Hey people! Today is Whit Monday, or the Monday in the Octave of Pentecost, and I thought we could celebrate it with an appropriately themed piece. I would’ve featured it yesterday, since that would be even more fitting, but it’s only today that I was reminded of it. As some of you might perhaps guess from the title, this is a liturgical sequence for Pentecost, “O Ignis Spiritus Paracliti”, written by St. Hildegard of Bingen, or rather an abridged version of that text. (For the non-Catholics or…

25-years ago The Avalanches blew my mind with their Since I Left You single and album of the same name. Friends and I went to see them at The Arches. Memories are vague. After all, we ended up in Alaska on Bath Lane until closing. I stumbled into work at 11am the following day, with the excuse that I had broken my glasses at a gig and had to get them repaired that morning. My boss just smiled. He knew I'd had a night on it. Thankfully I played fives with him and we had a good relationship.…

I remember anticipating Heldentod eagerly in 2021, due to the great impression I had of German outlet Grabunhold from their 2019 EP, Unter dem Banner der Toten. The debut album proved remarkable, and the band continued on a positive note with 2023's split release with Circle of Shadows, slowly drafting their own continuous landscape of Tolkien-inspired, triumphant and vigorous black metal. Half a decade after the first album, Frostheim is still characterized by mystique of the old world, winter…

"Lunatic Fringe" by Red Rider Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. A song from the 1980s that you like or means something to you. - Lunatic Fringe by Red Rider The 80s encompassed ages 15-25 for me. It was the decade when I listened to the radio more than any other. it was the last thing I did at night and the first thing I did in the morning. Lunatic Fringe got a lot of airplay during my high school days. It's a good tune and one I still add to playlists to…

I’ve developed a slight obsession with Tokyo's train station melodies. Known as Hassha Melodies (literally 'departure melodies'), these carefully composed seven-second jingles are designed to guide commuters onto departing trains on the city's vast, sprawling transit network.Before their introduction, Japanese stations used harsh electric buzzers to signal departures. In the late 1980s, new

Permit me to perform a magic trick. Having not listened to a note of Darkthrone’s latest Darkthrone album, behold, as I begin typing a review: “another fearless, authentic, and infectiously fun tour through classic 70s and 80s metal, track X leans more into the classic doom direction of the last three albums whilst track Y takes us back to the roots of German thrash, retaining elements of crust punk, by now a perennial Darkthrone trademark! The dynamic duo’s enthusiasm for all things metal and…

How can we differentiate AI-music or AI-poetry or AI-whatever from human-made songs, poems, etc.? On this note, I have been debating with myself whether to share this mellow music, which might be AI-generated (see here, for example) and which popped into my YouTube feed in May of 2025. Is it AI? And if so, is it art or just slop?

Well, I may not have provoked a musician to pen a retaliation tune (unlike my own flesh and blood, who recently joined a select pantheon of irritant critics). But I can now bask in having inspired a song, and one made by a well-known and highly regarded group too: electronic act Overmono. Their single "Lockup" - which heralds a new album Pure Devotion - apparently came from reading not Energy Flash, like you would probably have expected in the circumstances, but the other book of mine that…

Shavuot is the holiday about the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai (matan torah). There is a tradition of late-night study called tikkun leil Shavuot, or colloquially, a tikkun. The Pittsburgh community has -- I'm told this is very unusual -- a community-wide tikkun for the first few hours, from 10PM to 1AM. There are about 25 one-hour sessions (spread across the three timeslots) with teachers from across the local Jewish spectrum -- rabbis, cantors, and educators; Orthodox, Reconstructionist,…

This past week has been productive to the point where I’ve not had as much time to listen to music as I perhaps would have liked. I did, however, take some time to listen to some Dewey Redman on and around his May 17th birthday. I’ve always enjoyed his debut album, Look to the Black Star (1966) which showcased Redman’s bluesy and almost Rollinsesque tone. I started to listen to Redman more seriously as I grew to appreciate James Brandon Lewis’s style which like Redman before him anchors his…

Fire-Toolz – “Dear Robin Bears & Love Cloud ’24” Shelf Nunny – “Water Idea” Nathan Fake – “Slow Yamaha” The post Visual Velcro 55 first appeared on Palms Out Sounds.

The Gentle People were a group of friends who went by the aliases Dougee Dimensional, Laurie LeMans, Valentine Carnelian*, and Honeymink. Their adventures began when Dougee and Honey started throwing themed, “dress up” parties at their shared house in Brixton during the early 1990s. Lifting the name for these events from notorious kitsch 1970s flick, “Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls”. They were enthusiastic contributors to an “E-Z listening” scene, made possible by a then un-gentrified, still…

My latest review for Sequenza 21 is of pianist Simone Dinnerstein’s first album dedicated to the music of Philip Glass. Leading her string ensemble, Baroklyn, she charts the expansive waters of the composer’s suite from The Hours and the Tirol Concerto. Click the cover below to read more.

Clarence Carter, the legendary blues and soul singer and guitarist known for such songs as "Slip Away" and "Back Door Santa," died on May 13, 2026, at the age of 90. Clarence Carter was born on January 14, 1936 in Montgomery, Alabama. He listened to the blues records his stepfather bought, and as a result he took an interest in music while still young. He learned to play guitar as a result. He graduated from Alabama State College in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science in music. He briefly taught…

I've never actually played the full Karous soundtrack on here before, but I have played some of Nagata's other EPs with remixes of some Karous tracks. The original soundtrack is very dark, oppressive-sounding drum and bass, and this set of remixes very much leans into the darkest and moodiest parts of the original. The full album isn't streaming anywhere, but I can at least embed the official trailer with previews of several tracks.

