God moving over the face of the waters

Now, challenges like these, where I revisit specific time periods of my life, tend to be really great. This week I go back to the year of 2002. First quarter of that year, I start working at a big box retail store, and though I first start as a cashier, by the end of the Summer I was working in the music department. That year, in and of itself, proved to be a tumultuous one for me. By year's end, the relationship I was in with the mother of my son would finally come to a close, and though it brought us both a great relief, it also brought doubt and the shadow of loss with it. One thing that really helped bear all that was the acquaintances I made throughout that year, a select few of which would translate into deeper friendships. 

See, a bunch of us who worked there had a ritual, one that would happen at least once a week, but often more often than that. We'd leave work around 10:30 p.m. and then make our way up to the bars, and get hammered. All the while, we'd be talking about random shit, having fun, and trying to get lucky. There's one guy in particular who I became really good friends with, and through him I got to know a lot of music that was well out of my wheelhouse. Though by that time I was listening to E.B.M. and Aggrotech, and Future Pop and all that synth goodness, he was much more into a more ambient type of music. Rui, who I mentioned in an entry a good while back, listened to - and made - types of music in the electronic realms that I wasn't very aware of. And because we lived fairly close to each other, he'd always give me a lift back home when I was way too drunk to go anywhere. Anyway, it would be during these homeward trips that Rui would play these really cool songs, and I lowkey envied this motherfucker for having such an awesome taste in music. Man, those were good times indeed. Even when I was retching my guts out over having drunk way too much, and the poor guy would then have to clean vomit from off his car. Well, here's a selection of acts that I listened to back then or got to know about  on account of good old Rui! 

Day 271 - Photek - 'KU:PALM'
Here's how I break this album down : there are - for me - three very distinct phases to this album. First phase is tracks 1-5, which range from the pretty good to the 'eh, just kinda there'. Then comes phase two, tracks 6-9, which are mostly bangers, including the standout track 'Munich'. Everything here is pretty fucking good. Then comes the last phase, which has three very forgettable vocal pieces. Instrumentally, they are sound, and should they have been wholly instrumental, then good God damn, this would have been one for the ages. But alas, none of the vocal performances were really that good. I'll give it a 7/10, but this could have gone a bit higher if not for those pesky vocals tunes.

Day 272 - Einóma - 'Milli Tónverka'

I loved their debut record 'Undir Feilnótum' to death, and though this one came only one year after that first record, I was never aware of it. This one I found to be very much on the front-loaded side, meaning that I enjoyed the first few tracks much more than I did, say, the middle tracks. The first few I think almost could be the soundtrack to a sort of cyber noir thriller, and those were pretty good. Then in the middle it gets somewhat more abstract, and I didn't enjoy those tracks as much. It does pick up a bit in the end, though it ends in somewhat of a semi unpleasant maelstrom of cacophony.

I dunno, I liked some of it and others not so much. It felt like it was somewhat lacking in cohesion. It gets just a 6/10

Day 273 - DJ Shadow - 'Action Adventure'

I almost selected DJ Shadow for my hip-hop entry a while back, because that's how you see him labeled, though I myself never saw it. First track I heard from this guy was a track called 'You Can't Go Home Again', and it would have been in one of those early mornings me and Rui and a couple of other friends would spend, sitting in his car while he played the coolest songs ever. That song - and especially that song - remained inside my mind throughout that year. I knew that my then relationship was very much on its last legs, and to this day I vividly recall approaching the door to the house we lived in, knowing that very soon it wouldn't be my home anymore, and while I stood there, uncertainty gripping me to my very core, that song was playing on my MiniDisc player - yes, I was one of the lucky few who had one, so it seems. 

I haven't followed his work in many years, and I actually always preferred his work with UNKLE. If I was looking for something like 'You Can't Go Home Again' here, then it's nowhere to be found. There are some good tracks here, the first five or six make for some solid listening, but they're followed by a bunch of boring/lackluster tracks. It ends on a more somber, ambient note though, which may well be the best part of the album. Unfortunately, there's nothing here that would make me want to come back to it often, if ever at all. It gets a 6/10, and that's mainly because of the last few tracks.

Day 274 - Autechre - 'Plus'

Now that I think of it, Einóma was - along with something I really enjoyed, but can't for the life of me recall what it was called - a recommendation from a guy that worked with me and Rui. I wasn't super close with him, but we got along fine, and I know that one of his favourite bands was Autechre. I might have listened to something by them back then, I don''t know. Maybe I did. But be that as it may I figured that since it fits the time period I'm revisiting, this would fit very well. And, you know, in my day I listened to a lot of electronic music, from E.B.M. to synth-pop, aggrotech, gabber, ambient et al, and my mileage does indeed vary a great deal in what I can enjoy and in what I can tolerate. Things that veer towards the abstractly experimental, with no semblance of sense whatsoever behind what is being offered just grinds my gears.

There was a hilarious bit in an episode of 'The Office', where Gabe is hosting a party at his house, and eventually he boasts about his musicianship. When asked what he played, he simply replies 'Oh! I like to create soundscapes. I imagine one instant of a song, expanded to be the size of the universe.', and though this isn't quite that, it's annoying on levels of pretension that just baffle me. There are - certainly - some pleasant bits. I'd say the bests songs can be found among the last four, excluding the last one which was just atrocious.

You know, for a record called 'Plus' this is one hell of a minus. I'll give it a 2/10

Day 275 - Boards of Canada - 'Inferno'

Some twenty years ago I met a gay guy who was really into me, and flattered though I might have felt, I just don't swing that way. But he was talking to me online, and because at that time I used to DJ a bit, he was always sending me songs, recommending new music to me. One time he was telling me about a band called Of Montreal, a band that I never managed to quite get into. And I replied something along the lines of 'Oh yeah, I've listened to some of their stuff before. Like this ambient electronic thing, right?' and he poor kid just looked at me and shook his head. Of course I was confusing Of Montreal with Boards Of Canada. 

