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theneondemonx · 3 years

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MY TYPE | JJK

One Shot

▽ summary: you’ve never liked fuckboys, especially one Jeon Jungkook. But when you find yourself late at night playing a game of seven minutes in heaven with your college friends, things take a different turn.

▽ genre: porn with very little plot, college au

▽ pairings: fuckboy|jk x fem!reader

▽ words: 2192

▽ warnings: implied alcohol use, jk jerked off to your insta pics (y/n living the dream), oral sex (m receiving, deep throating), unprotected sex, lots of cum, dirty talk, nipple play, jk has a big dick

A chorus of ooohs filled the messy living room in which you and your friends were sitting in circle. It was late and most of the party guests had already gone back home, leaving just a small bunch of you and a pile of garbage all over the house. You would have gladly leave the place way earlier if it wasn’t for your best friend Se-mi, who you promised to drive back home. She insisted in staying longer to hit on Min Yoongi, one of your fellow classmates from the same major, but the guy seemed to barely notice. He might even been interested in her for all you knew: there was no way of telling, since he was always so introverted. The only person he spoke to was his disaster of a friend, Jeon Jungkook, the campus playboy.

How do they even get along? They have literally nothing in common.

And you knew this, since you had been often paired with Yoongi for some group projects during the years. The guy was cool. He was really smart and funny when you actually got to know him. He just didn’t open up easily. That’s why, even though you’ve had the opportunity to chat with him several times, you couldn’t really say you two were friends.

But back to the ooohs. The reason behind that childish reaction was to trace in the empty bottle of beer who had just stop spinning, pointing at you and the infamous Jeon Jungkook, who was having the time of his life – judging from the mischievous grin on his face.

You weren’t blind, you knew he was hot as fuck, but he was way too aware of his good looks and terribly overconfident. He was known to have slept with most girls on campus, and you were pretty sure he was more dedicated to keep his record than to actually graduate. Which, for a good student like you, was infuriating.

You had always found him annoying and obnoxious. And on top of that, you couldn’t figure out how girls seemed to fall for his cheesy lines every single time, throwing themselves at him like he was the only guy with a dick.

Sure, you didn’t really knew the guy, but in your opinion there wasn’t much to know about him. He was a cliché. And you couldn’t help but roll your eyes every time he tried to hit on you. Because he did. Of course he did. You were just his favorite type of prey: one that was not easy to catch.

“Well, you know the rules, guys. The closet is right at the end of the corridor. You have to stay in there for seven minutes. If you get out earlier, you have to kiss in front of everybody for the remaining time. And if you don’t get out.. well.. good for you.”

“Don’t worry, Jimin. Seven minutes are more than enough.” You said with a sarcastic tone, giving him a fake smile while you got up and adjusted your skirt.

Jungkook scoffed, getting up and leaning closer to your ear to talk in a low voice, but loud enough for the others to hear.

“You must have had some pretty lame sex if you think so. Hope I’ll change your mind.”

“You’re disgusting.”

And that’s how you found yourself sharing the tightest possible space with a known fuckboy like Jeon Jungkook.

As soon as you entered the closet, you pushed your back against one of the walls, folding your arms to your chest to make him understand in every possible way that you weren’t going to give into any of his shenanigans. Stupid move, since your shirt was a bit low-cut and that only made your tits pop up even more, looking like a four course meal to the blatant gaze of Jungkook.

“No class to run to this time, mh?” he immediately uttered, giving you a malicious smile while leaning with his shoulder against the door frame.

“Unfortunately.”

He rolled his eyes, darkened even more by the dim light of the small space you were both trapped in.

“Oh come on, do you really want to turn this game into seven minutes in hell? You don’t necessarily have to be a mood killer.”

“I just don’t like you, Jungkook. I know you are not used to hear it, but that’s just how it is.”

Your comeback didn’t seem to affect him at all. If anything, he just made him chuckle and slightly shake his head.

Seriously? You are that full of yourself?

“Ok, so it’s another Y/L/N Y/N who liked my photo at the gym from three years ago and then changed her whole profile in a ridiculous attempt to hide it.”

Your eyes widened and your cheeks turned suddenly red. You got caught.

“It was a mistake.” You tried to explain yourself, knowing too well that there was nothing you could say to go back from that.

He raised his eyebrow, looking straight at you from underneath his eyelashes.

“You scrolled through all my Instagram profile by mistake?”

No you didn’t. You just got curious. That’s the kind of shit you did at three in the morning when you couldn’t sleep. You just find yourself looking for weird stuff on the internet and scrolling through profiles of people you barely knew for no apparent reason. It was just a bonus point the fact that Jungkook’s profile was full of pictures of his body sculped by the gods. Sure, you were annoyed by his attitude, but you were still a woman.

“And you did it so very late at night, if I might add.” He said, taking a step forward towards you. “What were you doing, Y/N? Looking for something interesting?”

You blushed so hard that you were pretty sure he could see the redness in your cheeks even despite the poor lighting in the closet. But you couldn’t help but stare at him in the eyes like a deer caught in headlights, unable to look away from his hypnotic gaze.

“I wasn’t.” You murmured, defensively.

“You don’t have to feel ashamed, you know? I was awake too – thank God, if I might add. I would have missed it otherwise. I would have found myself locked out of that mysterious profile, unable to look at your cute pictures.” He paused, leaning way too close to your face. “Don’t tell anyone, but I had some fun with those.”

Normally, you would have told him that he was sickening, but for some reason you felt a pleasant warmth irradiating in your belly. You couldn’t help but picture him jerking off to your photos, and it wasn’t sickening at all. If anything, it was weirdly enticing.

He rested his palm on the wall, right next to your face, and looked down at your body like he was ready to devour it in one bite.

“I recognized the skirt, you know?”

You didn’t remember wearing it in one of your pictures, but it was plausible: that skirt was one of your favorites. Cute and short, but not too revealing.

“Well, I hope you saved the picture, because that’s all you’re gonna get.”

This was your response, when you actually found the courage to talk. But your voice was so low and shaky that you found it hard yourself to believe your own words. Of course he didn’t fall for it.

“Are you sure?”

You bit your lip, nodding in a last ridiculous attempt to give yourself a standoffish look, which again he didn’t buy at all.

He got even closer, slightly pressing his body against yours until your heavy breaths were melting into one another and you could feel his hardness on your stomach.

You did not respond. You were brain dead. All you could feel was your core painfully clenching around nothing and your blood flowing down to your lower belly, emptying your head of any thought beside those filled with the desire to feel his body.

“Mh.. okay..” he said, gently resting his hand on your thigh and starting to go further up with an excruciating slow pace. “So you don’t like this.”

It wasn’t a question, but it was clear he was looking for a reply you were unable to give. A soft moan escaped your lips at his gentle touch, which you didn’t move away from. A silent green light for him to go even further up, taking his caress under the hem of your skirt until his digits were brushing the damp fabric of your underwear.

“You want me to stop, Y/N?”

His words were a mere whisper against your lips to which you couldn't help but faintly gasp.

“No.” You found yourself saying, right before being cut off by the kiss he gave you, pressing his lips against yours and spreading them open for his tongue to enter your mouth.

You moaned, melting like pudding against his body while his fingers started drawing slow circles on your sensitive clit.

“For someone who finds me disgusting you got yourself soaking wet pretty fast, princess.”

His provocative words only got you wetter and needier, pushing you to the edge of your psychological barricade. Your hands rushed to his belt, unbuckling it with fast and sloppy movements until you could zip down his jeans, letting his hard cock spring free in front of you.

Fuck he’s big.

He seemed to have somehow read your thoughts in your eyes, since he chuckled, guiding your hand to wrap around his width and slightly moving it up and down while letting out a raspy moan.

“Are you gonna be a good girl and take me in your mouth, princess?”

You licked your lips, looking up at him with your eyes filled with lust while you slowly got to your knees. You never broke eye contact, pumping him slowly but steadily before swirling your tongue around the tip of his cock, covered with precum.

“Tastes good?”

“Mhmh.” You nodded with a mischievous smile on your face.

Your mouth soon wrapped around his cock, taking it all in until you started gaggin a bit for the length. A reaction which made him moan loudly and grab your hair, steadying his grip in order to guide your head in the increasing pace.

“Fuck your mouth feels so good.”

