tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32736302024-03-14T04:46:02.361-07:00Difficult MusicChaos is the future and beyond it is freedom.The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.comBlogger688125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-3539957690134563202020-12-31T14:16:00.001-08:002020-12-31T14:16:35.808-08:00A Difficult 2020 (To Say the Least)Well, that was a shit sandwich of a year, but I’m doing all right, and feeling
blessed that I came out intact. I’ve always expected that I’d experience a
pandemic in my lifetime—these are the types of things I think about a lot as
post-war Western Civilization winds down—and the idea never stressed me that
much. If some terrible new disease broke out, I reasoned, we’d be able to
isolate it and The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-44643854235238972262017-12-17T11:20:00.001-08:002017-12-17T11:20:08.513-08:00A Difficult 2016An ultra-lazy roundup of what I liked in 2016.
Caroline K—Now Wait for Last Year (Blackest Ever Black)
Originally released in 1985, this reissue was easily the most affecting album I heard all year.
Heron Oblivion—s/t (Sub Pop)
Elephant9—Silver Mountain (Rune Grammofon)
Black Mountain—IV (Jagjaguar)
Dysrhythmia—The Veil of Control (Profound Lore)
Neurosis—Fires Within Fires (The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-6760561040453912792017-01-01T10:25:00.001-08:002017-01-01T10:25:35.364-08:00A Difficult 2015—Top 15 AlbumsI never did finish summarizing my 2015 in music, so here's a quick list.
1. Elder—Lore (Armageddon Shop)
2. Iron Maiden—The Book of Souls (Parlophone)
3. Guapo—Obscure Knowledge (Cuneiform)
4. Zombi—Shape Shift (Relapse)
5. Uncle Acid—The Night Creeper (Rise Above)
6. VHOL—Deeper Than Sky (Profound Lore)
7. Anekdoten—Until All the Ghosts Are Gone (Virta)
8. Teeth of the Sea—The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-89103157592941199872016-12-04T12:12:00.000-08:002016-12-04T12:14:08.516-08:00Synth DIY Part 2: The Noise ToasterFor my second project, I chose the Music from Outer Space Noise Toaster. This Ray Wilson design is a little synth in a box; kind of a condensed version of the classic MFOS Mini-Synth (about which I’ll write next). With one oscillator, an LFO, an ASR (Attack/Sustain/Release) section, white noise, and a legit filter with frequency and resonance control, the Noise Toaster looked like a more The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-76075123962738978602016-11-15T12:04:00.002-08:002016-11-15T12:05:13.932-08:00Thumbscrew—Convallaria (Cuneiform, 2016)
The second Thumbscrew album goes further out than their debut. The trio of Mary Halvorson (guitar), Michael Formanek (double bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums) sound like they’re challenging each other, striving to push beyond their comfort zone. This is a much more adventurous record that’ll take several listens to fully appreciate. Passages where they lock in and rock out happen infrequently; The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-69825027172001925512016-10-17T23:53:00.003-07:002016-10-17T23:54:00.522-07:00Synth DIY, Part 1: The WSG
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The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-56012882022948888132016-06-18T10:22:00.000-07:002016-06-18T10:22:37.389-07:00Film In Music—Tell Tale (Drip Audio)
Film in Music, formed in 2009 and led by cellist Peggy Lee, includes a formidable bunch of heavy hitters from the local jazz/improv/creative music scene. When you note that Jesse Zubot, Chris Gestrin, Ron Samworth and Dylan Van Der Schyff all contribute, no preview listening is required. You already know this will be good. Seeing them perform this album live earlier this month reminded me of The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-74342527561196799392016-04-23T21:57:00.000-07:002016-04-23T21:57:15.961-07:00A Difficult 2015—Reissues and Archival Releases2015 was such a lousy year for music that I found most of my fun in the reissues pile. Each one of these was an exciting discovery.
Alice Coltrane—Universal Consciousness (Superior Viaduct)This is a
fantastic reissue of Coltrane’s 1971 album for Impulse!—one which Fact
magazine declared the third best album of the 1970s. The music shimmers and
prickles you, surging in ways that I The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-33980842303567223112016-04-08T21:14:00.000-07:002016-04-09T17:13:21.454-07:002112: Side Two
There’s a scene in Freaks and Geeks where the geeks argue about the perfect movie. Sam says it’s The Jerk. Neil claims that it’s Caddyshack. No way, Sam scoffs. Caddyshack is totally inconsistent. It’s just like Stripes: “You cannot tell me what happened in the second half of that movie.”
2112 is the Stripes of classic rock albums. To say it’s front-loaded is an understatement. The first side The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-91789949405234575642016-03-23T22:37:00.000-07:002016-03-24T23:06:29.373-07:00Uli Jon Roth’s Ultimate Guitar Experience, March 19 at the VenueAny show at the Venue is a tradeoff. It’s a useful space with decent sound. I like that they do early shows. I’m totally okay with clearing out at 10:30 to make way for the clubgoers. That’s great. The down side is being merely tolerated by the club staff, who on this night left me feeling like a degenerate for daring to breathe the same air as them.
Andy Timmons started the show with a rock/The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-69675373584566140552016-03-16T22:19:00.000-07:002016-03-16T22:19:45.977-07:00Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr. (33 1/3, Bloomsbury)
Talk about a daunting project! First, there's the album itself, and its dense, arcane contents. How do you even write about that music? Second, many brave people have written about that music. The corpus of Miles Davis literature is not small. There's gonna be a movie too. Is there anything new to say about Bitches Brew?To his credit, Grella does an excellent job within the 33 1/3 format.The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-51396422689587390652016-03-15T22:02:00.001-07:002016-03-15T22:02:41.699-07:00Keith Emerson (1944–2016)
I listened to ELP's debut album the weekend before Keith Emerson passed away. It crackles with energy while still being suitably indulgent and show-offy. The schmaltz factor is minimal, all in all. I think it's their best LP. It'd been years since I put it on and damn it if I didn't know that music down to the last paradiddle.
