Additionally, not every musician can or wants to tour. There needs to be a sustainable model for those of us who just want to make and sell recordings.
Two of my favorite artists right now. This article doesn’t mention “Clepsydra,” a solo Moor Mother project released on one of the Bandcamp days that’s just an absolutely astounding sound collage like nothing else I’ve ever heard.
Hey y’all, shameless plug but I make instrumental synth music as Golden Fang, variously ambient, melodic, harsh and primitive. I just put out a lil EP and I’m donating any proceeds to Durham Beyond Policing but it’s all pay what you want. Thought some of you might dig.
https://theegoldenfang.bandcamp.com/
Have any of y'all giving Autechre shine here dug into the live sets they released earlier this year from 2016/2018? I think those are actually my favorite releases of the year. It's an incredible arc hearing them take what is one of their most far out, psychedelic sets into the absolute madness of the Dublin show...
Fiona Apple, Waxahatchee, and Porridge Radio are probably my three favorite albums this year (besides Have We Met) and all three will be tied to quarantine for me.
I also loved the new Better Call Saul, it might have been the best season yet and was a powerful reminder of how good new shit can still be.
Otherwise Porcupine Tree dumped a bunch of their live recordings on Bandcamp on the first Bandcamp day and they’ve kept adding to it since. It’s been a total treasure trove and a comforting deep dive into one of my formative bands.
I’m a little behind on new releases but I’ve been living in this Porridge Radio album all week. Incredible stuff, “Give/Take” alone is an impeccable banger and the rest of the record is just so cathartic.
LOSE
Why There Are Mountains
Lenses Alien
Pretty Years
I like all of them but there's no question that LOSE is my absolute favorite (and just an overall classic record), and Pretty Years is my least favorite, though still great.
Can't wait to dig into this, I'm gonna be dropping serious coin on Bandcamp later.
Been doing a deep dive on Aphex Twin this week thanks to that movie Come to Daddy. I really connected with both the Classics compilation, which is just chock full of rave bangers, and on the opposite end of the spectrum Drukqs, which I had only listened to in chunks but never front to back. It snowed here last night as I went through the final stretch of the record and it was quite something, it’s a really emotional, nostalgic record amid the chaos.
The singles, especially “Crimson Tide” and “Cue Synthesizer,” are some of the best songs he’s ever written. The rest isn’t quite on that level like I hoped but it’s still totally fantastic and will probably be the main thing I listen to for months.
One of my favorite albums ever. I didn’t have an iPod when this came out so I ripped it to CD and played it over and over again on a portable CD player through headphones exactly as described. It later served as a bond between me and my fiancé some years later and we’ve discussed having “Take Care” as our first dance. Pretty obviously personal, but I don’t think they’ve ever topped it.
1. Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
2. Big Thief - UFOF/Two Hands
3. Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
4. Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe
5. Solange - When I Get Home
6. Lingua Ignota - Caligula
7. Nivhek - After its own death/Walking in a spiral towards the house
8. FKA Twigs - Magdalene
9. Black to Comm - Seven Horses for Seven Kings
10. Sunn 0))) - Life Metal/Pyroclasts
Honorable mention to Autechre’s Warp Tapes 89-93, which no one heard till this year so it counts. You can grab that shit for free on their Bleepstore y’all.
Horror is my favorite genre and I love seeing all these comments repping awesome movies. Off the top of my head, my favorites would be Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Shining, The Innocents, The Evil Dead, The Thing and Hereditary. I also just saw Return of the Living Dead for the first time in a theatre and it was absolutely incredible.
Some more recent ones that deserve more praise are Kill List and The Wailing, both absolute masterpieces. This year I've enjoyed Midsommar, Us and Hagazussa.
God yes, Thank Your Lucky Stars is such an underrated record! I think Side B of the album ("The Traveller," "Elegy to the Void," "Rough Song," "Somewhere Tonight") is one of the strongest runs in their discography.
So excited for this. I got one of the unmarked white 7"s in the mail because I have UFOF on vinyl and it just made me so giddy with how generous this band is. They make truly special, intimate, unpretentious music and Two Hands looks to capitalize on that.
The “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” scene in Under the Silver Lake prompted a summer long dive into their discography for me which was an incredible time. I don’t like this album that much but that song is one of their all-time greats.
I will always recommend Ben Wheatley’s Kill List, a terrifying and realistic modern British folk-horror.
I recently saw Haneke’s Funny Games which is pretty brutal and I thought very well-executed, very much in that line of realism even if the overall project of the film is intellectual.
I think a lot of horror fans turn their nose up at found footage/mockumentary style stuff but there’s a wealth of great films there. Lake Mungo I think is a must see, it’s not particularly “scary” but it’s an incredibly emotional film.
Order is pretty arbitrary at this point...
1. Big Thief - UFOF
2. Nilüfer Yanya - Miss Universe
3. Sharon Van Etten - Remind Me Tomorrow
4. Solange - When I Get Home
5. Nivhek - After it’s Own Death/Walking in a Spiral
6. Fennesz - Agora
7. Kyle Bobby Dunn - From Here to Eternity
8. Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising
9. Jessica Pratt - Quiet Signs
10. Helado Negro - This is How You Smile
It’s been a pretty good year, I think. Lots of interesting ambient music contrasted with extremely solid songwriters coming into their own. Love the Nilüfer album.
I’m team Veckatimest. I think it’s essentially perfect start to finish. “Southern Point” is a hell of a way to open a record, and the final stretch from “While You Wait for the Others” on is epochal.
Gonna get buried here but...
1. Autechre - NTS Sessions
2. Low - Double Negative
3. Mitski - Be the Cowboy
4. US Girls - In a Poem Unlimited
5. Julia Holter - Aviary
6. Car Seat Headrest - Twin Fantasy (Face to Face)
7. Beach House - 7
8. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs
9. Sleep - The Sciences
10. Skee Mask - Compro
I spent the first half of this year thinking it was not a particularly great year for music. Then the NTS Sessions rewired my brain and I realized how many artists have made compelling, complex artistic statements that have helped me navigate a much darker adulthood than I anticipated.
This Low album is absolutely incredible but I’ve been gripped by another groundbreaking electronic release from this year: Autechre’s NTS Sessions. This is some of the wildest shit I’ve ever heard!
I’ve weirdly had Aphex Twin’s “XMAS_EVET10 [Thanaton3 Mix]” stuck in my head lately, apropos of nothing. The bassline just rattles around in my head constantly.
Listened to the Let’s Eat Grandma for the first time on the beach on the Fourth. Cool and Collected through Donnie Darko bout wrecked me. Generation Z is here.
Sure, Kanye and anyone else for that matter can say whatever they want. I totally support that right. But the sticking point with free speech is that we also have to face consequences for what we say. Kanye might accidentally hurt people by saying what he feels. We might hurt Kanye by pointing out how he’s using his power and influence to prop up others’ hate speech.
Does it matter whether or not you intend to hurt someone (or in this case extremely large marginalized communities) if, at the end of the day, you’ve still hurt them? Not wanting to face consequences for your actions because you “didn’t intend” those consequences doesn’t matter, especially if those consequences were actively harmful and aggressively erased lived experiences of trauma.
In other words, you can’t say slavery was a choice and then be mad that you offended people of color because you didn’t mean to. You can’t say that you appreciate Trump’s speaking style and then be mad that his words have propped up murderous white supremacists because those words aren’t what you meant when you said you liked his speaking style.
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