Now, to be fair, I don't think I'd ever listened to more than a few tracks in isolation here and there. Never a full record. And this one, boy, at 70 minutes long it just felt like it had plenty of filler. It also had some really great songs - yes, ambient-y, atmospheric ones - but goddamn, it could have been pared down to 40-45 minutes max and it would have been all the better for it. Maybe release those filler tracks as a second disc or b-sides. But this being what it is, I'll give it a 6/10

Day 276 - Eluvium - '(Whirring Marvels In) Consensus Reality'
Something I don't really do when it comes to these challenges is structure the bands/artists I chose so that I leave the best for last, and thus I'd always end the week on a high note. When I was still a normal person who was interested in normal things like dating someone, I used to pour my heart and soul into these playlists that I'd curate specifically for whomever it was that held my interest. All this to say that I wish this had been the last listen of the week, and if I'm honest, had this been the last listen of the year then I'd be well chuffed. This one was a remarkable listen : delicate, beautiful, achingly so. It was not only the best of the week, but I'm certain it's easily one of the top 5 listens I've had so far during this challenge. I'll give it an astounding 10/10

Day 277 - Pantha Du Prince - 'Garden Gaia'

My friend Rui, he who inspired me to do this bit of the challenge, he's a very good looking guy, and very stylish in a cool kind of way. On top of all that, he's very intelligent, very interesting and quite creative. He studied cinema, and he writes and draws his own comics. So, with all those attributes, it's no wonder he never lacked for company. We briefly worked together with a girl who absolutely fancied him, and they'd eventually have a short-lived relationship where you could definitely see that the girl still had feelings for him long after they'd broken up. Sometimes I'd meet them, and we'd go for a drink, and then to some club or the other. She drank his every word, her eyes were on him always, and whatever he liked to listen to or watch, she liked as well. 

And yeah, I felt a twinge of envy, and that envy was twofold : I envied his coolness and roguish good looks, and I envied that devotion the girl had for him. I remember that the very last time I saw her - and this might have been some 15 years ago by now, or more - one of the things that she was telling him, and bear in mind that though they had not been together in quite a while, and both were in relationships with other people, an attempt at a friendship was still being made, but she was telling him that she still listened to all the things she knew he liked - and one of the artists mentioned was one Pantha Du Prince.

I remember that Rui had sent me some MP3s before, and though I registered the name somewhere in my mental data bank, and though I'd sometimes listen to some of his tracks in isolation - especially when I was DJing - I just never found the time or the patience or, indeed, the will to go down that rabbit hole.

And to be perfectly honest, the very first thing I noticed about this album is this artwork that's very Roger Dean-esque, right down to the font, and that might have led me to think that this would be somehow prog-ish. Well, it isn't, it's fine electronic music, though hardly original. I didn't much love this one, it had a couple of vocal tunes that somehow reminded me of Depeche Mode, with a little bit of Peter Heppner as well. The last few tracks are the best, by far, but it still didn't make up for an entirely pleasant listen. I'll give it a middling 5/10

Next week comes something that I should have done in the summer. But better late than never, and hopefully it'll be good - and cool! 

Midnight, the stars and you

So I decided to immediately jump into the Big Band Jazz/Swing bit. I think I might have written this somewhere in the past, but as a kid, my house always had plenty of music, and books, and movies. What with my mother working for a TV station, she had access to plenty of cultural stuff that made its way into our home. My parents had a vinyl record collection - it wasn't huge, really, just maybe like a shelf full of records. It was very varied, in terms of genres, everything from Dire Straits and Pink Floyd, to Santana and some classical music, as well as a few Jazz records - including one by Glenn Miller, so I guess this type of music has orbited me for a long time. More recently - meaning in the last decade or thereabouts -  the soundtrack to the videogame 'Cuphead' brought this music back to the forefront of my consciousness again. Let's see how this one turns out, hmm?

Day 264 - Benny Goodman - 'The Famous 1938 Carnegie Hall Jazz Concert'

Well, this is a hard one. On the one hand, this is very, very enjoyable. On the other hand, it's over two hours long, which - unfortunately for me - means that a lot of the songs became fairly indistinguishable from one another. By the time disc 2 started, I was already praying for this to end, and I wasn't even halfway through. That said, the very same disc 2 has a few very pleasant vocal numbers, which helped ease the struggle. This recording seems to sourced directly from a vinyl record from the exact time period, seeing as you can hear - very audibly so - a lot of surface noise and crackles and pops. But for me that only adds to a certain charm the record has.

I fear that some - if not most of these records - may fall to these lengths, and that's not going to help me one bit. If this had been a lot, lot shorter - say, around the hour mark - I'd've given this a higher score. As it is - and though enjoy it I did - all it gets is a 6/10

Day 265 - Erroll Garner - 'Concert by the Sea'

One of the great issues that arise when you don't really know a music genre that well, is that when you do a research of it on the internet, and the same records crop up in a various different best of lists, then you take that information at face value. I saw this record being described as 'Big Band', and while it might very well be true, it didn't really feel like one to me. More like upbeat piano Jazz, which, unfortunately, I didn't very much enjoy. And to my great annoyance, there's a sort of background mumbling - something the previous record had in spades - that just takes the immersion away from me. Some people, I'd wager, will find this extremely charming - I didn't. I can't give it more than a 4/10

Day 266 - Count Basie - 'April in Paris'

If, on the one hand, I think that this album was everything the others weren't - shorter and to the point, livelier, and with none of that annoying mumbling anywhere to be heard - on the other it's still not exactly what I think I was looking for in terms of Big Band sounds. Maybe I feel that it was actually swing or ragtime kind of music that I was hoping for, but that's on me, really. I enjoyed this one quite a bit - much more than both previous records combined. I'll award it a 7/10

