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An occasional blog about populist politics and popular music, not necessarily at the same time. LinksLocal Links Social Media My Other Websites Music Politics Others Networking Music DatabaseArtist Search: Website SearchGoogle: Recent Reading
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Sunday, January 25, 2015 Music Week
Music: Current count 26163 [26129] rated (+34), 408 [402] unrated (+6). The dead CD changer crisis is over. Having suffered two dead changers from Sony in just a few years, I splurged and bought the Yamaha. Main problem is that in order to let you change all five discs without having to spin the carousel around, the new unit is a couple inches deeper than the old one. The stereo equipment is housed in a cabinet I built way back in the 1970s for components of the time. The face of the new unit sticks out from the front edge, but at least the feet fit. I suppose I could tidy it up a bit by expanding the small hole in the back for the wires, but for now it works. Sounds pretty good, too. I continue making minor additions to the EOY Aggregate file, even after Pazz & Jop -- mostly adding selective P&J and JCP ballots. Still, I'm hundreds short of logging them all, so I suppose I could be accused of cherrypicking favorites to tweak the standings. Main result of this has been that Kamasi Washington's The Epic moved ahead of Julia Holter's Have You in My Wilderness to claim 9th place, while Sleater-Kinney's No Cities to Love edged ahead of The Epic to 8th. Neither gainer is a particular favorite of mine, although I do like both more than Holter. Main reason I think I'm doing this is that I'm continuing to scour the lists for prospects, so I'm picking out ballots that look promising. However, no amount of fudging is going to displace Father John Misty or Tame Impala from the top ten. Of course, their current tie for 5th is fragile. The other reason, I suppose, is that I'm reluctant to move on with my life, even though I've been very neglectful of website work I've committed to (not to mention writing a book or two). In this regard January 31 looms as a drio dead date: I intend to freeze the 2015 list then, which would make it a good date to halt doing everything else 2015-related. This week's finds all come from scrounging around the lists, and I'll do some more of that next week. Every A- record this week came highly rated from someone but was a pleasant surprise to me. I wound up liking Bully more than similar groups like Chastity Belt and Childbirth. Crampton turned out to have one of the year's best electronica albums -- seems like I've parked a lot of those in the high B+ tier this year (Carter Tutti Void, DRKWAV, Floating Points, Jlin, JME, Kammerflimmer Kollektief, Lifted, Lnrdcroy, LoneLady, Noonday Underground, RJD2/STS, Skrillex/Diplo, Jamie XX). Even better is Plastician. Michaelangelo Matos spent 60 P&J points on his top two: one, as far as I can tell, is a podcast, something I have no clue what to do with (and rather doubt should be considered an album at all), and the other is Plastician's cut and paste dance mix. It at least is CD length, although I have no idea how to get one burned. (For one thing, I doubt the samples are cleared, but if you can figure this out, please consider sending me a copy.) The reissues lists from electronica specialist publications and stores were full of obscurities I had never heard of. I managed to dig up a handful of those, sorting Patrick Cowley and Savant above the A- cusp -- Mariah and Arthur Russell below. (The Trevor Jackson compilation is more Adrian Sherwood so I wouldn't call it obscure. It's probably possible to assemble an A- Sherwood CD, but why go to that trouble when you can have a half-dozen B+'s instead?) I also waded through three Rough Guides, something that eats at me more than it will you, because I want to have some idea when and where these songs come from, and that information is awful hard to dig up. Still, a winner there, disguised as something else (Lost in Mali). Three high HMs might have benefitted from more patience and dilligence on my part. Damily is a Malagasy guitarist/band that recycles soukous with extra grit and distortion. Michael Bates is a bassist leading what's basically a Michael Blake sax trio, roughly comparable to Blake's own Tiddy Boom (an A- in 2014). Then there's the Velvet Underground's Complete Matrix Tapes, which at 4CD got one spin and a summary judgment. Lots of wonderful music in there, but also lots of old news -- 1969: Velvet Underground Live came from these tapes -- and I got a bit tired of hearing several songs recycle four or more times. Chances are if I had the box, the booklets, etc., I might have leaned the other way. But I didn't really get the sense that additional sets added much, unlike some jazz boxes I can think of (Miles Davis at the Plugged Nickel, Art Pepper at the Village Vanguard). Current plans are to publish a Rhapsody Streamnotes by the end of the month. Currently 90 entries in the draft file -- shorter than most columns but not too shabby. New records rated this week:
Recent reissues, compilations, and vault discoveries rated this week:
Old music rated this week:
Unpacking: Found in the mail last week:
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