A Dairy Revelation: Dr. Spin's Best Albums 2018 pt. 2

My initial decision to avoid feeding my daughters milk wasn’t entirely a choice. Although my involvement in the CrossFit lifestyle when she was born opened my eyes to the benefits of a non-dairy, non-grain diet, my first daughter seemed to have a genuine intolerance. Once I was able to find alternative sources for calcium and natural fats in her diet, I did not make serious efforts to acclimatize her system to drink cow’s milk. I met a lot of resistance along the way, but by all accounts she and her sister (whose colic caused us to take a similar path), have grown up quite healthy and strong.

Shortly after EJ was born, life changed dramatically in more ways than I can easily summarize. You can go back and read about it starting here for the full story.  Not the least of these changes was the unexpected birth of our son just a year and a half later. Unlike his sisters, he did not show any significant intolerance for milk. My hardline stance on the paleo diet had softened since P was born six years before and inarguably, milk is a convenient source of nutrition. So he drank milk. Quite a bit of it, for a while.

Undoubtedly, he quickly grew big and strong, which could be attributed to his genes as much as his diet. I was a pretty big infant, as well. Also like me, and unlike his sisters, he seemed to suffer from eczema and allergies. I assumed that he was the unfortunate recipient of my more undesirable genes and began rolling future management options through my mind.

Recently, however, my wife began an anti-inflammatory diet that had a pretty significant crossover into paleo.  As we discussed her plan, I realized that all of our son’s maladies could be attributed to inflammation from the cow’s milk in his diet. We tapered off the milk and within two weeks, no more runny nose or dry, irritated cheeks. Incredible.

So I wonder, with the normalization of cow’s milk in an infant’s diet, how many other people may see their children suffering from similar problems and start medications to manage them. Possibly more than is necessary. In any case, this unintentional experiment brought back home the importance of a clean diet, something that I will dedicate myself to with renewed diligence in the coming year.



Finally, all exposition aside, below is the top 10 albums list from 2018. Any one of these albums were considered at one point in time or another for the top slot, but I feel satisfied with the final ordering (at least for today).  Relatively few proper 2018 releases this year, and many obscure entries.  If you are looking for some new music in 2019, however, these albums would be a great place to start.

10. George Clanton - Slide: During the years I lived in Austin I discovered the joys of synthwave and shoegaze. Slide hit the nostalgia buttons on two fronts this year by comfortably residing in the crossroads between these styles.

9. Death Grips - Year of the Snitch: I have followed Death Grips ever since The Money Store took 2012 by storm, but very few of their albums have come back off the shelf since their initial run. Year of the Snitch has come in and out of rotation several times as 2018 drew to a close and never failed to hold my attention.

8. Wei Zhongle - The Operators: Suggesting Wei Zhongle was one of the times in which my Facebook algorithm really nailed it. Their super-quirky brand of art rock is engaging both in the short and the long term.

7. Kite Base - Latent Whispers: Great songwriting anchors this incredible and unique album from two female bass players with a knack for clever programming. Fans of late 80s electronica who prefer a wash of gothy fuzz would find a lot to enjoy on Latent Whispers.

6. Andrew W.K. - You’re Not Alone: Andrew W.K. bursts through the speakers yelling “OH, YEAH” like some sort of feral white-clad rock Jesus on this album. While the Kool-Aid he is peddling seems like its pure sugar, it’s far more substantial than it might seem.

5. Midlake - The Tales of Van Occupanther: I still like to refer to Midlake as the “Agrarian Radiohead.” Tim Smith’s liquid vocal approach often recalls that of Thom Yorke, but their tales of giants and villages paint pictures of days long past.

4. Venetian Snares - Traditional Synthesizer Music: This impossibly complex experiment pushes the possibilities of classic synthesizers past any perceived limits. Aaron Funk is able to somehow integrate enough variants to give these compositions a live, improvised feel.

3. Low - Double Negative: Although this album came in very late in the Fall, I reflected very carefully upon whether or not to designate it Album of the Year. Its predecessor Ones and Sixes became a favorite in 2015, and Double Negative is an incredible quantum leap forward in terms of creativity and musicality.

2. Modular - Dan Phelps, Vickor Krauss, and Matt Chamberlain: The mythology surrounding Modular became my “Blair Witch” for 2018, a curious investigation that I documented earlier this year. Despite my embarrassing disappointment when I discovered the truth, the album is ultimately propelled by unbelievable and subtle musicianship that continues to reveal itself listen after listen.

