This site is a work in progress, like I am. Do not acknowledge me.
Navigate
Banners
All credit and huge thanks to ©repth
This site is a work in progress, like I am. Do not acknowledge me.
All credit and huge thanks to ©repth
12/6/2024
I'm a little music pervert, I'll admit it. I like listening to weird shit, and will no longer hold any shame for it. I like seeing what happens when people push themselves to look beyond convention. It draws the best out of people, and really gets my mind going. I'm just going to take this as an opportunity to talk about some of my favorites.
This is not a standard live album. All the audio was recorded during Clipping’s 2017 tour, but the microphones weren’t pointed at the band. Instead they were in toilets, taped to ceiling pipes, tied to trees, worn by roadies—hidden all over venues. The results were then synchronized and edited over more than a year. Double Live is an impossible performance heard by hundreds of disembodied ears—part live album, part tour document, part musique concrète piece.
-clipping., Double Live Bandcamp Page
I think their description really captures the vibe of what is there. Audio tracks completely blown out by the speaker the mic is placed in. Clips of the band waking up in their hotel room. Bathroom chatter partly drowned out by the extreme reverberation of bass through the walls. It's a moment in its entirety that never existed to begin with. A unique way to memorialize a particular performance. Every revisit I notice something new, and grow a little fonder of it. There's not a ton to say, it's moreso an experience. It's what sparked this thought though, so I wanted to begin here as well.
The concept was simple, because they knew the results would be otherworldly. 3 artists working in very different styles would come together focusing on each person's particular strength. Matt Loveridge aka MXLX (former member of Beak> and Portishead collaborator) would play noise synths. Brian Miller (former member of Foot Village, Gang Wizard, and True Neutral Crew) would play drums, and Rhys Langston would rap. Plus they pulled in John Dieterich of Deerhoof for some guest guitar work. The results are a wild combination of uncompromised artist visions, simply letting each perspective exist together at the same time.
-drwg, caption from the EP Bandcamp page
It's just really good. Interesting beats overlap one another as these often verbose lyrics just do whatever they want. It works because of everything it does, coming together to form a complete package. But I cannot discuss this without highlighting the track Ballad of A Fading Mumble Rapper. The term is often used with negative connotations, but is instead used as a means to ruminate on the metaphysical forces at work on the culture surrounding music. Beginning as an extremely minimal spoken word piece, it slowly finds a beat, more of its percussion coming in before it shifts. A sawtooth syth becomes the focal point, news clips discussing mumble rap and generally being trendy slotted in before a synthetic voice begins to speak at length.
With word-first music by far and away the most currently popular, the lyrics of music both appeal and attract. Having American English as a shieldbearer of universally cool cultural imperialism, the famous quartet of pop-rap lyricism- fuck, bitch, n*gga, shit- might then be as catchy as a specific melodic arrangement. Like other musical motifs, specifically those in pop music, through constant immersion these become necessary to the point of addiction. To the point where we do not care or very consciously experinece them anymore.
[A news clip interrupts]
Anchor A- "...and- and it's- its- the sound is very hypnotic and visceral, but it's not- it's not something you necessarily listen to for it's lyrical qualities.
Anchor B- [Laugh] "That's a really nice way of putting it-" [Laugh] "Okay. What are they actually rapping about, anything... meaningful or is it just whatever?"
[Robotic voice continues]
If the pejorative "mumble rap" is supposed to suggest a degradation of language, we must also consider another view: like post-lyrical, post-conscious rap being a shuffling off of the yoke of English. A language forcefully drafted onto a people whose innovations and great workings go perpetually under-recognized at an institutional level. Such can be seen as an act of ownership and reclamation, wherein there is a retooling of oneself against standards of what is deemed respectable, professional, or otherwise slyly implied as "white". However, one must reframe and rethink ideas of ownership when it is on the biggest stage in the world. When that ownership has a licensing deal split 4 or 5 ways. When that ownership is owned- is subjected to A&R/R&D made to uphold the incentives of a board room. Becomes viral with terciary streaming royalties, holding fealty to focus groups who cannot focus past the time it takes 2/3 of an instagram story to expire.
