2021 Album Eliminations Ep 1: Gunship vs. Disheveled Cuss

2021 Album of the Year Elimination – Gunship vs. Disheveled Cuss

Preview Post including Gunship

Preview Post including Disheveled Cuss

Gunship – Gunship

Disheveled Cuss – Disheveled Cuss

2021 Album Preview Series: August in Appalachia

A preview of recent listening, including:

Bo Burnham – Inside (The Songs) (2021)
Mononeon – Supermane (2021)
Tally Hall – Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum (2005)
Siti Muharam – Siti of Unguja (Romance Revolution in Zanzibar) (2020)
Beauty Pill – Please Advise (2020)
Aphex Twin – Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 (2005)



Relevant Links:

Post on Beauty Pill’s Describes Things As They Are
Best of 2015
Source for Aphex Twin visuals

2021 Album Preview Series: Summer Solstice Special

Short reviews and discussion on:

Yes – From a Page EP (2019)
Flying Lotus – Cosmogramma (2010)
Onipa – We No Be Machine (2020)
Field Music – Flat White Moon (2021)
Spelling – Mazy Fly (2019)
Gabrielle Roth and the Mirrors -  Selected Works 1985-2005(2020)



Relevant Links:

Previous post on Arc of Life
Text post on Field Music

Album Preview Series 2021: The Aesthetics of April

Overview of new music in April, 2021, including albums by:

Chouk Bwa and the Angstromers – Vodou Ale (2020)
Aimee Mann – The Forgotten Arm (2005)
Ghost of Vroom – Ghost of Vroom vol. 1 (2021)
Thought Gang – Modern Music (2018)
Arc of Life – Arc of Life (2021)
Wobbler – Dwellers of the Deep (2020)

Relevant Posts:

Source for the Ghost of Vroom images

The Yes Open Your Eyes post

Album Previews for 2021 Part 1: Set the Stage

 The first of several previews of music new to 2021, including:

 

Sault – Untitled (Rise) (2020)

XTC – English Settlement (1982)

Jose Aponte – From Here; From There (2020)

Zara McFarlane – Songs of an Unknown Tongue (2020)

Machine Listener- Metonym (2020)

The Brendan Eder Ensemble – To Mix With Time (2020)

Relevant Links:

The Chomsky review mentioned above

An link to 2021 Radio, and ever-expanding list.

Top 20 of 2020 Part 2: #10-1

The Top 10 from my Top 20 of 2020 list.

Relevant Links:

Post on Floating Points Crush

Post on Venetian Snares Rossz Csillag Alatt Született 

Post on Kate Davis’ Trophy

Here's a Spotify playlist with representative tracks from the Top 20 of 2020

Venetian Snares' Rossz Csillag Alatt Született: An Alchemy of Contrasts

Review and discussion on Venetian Snares’ 2003 album Rossz Csillag Alatt Született.

Relevant links: 

Previous post on Traditional Synthesizer Music

David Lynch’s short film Pozar

Spring Album Overview Part 1: The Quarantine Collection

Overview of recent albums in rotation, including:

Steve Hackett: At the Edge of Light (2019)

avery r. young: tubman. (2019)

dumama + kechou: buffering juju (2020)

Dana Jean Phoenix: PixelDust (2018)

Anna Meredith: FIBS (2019)

Venetian Snares: Rossz Csillag Alatt Született (2005)

Relevant Links:

Older text review of Anna Meredith’s Varmits

Venetian Snares’ Traditional Synthesizer Music

2020 Spotify playlist

Floating Points "Crush:" The Aesthetic of Intellect

Review and discussion on Crush by Floating Points (2019)

Relevant links:

Review of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s The Kid, with an eye towardsthe Buchla Synthesizer

2020 Preview Series Part 1: The Hands-On Approach

Previews of new music for 2020, including:

Anamanaguchi – [USA] (2019)

Battles – Juice B Crypts (2019)

Crystal Beth – Push Through (2019)

Floating Points – Crush (2019)

Everything Everything- A Fever Dream (2017)

RPWL – Tales From Outer Space (2019)

Below is a widget to the 2020 playlist.  Watch it grow!

Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith: Buchla and The Kid

Discussion and review on Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s 2017 album The Kid, as well as a little background on her instrument of choice, the Buchla synthesizer.

Links of interest:
A written review of 2016’s EARS

A little more exposition on Moog synthesizers

Holly Herndon's PROTO: Anxiety and Ecstasy

Review and discussion of Holly Herdon’s 2019 release PROTO.



Copyright restrictions required me to mute the song examples in this post.  Links to the songs are as follows:






There is, unfortunately, no readily available clip of Evening Shades (Live Training), but I would encourage you to seek it out - it might hold the key to the whole album.

C418's "Excursions": Playing a Different Game

Review and discussion of Excursions by C418 (2018).

Hama's Houmeissa and Afroretrofuturism(?)

Review and discussion of Hama’s African synthwave album Houmeissa (2019)

Sahel Sounds Website

The Complex Retrofuturism of Traditional Synthesizer Music

Review and Discussion of Traditional Synthesizer Music by Venetian Snares (2016).

Links mentioned:

2018 Best of

S U R V I V E review

UPDATE:  My response to my own challenge.

Instagram

dr_spins_prescriptions

Facebook

George Clanton's Slide, Floral Shoppe, and What is Vaporwave?

In this episode:

George Clanton - Slide (2018)
Macintonsh Plus - Floral Shoppe (2011)

Special thanks to John Thompson for his graphic design contributions!

Unsure of What Day It Is, Full of Cheese: 2018 Honorable Mentions

The posting that accompanied the 2018 top ten was more anecdotal than is usual for year-end postings. Narratives that surround these postings are traditionally reflective, with one eye looking at
the past year and the other looking forward to the potentials ahead. There is a subtext in that post, however, that serves as a microcosm for what I would like to address in 2019.

I recounted how my kid's nutritional standards have slowly eroded over the past five years, but I refrained from admitting that these looser standards stretch into my personal nutritional choices.  Not too long ago, I was in the best shape of my life and was balancing my personal interests, my family, and my career in an unprecedented way. The profound and rapid changes that I have endured since them however, has necessitated changes in that precarious balance that I have not been able to correct.  Despite having a great year at school so far and really enjoying my family's growth, I am not playing music for myself in any form, nor is my fitness where I would like for it to be, nor am I in the dojo as much as I would like to be. 

I hope that in the coming year I can find ways to regain that equilibrium. I am trying to let go of the idea that it will look exactly like it did then, but devoting energy into figuring out what it could like to feel as good about my personal musicianship and fitness as I do about my career and family is unarguably a worthwhile path forward.

Below I have included a few albums that I really wanted to get into 2018's top 20, but just got edged out for one reason or another. Still, they are generally compelling enough to deserve mention.

Soen - Lakaia: I showed up for the Tool references, but the melodic overlap with Opeth’s more progressive tendencies got me to stay. Lakaia has been gaining momentum on a slow simmer since this summer, but didn’t quite crack the top 20.

Tangerine Dream - Zeit: This album was in no way what I expected, but as a prototypical pre-synth ambient album it continued to pique my curiosity for the better part of 2018. It unfortunately suffered the fate of having no appropriate venue - too atmospheric for the car, but too sinister for late nights in the house.

Big Big Train - Folklore: A very good progressive rock album that just barely got edged out due to a couple of lyrically goofy moments. This album was followed by several other positively reviewed releases that might warrant further investigation.

Alcest - Kodama: Described as “black metal” inspired by Miyazaki, Kodama ended up confounding my expectations. While there are a few extreme moments on the album, these are carefully placed for musical effect, resulting in a largely melodic and engaging experience.

Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children: Yes, I am very late in the game to this classic album of 90s electronica. Well worth it, and a difficult decision to leave it off the final 2018 list.

Field Music - Open Here: The first inconsistent album from Field Music that I have encountered. It has some of the best songs and grandest orchestrations in their oeuvre, but also some less inspired moments that are more apparent due to the greatness of the stronger material.

