#music (616 links)
- Mega mega mega, going back to Romford! How an outer London suburb became a metropolis for 90s dance music theguardian.com
Not much to do with Underworld, actually a potted history of Suburban Base Records, Boogie Times and friends.
- ‘He had this electrical charge’: the short life and long legacy of Jason Molina, master of Americana theguardian.com
A nudge to revisit Songs: Ohia.
When Songs: Ohia started in the mid-1990s, it was via lo-fi skeletal songs recorded to tape that were tender yet raw and delivered with a quivering high tenor reminiscent of Neil Young and soon-to-be collaborator Will Oldham. As grunge and alt-rock boomed, Molina went against the grain. “There was nothing less cool than a ukulele in 1994,” laughs his former bandmate Max Winter in the film. “Holy shit, he may as well have been playing bagpipes.”
- PJ Harvey: Dry Album Review | Pitchfork pitchfork.com
If PJ Harvey had her way, she would have made her public debut on Slint’s Spiderland. At age 20 or so, she answered the Kentucky five-piece’s call for a female backing vocalist, but never heard back. In one way, you can imagine it: both subtly violent acts from their respective south, with the accents to prove it. But even at the turn of the 1990s, the idea of Polly Jean Harvey bringing up the rear is hard to fathom—her Westcountry leer would have unleashed the devil incarnate into Slint’s whispered intimations of evil.
- The Making of SURFER ROSA by Pixies — Life of the Record lifeoftherecord.com
- The Making of SPIDERLAND by Slint — Life of the Record lifeoftherecord.com
- Temperature Zero for Culture: Why Everything Is Starting to Look the Same laurenleek.substack.com
A world that keeps removing the unlikely also removes the things that could have become the next likely. Ecologists have known this for a long time already and even priced it: they call it the insurance value of biodiversity, the standing reserve of rare species that cost energy and contribute nothing, until the climate shifts and one of them turns out to be what survives. A monoculture is efficient right up until the weather changes.
Via jamesholloway.
Sick of clubs with terrible sound, Mr Riedel and his business partner, Mark Ernestus, veterans of the Berlin music scene, recruited acousticians to turn their concrete shell into an aural delight. Polyester-lined panels absorb auditory “reflections”, leaving a crystalline sound that brings out details lost in muddier spaces. This wizardry is complemented by speaker technology custom-made for the space.
- ReynoldsRetro: RIP Ken Downie a.k.a. The Black Dog reynoldsretro.blogspot.com
- The Death of Spotify: Why Streaming is Minutes Away From Being Obsolete joelgouveia.substack.com
- The Pro-Pop Ideology, from Ashlee to Addison culture.ghost.io
Sanneh’s full embrace of commercialism was, then, the cultural equivalent of Mark Fisher’s idea of capitalist realism. In accepting that pop culture is fundamentally an industrial product — and often at its best when in pursuit of extremely cynical financial goals — it became illegitimate to discriminate against pop musicians for being "manufactured." Good pop is good business — and vice versa.
- Stars of the Lid Forever starsofthelidforever.com
A fan-led project to archive their live recordings from over the years, all compiled in one place for your listening pleasure.
Led by artists like DOMi and JD Beck, a generation of rising players is infusing jazz with absurdist online irreverence. But are they playing jazz at all?
- Interview with demoscener – 0b5vr 6octaves.com
- Aphex Twin, a Brixton squat and a load of wet mattresses: revisiting Telepathic Fish, the heart of the 90s chillout boom theguardian.com
Before it became naff music for health spas, chillout was cool – and this London club night was key. As a new generation carry its spirit forward, the originators remember the beats and bedding
- The history of album art matthewstrom.com
- Floating Points - Dexion youtube.com
From Floating Points’ forthcoming soundtrack for Lazarus, by Shinichirō Watanabe.
- Roger Kilimanjaro - Sound Blocks youtube.com
Sound Blocks explores the visualization of music, assembling piece by piece to create a harmonious whole.
Very satisfying.
- Blood Incantation - The Stargate youtube.com
The Stargate presents the saga of a mysterious artifact and its victims in a hallucinatory synthesis of science fiction and folk horror, where mind bending imagery and unsettling atmospheres converge in a surreal tale of primeval blood magic, interdimensional travel and grotesque otherworldly technology beginning in the Dark Ages and journeying into voids of deep space.
I wouldn't have imagined that I'd spend the first month of 2025 watching 20 minute long progressive death metal videos but I have no regrets.
- The Ten Rules of Techno youtube.com
As interpreted by Lucas Debiasi (via Russell).
- Orba by Artiphon + GarageBand – Tutorial youtube.com
- Is There Any Escape from the Spotify Syndrome? newyorker.com
Artists have always fretted about the pressure to conform, but the data-driven, music-as-content era feels different. “You are a Spotify employee at that point,” Daniel Lopatin, who makes abstract electronic music as Oneohtrix Point Never, told Pelly. “If your art practice is so ingrained in the brutal reality that Spotify has outlined for all of us, then what is the music that you’re not making? What does the music you’re not making sound like?” Listeners might wonder something similar. What does the music we’re not hearing sound like?
- Slint Interview: 'Spiderland' Anniversary rollingstone.com
Spiderland eventually earned a place in the pantheon of cult-favorite Nineties albums, and became a hallowed influence for everyone from Bush to Mogwai and Pavement. Thirty years after its release, it remains an unclassifiable triumph of rock moodcraft — its literally soft-spoken vocals and skillful play of harsh and delicate textures often imitated but never rivaled.
- Floating Points - Del Oro youtube.com
- Dummy - Nine Clean Nails youtube.com
- Cultural Stasis Produces Fewer Cheesy Relics like Rocky IV culture.ghost.io
A major part of cultural stasis, then, may stem from most artists refusing to embrace contemporary aesthetic choices. In fact, I would argue that the Nineties ushered in a paradigm of rationalized, naturalistic aesthetics anchored in the meta-knowledge that artworks have a longer shelf life when they feel “real” and avoid mannerist/over-indulgent faddish aesthetics.
- Omni - Plastic Pyramid youtube.com
- This Mortal Coil - Holocaust youtube.com
I got into Pixies at the beginning of 1993, just before they broke up. Perfect timing, as ever. They were my first introduction to 4AD and set the tone for me. I was completely into the early/mid 90's era 4AD but 80's era 4AD - Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil - were completely uninteresting to the 16 year old version of me.
But now I'm older, I have a good-enough Celestial Jukebox and no desire to pogo I have the perfect set of circumstances to dig into early dreampop.
- PACKS - HFCS youtube.com
- Super_Collider - Gravity Rearrangin youtube.com
This popped up in my radio for the first time in many years. From Raw Digits, by Jamie Lidell and Cristian Vogel's off-kilter, millennial glitch-funk Super_Collider project.
- Exek - It's Just a Flesh Wound, Darling youtube.com
This song got stuck in my head after a rapid unscheduled disassembly of Aeropress all over the kitchen floor and my arm.
Maybe they’re perfect reminders of how violently smashing bytes together on a thin, vulnerable plastic / magnet sandwich is still one of the most punk things you can do as a musician and artist.
- I Can’t Accept That: University Challenge, Jungle And How Glibness Creates Bad History thequietus.com
A common response to someone like me getting pernickety about an issue like the University Challenge is “it’s not that deep”. But here’s the thing: yes it is. It really is. This is our history, it’s our culture – whatever your class, race and tastes, subcultures as deeply ingrained as jungle and drum & bass form part of the fabric of Britain, part of how we relate to one another and see ourselves, part of how the world sees us.
everynoise.com is and was a projection of things I worked on at the Echo Nest, and then Spotify. As of this morning, I'm not working there, and I expect most of the things I did will no longer be done. The domain is mine, but the processes that updated the site have already stopped running, and the current server may stop serving at any moment. Once that happens, I will try to bring back at least a wistful memorial to what it was.
Via philgyford.
We're building a new platform to allow fans to connect with, and financially support their favourite musicians. It will be 100% run by and for the benefit of musicians, fans and the people who make it. A platform co-operative.
Via russelldavies.
Present Day, heh... Present Time! Hahahahahahaha!
A.I.’s wonkiness—all of these networks are still in their nascency—forced Lopatin to reëxamine his most instinctive and well-worn habits. “It reminds me a lot of Paul Schrader’s transcendental-cinema thing,” Lopatin said. “He always talks about how there are films that are formulaic and ones that aren’t. The ones that aren’t do weird things with time. They dwell a little bit too long on the wrong object, like a door after someone has passed through it. You’re usually following the person, but now we’re staying on the door. That’s what A.I. is actually doing really well. What it’s not doing very well is following the person.”
- Powering down: the story and legacy of PC Music | Loud And Quiet loudandquiet.com
The age of the record label as a buzzy, zeitgeist-shifting epicentre is practically over. Which is what makes PC Music, a label set up by producer A. G. Cook in 2013, such a unique entity. As it announces that after ten years of operating it will cease to release any new music, it leaves behind a legacy that is almost unparalleled in contemporary music.
- TN:66 Adam Buxton - Tape Notes tapenotes.co.uk