-drwg, lyrics from 3:35-5:50, please buy on Bandcamp
This might be the only place on the internet where the full speech is transcribed, and I think it deserves so much more. It's not a new concept by any means, I can find blog posts from at least 2008 talking about rap's post-lyrical era. But in my mind, this is an extremely succinct, profound thesis for this train of thought. I'll refrain from commenting too much on this specific philosophy, as it's not my place in this conversation surrounding race and reclamation. I appreciate it as an art piece, a song, and an expression of an idea. It works.
Sophie’s debut album Oil Of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides is released via Transgressive Records. The album is the next step in Sophie’s incredible and unorthodox career, following the Product EP and is a bold artistic statement that establishes Sophie as a pioneer of a new pop sound. It is sprawling and beautiful, while still keeping the disorienting, latex-pop feel of her fascinating production technique.
-OOEPUI Ochre Store Page, or buy digital on Bandcamp
What can be said about SOPHIE that hasn't been already? Not much, so instead I direct you to Jessie's fantastic review of the album.
The description underneath the album is a memorial to Groggs, a member of the group who died before the album's completion. His death shaped the album's final sound, tracklist, and ultimately the decision to retire the Injury Reserve name. The remaining members now produce music under the name By Storm. As an album so centered around introspection and death, longing and loss, I think everyone will find themselves drawn to different aspects of this album. I've developed a distinct attachment to the track Knees. It makes me tear up every time I hear it. The lyrics are powerful but it comes alive on another level with its vibe and delivery. Another album that feels better described as an experience in my mind. It is harsh, it is unwavering, and it is thoughtful. Buy the album on Bandcamp.
There's no description on this album, and Cali as an artist is criminally under-discussed, so I'm left with little outside material to work with. An extremely creative and inspired artist, I bounce between many of his releases. Sonically, this release is all over the place, and that's a large part in why I like it. I'd be a liar if I didn't admit that Shelly's Deli (Nevermind) wasn't a large part of my love for it though. I find the beat, lyrics, and flow hypnotic, impossible not to bob my head to. There is no big message to this album, but it instead forms a cohesive, shotgun-blast of an idea of what pop could be. It forms almost an equal-but-opposite relationship with the next album. Buy the album on Bandcamp.
If PRINCE$$ is a breakneck exploration of a bunch of disparate ideas, 7G is taking each idea and exploring it for an album's worth of time, and then throwing that all into a compilation. Much more focused, but still forward-looking as to what pop could be. Each having a different theme (Drums, Guitar, Supersaw, Piano, Nord, Spoken Word, Extreme Vocals), they all take a vastly different approach to A.G.'s curated style. It's somehow both a debut and a partial anthology, an exploration of sound. A.G. is exceptionally talented and chooses to focus that talent into expanding what could be. If at all into hyperpop, you've no doubt seen and felt his influence all around, even bleeding into the mainstream from time to time. Buy the album on Bandcamp.
clown core are well known, their eccientric and off the wall visuals and performances obviously eye catching and combative. toilet is quintessential clown core in my mind though. Dynamic, bombastic and yet somehow also extremely precise and thoughful. I can't really claim you need to take an album with tracks including witch pussy and scheduled diarrhea super seriously, but I am insisting that if you think that that is their whole bit, you are missing the point. It's an album of extreme influences, of incogruencies mashed together into a cohesive whole. With tracks like toilet being one of their best known tracks, with well over 7M views alone on Youtube, showcasing their speed, intensity, and dedication to the absur. To be clear, I think it's fantastic, an all time piece. But they show their true capabilities on tracks like google your own death, demonstrating their incredible range and technical talent as musicians. I find it truly moving. I see these clown personas as a chance to move outside their other lives, other expectations, and instead revel in making. To ignore conventions and genre definitons and instead mash things together like a pair of madmen. Buy the album on Bandcamp.