“You like it? Is this what you pictured while jerking off to my photos?” You said during a small pause, not even giving him the time to respond with anything but a loud moan, since you immediately got back to deep throating his cock like it was your last meal.

“Fuck I’m close.”

Those words only made you move faster, keeping your eyes locked with his to take in every ounce of pleasure you could get from him. And at that point there wasn’t much he could do to hold back. You suddenly felt his hot semen spilling down your throat.

However, you only had the time to swallow before he leaned down, wrapping his arm around your waist and lifting you up with ridiculous ease.

You wrapped your arms around his neck and your legs around his waist, letting him push you against the wall and move your wet panties to the side to sink deep inside your throbbing core.

You let out a sharp moan, welcoming his size between your tight walls with pleasurable pain. One of his hands got under your shirt and bra, squeezing your breast and tracing circles with his thumb on your hard nipple.

“Look at you. You got so wet just by sucking my cock, baby?”

His words were again a lustful whisper against your parted lips, but you were unable to respond – your voice cut by the deep thrusts he was torturing you with. You were sure, however, that the lewd sounds of your wetness were enough of an answer to him.

“Such a pretty little slut. What are you gonna tell the others when they’ll see my cum dripping down your thighs?”

You moaned loudly, helping his pace with the movements of your own hips to take him even deeper.

“I’m gonna tell them that this lame sex little slut made you come twice in a row.”

He groaned, thrusting harder in you.

“You are so fucking hot.”

The pace got quicker and quicker until you found yourself out of breath, calling his name in between moans while your legs started shivering, signaling your forthcoming orgasm. And when it came, it hit you like a train, making you grab his hair and moan loudly while your walls clenched around his cock. You felt him twitch inside you until he sank deep with sloppy thrusts, releasing his orgasm inside you with a raspy moan.

You two took some moments to relax your racing heartbeats, leaning against each other's forehead with eyes closed and heavy breaths.

When you felt again capable of speaking, you let out a pretty laugh, pressing your palm against his cheek.

“Hope this memory will serve you well for your future lonely nights.”

He laughed, caressing your nose with the tip of his.

“Trust me, this won’t stay in the past.”

“Jerkass.”

“Nerd.”

#jungkook fanfic #jungkook smut #jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook #jk #jjk #jungkook oneshot #jungkook college au #jungkook fuckboy #smut #college au #yoongi #bts fanfic #bts smut #bts college au #fanfic #oneshot #bts x reader #bts

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newmusickarl · 3 years

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Album & EP Recommendations

My word, the music world has well and truly spoiled us this week!

The past seven days has seen a colossal avalanche of new releases, so much so I’ve barely had chance to keep up with it all. Although this is not the full list of everything from the past seven days, here are the 16 (yes, 16!) new releases I’ve enjoyed the most this week.

As there is so much to get through the rundowns are (mostly) a bit shorter than normal and there is no single Album of the Week, instead I simply recommend checking out whichever album or track sounds most appealing depending on your preferred taste.

So without further ado then, here’s what’s good:

Californian Soil by London Grammar

It’s been four years since the release of London Grammar’s last record Truth Is A Beautiful Thing - an album that I enjoyed, but I’ll admit also left me feeling somewhat underwhelmed coming off the back of their incredible breakout debut, If You Wait. As it turns out, the band themselves were also having a tough time around that period, with front woman Hannah Reid in particular battling relentless industry sexism, as well as the persistent physical pain caused by her fibromyalgia condition. With this being the case, it is amazing that the young indie-pop trio have made it to their third album at all, let alone delivering what is their best work to date.

Opening on a grand, string-drenched Intro, the record soon morphs into the sun-soaked guitars and soaring orchestration of the album’s glorious title track. It marks an early highlight as Reid catches the audience up with the tribulations of the last few years – “I left my soul on Californian soil.” From there the album doesn’t really let up as the band move through a series of career-defining tracks – the gorgeous contemporary groove of Missing, the dance-influenced How Does It Feel, the chilled-out ambience of the dreamy Baby, It’s You and the sublime, stripped-back closer America.

However, the album’s strongest moment comes when Reid confronts music industry sexism head on with defiant anthem Lord It’s A Feeling. Beginning with some twinkly xylophone, before evolving into an atmospheric synth-laced backdrop where Reid pulls no punches:

“I saw the way you made her feel, like she should be somebody else,

I know you think the stars align for you and not for her as well,

I undеrstand, I can admit that I have felt those things mysеlf”

The cutting lyrics against some blinding quiet rave instrumentation leaves quite the impression, as does this sterling record in general. After a slight misstep, London Grammar have well and truly rediscovered themselves and they have honestly never sounded better – a truly incredible album.

If You Could Have It All Again by Low Island

Oxford electo-pop outfit Low Island are another band that have defied expectations to get to this point. This, their debut album, was not recorded in a professional music studio – in fact, the vocals were recorded in a bedroom cupboard of all places. The band themselves don’t even have a manager or a record label. In every sense of the word, they are a truly independent band. For a self-financed, self-produced effort, If You Could Have It All Again is a quite remarkable first outing.

From melodic, uplifting opener Hey Man, the record quickly jumps into spoken word electro punk banger What Do You Stand For, featuring acid-drenched synths and a dancefloor-ready groove. Fans of FIFA 21 will recall Don’t Let the Light In, with the glitchy pulse of recent single Who’s Having the Greatest Time also standing out. That said, it’s the smooth, infectious sway of I Do It For You that still pulls me in the most.

Having followed the band since their early EPs, I’ve been rooting for Low Island for a while now and this is one debut album I was highly anticipating this year. Safe to say, my expectations have been met – this is a fantastic, accomplished record, which leaves me eager to see where they go next.

The Greatest Mistake Of My Life by Holding Absence

There was a time when the difficult second album used to be a thing, but listening to the sophomore effort from Welsh rock band Holding Absence this week, I’m really not sure that exists anymore. After a dramatic and impressive self-titled debut two years ago, the band have wasted little time taking things up a notch, with this new album cinematic and masterfully produced from beginning to end.

From standout singalong anthems like Afterlife and In Circles, to the album’s epic seven-minute penultimate track Mourning Song, The Greatest Mistake of My Life shows a band pushing themselves and driving forward with ambition at every opportunity. In a year packed with outstanding rock and metal albums already, this is most definitely another one you can add onto that list. Soaring, impressive and demanding of repeat listens.

We Forgot We Were Dreaming by Saint Raymond

It’s been six long years since Nottingham-born singer-songwriter Callum Burrows, AKA Saint Raymond, released his debut album. However it seems the time away has been well spent as this long-awaited follow-up finds Burrows in fine form, with this album packed to the brim with catchy, glossily produced indie-pop anthems.

From the brilliant title track that opens the record, to the bouncy riffs of Right Way Round, Talk and Solid Gold, to more subdued and heartfelt moments like Only You, this album will have you smiling, singing your heart out and dancing your troubles away.

Flu Game by AJ Tracey

AJ Tracey may have only been three years old when Michael Jordan was winning NBA championships with the Chicago Bulls, but that hasn’t stopped him making a record influenced by the legendary icon and his famous 1997 Flu Game. Like many others including myself, grime superstar AJ Tracey spent lockdown watching the brilliant The Last Dance documentary, and this record weirdly works as a fantastic unofficial companion, but also just a great summer rap record.

McCartney III Imagined by Paul McCartney

Even if like me you completely missed Sir Paul McCartney’s 2020 album McCartney III, it’s well worth checking out this reimagining, where he has called on the help of some of his famous musician pals. This is a real who’s who line up of guest features including Beck, Khurangbin, St. Vincent, Blood Orange, Phoebe Bridgers, Damon Albarn, Josh Homme, Anderson .Paak and more, making for quite a fascinating mix of sounds and styles.

Moratorium (Broadcasts from The Interruption) by Enter Shikari

And finally on the albums front this week, genre-benders Enter Shikari have released a brilliant compilation of all their lockdown live performances, headlined by an incredible string-tinged acoustic version of The Dreamer’s Hotel and a beautifully stripped-back “At Home” rendition of Live Outside.

Tracks of the Week

Introvert by Little Simz

Wow, wow and wow again. Still fairly fresh off the back of her masterful, Mercury Prize nominated third album Grey Area, this week British rapper Little Simz released the first taste of her next record in the form of this epic and triumphant opening track. At six minutes in length, this majestic and operatic political anthem aims to grab the listener by the collar and shake them awake. Without a doubt, one of the best songs of the year so far, the powerful video for which you can view above.

