All I had was the hope that pieces would take shape and we could watch them all fall into place

There was a golden age of online piracy for me, and looking back, it's funny just how much things changed and evolved for me in a short span of time. I wasn't there for Napster, mainly because at that time I didn't have a PC, let alone an internet connection. But everything that came after... I was there. AudioGalaxy, E-Mule, Kazaa, Limewire, and then DC++. And let's not forget that game changer that was torrenting. Anyhoo, the first person I ever knew with an internet connection was my good friend Sérgio, and it was in his place that I created my very first email address - one that I have not used since around the year 2000 or so - and then my good friend Hugo was the first one to actually download songs - the fabled 'MP3' - and build a library of songs on his PC. And so that's what I did until about 2003 - I'd just download whichever song I felt the need to listen to, the very concept of downloading an entire album was alien to me. Then I met this weird goth tryhard that could get anything you'd be looking for - any song, even any record. One day I asked him if he had such and such record, and he replied that he had the whole discography of the band. And I asked him what he meant by that. And he said he had every single studio album, every single live album, EP, single, bootleg, unofficial release, remaster, remix - you name it. Apparently this guy was downloading entire discographies just like that. Obviously, in the span of these few years, internet had moved from very slow dial-up connections to much faster broadband connections, and that made a ton of difference. 

Still, I wouldn't go all-out crazy on downloads just yet - no, it wouldn't be until 2006 when I bought my first laptop - and a little while later I bought my very first external HD, which was stupidly expensive. By that time I was downloading comics, movies, shows, music... I'd eventually come to have three or four external HDs completely filled with everything I could lay my hands on. Fast forward about four years, I'm living in London and late in the year I have a visit from a dear friend of mine called Rui - he'll be in a story here sometime soon - and we both have the same common interests, and we're talking about our downloading habits and routines, and he drops this bomb on me - he'd gone beyond simply downloading an artist's full discography, he was now downloading entire labels. He'd listen to the whole thing, keep what he liked, discard what he didn't, but he'd listen to the entire output of whichever label he'd download. And granted - we're not talking about labels that were incredibly massive, with hundreds or thousands of releases, but still.
Anyway, that inspired me to do something similar - I'll be revisiting a few labels that had plenty of stuff I was interested in way back then but that I only listened to like a record from any given band. First one is the long defunct label Anticon.

13 & God - 'Own Your Ghost'
I remember listening to their first record ages and ages ago, it having been described to me as 'alternative hip-hop', and maybe it was boredom rather than curiosity that drove me to listen to it. I ended up really enjoying it, though not so much that I'd listen to anything else by them until now. This one sounds more like The Notwist - a band that comprises half of this project. There's some great glitchy moments, it's more electronic than hip-hop, though that element is still very present. Super good listen, I'll give it a whopping 9/10

Son Lux - 'At War with Walls & Mazes'
A band that I mostly only knew by name, and the odd song here and there - which I liked. I knew that eventually I'd get to them, and I have no idea why I never did before. There are some amazingly beautiful songs here, and though I didn't love the whole record, it's strong enough to deserve an 8/10

Themselves - 'Them'
And this is the other half of the '13 & God' project.
I'll admit that Hip-Hop is not my thing, I'm clearly not the target audience. I find my ability to tolerate more than a few songs in one sitting is very short, but I still found to be this one pretty good, pretty well produced, buy maybe just a bit too long - it's over an hour long. A good 7/10

Odd Nosdam - 'Burner'
There was a time when the name 'Odd Nosdam' was somewhat ubiquitous. You'd see the name in remixes, collaborations, music journos waxing lyrical about him, but I never cared to find out what all the fuss was about. So, not knowing what to expect, here I found myself enjoying this a lot - it's very much on the ambient side of hip-hop, closer to a DJ Shadow than anything else, really. I'll give it a respectable 8/10

Peeping Tom - 'Peeping Tom' 
Ah, 'Peeping Tom' - one of my favourite songs. That bit where he sings 'You're still the one who makes me feel much taller than you are / I'm just a peeping Tom on my own for far too long' sends shivers down my spine still. What? This is not about the Placebo song? No, this is about yet another of the infinite Mike Patton side project thingies. My hot take : I only sort of liked Faith No More, and I found most of what he did outside them to be fairly dull and downright annoying. And that description fits the bill perfectly for this record - it's dull and annoying. Just a 6/10

