Om Unit – Acid Dub Studies

I interrupt this period of doing some work to quickly blog an album that I’m listening to which is about to go on the end of the stupidly long ‘must-buy’ list. Its positioning on the list doesn’t indicate how likely it is that I’ll get it, as I rarely get them in order. Whim always dictates the day when I decide to buy stuff. Whim is a benevolent but frustratingly unpredictable dictator. The Executive Monkey wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.

I don’t know how often I’ve posted dubstep stuff before. Not enough, I feel; in recent memory I can think of Cruelle, which is adjacent territory. I’m listening to it more often these days, I like how wide the scope for the ‘scapes are, the malleability of the rhythms, how immersive it is. Om Unit uses all these aspects, and more I’m not thinking of at the moment, to superb effect.

Cruelle – J’ai remplacé l’amour par l’argent

I’m not gonna lie, I looked at this because of its cover, prominent on the right hand side of the latest releases of Avon Terror Corps whilst listening to the last post (which, because I’m doing this an advance and scheduling it, I can’t hyperlink said post because it ain’t posted yet).

I stayed for the music, however. Really good beats. The first track especially blew me away as I wondered how anyone could conceive of making a beat like that although I realised that if you swapped out all the kicks to an array of toms you’d have something very tribal indeed. And as one of the commentators noted, the drop in the middle of But is absolute genius.

But I think the whole album is. The way the last track finishes the album – the only song in English – is another one where I was skeptical of the song until it got to the end and I realised it was in fact brilliant. It takes a special artist to be able to do that. Whether she was sitting on the loo at the time she thought of it is not made clear.

Jay Glass Dubs – New Teeth For An Old Country

Although that there image you see is a picture of yer actual cassette, I suspect such a thing is not available to us now as the page itself only sells the digital album. I don’t have a working tape player anyway.

THis is quite earlier in his career but I heard one of the tunes on a show that Bokeh Versions did which took me to the album, and this did really impress me, it did. I think this may be the first artist to whom you can apply the term ‘glacial’ that I have posted here. I may be wrong; my memory tends to be less reliable these days.

So it’s dark, cavernous dub/dubstep/dubtech/dub techno/ambient dub (call it what you will) and it knows where its groove is, particularly in the latter half.

I have occasionally listened to some of his other works and they’ve always intrigued me. I think this may be the prod to dive in a bit deeper.

Dwellings – Power is Blind in Both Eyes

Despite my frequent claim that genres are essentially bullshit concepts, I kind of have to grudgingly admit that they can be handy as vague guidelines. Mainly because when I come across something like this which is absolutely nowt like the stuff I usually post (question: what is the stuff I usually post like? There’ll be an exam later) then I suppose I should be able to say what it is like. And with this, I don’t think I can. By that I mean that I am even more at a loss for descripttors than usual.

It’s probably dubstep adjacent, but more gnarly? Reminds me somewhat of Demdike Stare but, again, gnarlier? A bit like The Bug? Gah! But then, maybe there is no real handy label for this? I think that is ultimately the fate of all music, anyway.

I believe the cheeky chappy on the cover of this is also a member of Gnod, however. That I am confident in saying.

Violinbwoy – død

Measures of forever are surprisingly impermanent

Welcome to my reality – don’t expect concessions

I made myself a rock
then I made myself a hard place
then I surprised myself
by what I used them for

Implications for the continued placement of the cart before the horse include:
1 – the horse came into existence because the cart was already there!
2 – the horse doesn’t exist! The cart is all there is!
3 – The horse is just a figment of your imagination, which is imaginary anyway!
4 – The horse cannot exist without a cart!

There are smoking guns amongst the smoke and mirrors

Take that opinion off its pedestal!

When you’ve got nothing to say, where do you start?

Cremation Lily – Radiance and Instability

The word ‘myself’ implies that the self is a possession. Discuss.

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Reality is very close to the ultimate illusion; very few people question it.

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Don’t try to engage my enthusiasm on a Monday. My enthusiasm spends the day in its bed. It likes long weekends.

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Words are a lot like statistics. You can use them to prove anything. You can also use them to disprove anything.

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Is that really my mind? It looks so unfamiliar from the outside.