Posts Tagged 2015

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…lists.

And so:

A L B U M S

10. Motörhead | Bad Magic

Even before the…timely (overtimely) death of dearest Lemmy, I decided this would be on my list, but last. I like the sound of the record but there’s not really any standout tracks. And, this is weird to even mention for a Motörhead album, but I thought some of the lyrics were a little sketchy. The couple albums before this def got more spins, but the overall package came together better on this one so it was good to get on vinyl. Doesn’t sound like a final statement but at least looks the part.

9. Sleater-Kinney | No Cities to Love

I still love Janet Weiss and the guitars, but since Corin became a mom and Carrie became a comedian it doesn’t really speak like it used to. Hard to describe what this band used to mean to me; almost didn’t buy the record. But I don’t wanna be that guy…who’s like that…about things. And yet, I am. But I try. Only listened to it once. It’s good.

8. Matana Roberts | Coin Coin Chapter Three

I said this was pretty much set to make my list with each chapter and here it is. Close call tho, I have not been paying attention.

7. Sannhet | Revisionist

This might have gone higher if I listened to it more. Maybe I’m a little off-brand this year, what can ya do.

6. Blind Idiot God | Before Ever After

This caught me outta nowhere from an episode of the Diane Kamikaze show with the drummer who’s also in Khanate. I guess it wasn’t totally outta nowhere, I had read about them in the History of Progressive Metal book. Never really listened to them tho, but the record looked nice so I got it and really got into it. One of those things you can just leave on the turntable for general occasion, esp. the 1st side.

5. Capsule | Wave Runner

This was not a great year for J-pop and this was not really much of an exception, it’s pretty straight up EDM. I’m gonna…not ever be at that live show, but maybe it gives the illusion that I enjoy fun. Nakata is a composer, goddamnit.

4. Iron Maiden | Book of Souls

If you like Iron Maiden, here’s a whole lot of it. Hard to say if it’s up to “classic” status, but it’s at or near the top of the post-2000 releases which I haven’t spent that much time with but I don’t think it’s a bad compliment. There’s also a nice tribute to Chris Squire. (Maybe unintentional, who knows.)

3. Lim Kim | Simple Mind

Oh man, this was so good, sorry J-pop. Single of the year for me but I loved the rest of the record even tho I don’t know what she’s saying. Maybe a big part of the appeal of J-pop was not understanding how corny the lyrics are. Whatever, I love her voice and the production is cool. It’s not all retro-future Gothic Freestyle, it’s pretty varied. She can do it all.

2. Sigh | Graveward

Sigh does all the the Sigh things which happens to be my thing. If the Sigh thing was everything’s thing would it still be my thing? Not ever going to be an issue.

1. Screaming Females | Rose Mountain

Yes! It’s finally cool to rip Smashing Pumpkins riffs, I am not kidding. But you can also sing along w/o feeling like an idiot, impossible w/ a Pumpkins record. It does not really sound like SP most of the time, they got their own thing established, but when it does it’s pretty sweet if you ask my blog. If you listen to one track at a time from a record like this you are a supreeeeme chumppp.

M E N T I O N S [it turned into a whole 2nd top 10, whatever]

10. Merzbow/Gustafsson/Pandi/Moore | Cuts of Guilt, Cuts Deeper

Mostly reminds me that I haven’t read that Kim Gordon book yet. It’s a hard sell even at one disc if you’re not into this kind of thing, but if you were curious about improv free jazz-noise I would say it’s not a bad place to start. Big names, great artwork, it’s more than you usually get. Only gripe: you couldn’t come up with a group name guys? Even like, “Bag of Toenails” would be better, anything. How are you supposed to talk about this group? I just outed myself as a poseur, didn’t I. You’re not supposed to talk about them. Well, I’m almost sure I won’t, but, I would.

9. Daniel Menche/Mammifer

Ambient noise projects even harder to write about than free-jazz improv noise projects, of course, and currently I am not up to the challenge. Get it?

8. Dark Buddha Rising | Inversum

Thought this was a side project by the Neurosis dudes, but I guess it’s a totally different band from Finland that’s on their label. I thought it sounded pretty cool but if I don’t really listen to it much it’s like an .:Occult Objeckt:. which is what all records should aspire to be.

7. Locrian | Infinite Dissolution

Bleakness, keyboards, weird sound fx; Nine Inch Nails kinda makes me sick to my stomach anymore, so I’ll take this. (They do no sound anything like NIN.)

6. Enslaved | In Times

This is a band I need to listen to more, like dig through the whole catalog. Only really started with the last one.

5. Björk | Vulnicura

I don’t like sad Björk. Of course she’s still great and all but I can’t deal with it.

