What are you listening to?

Surely we listen to music sometimes.

Right now I'm diving through a bunch of Fabric mixes (the download-an-MP3-album-for-£5 thing that fabricfirst members get is awesome). So far the Shackleton and Dave Clark mixes are notable winners.

I'm also plowing through a bunch of stuff culled from various people's best-of-2011 lists from QT3. I have no idea how I missed Idle Warship, which completely rules.

What are you folks listening to?

My listening habits are pretty varied -- you know how everyone says they listen to a little of everything but are full of it? I actually do -- but right now I'm on a blues kick with a touch of gospel. Recent plays include B.B. King, Joe Bonamassa, Muddy Waters, and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

I actually like a lot of what Joe Bonamassa is doing these days. He gets grouched at when he dares to move away from the standard Blues Deluxe kind of stuff, but I've heard that kind of thing before. Something like The Ballad of John Henry is more interesting to me lately.

Just now I'm desperately trying to remember to cross-convert the FLACs I got from Bandcamp into MP3s so that I can listen to He Think He #Rapgod from Casual from last year before the 17th, because I don't want it to get lost in the deluge of rumored Hieroglyphics releases we see rumored every year that never come out. He's pretty firm on the date for He Still Think He Raw, though, and I'm one of the, like, ten people in the universe who really liked the original He Think He Raw, so I suspect that Cas will at least keep to his release schedule.

I'm still listening to Guadalcanal Diary's 1987 album 2x4, which I got as a gift from Christien Murawski last year. It is just strangely, endlessly catchy.

I'm listening to Nina Simone a lot, nowadays.

That's such a great record, and I'm not sure there's anything too strange about it! Sadly, they were a textbook case of what happens when a whole lot of label money gets tossed at a band and said label then interferes in the creative process. The follow-up to 2x4 was going to be this sprawling, almost prog-rock take on religion and agnosticism and the pull between the two and whether there was a place for either in society...and Elektra said "Are you crazy?" and forced them into the fairly awful album Flip Flop where the emphasis was on the second word there. A number of the songs the label rejected ended up on Murray Attaway's only solo album, In Thrall in '93.

Oh, good. I was hoping you'd find your way here. Music threads wouldn't really be the same otherwise.

I like that folks like Charles push me to listen to stuff I wouldn't otherwise and calls me on my bullshit enough to make me think more.

I am listening to a whole lot of punk rock, but that's mostly what I listen to anyway.

Rudimentary Peni - hilarious and dark deathrock before deathrock was lame. Had heard of them but never listened to them and more's the pity because I absolutely love it. Even when it goes off the rails and just become's Nick Bilko's therapy sessions

Currently on an early 90s rock kick (Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Soundgarden) while also balls deep in Theophilus London's album Timez Are Weird These Days.

And, of course, always listening to Warren Zevon.

right now? animals as leaders.

May as well post some Youtubes of the stuff I mentioned.

Joe Bonamassa - Happier Times


Joe Bonamassa - Jockey Full Of Bourbon (Tom Waits cover)

Listening to this right now :D

Bad as Me and a few others from last year, notably Antlers and some other bits. Some BoC-type-stuff on Last.fm, and I've been going back over the Cut'n'Run Crew remixes.

This one is the current favourite, but it has been In for the Pill and Sirens before. I'm not a NiN fan by any means and that video is pretty rubbish, but I do enjoys me some breakbeat. Stanton Warriors are the closest I've ever been to a proper, full-on nineties-style rave.



There's also some fantastic stuff in this little piece by the ever-pugnacious, disgracefully fiery and blissfully opinionated Mr Neil Kulkarni.

Bonus: here's a song that I can't find referenced in his catalogue or Moanin' at Midnight (please read this book) but it's just so damn perfect.

I've been all about Mercury Rev this week. Not sure why, but come on, these are great:





Oh look! It puts it right there on the screen for you...!

One reason I may end up here more than "there" is the excellent forum software.

Well, it needs some work. It's hard to tell at a glance where one post ends and the next begins. Everything kind of blends.

Also...avatars. Hopefully it doesn't have sigs.

I've been listening to Fitz and the Tantrums, I likes 'em!

Embedded YouTube does kind of rule for threads like this.

It was something of an epiphany coming here actually, I suddenly realised just how ugly QT3 is. You get used to it of course, but this is night and day.

I've been listening to this:



Yes. Oh, yes.