Day 267 - Duke Ellington - '...And His Mother Called Him Bill'

Just like the Count Basie record, I enjoyed this one quite a bit, and in parts it almost was what I was looking for, but not quite. It got me to thinking just what it might be I would be looking for, and then I remembered that fairly recently I'd watched 'The Shining' again, and then I reasoned that it might well have been half a decade ago or more, but be that as it may, it's that jazzy bit that plays whenever Jack Torrance enters the Overlook Hotel's bar that I'm really angling for. That may or may not lead to another entry in this challenge, but maybe not soon. Still, I found this one pretty enjoyable, sometimes even evoking somewhat a languorous feeling in me, and I mean that in the best way possible. I'll give it a 7/10

Day 268 - Dizzy Gillespie - 'Dizzy Gillespie at Newport'

While I can't technically fault this for any single thing, I find the fault itself lies with me and my expectations. I keep expecting for something I don't entirely get, except for bits and pieces scattered among the (for me) mostly forgettable music. Muzak, even. Again, not bad by any means, just not that enjoyable for me. It gets a 5/10

Day 269 - Ben Webster - 'King of the Tenors'

Maybe there's a technical difference between this kind of Big Band Jazz and the one I think I was looking for, but I don't know what it is, I can maybe see the differences stylistically, and certainly I can understand that different eras generate different meanings for things that are called the same. But this one just wasn't it at all, and I'm not even sure that I liked it that much, even. It did have a fairly decent interpretation of 'Danny Boy' but it was too little, too late. I'll give it a very generous 4/10

Day 270 - Woody Herman And His Orchestra - 'Giant Steps'

Two things I'll admit here : first, this was not the record from this artist I'd picked for my listen, but Apple Music didn't have it. Second, I'd given up on this being what I was looking for, I'd decided to just take the loss and deal with it. And yet, I'll say that this one surprised the holy hell out of me. Because if in the one hand you can certainly feel the 'Big Band' here, on the other hand it's nothing like that swinging sound I was hoping for. And yeah, something that really makes a difference is that this is a record that came out in the 70s and not in the 30s/40s, so it's very, very modern - I'd wager that maybe even by today's standards - and it's just so dynamic, so lively, so entertaining. This one feels like it could very well have been the soundtrack of some heist movie, right down to the tender moments. Not gonna lie, this is this week's absolute winner. I'll give it a great 8/10.

I was going through my list of challenges, and I really need to get some out of the way. As it happens, the year is winding down fast and I need to make sure that I do some of the ones that will have a deeper meaning with me. And next week we get electronic.

Almost you, almost me, almost blue

So I finally got round to doing a part of the challenge I always knew I would be making, and one I've been dreading to undergo since the very first beginning : Jazz.
Now, I've always had an intensely dislike/downright hate relationship with Jazz, but it was - at least according to my point of view - entirely justified. When I was very young, my mother was working at a TV station and she often had to view content that was being shopped around by foreign networks. This included - unfortunately for me - content from Jazz festivals. But it also meant that for a few years we'd attend a night or two of a local, internationally renowned Jazz festival, and boy oh boy, did I loathe everything I had to listen to. And I used to have a... not a hot take, but rather a nuclear one : I didn't think anyone really likes Jazz. People are just too afraid to say it, lest they run afoul of these groupthink people who'll call them every '-ist' under the sun. But the sad truth for me is that during my life I have met and worked with people who actually enjoy it. 

Jazz, however, is an ubiquitous, inescapable presence is everyone's life : it's in movies, TV show, it's imagery is iconic, and the names are universally recognized. Miles, Ella, Coltrane, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Monk, just to name a few. Everybody's heard of them. 

And now that I'm grown up, how do I feel about Jazz? Well, since then I've heard some Jazz - old and new. There were things I liked and things I detested. I tend to like vocal Jazz more than instrumental Jazz. I liked what I heard from Django Reinhardt and his guitar playing. Chet Baker, too, I came to enjoy. I really don't like Diana Krall but quite like Norah Jones. But it's not - and never will be - something that I will actively seek out to listen, I don't think. So did anything here really changed my mindset? Well, read on.

Day 257 - Jaco Pastorius - 'Jaco Pastorius'

I remember a conversation I had about 30 years ago with a guy I was doing service with in the Air Force. I was hardcore into metal, the guy was into Jazz. I was telling him about bass players like Steve DiGiorgio, Joey DeMaio or Steve Harris. He was telling me how they paled in comparison to guys like Stanley Clarke and Jaco Pastorius. I didn't believe him then. And truth is, I still don't believe it now. 

I have a number of issues with my listening of this album. And the first immediately leads to the second, which is a genuine fear I had. To whit, I found this to be far too long. At almost an hour long, this very early on became muzak to me. I just couldn't really get into it. Yes, the playing is amazing, yes, the bass absolutely smokes, and here and there I was pleasantly surprised by some good moments - especially on the shorter songs. But it wasn't enough for me to really enjoy it. I'll give it a 5/10

Day 258 - Herbie Hancock - 'Maiden Voyage'

Now, this one I actually really liked. And whilst trying to figure out just why I enjoyed it so much, I thought of a really good joke to use in this 'review' of mine, but it would have been wasted here, so I'm saving it for a (hopefully) more appropriate occasion, that I'm all but certain this exercise will provide me with. So, I'm not entirely sure that I can articulate the why of my enjoyment. I know very little of Jazz for me to state what is truly different between this one and other works of the genre. But for me was all about the mood it conveyed, how chill it was to listen to. The shortest song being around 6 minutes and the longest being over 10, and none of them feeling like they overstay their welcome, as well as, indeed, the whole album feeling like it just breezed by, is - for me, at least - a huge compliment. I'll give it a good 7/10