Why? - 'Elephant Eyelash'
The record begins with this nice, Matisyahu-like hip-hop song that I thought would set the stage for the rest of the record. And boy, was I was wrong - other than that track, there's very little in that vein. What there is, is oodles of a charming sort of indie folk rock that I really hadn't listened to since the mid 00s, sort of like bands like Oh No! Oh My!, and stuff like that. Granted, maybe because I hadn't listened to such an album in decades, this one felt real good and fresh to my ears. Probably the record I enjoyed the most listening to this week. A staggering 9/10

Baths - 'Cerulean'

Familiar name. Familiar music. Pretty sure I'd heard some of these songs before, probably when Zee and I were fucking each other's brains out. It doesn't really start too well, this album, I really didn't like the first track, but it picks up soon afterwards and turns out to be pretty decent. I'm guessing good enough for a 7/10

Next week, another label. Maybe Kranky or Constellation.

Towns that change their name and a horn of plenty

The thing about metal, right, the thing is that there are like a bajillion billion different kinds of genres, and whereas some you can kinda figure out what they sound like, others you go like 'ok?'.

And the - probably - stupidest name ever to grace a metal genre is... Djent. What? Djent. Bless you. No, no, I'm serious - I AM FUCKING SERIOUS - Djent. Where can I begin if not where this started?

Meshuggah - 'Chaosphere' 

I can't think about this band without thinking about a guy I used to know over thirty years ago. Late 80s/early 90s and I'm getting into increasingly forms of extreme metal, and there's this bunch of guys and gals I get to know through not only my then best friend as well as my mother's son. One of these guys is an older guy - I can't tell now how much older, maybe a couple of years more, maybe a bit more - and eventually he opens up his own record store - selling, you guessed it, metal records. Sometimes I'd run into him on the bus, and we'd talk a bit. So this'd be, I dunno, mid-to-late '95 and on one such occasion where we ran into each other, we start talking about what we're listening to. And I mention something - can't remember what - but something that to this guy sounded so inanely stupid or childish that he just gets a look on his face - you know the one, where you scrunch up your face, and you sort of tilt your head backwards and shake it in sheer disbelief of the idiocy that just soiled your ears, and he says 'I don't listen to that shit, I only listen to stuff like 'Meshuggah', and I instantly hated them.

Fast forward decades and I listen to 'Chaosphere', an album many regard as a masterpiece. 

Many, yes. But not me. This was bad beyond belief. An atrocity that defies description. So bad that the only that I can recall from this piece of shit is that it ends in - quite probably - the worst piece of muzak I have ever had the displeasure of listening to. Could only deserve a 0/10

Animals As Leaders - 'Parrhesia' 

It was through Rick Beato's YouTube channel that I got to know just how amazing a guitarist Tosin Abasi is. But I've never felt that urge to go and listen to his band. Of course, now it's as good a time as any. And boy - this is good - very, very good. BUT - it's got a very big problem. Two, in fact. I well and truly disliked the drums sound, it sounded way too tinny. Not tiny, tinny. And even worse? The bass sounds horrible. I'll give it a great 7.5/10

Periphery - 'A Pale White Dot'

Godddamn, talk about a missed opportunity here. When I first started thinking about this bit of the run, how could I not go for their 'Periphery V: Djent Is Not a Genre' album? Motherfuckers only went and released a new album after that one. So first thing I got was how this one starts almost like a black-metal record - blast beats, wicked riffs, and those scratchy screams... I loved it. But then there's a shift in the voices - it becomes clean and sort and whiny, maybe a bit too whiny at times. And then there are melodic bits that could've just come from a gothic metal thingy with a buxom lass singing. Pretty good, it deserves a 7/10

 

Tesseract 'War Of Being' 

Dull. Boring beyond belief. 1/10 

Volumes  - 'Mirror Touch'

I can't remember a single note from this record, but I remember feeling mightily pissed off after I'd listened to it because it made me feel like I'd just wasted forty minutes of my life. 1/10

Vildhjarta - '+ Där skogen sjunger under evighetens granar +' (Yes, plus signs and all) 

By far, the best listen of the week. I didn't like all of it, but what I did like, I enjoyed immensely. Clean and harsh vocals, sometimes reminding me of Solefald and latter day Enslaved, with the odd quiet bit here and there reminiscent of something by The XX. A throroughly deserved 8/10

Scale The Summit - 'Subjects'

So apparently this is an all instrumental band, and the album I picked was the first one to have vocalists on it. All different on each song, and some singers I liked, some I didn't. I found this to be just OK - nothing special, but neither did I find it to be offensive on the ear. It's a 6/10

So what the fuck is Djent, anyway? I have no idea, and I'm pretty sure I delved all I'm ever going to into this here topic.

You didn't see me, I was falling apart, I was a television version of a person with a broken heart

Of course I don't tell myself I don't deserve. Of course I don't. Tell myself, that is.
What I do tell myself is, there are those who deserve more, and so long as they are getting what they deserve, what they truly and richly deserve, then how can I be anything other than happy?
It's not that I don't deserve. Maybe I do, maybe not yet, maybe there's still a lot of atonement ahead.
Maybe. Maybe. Of course, maybe. Of course I don't tell myself I don't deserve.

Berenice, there's no release at all that's not worth dying for

True story, swear to God -  I had written a long ass post about guitar heroes/ gods/ whatever and just before I pressed publish one of my cats ran over my keyboard and something happened that deleted all I'd written and fucking 'undo' was undoing fucking nothing. Shit. Abridged version it is, then.

Day 135 -  Joe Satriani - 'Surfing With The Alien'

Easy 9/10

Day 136 - Steve Vai - 'Passion And Warfare'

Looking good so far, another 9/10

Day 137 - Yngwie J. Malmsteen's Rising Force - 'Rising Force'

Didn't love it as much as the other two but still pretty great 8/10

Day 138 - Liquid Tension Experiment - 'Liquid Tension Experiment'

Streak continues, 8/10

Day 139 - Santana - 'Abraxas'

Eh... didn't really like it, and that's ok. I'll give it a 5/10

Day 139 - Cacophony - 'Go Off!'

A two-fer, as you get both Marty Friedman and Jason Becker here. But the singer's voice ruins it for me. It's a 5/10 just because of some of the instrumental bits.

Day 140 - Gary Moore - 'Still Got The Blues'

I don't like blues. Never have, never will. The playing is great, but I just can't really enjoy this. A generous 5/10

Maybe some more guitar shit next week. Either that or bands from a genre I've never listened to - Djent. Which will be, in essence, more guitar shit. Oh well.

I don’t want to be a stranger in a strange land anymore

'So can you understand why I want a daughter while I'm still young?', but this was, of course, a lie, too. I'm no longer young, and I no longer dream of having a daughter, though I'll want one until the day I die. But then again, everything is a lie, and knowing that, being aware of that, it's the ultimate step towards the truth.

You don't know me, I'll tell you something about me, and then you'll know something about me, but never the full picture, because no one ever does. But I seek. I am a seeker. Not a seeker who's a lover, rather a seeker into the mistery, a seeker of the truth, a seeker for the truth. All is a lie. You think this is real, that life is real, that god is real? It is not. It's as transient as it is eternal, it never was, always was, always is, never is, never will be, always will be. It's Maya as the only divinity that does not lie to us, by gifting us illusion, illusion we accept.
I seek wisdom, here, everywhere and elsewhere. Wisdom I find in the words of others. One such pearl of wisdom informed me that energy doesn't lie. Oh sweet little girl, energy is the biggest of all lies. The father of lies. The source of lies. Energy is volatile and everchanging, it'll never be the same thing for long. It lies. It lies dormant. It lies active. It lies as it changes from one state from the other.
It lies, you lie, I lie, we all all lie, because if we ever told each other the truth, then that would mean curtains for us all, and so deception, subterfuge, illusion, those are the currencies of truth.
'I want to hold her hand and show her some beauty before all this damage is done.', and this was, of course, the truth.

Almost heaven, West Virginia

Jam bands, ya know? I didn't, not for a long time. First time I heard about such a genre I legit thought that it pertained to bands that were either somehow related or adjacent to the band The Jam, but no, apparently I was wrong all along. Then I got to know people who really are into this type of music, and of course they are as insufferable as you could possibly imagine them to be. I wanted to steer well clear of this genre, but fuck me, I'm a glutton for punishment. And I did do my research - and wouldn't you know, what's the first thing I find out? Don't go for the studio albums, listen to the live albums, that's when that 3 minute song suddenly explodes into a 30 minute epic of musical masturbation, and sir, I will most certainly will not do such a thing, oh no sir. I gathered what were about the seven 'best' jam bands and set out for another handful of lessons in pain.