Thanks for the mini-history. What's your take on GC's two albums prior to 2x4? And how is Attaway's solo album? It's a shame the band broke up when 2x4 brilliantly shows the potential they had (and had already fulfilled, really).

I know this will make me unhip or something but I finally started listening to R.E.M.'s final album, Collapse Into Now, and it's actually really good. It builds on the strengths of Accelerate while being more expansive. There are callbacks that echo some of their better efforts and a few of the tracks I rank as among their best ever, especially Discoverer, Uberlin and It Happened Today.

Here's a fancy link to each. The videos are a mixed bag, so feel free to close your eyes and just listen:

Discoverer


Uberlin


It Happened Today

Fitz and the Tantrums fucking own, but although that is their big single I don't think it is anywhere near their best work. My favorite is the opening track from that album.

Fitz and the Tantrums - Breaking The Chains of Love


The only problem with the band is that their male singer's hair makes him look like an asshole.

They're good with individually great songs, in my opinion. The more spiritual bent of GD never clicked for me, especially as they were contemporaries of House Of Freaks, whose take on spirituality I bought into totally.

Attaway's solo album is melodic, but also challenging and at times incredibly dense.

This song probably got the most play from it, "Allegory":

Oingo Boingo, as usual.

I never posted in these threads on the other forum, I guess I'll start. This is Catfish Keith with (Poor Boy a Long Way From Home) That Aint't No Way For Me To Get Along. There are a bunch of different versions out there, but my favorite is from a Best of Live From Studio One album he did, which I have, but may be hard to find (sorry). The version off of Live at the Half Moon is pretty good, too. If you like that and want to check out some of his other stuff, Fresh Catfish is a good album to start with. I also like his straight guitar work, and A Fist Full of Riffs is a nice example of that.

I am always listening to Current 93, but more lately than is typical.

Oh, and Swans.

Fortunately, you can never listen to too much C93. I was listening to the awesome remixes of Dog's Blood Rising and In Menstrual Night that Andrew Liles did just last night. Good music to have nightmares to.

While I don't listen to that much music, I'm sometimes reminded how unexpectedly transformative it can be. Having recently realised that I have no good reason not to think that my consciousness, and therefore thoughts and actions, are predetermined, and so I am not in a literal sense able to control my life (a large and contentious topic for another time - just grant that's what I think!), this has left me with something of a philosophical despondency, for the predictable reasons.

By chance I was listening to Adele's Chasing Pavements, and I found myself interpreting the chorus -

Should I give up,

Or should I just keep chasing pavements?

Even if it leads nowhere,

Or would it be a waste?

Even If I knew my place should I leave it there?

Should I give up,

Or should I just keep chasing pavements?

Even if it leads nowhere

as meaning "should I give up chasing my thoughts, even if they lead nowhere, because they might be predetermined to?". Is it worth chasing a pavement I cannot control the direction of, given that it might lead nowhere? And I just felt the music was giving me an emphatic, rhetorical YES. A pre-determined life is is still human and wonderful. (If this seems like dubious reasoning don't worry, it's an expression of my feelings more than an argument or substantive point.)

Of course the lyrics mean nothing of the sort, but that's the beauty of music, it can mean what you want, and can save you in the most unexpected ways.

yesssss.

Do you listen to any other postindustrial / neofolk?

You may like Brooklyn's Cult of Youth



omg. I finally listened to this on my commute and it's amazing.

French Cold Wave from the Mid 80s.

The Joy Formidable's EP 'A Balloon Called Moaning' which in places reminds me a lot of the Pixies.

Been listening to a lot of Baroness and Caspian these days, in anticipation of the new albums that I assume they will each be releasing this year.

I'm digging those Fitz and the Tantrums tunes. Hadn't heard them before, thanks for the tip.

I was just listening to this excellent tune by Herbie Hancock and The Headhunters - great performance vid from some TV show in the 70s. It does get pretty far out at the end, but that groove they lay down at the beginning of the tune is just irresistibly funky. UNH, I love this band!!

Right now I'm feeling kinda epic-y, so I'm listening to Two Steps from Hell. For example:

I just finished a Swans kick with Swans are Dead, Various Failures, and My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky which I haven't heard before (thanks RDIO!).

Now going further back with a Sol Invictus (waves to the C93 folks) run.

I'm listening to the new Evanescence album, which is $4 on Amazon today.

DON'T LOOK AT ME!

The new Sons & Daughters album is killing me right now.

This isn't my favorite song (so far I love everything about 'The Model'), but it's the only one I could easily find on YouTube: