MY LIST FOR PITCHFORK'S "THE PEOPLE'S LIST"

Here is my list for Pitchfork's "The People's List." Having to put my choices in order was incredibly difficult (I'm still not sure I got it right, though I feel pretty comfortable with #1); I would've preferred to just list them alphabetically by artist. Also, to avoid having ridiculous numbers of entries by the same artist(s), I limited my selections to one album per band/artist.

1. Bark Psychosis - ://Codename: Dustsucker (2004)
2. Radiohead - Kid A (2000)
3. Portishead - Third (2008)
4. The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I (1999)
5. Stereolab - Sound-Dust (2001)
6. Tim Hecker - Harmony in Ultraviolet (2006)
7. Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On (1997)
8. The Weeknd - Thursday (2011)
9. Four Tet - There Is Love in You (2010)
10. The For Carnation - The For Carnation (2000)
11. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (2000)
12. Mogwai - Young Team (1997)
13. Burial - Street Halo EP (2011)
14. Flying Lotus - Cosmogramma (2010)
15. Fever Ray - Fever Ray (2009)
16. Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country EP (2000)
17. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - Source Tags and Codes (2001)
18. SBTRKT - SBTRKT (2011)
19. Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey EP (2007)
20. Neon Indian - Psychic Chasms (2009)
21. Bjork - Homogenic (1997)
22. Aphex Twin - The Richard D. James Album (1996)
23. Fennesz - Black Sea (2008)
24. Sonic Youth - Murray Street (2001)
25. Lokai - Transition (2009)

I wanted to keep it to twenty five choices because that seemed like a good number. Any more and I feel it starts to become a little harder to justify that each album really meant something to me on a personal level. I tried really hard to avoid putting any albums on my list just because they're supposed to be "important." My rationale for selection was basically "what are twenty five albums released between 1996-2011 that I really love listening to?"

Actually, to be perfectly honest, it wasn't that hard to stop at twenty five. It would've been more difficult to keep going--I doubt I could get to fifty with the one album per artist rule and all of the other rules I tried to set for myself. Based on my scribblings on a sheet of paper, though, the next fifteen would look something like this:

• POLARBEAR - Why Something Instead of Nothing? (1999)
• Massive Attack - Mezzanine (1998)
• Darkstar - North (2010)
• Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension (1996)
• Blue Daisy - The Sunday Gift (2011)
• Real Estate - Days (2011)
• Girls - Album (2009)
• The Besnard Lakes - Are the Roaring Night (2010)
• Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - B.R.M.C. (2000)
• Chavez - Ride the Fader (1996)
• Bardo Pond - On the Ellipse (2001)
• Gonjasufi - A Sufi and a Killer (2010)
• Broadcast - The Noise Made By People (2000)
• The Caretaker - An Empty Bliss Beyond This World (2011)
• Menomena - Under an Hour (2006)

One thing I find interesting about all of this is that you can see the pattern of my listening, in some ways. Most entries are either ten+ years old or from the past five. That space in between was spent largely listening to older stuff--digging into back catalogues or doing my homework on various genres. Obviously some artists on the list continued to release stuff throughout the decade that I listened to, but in a broad sense it's really only in the past four or five years that I've started to focus on the here and now again. Also, it's interesting the way that the slightly different criteria I used shifted the ordering from end of year lists I've made in the past (like with Four Tet and Flying Lotus, or SBTRKT and Blue Daisy).

MUSIC DIARY 2012: SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

From Monday, May 7th, 2012 to Sunday, May 13th, 2012, I took part in #musicdiary2012. For those of you who don't know what that is, take a look at this post or go here. Essentially, I kept track of every piece of music I listened to for a week. There were a few lapses--I don't remember everything that was played on the jukebox at the bar one night, and there were a few things I overheard while in stores that I didn't know/recognize, for example--but by and large what I posted for the past week was as accurate as could be, under the circumstances. Now, what's the use of this if not to discover some things about my own listening habits? A little self-reflexivity can be a useful thing, though too much, as I'll discuss in a minute, can be a problem. Let's see what I've learned. To start with, some figures on my week of listening:

• Number of albums* listened to: 28
• Breakdown by day: 7, 6, 3, 1, 3, 5, 3
• Number of songs independent of larger release listened to: 36 
• Breakdown by day: 13, 10, 4, 0, 5, 4, 0
• Number of artists listened to: 45
• Artist with the most plays: Four Tet (6); 1 album, 4 songs
• Number of albums* listened to from 2012: 9**
• Number of songs independent of larger release listened to from 2012: 18**
• Number of albums* listened from other years, by number: 7 (2011), 3 (2010), 1 (2009, 2005, 1996, 1995, 1994, 1993, 1991)**
• Number of songs independent of larger release listened from other years, by number: 5 (2010), 4 (2001), 2 (1996), 1 (2011, 1986, 1983, 1970)**
• Number of albums* listened to on computer: 24
• Number of songs independent of larger release listened to on computer: 27
• Number of albums* listened to on iPod: 4
• Number of songs independent of larger release listened to on iPod: 9