Smile by Wolf Alice

The second taste of their forthcoming album Blue Weekend, Smile continues Wolf Alice’s pattern for alternating Loud/Soft releases, with this one featuring buzzy guitars, punky vocals and a hypnotic chorus melody.

Beautiful Beaches by James

Although written off the back of the California wildfires that impacted front man Tim Booth’s local community, the lyrics on the band’s latest anthem purposefully offer a dual meaning, giving hope to those dreaming of a post-lockdown getaway and fresh start.

He Said She Said by CHVRCHES

The Scottish trio made their much-anticipated return this week, with Lauren Mayberry also sharing her experiences of sexism on this arena-ready synth-pop banger.

Matty Healy by Georgia Twinn

Georgia Twinn delivers an infectiously catchy break-up anthem, inspired by an ex-boyfriend, who’s most interesting feature was supposedly looking like the 1975 frontman.

Kill It by Vukovi

Underground Scottish rock outfit Vukovi’s new single is so good, they even managed to get KILL IT trending over the weekend of its release. Masterfully produced with big bold riffs and trancey synths, this one just sounds huge.

Can’t Carry On by Gruff Rhys

The latest solo single from the former Super Furry Animals frontman is a stunning, super-melodic tune with an instant chorus you’ll be singing before the track has even finished its first play.

Ceremony by Deftones

One of the highlights off their last album Ohms, the nu-metal rockers have now delivered a cinematic new video directed by horror legend Leigh Whannell. Check it out!

Chasing Birds by Foo Fighters

And finally this week, Dave Grohl and company released a trippy new animated video for this Medicine At Midnight cut to help celebrate 420 in their own unique way. Again, well worth a watch!

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sinceileftyoublog · 3 years

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Wobbly Interview: Going for Happy

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Thurston Moore Ensemble/Negativland band member Jon Leidecker has been releasing electronic music under the moniker Wobbly for over two decades now. In Chicago experimental label Hausu Mountain, he seems to have found kindred spirits, matching his far out idiosyncrasies. 2019′s Monitress and its follow-up, Popular Monitress, which came out earlier this month, are albums about and by machines, as Leidecker ran his music into pitch trackers and synth apps on his phones and tablets, embracing the errors and randomness that were produced along the way. While the source material on Monitress was mostly improvised, the songs on Popular Monitress are more structured and composed, resulting in songs like “Authenticated Krell”, which follows a comparatively clean synth arpeggio before being enveloped by texture, or “Lent Foot”, where the various instruments trail each other. It’s remarkable just how familiar certain sounds are even if not traditionally instrumental ones, like the typewriter clacks of “Illiac Ergodos 7!” or the zooming notes of the thumping title track. Blurring the lines between what’s instrument and what’s not, and even further, what’s composed music and what’s not, Popular Monitress is a defining statement for both Leidecker and Hausu.

I was able to ask Leidecker about various songs on the album and their inspirations. Read his answers below!

Since I Left You: You chose to write more structured songs this time around before running them through the pitch tracker. Do those nuggets of recognizable structures make the final product all the more disorienting?

Jon Leidecker: Hopefully! On both albums, the main thing is keeping the focus on just how live those pitch trackers are. It’s Monitress as long as you can hear how they’re listening. For years, it was strictly a piece for live performance--I needed to be improvising myself, and able to respond instantly, to really underline just how spontaneous the machine responses are. So the first record tried to keep more of that sense of flow. Large stretches of it are simply baked down from stereo recordings of concerts & radio performances of it. Overdubbing more layers of trackers seemed legal, as long all the voices were following that one original sound.

Of course, when you play a tune, something composed or even quantized, it definitely becomes easier to hear what they’re doing. The exact same code running on each phone will respond in very different ways to the same source audio, and you get a chorus of individual voices. They play a lot of wrong notes, but oddly, if you feed the trackers lots of consonant, major chords, it stops being dissonance, and you can tell they’re going for happy. You hear these weird things, trying to sing in unison, and..the result is just pure delight. Weirdly emotional! What’s a mistake? What’s music?

SILY: How did you come up with the song titles? For instance, is there anything particularly Appalachian about "Appalachian Gendy"?

JL: They’re mostly mashed up references to landmark works in the field of generative & algorithmic composition, from the 50’s up to the early 90’s. The recent push of stories on AI musical tools seems to be about automation and labor-saving, but the field of how to develop tools for more creative ends goes back all the way to Bebe and Louis Barron going to the Macy Conferences on Cybernetics and designing their first self-oscillating feedback circuit.

So while my tracks aren’t really in the musical style of the works they reference--something like “Appalachian Gendy”, which sprung up a fantasy Spiegel/Xenakis tribute, got paired to that stompdown track, and once it did, I added a solo on iGendyn.

SILY: To what extent is your music here inspired by the inner workings of the brain?

JL: Once you get a grip on just how simply neurons and synapses interact, how reassuringly physical thinking is, the electronic music I’ve always found most inspiring often involve feedback systems, self-playing devices, generative music, things that learn rather than settle. Music that helps you model thought. The whole East Coast/West Coast 60’s divide in synth design boiled down to Moog reducing your options until you could easily dial in what you already know you want, and Buchla designing uncertainty machines to be networked together until they approach the complexity of an unknown brain.

SILY: "Synaptic Padberg" and "Every Piano" have moments of recognizable instruments as opposed to alien instruments (strings and piano, respectively). Was that just a product of the errors/randomness of the music-making, or purposeful?

JL: It's supposed to sound orchestral, so I hit my Mellotron and Chamberlin apps pretty hard with this piece. Not like anything remains plausibly real once they're getting hammered by the trackers. That is a real grand piano, however: me playing the tune at SnowGhost Music in Montana. Brett Allen deserves an engineering credit, but I also wanted the first listen to make you wonder.

SILY: There's almost a funky rhythm to "Motown Electronium". Do you envision folks dancing to this record?

JL: Would have been plain wrong to put that title on an unworthy beat. What would a room full of people dancing to this even be like? Maybe in Baltimore.

SILY: Do you think "Training Lullaby" is what a computer trying to write a lullaby would sound like?

JL: Not that relaxing, is it? That’s ten seconds pulled from a five minute live improvisation, just a little burst of fury in the middle. Which I’ve heard enough now that I can sing along to it; so now, for me, it is calming.

I finally had to admit to myself that I’m a fan of the OpenAI Jukebox stuff. It’s right at that stage where their results are still primitive enough to remain a little mysterious. All the context and relationships intrinsic to what humans call music is irrelevant to those GANs. They don’t need culture to make music, they just need waveforms. What does it tell us that simple pattern analysis and brute number crunching on a large enough data set can produce those sounds? They’re training us. I have twelve hours of their Soundcloud dump ripped to my phone, and I play it a lot, though I wouldn’t play it for anyone under four. Can definitely sing along to some of the weirder ones by now.

SILY: How did you approach the order of tracks on the record? I'm struck by, for instance, the chaos of "Grossi Polyphony" following the comparative lull of "Every Piano".

JL: Just trying to show the range, and keep the surprises coming. Perpetual variety becomes monotony so quickly, so there is a very careful balancing act to play between shorter and longer tracks. I like a record where on first listen, any new section that begins, you feel like there are no guarantees how long it’ll last, eight seconds or eight minutes. Even things that sound like they should be songs: no guarantees. I still remember the first time I heard The Faust Tapes as a teenager.

SILY: Did you actually use musical dice to write "Wurfelspiel"?

JL: “Wurfelspiel” is just name-dropping Mozart’s generative piece--again, a real piano, but no musical dice involved.

SILY: The beats towards the end of the album--the pseudo hip-hop of "Cope By Design", techno of "Dusthorn Sawpipe", krautrock of "Help Desk"--seem to me to be far more propulsive than anything else here. Do you see a connection between those tracks?

JL: The album hits you with all these miniatures in the middle to keep things moving, and those three are the last little barrage of them before the shift into the final stretch with the longer, more hypnotic pieces. Can be tough to sequence an album when you’ve got so many short tracks, but it’s also total freedom.

SILY: How did you like getting the Hausu Mountain album art treatment?

JL: Totally family. All the Monitress packaging has always been iPhone panorama mode artifacts, visual glitches not entirely unlike what my phone’s trackers do to what they hear. I gave one of those images to [Hausu Mountain co-founder Max Allison] to work with the cover of the first Monitress, and he sent back this image, saying, “Here’s the initial stage: Your photo reduced to color blocks I’ll carefully render out later.” So when the second hyper-detailed one came back in a more proper Hausu style, they already seemed like a sequence, and this second one was already in place, so it all clicked. Any version of Monitress, the music is different, but it’s always the same piece. I’m really happy they asked me for something. [Label co-founder Doug Kaplan] and Max are just coming from the good place.

SILY: Are you doing any live streams or socially distant shows any time soon?

JL: Multi-location live streams are a blast. The time modulation inherent in all streaming is deeply psychedelic. The kind of listening you have to do when you know that the relationship of sounds together in time is different for each musician involved? I’m learning utterly new tricks, and it’s astonishing just how live the result is. I sat in on a live stream with Thurston Moore Group a few months ago, the four of them in London, and me hooked up to an amp not far from where I normally am when I play with them. And everyone agreed: It felt like I was there, right up until the instant I quit the app.

I’ve been pre-recording some home live sets for Hausu, Curious Music and High Zero Foundation. Negativland is putting together an hour long performance with Sue-C for the Ann Arbor Film Festival in late March. I finished an album mostly recorded outdoors with my old friend Cheryl E. Leonard for Gilgongo, and we’re going to try to a few outdoor concerts, too.

SILY: What else are you currently working on/what's next?

JL: The second album with Sagan, with Blevin Blectum & J Lesser, is coming out in late April. That one took 14 years to finish. There’s a trio record with Thomas Dimuzio and Anla Courtis coming out on Oscarson. Doing a revision of the last episode of my podcast on sampling music, Variations, to incorporate that OpenAI music. Some Negativland releases tying together the last two albums. There are about four of five other albums that might be done, though it takes time to be sure.

SILY: Anything you've been listening to, reading, or watching lately?

JL: This month has been Maryanne Amacher’s collected writings, Keeping Together in Time by William H. McNeill, Ministry For The Future by Kim Stanley Robinson, important even with happy ending. Interview with Karl Friston - Of Woodlice And Men. Listening to a lot of “Blue” Gene Tyranny, Xenakis & Lang Elliott, and last week every Ghédalia Tazartès album in reverse chronological order. I don’t care what anybody says: That guy’s immortal.

SILY: Anything I didn't ask about you want to say?

JL: Thank you for your questions!

Popular Monitress by Wobbly

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hitodama89 · 4 years

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Non-Eurovision 2020

For the first time in history, Eurovision was cancelled. It was of course because of the Coronavirus crisis and it was objectively speaking absolutely a right call, but even so it just broke my heart. Especially after I learned that this year’s songs can’t be used in the next year’s contest because of some rule shenanigans! I was originally going to skip writing about this year altogether because, well, there was no contest to speak of, but in the end I decided I’d want to write down my opinions about the songs we never properly got to hear.

And... Now I am even more sad than before! We missed so many great songs and I would’ve given so much to see the shows they would’ve gotten!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgONBKFQpxE

Finland’s song this year was a very mixed bag for me. It sounds so, so... Okay. Absolutely nothing memorable, for better or for worse. It doesn’t hurt your ears but you won’t remember it in a minute either. But then there are the lyrics that hit home a little bit too hard for me. “Yeah, we never know what we have | Until it’s over and we’re looking back” Ouch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFCn_8oViRw

Malta’s song raised similarly mixed feelings in me, but for completely different reasons. For the most part the song doesn’t really do it for me, not its melody nor the lyrics. But then again the beginning part is really neat and the chorus just plain and simply slaps! Also parkour is always cool but I have no idea what it has to do with the song?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNetXPSld50

Ukraine also confuses me quite a bit. It has all the elements I usually adore in Eurovision performances: vocalist has an interesting voice, she sings with her native language, there are flutes and neat light effects. Buuuut even so this isn’t in my top picks of this year? Maybe it speaks more about the overall quality of other entries than the quality of this song, because this song is definitely decent!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9GAfFHZE-E

Switzerland’s song is the first one that gets to the territory of “really good” for me. The haunting performance is captivating, French just sounds really good while sung, the lyrics are interesting and all in all the song sounds amazing. Even if Eurovisions are traditionally all about being flashy and going all out, it would be real shame to have a year without a melancholic performance like this!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELr6U2fOrnE

If Switzerland went for minimalism, Latvia took the prize of the weird show this year! The subject of trying to become a perfect wife and mother is a very real one and instead of making fun of it I think the peculiar visual show perfectly underlines how absurd it is. For most part I also like the melody quite a lot, but I feel like the short rap music part doesn’t really fit to the entirety of the song all that seamlessly. It might’ve been intentional, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_dWvTCdDQ4

And then if Latvia’s performance was about being weird in in a serious way, Russia was weird in an absolutely hilarious way! Which I felt was a weird move from a country like Russia, but I guess after what we got from Israel a couple of years ago anything is possible. There are barely any sensible lyrics, but what the song lacks in depth it more than makes up in the energy of the melody, silly disco visuals and that weirdly hypnotizing wobbly leg dance move. This sure is a Eurovision performance through and through!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0VzBCvO1Wk

Azerbaijan is always one of those countries whose song I’m eager to hear, because it has always been pretty likely that I will like whatever they decide to send to the contest. This year was no exception and as soon as I heard their theme was ancient Egypt I was already almost sold, haha. The song itself turned out to be also great and I especially love the bizarre (Buddhist?) mantra in the chorus - and especially the visuals that happen during it! That’s just so many of my aesthetics smashed into one that I’m surprised anything could beat it, but yes, something indeed did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxPm-Wz8qpY

In my mind Lithuania was the winner of this year. What on earth did they manage to do to beat everyone else, then? I’m... Honestly not sure! It’s one of those cases where I have hard time dissecting the greatness of this song, because it plain and simply sounds so god damn good to me without any particular reason. It sure is incredibly catchy, has some amusing instruments, good lyrics, amusing visuals and I guess then everything just clicks the right way. This one I will definitely be listening a lot for a while!

#eurovision #eurovision 2020 #euroviisut #eurovision evaluation #long post #rambling

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vinylfromthevault · 5 years

Photo

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Orange” released 25 years ago today, October 12th, 1994. Matador Records, silver vinyl. Tonight we’re catching JSBX’s drummer Russell Simins’ band S-E-R-V-I-C-E at Cactus Club in Milwaukee. We saw them last month at our neighborhood street party, Bay View Bash, and back in May 2017 in Indianapolis at Hi-Fi Indy and they are amazing. Here’s a couple of shots from those shows.

Orange, my favorite JSBX record and their third or fourth (depending upon how you count the first two releases from 1992) LP, is at times sparse, chaotic, funky, punk, bluesy but always amazing. The lead track, “Bellbottoms” swells with strings and a funked out groove before hitting the staccato’d “bellbottoms” anthem. The song inspired Edgar Wright to write the 2017 movie Baby Driver, the soundtrack to which was nominated for a Grammy (the song “Chase Me” in the movie is a remix of “Bellbottoms” by Danger Mouse featuring Run the Jewels and Big Boi). “Wright laid in his bedroom listening to the song on repeat, visualizing a car chase set to “Bellbottoms.” He also started coming up with the idea of a character: a getaway driver for a bank heist, who cannot do his job properly without the right music playing.” (IndieWire) “Ditch” is hip-shaking sexy and “Dang” has fantastic, crazed harmonica solo by Judah, matched by Jon Spencer’s insane theremin. The first of two excellent instrumentals on Orange comes next: “Very Rare” slows down the beat to a hypnotic rhythm overlayed with Spencer’s signature guitar twang. “Sweat” is iconic JSBX giving us the classic line “That’s the sweat of the Blues Explosion!” “Cowboy” is weirdly mangled country-western (not my favorite track on the album) but the title track “Orange” returns to the slinky JSBX groove (Spencer name-drops ‘Star Trek’ and manages to make even that sexy). Side B leads off with “Brenda” with Spencer singing longingly, just a little too high out his range, for a girl and her money. “Dissect” is thick with musical chaos and “Blues X Man” is a “12-bar back-country roadhouse blues and back-alley back-seat eros to Lower East Side boasting about the Blues Explosion’s musical virility. It begins sparse and skeletal before adding a female backing chorus and DJ turntablism, turning traditionalism upside down and scraping country and city down to their nubs in order to make everything bleed.” (Allmusic) “Full Grown” is balls-out insanity beginning with the line “Baby baby you sure like to fuck FUCK!” and “Flavor” is hilarious, rattling off all the cities where the Blues Explosion is number one and the band gets Beck on the phone to croon out “flavor.” (The remix of “Flavor” is even better, featuring Beck and Mike D in a wicked funny video.) Orange concludes with my favorite JSBX track, the instrumental “Greyhound” which is monstrously awesome, best played at 11.

