I listened to yesterday's songs again with Megan on the couch, and it was kind of a lackluster set. Not that some of those artists haven't done good things, but it sure didn't hang together. I guess that's the hazard of this thing, but here's hoping today's songs rock!
Oh, I've also added a tasty treat to the front of the playlist today for those that don't follow me on Twitter. LINK! HE COME TO TOWN!
HELL ORBS, "Invincible"
A collaboration between dendy crew and Drew Fairweather of Toothpaste for Dinner/Married to the Sea fame, HELL ORBS is electronic music with Drew's screwed up storytelling over the top. I'm not really sure I can say anything about this that isn't readily apparent from listening to it. I do enjoy the word "dildocrat", though. Seems useful.
Beige, "12 a Prt.07-2"
Beige is back! Which means I have to go through the annoyance of uploading it to YouTube again! Dammit, shuffle, why do you like this record this much? I feel like I should anthropomorphize my shuffle here, so I can yell at it better. Any suggestions down in the comments? (probably not) I do like this song, though. Pretty electronic tilt so far. That means we're either gonna get Squarepusher or, like, free jazz next.
Led Zeppelin, "Custard Pie"
Yeah, or that. Well, guess we had to get the Led out around here sooner or later. I think it's basically impossible to divorce the music of the band from all the surrounding cultural baggage. However, having not listened to commercial radio (outside of baseball games) regularly for decades, I've largely detoxed from my Led poisoning, and find myself really enjoying the times I choose to put them on. There's a reason that they probably have more imitators than any other rock band ever.
Andrew Bird, "The Water Jet Cilice"
So, we're now jumping around to opposites, eh? Andrew Bird first came to my attention as an associate of the Squirrel Nut Zippers, and his early work was in a similar vein. Starting with The Swimming Hour, though, he began embracing other styles of music more and more, and his run of albums from there through Armchair Apocrypha is one of my favorites of any artist ever. This song is from one of his Fingerlings discs, which are albums made up of live recordings, partial studio recordings, and other ephemera which still manages to be beautiful. Here, you can hear his approach to live music, of slowly building up loop after loop, with many of the sounds made by varied techniques on his violin.
The Wisdom of Harry, "...Hello"
The intro track to this album, which is an instrumental album that sits somewhere near Tortoise's more electronic moments in the post-rock landscape. There's probably nobody reading this who is going to get excited about that description, is there? Post-rock is kind of the catch-all for bands that make use of the instrumentation of rock music, but use them to explore different types of songs and structures. We've already met Godspeed You Black Emperor, for instance, although there's not much "rock" in their post-rock. I guess I should stop now.