6. mus.hiba | hitoe

This should maybe go with the non-albums. I should have talked about them before this. They have a unique sound. Will talk more about them in the future.

3. Raekwon | Fly International Luxurious Art

Rough year for the Wu, Ghostface lost his shit on Action Bronson (uh, finally, really) and RZA became a conceptual artist or whatever. Thankfully there’s this. Maybe not one for the ages, but better than there’s been in a while I think.

2. f(x) | Four Walls

This was a big year for K-pop, esp. accessibility-wise w/ the whole YouTube fiasco, not like there’s a rivalry between the two countries or anything… (I should mention that Namie record made it all the way to satellite radio in the states, I heard it a couple times and I don’t even listen to it on purpose, but it was all in English so I didn’t care so much. Sorry.) Best tracks imo were Deja Vu & Rude Love. I really liked the Lim Kim better as album tho. Was it not a full album? Oops. NB: Ppl made a big deal out of Pitchfork reviewing this a full week after Billboard did for some reason.

1. The Go! Team | The Scene Between

This pseudo-group kinda fell off for me in the process of becoming a real group but they came back this year w/ some pretty good stuff and at least one with a terrible video. But it’s cool. Would have missed it if Watt didn’t play it on his show. He also made a record with that guy (One of those guys? Need to actually research this a little. It came out last year anyway.) that sounded good but I didn’t really check it out. Maybe if I ever review records on a regular basis I’ll talk more about it. But you know how that goes by this point. (If you don’t: it doesn’t.)

N O N – A L B U M

10. Especia | Primera (Selection)
I don’t even know if I like this tbh. The Japanese release is a full album I guess but it’s on iTunes a few songs short cause we can’t handle it. (And yet it leads with a non-essential 10-minute track, go figure.) They have one song I really like and it turns out to not be on this one, but last year’s GUSTO, which I bought on CD cause I’m old, leave me alone. Listening to it on the stereo gives me a weird feeling of embarrassment, which I suspect is intended.

9. V/A | Idol Bakari Pizzicato

This was…cute. Would have been more interesting say, 10 years ago when “Idol” did not mean perfectly plastic, autotuned, quantized earcandy. Non-perfection was the charm. Love the songs still, but it makes me appreciate the originals even more. Not to say Nomiya Maki is not perfect, but she is NOT an idol. She’s a chanteuse!

8. F.O.D./Dead Milkmen | Split 7″

This was a fairly transparent hoax of “lost” recordings being reissued which I don’t think anyone questioned for a second cause that’s where we are at with punk rock apparently. Maybe I’m out of touch. I’m not really out there anymore, everyday, in the pit. The conversation pit. It was pretty funny either way. Even tho I only bought this one, the dude from SRA sent me a link for all the mp3s (probably by mistake) of the other split 7″s they put out this year and I like this band Merda, who are from Brazil but sometimes sing in Japanese which is interesting. I don’t get into many new punk bands anymore.

7. V/A | Virgin Babylon Records 5th Anniversary

Too much to talk about on this one. I should really write more full reviews. Really.

6. Watchtower | [individual songs from unfinished new album]

What a concept! Releasing single tracks before eventually collecting them together with presumably a few more songs onto one larger release. But however they did it, bravo on this comeback cause some other clowns were calling themselves Watchtower which is not even a good name ffs, sounds like they’re Jehovah’s Witnesses. What a great band if you’re into the mathy prog-metal tho.

5. tricot | E

And speaking of mathy, we have some new tricot, still w/o a full-time drummer to record another proper full-length, but they are putting out some promising tracks still after a bit of a falter.

4. ZZZs | Invidia
Hey, I actually reviewed this one for real.

3. Scharpling & Wurster | Best Show Box Set

Objectively and subjectively spectacular. I used to mostly like the earliest stuff when the whole thing was just making fun of Glen Jones, then I checked out for a few years and when I came back to it I almost didn’t get it anymore. So it was a lot of fun filling in the missing pieces.

2. Melt-Banana | Return of 13 Hedgehogs

Old material that was tough to find, this nicely replaces a folder of low bitrate rips I got off Soulseek in 2006 and then some. Wacky covers: Devo! The Specials! Some old Europop! I don’t know!

1. Suiyoubi no Campenella | Diablo

Only 3 songs that I listened to a whole lot back-to-back with the previous album I should have already had. But I just didn’t want to listen to rap for a while I guess. Def a new obsession on par w/ Halcali, maybe.

S H O W S

10. Horror-thon @ The I-House

Not exactly a show, but just illustrates how much more I go to the movies than shows now and I didn’t even see that many movies either. It’s mostly been studying and getting paying work again.

9. Sakura Sunday (Bonten, J-Music Ensemble) @ Fairmount Park

I also volunteered a bit. You’d think I’d been to this thing before but it was a first. I had not even seen the Japanese House. It just wasn’t a priority so I never got around to it before. They had some traditional Taiko and dancing which I like, but this group Bonten does something more like soundtrack music, adding some modern synths and performing like a regular band. The J-Music Ensemble is a Jazz band with a full horn section that covers J-pop songs and they have pretty good taste in song choice like Perfume and Utada. Hope they go further w/ the idea.

8. Fucked Up @ The I-House

Spent a lot of time at the I-House this year, esp. when they moved the Japan Philly Society Conversation Club there. How is it for punk shows? About as weird as you’d think. They performed kinda like RHPS, on the small stage in front of the movie screen, which played a random light show. I never posted pics due to a technical issue, altho I did dump them all onto flickr set to private. I should really fix my flickr page. Never saw them before and I’m not a huge fan so I missed their transition into like, krautrock w/ screaming. It’s pretty cool.

7. Philm @ St. Vitus & JB McGuiness (New Castle)

Had to see ’em twice cause I left Vitus early to catch my train home so I would not be stuck in NYC on the coldest night I have ever experienced. They’re good and all but Dave Lombardo was RIGHT THERE, MAN. Non-that aspect of it: it was interesting to see the same headliner back-to-back in two very different “metal venues”. There’s a lot of snark that could go both ways but I will leave it to your imagination.

6. Helmet @ World Cafe Live

Page Hamilton doesn’t have a lot of interest in recreating the screaming parts but the music was so tight it didn’t matter that much. There actually was a pit so it was not like a loud Jazz gig or something. (It’s a somewhat “Adult Contempo” venue.) Helmet does not get the respect they should from the Metal scene as like, almost-cover bands, shoegaze or Korn…I guess cause there’s not enough contrarian juice in defending the music and they never did the Civil War reenactment-type fashion thing. It’s not exactly top-notch songwise post-Meantime in my book, but it’s all monster riffs and killer solos. Altho, there was not even an opening band which is maybe why they booked this place. I guess they went out of their way to snub “the scene”, but metalheads defend bands that don’t even play live based on the first couple records that are the only good ones, get real guys.

5. ZZZs @ Boot & Saddle

Finally made it into the place I actually drive past all the time that my older cousins used to line dance at or whatever. I have mixed feelings about the sign renovation, but nice place. Anyway, this was a real cool show, I talked about it in the post I already linked to.

4. Marty Friedman/Exmortus @ The North Star

Hell of a show to say goodbye to this place with. Sad it’s ending shows but it was always an out-of-the-way venue. I kinda just like Marty as a dude and a player, not that I don’t like his records, but I wasn’t really expecting it to “translate” live. I think the show was on a weeknight and I was actually planning to duck early, I just wanted to feel like I had really crossed Megadeth off my seen list, but wow. That is a real band. Exmortus was cool too, did some straight-up Classical stuff, got their album that came out last year that I’ll…y’know.

3. Scharpling & Wurster w/ Kurt Vile & The Dead Milkmen

Speaks for itself. Good job getting these two Philly camps to break hoagie, btw.

2. Either/OR playing Morton Feldman’s “For Philip Guston” @ The Rotunda

Compared to other types of music, this piece is sort of like a five-hour intro to a song that never kicks in. I really stayed for the whole thing w/o even a bathroom break and I left my phone in the car. (Incidentally, I received a $76 parking ticket for this otherwise free concert. Worth it.) For the first hour or two, I was writing twitter jokes in my head, but I forgot what they were by the end. (I nodded off a little a few times.) But it was really an amazing musical experience in it’s own universe.

1. Melt-Banana/Hirs @ Johnny Brenda’s

Was I really gonna put Morton Feldman at #1? I might have. Am I that guy now? I’m not that guy. I used to listen to the late-night avant-garde show on PRB, I took it all the way, as far as I can go. I’m not a genius. And I’m not commercial. But sometimes I need some new electro-pop music to feel like I’m living in the 21st century, so seeing Perfume last year was great. But this was something else. This really put it all together. I mean it’s just some people playing to a pre-recorded track, but it was so punk rock. This was really how you do that. I didn’t want to admit this, but when I saw Motörhead at MSG a couple years back, they put on a great performance and all, but I was so far away (best tix I could afford) it almost didn’t matter if they were really playing or if I was watching on a screen, and I had this sense of urgency leading up to seeing them like, “this is gonna end! it’s gonna be over!” And now it is, but during the show itself I thought, “it’s ok if this ends”. Rock music does not end because it’s not on that scale and purity at any kind of non-acoustic show is an illusion anyway. “Goodbye, fuck it.”

So anyway, I’m pretty psyched about seeing Maiden in March. Hopefully everyone survives till then.

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