Weaknotes for m/e 18 January 2020
Feeling mostly ill and cold and tired: the last four weeks in a nutshell. More…
Tag: music
Feeling mostly ill and cold and tired: the last four weeks in a nutshell. More…
Technically it’s four weeks since my last one of these, not quite a month, but there’s no shorthand for ‘four weeks’ so m/e it is. More…
It’s only been a couple of weeks since the last one but Episode 27 of Enlarged Heart Radio is already here with another hour of interesting sounds for your ears. More…
Enlarged Heart Radio is back! Episode 26 has another hour of interesting sounds for your ears. More…
This sudden change of seasons hasn’t been great for my health the last couple of weeks. And it is most definitely a new season: winter in Ireland starts in November and don’t let anyone ever tell you different. More…
Quite a busy, three-city week to start the fortnight just gone. More…
Here’s a genuinely heartwarming tale of triumph against the odds (and the music is great, too). #link
So I let a month go by. That’s why I went with ‘weaknotes’, after all. Bullet points required here, I think — just the highlights, the most remarkable that I didn’t already tweet or blog. Here we go. More…
A semi-DIY, part-cardboard drum machine that promises to be “super affordable”? I’m interested. Let’s see when the crowdfunding campaign launches. #link
The man in the van with a bass in his hand goes deep on his relations to the world around him. #link
This album came out today and it’s brilliant stuff. I don’t know what it’s doing on Relapse Records but that’s not a complaint. #link
It’s bad enough that music is missing the richness of metadata to give listeners context and background for recordings (streaming services don’t even come with high-res original artwork, for crying out loud) but when it means the artists themselves aren’t even getting paid? Well, we shouldn’t be so surprised; the music industry hasn’t been about supporting its artists for many years, if it ever was. #link
A 1989 compilation of live and rare tracks from the then Blast First roster: Sonic Youth, Big Black, Butthole Surfers and more noisy miscreants. #video
There I was thinking to myself, I wonder if anyone’s done a round-up of Weasel Walter’s multi-faceted musical catalogue? Of course they have, and props to Brad Cohan for a great one. Now, should I pitch something along the lines of ‘Weasel Walter’s No Wave picks’? #link
“The vault fire was not, as UMG suggested, a minor mishap, a matter of a few tapes stuck in a musty warehouse. It was the biggest disaster in the history of the music business.” #link
Fascinating to me, more for the concept than the execution. Who would’ve thunk Moby of all people pioneered hyper-speed machine drums? #link
Just the ticket to beat these persistent winter blues. #link
Just a short clip of Jawbox in rehearsals for their upcoming reunion tour. Which I won't be seeing. Sad face. #video
Palm are my current music obsession. There isn’t much live footage of them on YouTube but the above is a great example of what they do. #video
Back after another extended break, and just in time for Xmas, with more interesting sounds for your ears in Enlarged Heart Radio 25. More…
I felt like I wasn’t the only one tempted to google ‘Cosey Fanni Tutti transphobia’ after reading this memoir, but aside from this Jezebel interview which raises the question, it doesn’t seem to have provoked much discussion. Perhaps that’s because in this particular instance, the Genesis P-Orridge depicted here is an enormous arsehole who doesn’t deserve the respect of being appropriately gendered, though it still feels like some level of disrespect to the trans community. One would really have to ask trans people how they feel about that. More…
A really nice profile of a label I was only vaguely aware of before now. #link
Jes Skolnik’s talk from this year’s MoPOP Pop Conference. #link
Beautiful. More…
Here it is, the first Meat Puppets song from the original lineup in over 23 years. Sounds like it’s from that era, too, with a touch of Up on the Sun psych in the solos. By the way, here's a bonus live set from June. #video
Another blur of a month couple of months goes by, this time mostly busy with work, which is a good thing. You’ll never see me complaining about getting paid! More…
I got a mini MIDI keyboard last Xmas precisely to mess around with SunVox and I’ve only just done so (it works great, as it happens). I want to treat myself to a cheap electric guitar this Xmas, too, and maybe one day soon I’ll have a free afternoon to make a track. #link
“…I make do with what little downtime I have, even if it’s just eight hours a week of time to work on recordings at home or going to my practice space. I make those hours really count.” That puts me to shame. (Her new album is very good, of course.) #link
Wire, performing songs from their classic first three albums live on German TV’s Rockpalast in 1979. #video
Those of us who know, know; beyond us, Devo remain criminally underrated. #link
Today Is The Day, Áine O’Dwyer, Gun Outfit and more in Enlarged Heart Radio 24. More…
“Writing makes you not like yourself very much, I’m afraid. I think anyone would feel the same if they’d looked that deeply into themselves for a couple of years. I’m having to rebuild that now, my acceptance and liking of myself, because I’ve so examined myself from so many angles in such an unflattering way.” #link
If this is what the new Low album (Double Negative, out in September) actually sounds like, it might be the best thing they’ve ever done. #video
Tom Ewing, who used to run ILX, is incisive on online forums as a whole: “Left to its own devices, any online community, whether small or huge, will reflect the society it’s built in. Making something better takes effort and intervention.” #link
Celebration, Devil Master, Tigue and more in Enlarged Heart Radio 23. More…
The new Parquet Courts is out today, and it reminds me of the Minutemen more than anything else I’ve heard from them. Not that it sounds like the Minutemen in any specific way. (And not this particular song, which owes more to the Big Boys than anything else.) #video
I dig Power Trip and Iron Reagan; I can dig this. (Also, maybe it’s something peculiar about the metal features on Bandcamp Daily, but they tend to get way more than average social media shares and comments, the latter of which are often along the lines of ‘you forgot Band X!’. I want to look at that as a positive sign of the genre’s health; that there are more artists doing things that excite listeners than what will fit in a given article.) #link
Here’s an excellent interactive tutorial on the basics of how sound works. [c/o Infovore] #link
The Sage of Pedro keeps it real for surf-turned-culture zine What Youth. #video
Consider this a supplement to my previous link on PSF Records. #link
Joe Carducci and Mugger talk SST and things at a bookstore in Brooklyn. So curmudgeonly on Carducci’s part, but he’s an avowed romanticist for the (or rather, an) American working class mythos, so adjust your filters for his insight. #video
Leaving aside the pseudoscience of plants ‘hearing’ music (though it’s worth musing on the notion that we humans are not that far removed from vegetable matter), this here is a great selection of ambient music inspired by our photosynthesising, CO2-respiring friends. #link
So I let a few months sail by since the last one. (Why do I leave it so long? Option paralysis has something to do with it.) But anyway, here’s episode number 22 of Enlarged Heart Radio, another hour of interesting sounds for your ears. More…
No more words from me; just click through, read and listen as you like. #link
Forget that: What about Savid Bowy? Jacked Like A Man? Baddwurds? Or even Furious Band? I love the direct simplicity of that one. #link
That Quincy interview (which everyone shared two months ago) is something else, but it’s lacking without this revealing conversation on how it came to be. #link
Roadburn, which happens this week in the Netherlands, really seems like my kind of festival. As in, club gigs in a small city where I can chill in my hotel room most of the time. #link
On the fates of Jawbox, the Meat Puppets and others swallowed, then thrown up my the music industry in the post-Nirvana fervour for the Next Big Thing. #link
Another one for the inspiration pile. #link
I should grab these at some point. #link