Found A Job

First: sorry I’ve been sort of quiet for a few weeks.

Second:  this.

It’s true.  This one pays far more than my prior occupation so it’s worth the being-busy-all-the-time aspect.  However I have not – cannot – neglect music and thus always have something worth sharing with the world.  Every commute, every bicycle ride, every nighttime book devouring session is accompanied by something new, expansive, exciting…  punctuated by old favorites I find myself doubled over with joy upon re-hearing.  So I’ve got something to say.

Unfortunately I worked my brains out today and must save the in-depth breathless praise and wild exhortations to purchase vinyl for the remainder of the weekend.  I will simply state that there are a few albums I’m quite taken with, continually listen to, and wish that more people would get familiar with.  These are a few of them:

United Waters – Your First Ever River

Sensations’ Fix – Fragments of Light

Robert Fripp – Let The Power Fall

Fleetwood Mac – Tusk

Drive (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Thundercat – Golden Age of the Apocalypse

and finally, with apologies to the artist herself:

Matana Roberts – Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens De Colour Libres

Because this is, by some distance, one of the most powerful and heartfelt albums of 2011 and I really should have shared all about it when I got it months ago.  I promise – I swear – I will soon.  Keep an eye on this page, and stay ready for the deluge.

Odd Future: Tyler The Creator and Hodgy Beats on Fallon

Since I actually sought this out on tv and stayed up to watch it, AND it turned out to be more than worth the time and effort, sharing seemed to be on order.  It’s Tyler, The Creator and Hodgy Beats of OFWGKTA.

So check this out and enjoy it as I have.  Several times already.  A few highlights:  Their insane energy and enthusiasm.  Tyler getting away with wearing the upside-down cross ski mask.  The song itself, fucking great even when edited.  The J-horror girl standing there doing nothing.  The gnome.  Felicia Day warily shouting “WOLF!” And of course the perma-grin final few seconds in which Jimmy Fallon carries Tyler piggyback, and a (possibly inebriated?) Mos Def shouts “SWAG, SWAG, SWAG!”

Get Based

My last post about Lil B (Age of Information video!) ended with promise of a mix.  Well here it is.  For you, your friends, even your mother:  this is not only designed to get the uninitiated based in 45 minutes or less, but to properly rebuke those who think this man is all hype and no substance.  Play it for them.  Especially your mom.

Download HERE

Covering some (but not nearly all) of my favorite highlights across his releases from 6 Kiss on to Angels Exodus, my aim here is to compile the most amount of swag in the least amount of space, still showcasing some of the uncanny variety Lil B is capable of.  This collection is proven to bring love and knowledge to everyone it touches, like all the best of his art.

Tracklist:

1. B.O.R. (Birth of Rap)

2. The Age of Information

3. Myspace

4. Cocaine

5. Bashido Blade

6. I Love Video Games

7. Free Your Soul

8. Whats 100 Dollers

9. Let the Eagles Go

10. Death Valley

11. New York Subway

12. Walk the World

13. 1 Time

Check it out, send it to everyone, burn it to cd and listen while you cruise…  I certainly do.  If you love it, and you will, relish in the fact that this is a very small proportion of the mountain of tracks he’s dropped.  Go to based world or check out his extensive youtube collection or join the discussion on his last.fm page – all of which will lead you to a treasure trove of incredible music to subsist on until he drops his next tape.  Which may very well be this month.

Serious about sharing this with your mom.  Halfway through Age of Information mine was nodding her head, saying this is the best rap I’ve ever heard!  Now she listens all the time.  THANKYOUBASEDGOD.

Albums I Missed: 2010, part 2

Here’s another set of essential 2010 albums unfortunately left by the wayside.  Witness their excellence.

• Mark Van Hoen – Where Is The Truth

Beauty.  Just, pure fragile beauty.  Floating like a spiderweb made of static, hung with fragments of shattered dreampop.  Van Hoen, who started out in Seefeel and ferried the shoegaze & idm Locust through the next decade, knows a thing or two about prismatic blissouts.  Being unfamiliar with his past solo work, I won’t remark on how this is a more personal statement or not; I will simply say that, as a *huge* fan of Seefeel, a longtime admirer of Locust (especially Truth Is Born of Arguments – an essential document), and an eternal seeker of alluring disintegration, this album hits the spot.

