Hello everyone - long time no write. I haven't been too active on the music front lately, so I'm going to try and condense the last eight weeks of luke into one succinct blog post.

Dessa - A Badly Broken Code
Genre: trip hop, hip hop



This seems to be the Jukebox's album of the year so far. I don't think any of us are completely in love with it, but all of us like it a lot. Dessa reminds me of a female version of Sage Francis for some reason. She blends singing and rap in a way that's reminiscent of old trip hop, but she is undeniably a rap artist. I like that she isn't one of those female rappers that try really hard to show off how hardcore she is. She's content to just sing/rap about a broken relationship or use her intelligent writing to her advantage. This is the first I've heard of her so I may need to swim around in her back catalogue. God knows I don't have a lot of female hip hop!

The Antlers - Hospice
Genre: indie, music to kill yourself to



I'm about six months late to the Hospice party -- probably because the name of the band is The Antlers and who the hell wants to listen to a band named that -- but it finally clicked with me today. This album is equal parts brutal and beautiful - it is heartwrenchingly sad at times and then oddly inspiring. I'm not sure that 2009 had an album that stood out quite like Hospice. It took me ten listens to even decide if I liked it or loved it. The answer is love.

The Knife - Tomorrow, In a Year
Genre: opera, electronic, fucking weird



Wow. This album is bizarre. Silent Shout was one of the best records to come out in 2006 and the much-anticipated follow-up to it is a concept opera about Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species. It is torturous to listen to at times. There's five minutes of a droning sound, two minutes devoted of a high-pitched beep that makes you want to cover your ears, and some of the strangest opera singing around. It is the kind of album that most bands don't recover from: once they jump off the deep end, there's no going back to the land of normal. The album gets a little bit more Knife-y by the end of it, but at that point it's already past the point of no return.

And yet, there's something bizarrely enticing about this disc. It is fascinating in its own strange way. I find myself listening to it and wondering how the hell they made it, and then when it ends I find myself grateful that my ears are not being pummeled anymore.

Why? Alopecia
Genre: indie rock/emo jewish hip hop



The album I listened to the most in 2009 is the album that should have been my 2008 album of the year, Alopecia. For some bizarre reason I just can not stop listening to Alopecia. Yoni Wolf's brutal honesty and clever as hell wordplay just keeps me coming back over and over and over. It's addicting. I think this album is very close to being my favourite album of all time at this point. I even hooked my girlfriend/fiance/whatever on it recently which makes me like it even more. I need to find a way to stop listening to this before I get sick of it.

Massive Atack - heligoland
Genre: lounge-hop



I was afraid to listen to this album. You see, Massive Attack really defined music in the 90s, first with the seminal Blue Lines and then with one of the best sounding discs of all time, Mezzanine. You couldn't talk about trip hop without somebody mentioning Massive Attack. It was impossible.

Then the 2000s happened and Massive Attack has been irrelevant ever since. 100th Window, while a decent album, never hits the highs of previous albums and while their recent EP was interesting, it wasn't top tier material. heligoland follows this trend of being merely average and therefore extremely disappointing. Massive Attack is a great band that I have great expectations for; when they come up short and merely put out an average album, it's almost worse than not putting out anything at all, especially seeing how this album took seven years to make. I find it hard to imagine a time where Massive Attack is relevant again - time has just passed them by, I think.

RJD2 - The Colossus
genre: instrumental rock, jazz, hip hop



Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh. This is one of the most frustrating albums of all time.

At first, it's really cool, a varied instrumental album that manages to make you forget about how bad The Third Hand was. Kenna is an old fave of mine and does and his voice fits in well with RJ's instrumentation. The album stagnates a bit as it goes on, but considering how low he set the bar after The Third Hand, it's tolerable.

And then track 9 happens.



Four minutes later, you're reminded of how good RJD2 used to be and how he used to completely own the world of instrumental hip-hop. It doesn't help that Illogic is one of my favourite guys in the world of hip-hop. Suddenly he's invalidated the whole album by daring to compare it to Dead Ringer. It's not even close to being as good, but that doesn't even matter. RJD2 is officially a tease. RJD2, I hate you.

