Ryan’s Music Picks 🍔 12 April 2017

Whew, it’s been more than a month since my last one of these. I had nearly 30 albums stockpiled in my working playlist, and I’ve cut it down to 11, but I probably will have more next week or the week after.

Mastodon – Emperor of Sand (Apple Music, Spotify)
At what point do we just crown Mastodon as kings of metal? Do they have to take out Metallica in a fistfight? Does Kanye have to rush the stage during the Grammies and announce that he’s going to let you finish but Mastodon is the greatest metal band of all time?

Geotic – Abysma (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Geotic is the name of the alleged side project from Will Wiesenfeld, who has also released his intricate bedroom/laptop experimental electonic music as Baths. I say alleged because, at this point, there are more Geotic albums than there are Baths album. This is the closest his two projects have come to crossing over, as previous Geotic releases were strictly ambient affairs, whereas this gorgeous piece of work has beats, moments of pop, and even vocals. It still has the patented Will Wiesenfeld touch, which is the ability to get you directly in the feels and install itself there.

Monster Movie – Keep the Voices Distant (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Monster Movie is pure shoegaze and I love it. It’s totally sing-along-able kinda bummed out songs, drenched in reverb and noise, with a emphasis on epic choruses and guitars making noise. Monster Movie are masters and this album is here to wrap you up in sound.

Unwed Sailor – Take A Minute EP (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
I’ve been a big fan of Unwed Sailor’s instrumental jams since the early 2000s but haven’t heard much from him recently. This EP brings back the touchstones of Unwed Sailor of old: syncopated drums and quiet guitar and chimes, with a bit more density than the old stuff, and some synthesizers too. It’s perfect driving music for these beautiful spring days we’re having in So Cal.

Inter Arma – Paradise Gallows (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Brutal and crushing in a soul-rending kind of way. I mean, we’ve all had days like that, right? Just the feeling that nothing’s going right and everything is garbage. I believe in many things including hope, but there are days that just suck, man. And it’s nice to have a band like Inter Arma who has been there too. Self-care on days like that is important. Sometimes you need a good cry, or a quiet evening with a nice book, and sometimes you need the most punishing black metal imaginable to remind you that, yeah, you’re not alone and other people have bad days but they survive and darn it, you will too.

Jean-Michel Blais & CFCF – Cascades (Apple Music, Spotify)
Music for quiet contemplation that might bleed over into the transcendent. It’s solo piano compositions front and center, with CFCF’s electronic sounds playing in the edges. This type of duo is really a novel concept to me, as the non-piano sounds really heighten the drama and push things to the next level for me. A meditative album, to be sure, but one that moves. Fans of Philip Glass and Steve Reich will really enjoy where this goes.

Sin Fang Bous – Clangour (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Maybe I’m just out of the loop, but I don’t think we get so many of these kitchen-sink bedroom pop albums anymore. You know, the kind where one person constructs the whole thing and throws in every instrument and sound they can find, just burying some achingly twee pop songs underneath toy pianos and recordings of wind in the trees. This is adorable and precious and, well, I guess I cannot fairly judge the level of irony here, but I like to think it’s super sincere.

Priests – Nothing Feels Natural (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
It’s…interesting what passes as punk in the year of our lord 2017. Pitchfork, and iTunes, etc. call Priests a punk band, and, well, I mean, okay sure. They rock, they’re snotty. The tempos are fast and it feels like it’s a no-frills guitar/bass/drums setup (but I think I hear some saxophone peaking around the corners?). But I guess punk has meant so many things over the years that we need more words for it. Priests harken back partially to punk’s New York origins and roots in surf, but there’s also a lot of bleed into what I would personally classify more as New Wave. Anyway, genre classifications aside, this album makes me want to give people the middle finger, which is, I think, a sign of a good punk album.

Teengirl Fantasy – 8AM (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Teengirl Fantasy is what it sounds like when you take all of the pop elements out of pop songs. It’s like listening to Britney Spears through a wormhole. Imagine if you somehow became just slightly out of sync with our dimension but realized that you’d left Rihanna playing. All of the pieces of radio-ready dance pop music is there, just assembled by timeless beings with no concept of the self or something.

Pallbearer – Heartless (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Pallbearer is the band my dad imagines when I describe the darkest of the black metal (see Inter Arma, above) to him. It’s got crunch and riffs, but the singing has harmonies, and there are tons of guitar solos. Like, Pink Floyd levels of guitar noodling. It’s got a bent for the old school and the theatric, but it’s still heavy metal, just a bit too slow for headbanging.

Dosh & Ghostband – Def Kith II: The Price is Ill (Bandcamp, Apple Music, Spotify)
Imagine if you had a epic cage match showdown between a bunch of drum machines, synths and arpeggiators. Fights rise, and fall, opponents get tossed out of the ring only to come back and grab the feet of the champs or hand up folding chairs in a moment of chaos. That’s what’s happening here, and we get to sit back and enjoy these machines fighting in lockstep with each other.

Anamanaguchi – Capsule Silence XXIV (DOWNLOAD, Spotify)
Somehow I didn’t fully process what was happening with Anamanaguchi’s weird Capsule Silence video game until recently, but it looks like they have given us between 16 and 35 tracks that represent demos, experiments, b-sides and other detritus from the last couple of years. I feel like this is a housecleaning of sorts before the finally release their next album.


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