this is a little more interesting, but in a familiar sort of way. it's still pointless.

https://claricejensen.bandcamp.com/album/the-experience-of-repetition-as-death

this is essentially a bad parody of industrial music.

but, that's all industrial music has been - a bad parody of itself - for 20 years.

i also want to point out that there were a lot of really substandard ambient records released this year.

what year was music for airports? 77? and, eno was more of a marketing genius than anything else; he didn't really invent the idea. so, 45+ years later, what's the point of releasing the same record over and over?

it's just a product. a commodity. and, you put on the newest style in office ambience to be seen, to be cool. admit it.

i don't have time for such contrived bullshit. just give me music for airports, or music for films on a bad day. bonus: phil collins.

i'd put the records by olafur arnalds, bonobo, nihls frahm and the eno brothers in this category, just to name a few. it seems like there was a trend...

i've been pretty disappointed by most things tortoise for quite a while, so my expectations have absolutely cratered. i guess that if you really need a jeff carter guitar fix, there's something here for you. but, songwise, this is pretty bland.

https://intlanthem.bandcamp.com/album/suite-for-max-brown

tersely: gay men will always challenge the patriarchy in ways that other queer people just don't.

even cultures that considered homosexuality normal, like it was in the classical world, have tried to regulate male homosexuality into dominant and submissive roles.

it's not the sexual act. it's the submission - and, specifically, the concept of masculine submission. that's the part that's subversive, that the patriarchy just can't fucking deal with, and will always be revolutionary so long as there's a patriarchy in place to overthrow.

i think i've listened to all of perfume geniuses records a few times, and they just don't get over that hump of abstraction for me. everything sounds 60% done. this is more of the same. but, i know i'm looking for something that the artist isn't really intending to produce; i'm seeking out abstract art, and he wants to make art pop. i want coil or queen, and he wants duran duran. or tom petty, even.

that said, i'm in solidarity with the subversiveness, even if i wish it was just a bit more, all around. i've written about this a few times recently - in-your-face gay male sexuality is still shocking, even when everything else considered "queer" has been sanitized and normalized. 

so, i'm not listing the record on it's merits, but i'm acknowledging it exists. 'cause you might have less strenuous requirements than i do. and, maybe the subversiveness has value on it's own.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_l38nMfxcO7XtTjdfnkWYFVHVrmm1bXspc

so, fiona apple took the critic's list by storm this year. i remember her from the 90s...sarah was a big fan...

i can get my head around why this has happened, as she fits almost uniquely into this kind of neo-boomer space (she's a beatnik.) that's probably at it's high point right now, as millennials go through their last years of cultural relevance at the same time as the last boomers retire. she was an odd duck in the 90s; kind of there, but neither hitting her commercial nor her critical potential, trying to navigate this space between gen x oddity and girl-beck redux. so, has she found something here?

see, it just sounds to me like fiona apple.

and, it's still got the same old quirkiness, even if it's more predictable now, but still lacks that c'est la vie that i never felt she really had. but, i need to flip it over, because people are going to get into this because it sounds like yesteryears, whereas i'm going to just shrug off the retro sheen of it. and, in the sense that she's been doing this beatnik shtick for however long now, has it reached some plateau? i dunno.

it seems she's kept her fan base happy, though.

i just don't hear anything on this record that i haven't heard her do before, and so don't see the point of listing it. but, it's really the critic's choice this year, so i feel compelled to react in some way. and, that's all i got - it's a new fiona apple record. swell.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nvvTVXc476e1vHBGAN7Y-DH9_sZjOhgx8

in principle, rambling 45 minute tracks are right up my alley - i like music with sections that evolves, and i'm willing to look into quite a few different styles to seek out that sort of development. so, while this may be too opaque for most non-fans (and, i've never found his work compelling...), the length and difficulty of this recording was actually something that attracted me to it.

in the end, though, this isn't purposeful; it's just totally self-referential and absurdly self-indulgent. but, it's actually a little frustrating, because if this was about something, i might actually really like it.

https://pwelverumandsun.bandcamp.com/album/microphones-in-2020

another dominant influence on the kate nv record is early cocteau twins.

like, this was 1985, and it still sounds contemporary. while it's a great little tune, it's not a strong reflection on the level of creativity in the contemporary art scene. but, you have to understand it in relation to the greater world - it's easy to attack the kids, and i'll fall into it sometimes, too. but, it's structural. it's a reflection of the society, and the economy underlying it.

and, note that you have to go to russia to even find western 80s retro music masquerading as forward thinking experimental electronica.

it's a sad state of affairs. truly.

all those innovative artists in the 70s and 80s were funded by government art grants, or just flat out living on welfare. as the market wouldn't support them, they needed state investment to exist and be creative, and they needed a system that was focused on not just allowing them to exist outside of market conditions but nurturing them outside of them in order to develop.

despite the propaganda to the contrary, when they took that away in the neo-liberal counter-revolution, the innovation dried up entirely. and, we've been in total cultural stasis since the mid-90s, as a result.

if we want innovation in art, we're going to need to get back to funding it via government grants. and, the same is true for science.

what markets do is enforce a regression to the mean, a dumbing down, a great saming. and, they have to, because you're forced to conform to market demand to produce a product in order to exist. it's inherently contradictory to the function and purpose of both art and science to try and coerce them into meeting demand like this, and both will necessarily suffer in the end, for it. 

if we want people to think freely and move us forward with those free thoughts, we have to emancipate them from both government censorship (which is the problem they have in asia, although it's increasingly setting in here) and market forces in order to do it. we had the right balance, before we undid it. we'll have to find it, again.