Anna Meredith's Varmints and a Brief Snow

A month ago, the first day of school came and, despite having a good feeling about what will be happening in my bands during the coming semester, I couldn’t say that I was particularly happy about it. I had a wonderful couple of weeks at home with my family and getting used to leaving them behind every day in the midst of the usual morning stress was not appealing. As is often the way with semester preparations, we had two days of staff development to gear up before the students would arrive. On the second day of this scheduled inservice, we got a reprieve. Snow began to fall and my new district, being small and relatively remote, fortunately understands that many of its teachers drive in from other places. It was decided that we would leave early.

So I got a brief extension on my vacation. Austin almost always had more ice than snow, which can certainly shut down a school. It isn’t, however, really all that fun. Up here in North Texas you have the potential to get real snow - the kind that dances across the road rather than pelts the windshield. I was excited about watching P play in the light layer of white powder that was accumulating on the road when I got home.

Snow was swirling across the road like sands across dunes and Anna Meredith’s Varmints, a selection from my Christmas booty, was pulsing strongly, reflecting the white ripples as they cascaded across the blacktop. I put the album on my wishlist last year during my search for a follow-up to Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s astoundingly good EARS. Meredith’s interdisciplinary status as a composer for the BBC and a synth-pop songwriter seemed to put her in the position to fill that void in 2017.

Stylistically, however, the two are apples and oranges. Varmints has an extroverted flourish that is more theatrical when compared to the cerebral atmospheres of EARS.  Like many Ableton-savvy composers, Meredith likes to vary a theme, particularly through rhythmic displacement. Take, for example, the disorienting entry of the backbeat of Nautilus. For four full minutes, the listener is allowed to think that the riff is on the beat, only to find that it is actually on the upbeat, resulting in a perceptual shift of the entire landscape. This kind of rhythmic slight-of-hand shows up several times throughout Varmints and it never seems to get old.  It also allows the album to consistently tread the common zone between between layered songwriting and complex composition.



The distinction between these two extremes is often blurry. Meredith’s experience as a soundtrack composer grants the even the songs that are geared towards accessibility with a heaping tablespoon full of intricacy. She will often use intentional dissonance, using chords that don’t seem to work until after they have passed. Melodically, however, she keeps things light, bringing to mind Neko Case’s contributions to the New Pornographers. As a whole, however, Meredith’s often thunderous rave-inspired beats make Varmints a unique beast, indeed.



It turned out that Denton did not much snow, but it was enough. P got home and went directly outside with her mother to throw snow at each other.  EJ, on the other hand, is not convinced that footwear is so great yet, so I stayed inside with her. When they came in, she told me that P will “always remember this,” and I was really glad that I was there to see it. It was a heart-warming way to spend the last cold day of our vacation.

The Unique World of Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith's EARS

I don't know that I'll ever be able to exactly replace or recreate the experience of playing with world-music fusion group Ethnos. For a while, we had a regular gig at Marrakesh Mediterranean Grill, and I always looked forward to it. The food was outstanding and having a monthly performance encouraged us to keep being creative in fulfilling ways without totally losing touch with the public.

One of the last times I played with Ethnos, I picked up our flute player on the way to the gig. When he got in the car, he also jumped into Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith’s EARS album, which had been playing virtually nonstop for nearly a week and a half. Almost immediately, he picked up on its cerebral aspects, and after a very brief explanation on what attracted me to the album, we listened to the entire thing in complete, engaged silence.



I was pleased by his interest. My ears were unexpectedly primed for Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith when I discovered her. I had just revisited Jean-Michel Jarre’s Equinoxe, and I was still enjoying Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians as a 2015 favorite. EARS doesn’t resemble either of these works exactly, but it does exist in a kind of common ground between them. As an analog synth project, EARS is created out of the sounds that Jarre pioneered in those 70s recordings. Also like those recordings, Smith’s compositions evoke vivid, world-building environments. Her compositional style is radically different, however, due to the unique affordances of her instrument of choice, the Buchla Sound Canvas.