Day 259 - Alice Coltrane - 'Universal Consciousness'
The aforementioned joke almost reared its ugly head a few seconds into the first song - which ultimately I just did not enjoy. But I held fast, and the second song didn't show me any reason to love it either. Then I sort of stopped and it dawned on me that what I was listening to actually had more in common with a specific type of classical music that tends to be more towards the chaotic side, stuff like Stravinsky or Shostakovich, or even some Penderecki. I'm not saying they're the same, not by a longshot, but my brain interpreted it that way and then it made more sense to me. Outside of maybe the first two tracks which didn't do much for me, the rest I enjoyed. I'm not going to say that this would be something I'd reach for often, but neither did it make me feel like I'd wasted my time listening to it.

For me, it's a 6/10 

Day 260 - Lee Morgan - 'The Sidewinder'

Re : the joke. I knew from the first second I listened to this that the joke would not be used here. In fact, I am hopeful that the occasion for me to use doesn't arise, though I'm fairly certain it will. Some of my upcoming choices I know will test me. As for this album, just like Herbie Hancock's, it's all about the mood it sets. I'm somewhat suspicious that I may have heard at least bits and pieces of some of the songs here, maybe in movies or commercials. And I would describe this as cinematic, in the sense that it brought to mind something that could easily be heard being played in a seedy speakeasy in some detective movie from the '60s. A very pleasant listen, to be sure, and I'll give it a 7/10

Day 261 - Eric Dolphy - 'Out To Lunch!'
This one almost merited the joke, because alas, I wasn't a huge fan of this one. But I opted to save it for a future entry in this series. 

Now, why didn't I like this one? Frankly, I found it to be fairly... I dunno. Sterile. Lifeless. Lugubrious. It had none of the vivacity, swing or energy the others had. And that's ok, you can't win 'em all. You just move on and hope that the next one's better suited for you. It's not bad, no, just not very enjoyable for me. I'll give it a 5/10 

Day 262 - Sonny Rollins - 'Saxophone Colossus'

When I did my admittedly not very thorough research into what albums I'd choose to feature here, I made sure that I didn't pick anything that was - to my understanding - a record that was so overwhelmingly and universally renowned that even I would have heard of it, and I also made sure to select at least a couple of records that I knew that, and reading from the descriptions in the list I found them in, I would either intensely dislike if not downright hate. This was one such choice, and I am very glad to say that not only I enjoyed, I enjoyed it precisely because this one had - and in spades - that which I found to be missing in the previous record. This one is full of life, contagiously so. I'm of a mind that this might have been the best record of the lot. It gets a great 8/10

 
Day 263 - Ornette Coleman - The Shape of Jazz to Come'

I have to be honest, I didn't love this one. It was... too slow. Sort of like a dirge, really. But I still liked it better than the Dolphy record, though really not by much. I don't know how to put it into words just why I enjoyed some records more than others, maybe it has to do with what kind of feelings well up inside me while listening to them. Some of the records here just seemed to fly by, a few sort of felt maybe they overstayed their welcome. Or maybe I just prefer something with a bit more pep in its step.

I'll give it a 6/10

So what did we learn, kids? Well, for me, I realized that Jazz is best appreciated while being listened to on headphones. In all others instances before it was huge no-no for me, but headphones really helped me appreciate that much more all that Jazz, pardon the pun. In fact, I might even do a further entry into this challenge where I focus on Big Band Jazz / Swing. I might just do that.

'I don't belong here', said old Tessa out loud

I'm pretty sure that what happened to me happened to a ton of people all over the world, but pre-pandemic I barely used youtube. Sure, I'd go there sometimes, either to see a music video, or a game playthrough, maybe a trailer. But I certainly didn't spend hours there every day, I didn't follow any channels or content creators. All that changed, though, with the pandemic. And maybe there was a boost in whatever was being suggested to me in my feed, and so I started listening to a wider range of content there. 

Many of those channels, though, and even though they still exist and are quite successful, I've stopped following as fervently as I did. Even the one that inspired this week's post - a channel called Sea Of Tranquility - is one I watch only a small portion of their output. But for a few years I watched pretty much everything the channel released. And some of it resonated with me, and some of it didn't. But fairly early on I got addicted to two of their regular shows : 'The Prog Report', which dealt with all kinds of prog music, as well as '4Fusion Friday' which was dedicated to Fusion. Now, the funny thing I was never a fan of any of those genres, but the shows themselves were quite entertaining, and are still the only two I keep on watching regularly.

And sure enough, one of the things I've been meaning to explore since then was none other than Italian prog. Let's hope it turns out well, this incursion of mine...

Day 250 - Le Orme - 'Felona e Sorona'

First off, I really, really liked this and one of the thing that made me like this was the fact that a) it was only 33 minutes long and b) there were no 15-20 minute long epic tracks. But also, I really loved Aldo Tagilapietra's voice - very calm, very soothing, every word clearly enunciated. Heavy on the keys, synths and mellotron, this was a really enjoyable listen. Now, my Italian isn't so good that I could understand the themes of the album, but luckily we have the interwebs : 

'... it is a concept album pivoting on the story of two planets which revolve one around the other, without ever coming in contact. While Felona is shiny and flourishing, Sorona is dark and home to plagues and catastrophes; however, in the second part of the suite, the fate of the two planets is inverted.'