I'm sure "Lucky Man" was the first ELP song I heard on the radio. The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-17949216952774599912016-03-09T22:03:00.003-08:002016-03-09T22:04:28.138-08:00Magma—Üdü Wüdü (RCA France, 1976)
I'm no Magma expert, but do know that I love their whole deal. I'm still smiling from the show they put on at the Venue last year. What the what was that? All I know is we should do that again sometime soon.
You don't often see their albums out in the wild, so I happily forked out for this copy that turned up in the new arrivals bin at Dandelion Records.
Üdü Wüdü is their sixth studio album; The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-72235776490778905372016-03-02T18:56:00.002-08:002016-03-02T19:05:55.444-08:00Low by Hugo Wilcken (33 1/3, continuum)
After the shock of his death subsided, Low was the only Bowie album I listened to. It felt like a good place to go—a mysterious, elusive album with no big hits on it. I didn't feel nostalgic about it. Emotional resonance was minimal. The whole album slips past you, surreal, the production and atmosphere taking you out of place and time. It's clearly brilliant, and invites repeat listens while The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-6212322622028036532016-02-26T00:57:00.001-08:002016-02-26T00:57:58.176-08:00Wheels of Steel: The Explosive Early Years of the NWOBHM
Right when I think, "Somebody should write a book about x," Martin Popoff has gone and written it. My full review is at Hellbound.ca.The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-63068157137726408092016-02-18T23:36:00.001-08:002016-02-19T00:01:04.528-08:00The Musical Box, February 17 at the CommodoreI had a dream…I had a awesome dream…that I saw Genesis on the Selling England by the Pound tour.
Wait, that wasn’t a dream. That was last night at the Commodore. It might as well have been Genesis on stage. After seeing Quebec’s The Musical Box, I can’t really call them a tribute act. What they do goes beyond that. Their show is more like a historical re-enactment or (and this is the first and The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-88463455540803079392016-02-13T13:44:00.000-08:002016-02-13T13:44:43.733-08:00Recent Viewing
The last Cronenberg movie I watched prior to this was The Brood. Maps to the Stars contains 100 per cent less fetus licking, but is just as sick. Trust me. Hail to the master, and hail to Julianne Moore, one of the gutsiest actors of our times.The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-69485862495748758482016-02-09T07:41:00.000-08:002016-02-09T07:41:20.660-08:00Recent ViewingThe Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-87751911427074398662016-02-04T22:01:00.003-08:002016-02-04T22:03:59.066-08:00Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark—Organisation (Virgin/DinDisc 1980)
My 15-year-old self wouldn’t be impressed that I’m listening to OMD these days. To hell with that kid, though; he was no fun. I sometimes consider an alternate history for myself had my parents stayed in England. Maybe my teenage years wouldn’t have been so rockist; maybe my friend that had a job might have come home with a Wasp synth one day, and our basement band would have been based around The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-32052592015315553432016-02-01T07:58:00.003-08:002016-02-01T07:59:45.559-08:00Marc Maron—Attempting Normal (2013)
I’ve been a WTF Podcast fan for just over a year now—Maron’s interview with Paul Thomas Anderson was the one that hooked me—so I already know a lot about the guy. His past life is a constant hum in the background of every episode. However, opening this book at a couple random pages presented things I wasn’t expecting to see.
Agh! Marc’s having weird sex! Genital constriction is happening! Agh!The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-73649301964904252622015-09-10T19:34:00.001-07:002015-09-10T19:35:56.919-07:00Guapo—Obscure Knowledge (Cuneiform)
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The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-80854950513786282972015-06-27T09:42:00.001-07:002015-06-27T09:45:10.499-07:00A Difficult 2014—Part ThreeSorry for the delay; there was a massive screwup behind the scenes with my year-end posts. I’d continued work on A Difficult 2014, writing some pretty comprehensive reviews for the remaining ten albums. The final two posts in the series were looking good...and then I lost everything due to a corrupted goddamn USB stick.
Motivation and inspiration are hard enough to come by these days, and this The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-90330229197251292172015-05-19T19:32:00.004-07:002015-05-19T19:33:30.915-07:00March into AprilAchim Kaufmann/Jeff Younger/Dylan Van Der Schyff March 31 at Merge
Pianist Achim Kaufmann came to town for two sets of stormy improv at Merge. The music roiled and boiled as the trio pushed towards the limits of what was playable on their instruments. Younger grappled with his guitar and blew into its pickups. Kaufmann scraped cups and glasses along the piano's surface and crouched down to prod The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-39174326197199155542015-03-15T11:04:00.003-07:002015-03-15T11:08:12.134-07:00A Difficult 2014—Part Two
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The Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3273630.post-12996361848081084862015-01-31T11:41:00.001-08:002015-01-31T11:57:24.055-08:00A Difficult 2014—Part One2014 had some ups and downs, like any other year. The ups were good, the downs were utterly terrible. Losing my father-in-law this summer was the biggest blow. It was awful, but he went out in typical Charlie fashion, calling the shots right to the end, and we were all there for him.
Overall, I had my health, my job, and my friends, I played plenty of music and took some nice trips. I got to seeThe Mulehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05173496638219487968noreply@blogger.com0