We weren't sure if we'd ever get another chance to see them after we bailed early from the disastrous 2023 Blue Ridge Rock Fest↗, but we managed to catch an Electric Callboy show in Nashville this past week. It was fantastic. I know I whined recently about arena shows and emphasized about how much we prefer smaller venues. I was a little anxious going to an Electric Callboy show knowing that the band does have a bit of a reputation for spectacle. I needn't have worried. This turned out to be a…

This Sunday morning I am thinking about multimedia cd-roms by musicians in the 90s and thinking: “did they play Myst?” I do not care about if any musician was actually a gamer, but because I am a huge dork I keep thinking about the band Queenscryche, in their stage gear, crowded around a desktop computer and trying to figure out the marker switches on Myst island. Because I have nothing better to do, here are my thoughts on various musicians with computer games and if they’ve played Myst. Many…

Naively mistaking all aspects of this situationLean in to tensionI see it all, I pay attentionA small dose of humiliationIt keeps me humble, it keeps me waitin'

"Whipping Post (Live at the Fillmore East: Second Show, 1971)" by The Allman Brothers Band Listen on Apple Music Your browser does not support the audio element. A song from the 1970s that you like or means something to you. - Whipping Post by The Allman Brothers Band I could go the rest of my life and only listen to songs from a single year, 1971. Led Zeppelin IV - Led Zeppelin Who's Next - The Who Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones L.A. Woman - The Doors At Fillmore East - The Allman…

Hey people! I’ve recently been listening quite a fair bit to Sophia Somajo, so I thought I may as well feature this highly talented Swedish musician, because I think she’s absolutely great. It’s actually not the first time that I’m featuring Sophia; I did it once before, specifically her cover of Tina Turner’s “Private Dancer”, which, in my opinion, is so much deeper and hard-hitting than the original. But while Sophia is a fabulous, insanely expressive and versatile singer, her songwriting is…

Inferno, the new Boards of Canada album, is released this week; coming thirteen years after their last album Tomorrow's Harvest. After a 13 year wait, the fanbase is sufficiently excited to hear it. It has, however, already received a lukewarm review from The Guardian, basically calling it boring and that we've heard it all before. This is a particular problem for a band like BoC - and Portishead before them. They have a signature sound, a specific aesthetic that is unique to them. If they…

kpop songs i keep coming back to. mostly fourth-gen — le sserafim, newjeans, aespa, illit — with a few favorites from outside the lane. hit shuffle, or flip on kpop tv and let it run. shuffle a track kpop tv now playing most creative videos the ones i replay on mute, just to watch

David Lloyd & His London Orchestra wasn't the most popular name in the instrumental field during the mid-century, but this album – Film Hits (1966) – has some great arrangements of popular film themes and it makes one wonder why he didn't become more popular than he was. Admittedly, he had twelve albums released in the decade including two more film theme albums and two spy-themed albums which we'll review later this year. This LP (from Polydor) includes popular themes from the mid-1960s…

This has been a stressful week for me, so today I will simply leave you with one of my all time favourite songs. 'I Can See for Miles" was written by Pete Townsend and performed by The Who. The lyrics were inspired in a fit of jealousy on the part of Pete Townsend any time he saw his then girlfriend with other men. Pete Townsend was certain the song would be a smash hit and considered the best song he had written up to that point. "I Can See for Miles" was recorded over several different…

I've played A.P.J. on here before, but that album from 2002 is all I'd ever heard of them. I just found out recently they've been recording again and so I picked up their last two albums to see what I've been missing. This is their fourth album from 2014, with a cool, laid-back vibe compared to Labyrinthos. Very good stuff. This album isn't available digitally, but drummer Kazuki Ikenaga has the CD on his online store.

Good live improvisation progressive rock band. Saw them at Tip Top Deluxe in Grand Rapids, MI, and look forward to whatever they lay down on a record.

Galaxie 500 On FireGet It At DiscogsHaving already made a fine account of themselves on Today, the three members of Galaxie 500 got even better with On Fire, recording another lovely classic of late '80s rock. As with all the band's work, Kramer once again handles the production, the perfect person to bring out Galaxie 500's particular approach. The combination of his continued use of reverb and the sudden, dramatic shifts in the music -- never exploding, just delivering enough of a change --…

Hey people! When was the last time I shared anything in Polish? I don’t even remember it myself! I’ve talked about it here before, but I always feel a bit hypocritical when it comes to my blog and Polish music. Because, you see, even though I’m Polish and very proud of it, love my language and think my country is the absolute best place to live in our times (even my own blogging assistant Jack used to think I was Welsh or Swedish or something), I don’t really listen to Polish music. I really…

Women of Music Volume 14(Betty Everett on cover) Adrienne Nelson & The Dodge City Dudes- Eights And Aces - G&G 101a.mp3 Betty Everett - Why Did You Have To Go (CJ)_.mp3 Betty O Brien - She'll Be Gone (Liberty).mp3 Carol Jarvis - Red White & Jolly All Over (Downbeat).mp3 Judy Reynolds - A Goodnight Kiss (Rich-R-Tone).mp3 Lola Sugia - Blue Tears (Golden Crest).mp3 Lynn Marshall - I'm A Fool To Care (Star).mp3 Marsha Lyn - Johnny B Goode (Alibi).mp3 Mary Ellen - Ya'll Come (Golden Arrow).mp3 Mary…