Xiu Xiu - Eraserhead Xiu Xiu This is a log of my experience of listening to Xiu Xiu's new album, Eraserhead Xiu Xiu, for the first time, song by song in chronological order as they're played from the album. Viento Scrapy plastic/metallic objects, compressed sound, dragged over a surface near a mic. Distorted. Train whistle. Drone-like harmonies. Minor-key synths. Horns in the distance? Sounds like compressed air is blown through a hose. Bass. Bass. Controlled sounds. Back to calm. The scrapy…

https://www.creativepastures.com/paintings Derek Robertson was born in St Andrews, Scotland in 1967 https://www.creativepastures.com/migrations Some pleasing and interesting images.

Another week has passed and the metal has arrived right on time. Hails! Haserot - death - USACranial Osteotomy - death - RussiaLithopaedia - death - USARotten - death - FranceGrim Legion - death - USANeurologic Pathology - death - UkraineFinal Resting Place - death - USASanguinary Verdict - death - USA/ColombiaDysgnostic - tech death - DenmarkEnfrenzied - tech death - USAApogean - tech death - CanadaArise from Worms - tech death - Canada/USASigyn - melodeath - FinlandVolubillis - melodeath/prog…

Although ECM celebrated its monumental 50th anniversary not too long ago, there was a flurry of activity surrounding its 40th as well, including Anniversary Waltz, a promotional sampler where jazz, folk memory, chamber poise, and improvisational risk come together in characteristic fashion. The compilation’s title tune comes from the John Abercrombie Quartet’s Wait Till You See Her (ECM 2102), which also happened to mark bassist Thomas Morgan’s debut for the label. Violinist Mark Feldman brings…

Magical musical musings care of the marvellous John Matthews. Following his passing in 2021, a continuous stream of music, spanning new studio albums to expansive box sets, has been issued under the legendary dub producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry‘s name. Largely though these have emerged as weak, superficial collaborations cloaked as profitable cash cows which seem designed solely to taint his enduring legacy. However, hopes for one final masterpiece from the dub pioneer were recently realised with…

PHEW! WHAT A SCORCHER! Screenshot As the front page of British tabloids used to put it. Quote of the Day ”When people are least sure, they are often most dogmatic.” John Kenneth Galbraith Musical alternative to the morning’s radio news Cavatina (from The Deer Hunter) Link Long Read of the Day We’re using the wrong pronouns for AI Interesting essay by Matt Ridley Most people who talk about artificial intelligence reach, sooner or later, for the singular. There is the AI, the machine, the mind we…

Bonnie Tyler, 1951–2026.The song Total Eclipse of the Heart has enriched my life in so many ways.the original song videodiagrammatic syntax of the lyricsthe Lego videotwo alternative total eclipses: the Marsh family with Totally fixed where we are, contrasted with Total Eclispe of the SpirkDr Who crossoversthe literal video: Random use of candlesthen going meta: Dr Who literal crossover (watch the literal video first, or you'll miss most of it!)even its use in debugging our internetRespect for…

What the fuck even is "Magical Insurance Bureaucrats" anyway? Compilation of a bunch of the art - this is my "tone piece" for the project more or less For a while now, I've been working on this thing called The Ongoing Adventures of Magical Insurance Bureaucrats in a World Recovering from a Failed Alien Invasion (a mouthful, but at least I'm true to myself) and when people ask me what it is, I don't really have a good answer. Wait what do you mean by that lmao This whole thing started as a…

By The Neck (single release) The cover artwork for 'By The Neck', as drawn by Aubrey Crowe My band Waxlimbs released our latest single By The Neck on June 28th, and now is probably a good time to write about it while it's fresh. We started working on By The Neck in April of 2024, at Will's tiny basement studio. We had been talking about a change in direction for a while, and ended up with something promising within an hour or so of laying down ideas. We started with guitar feedback and droning…

In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Hanif Abdurraqib, Andrew Sean Greer, Roxane Gay, and many others. Lisa Owens’s novel Natural Disaster shares an compelling 24-hour glimpse of modern motherhood both profound and brilliantly comic. Booklist wrote of the book: “The pressures placed on the…