Boy oh boy, that's some heady stuff. There's a version of this that's sung in English, but I stuck to the original. And I'm glad I did, though if I can fault it for anything... then I have to say I wasn't a terrible fan of the production. Still, good enough to get a 7/10

Day 251 - Locanda Delle Fate - 'Forse Le Lucciole Non Si Amano Più'

I am of two minds about this one. If on the one hand I really liked the instrumentation found in this record, on the other hand I found the vocalist's voice to not really fit in with the music itself. And that said, is it a bad voice? No, not at all. I found the singer's voice to be quite soothing, but more in a pop oriented type of music. What with the music being (mostly) so airy, I'd say something in a somewhat higher register would have suited the music much better - and in the song 'Non Chiudere A Chiave Le Stelle' the voice reaches a softness that's just gorgeous. I wouldn't have wanted a Jon Anderson type of singer, but maybe something in the middle would have fared better. This - unsurprisingly - is reminiscent of Yes, Genesis or Camel, and that's why I ended up enjoying the instrumentation so much. Could have gotten a higher score, for sure, but I'll give it a 6/10

Day 252 - Reale Accademia Di Musica - 'Reale Accademia Di Musica'

In truth, this wasn't the band that I had elected for today, but because Apple Music didn't have pretty much anything by said band, I had to choose another one. Also, I found out online that that specific band was somewhat polemic for its time, and boy howdy, would it be polemic now. So I settled for this one, and I really enjoyed this one : very beautiful, delicate, with some decidedly tender moments. It's very well played, and it gets heavy-ish in parts as well. As with Locanda Delle Fate, I wasn't such a fan of the vocalist's voice here as well. I liked him better than Locanda's, for sure, but sometimes his voice is just too quiet. Some songs could have a done with a more powerful range. Another thing at fault here is the production, I think this is one of those records that would really benefit from a remix or a remaster. I found the guitars to be fairly muddy, especially the rhythm guitars. Sometimes they feel just like random noises rather than actual guitar playing, and the bass is too low in the mix for my tastes.

Bearing all that in mind, I just really enjoyed this album, and I'll gladly give it a 7.5/10

Day 253 - Il Balletto Di Bronzo - 'Ys'

There was a time in my early teenage years where, having fallen madly and hopelessly in love with videogames and consoles (especially Nintendo), I consumed a wealth of imported American and British magazines, some of which I bought, others I borrowed and a great deal more I... erm.. procured. I gave them the five finger discount, if you catch my drift.

In any of these mags, you'd see any number of feature articles, news, reviews, as well as a bevvy of ads for vendors who specialized in imported games. Among those very many games being advertised, you could often find games from a series called 'Ys' - and from that moment on, and well until past my 30s... I've always read 'Ys' as 'Whys'. Even though by that time in my life I'd already listened to Joanna Newsom's 'Ys' and my forays into high fantasy and the research I'd done on mythologigal places somewhat related to the Arthurian lore - think Avalon, Lyonesse, Hy-Brasil - had crossed their paths with this fallen city of legend, I was still flabergasted with the fact that it's pronouned 'Ees' and not 'Whys'.

And 'Ys' is the name of this album, by a band that released a couple of albums in the early 70's and then disbanded. And if I'm honest... I wasn't a huge fan of it. Let me see if I can explain this : I've listened to some stuff these past few years that's labeled 'Jazz Rock' and I never really got that. Because in my mind, 'Jazz Rock' sounds a bit like, well, a rockier kind of Jazz. And it never does, in whatever it was I listened to. And it does here, perhaps a bit too much for my tastes. And I didn't care - at all - for the free jazz bits. Also I should mention that whilst I do think that the singer has a good voice - he's much more on the rock side than on the crooner side - I wasn't entirely convinced that a) he actually sang that well and b) his voice wasn't the right fit for this band. Maybe had be been the singer of Locanda Delle Fate then everything would have been perfectly balanced.

This isn't bad, not by any stretch of the imagination, but... I only really liked one song on the album, and it's a bonus track at that. It gets a 5/10

Day 254 - Semiramis - 'Dedicato a Frazz'

No preamble here, this is a fucking masterpiece. 

Basically a one and done band, they recorded this glorious piece of music when they were teenagers. And the singer was 16 when he recorded the vocals for this album, and he sounded much more like a man, a proper man, at 16 than I do going on 50. Jesus.

Everything is here is absolutely top notch, though - as always - a cleaner production might have elevated it a bit more. That said, everything here is so, so good, that I can't give it anything less than a 9/10

Day 255 - Premiata Forneria Marconi - 'L'isola di Niente'

If I've been hitherto been somewhat charting uncharted waters, then these next two bands aren't utterly unknown to me. Meaning that I at least knew them by name - though just the how I knew those names I cannot fathom. It's possible that I somehow came across a record of theirs in a record shop, or on a flea market. Maybe it was a tattered t-shirt I saw someone wearing somewhere. But I was aware of their names for many, many years - I'm talking decades here. And yet, not knowing (or otherwise being remotely interested in finding out) anything about them, I never followed up on them. 

And... cue the aforementioned Sea Of Tranquility Youtube channel, where these guys were mentioned often. Obviously, that made them prime candidates for this exercise. I have to say that I really loved this album - it has, perhaps, the best playing along with the Semiramis record. The production is gorgeous, everything can be heard clearly, and the singer has a real good voice - though I'll admit that the one song that's sung in English does seem a bit out of place. Vocally wise, not instrumentally.

I will have to admit, though, that I really didn't enjoy about the first half of the last song, but the last half more than makes up for it.

Really, really good, it gets a throroughly deserved 8/10

Day 256 - Banco del Mutuo Soccorso - 'Darwin!'

Just like PFM (the previous band), I can't imagine where I'd've heard this name before. It got me thinking if maybe this wasn't a band my godfather was into - he did like prog, and Fish and Marillion were certainly things he listened to. Could it be that I heard that name being mentioned, or maybe it was in some tape I saw in his car? I don't know, I really don't. But this name has echoed in my mind for years and years. 

The first thing I'm going to say about this album is that initially I struggled a lot with the vocals. The first song - though instrumentally very good - had some really not great vocals, and I almost thought that I wouldn't really enjoy this album. Then the strangest thing happens : from then on the vocals get real good. So good, that I almost thought that they either had multiple led vocalists singing here (they didn't) or whether the album was recorded throughout a long stretch of time, which might have explained the evolution of the vocals - but I don't think it was that. 

This album was very, very good - it's a concept album about the Darwinian concept of evolution. Instrumentally, this is top tier, and everything makes for a very, very solid listen. I'll give a strong 8/10

Next week I either do something potentially pleasureful or something likely painful. I'll decide tomorrow.

The same moon shines, the same wind blows for both of us and time is but a paper moon

Man, these algorithms that power social media sure are something else, something spooky. For all the talk about AI, the algorithms sure disturb me quite a bit more - at least for now. So I was doing some research for a topic I'll be doing in the near future, and while I was thinking about said topic, my mind flashed back to a memory I had buried in my mind - quite likely something that was now over forty years ago. When I was a kid, my mother used to work at the only TV station we had, and because it was not that far from where I lived, I visited her very, very often. Sometimes she'd be doing office work, other times she'd be doing studio work. She was working for the department that handled foreign content, and part of her duties were - among many other things - to view - and I should note that by 'view' I don't mean she actually watched the whole thing; no, she watched a few minutes only, took some notes, fastforwarded a few minutes until the next segment, and rinse and repeat -  analyze, and write reports on whatever content was being shopped around from foreign networks, and it could be something contemporary or not. There was no actual distinction between what kind of content she had to view - it could be soap operas, regular TV shows, cartoons or even music shows. 

Often, when I visited her, and she was busy viewing something, I'd sit beside her and watch along, or if she had to go to a meeting, she'd sit me down and put on something for me to watch. In one of those instances, she was viewing music shows and I remember a band playing that immediately got on my nerves. I mean, even then, even at that young an age, I knew I was listening to something so stupidly pretentious, I'm surprised I didn't throw a tantrum. And the people playing, what were they, Japanese? Did music even exist in Japan? I was shocked, disgusted and traumatized.

And that - dear readers - was that. That was the end of that story. That is, until this week.

The algorithms, right? I'm used to getting suggestions based on whatever I search for - though some turn out to be wildly off the mark - and sometimes I get suggestions that make me think that my phone really is listening to me. But what scares me was when I think of something - I don't even verbalize it or look it up or whatever... and within minutes I'm getting suggestions that match exactly what I was thinking. And what did good ol' Youtube do? Motherfuckers, the video that I had seen once and only the once in my childhood appears in my feed. I had no idea what they were called, but as soon as I saw the thumbnail, I was like '...is it? Could it be? After all these years, could I have found that music from my childhood that I truly detested?', and a few seconds into it, sure enough - it's the very same band, and wouldn't you know, I actually found it pretty good!

Day 243 - Sadistic Mika Band - 'Hot! Menu'

So the song that almost made me wretch as a kid was actually the first song from their 1975 record 'Hot! Menu', called 'Wa-Kah! Chico'. For some reason, as a kid I didn't think it was actually real people playing that song, but rather robots with realistic skin. Because they played so... so precisely in time with each other. Like machines whose programming made all the pieces fall neatly and unerringly into place. And I didn't know it at the time, I had no idea what it was called, but man... noodling is something that I really am not such a huge fan of. And yet... I actually liked it here. And thinking that the rest of the album was going to be me much of the same... it's actually quite different. Proggy, yes, and some fusion-y bits as well, with some rock thrown in. It's funny how something I loathed as a kid would turn out to be pretty interesting! I'll give a pretty decent 7/10

Day 244 - Yellow Magic Orchestra - 'Solid State Survivor'

Well, this is the band where Yukihiro Takahashi (the drummer) was before Sadistic Mika Band, so it's got some family ties going on. This album is quite interesting - and apparently highly influential in a number of music genres, ranging from hip-hop to techno - in that it's mostly instrumental music that would not be - at all - amiss in 8 Bit videogames, and for my part, that's actually the most enjoyable bit of the album. Not to say that what's left was bad, but rather it's more akin to, say, Roxy Music. All in all a pretty groovy listen, it gets a 7/10

Day 245 - Far East Family Band - 'Nipponjin'

Very, very much on the spacey side of prog, this was a very interesting listen. It wears its Pink Floyd influences proudly on their sleeves, though they veer more towards the space rock end of that particular spectrum. A funny thing I learned about this band while researching them is that a fellow called Masanori Takahashi was their keyboard player, more famously known as Kitarō, he of new age music renown. And it shows here and there, especially in the more instrumental bits. Whilst I enjoyed the record, there's nothing really groundbreaking here - even for a 1975 record. All in all, I think it deserves a 6.5/10

Day 246 - Kenso - 'Kenso III'

I don't know what to make of this, really. On the one hand, it's a highly regarded album critically, and on the other it just feels terribly derivative - but I say that in a positive way. This album is classified as being Fusion or Jazz Rock, though I don't know too many records of that genre that would sway me to fit them in any of those categories. It does sound much more proggy than anything else, really, especially close to some Genesis stuff. Steve Hackett's guitar work is clearly an inspiration here. It's all very, very much instrumental, with only some vocal harmonies here and there, and though that's ok in and of itself, I am a huge fan of music with, well, actual singing. Nothing about that takes away from the album, though, and I found myself enjoying the latter part of the album quite a bit more than the rest of it. Didn't wow me, and neither did it make me feel like my time was stolen. I'll give it a 6.5/10

Day 247 - Kazumi Watanabe - 'Killowatt'

Or should the album be called 'Kirowatt'? At least that's how it's called in Apple Music.