in the mean time, we're just going to keep recycling ideas to meet market demand, in utter stasis and stagnation.

listen, i know better than to look for something innovative. you're not going to find innovation in late capitalism - there's no funding for research. the market won't innovate without investment, and the investment's completely dried up.

but, we can still hope for execution in this sad state of affairs.

and, i have a responsibility to point towards the actual innovators, even as they're dead or dying.

this is very much a throwback to the space that peter gabriel & kate bush were working in in the early 80s, and i'd suspect this person is a gigantic tony levin fan. it's so easy - and common - to water this down to the point that it's boring and where this seems a bit better is that it doesn't commit that error. while derivative and backwards-looking, it's also legitimately interesting and that's rare in the genre, nowadays.

https://katenv.bandcamp.com/album/room-for-the-moon

yeah, even if there's a few legit high points on the jerskin fendrix disc, there's too much just aimless nonsense that accomplishes nothing besides weirdness for the sake of it to justify repeated listens. 

there's plenty reason here to keep an eye on him for later, though.

so, i gave this a listen, and while i can't say i got much out of it, it's not due to a lack of familiarity with the source material - what's curious about this is the act of hearing somebody piece together cliches out of genres that normally don't go anywhere near each other. these sorts of mixes are often stable, but i suspect this is just too weird, and i'm left with another ween or tom waits or tricky drop or something - something that works better on paper than in real life.

i mean, winterreise almost reminds me of right said fred, and when you strip it down, that's where this really exists - it's just purposefully odd, without succeeding in being profound. and, it's sort of half-assed attempt to be profound just makes it more weird.

there's a place for weird, sure. but, let's not get confused - there's not interesting music or worthwhile songwriting underneath the gimmickry. maybe there might be, eventually. for right now, it's just weird...and you can enjoy that or recoil against it however you choose to....

https://jerskinfendrix.bandcamp.com/album/winterreise

so, yeah - this is awful in a certain sense, but it's a decent rock record in another. it's a bit past it's best before, but i'm a 90s kid, and i'm always going to have a soft spot for 90s rock, of which this quite clearly is. it's dynamic enough that they keep it interesting, even if it's....

i mentioned it was awful, and it's the cheese that is the concern, but this is so longstanding. self-consciously absurd acts like ween aside, there's plenty of music by more serious acts like sonic youth that is just chuckle-worthy at this stage, and never intended to be. but, i don't know if i want to tell them to exploit the cheese or throw it away, and i don't know if there's a right answer, at a point so late into the rock era as this. even people five years younger than me are going to be prone to interpret this sort of thing as a novelty act, and maybe that's ok.

in a strong year, i wouldn't put it in a best of list - unless that year starts with 198 or 199. but, it's enjoyable enough. and, it would be worth a beer, i'm sure.

we'll see where they go with it, but i'd like to hear them take it up a notch in profundity and intensity - it's a little too frivolous, a little too light.

https://them-airs.bandcamp.com/album/union-suit-xl

this was 1987, i think.

hilt was a skinny puppy side project. they intended to sit down and make the worst music ever, as a lark, and focused a lot on the cheesier and seedier sides of bad 80s club music.

the lyricist was an old punk, who went to town with it - it's totally tongue in cheek, without ever giving it away, entirely.

the result actually sounds fairly far ahead of it's time, when compared to all of the shitty indie rock out there that is only accidentally making the worst music, ever.

yes, this is a joke.

this sounds like a hilt record.

https://them-airs.bandcamp.com/album/union-suit-xl

i've been keeping an eye on liturgy for a while, and expected a record to eventually be produced that was something i could actually listen to. i don't exactly want to say i had a muted respect from a distance, because i can't even pretend to like the religious themes, but there was always enough in each successive fail to warrant giving the next one a shot.

while this is a dramatic step forwards towards legitimate listenability, it's also, in truth, little more than a series of dramatic crescendos, interspersed with a bunch of aimless cadences. it's the kind of thing that hipsters that don't actually know anything about music fall over themselves over, but real music nerds tend to snicker at. every generation has a few of these types that sincerely seem to want to get there but just never do.

i'm going to give it a few more tries, but, despite the major step forwards, it seems that there's just really not much here besides aimless pomp. & we'll see what happens next time....

https://liturgy.bandcamp.com/album/origin-of-the-alimonies-2

so, i've lost track of everything, and that's ok. i got very stressed out over my body changing in ways i don't like and just stopped functioning for a while. posts here will fill out when i'm done building my diet.

i'm going to need to rewind to 2013 and do a final scrub over everything before i'm able to refocus and get back to doing some work, but it really relies on halting the detransition. there is simply no existence on the other side of a detransition that i don't want. i will shrivel up and cease functioning and die.

this is a record that has some surface interest, but kind of continues to fall into the same hole that all of these vocal records do - the tracks kind of explore an idea or an aesthetic for a few minutes, but don't actually go anywhere. it's the add generation - they have no attention span, no concept of process or development. and, it's kind of all that so many of them want; my request for something more developed and written is largely alien to the bulk of them. but, all i hear here is a proof of concept - i want to hear this taken beyond the realm of an abstract idea and worked out into a finished product. i'm starting to realize i'm not going to get it...

but, if bjork was on to something with medulla (even if the idea is ultimately properly credited to autechre, or john balance, perhaps via the cocteau twins or dead can dance), the evidence of it is just building. there's a developing genre, here. and, while i may have to wait to get what i really want from it, it might be just around the corner.

https://lyrapramuk.bandcamp.com/album/fountain