How Was Your Life? Memotone 2023 - Impatience By far my favorite project from memotone. “How Was Your Life?” presents a gentle haze for the listener to recline against. acoustic and electronic sounds are masterfully interwoven and the pace feels relaxed throughout despite occasional bursts of energy. The whole pieces builds to some beautiful jazzy crescendos like on the second half of “Open World” that feel like finding an oasis in the desert. “Carved by the Moon” stands out as a very…

Hey people! Today, I thought I’d like to share with you one of my favourite songs by Susanne Sundfør. I’ve been aware of Susanne Sundfør’s existence for quite a few years, I think ever since 2017-2018 when I first got a bit deeper into Norwegian music, but it took a few more years until I dived deeper into her discography beyond just being familiar with her most popular songs. I totally fell into it and it was an unforgettable experience. In fact I wrote about it on this blog when featuring her…

Lee Garnett : his only surviving pictureLee Garnett was a 1950s rockabilly singer who burned bright and fast, only to vanish into obscurity before the decade was out. Born in 1935 in a small Texas town, Jimmy grew up on a diet of Hank Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and the raw energy of southern juke joints. He taught himself guitar on a beat-up acoustic his father left behind and started playing at local dances while still in high school. By 19, he had formed a three-piece band called The…

New Jazz Jungle: Remembering Pat Thomas 1997 - Newjazz.com Every now and then I hear a genre fusion that seems so obvious i feel like i expect to see a whole community of artists exploring. Pat Thomas strikes one of those with New Jazz Jungle, an energizing psychedelic combination of the highly rhythmic and flexible breakbeat chops of jungle with atonal and atemporal free improvisation. Rarely until the jungle-pop revival that we’ve been seeing recently have I heard much breakbeat alongside…

Strange Logic Cryptwarbler 2025 - independent noise artists often have affinity for the long-form. Frequently releases will be single live sessions or improvisations either presented as a whole or cut up and arranged into disparate pieces. Strange Logic stands as one of my favorite examples of a noisey experimental electronic release where most of the tracks are under ten minutes, and they all occupy varying soundscapes. Cryptwarbler’s unique circuit-bent Casio rig allows for rich timbres that…

Leonard Cohen - Kalvøyafestivalen, Bærum, Norway, June 30, 1985Nothing says summer like Leonard Cohen serenading a field full of Norwegians back in June of 1985. Right?? This very charming half-hour performance is well-worth a watch — is it the middle of the afternoon or the middle of the night? Who knows, but the sun is shining brightly as Lenny and his band shine even brighter, playing such faves as “Memories,” “The Story of Isaac” and “I Tried To Leave You.” You know, the songs of the…

You open the door and in come the bluebottles, wasps and gnats. Today though, despite the heat, I am totally focused on playing bass.In my head, the songs have had basslines playing alongside them for days, if not weeks. It's just that they didn't seem quite ready.I've just recorded bass on to a song, and suddenly the whole project seems grown-up. What I played was really simple, but sound is so complicated. In an instant, the resonance of the backing vocals came to the forefront, sounding…

The June 2026 music round-up comes to you fashionably late because I've been too busy Anthroconning. New Music Immediate ImpressionsA fair bit of new music this month! Death Cab for Cutie - I Built You a Tower The 2nd indie rock divorce epic of 2026 (after the latest American Football album). Doing my Death Cab discog review-through last year really reinvigorated my love for the band and I've been greatly enjoying this new album. While generally speaking this is perhaps what you'd expect from…

"A Day In the Life" by The Beatles Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. What song makes you feel like you're floating? A Day in the Life by The Beatles It always makes me happy to hear a song by The Fab Four, especially when it's unexpected. This tune used to win a lot of polls as the best rock sone ever. I don't know about that, but it's pretty damn good. View Lou Plummer's Crucial Tracks profile

Release date: July 10thRecord label: Ernest Jenning Record Co.Genre: Noise pop, noise rock, space rock, art rockFormats: Vinyl, CD, digital My first thought when I saw that Parts & Labor had reunited after an eleven-year hiatus was, of course, joy–they are, after all, one of the best bands of the 2000s, and more than likely responsible for the best “rock music” to emerge out of Brooklyn during the George W. Bush administration. My second thought was: well, who’s going to be the drummer? Was it…