Now, granted, there's much about Jazz Fusion/Jazz Rock that is still very unknown to me. I haven't listened to much of it, so I rarely know what to expect. From what I could ascertain online, this one skews more toward the Jazz Fusion side, and I can see that, but there's some bits of rocking guitar here. And to be sure, I can't fault any of the playing here, and if there's something I really love here is just how prominent the bass sound is. But (unfortunately) for me, most of this record was just music that I could safely ignore while listening to it. Some of it just gets too close to Muzak for my tastes, and it's in one ear and out the other. Only maybe the first and last couple of tracks really stood out to me. Not bad, not by a longshot, but just not my cup of tea. Still, it gets a 6/10

Day 248 - Ruins - 'Symphonica'

Well, listening to this made me think of a very specific moment in my life where I felt like doing the Homer Simpson backing into the bushes meme. There used to be a record store close to where I worked, and they only sold Prog/Psych records, and variants and subgenres thereof. I never went there a lot - maybe only a couple of times, really - and this specific time I went in and heard something so outlandishly ridiculous that my instinct was to back away and return another time, if at all. But curiosity got the best of me and I asked the guy who owned the store what was we were listening to. And he says it's a band called 'Magma', and I reply, 'Weird, this sounds nothing like the Magnum I know', to which he says, obviously frustrated with my stupidity, 'Magma! MAGMA! MAG-MA!'. And for god knows how many years thereafter, I never revisited the band, nor had I any real inclination to do so.

About maybe a couple of years ago, in one of those nights one has when you can't find any sleep, and some stray thought crosses your mind, and you end up in Wikipedia, and about three searches later you've deviated so far from what you were originally looking for, and you end up in Magma's wiki page. And that's how I came to learn that these French visionaries play a sort of music called Zeuhl, which is, apparently, a mix of Jazz Fusion, Symphonic Rock and Neoclassical music. It's also sang in the completely made up language of Kobaïan... and it's got something that I hate with a burning passion, which is Free Jazz, but the why is reserved for a future post.

And everything I just mentioned is very much prominently on display here. And it's weird - too weird for me, if I'm honest. Is it bad? No, it's - I think - quite good for what it attempts to do. It's complex, and well arranged, and you can certainly see these people know what they're doing. So it's not bad, it's good. Right? Right?? Well, that's as may be. As I've stated here often enough, something being 'good' does not necessarily equate to being 'enjoyable'. And ultimately... I found myself calculating just how much time I had left of this torture. I'm not sorry I listened to this - it does have its genuinely good moments, but the weird/unenjoyable ones far outweigh them. I'll give it a generous 5/10

Day 249 - Gerard - 'Irony Of Fate'

I had, in fact, elected another band to listen to but Apple Music wasn't having it, they had none of their albums there, so I had to choose another one. This one had been on my radar, and when I did some research on them, lo and behold!, I find they have an album whose cover is none other than John William Waterhouse's sublime painting 'The Lady of Shalott'. So I did some more research and apparently this album isn't widely well regarded. This is more on the Neo-Prog side (think British bands like Marillion, Pallas, IQ or bands like The Flower Kings and Symphony X.) My listen of this album was very pleasant - everything was very well played, in particular the keyboards which were melodic, symphonic, melancholic and probably a lot more words that end in '-ic'. I liked the singer's voice - though it's hardly spectacular. He sings mostly in Japanese, but sometimes with a little English thrown in, and yes - a little bit of 'Engrish' here and there as well. It was pretty good, and I wouldn't mind listening to something else by them. It gets a deserved 7/10

Next week we go to Italy. I think.

Fair Roseanna, your vagrancy's a familiar tale

It's the mid-to-late 90s and after well over a decade of basically just listening to metal, I'm finding myself a bit disillusioned with the whole thing. True, I kept on listening to (mostly) metal anyways, but my tastes had begun to wander away from it quite a bit. It's at this point that I start to go back to stuff I listened to through my older brothers, stuff like The Smiths, Joy Division, Bauhaus, The Sisters of Mercy, The Mission - as well as other, more electronic stuff I knew in bits and pieces from that time as well, prime among them Depeche Mode. In about 1997 or so, me, my then girlfriend Dora and someone who was once a really close friend of mine, started going out and every now and again we'd come across this goth troupe and in one of those instances I realized that one of those goth kids was a kid I went to school with a few years back. So we got to talking, and eventually I'd come to know - and somewhat be a part of - that scene. It's where the harsher type of electro started to come into my life, though I didn't really enjoy it at first. If I'm honest, we always ended up listening to the same old songs anyway. But even then I realized that there were... weirdos among the weird, who listened to stuff that no one other than a bunch of folks would realistically enjoy. And they'd listen to that type of music- and only that type of music. Some years later - this would have been in 2002 - I find myself working at a big box music store, and through some conversations I had with this one guy who worked in another branch, I got to understand a bit better just what subtype of goth they were into - and it was mostly (but not exclusively) stuff from the Cold Meat Industry label. To be fair, I never had such a burning inclination to delve into it, though I am certain that I have listened to some stuff from any of those bands in isolation - either through samplers, compilations, or possibly because some girl I was dating at the time - yeah, I only dated goth girls for a while - listened to it. 

Now comes the time, and was it worth time? Was it bollocks.