Some simple conclusions that can be drawn from this list: I listen to more contemporary (released in last 5 years) music than older music, I do the majority of my listening at home on my laptop, and I listen to albums and songs in roughly equal proportion. Unfortunately, because of the nature of #musicdiary2012 and the week in which it occurred, these conclusions are not exactly correct. The first point, that I listen to contemporary music more than older music, is true, but the second is not and it directly influences the third point, which is also untrue. 

I do the majority of my listening on my iPod while waiting for, riding, and walking to and from the bus. In an average week in the past year, I've had somewhere between 4 and 8 trips on the bus and it is on those trips that I do my most extensive listening. Furthermore, while I will occasionally listen to entire albums on the bus, I usually jump from song to song; sometimes I will listen to more than one song by an artist, but rarely will I listen to a whole album. I am much more likely to listen to an entire album when I am at home. This past week was the first week of the summer semester. I don't have to go into the office or even go to campus for anything in particular. Consequently, I rode the bus twice this week. While I took a number of long walks with my iPod (something I'm less likely to do during an average week--when I go running, I never take my iPod), I still did the majority of my listening at home via my computer, mainly because I was at home more often than usual this week. It would be really interesting to do a #musicdiary2012a during the Fall semester to see how the results change (I just might do that, if I remember).

One other factor influenced my #musicdiary2012 results more than I'm comfortable with: self-consciousness. Knowing that my listening for the week would be open to others did change how I listened to music this past week in a couple of ways. First, I listened to more albums than I normally do (even with the environmental factor of being at home more often than usual). The type of people whom I imagine take part in things like #musicdiary2012 are those who still validate the album form over the individual song, who bemoan the damage to our attention spans wrought by the internet which renders us incapable of the deep and attentive listening required to appreciate albums, who go to record stores and buy CDs (or even vinyl) not just to rip the music straight to the computer and never play the actual discs/records themselves again. In short, with that kind of imagined audience, how could I not play more albums than I normally do in an attempt to please the crowd? Of course, I don't exempt myself from some of the above descriptions. The very first post on this blog--in its pre-blogspot days--dealt with my relationship with Real Estate's self-titled debut album and how I felt I wasn't listening to whole albums as much since I got an iPod. Nevertheless, I've listened to more complete albums this week than I tend to these days.

Second, and perhaps more important, my listening this week was more varied than it usually is. In an average week, I will listen to some albums and songs many times, simply because I'm enjoying them at the moment and don't feel the need to listen to other things. If I'm planning on reviewing a particular album or song, then I'll play it even more frequently than I normally would. Knowing that my reports would get quite dull if I did that, I consciously avoided listening to albums or songs more than once. Over the course of the entire week, there were a very small number of repetitions: I listened to Melody's Echo Chamber's "Crystallized" twice, Four Tet's "Jupiters" twice, Lone's Galaxy Garden twice, and My Bloody Valentine's EPs and Rarities 1988-1991 twice. I can't say for certain what I would've listened to this past week had #musicdiary2012 not been taking place, but I imagine some of those songs/albums would've been played more than twice, and some others wouldn't have been played at all.

Ultimately, then, #musicdiary2012 was less a portrait of an average week's listening and more a report on what I listened to the week I decided to do a music diary. I don't want to give the impression that #musicdiary2012 was useless, though. If I didn't learn any earth-shattering things about myself or my listening habits, well, I didn't expect to. It did help confirm some thoughts I've had about the ways that I listen to music in various environments and using various music players, which is about what I'd hoped going in to this. Thinking practically, I'd be interested to see if doing this two or three times a year helps to balance out some of the distortions that different parts of the academic calendar and self-consciousness cause. Although, saying that now, I'm not sure that accuracy is necessarily the ultimate goal here. I suppose it depends on your purpose in undertaking the project. Over a number of years, I can see how the idea of the music diary as it  is formatted currently would build up to quite an interesting snapshot of your life, one that would only indirectly say anything concrete, but that might offer a list of triggers to memories more than just written accounts of those weeks could. You'd read that you listened to a song in a particular context, put it on having not listened to it in some time, and be transported back to that moment, perhaps.***

That's all for right now. I hope to see you all for #musicdiary2013, if not before then for #musicdiary2012a in the Fall (assuming I remember to do it)!

