GIGAN – The Fathomless Echoes of Eternities Imagination

Here’s a track fro Gigan’s 2011 album Quasi-Hallucinogenic Sonic Landscapes, released by Willowtip Records. It kinda-sorta reminds me of Orgone’s Goliath.

The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza – You Won’t, new track from Danza IIII

It’s like Danza III never ended! Which is a good thing.

Neurosis – Honor Found in Decay promo

Update #2: here’s an embed of At The Well, a track from Neurosis’s Honor Found in Decay. Oh, wow. What a commanding, fantastic, perfect track. The guitar sounds at the start like a moaning ox, but radiates out into brighter colors as it whines and fades. Amazingly, the bagpipes here are (they are bagpipes, right?) are not just a novelty but one of the most beautiful moments of the song. The ritual vocal repetition, what sounds like “in the shadow world…,” the kind of watery wobbling guitar notes radiating out over very familiar tribal sounding drums is reminiscent of the climaxes at the end of tracks like Burn from Eye of Every Storm, or the title track of Given to the Rising. Yet it’s a very different entity- it’s not oversaturated with effects, you can almost hear a silence between the instruments as if placed there out of deference. Jesus, this is as good as any track Neurosis has put out in a long time.

Now, below is just a promo. There really is some honest-to-god music mixed in here. So listen for it. There’s also some over-the-top marketing but they’ve always been like that.

Update: Neurosis has premiered the track At the Well for NPR’s All Songs Considered. Cheggit here.

Now on twitter: @makeshiftsex. Follow or

Now on twitter: @makeshiftsex. Follow or die.

Hydra Head Records shutting down

Holy shit.

Pig Destroyer – Book Burner

So, MetalSucks is going ballistic over the impending Pig Destroyer album Book Burner, out October 22. And that’s fine. That’s awesome even. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say the commenters are fucking brain damaged idiots for thinking it’s clever to go “OLOL you’re biased bc you love Pig Destroyer!” But as much as I’m willing to go along with this, because, let’s face it, Phantom Limb is one of the best metal albums ever, I’m not super life-changingly excited about what we’ve heard of Book Burner so far.

First there is the teaser:

It’s stripped down. It’s good. It just isn’t Phantom Limb good. Here’s a full track, Burning Palm.

Ok, Burning Palm is great. But it doesn’t quite roar, and it isn’t until the close of the track that it becomes the catchy as shit stuff I’m used to. We’ll see.

 

Swarm of The Lotus – Call To Abandon

Incredible.

Thoughts on The Needle Drop

I found Anthony Fantano from his Have One on Me review. On the one hand, there are many worse things to do with your life than dedicate it to music, especially great music. But on the other, calling yourself “the internets busiest music nerd” is a little off-putting. I get a general air of someone whose tastes are a mile wide and inch deep. Though I may be wrong.

Also I think reviews that are essentially taxonomic, i.e. comparative or emphasize the history or biography or region of a group are in some ways inhuman and wrong. He’s not the only one who does this.

It’s hard to use any sort of tangible language to describe what it feels like to move through a song, but I think trying to dig in with your bare hands, to put the qualitative experience of a song into language as best you can is the right thing for reviews to do.

It strikes me that most reviews nowadays are 90% taxonomy/10% attempt to describe the experience.

Ys, Have One on Me

Just for fun. Graded songs on Joanna Newsom’s last two albums, Ys and Have One On Me:

Ys

1. Emily: A+
2. Monkey and Bear: A+
3. Sawdust and Diamonds: A+
4. Only Skin: A+
5. Cosmia: A

Have One On Me

CD 1

1. Easy: A-
2. Have One On Me: A+
3. 81: C+
4. Good Intentions Paving Company: B+
5. No Provenance: A-
6. Baby Birch A+

CD 2

1. On a Good Day C+
2. You and Me, Bess C
3. In California A
4. Jackrabbits D
5. Go Long A-
6. Occident D

CD 3

1. Soft as Chalk C-
2. Esme D
3. Autumn C+
4. Ribbon Bows C+
5. Kingfisher A-
6. Does Not Suffice B

Kehlvin – Orchard of Forking Paths

Top-notch post metal that feels a lot like Callisto’s True Nature Unfolds (I’m still waiting for ANY band, Isis excepted, to write a song that encapsulates post-metal as perfectly as Callisto’s Blackhole).

A nice alternative to the many darker sludge-based offerings that have carried the genre’s flag for the past few years. The massive natural force of OoFP’s slow rhythms is leveraged for passages that feel positively inspiring. And sometimes releases to peaceful moments. The structural iteration of the songs is addictive and hypnotic in exactly the right way.

If you want to feel like you were transported back to 2004, the golden age of the genre, pick this up!