the whole social code given the chance, and every situation he fumbles shows how he is the harbringer of the new age, away from archaic formalities, too autistic or just annoying to lie or keep relations buoyant with half-truths, letting go and saying no (or yes) -- but it is a comedy of manners, Larry David is a fool, and he would be the first to tell you that. But the greatest part of the show is how Larry is right sometimes, how his ludicrous personal code of ethics does have an internal logic that is crafted not by a cruel mind, just a petty, short-sighted, but fundamentally just mind. Larry is the id, the one stupid enough to call out what is actually felt, how the emporer has no clothes, but ultimately, it's a comedy, a story of a fool, and a very funny one, and it is in a long line of stories about fools that make you think somewhat about their virtues.

January 21, 2024 -- ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER - RUSSIAN MIND -- Good, with the best song of all times on there and some runners-up. As a science-as-religion kid tricked into artistic pursuits, piano music became far more with the mystical technology and futuristic timbre of the synthesizer. The prices and unattainability helped build this interest -- spurring on sporadic reading and brand recognition. I found most synthesizer music, however, aimless or at least not technological enough. I only found respite in Michael Hoenig, Software and maybe some middle Kraftwerk. Or maybe the reverse -- I found Oneohtrix first and was fascinated by the distinctly electronic timbres he could make, leaning into and not away from the technological side. Either way, soon enough I branched out to Raymond Scott, Wendy Carlos and other protozoan arcane and dareisay cold records. But despite my preference for historicity, if I were asked to choose one synth record for the rest of my life, I would choose Rifts, and not because it is perfect, but because it has Physical Memory, a song which acts like the logical solution and conducer for a panic attack -- all will fade, it does not matter, or stop worrying, or, you know how big this place is? We've been at this, trying to figure everything out on this planet for hundreds and hundreds of years, and even still, both paths lead toward that emotional acceptance, that bitter pill, that you have to let life fade, and cherish it before it does, and nurture it but remember, that it happened, and you tried your best and you believed, but it happened for a reason, a causality a bit beyond our understanding, enough so to call it an ecology, that has been in place far before you and after you and around you that you have to recognize you are an atom as much as atoms are. Maybe it connected the foreverness I wished to feel -- computers, if nothing corrupts (in retrospect, like that ever happens), go on forever, and I cried this crying to my Grandmother when I was five, how you load a computer, awake it back from death, and you find the world as you left it -- why was this their exclusive right? You're telling me I have to die forever? But I want to live! We went up to her birthplace with her, when we still could, that was, and I was listening to Oneohtrix, Replica that is, contemplating the impermeable rocks of the Canadian Shield. Or this is all revision, but that is what this song, a monolith, has felt like to me throughout the years -- it had to become this, the greatest song at somepoint -- I don't know when, it probably was first a joke, but the song and the video, with its primary act being something like the feeling of forgetting time staring at the waves contemplating what foreverness implies, and the secondary act being the wave of melancholia, and finally unsure and fading acceptance -- a necessary implication of the human awareness of foreverness -- came to be the statement on what living was, what life was, a grand beauty, occasional tragedy. But the synth textures are so shimmering, multivalent and digital that I attached/revised a theory onto this work to help fall in love. Or something. And Immanence sounds like De Quincey's learned Opium high, a grand knowledge of eschatology -- the same melancholia of Physical Memory -- shrouded and showered in more ethereal and intoxifying drones. Thrown in aswell is the 2 3-minute tracks -- the diptych Months and Time Decanted -- the former like a foghorn and the latter simply 16 bars, both as effective as any in communicating the problem with eternity. Russian Mind meanwhile is a study for tempo-delay and short decay times, and Grief and Repetition is an early experiment in plunderphonics that the more earthly melancholiacs will enjoy, but is merely fine. Overall, one of the better theoretical grab-bags from Rifts' biblical redundancy.

January 18, 2024 -- OH MY GOD ELEPHANT - OH MY GOD ELEPHANT -- Good and good and a guiltyish pleasure. Can we escape the tyranny of the real emo copypasta? Some ironically (read: do not, but are afraid to say and defend themselves) praise it, some say emo is anything, some hate the word emo, with the latter being most convenient and historically correct. Cap'n Jazz, after all, was "the most pretentious punk band in the midwest", and Randall insists there does not exist any good self-styled emo (except for, perhaps, Weatherday -- and that occupies such a weird place, truly an outsider work - not my favourite, but much more worthy of praise than much else that has come out recently emblazoned with the E word -- and You & I was jokingly called "emo-metal" by their friends). Eg. Boy's Life was post-hardcore, Cap'n Jazz was "pretentious punk", The Hated was an inside joke, Bells on Trike was Indie, so was Days in December, Ache Hour Credo was, well, Ache Hour Credo, Indian Summer was a suicide note thanking Slint for keeping them alive as long as they did. Etc., I'm taking up space. It's fun, you should try it. But reconciling with what the revival is and represents and what that term isn't hard. Because it gets applied to bands like The Brave Little Abacus, Algernon Cadwallader, Boy Problems, and then Mom Jeans. Those bands have little in common. But then you get bands who appropriate the goofiness of some of the revival to escape the deed of needing to open yourself uncomfortably up (ie. Mom Jeans and the assorted shitlist that I'm sure I'll rant about at some point). This band does the latter quite well -- actually opening up that is, and I think this may be because they were Just A Band. It really feels like these were some friends who made music because they were friends for their friends and would include funny things on their recordings while being aware they were emo because that term had been a thing by this point substantially and we know that the 90s had bands like this but the important thing is that this does sound like friends and it doesn't sound like too big of a production, it sounds as humble and forgotten as the platonic 7 inches of yore (ie. 1993-1999). It happens to twinkle, but it feels a lot less fundamental to its existence than similar shit that would get grouped in with this because of an insistence to categorize, metabolize, file away and reduce the past into "waves" of a music genre that began as a derisive anyways. This sounds like a shortlived band from Nowhereville, USA, and so do all of the best 90's 7 inches. Not the best, and not the most pure, aware of itself like a dork, but when we talk in such unattainable terms, some things simply Have To Do, and this isn't Pure, not knowing of The E Word, but it's a good band, and from the heart, which is why those 7 inches get all of the praise in the first place. (But time makes pure objects of everything -- how much of history, except the obviously violent, is sanded down into comfort due to lack of context?)