Scribed by Sandre the Giant Released: 15th May 2006 Norwegian death metallers Zyklon were a disappointingly short lived project but they managed to kick out three albums of exceptional quality. Being made up of former Emperor members as well as fellow black metallers Myrkskog will probably do that to you though. We’ve covered ‘Aeon’ on this series before, but we now get to the one where I discovered them, 2006’s ‘Disintegrate’. This record got its claws into me pretty early on, and to this day…

Banyan Ether Having appeared on BlackPlastic with their 2023 song, More to Say, Banyan are back with a new slice of blissed-out electronic music in the form of new single Ether. Whilst both Ether and More to Say channel the same rounded, soft synth sound, this new release has a driven feel to the percussion. The result is a song perfectly suited to the moment where the sun touches the Mediterranean horizon. It is reflective, dramatic, and beautiful. Lyrically, Ether deals with the experience of…

Each Thursday in the Disquiet Junto music community, a new compositional challenge is set before the group’s members, who then have five days to record and upload a track in response to the project instructions. Membership in the Junto is open: just join and participate. (A SoundCloud account is helpful but not required.) There’s no pressure to do every project. The Junto is weekly so that you know it’s there, every Thursday through Monday, when your time and interest align. Tracks are added to…

Introduce yourself with five albums that have shaped you: Pink Floyd – The Wall (1979) Metallica – Master of Puppets (1986) Iron Maiden – Powerslave (1984) Rhapsody of Fire – Symphony of Enchanted Lands (1998) Angra – Angels Cry (1993) I read this on Cafélog from Thomas, who read it from Martin and I immediately started thinking about which albums I would choose. It was tough to narrow it down to five, but I went with my first instinct. These are all albums I listened to countless times, from…

Back in 2022, Ban Ban Ton Ton raved about George T’s then digital-only release, “Roll On, Kings Cross”. We described it as a “dynamite dose of poetry and digidub.” Likening the prose – which describes a train journey from the coast to the city – to Michael Smith and Joe Duggan, while comparing the production to Dennis Bovell’s remixes of Jarvis Cocker’s “Swanky Modes”, and The Sabres Of Paradise’s “Wilmot”. Melodica-led with a hefty post-punk flavour, its dub, which focuses on manipulating and…

5/5 golden merles Songwriting triumvirate Nathan Baumgartner, Boone Howard and Tyler Keene have returned with an album (Well Once There Was A King) of playful profundity, earnest strife, and drive-thru funerals. While melodically devoted, it is also again an anomaly among a landscape of folk and rock dominated with fashion, franchise, and anti-poetics. “It feels too easy to forget/the lie I settle on”Conceptually the album starts from a bizarre notion of songwriting: what if melody wasn’t a…

Under the gun once again, doing the work of two people at the day job (blame summer vacas), so hardly a moment to spare to crank out this weekly “impending Boston-area shows I’m interested in or ones that you might be” post, which also includes recently-announced local rock shows & other events. A bunch of […]

Light honey, cream and crusty French bread swirl between the cheeks. Plus a slightly minty hop. This is only $2.85 CND a can at the LCBO and grocery stores around our fair province. That’s a great cheap beer for a hot afternoon in the garden. There’s not much else to say about it. Pairs well with watching robins strip your Juneberry bush of all its fruit. I mean, I could complain but it’s not like there’s a regulatory board that administers this sort of thing. That head sure died fast. And it’s…

First performed in La Jolla Playhouse (San Diego) on 28 May 2024, and later that year at the Citadel Theatre (Edmonton) on 9 December, The Ballad of Johnny and June is currently on an extensive tour of the UK. This Johnny Cash musical details his personal and professional entanglement with June Carter; written by Des McAnuff (who also directs) & Robert Cary, it’s based on a concept by the couple’s only child John Carter Cash. I would begin with a summary of the plot, however as time seems to be…

We’re headed to the beach for sand, sun, and tons of chill summertime VGM. We’ll cover tropical beach vibes and underwater tracks with a guest mix in-between. This episode features returning guest Matt Storm, who hosts a summer VGM mix block. Matt Storm ➡️ https://linktr.ee/dj_stormagedddon 〰️〰️〰️ 🔊 Transistor.fm lets you host unlimited podcasts, automatically distribute your shows to all major podcatchers, and way more. CLICK HERE to try it out! 00:00 Intro/ Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania -…