Nobody has gained or accomplished anything

This week was very much so on the unpleasant side. Personally, I mean - and while I didn't feel cranky, I did feel deflated, defeated and sad. I'm trying to put things in motion that will maybe make things be better someday, but God alone knows when that might be. 

Day 162 - Loscil - 'Lake Fire'
There's a brilliantly funny sketch in the TV show 'Big Train' where this guy's on a pub with a bunch of people, and one other guy is saying something that the first guy thinks is really interesting and clever, and he makes a mental note to one day try and pass it off as his own idea, and obviously, when he does, it backfires on him completely and he ends up being ridiculed and lambasted by everyone around him. And it's so absolutely hilarious that you won't even see the punchline coming your way. All that just to say that many years ago my friend Rui was talking to me about Loscil (I think... I was very drunk... pretty sure it was Loscil, but then again maybe not), and I sort of remember him telling me something about this one album that had music you'd listen not on actual clubs, but rather this was the sort of muffled music that you'd hear coming from the inside of the club when the doors were being opened and you could just sort of make out what it was. At that drunken moment I found this concept to be amazing and to this day I'm not 100% certain if I heard everything he was telling me correctly or not. I might have misunderstood what he said or something like that. So cue to summer 2015, and here I found myself backstage of one of the biggest festivals we have over here, and Florence herself walks past me and I didn't notice her until someone points her out to me, and I'm hanging out with the Franz Ferdinand guys, drinking and eating like a lord, drunk off my feet, and I'm talking to their now ex-drummer Paul, and I'm asking him what I feel are good questions, like what inspires him, and shit like that. Then out of the blue I remember that convo about maybe Loscil I had with Rui years earlier, and I ask poor Paul if he knows them. He just sort of shrugs his head, and oh boy, on I go on this rambling, drunken tirade about music that you could hear on clubs, but not really on clubs, on the outside soer of thing, and soon enough he's very kindly telling me he has somewhere else he need to be. *Le sigh*

So, that all said, I finally listened to a Loscil record - and let me tell you this : I really liked it, it's really good, but the likelihood that I'll ever listen to it again is close to zero. Very ambient, very planetarium kind of music, like when you're looking up that dome and you see the cosmos and this chill music just leaves you at ease. Pretty good, liked it a whole bunch, I think I'll give it a good 8/10

Day 163 - Stars Of The Lid - 'The Tired Sounds Of Stars Of The Lid'

At the end of the day, there's just too much of everything. Too much content. Too many bands, too many movies, too many games, too many books, and there will always be a lot of things that just slip you by. You may even be aware of them, and somewhere deep down there's a mental note you made twenty years ago about how you should really check something out. And one of those very many things for me is Stars Of The Lid. Especially because over the years I've had a number of people telling me just how much I'd like them. And I remember seeing this record back at the music store where I worked at, and for some reason it - along with a record called 'The Troubled Sleep Of Piano Magic' by Piano Magic - always seemed to be calling out at me. And whereas the latter I'd come to get to know and adore, this one just fell by the wayside.

And just like the Loscil record, it was pretty good, I enjoyed it a lot for what it was - instrumental music, with some incidental bits thrown in, ambient tinged with some ominous darkness that you'd find in a David Lynch movie, but this record is over two hours long, and that, my friends, is far too much for me, so I'll be pretty content with finally just have listened to it. Like the Loscil record, I'll award it a decent 8/10

Day 164 - Labradford - 'Fixed :: Context'

Back when I used to work at the music store, I'd often take a gander at the section that housed this band's records and I'd think 'what a singularly stupid name for a band that is', I mean, who would make a portmanteau of Labrador and Bradford?

And this one was super cool post-rock in the vein of Mogwai, but with some Angelo Badalamenti vibes to it. Really good, I'll give it a rollicking 8/10

Day 165 - Pan American - 'Fly The Ocean In A Silver Plane'

A side project, maybe even the main project now of the Labradford mastermind. Similar, but maybe a bit more electronic, a bit more experimental. Albums that are under 40 minutes are always very appreciated by me, and this one is decent enough to get a 7/10

Day 166 - A Winged Victory For The Sullen - 'Invisible Cities'

I kinda cheated on this one, but not on purpose. You see, I was entirely convinced that this album was released by Kranky, their label. But apparently they also release stuff on Erased Tapes and Ninja Tune, who put out this one. But - spoiler alert - I ended up loving this one so much that I picked it anyway. It's stupid, but I had their whole discography on vinyl once upon a time, and yet I knew maybe just one or two songs by them. This one was just so incredibly beautiful, that I almost felt myself drifting away into the quiet of the night. It's a 9/10 all the way

Day 167 - Grouper - 'Shade'

So here's the deal : I've listened to a few songs by Grouper in isolation, and I've really loved them. She has this haunting, ethereal voice that just gets directly to your soul. But about ten years ago I tried to listen to a whole album and I feel asleep shortly afterwards. So after that I never tried again. And this one was so, so good - achingly beautiful in parts, dense and mysterious in others, it was quite the needed balm for my soul. It gets a pretty solid 8/10

Day 168 - Tim Hecker - 'No Highs'

And I finally got to Tim Hecker. He's a name that I've heard many great things about in the past, but I never felt the urge to pull that trigger. So, this one being an album that handles pretty heady themes - depression, anxiety, all that fun stuff - it's amazing just how those feelings are translated into music here. It doesn't mean that this is full of sad and miserable songs, quite far from that. What we have here is a collection of songs that at times can feel heavy, oppressive, a burden you feel deep inside, especially when you have those voices inside your head saying how truly worthless you are, and you feel crushed by yourself. It's confusion, it's disjointed, and it's pretty damn good. This one gets a very deserving 8/10

I don't 'know yet about next week- there are still a few labels I might want to explore. Two, for sure, those being Pelagic Records and Dunk! Records. I might also take a look into Temporary Residence, who knows?