January 18, 2024 -- PARCHMENT FARM - THAT'S WHY I ASKED TO GO BOWLING (SINGLE) -- Really, really good. Whenever I release something, as part of tradition I face God and walk backwards into the Tartarus of 4chan and put it on one of the shillthreads, just in case anyone has an ear to the ground there. No one does, but I (want to? have to? resent doing it but feel a regressive need to?) humble myself - no one tears your dignity to shreds if they feel like it than people on these threads (ages ago, one person praised my songwriting, but more recently, I've got "jesus this is bad" and "the most pretentious, unlistenable dogshit [...] kill yourself, etc."). But it is very much a tree-falling-in-the-forest thing, because in the same thread I threw my shit album up in, Parchment Farm - whoever that may be (by looking at their Bandcamp, it seems like a home-recorder with a steady band, something I know the feeling of aswell) - put up this single aswell. And it took me by shock, because out of courtesy, you're supposed to give 'feedback' - you listen to 10 seconds, say "good texture" or some similar bullshit that the SubmitHub people spew out for money (except for Motel Void -- thanks for interviewing me!) -- and it was like I was listening to 'still' by nouns again. And I don't want to say that this is just nouns worship - looking over his/their bandcamp, they have dabbled and they have dabbled, this does very much seem like more of an acceptance of anonymity, a willingness to put full jams as albums, it's Bandcamp for chrissakes, it's not Warner Music, you might aswell. And that is the (theoretical) appeal of Bandcamp and that is the (theoretical) appeal of shillthreads, which is when something comes out of the aether of the play button like this and grabs you like the A-side does here and rockets you forward, you are all the much more surprised. This is a fully inspired piece of work, what functions as a great EP, some of the best lo-fi drum recording I've heard in years (better than what I've done - but this has given me a lot of inspiration to just change my crash to be trashier and keeping my hi-hat closed - as I love open cymbals and this has sort of shown me (and I have - as I am slow - realized how cymbals are mixed usually) that you can derive the same power with them closed and the trash sound just increases it - reminds me to try the Wurst mic technique again), very dynamic structurally - and natural - but makes me less afraid to stop-start - it's all a great emo-phxc-etc-internet-punk-pop-wtf permutation. The breakdown is really, really good, and the second track is a much-needed and useful piece of space beside it, and a beautiful song in its own right. But I also think - is this admiration not derived from re-listening? In part? I mean, this is definitely a work with merit, but when you choose to trawl the ocean of Bandcamp, you can listen to all the snippets you want (Lord knows my attention-deficit ass does, and does not mean to, but does), but you have to sit and listen and relisten and Bandcamp is full of possible Great works, like genre fiction - it can be derivative, but between the hackneyed jacket could be an inspired work! - but it can be decieving too. Is my nouns comparison just the punchy production and the shouted vocals? No, it's the passion and desparation and the fact that like nouns, this is some link I just clicked and I don't know if people were hyping it up or not but I just listened and relistened and realized how good it was by my own volition, because that is how recorded music works - it sounds a lot stupider when you put it in words. But it's a lot more profound when you're the first Bandcamp supporter. Recommended.

January 18, 2024 -- PORTRAITS OF PAST - DISCOGRAPHY -- So, so great and raw. Was talking to Randall about this last night infact -- apparently the band was listening to different things every month -- like everything from Unwound to grind to Ebullition stuff (which is where this was released). I don't know how this manages to spiral and swell the way it does, and I still cannot believe the release date every time that I see it. It seems as if they saw into all of the influences that time would siphon out by the end of the 90's while they were happening. I don't know how this is so good, and I don't know how "Bang Yer Head" works, but it does, and it keeps, just going, banging, insistent, but never with one punch harder than the rest, a crescendo not by dynamics, but by tonality, energy, repetition. Highly recommended.

January 17, 2024 -- HAYDEN PEDIGO - THE HAPPIEST TIMES I EVER IGNORED -- Wonderful. Definitely has crafted his own niche, although it contains a touch of worship -- but so few artists ever break out of idol worship (Fassbinder, as innovative as he was, just loved Sirk), and Pedigo seems a lot more bent on *actually* breaking away -- there's a great interview with him where he talks about how anyone can fingerpick in an open tuning and sound like Fahey -- but Fahey crafted his own niche, Pedigo noting Fahey continued to worship Patton while going farther and farther away. While the map may have been made by his predecessors, he has learned the land for himself, and brought out aspects with such delicacy they seem a lot newer than they are -- and since there are something like 3 ideas, this is the mark of a skilled artist. And rest assured, Pedigo isn't a complacent artist, and this is a rare case where all of the excellence was very, very much intentioned. Recommended.