Kevin Drumm – MayorOfPosen

This piece does one thing and one thing only.

For 20 minutes.

It’s wonderful.

Water Damage – But the Rat was Very Smart

Ok, serious mong time.

Two tracks, extremely repetitive, with an insane guitarist making noise over it, and I mean noise. I assume it’s a guitarist. Could be anything, really, with all the tech these days. I’m only assuming it’s guitar as I can make similarly insane noises when I want to, and it’s fun. They could also be labelled a super-group if you wanted to do that (ok, you’ve made your point – ed). Also, two bass players and three drummers? I just looked at the line up. There’s synth involved too. I have also made insane noises via synth. They too are fun. Anywho, it works.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I may be mildly catatonic. This sort of music certainly makes me glassy eyed, but I happen to really like that sensation. Or maybe it’s just the music that does it. And spreadsheets. They never fail.

Pärson Sound

I know I’ve used this name a lot in past posts when attempting to point signifiers to other artists, so you may be wondering why I’m posting this like I just discovered it, or something. Well, I just discovered it, or something. Discovered that it had been made available on Bandcamp, anyway. How long it’s been here, I have no idea. It’s not as if I keep a list entitled Albums I Like That Are Not On Bandcamp and regularly check for changes like some kind of librarian checking to see if Ebooks have become available for old print books that happen to be on reading lists (that does happen, and probably not just where I work).

So, for mind-bending psychedelic rock, this is ground zero. I wish I thought of that line but I didn’t; however, it sums up this album so well that I thought I’d nick it. When I first became aware of this in 2010 or so it truly astonished me, particularly the 29 minute Skrubba which actually fades out, can you believe it! I mean, how much longer did they actually jam that for?

So this is the only album by this artist, though they incarnated with mild variations in name and personnel over the next few years. But if only one album is your legacy, then why not make it the ur-psychedelic rock album?

Nordena – Continent

I’m fooling you into thinking I’ve discovered a new artist here. It’s actually Tamás Olejnik, he of the wonderful Organit albums that I posted before.

Not being anything remotely like an expert in the genres and subgenres of techno and deep house and electronica in general, I’m not sure what makes Tamás say ‘this is a Nordena tune’ or ‘this is an Organit tune.’ I admit there is a subtle difference in them though I couldn’t explain what, though it’s taken me a couple of listens to even get that far. But it has the same effect on me as the Organit stuff: deep hypnosis that is ideal for the spreadsheet catatonia /cataloguing and amending MARC records for ebooks /problem solving for same with which I spend my working life.

Every bit as trancey as you want it to be.

Gnod – Easy to build, hard to destroy

Because I mentioned this to Chris on Saturday. This is probably my go to Gnod album at the moment. This is them doing trance and repetition unto infinity.

For those unfamiliar, this is a compilation of tracks, jams and grooves from earlier in their history. These days they tend to the louder and angrier, and whilst it’s still good, I always preferred this approach.

I mentioned on one of my posts yesterday about Tony’s First Communion, amongst my fave ever tunes. Well, there’s a kind of proto-version of it on here. It’s not the the same as the one on Crystal Pagoda, which is also well worth your time.

Nova Express – Twenty One

I have a colleague at work with whom we discuss music fairly frequently and through each other we have discovered some good stuff over the years, although some of the stuff I’ve tried him on has been a bit hard for him to bear – he described Gnod as Pink Floyd having a bad trip after I played him Tony’s First Communion (one of the best pieces of music ever, imo), and said he’d rather pull his own teeth out than listen to Oneida again.

Anywho, a success story was a band called Appliance, who I’m sure you all remember from the beginning of this cursed millennium. He said to me that he couldn’t believe he’d missed them as he was well into that type of music then and he was familiar with all their contemporaries yet Appliance completely passed him by.

I feel somewhat that way about Nova Express, who I now know to have been around at that time too, though I didn’t then. And whilst I’m not going to claim that my journey into repetition and minimalism was complete by that time, it had certainly started and I’m convinced I would have done the listening equivalent of feasting on this stuff.

Be that as it may, I know it now, and I know it gladly.

Valerio Cosi – Heavy Electronic Pacific Rock

This album title may make you expect something other than you will get. One more reason to love it.

See, this album has been a part of my life for well over a decade, now. I posted it not long after starting Soundbergs using a Youtube link. However, the great man has now added it to his bandcamp, remastered.

Simply put, this is among my very favourite albums ever. Despite the length of time it’s been in my collection, it still gets played regularly. The opener in particular has a strong claim to ‘favourite peice of music, ever’ (although I don’t believe in absolute favourites and would never dream of compiling some kind of all time top ten or any other arbitrary number).

This music is trance in its purest form, and absolutely ecstatic at that.

Flowers Must Die – Återbruk

Okay, I’ve just hypnotised myself listening to this.

When you do boring spreadsheet stuff, which involves a lot of repetition, then trancey minimalistic music involving a lot of repetition is really the thing. I mean, really the thing.

Of course, I like that sort of thing anyway. Maybe that’s why I ended up doing the sort of work I do.

Their ‘Greatest Hits‘ from a while back does exactly this too, especially the 55-minute closing track.

I want to live in a universe where a 55 minute trance is genuinely a greatest hit.

 

sunn o))) – Pyroclasts and Life Metal

Now then, you know the sign of really, really good artists? They can release more than one really, really good album in a year.

Just saying.

Did you know ‘Sesquipedalian’ basically means really long word? I love that the English language contains this sort of nonsense!

Here’s an interesting post, not at all related to music, but very much related to living well.

 

 

 

Josiah Steinbrick – Banana Live

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.