Day 236 - Arcana -' Inner Pale Sun'
Excellent darkwave/neoclassical, somewhere in the vein of Dead Can Dance, Elend, and a bit of Ordo Rosarius Equilibrio. There are moments here that are so, so cinematic in their nature, that you could just see them being part of the soundtrack to one of the quirkier Tim Burton movies. And I say this because there's such a delicate beauty here that images spring to mind together with the music. Loved this a lot, just wasn't a fan of the last song on the album - sounded too Death In June lite. 9/10

Day 237 - The Cult Of Brighter Death Now* – 'All Too Bad - Bad To All'

The name 'Brighter Death Now' is one I'd known about for decades. I had no idea what to expect, but bad drone shit wasn't it. Atrocious, it gets 0/10

Day 238 - Deutsch Nepal - 'Erotikon' 

Just as bad - if not, indeed, worse - than the previous entry. I might have listened to this shit in the early 00s to impress some goth chick, but no amount of money in the world could persuade me to listen to this dreck again. Not surprisingly, a 0/10

Day 239 - Raison d'être - 'The Stains of the Embodied Sacrifice'

Aaaaannnndd.... it doesn't get any better, does it? 

I just have no patience for this sort of ambient anymore, it's too much, too stupid, too insufferable. And only because of some moments in one of the final songs, it gets a 1/10 

Day 240 - Coph Nia - 'The Dark Illuminati: A Celestial Tragedy in Two Acts '

More shite, though there’s some bits of melody here, and it’s crooning more that actual singing, but it didn’t make for a pleasant listening experience. A very generous 3/10

Day 241 - Desiderii Marginis - 'Seven Sorrows'
I now wonder if I enjoyed this record so much because it was, in fact, good, or if it was because after four days of shite, something remotely above mediocre would sound like a masterpiece to me. 

There were some very cinematic moments here, heavy on the strings and with some melancholy piano segues here and there. Good, but not great - still, miles above the previous four entries. I'll award it a 6.5/10

Day 242 - Puissance - 'Back in Control'

Damn, I now realize that I could have timed this whole thing for a Front 242 album to land on this specific day, but I was too much of a dumbass to think of that. As for this entry, well, suffice to say I always thought that this was a black metal band - but they are clearly not. I enjoyed this one, though not overly so. Maybe because of all the crap I had to endure throughout this week this one, too, sounded to me much better than it actually was. I don't know. Neither bad nor good, just ok, and I'll give it a 5/10

Next week.... well, I'm still cooking on that one. We'll see.

They heard me singing and they told me to stop

The other day I decided to take a look at my subscriptions tab on Youtube, and I ended up doing a bit of spring cleaning, mainly because I realized that for whatever reason I was subscribed to quite a number of channels. And it's not just bands or streamers, I was subscribed to a lot of random channels from people who I have no idea who they were - like at all. Some I sort of maybe recognized, but most of the rest I clicked on the channel and there's nothing there - not a single video, nor a playlist. So I swiftly unsubscribed from them. But whilst doing that I got an idea for a challenge. I've been subscribed to the KEXP channel for a long time, and while I haven't actually visited the channel in quite a while now, I'm still receiving lots of their content on my recommendations. So I decided I'd choose a few of the bands they feature there and see if they're any good.

Day 239 - Angine de Poitrine - 'Vol.1'

Now, when I was still buying records, these... people? aliens?, whatever they might be were an ubiquitous presence in the mailing lists I received weekly. And I remember looking at the cover of this album, and thinking 'What a stupid name for a band. And what is this cover? Dear Lord in heaven, please tell me this isn't how they look.' Ah well.

And I can't even describe this. I can't. Is it prog? Yeah. Is it experimental and math and psych and all the things that the internet tells me they are? Yeah. And yet - none of that describes the glorious weirdness that I was witness to. If there ever was music that looks exactly how their players look - then it's this.

And at just over 33 minutes long, it really flew by. A great start to the week, 9/10.

Day 230 - Malcriada - 'ESTÁ BIEN LLORAR </3' (Yes, with caps and emoji, very millenial)

Pretty good, but highly derivative of Crystal Castles. The best song I'd say is the acoustic one where it's just the guitars and her singing. I'll be keeping an eye on them and it gets a strong 8/10. 

Day 231 - Valgur - 'Armageddon'

Also very derivative, but not in a really good way. I didn't much enjoy this one. Again - neither good, nor bad... just meh. 5/10

Day 232 - Pink Breath Of Heaven - 'Colors Make A Sound'

For some reason I had pretty high expectations for this one. Unfortunately, as soon as I heard the singer's voice, my heart sank - I really didn't like it. And neither was I a fan of the whole instrumentation, it was very, very derivative of other things - maybe a little of Emma Ruth Rundle there. A generous 4/10.

 
Day 233 - Sadness - 'sunset blush' (Yes, lowercase and all, thank you so very much)

This was really really good - one of the week's best, and a return to form after a couple of duds.

This reminded me of early post-Darren White Anathema, as well as some Explosions In The Sky. Derivative, to be sure, but really really good. A very worthy 8.5/10

Day 234 - Night Heron - 'ESCAPISM' (And pretty fucking please, can these bands just use normal caps/lowercase?'

Imma be honest, when I saw how these folks looked like, I figured I would be in for an atrocious listen. But holy hell, was I surprised! I had to go on the interwebs to see how to best describe what they sound like, and lo and behold, the KEXP website states that they're '...a moody, nocturnal, slow-motion blend of R&B, synth-pop, and yacht-rock – or as they aptly bill it, “night-driving” music – distinguished by laidback beats, jazzy flourishes, dreamy melodies, and a light psychedelic touch.' 

This was a really great listen, and it gets a very good 8.5/10.

Day 235 - Den Der Hale - 'Larking About'

Their Discogs page state that they're a 'post-psych' band - whatever the hell that means. And what we got here was something pretty weird - though quite good. Something along the lines of Wardruna in places, I guess. But it also made me think of this label that used to be around up until a few years back, that used to put out some weird stuff like this - and next week I'll be diving into it. As for this one, it's good, but I'm not sure that I'd ever listen to it again. I guess I'll give it a 6.5/10.

Next week, it's Cold Meat Industry time.