#jon spencer blues explosion #jsbx #jon spencer #russell simins #judah bauer #punk blues #alternative rock #matador records #vinyl #colored vinyl

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thesinglesjukebox · 5 years

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ITZY - ICY [6.50] Cold summer...

Iain Mew: Hey hey hey! Yo! Eh eh eh. Beep beep. Bom bom bom. Oh oh oh. Ring ring ring! The pick'n'mix approach to ad-libs is as delightful as the deluge of hooks. That is, almost as delightful as a new group bringing back Lip Service but successful, surging through myriad scenes with just a wobbly Blackpink siren noise, the silliest bit of wordplay, and forward momentum to rely on. [9]

Kayla Beardslee: I respect how committed this song is to its relentlessly -- annoyingly -- cheerful aesthetic, but that doesn't mean I find any aspect of it pleasant. Constant shouting interspersed with flashes of forgettable melodies, a tuneless bridge that sounds distractingly ready to segue into "I Just Can't Wait to Be King," and sound effects out the ass: what is there to like about this? [2]

Katie Gill: This is less a song than a collection of noises. The background shouts, the chants, the instrumentation that seems to be composed mostly of "oh hey, I found this fun synth effect we can use!" -- "Icy" is trying to win an award for doing the absolute most. I suspect that some people will find it annoying. As for me, I find it weirdly endearing. It helps that barely any part of this song is memorable enough to be stuck in your head. [6]

Leonel Manzanares de la Rosa: JYP darlings Itzy's music is always busy and bustling, with different segments that, on their own, could make for several different songs, but they have given their all-over-the-place sound a solid direction and a consistency that is very impressive for such a young project. They're starting to at least solidify their place in the top-tier; the charts can prove. [7]

Leah Isobel: Itzy's take on self-confidence here veers cartoonish -- buoyant slap bass, snotty vocals, a general air of genial brattishness. There are some great production touches, like the high chimes in the pre-chorus or the stuttered vocals, but the chorus abandons the rest of the track instead of tying everything together; the result is fun but messy, covering the same thematic ground but lacking the clarity of purpose that "Dalla Dalla" demonstrated. We know the girls believe in themselves, and we know they have fun doing it. So what? [5]

Anna Suiter: Lia's telling me that this song is my favorite song? Not quite, but "I see that I'm icy" keeps playing in my head anyways, so she must be partially right. [6]

Alfred Soto: In contrast to the dead-eyed proficiency of "RNP," "Icy" brims with confidence: the raps, fills, and sung portions sound improvised when they clearly aren't, and the production gives the Korean group a jolt. [8]

Ryo Miyauchi: The lyrical emphasis on self-confidence, the metallic robo-bass drop and the overall focus of iciness as the language for stoic cool all check the boxes of the "girl crush" concept for Itzy. That said, "Icy" feels like a 13-year-old's vision of girl-group cool in the most endearingly dorky way. The hip-hop-inspired phrases in the single -- Ryujin's "shout to nae eomma" line and especially Lia's "they keep talkin', I keep walkin'" hook -- are proudly cheesy like the comic-book POW!'s popping up in the music video. While the noisy dial-up chirp adds some edginess to the production, it's the goofy slap bass that sums up the attitude of this song. By bringing a slightly not-cool version of industry-approved coolness, Itzy define their own "girl crush" concept. [6]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: This is basically an update on 4Minute's "What's Your Name?" except with more seamless genre-blending, more palpable confidence, and an extended dance break. No other group right now does the girl crush concept better. [7]

Joshua Lu: Not altogether unexpected: Itzy graduating from the self-assuredness of "Dalla Dalla" to the cockiness present on "Icy," bringing to mind bratpop greats like Cher Lloyd. Completely unexpected: a chorus reminiscent of "Donatella" and the best use of a "Blah blah" hook since Missy Elliot in 2015. [8]

Jessica Doyle: They seem to be settling into a groove pretty quickly, and it's a nice enough groove, all color and self-confidence; once they get a more compelling chorus the momentum will be all theirs. (I appreciate the sentiment of "They keep talkin', I keep walkin'," but it seems to slow the song down without much compensation.) I feel a little nervous about supporting this group wholeheartedly, though; I'm not at all sure JYP provides the circumstances for the smiles and pride to extend beyond the concept. I'd feel better if I could believe that Lia might actually get to eat the burger once in a while. [5]

Michael Hong: Has any girl group's rapping sounded as good, as essential, as Itzy's? "Icy" follows the record-breaking "Dalla Dalla" and is similarly an almost violently maximalist banger stacked with a seemingly endless number of hooks where their raps drip with personality. "Icy" is a swirling mass of noise featuring video-game bloops and bleeps, pounding percussion, and shouted ad-libs that feel altogether exciting and remains completely enthralling. Unlike "Zimzalabim," (also-co-written by Caesar and Loui) which seemed to drop momentum at every turn, almost every moment on "Icy" seems to be seamlessly integrated, from the expertly rapped verses, the melodic pre-chorus, and the hook-laden chorus. For example, part of the instrumental drops out for Ryujin's rap on the second verse and this only emphasizes how strong Itzy are as rappers. Itzy also manage to match the energy of the show-stopping pre-chorus with one of the most hypnotic choruses of the year. It's Itzy's undeniable charisma that keeps "Icy" from ever falling into a unlistenable piece of chaos, and instead, solidifies them as the rookie group of the year and one of the hottest K-pop girl groups to watch. [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#itzy #music #k-pop #music video #mv #new music #music writing #music reviews

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everynumberone · 5 years

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‘SexyBack’ - Justin Timberlake

youtube

Number one week ending 9th September 2006 for 1 week

After the success of his first solo album, Justin made a U-turn on his second with this weird electro-pop track that is incomparable to anything else in the charts at the time, and made electronic music trendy again. Full of bleepy synths like a badly tuned 80s song, distorted vocals, risque lyrics (’I’ll let you whip me if I misbehave’) and no proper chorus, it somehow works, and creates something weirdly hypnotic and inventive - not something you would have expected from an ex-boyband member who looked like he was going down the predictably successful R&B route. ‘SexyBack’ became a long-lived meme in itself (you can insert any adjective in place of ‘sexy’), and I still find listening to this interesting in the best way.

#justin timberlake #2006 #00s

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pleiadesounds · 4 years

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Where To Start With, Pt 1

This week, Harry Fanshawe from UK noiseniks Modern Rituals acquaints Kai with the inimitable Silver Jews, while Kai in turn shows him the finer points of British post-punk stalwarts Wire.

Kai Woolen-Lewis Wire are, for me, one of the great bands in the history of punk music. Whereas a lot of other bands you’d describe as such would subsist largely on folklore and be a calamity if judged on their incarnation in the present moment, Wire however seem to be one of the rare bands who have managed to be both very influential (if you need punk credentials, they were covered by Minor Threat and if you need trendy floppy haircut credentials, they were covered by My Bloody Valentine) and forever forward-thinking - bridging the gap between the pompousness of progressive music and the snarl and brevity of punk, a bridge between what were two ultra-partisan camps. Though they’re contemporaries of elder statesmen of British punk like the Sex Pistols and The Buzzcocks, there’s far more of an art-school vibe to Wire - one gets the impression that they must’ve stood in stark contrast to the image and the attitude of their peers, with cerebral and challenging songs that refused to succumb to the immediate hedonism of the punk music of the time. One gets the impression that they have far more in common with genre outliers like Patti Smith, Pere Ubu and Kraftwerk than with any of their counterparts in the British punk scene.

When I first saw them, at the Lexington in London 4 or 5 years ago, they played almost entirely new songs, with only a few songs from their “seminal” LP’s included in the set. Now that the horror of not knowing many of the songs has worn off, it’s a clear sign of their continuously forward-looking approach. With seventeen studio albums and god knows what else in the way of releases, here’s where to start with Wire - despite their huge legacy, absolutely not a legacy act…

Playing Harp For The Fishes

KWL Even after decades of churning out consistently stark, highly original songs, Wire still absolutely excel - although lots of their current and recent material is a lot more digestible than in their early years - this, from 2017’s Silver/ Lead is big slow-grooving song which gives an excellent idea of the kind of discomforting experimental noise Wire have always dealt in. A steady rhythm section struggles against all matter of ethereal out of key guitar, weird oscillating noises and throbbing synth lines. Musically and lyrically challenging and abstract without ever feeling overwrought. Sardonic without any hint of bitterness. Dense without even a smidgen of unpalatability. Is it always so? Aye.

Harry Fanshawe Wire for me have always been a band on the periphery of punk history. Not to say that is rightly so, but they're a band that I've seen has being earmarked as integral by the nerdier music fans (I mean that with fondness). Take Joy Division, they formed because they saw the Sex Pistols, but they made something much deeper and more meaningful. My mental placement for Wire has had them alongside the likes of Killing Joke in that history (weirder and less easy to associate with the common idea of 'punk'), and I feel like their evolution has been similar. Like you say this track favours simplicity with the steady beat, allowing a nicely sized canvas to throw as many different colours at, which they do with the layers they chuck on top. That is an approach that I see as being more contemporary of today than the 70s (favouring simplicity and excelling in it has really come back in the last few years). It shows how adaptable this band has been over the decades.

Lowdown

KWL Wire’s first album Pink Flag has gone down in music history as one of the seminal British records of the early punk movement, largely down to it’s combination of abrasiveness, melody and brevity. 21 songs in 36 minutes, often fleetingly abrupt, played at breakneck pace and infused with an abstract sense of humour and an art-school sensibility that set them miles apart from their contemporaries. This one, Lowdown, sounds like a soul single on 33rpm; a fascinating disco dirge and highlight of a pretty highlight-heavy first LP.

HF Right back to the 70s and for me that Crazy Horse vibe is straight in there. This is the THE Wire album. Fight me. Musically, it's a whole different sound to the last song, it's got vibe and groove and all the amazing characteristics of the best 70s bands. Vocally I find it more alike the stuff of the 2010s, though I reckon that's probably debatable! It's obviously got that old school, British punk oi! to it and today they're much calmer. But you can hear it. For anyone who knows Kai and his musical projects of the last few years, this riff is SO Kai.

Marooned

KWL Here’s an older one - from 1978’s Chairs Missing. The jump between Pink Flag and this in the space of a couple of years is absolutely insane, and the jump from this to the next year’s 154 is also pretty nuts. A highlight on a rich, chilling and unique record of challenging post-punk, Marooned is slow, meandering and awash with oceanic wetness, big synths and sheet glass guitars, with Newman singing about hanging out on a sinking iceberg - both sonically and in terms of sheer epic-ness of scope, it’s closer to Pink Floyd than to any of their genre contemporaries. I put this on at a house party once and the atmosphere nose dived and the whole room just totally explicably got really fucking awkward. Take what you want from that, I guess.

HF Forward a couple of years and the Pink Floyd sounds are in there, the experimentation is kicking off and yeah we're sat on a soft synth cloud here. It is a massive jump and I love that, I fully dig that 'fuck it who cares what anyone thinks I wanna try that'. I reckon that idea is nicely reflected in your house party play of it. I know that feeling, I did it with Primitive Man myself around a bunch of posh hipsters listening to surf rock in Cornwall. Lasted like less than 2 seconds. Proper wankers. Anyway, point is Kai, it's their loss. The tune slaps.

Map Ref

KWL By 1980’s 154 - so called because at the point they recorded it, they had played live 154 times - Wire had cemented their place as both stalwarts and genre outliers by following up the seminal Pink Flag with the enormous impenetrable curveball-shaped Chairs Missing. 154 is full of big bangers and awkward, atmospheric synthesiser-led songs - this by the way is one of the big bangers. Lyrically it seems to be a geography nerd gushing about the enormous epic expanses of landscape that make up the American midwest. Before you go look it up, the Map reference is somewhere called Centerville in Iowa or Ohio or something. Map Ref has a chorus I frequently cite alongside “That’s When I Reach for my Revolver” or “The Girl Who Lives on Heaven Hill” as a contender among underground punk rock’s biggest fist-in-the-air choruses.

HF Again, 70s vibes are rife, the energy of the rhythm section just holds it all up so strong. Weirdly, I find his voice sounds loads like Blake Schwarzenbach [Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil]? Any influence on him there? Who knows. Way more in the way of vocal melody here and the vibe is moving more along the way bands like Talking Heads were at the time. Definitely a banger. Love the lil satirical 'chorus' drop in there. As for landscapes inspiring songs, fuck yeah why should it always be about people? I mean animal rights punk is usually dreadful and dull, let's talk about something inanimate for once.

Blogging

KWL Brazen, streamlined and groovy, with a chugging downtuned riff and a glorious uplighting chorus - Blogging showcases Wire’s admirable ability to follow their own pretty standard formula and keep churning out highly original and interesting songs. The lyrics deserve a mention - it’s a hard enough endeavour sometimes for those of us born in the 90s, but if you were in a band that existed in 1976, the current musical landscape must be a pretty soul-destroying place to exist. Actually scrap that. If you were alive at a time when art seemingly meant something or was worth anything, now must be a horrible place to live. “I’m blogging like Jesus/ I tweet like a pope/site traffic heavy/ I’m YouTubing hope”

HF Totally agree Kai. Today is a fucking terrible time to be alive if you're interested in anything related to the notion of 'art'. It's all been rehashed and overdone. It's everywhere to be seen and no longer has a sacred place. It's been abused and overused for petulant causes. Everyone's a fucking artist and that's killed the concept. Can't believe how much this reminds me of Jets to Brazil, why!? I suppose we can forget about the present if we stick to Wire's back catalogue.

Circumspect

KWL A product of extensive periods of down-time on their part, which saw the members working on other projects - Colin Newman’s Githead in particular is worth a mention - 2008’s Object 47, so called because it’s the 47th Object in their back catalogue - is a really great record and a hidden gem in Wire’s back catalogue for me. Dispensing with the distortion and the abrasion, Wire made a record of sparse, infectious guitar-based songs that you can really lose yourself in, and this is one of the songs in which I have most frequently lost myself. A slow circular guitar arpeggio, laid-back drums and lush vocals result in an almost Manchester-esque slow disco pills-thrills-and-bellyache vibe - this is Wire at their most hypnotic and enjoyable.

HF Slowcore Wire! Yeah this is one of my favourites from this list. Having time away from something can let you come back to it without as much creative control or care, and refreshing your image of what the thing is in the first place. Step away, come back more naturally. This is softer, but it's still as weird as anything else they made in the last 20 years. Pretty banging video too, mind. It feels like you're in one of those dreams where you try and run but you got sandbags on your feet. But in this one, it's Drew Barrymore from Donny Darko and she's apathetic as fuck.

Bad Worn Thing

KWL Their first album properly “back” after a period of sporadic activity through the 2000s, Red Barked Tree is the sound of a band of fifty-somethings consistently at peace with the idea of re-defining what their band IS, without at any point ever stepping on the toes of their older selves. Another album highlight (with acoustic guitars) Adapt, sums it up pretty nicely. "Go east / Go north / Go south / Go west / Leave mouths open / With your best / Adapt to change / Stay unimpressed”. Bad Worn Thing finds the band both tapping into 2000s alternative music and subjecting it totally to their musical and lyrical interpretations. An upbeat, undeniably British-feeling slice of sauntering pop, one that makes me feel like I’m taking an afternoon walk through a British urban landscape to the shop on the first sunny day in weeks - all while giving a pretty caustic account of Britain’s ongoing relationship with its past and by implication, it’s future. “Follow me, no explanation/ the future sold the chancellor paces/ the growing pains associated with a past that no-one faces.”

HF This feels so much more British than much of what we've had from them on this list so far. This is Britpop Wire. Dam right they sound like they're back, they have something new to say, they're older and more jaded, but they still have something to say. I love the 'overcrowded nature of things' repetition. Like they've come back to this messy DIY music thing and it's a fucking full house. So you gotta build your own. Mind you, I'd say Wire have always lived in the garage.