I flew 3800 miles to be at this show, the first legitimate Shpongle live show ever. Worth it? hell yes.

This is merely the audio of the show; you can buy the actual DVD here. If you buy the Real Thing you can probably see me being assaulted by a bubble machine. So awesome.

Track Listing:

1. Ineffable Mysteries
2. Beija Flor
3. Dorset Perception
4. Periscopes of Consciousness
5. I Am You
6. Star Shpongled Banner
7. My Head Feels Like a Frisbee
8. When Shall I Be Free ?
9. No Turn Un-Stoned
10. Divine Moments Of Truth
11. Shpongle Interlude.
12. Nothing Is Something Worth Doing
13. Once Upon The Sea Of Blissful Awareness
14. Around The World In A Tea Daze

give it to me already

Shpongle - Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland (2009)
Genre: Electronic, Psytrance
Year: 2009

Nothing Lasts... but Nothing is Lost is the one album that people associate with me more than any other. I've probably turned 20-30 people onto Shpongle thanks to its awesomeness. I flew halfway across the world to see Shpongle live last year. Naturally, this is my most anticipated album in god knows how long. How is it?

Pretty damn good. As good as Nothing Lasts? Nah. But what is? Nothing Lasts featured 20 tracks that were all five minutes or less, while this album -- hereby referred to as Shpongle 4 because this title is stupid -- only has 8, many of which break 10 minutes. Each song is a lot more varied than your standard song, though, with each song featuring several musical ideas that blend together quite nicely. I often am like 'is this even the same song?'

Shpongle 4 features a good amount of vocal work, at least compared to previous albums. I Am You and No Turn Unstoned are the standouts here thanks to some nice choruses that repeat throughout the song. Even those without vocals tend to feature some sort of crazy chanting. My favourite song though is the vocal-less third track, Nothing Is Something Worth Doing. It's serene and features a hang drum, an instrument I've been obsessed with since I saw them play it live last year. Damn, those things are cool. I'd buy one if I randomly had thousands of dollars I didn't want anymore.

So yeah, Shpongle 4. It's real. It actually exists. Listen to it.

buy (releases november 2)
try

and now for something completely different

Manufactura - Precognitive Dissonance
Genre: Power Noise, Industrial
Year: 2003





This is about the most aggressive, unsettling, violent music I listen to. It is pulverizing and painful, the content is flat-out offensive and I often feel bad for listening to it. I can feel my blood pressure rise whenever I listen to this.

I have to be in the right mood for something this intense (I can only take so many samples of people getting killed and raped), but sometimes it's a nice change of pace. It's great for tuning out the world.

and not much else!

buy
try

Micronaut - Europa
Genre: Electronic, Instrumental Rock
Year: 2005






Europa is not like most electronic music. Most electronic music is extremely synthetic, created in a small room on a computer. If something from the electronic genre sounds organic, it's usually sampled. There is nothing wrong with this approach to music at all, and indeed, many of my favourite records are created this way.

But not Europa.

Europa is the electronic sideproject of one Chris Randall, the creator of the seminal industrial rock band Sister Machine Gun. Chris Randall is a programmer first and a rock musician second, but that rock sensibility never goes away. There's loads of guitars and basslines and all that good old natural shit going on here. Sometimes I classify this album as instrumental rock over electronic just because it feels like something you could actually see a band playing instead of a guy letting the computer do all the work.

My favourite thing about Europa is its progression. The first four tracks plod along in a restrained, quiet way - you don't really notice that they're there, but you appreciate them nonetheless. They're pleasant. Then the album flows seamlessly into some glitchy IDM, then a brooding piece with a cello, then some loud guitar riffs, and then back to brooding again. All the while, Europa maintains its restraint, sounding like something that approaches the boiling point but never quite goes over. The second half of the album is just gorgeous songwriting. I have a hard time putting it into words, but it just feels like you're listening to something great.

And you are.

buy
try