Day 128 - Grateful Dead - 'Terrapin Station'
Many, many years ago, when I was just a kid, just getting into metal, I remember seeing a band tee that looked so absolutely evil, with such a badass name - 'Grateful Dead' - and I thought to myself this has got to be the heaviest shit ever and when I eventually did listen to a few of their tracks I was greeted by this folksy stuff that bored me to tears. And in truth, that's pretty much what this is is for about 95% of the album, and the other 5% is like the last track where they go on 'jam' mode, which I didn't really enjoy that much. 'Yeah, but you gotta smoke a joint or seven to really appreciate them, you know?', 'But I don't smoke, like anything', I reply. 'Be a lot cooler if you did, bro. Be a lot cooler if you did.' 

And fuck that shit, I like what I like, and this I found to be just above tolerable. 6/10

Day 129 - Phish - 'Evolve'

Sometime in 1990 I'm in my godfather's car and he's listening to something I was absolutely detesting. I can't remember a single bit of it, and when I asked him what it was, he said it was 'Fish', but I eventually came to know about 'Phish', so I have no idea which one was the culprit there.

I liked this one much better than I did the Grateful Dead record, however I felt this closer to boogie rock, of which some things I actually like. Did it need to be like an hour long? Did it bollocks, and I constantly harp on about bands being unable to edit themselves, and oh hey, here is another shining example. I'll award it a 7/10

Day 130 - Widespread Panic - 'Snake Oil King'
Never heard of these guys, but out of the gate I just have to say I loved the production on this one. All instruments could be heard loud and clear, and with that bottom end so high up in the mix, it's always a plus for me. Album is just over a half an hour long, which means that live the whole thing must be stretched out to like ten hours or more. While I didn't hate the singer's voice, there's something just slightly off-putting for me. It can sometimes sound a bit too whiny. But overall this was a pretty great listen, and I'm glad this one wasn't another hour long slog. A very worthy 7.5/10

Day 131 - Traffic - 'Far From Home'
Weird. So it turns out that I already knew a bunch of these songs, and true story swear to god, I promise I'd never heard a single album by these guys. And yet there's something very much along the lines of Peter Gabriel or David Byrne here, which by itself doesn't make the whole thing great, but it makes it decent enough, I guess. But also some of it sort of reminded me of 'Discipline' era King Crimson, which is my favourite era, and that's always good in my book. Again, huge gripe for me is the length of the album. It's over an hour a long, and there are at least a couple of songs there that are distinctly filler. Had they shaved off a couple of the not-quite-clunkers-but-not-quite-stellar-pieces-of-music here, then I could have seen it go a higher than the 7/10 it got. 

Day 132 - The Allman Brothers Band - 'At Fillmore East'

The Everley Brothers. The Isley Brothers. The Righteous Brothers. The Doobie Brothers. The Walker Brothers. The Chemical Brothers. You see, I always thought all these bands were vaguely nestled in that doo-wop/R'N'B kind of thing, with maybe a couple of notable exceptions. And then there was The Allman Brothers Band, someone who I've known by name since I was very young. But If I were pressed... I'd have to admit I'd never heard anything by them. And I'd always heard that this was their definitive recording... and so I cheated. A bit. See, I didn't contemplate adding live albums - or compilations - to the mix, and here I am listening to a live album. Do I have anything against live albums? Not really, I love a number of live albums. And... ooff... it's over two hours long. Jesus H. Christ on a bicycle. There's a song here called 'Whipping Post' that goes over for more than twenty minutes, and god, oh my god, oh my sweet fucking god, I swear I cleaned my room, I went and took a shit, and this song was still playing. And guess what? The next one is 33 minutes long. With a never ending drum solo. Jesus. JESUS! Kill me now.