• Solar Bears – She Was Coloured In

Being taken in by the line that their name is inspired by a certain Tarkovsky film and the fact that they employed old school synths in a more pop-friendly framework than Oneohtrix Point Never or Emeralds, I nevertheless held this one at arm’s length upon first listen.  The tones grabbed me, the melodies held me, the sheer variety kept my attention from wandering, but I was stopping short of truly absorbing it.  Second go-round, I realized it’s not made to dissect the individual tracks or feel around for a signature invention, something groundbreaking to hang its hat on.  This album is one to sit back (or walk or ride or whatever) and take in all at once.  Much like Teebs’ utopian fever dream Ardour, this 50 minute excursion is built carefully out of vignettes highlighting different facets of the sound until a wholly rounded picture is formed by the end.  I can hear Blade Runner and The Neverending Story and even the Terminator at times, but I can also sense the instructive warmth of Boards of Canada, fellow Scots with a penchant for playfully distracted, unpretentious psych explorations.  Where else would we find songs titled Head Supernova,  Primary Colours at the Back of my Mind, and Neon Colony?

• Girls – Broken Dreams Club EP

Well this one snuck up on me.  I was never a fan of the debut LP, which swam in a torrent of praise in 2009.  Some songs caught my ear but the band simply didn’t hit those pleasure centers I need to truly enjoy an album.  Playing this lengthy EP on a blizzard bound morning while making pancakes turned out to be a shining revelation, and an arresting listen.  Moving beyond their Velvet Underground, jangly garage sound into the realm of earnest, intelligent, well written pop infused with more than a little  grit and gravitas, the band has officially released one of a literal handful of rock albums which I can admire, adore, and really sink my teeth into.  Biggest highlights are the title track, a stoned lament for the fractured state of our world today, and Caroline – a tune which steps out of any boundaries the band previously ruled, into pure psychedelic wanderlust.  It reveals itself slowly (at first echoing The Smashing Pumpkins‘ deep album cut Porcelina of the Vast Oceans), unwinding like a scarf caught on a fence, until it’s stretched to the point of abstraction and hanging in the air around you.  A cloud of a hazy rock dream, tugging upward.  A great way to end an album and point to an even brighter future for this duo.

Lil B – The Age of Information

Here is the Based God with some truth.

Lil B started truly blowing up in 2010, releasing literally hundreds of youtube tracks and more than a handful of more-excellent-than-not mixtapes, each full of absolute gems which cannot be missed.  Unfortunately the deluge of material tends to intimdate the uninitiated, especially if they play a random track or two and find themselves baffled or recoiling at what they perceive.  I myself finally caved sometime in the summer and was taken in by the surreal wordplay and exquisite, twisted beats (or ambient soundscapes) his words are married to.  I was intrigued and drawn in, but always with more curiosity than love – until The Age of Information changed my mind.

This one combined some of his most prescient and observant lyrics with a laid back, psychedelic compression worthy of any spaced out Boards of Canada acolyte, orbiting a classic piano line dropping anchor for the heavily drifting wordplay.  Speaking of our generational disconnect with each other, with history, with the wider culture itself, he’s sharing thoughts imbued with far more earnest grace than originality; it’s the heartfelt truth of a young mind grappling with the very internet culture which has enabled his meteoric rise.

About that rise:  watch out for a lot more from this prolific and talented artist in the coming year – full length Angels Exodus just dropped at Amalgam Digital, and its (supposedly) massive follow up Glass Face is soon to follow.  I’m also putting together a mix, soon to appear on this very blog.  Keep your eyes peeled.  And check out Lil B at last.fm for the latest discussion and links and all that.

Albums I Missed: 2010

So we all tend to discover some of our favorites of a given year immediately or long after it has passed.  I decided to share mine.  Despite being the first week of January, I’ve already discovered, revisited, and heard enough albums in a better light (courtesy of my brand new Sennheiser 280‘s) to start a list going.  This is the first in a series to unfold for the next month or so.  All I know for sure is that this music is at least as worthy of a listen as anything listed in Best of the Rest 2010, or even Best of 2010.

• Forest Swords – Dagger Paths

This album I heard once, the moment it dropped.  Despite intriguing me somewhat, it managed to slip to the back of my must list and languished for the rest of the year.  Spotting its placement on several highly respectable year-end lists, I felt compelled to give it another chance.  So thank you, fellow list makers.  Especially my friend at Bubblegum Cage III.  What sets this material apart from the beat scene or the solo-psych-project folks – or anyone else for that matter – is the serpentine guitar work and murky, lived-in feel of every moment.  Lurching beats dangled around thunderous, bassy guitar melodies and an almost tribal, foot stomping ethos, this (frankly) astounding debut sounds like the work of an accomplished veteran, confidently going out on a limb, then rising, rising, rising.  The only direct reference point I have is Gang Gang Dance, live, lately.  Don’t look to their records for anything like this;  you had to be there.  Thankfully that ecstatic experience seems to be just what Forest Swords aims for and achieves on this album.