Anyone who knows me knows I'm a sucker for weird instruments, so this was a big sell. I am still unclear as to the technical nuances of the instrument, but the rippling, arpeggiated textures it creates are clearly a key component to EARS, and bring to mind the contemplative characteristics of Reich’s compositional techniques.

EARS is most readily identified as an electronic album, but it is actually a subtle combination of synths, voices, and woodwinds that straddles the distinction between improvisation and composition. It can hang on the edge of the awareness as background music, but it can also be engaging and immersive. In this latter regard, I find it to be surprisingly effective. Even with some tracks clocking in at ten minutes, Smith’s work has the capacity to take the listener on a journey that, once begun, is hard to stray from.


In the months following my discovery of EARS, I felt inspired to investigate other synth music in the hopes that Smith represented an underground genre of which I was unaware. None came close. EARS was, and is, far too unique. I still play it regularly and find it incredibly satisfying.

It would be quite a stretch to consider EARS “world” music, but when we stopped the car, Ethnos’ flute player immediately commented that the band should do something like it. Even though we did not have a synth player in the group, much less a Buchla, his ears were open enough to hear something that he thought that we could reinterpret. This was one of the reasons why I enjoyed playing with and the group so much. Getting to play with with people with that level of creativity and open-mindedness was a gift that I will always cherish.

Looking Backward and Forward to S U R V I V E

In all of the eight years I spent in Austin, I rarely got out to see any music. Chalk it up to parenthood. Even when it came to SXSW, which has now grown into a ridiculous monster way beyond anyone's imagination, I only ever went to free shows, and I am pretty sure that I can count all of them I actually got out to on one hand.

During one particularly rainy SXSW afternoon I ventured out to see a band that, thanks to the recommendation of a friend, had become an unlikely favorite. The synth band S U R V I V E, who supplied the memorable soundtrack to a trip in Tuscon, was setting up a rare informal show at record store and personal browsing spot End of an Ear. Even without hardcopy, MNQ026 had uncharacteristically stood the test of time, clawing its way to classic status in my book, and I did not want to pass up the chance to see them for free up close. I got there a little early, so I had to the chance to talk with one of the members briefly, mainly to ask if it would be cool if I took some pictures of the band’s gear.

“Yes,” he said decisively, “it would be VERY cool.”

The band was clearly proud of their setup, and although I certainly don’t have the insight to make heads or tails of it all, I know enough to appreciate what they have assembled. What became more apparent when they began their performance, however, was the way in which they had total mastery over those instruments. Many of the artists that S U R V I V E call influences were experimenting with the possibilities of these instruments when they were new, but S U R V I V E knows what each instrument is capable of and uses it to compelling effect. It was a great show that was not done justice by the poor videos I took.

That was two years ago. Now, thanks to some of the band’s members being involved in the distinctive soundtrack to a delightfully retro-creepy Netflix series, S U R V I V E are as close to the big time as an experimental synth outfit can hope to get. Coincidentally, and even before their attachment to Stranger Things, they had recorded and set a release date for MNQ026’s follow-up, RR7349.

Of all of my September 30 new releases (and there were several), this was the one that I have anticipated the most.  Its predecessor's compelling mix of texture, timbre, atmosphere, and melody has kept me coming back, and it has been my hope that RR7349 could recapture the magic, so to speak.



The verdict? It seems that it has. RR7349 still sounds as if it is the soundtrack to a long-lost Blade Runner spin-off. It delivers on the nostalgia in terms of sound and structure, which is largely due the array of vintage instruments that the band employs, but is also harbors a nuanced melodic side that exists in a carefully crafted balance with its layered atmospheres. In this regard, it is remarkably consistent. Anyone who was brought up with the darker sides of Jean-Michel Jarre, Tangerine Dream, and other 70s synth pioneers floating around the house will find a whole lot to like on RR7349.



So one of the regrets I have now that Austin is in my rearview mirror is that I am not as locally available for S U R V I V E's increasingly frequent live performances. They do seem to tour more readily, however, so it might be possible to catch them in the metroplex. Probably not in Denton, though. It’s safe to assume that they are too big for all that now. I’d love to be proven wrong on that, though…...