 Album of the Year 2018

1. Soup - Remedies: If Modular was my “Blair Witch” for 2018, then Remedies was “Lord of the Rings.” It crosses progressive songwriting and melodic post rock in relatively well-trod ways, but in all the ways that work.  Walls of sound, compelling melodies, and gentle psychedelia overlapped to make this one a sustained favorite throughout the year.

The Whole30 and the White Sea

When I began getting involved in CrossFit a few years ago, I made a dedicated attempt to align my eating with the paleo diet. Over the course of the following years, however, I slowly began to add things back into my diet, including regular “cheat” items. By last fall, I was eating a paleo diet that was being constantly undermined by a barrage of "sugar bombs." Despite keeping a relatively regular workout schedule of 2-4 days a week, my performance was declining. I knew that I was dealing with a sugar addiction, but I was doing nothing to aggressively address the problem. In fact, between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I felt like had pretty much lost control.

To get back on track, I decided to do Whole30 challenge in conjunction with my close friends at CrossFit Denton during the month of January. The specific guidelines of the challenge are noted on the program’s website, but in essence, the Whole30 is a very strict paleo diet – no cheats, no shortcuts – for a 30 day period. On the morning of January 1, I drank black coffee by choice for the very first time ever and did not look back.

The core of my diet was not too far off from the Whole30 guidelines, but the challenge became to find and eliminate refined sugar. In some cases this was obvious (no more protein bars), but I started to see it hiding in some weird places. It turns out, for example, that sugar-free bacon is scarce. Fortunately an alternative arose, because bacon is a big common denominator in our house.  To remove it entirely from the family diet could have derailed the entire program.

Otherwise, I had already built up a pretty decent repertoire of paleo recipes that are Whole30 compliant. Finding time to prepare enough food to feed the family on a daily basis, however, was another challenge. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, but I came to enjoy taking responsibility for my family’s nutritional well-being. I often doubled up recipes to ensure that I had leftovers, and I tried out new ones with unfamiliar ingredients. I concluded that I really like parsnips and butternut squash, and although beets are pretty good, I am not convinced that they are worth the mess.

The changes in my energy level made all this time invested in the kitchen entirely worth the effort. Whole30 participants often report nearly uncontrollable cravings and mood swings in the first week. Perhaps because I have had previous experience with those kinds of withdrawals when I first began CrossFit, I did not experience them as acutely as some. The cravings subsided within a week, to be replaced by a noticeable boost in my workout performance, particularly in terms of stamina and endurance.

The biggest problem was January. My wife, my mother, and I all celebrate birthdays this month. Declining constant offers of birthday cake and navigating birthday celebrations became a real obstacle.

On the 30th day of the program, arguably the exit date, I was listening to In Cold Blood by White Sea, the solo project from M83’s Morgan Kibby as I again contemplated “to cake or not to cake” at my family birthday celebration. This particular album has been in rotation all month. Unsurprisingly, The White Sea is electro-pop with an unapologetic deference for the late 80s. What is surprising, however, is Kibby’s broad vocal range. The breathy tone that she uses with M83 is merely a facet of a much broader capacity that she displays on the album.  Overall, In Cold Blood is good, but it lacks the musical experimentalism that makes M83 so distinctive.  There is, however, no lack of visual impact in their videos.



I chose not to cake, by the way, which at the time made me a little sad. I was thankful the next day, however, when I worked out the next morning at 5 am with a clear head, free of any sugar hangover that such an indulgence might have caused. As per the guidelines of the program, I did not take any measurements, weigh myself, or take before/after pictures. I instead let my general sense of fitness serve as my primary gauge of progress. By this measurement, the program was a huge success.

Dr. Spin's Best Albums of the Year: 2012 Edition

I admit to having something of a sugar addiction. Although I can generally manage on a regular basis, the holiday season is a bit more difficult to navigate. In addition, this year I have been trying to shield my daughter from the onslaught of refined sugar as it makes the rounds  My grandmother, however, her great-grandmother, has a more insidious agenda.

I have noticed that when we eat as an extended family, she often exerts a not-so-subtle pressure to make sure that the Little One gets more than her share of desert when it is available. Ween has always shown her love through food, so I get that she is being affectionate in her own way, but sometimes I feel like my efforts to build my daughter out of wholesome foods are ignored.