• How To Dress Well – Love Remains

Honestly, I kept away from this one out of sheer knee-jerk hipster/pitchfork/etc rejection.  I shouldn’t have.  It’s so much more (and less, in a good way) than what it’s been sold as.  Far more psychedelic than any description employing “r&b” infers, it’s a syrupy miasma of primal notions and half-thoughts, the bits and bytes of heartache and longing twisted up in a melting dream logic David Lynch would be proud of.  This is drone music for the dance party comedown, dance music for the somnambulist, love songs for the fucked up.

• Shackleton – Fabric 55

So I had the impression that Fabric mixes were simply a series in which an artist makes a DJ mix of other artists work.  Sometimes they’re great, sometimes they’re just alright.. but they’re never essential or brilliant like the artist’s own work.  I couldn’t have been more wrong.  Shackleton mines his own discography, past present and future, using elements of his Three EPs release as thematic glue to bind a striking set of 22 tracks that, to me, is possibly the final word on dubstep as we know it.  One listen through and I’m already confident that I’ll be spinning this more than his prior album – and I absolutely LOVE that album.  This one is simply more vibrant, active, playful.  It shuffles off on an oceanic dub odyssey, seamlessly whirling through almost 80 minutes of depth charge awe.  The fact that I ignored this profoundly satisfying set, from a personal favorite artist, makes my head spin.

If you’ve got suggestions for something I may fall in love with, please leave a comment.  We all benefit from hindsight.  MORE to come…

James Blake

My first album of 2011.  So infectious, I’m giddy with the prospect of holding its vinyl in my hands on release day – still a month off.  James Blake set the blog frontier ablaze last year with two progressive leaps beyond the dubstep fray – the CMYK and Klavierwork EPs – but never gripped my attention, making my ears perk up, my spine tingle, quite like this.  This self titled debut is easily this year’s (first) benchmark.

 

Holy hot shit.

Sorry.  I just had to get that out.

This is a crystalline monstrosity, a tsunami flash frozen in place, looming overhead like a malignant glacier as we zoom in ever closer.  To listen is to move across its surface, close enough to observe the essence of each facet like a diamond under microscope.  Stripping his ‘post-dubstep’ production to its core and reflecting and amplifying each empty space against its sonic counterpart, the elemental touch only serves to enhance his latest evolution of vocal manipulation.

Leaving behind the extracted shards and melodic strings of vocal samples of prior releases, Blake’s voice runs the center of every track in a hall-of-mirrors chase with its own distorted reflection.  Alternately disintegrating and exploding, submissive and dominating, his new showcase instrument even rises above digital manipulation entirely in rare moments of acoustic grace.  On my first listen, this was akin to the moment your plane breaks through cloud cover, uncorking the brightness of the blazing sun on a rainy day.  The final track in particular reaches an ascetic ideal, almost wholly a capella in execution.  This isn’t what normally sates a beat-fiend looking for the newest fix, but it’s an exquisite rush all the same.

Speaking of a rush:  second track The Wilhelm Scream is probably the key to my instant affection for this album.  Opening with a plaintive synth line and echoed-at-God-level darkly winsome vocals, the song gradually fills in like final details on a vast canvas, a blueprint in miniature of Blake’s signature austerity.  From an embryo of muted drum stabs and compressed guitar lines, Blake inflates a billowing dirigible, ascending past the atmosphere at its peak before swinging low with his most resonant phrase:  I’m falling, falling, falling.. This shredded my perception of the artist and sent me hurtling towards the explosion that is Never Learnt To Share.  When it hits for the first time, you’ll know what I mean.

If I had to place this album in a given context it would look like this:  The detail oriented tactile feel of Mount Kimbie‘s exquisite production, taken to the spare extreme of The xx‘s striking debut last year.  Multiplied by 50 on each side.  Each click and hum, synth flutter, bass surge, and twisted vocal hook is used as if it were the last Blake would ever grasp.  The soaring gospel towers this man constructs with so few pieces will take your breath away, and keep it.  Nothing has sounded this meticulously airtight in a long while, and for good reason.  It takes a  rarefied amount of control to keep the plates spinning this way, and James Blake stands coolly alone for now.

Watch this and stay on the lookout by February 7th.

Best of the Rest of 2010

My Best of 2010 was basically an attempt to carve my musical experience of the past year down to its most essential, most ingrained elements.  An attempt to sum up the music I feel had the largest impact on my listening, on my life.

I left out a lot of great albums.  Thankfully, they were drawn from a text file kept on my desktop throughout the year, chronicling each album I decide, at a given moment, is awesome.  Yes, it’s that simple.  As time passes I remove the fleeting infatuations, anything not holding up.  So I’m left with a solid list I can refer to in search of everything I really, truly enjoyed this year.  This is it, in order I heard them.