Used To

KWL Another huge cut from Chairs Missing - and a perfect example of what critic Simon Reynolds called Wire’s “strange clockwork geometry” - a blissful piece of post-punk psychedelia and definitely one of the climaxes of a record that enjoys an embarrassment of rich, blissed out moments. I would definitely cite Wire’s work in this period as proof of the utter compatibility of the experimental, expansive, forward thinking music of the 60s and 70s and the abrasiveness and brevity of punk. Indeed, it sounds like bullshit now, but the same A+R man who signed Pink Floyd and the Sex Pistols was responsible for EMI’s acquisition of the band while they were still in their infancy. For me, basically everything that made the years 1976-1979 so exciting and vital in the history of unpopular music is represented in this album, whether it be this, the Beatles-on-glue vibes of ‘I am the Fly’ or the aggressive minimalism of ‘Being Sucked in Again’, the album just gives and gives and gives. An absolute classic.

HF Very pleased we went back to this to close. Absolutely loving the post-punk psychedelia tag on this baby. Again, everything you say above that I hear in this record is their observant nature as a band to look back at the twenty years before them and incorporate what's important, what's wrong, what's right and the relationship of all that against their own stronghold. It reinforces their importance and their place in all of this. Not everyone, hardly anyone, has the ability to be the originator of something whilst being so observant (the latter being one of the most troubling things for humankind) at the same time. A perfect place to end with Wire: it repeats, it talks, it stays with you for a moment and then it's gone. Thanks Kai.

Silver Jews

Harry Fanshawe Like many of us, my summer last year was consumed by the release of David Berman's new album under the 'Purple Mountains' moniker and then his sudden death. I'm sure many of us also went back through his entire catalogue once we'd exhausted our ears of his latest and last offering. Silver Jews have always been a standout band for me, usually sitting with things like Leonard Cohen or the Velvet Underground in my poor attempts at genre categorising.

What's always stood out to me in this way, making it something I've struggled to place with more contemporary artists, is the looseness in the music and the corresponding looseness in its lines between music and prose. Like Leonard or Lou, SJ have a truly unique way of delivering and intertwining music and meaning. Where the new Purple Mountains record is much more polished in its production, my fondness for the old Silver Jews records has always been like that of an old, familiar room; their rusty structures and broken floorboards bring with them more character and heart than any solid new build could and, given last summer’s events, it now holds a very special place in my heart.

KWL I remembered having heard about David Berman’s suicide because many of my most misanthropic and refined friends had been especially despondent about it - it seems I missed the boat on that particular opportunity to be saddened by the loss of a great artist, so having this opportunity to go back and be able posthumously introduced to him has been a strange experience - cool that Harry and I have these different perspectives on his work and death…like reading a sentence with a full stop at the end, or something.

Albermarle Station

HF A tender country offering inhabited by old ghosts, broken bridges and ivy covered screens. This song always reminded me of travel, of the lingering memories from recent events in recent places bouncing around the mind after an experience somewhere with people. All whilst anticipating the next destination. There's a train station near my parents’ house and as a teenager I used to travel from it a lot to see friends. That place hasn't changed at all in the 15 years since, and the rare occasions I go there now just bring back all of it; all the old ghosts while I sit and wait near the ivy covered screens and the rickety old bridge.Travel is a time that allows for rumination and retreat, and that can be savoured in all of its broken glory.

KWL A surprising first listen - I’m not sure exactly what I expected, maybe something a bit glossier and more upbeat, but this is great - ramshackle, melodic and with lyrics that will take a million listens. It sort of reminds me of Red House Painters but with wit, self-deprecation and genuine insight in place of abrasiveness and machismo. Berman is a prepossessing and fascinating figure in light of his suicide, I should imagine before just as much and also considering the esteem in which a lot of people held and hold him. Maybe you led me there but this song definitely feels like they have a foot in the past, in those old, deserted spaces you pass through on the way somewhere.

New Orleans

HF From that slightly out of tune guitar at the start to the doubled up lazy groans about the trouble in the stairs; to me this song is the dusty corner of an old house, the gold in the cellar, and it's not the house you think it is. Keeping up with a nostalgic line of thinking, this track captures the 'otherness' of the past, the distance it eventually takes, even when it can be so well set in stone by old artefacts and rooms. It beholds the length of reflective nights and the depth of their texture. Trapped inside the song where the night's are so long, we count sheep to find soothing sleep. An early banger from Berman.

KWL This is also great - there’s something hugely admirable about a song being able to be this rickety and cobbled-together-sounding while still being so evocative. It’s like, they could probably have recorded it without the out of key guitar lines or the drums losing the beat, but they didn’t - and there’s beauty in the imperfection. The song has that ‘On The Beach’ feeling of the end of a long, drunken night, when the ash-tray is full and the kitchen needs tidying before bed. But you’ll do it in the morning.

Tennessee

HF Clearly a trend is setting in here: the slowest country SJ numbers titled by places. Aside from the obviously amazing play on the title word in the chorus, this love song has some of the best one-liners as far as I'm concerned. Here's one: 'Punk rock died when the first kid said "Punk's not dead, punk's not dead”'. Here's my favourite: 'We're off to the land of hot middle-aged women'. Is this an optimistic look to a future with a spouse? As far as I care to know, the whole song is. Punk may be dead but love isn’t.

KWL I always knew you had a type, Harry. Another piece of rickety out of tune folk-country storytelling that somehow plays with superficiality and reaches into the darkest depths at the same time. A bit of cutesy word-play and a really lovely key change in the middle of the song - this is actually going really well, isn’t it. I’m guessing the lady singing is Berman’s wife, just because the whole atmosphere just feels very close and personable - listening to these songs of Berman being in love and happy and stuff is startling in this current context. A great song.

Sleeping is the Only Love

HF What's that? Another love song? Maybe! As blurred as it seems deliberately to be about loving someone and how incredible a good night's sleep is. As someone who troubles with sleep, I can agree that there are times when I would crawl over broken glass and hot coals to make it to sleep. I also love the reflection from that onto the peace had with a good functioning relationship with someone you love. Sleep and love intertwined.

KWL All these love songs have taken on a very strange overtone, now. This one has somewhere in it a snapshot of Berman and his wife settling down to the quiet life in Nashville - it’s all pretty beautiful, and it’s very impressive to go about making so intricate a love song about something as banal as sleep. I think there’s a snapshot here of the kind of intimacy that goes beyond the sexual - where somehow sleeping next to someone is the most intimate thing of all - the rolling over, the arms going to sleep, the waking up, the bad breath. The real deal.

Punks in the Beerlight

HF A song for the addicts! After a hot summers day, what better than the transcendence found in the cooling of a beautiful summers night? How could you make that even better? I guess you could smoke the gel off a fentanyl patch? This song is for a long summer night where you can go and run away into the night with a friend, find the nicest, deadest park around and watch that sun go down. And what comes after we exhaust our routes for escape? Let's not kid ourselves. It gets really really bad. Gotta love that 80s glam section after the first chorus too.

KWL Ok, so I feel I need to state here that Harry’s article has sent me down a deep rabbit hole of SJ/David Berman appreciation. It’s strange to find him here, at this point and I just wonder what it would have been like to have been like “I hope David Berman’s doing okay” at random intervals in life. This is easily the most conventionally beautiful song on the list so far and somehow it examines some of the darkest corners of the human experience. It reminds me of the beauty of being in love - all other markers fade into unimportance, rendering the rich paupers and the poor rich beyond dreams, together; a beautiful juxtaposition, part love song, part junkie memoir.

Advice to the Graduate

HF 'Your third drink will lead you astray.' Let's follow on from the last theme. 'So you've got no friends and you wander through the night. And now you watch the sunrise through a rifle-sight'. This song speaks for itself.

KWL This song seems to be quite strongly advocating the “school of life” diploma - that when you finish all the arbitrary self-building, that there’s a big wide world to step out into that’s all misery and addiction and what’s your deep critical analysis of Edgar Rice Burroughs going to do for you then? It sounds so slack, a borderline The Shaggs influence - Berman said that all of his favourite singers couldn’t sing, and it doesn’t sound like he or his backing band was much better. A genuine advert for keeping the musicians out of music…

K-Hole

HF I've never understood the appeal of a K-Hole, I suppose that DB doesn't either, since he compares it to the feeling of being left alone. Though he does still reserve his fondness for booze as a trustworthy fallback during tough times. Perhaps that's it; it can go too far. I love the string arrangements in this song, it feels outback and rural, the lyrics appeal to that sense of dusty distance too.

KWL I have a real soft spot in my heart for when the music of a song seems to run in tandem with its lyrical content, and I must say lots of the instrumental here feels like an out of body hallucination of a country song - large swathes of the song feel like Alice in Wonderland or that first Pink Floyd record that sounds like a Kaleidoscopic Circus.

Dallas

HF You know the way a city can change completely in character when night hits. When all the blazing sunlight lifts and leaves you with the purity of a place. It's like a deep breath of fresh air after a heavy day, you can feel your spirits lift as the weight peels away. This is a great, simple example of DB, highlighted best in the last lines: 'Poor as a mouse every morning, rich as a cat every night, Some kind of strange magic happens, when the city turns on her lights’.

KWL The lyrics to this really grabbed me too - but not so much in respect of the city at night, but the string of non-sequiturs that pepper the song, something that DB is obviously really great at - painting those little pictures. There’s the bit about his shrink’s former NFL career, the eroticism of CPR, “our record just went aluminium” - all absolutely amazing. I’ve heard hundreds of songs about hundreds of places, but they never came as unique or as vivid as this.

I Remember Me

HF Another example of being a sucker for the whimsical. 'I remember you and I remember me': through the years you can lose the old parts of yourself. When you're in a relationship these losses double, and when you look back in your 'now' state to the person you were right back at the beginning, and the person they were, it makes you appreciate the whimsical and the romantic because they are so short-lived and random. Even though you change through those years, that change enables each quirk and trait that you might look back on and miss. So soak it up while it's there lest you regret its disappearance. In this story, the characters end up apart, but whether or not you do, know that even if you are still together, parts of you can always remain apart.

KWL This is the best song on the list, for me - absolutely gorgeous and very very moving indeed. Somehow, Berman manages to sum up in his songs and in his writing that life is a huge collection of these tiny tiny moments, and maybe if we looked more closely at the tiny moments, the enormousness of life might not seem so terrifying. A sort of temporal looking after the pennies, so to speak. This one screams “don’t wait for the perfect moment, it’s now”.

How to Rent a Room

HF A great ender for this list. 'I want to wander through the night as a figure in the distance even to my own eye'. 'No I don't really want to die. I only want to die in your eyes'. If only…

KWL Further research into the life of DB has directed me towards the fact that his father represents the worst of the worst of the American Republican corporate lobbying parasite - against environmental protections, the minimum wage, health warnings on tobacco, labour rights and trade regulations, to name just a few, and whose son Berman seemed ashamed to be. I just looked through the lyrics to this and they genuinely seem to be a letter to his dad, who he called “a despicable man … [a] human molestor … an exploiter … a scoundrel” saying “I’d rather be dead than your son.”

Thanks for this Harry, it’s been a real pleasure and a great introduction to a fascinating man and his band. May he rest in peace.

For the full playlist, click here

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6onmyshoulder · 5 years

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Hi, I wrote some cringe stuff about ‘space song’ and ‘instant crush’ if you want to check it out aha.

How apt is it that a song like ‘Space Song’ exists on an album titled ‘Depression Cherry’?

There’s this one scene in Atlanta FX, if I remember correctly, where Donald Glover’s character has headphones on and is reflecting on whatever happened to him and this ‘Space Song’ plays softly in the background. I remember being mesmerised by the weird loopy synth so I went to find the song and well, it was a Beach House track.

The song is about the passionate longing the protagonist has for whoever she is/was in love with. And Victoria Legrand’s voice captures this yearning and heartache and sadness in such a captivating way that it really just fucks me up. Like ma’am, you’re about to make me ugly sob on this crowded ass train at 10am on a Tuesday morning.

Her vocals are slightly hazy, and the instrumental meanders along nicely as they both compliment each other in perfect harmony. But what really makes the song is that fucking weird loopy synth that I can’t describe with words...it’s really something you have to hear. The synth, that comes in mostly when Victoria takes a break, adds to this melancholic vibe the track seems to go for, and it really is the icing on the cake.

‘It was late at night,

you held on tight’

‘Fall back into place’

‘Tender is the night,

for a broken heart’

‘Who will dry your eyes,

when it falls apart?’

‘Were you ever lost?

Was she ever found?’

The way the song starts where it slowly builds up and gets louder, and the way the loopy synth kicks in at the peak is just so fucking gorgeous to me.

Just a perfect fucking song that you really can listen to anytime. It’s perfect in the morning, in the afternoon, late evening, 12 midnight, 3am etc etc.

The song just makes me feel like Legrand is stroking my hair and telling me that it’s going to be alright and that she’s here for me while I sob uncontrollably about unrequited love at 2am after having watched ‘Love, Rosie’ for the 15th time this month in a room with some really soft yellow lighting and I’m covered in a thick ass comforter...

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Daft Punk’s ‘Instant Crush’ has accompanied me through every sad phase I’ve had since like my second year of junior college. It wasn’t ‘Marvin’s Room’ or the entirety of ‘808s and Heartbreak’ surprisingly but the very song I always find myself coming back to is the Julian Casablancas assisted record from Daft Punk’s ‘Random Access Memories’.

‘Random Access Memories’ has some fucking stellar songs. ‘Give Life Back to Music’ is a fire intro. ‘Giorgio by Moroder’ has such an engaging monologue before the beat drops into an 80s disco inspired funky song. I usually skip skits and monologues after multiple listens but I can never bring myself to skip Geovanni/Giovanni Giorgio saying ‘my name is geovanni giorgio...but everybody calls me...giorgio’. ‘Get Lucky’ and ‘Lose Yourself to Dance’ made the billboard charts and ‘Motherboard’ is just a gorgeously meandering track.

But man...’Instant Crush’ is something else. Also on the theme of unrequited/failed love, Casablanca’s delivers a gorgeous vocal performance that sucker punches you in the heart.

Some of the lyrics might come across as a bit incel-y. Like when he sings ‘so I chained myself to a friend’. It seems a bit sus because we can’t tell if he chained himself to her with the hopes of something blossoming and then is upset that nothing happened or because he just genuinely wanted to be her friend. Mans MIGHT be on that ‘Nice Guy’ bullshit. I mean that’s one reading of it.

Also, I was reading the genius annotations for the above line and someone said ‘Julian wants to take the relationship somewhere but he doesn’t know how to phrase(?) himself properly so he just plays it safe and keeps himself as a friend’...big yikes/oof/oh no...

‘A little time with you is all that I get’

‘I listened to your problems, now listen to mine

I didn't want to anymore, oh-oh-oh’

‘And we will never be alone again’

‘Kinda counted on you being a friend,

Can I give it up or give it away?

Now I thought about what I wanna say

But I never really know where to go

So I chained myself to a friend’

‘Cracks in the road that I would try and disguise

He runs his scissors at the seam in the wall’

‘One thousand lonely stars hiding in the cold

Take it, oh I don't wanna sing anymore’

The instrumental and subject matter don’t match because the former is uplifting and the latter is depressing but that’s what makes this song just all round perfect for what it is. Just a conflicting mess of emotions within Casablanca’s headspace mirrored by the conflict between beat and lyrics.

The instrumental is almost hypnotic, putting the listener in a trance with its electronic production, while Casablanca’s autotuned voice adds to this sense of inorganic digital hypnosis. The synths during the chorus sound sharp and jarring and just work perfectly with Casablanca’s vocals in pushing forth his conflicting emotions.

Can imagine myself walking along a dimly lit street with neon lights(don’t ask me how this works) with my hoodie up and a slight drizzle going on, at around midnight, with this song playing through my headphones as I step on puddles that have formed along the pavement and a car honks in the distance and people are running past me trying to escape the rain before it gets heavier. I stop, reach into my backpack, pull out a raincoat and put it on. I press replay on this song, and continue walking along this street.

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Both songs mean a lot to me, not because I have memories attached to either or anything but simply because for some nostalgic reason, I find myself listening to both these songs at random points in my life. It’s almost instinctual that when a certain emotion pops up, my reflex when choosing songs to listen to leads me to either song.

Plus, I usually talk about hip hop music so I just wanted to give credit to two songs that aren’t really in the hip hop sphere that have had a huge impact on me.

Emotions/feelings are complicated and somehow, both songs seem to engage that idea spectacularly, while also weirdly making me numb to my own emotions while listening to either song.

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