For example, a couple of weeks ago, my extended family went to a Christmas shopping event at Dillard’s. Several employees were making rounds with hors d’oeuvres plates, one of which was piled high with cookies. Cookies, in particular, are something of a “gateway sweet” for me, and I had been doing a pretty good job of dodging that particular server. Towards the end of the evening, however, my resolve began to wear down and when I was cornered, I decided one cookie wouldn’t destroy my efforts to stay fit.

My grandmother, however, was with me, and her craftiness knows no bounds. She picked one out for herself, but she was also very concerned that the Little One would miss out, so she also grabbed a second one for her. I really didn’t want my daughter to eat a whole cookie at 9 pm, but it wasn’t up for debate. My grandmother proceeded to break off chunks, gleefully watching them disappear into my daughter’s delighted face.

Disgruntled, I took over. I did not want to put a damper on my grandmother, but a whole cookie seemed like just too much.  I started to sneak bites to minimize the damage. When it was gone, my grandmother offered me the other half of hers.  I was in the throes of the insulin rush by this time, so I could hardly turn it down.  In the end, I had inadvertently more than doubled my cookie input.  My grandmother had gotten both of us!

I’m still not convinced that this wasn’t her master plan in the first place.

Anyhow, you are probably not here to read a cautionary tounge-in-cheek tale about my dietary downward spiral - at least not entirely.  You're here for the top ten!  Looking back on last year's list, I think that this year is a bit more honest representation of my listening habits.  To me, these albums represent the experiences and changes in 2012.  Plus, its some dang good music that, in some cases, you might not have heard of elsewhere.

10. My Bloody Valentine - Loveless: After several years in an irregular orbit, this album finally clicked for me. It’s actually a beautiful, emotionally charged album that changed the way I listen to a lot of contemporary music.

9. Oneohtrix Point Never – Replica: It doesn’t make sense that Replica is as musically affective as it is. However, its choppy, post-apocalyptic atmospheres capture an alienated sentimentalism that kept it in rotation all year long.

8. The Mars Volta – Noctourniquet: While the choice might be confusing to the public, I would love to see some brave contestant sing a song from this album on The Voice. If they were able to capture the arresting melodicism with the same intensity as Cedric, it could really bring the house down.

7. Grizzly Bear – Shields: Shields is a bit of a late entry to be placed so high on the list, but I have increasingly found myself drawn into its orbit. It serves nearly all purposes: it is singable, textured, intelligent, artistic, and vibrantly executed.

6. Astra - The Black Chord: Sure, this is a bit of a guilty pleasure, but Astra is so good at what they do that I really don’t feel that guilty. They miraculously reinvent the progressive and psychedelic sounds of the 70s without directly copying any one group.

 5. Now, Now – Threads: Great songwriting and energetic performances underpin this album. Threads is a hard one to take out of the player.

4. Anais Mitchell – Hadestown: Mitchell’s folk opera epitomizes layered meaning. No matter how many times I listen to it, I feel like there is more to appreciate.

3. Field Music – Plumb: This album seems to bend the laws of space in time. Its short running length belies its incredible depth, which surpasses that of many longer, more involved librettos.

2. Death Grips - The Money Store: Not since Rage Against the Machine has an album navigated the extremes of fury and intelligence so effectively. In a side-by-side comparison, The Money Store has made many other albums from this year sound kind of dumb.

1. Rush - Clockwork Angels: If you have followed the blog at all, this is a no-brainer. Despite my adoration of all things Rush, I believe that is nothing short of phenomenal that this band is able to release such a strong, viable record at this phase of their career.

If you missed the first half, you should check it out here.

Thanks to everyone who reads the blog, especially those who have made suggestions. Keep reading and let me know that you are out there!  More to come soon.

Coltrane's "Giant Steps:" Spontaneously Laying it Down

I’m on Spring Break this week, but by a lot of people’s standards, I usually don’t do a whole lot. Obviously, the days of sticking to Velcro walls in Padre Island are long over (a story with its own soundtrack that may one day be worth recounting). These days, I usually find the “staycation” just as cathartic. It feels good to wake up to no alarm, drink coffee, and decide what I am going to do based on whatever I feel like doing.