• Bullion – Say Goodbye To What EP

• Four Tet – There Is Love In You

• Arrington De Dionyso – Malaikat Dan Singa

• Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – Kollaps Tradixionales

• Autechre – Oversteps

• Gorillaz – Plastic Beach

• Erykah Badu – New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh

• Ikonika – Contact Want Love Have

• Take – Only Mountain

• LCD Soundsystem – This Is Happening

• Boris – Heavy Rock Hits Vol. 3
  

• Connect_icut – Fourier’s Algorithm

• Janelle Monae – The ArchAndroid

• Rollo – 3

• Yellow Swans – Going Places

• Sightings – City of Straw

• Guido – Anidea

• Lorn – Nothing Else

• Teebs & Jackhigh – Tropics EP

• Infinite Body – Carve Out The Face Of My God

• The-Dream – Love King
  

• The Sight Below – It All Falls Apart

• Deepchord Presents Echospace – Liumin

• TOKiMONSTA – Midnight Menu

• Oneohtrix Point Never – Returnal 7″

• Scuba – Triangulation

• Sepalcure – Love Pressure EP

• Imbogodom – The Metallic Year

• Singing Statues – Outtakes EP

• Flying Lotus – Patter + Grid World EP

• Seefeel – Faults EP

• Mark McGuire – Living With Yourself

• Efdemin – Chicago

• T++ – Wireless

• Gold Panda – Lucky Shiner

• Deerhunter – Halcyon Digest

• Balam Acab – See Birds EP

• Gonjasufi – The Caliph’s Tea Party

• VHS Head – Trademark Ribbons of Gold

• Marcus Fjellström – Schattenspieler

• Zach Hill – Face Tat

• Games – That We Can Play

• Zs – New Slaves

• Fenn O’Berg – In Stereo

• Richard Skelton – Landings

• James Blake – Klavierwerke EP
  

• Fursaxa – Mycorrhizae Realm

• Dimlite – My Human Wears Acedia Shreds EP

• Kurt Weisman – Orange

• Clubroot – II MMX
  

So there it is.  Something to remember is that any one of these albums may end up defining the year as much as the ‘true’ list – and that something I haven’t even heard yet may best them all.  It’s happened before.  This is why Optimistic Underground will soon post its first Music From Before 2010 But Discovered This Year list.  This will cover the much wider range of music I was into this year, since there is already much more music out there than is being released at any given time.

[This post is subject to change.  Like I'll probably add one or two more by January.]

Eleven Tigers – Clouds Are Mountains

“Eleven Tigers just blew my fucking mind,” I thought.

And this is probably the tenth time I’ve listened to Clouds Are Mountains.

“Who is the third who walks always beside you?”

That number is now closer to fifteen.  Realizing that this relative unknown not only explodes genres on one of my favorite albums of the year but also quotes The Wasteland with panache and twists it into one of the more earworm friendly tracks on a densely stacked deck of indelible dream bangers is a priceless sensation.

Eleven Tigers is the artistic name of Lithuanian transplant Jokubas Dargis, who makes his debt to a certain dubstep legend more than apparent:  “Influenced by Burial, I went to explore the atmosphere and the ambiance of London metropolis – my current home. I study music technology and do all sorts of activities I never thought to embrace.”  Pairing that quote with a listen is the quickest way to realize that he’s driven more by the expansive nature of Burial‘s idealism than simply his style.  The first and most obvious difference is the expansive color palette deployed across all corners of this hourlong experience.  From taffy-stretched drone tunnels bridging propulsive house and dub techno beats to the clipped channels of unknown conversation forming a preamble to fractured fairy tale dreampop vocals, every lush moment drips with a heart of wanderlust and a propulsive kick in its step.

Breaking with nearly all tradition of its nominal peers, this album has a dramatic heft, an operatic rise and fall structure demanding front to back listening – with the surgical precision of some mythical perfect trance mix to keep everything on a consistently gasp inducing flow.  Every time an exquisite groove is discovered and locked into, a new element arises to subtly shift context until a sudden left turn imperceptibly shuffles the entire journey onto yet another new level.  The segues – whether in-track or between them – offer nearly as much straight-dope pleasure as the hard hitting segments riding out one of the narcotic beats into that blissful state of pure flowing sound.  Almost.  This man truly understands the hypothalamic connection to the sort of infectious repetition present in any truly ecstatic dance music.  The fact that he manages to fold that in with a nearly spiritual sense of dynamic balance is beyond belief.

But really, believe it; it’s true.  Hear the evidence yourself for free streaming right now in high quality and you’ll understand what drove me to immediately place an order on his bandcamp page.  It’s just that worth it.

[buy this at eleven tigers' bandcamp page or grab it at boomkat]