#MWE
28-The Dandy Warhols: The Black Album
I’d heard of The Dandy Warhols but didn’t know anything about them. So…
Started pretty good, my type of music, with White Gold being a real banger of a track. After that, though, things took a departure I wasn’t expecting, into a highly produced tech-ethereal something that I might have like but… didn’t…?
The last track, Twist, won me back somewhat, but a lot of attention had been lost in the previous three tracks.
I’ll try another album though.

#MWE:

2.28: Hastings Of Malawi - Choreological Exchanges

Fascinating industrial musique concrete cut-ups tell the tale of telephony, recapturing the spectral black magick of dissolving time & space.

From Heman Pathak, David Hodes and John Grieve, all of whom were involved in the making of Nurse With Wound's first album, Chance Meeting On A Sewing Table Of A Sewing Machine And An Umbrella.

strange & essential

https://subrosalabel.bandcamp.com/album/choreological-exchanges

#experimentalmusic #musiqueconcrete #cutups

Weyes Blood - The Innocents. I don't always know what Weyes Blood is doing, but it's always rewarding. She delivers a heady mix of synths, folk, noise, noises, bold melodies, banjoes, deep harmonies... but none of it feeling at all chaotic or unplanned. Comparisons to Enya, to the extent that they are flattering, are apt. #mwe

#MWE Bonus: Chris McCue - Plastic Epoch. This was pitched to me by Chris himself as a doom metal concept album EP. It's definitely got some doomy tones along the lines of Monolord, but the conceptual nature and the vocals remind me of one of the grandaddys' of experimental music, The Residents. I would like to hear what Chris can do with some more layered instrumentation, but I definitely didn't hate it, @ChrisMcCue!

#MWE 2/28: Protein Den - CML (Ekhein, 2008)

Protein Den was the duo of Gordon Ashworth (Caen) and Ekhein proprietor Matthew Sullivan (Earn/Privy Seals). This, their second and final release, took things further than their previous effort and found them operating entirely by mail. Even if the violent brevity of CML feels more immediately satisfying than subtler mail-noise acts like Domaine Poétique, I'm mostly left contemplating what effects the absence of proximity truly have on work like this.

#MWE 28: Beyonce - Renaissance. I wanted to end on a big one. I have never "gotten" Beyonce. In my mind, she's a solidly decent/not amazing singer and I just haven't been able to grasp why she blew up to be the biggest name in pop music. After Renaissance... I still don't get it. Some of these songs have pretty interesting production, but that's about all I'm taking away. I am simply not the target audience here, and that's fine.

2/28 #MWE On first looking into 😏 the cover #art for #MosesSumney's 2017 #album Aromanticism, I was reminded of #Seal's 1990s album covers, his body strikingly posed (Seal's later #work more intimately shows his face). I bring all this up because this cover pose AND Sumney's #music seems in line with Seal. Here, the body is not just faceless but headless, but instead of boldness, there is something almost shy and awkward. Hear, the #songs and the vocals are almost unbearably soulful, shimmering.

#MWE
27-Prince: Musicology
Inspired by the Prince episode of “New Girl,” I opted for a Prince album. I grew up with his hits, but aside from “Purple Rain” and “Batman,” I don’t think I ever listened to a whole album.

This had a strong start but faded for me as it continued. Very funky first half, less engaging second side.

Tobias Jesso, Jr. - Goon. I'd heard that Jesso Jr. has SONGS, but he recently won the Songwriter of the Year Non-Classical Grammy to prove it. These are 12 FINE songs in the 70's piano-singer-songwriter tradition. You get the sense that this isn't even that hard for him - timeless melodies and peerless lyrics just pour out. Gorgeous, if a little *too* evocative of AM's golden era. He clearly has tricks not on display here. #mwe

#MWE 2/27: Second Story Window - s/t (Gravity, 1994)

Gravity were one of the most exciting punk labels of the early '90s largely due to their willingness to release music by more experimental, challenging bands, and while your elderly parents may disagree, Second Story Window weren't one of them; playing a relatively stay-at-home post-Rites Of Spring emocore (but doing so really darn well), their only outlier was the full-on screamo yawping courtesy of sharing a vocalist with labelmates Heroin.

#MWE 27: Subhumans - From the Cradle to the Grave. This is more like it. Like Fear, this is a pretty straightforward punk album, but with none of the gross lyrical content and a much less grating vocalist. Steve Von Till said Subhumans were a big influence on Neurosis, and a lot of the tone on this album reminds me quite a bit of The Word as Law. Ending the album with a 17-minute long epic is another solid link between the two bands.

2/26 #MWE Not only have I never listened to an #album by #AFlockOfSeagulls, I only know four of their #songs, with two on this debut record. Each AFoS #song I know works so well as a #pop single--no guarantee that the albums work as albums. This one is great though! The #music is not as foreboding and dystopian in sound and texture as the #GaryNuman and #JohnFoxx music that precedes it. Neither moody New Romantic nor slick New Pop either. Just danceable New Wave with a fun cartoonish SF edge.

#MWE
26-John Lee Hooker-Burnin’ (Expanded Edition)
Note: first half in stereo, second half same songs but in mono. I prefer the stereo cuts but appreciate the old-timey mono sound.

Blues, when performed with soul, is a religious experience. I forget this, because I eschew religion. But damn JLH can fucking play that guitar, reach deep, and be pretty old fashioned in his feminine tastes but..
And the backing instrumentation especially the pianos and sax

That’s how ya get me prayin’

#MWE 26: Fear - The Record. I recognize this album's place in punk history, but that doesn't mean I enjoyed it. Lee Ving's vocals are too Jello Biafra for me, and I never really liked The Dead Kennedys. That aside, it's pretty standard punk, with a fairly shocking amount of homophobic content by today's standards. And the track Fresh Flesh is about as sexually violent a song as I've ever heard. For these reasons alone, it's nothing I'll ever spin again.

The Go! Team - Get Up Sequences Part Two. It's not honoring the spirit of #mwe to say "more of the same from these guys", but (a) there's nobody doing what Go! Team does and (b) this is literally Part Two of last year's Get Up Sequences Part One. Fun hip-hop moments, majestic melodies, and the singularly rattling percussion you've come to expect.

#MWE 2/26: Klaus Dinger + Prejapandorf - 2000! (Grönland, 2017)

Between putting all the pieces of punk rock together before anyone else on side B of Neu! '75 and one line-up of a later band featuring his elderly mother, Klaus Dinger was one of music's most undersung eccentrics. Which is why it's surprising that this LP, culled from informal sessions leading to the formation of Japandorf, tends to play it safe. Even so, it must've been a gas for these musicians to jam with the father of motorik.

2/26 #MWE Forgot to do one yesterday and nearly forgot again for today. I probably know an #ArcticMonkeys #song but I'm not sure which. I do know the band is quite popular. The Car is their latest record and also sports the only bland title. The #music is superb though. I always imagined AM to be a raggedy rough and tumble group but this is really sophisticated #pop, with just enough grit in the #guitar solos to "still make it #rock." The overall feel is smoothly decadent Bowie lounge act vibes.

2/26 #MWE Forgot to do one yesterday and nearly forgot again for today. I probably know an #ArcticMonkeys #song but I'm not sure which. I do know the band is quite popular. The Car is their latest record and also sports the only bland title. The #music is superb though. I always imagined AM to be a scrappy rough and tumble group but this is really sophisticated #pop, with just enough grit in the #guitar solos to "still make it #rock." The overall feel is smoothly decadent Bowie lounge act vibes.

#mwe
25-Lana del Rey: Blue Banisters
Had this album sitting in my library unattended for however long. I really like LdR’s style. She’s kinda the naughty rebirth of Tori Amos. And while that’s good, it has the same results for me, to wit: I enjoy the first half or less of the album then find myself woefully bored for the next forty minutes. Why must all of her albums be so dang long? Publish five at a time but four times a year. Idk. I wanna love her but it’s just affable like these days.

Special non-#MWE bonus review!

@ChrisMcCue - Plastic Epoch (private-press, 2023)

Chris McCue knows times are tough, and he wants the rest of us to know, too. How he hopes to reach the masses by imparting his communiqué as a digital-only 14-minute demi-doom metal-ish ("[w]hat if 2000s Earth were influenced by 1990s Earth?", I asked myself, because I'm lonely) EP is anyone's guess. Part of him wants me to deride this as a 'shit sandwich', but I'm already back in line for whatever's cooking next.