This year is a little more complicated, however, because I also get to play “Mr. Mom” with the Little One. This in no way a complaint - during the school year, I often drop her off in the morning and don’t get to spend much quality time with her until bedtime. I am grateful for the opportunity to hang with her all day. Now we “hit the town” together, but taking into account naptime, feeding, and general mood swings, I have to plan my “spontaneity” a little bit more carefully than in the past.

This afternoon, I spontaneously decided to cook one of my absolute favorite paleo dishes for lunch: yam and sausage hash. My vegan/vegetarian wife is a little apprehensive about the meat in this dish, so when I’m cooking just for me, it’s kind of a special treat. The Little One and I took a trip to Whole Foods for the ingredients to this easy recipe:

-Grate 2 yams (food processor makes this quick)

-Brown 1 lb sausage

-Put it all in a skillet with some coconut oil and cinnamon

-Cook it all up

-Mack it down

When we got back, the Little One played happily with a variety of sound-making apparatus, I filled the house with the smell of cinnamon and sweet potatoes, and we listened to John Coltrane’s Giant Steps.

She, of course, is an old expert in jazz by now. The very first album she ever heard in open air was Kind of Blue. As great as that album is, Giant Steps is another beast entirely. I’m a decent improviser, but if you asked me to play over any of the songs in Giant Steps, I would humbly decline. I know just enough to know that there is no way that I could fake my way through these amazing songs. The studies that I have engaged in, however, have provided me enough of an ear for what “sounds right” to really appreciate Coltrane’s incredible mastery over both his instrument and his contributions to jazz theory.

Giant Steps represents the pinnacle of harmonic complexity in "traditional" jazz. The main melody its title track is catchy and simple, but it skips across a set of chord progressions that are fiendishly complex. Hold on tight:

When improvising, a jazz musician has to spontaneously juggle a complex musical vocabulary based on jazz tradition and the harmonic potentials offered by the song. After thousands of hours of practice, the best improvisers cultivate an awareness of these potentials, intuitively setting up and targeting the notes that sound good in any given key. This is an incredibly difficult skill set to master, even on a relatively standard song form in a common key.

Coltrane devised a logic for a distinctive flavor of harmonic complexity, successfully crafted it into a working song, and proved that it worked by improvising over it with unparalleled fervor. Giant Steps changes keys virtually every measure, each with its own set of tendencies and potentials. Professionals and college professors have, at the very least, a healthy respect for playing an effective solo over its changes.

Coltrane continued to explore the potential in his harmonic approach throughout Giant Steps, sometimes in entirely different settings. On the unbelievably beautiful ballad Naima, Coltrane explores the saxophone’s unique timbral potential. From the very first note to the very last, Coltrane’s saxophone cries on Naima. This version below is much more aggressive at times than the studio recording, but it also shows the incredible range of sounds that Coltrane had in his toolbox at the time, not to mention his astounding rhythm section.

The master plan while Coltrane was laying it down this afternoon was to eat, strap the Little One to my chest, and go for a walk on a local hiking trail. Before the album finished, however, and before I finished my lunch, the Little One had fallen asleep. She spontaneously became the one laying it down, so to speak. So much for plans – perhaps a rerun of original series Star Trek is in order.

Thundercat's "Apocalypse" While Juggling Dinner

When I am scheduled to have time alone with the Little One, people cautiously ask me “are you OK?”  I find the question a little curious, because there seems to be an assumption that I might be nervous to be alone with her. Although the Little One has injected no small amount of chaos into the everyday, I find that it is quite possible to include her into the things that I would normally do. Weaving our needs together is certainly more complicated than just doing my own thing, but it is also cathartic.

Earlier this week, I brought her home while my wife was working late. On evenings like this, after we feed and play, the Little One and I usually sit down and listen to music. The easy thing to do, of course, would be to make a quick dinner so that I could tend to her, but I am trying to continue eating on the Paleo diet I was introduced to in CrossFit, which inevitably requires some sort of preparation. This particular evening, we accommodated by changing the regimen a little, and we did our listening from the kitchen. While I chopped up yams and zucchini, we listened to Thundercat’s recent electrofunk release The Golden Age of Apocalypse.