Overall I can't say it's bad, but for me this is so far from good.... it's over two hours of my life I'll never have back.  3/10  

Day 133 - Tedeschi Trucks Band - 'Future Soul'

No preamble here. I really liked this album, but I struggle to understand just how they fit in the jam band thing -  maybe it is live when that really comes into play. Funny thing is, they could have slotted perfectly in other genres I plan to delve into some weeks down the line. It's bluesy, it's soul-y, it's rocking and singer Susan Tedeschi has a really great voice. I don't usually reach out for this type of music - blues is something that really gets under my nerves - but I wouldn't mind listening to more by them. I'll give a very good 8/10

Day 134 - Gov't Mule - 'Peace... Like A River'

There's something that rightly leaves me fuming. And that's when I listen to music and think it was just a monumental waste of time. Out of all these bands, these were the ones that came closest to the studio version of what I dreaded a jam band would be like live. And I did not enjoy a single second of this. Right off the bat, I hated the singer's voice. I don't like the voice, then boy howdy, good luck me enjoying anything else. And this shit... this shit was boring. It would've been dreadfully boring at 30 minutes long, but at 76 minutes long? Jesus fucking Christ, just shoot me now. By far the worst record of the week. 2/10

I wanted to do a week of Southern Rock, but after this, it's a long time coming - if at all.

I still have no idea what's in store for next week. Maybe punk, a genre I've always disliked. Maybe shredders/guitar heroes type of thing. We'll see what we'll see.

The abyss becomes me, I wear this chaos well

I made a very grave mistake a while ago, which was reactivating my Instagram account. And though I set it up to see only content from people I follow, eventually I start getting posts from randos with their opinions on everything, and I literally do not care. But the other downside to this is just how many people from my past I get suggested to add as 'friends'. And if I'm honest, most of them bear no effect on me, but some do. And that effect translates itself through memories, through things I recall from moments spent with people who were once important to me. One such memory I had recently actually informed a lesson that took me far, far, too long to learn : that something that once was important in a moment of your life spent with another, something like a book, or a movie, or a song, won't necessarily have the faculty of being replicated with another person that you're later with. This comes from a suggestion I had for an Instagram 'friend', an ex of mine called Sonia. I'll spare everyone the details of that relationship, and though it ended in somewhat of an acrimonious manner, we eventually managed to be on normal terms with each other, the very few times we've seen each other ever since. But one of the very many times where we just clashed, in terms of pretty much a lot, was when I gifted her a book I love and that I had presented to another, much more significant ex, years earlier. And that gift, that book, that memory that had been created, I look very fondly upon even unto this day. But Sonia hated the book. She hated it with a passion. And when I asked her what, exactly, she didn't like about the book, she went into like an hour long diatribe which left me sobbing on the other side of the phone. And that book? That book is called 'Nation', by my favourite writer of all time, Terry Pratchett. I love that book, read it multiple times, cried many times reading it, loved the stage adaptation I saw at The National Theatre in London.

Memories lead you to winding pathways, and now, as my spirit is ever more broken, as it readies itself to be broken even more, by magnitudes I can barely begin to fathom, I sit thinking about Terry Pratchett - and more specifically about a bit from one of his books, a little gem of a novel called 'Eric'. Long story short - and this is a very short book - what we have here is the Discworld version of the tale of Faust, he who would sell his soul for unlimited access to knowledge and all earthly pleasures. By the end of the tale, both the titular Eric (a 13 year old Demonologist) and Rincewind (an inept wizard who, in his haste to run away from the very many horrors, eldritch or otherwise, that want to kill him, tends to run towards destiny in the making, often saving the whole of creation completely by accident), escape hell, or more precisely Pandemonium, the capital of hell in Milton's 'Paradise Lost'. And what makes that escape all the more poignant is when they notice that the cobblestones that make up the road to hell are actually inscribed with 'good intentions' :

'I meant it for the best'

'I thought you'd like it'

'For the sake of the children'

'We are equal opportunities employers'

Before I write about now, I have to rewind time and go back a year. And a year ago, almost to the day, one night I was home, it was a sunday, and it was the last day of a week off work I had. At that time, I wouldn't be able to go to sleep before five or six a.m., and so what I'd do was play some game or the other until I felt sleep weigh heavy on me and I'd go to bed. I was sitting on my chair, my headphones on, turned to the max, focused on the game. From the corner of my eye, I see something that catches my attention, and it's my grandmother leaving her room to go to the toilet. It's a scene I'd seen so many times before, that I mostly had stopped noticing her comings and goings. This would have been around one a.m. or so, and just before I go to bed a few hours down the line, I get up and now it's my turn to go to the toilet. As I enter the small corridor leading to it, I see my grandmother laying down on the floor, barely clothed. I can barely make out anything she's saying, but in that jumble of words, I realize she's saying she had been calling me for hours, and I never heard a thing. That was the day my grandmother started to die.

And her death, almost a year on, is still deeply felt in my heart, in my soul, in my mind. And in my life too - it brought about change that the optimist in me hoped would not come, but that the realist in me dreaded - nay, knew - would come. Earlier this year we had to move house, I guess I've already written about it here. I embraced my new reality with a grim certainty that hell hadn't yet reared its ugly, inevitable head. There is far too much chaos in this equation for it to be solved, and some of that chaos, some of that chaos I invite into my life. Part of it began when, in the first week of being at my new place, a stray cat jumped inside my house - we live on the ground floor - and decided to stay. She joined the ranks of our army of cats, which was four strong already. But this cat - we named her Olivia - came bearing gifts : we soon realized she was pregnant, and in late January the kittens were born. I fell in love with them at once, all six of them. A few weeks later, after they'd opened their wee eyes, and were now starting to roam about the house, I said to the other party involved - my mother - that I wanted to keep them. I could afford the extra money that would have to be spent on them, not only through my savings but also there was a lot of shit I could do without and could easily cut back on. I looked at them, and saw them : tiny, frail, beautiful, and my heart burst with such love for them all. I thought that maybe if this could be my last one good thing I'd do in this life of mine, then it would be a worthy thing. If I could protect them, and shelter them, and love them, and keep them from harm, then I would do it with all my heart.

But of course - chaos.

Sometimes I do wonder if I actually died all those years ago, and if my hell, my eternal torment, my unending nightmare, would be to live out my life with my mother. If such is my fate, I find myself envying Sisyphus and Judas, Prometheus and Loki. My punishment is harsher.

It's my bane - maybe temporarily, maybe forever - that by choice, by necessity, and a combination of other factors, I have to share my house with my mother, who is, at best, at the very best, mentally unbalanced. Adding that to an already precarious mix, which include me, a broken man, eleven cats, and a lunatic, then chaos multiplies by a hundredfold. And chaos, being the unpredictable bitch it is, tends to surprise me at unexpected moments. And then what happens is fighting, and shouting, and me - close to fifty years of age - crying myself to sleep every night. And this isn't the life I wanted - I wasn't born for shouting, for fighting, I was born for birdsong, I was born for peace. I was born for the sighing of the wind over rustling leaves, and to hear the laughter of my children and my wife. But that was not the life I got. It was not the life I fought for, or, indeed, made any real effort to achieve. To achieve, let alone deserve. 

I had such good intentions. Such good intentions. I just wanted to do something good, you know? Something tangible. Something that could bring solace to some souls who are thoroughly undeserving of the cruelty of this world. And yet, even at that I fail. Lunacy impedes me of doing this kindness, at whatever cost it might have come to me, a kindness I'd do until my dying breath. It's two a.m. where I live, and as I type this I look at the photos I've been taking of the kittens throughout the day so that I might forward them to the local vet, who'll upload them to their social media, and in my heart of hearts, I can only hope they can find new homes with people who will love them at least one tenth as I love them. 

Already I find myself missing them, though they are still here. One, a small tabby beauty, lies lazily beside me, her inquisitive eyes watching my every movement. Three others are playing, they're on the floor, and as they move around and about my feet, I feel their tails swishing past my leg. I have to say goodbye to them. How? My dear God, how, how can I say goodbye to them? Already I envision the scenarios wherein they are leaving, for me never to see them again. Already I imagine the last kiss goodbye I'll give them, and me asking for a promise from whomever takes them to love them. Already I imagine myself, heartbroken beyond all the words in creation, awash in tears that I don't know I can still cry.

O Lord. O Lord. I often ask myself just how many times more must I mutilate my soul. And every time I think that the tattered remnants of my core can no longer be shredded, here I find myself at the gates of yet another sundering. My heart, it becomes a charnel. My soul, it becomes an all encompassing abyss. Were I to solve and open the lament configuration, no hell in existence could offer me more pain than what I now feel.