And this is from a similar folder on my home PC which is nowhere near as unwieldy (yet) but since I’m on a mission…
And their version of ‘Estranged’ is worth the cover price alone if I had it, but the whole thing is mighty fine.
I’m about to go to bed, as it happens. This is very good music for just before you’re about to go to bed.
I have a folder in my bookmarks toolbar where I’ve been storing links to stuff I want to listen to again, or even at all if I like the look of something but haven’t got time to listen to it or it hasn’t come out yet because of all this pre-ordering rubbish that labels still insist on doing (sidebar: I’d be interested to know if people like an album more if they’ve been hotly anticipating it than if it had just come out unannounced – it would be impossible to do a truly quantitative study of such a thing without cloning people, but nevertheless… personally, I would hope not and so we could tell labels to just put the damn thing out when it’s ready already).
So this folder has become unwieldy and long and has prompted me to spend time listening to the albums on the links in order, so that be sort of what I’m doing. A couple have now got deleted, a couple I’ve enjoyed but not quite enough to post because something about it might annoy me a bit, and this is the first blogging fruit of the exercise.
I don’t know whether to arm you for a swarm of posts or to prepare you for a(nother) period of tumbleweed because I have no idea how this exercise will pan out.
Lee “Scratch” Perry is responsible for at least three of my very favourite ever pieces of music.
One of the best things about getting older – and you’d be surprised how many best things there are about getting older, given the bad press it gets amongst da yoof – is that you can have as many favourite ever songs as you damn well want. Anyone trying to get me to narrow it down to some arbitrary number would just get told to naff off, though maybe less politely, followed by a diatribe about place, mood, environment, memory, etc. You can have as many favourite songs ever as you want, you know.
On this album that I wasn’t expecting, the great man is teamed with On-U-Sound, the great Adrian Sherwood. Now, other favourite songs ever have issued forward from this stable and its denizens., meaning that you could be forgiven for expecting great things from this, pre-loading an expectation on the thing before you’ve even given it a listen.
Fortunately, their shoulders are broad enough. There is much substance here, and with enough listens, I may even have some additions to me favourite ever songs.
So take the scars from your eyes and remove the bars
there is no cage except in your imagination
The objective truth can only be perceived subjectively
Thinking is subversive
Rumours of my exaggeration have now died
The best way to learn boundaries is to cross them
It’ll teach you how valuable they are
So God plugged the universe in. “Let there,” he began, “be sound.”
And he turned us on.
This is one of those that I discovered by trying out something that one of the fans I follow on Bandcamp had bought. I have zero idea why I clicked on this one in particular, but am very glad I did.
Some of the titles are fabulous, which is why it gets to be a political album despite being largely instrumental, like the awesome Welsh drummers some posts back. But great titles are only pithy phrases unless they’re backed by something excellent to be a title to, and these things are.
Not a guitar in sight, though, for those of you who prefer my more guitar oriented posts.
In order to ignore the woes of the cricket for, ooh, some seconds, let’s type a random paragraph that bears no relation to the almost indescribable music that this post is bringing to your attention.
Of course, using the word ‘indescribable’ is in fact a description of sorts, albeit a meaningless one. Much like most music reviews (/snark).
1000 monkeys at a typewriter, etc. Dancing about architecture and all that.
Having said that, one of my posts that was filled with non-sequiturs when I was going through that phase of copying stuff out of my ramblings document was quoted on the release of that artists next release on his Bandcamp page by his record company. Now, to post that album I feel obliged to find another bunch of such ramblings. Takes my mind off the cricket, I suppose (all out for 67! Fucking woeful!)
Wile I’m on the Middle east / western rock fusion thing, here’s another one for you that I discovered yesterday as a side effect of someone saying they’ve got volume 2 upcoming.
I don’t usually post the things when the complete album isn’t available for listening because I’ve made the point before that only putting a couple of tracks up for preview is a dead business model that is irrelevant in an age of blooody Spotify and their ilk. However, this one has most of the tracks available for listening, and they are so damn good.
I understand that these recordings are kind of a side effect of the main project which will eventually yield an upcoming album. My appetite is whetted but my breath isn’t held. Because I don’t hold my breath. Stupid thing to do.
The Universe/God/Random Coincidence (delete as appropriate to your deity of choice) doesn’t half have a sense of humour. The next album I find myself wanting to post is only a self titled album.
They’ve been on Soundbergs before, when they first put something out, back in the days when I had disposable income and bought it. If I had disposable income, I’d buy this too.
I just noted the time and the second day of the Ashes is about to start, plus my tea break is probably up now, so I really should just get on with it.
Funny sport, cricket. More of a game, really, but then people have actually died doing it. Does that make it a sport? I mean, people possibly die during games of chess, too, if they drag on long enough. Would that make it a sport? Do mayflies play chess?
Or is the risk of dying not enough to make something a sport? I should just look in a dictionary and see if the definition of sport is something along the lines of ‘a leisure activity that contains risk of death.’ After all, this would then rule out politics, war, commuting, etc from being considered sports.
But then, there are people who think that the entire ‘life’ thing is just a game (usually rich people who don’t value other human beings very much) – what if they’re right? Ugghh. And with that I’m off to see if England collapse as predictably as they have been doing recently in tests.
When you call your fourth album ‘I’ ?
Not sure what to make of that. In fact, I never did get the idea of self titling albums. I just didn’t. It’s so damn easy to come up with album titles that why would you self-title an album? But this sounds like criticism and it isn’t meant to be. I may be actually telling the world of some or more of my own limitations.
That’s all that writing is, really. Bear that in mind next time you read a music review. Pretty much the only times it isn’t is when someone is copying verbatim something from someone else (as in, most ‘news’ these days), or genuine stories.
As always, this is not a music review. But if you happen to like this music, you’ll like the next one I’m about to post.
Soundbergs 