Thundercat is part of a collective of musicians that orbit around laptop artist and producer Flying Lotus. As a sometime bassist myself, I admit finding a new bass guru is an appealing prospect, and Thundercat does not disappoint. He owes no small debt to bass pioneers Jaco Pastorius and Stanley Clarke, but at the same time manages avoid taking himself too seriously. With more and more bands resorting to synthesized and sequenced bass parts, it is inspiring to see someone pushing the instrument to the front in a way that is both classic and relevant.



The Golden Age of Apocalypse is a great example of what I call a “waketime” album for the Little One. It’s far too energetic to be soothing, but it is fun and harmonically deep. Although his nom de plume is an 80s reference, Thundercat harkens back to the 70s when the shimmer of the Fender-Rhodes unified Earth, Wind, and Fire’s anthemic bombast with the jazz fusion chops of Return to Forever. The Golden Age of Apocalypse avoids delving into a full-on 70s rehash, however, by acknowledging the atmospheric innovations of acid jazz and turntablism. Thundercat and his backing group are probably capable of recreating DJ Shadow’s 2001 classic Endtroducing…... even hypothetically, that’s no mean feat.



Hang in there until the bass solo at 3:00.  Trust me on this one....

I would love for the Little One to grow up knowing albums like this one as a household staple. I suspect that by the time she gets into her own music-making, it will probably be far trendier to work in the vein of Flying Lotus’ laptop work than Thundercat’s more classic approach to the bass. I would, however, like for her to know the feeling of having an instrument vibrate in her hands so that she can viscerally appreciate good playing when she sees or hears it in some setting. Although it’s not necessary to have this sort of background to get into The Golden Age of Apocalypse, it does deliver on this level and beyond.

Starting CrossFit withTomahawk: Perspiration and Appropriation

Every summer comes with a horizon-expanding “project,” because as attractive as it may sound at the end of a given school year, sitting around the house wears thin.   Last summer, for example, I tried to make some progress in learning Japanese.  Since then, my health practices had declined slightly and by the end of spring I felt as if I was slowly gaining back lost weight.  This summer, then, to hit the “reset” button on my fitness practices, I decided to make CrossFit the 2011 summer project.   I may talk more in depth about this over the course of the summer, but I will say that it has been a transformative experience so far.

I began on the very first day I had off, and to celebrate I traded out almost all of the CDs in my changer.  One of the new discs was a copy of Anonymous by Tomahawk.  By sheer chance, this 2007 album came up in the player on my way to three out of my first four CrossFit classes.  As a result, for at least the month of July, Anonymous became associated with getting started in Level One.
 

What makes Anonymous musically unique and of particular interest is its subject material.  During his stint as the guitarist for HankWilliams III, guitarist Duane Denison began researching some Native American Indian music.  He and Battles drummer John Stanier reinterpreted this material in an experimental Zappa-esque rock format and used it as a springboard for the inimitable vocal genius/insanity of the vocable-spewing Mike Patton.

On the one hand, it seems that Denison should be applauded for “paying tribute” to American Indian culture, but it could also be argued that Tomahawk is indulging in the kind of appropriation that I discussed in the May post concerning Alash and Enigma.  Incidentally, those great musical appropriators of the 90s took their stab at American Indian music, as well.

The comparison is a bit unfair, however, because Enigma indulges in an image of an idealized American Indian mystic, rather like the one that fueled the New Age movement.  Historically, the American Indians have been repeatedly appropriated in this and other ways with little actual respect and compensation.  Denison attempted to pay tribute to the uncredited musicians that served as his inspiration though the title of the album, but one must wonder if this is enough.

Musically, however, Anonymous seems a bit more reverent to its source material.  I think that this reverence stems from a menacing undercurrent on Anonymous that stands in stark contrast to Enigma’s hyperreal “benevolent mystic” stereotype.  Like many (but perhaps not enough) Americans, I admit to a certain cultural guilt over the fate of the American Indian.  I think that because of this, I interpret Tomahawk’s sometimes warlike drumming and otherworldly melodic approach as a more vengeful and perhaps lonely representation (an interpretation perhaps shared by the creator of this fan-made video). 

This menace, whether perceived or intended, provides an interesting and sometimes empowering backdrop to the morning CrossFit experience.  As the box thumps with the coolest hip-hop of the moment, I am often working out to dark drums and chugging guitars in my head.  Even on the more mellow and reflective pieces on the album seem to provide a sense of rebellious inspiration on the sweaty, endorphin-infused ride home.