*I'm including in this definition EPs. Basically, anything that's more than a single song (or two song single/12") that I listened to in toto.

**Something played more than once is counted only once here.

***On a slightly more cynical level, I think #musicdiary2012 reveals just how much information about a person can be obtained through very small (and voluntarily administered) amounts of surveillance. If you were looking for ways to more effectively target internet ads/spam toward me, I imagine that the past week's entries would be very useful. The hashtag name--making it easy to link this in to social networking sites and a larger base of participants--offers quick access to demographic information for a large number of people with certain shared interests that could be targeted quite easily by advertisers/corporations and cross-referenced against other bits of personal information gathered about the subject.

MUSIC DIARY 2012: DAY 5, 6, AND 7 REPORTS

#musicdiary2012 for Friday, May 11th, Saturday, May 12th, and Sunday, May 13th, 2012

(if you don't know what this is, read this post or go here)

Well, when I started out, I had no idea that I would find the write-ups difficult. I spent Friday night at a friend's house and didn't have chance to put up a report. Yesterday, while I was at home all day, I wasn't in a mood to do anything other than write my list of what I'd listened to. As I didn't listen to much music today, I decided to save it all up and write about it in one big chunk. So, here is my final entry on my week's listening for #musicdiary2012. I'm planning on writing tomorrow about some conclusions I've been able to draw over the course of the week.

Friday, May 12th, 2012

• Fennesz - "Endless Summer" from Endless Summer (2001)

I put this on as I made my morning internet rounds. This was the first Fennesz track I ever heard (back in 2006, if I recall correctly, just after I'd discovered Tim Hecker and read some reviews that linked the two) and--like many people, I imagine--it was what caused me to investigate further. With the sunlight coming in through the big window in front of my desk, the track's submerged melodies (a version of the Sandals' theme music from the film The Endless Summer) felt just right. I didn't want to listen to the whole album, which I don't find as rewarding as either Venice or The Black Sea.

• Lone - Galaxy Garden (2012)

As I was getting ready to head out to the grocery store to pick up some supplies for the evening (I needed Worcestershire sauce, horseradish, and clamato juice to make Caesars, my favourite drink), I put this album on. I'm still trying to wrap my head around it: it's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but there are a few parts that make it hard for me to warm to it fully (I'm not a huge fan of how hyperactive the beats can be, for example). Nevertheless, I'm definitely enjoying it more with each listen. It feels like a summer album to me, so I can see myself listening to it quite a bit in the months to come.

• Four Tet - "Jupiters" from the Jupiters/Ocoras 12" (2012)

I've talked about this track already. It's quite good. If you haven't already listened to it, then you should.

• d'Eon - "Al-Qiyamah" from LP (2012)
• Neon Indian - "Sleep Paralysist" (2010)
• Shlohmo - Vacation EP (2012)
• Talk Talk - "Life's What You Make It" from The Colour of Spring (1986)
• The Weeknd - Echoes of Silence (2011)

I listened to all of these in the afternoon as I attempted to do some work. The d'Eon track was pretty dreadful; I couldn't quite make it all the way through. Neon Indian was almost a reflex reaction to it, something bright and poppy to wash the taste out, so to speak. It's my favourite track of his, and I still don't quite understand how it wasn't a chart-topping, globe-conquering monster. I've written about the Shlohmo EP before, but I feel as if I underrated it a bit when I reviewed it. I've come to enjoy it more and more as the year's gone on. I wanted to listen to the Talk Talk song on Wednesday night when I was walking, but for some reason I'd forgotten to put the album on my iPod. It's a great, great song. I put The Weeknd on while I waited for the friend to come by and pick me up. Given its sudden appearance right at the end of the year, I never felt like I'd given the album its due, so I've spent more time listening to it than House of Balloons or Thursday over the past few months. The first half, from "D.D." through "Initiation" is pretty much flawless, but "Same Old Song" might the worst song of the trilogy and "The Fall" is overlong. Nevertheless, the album ends on a strong note, and if it's the weakest of the three, it's still pretty fantastic.

Saturday, May 12th, 2012

•  Royal Headache - "Girls," "Down the Lane," and "Psychotic Episode" from Royal Headache (2012)

I listened to these three songs in the afternoon after reading Paul Thompson's review of the album for Pitchfork. I wasn't expecting much--garage-punk is not exactly my preferred genre--but the review made it sound as if this might be a worthy follow up to Girls' Album (something Girls themselves do not seem capable of at this point). I can't say I was impressed, to be honest. Oh, it was fine if you like this sort of thing, but just like I don't "get" Guided by Voices, I don't have any use for this album in my life right now.

• My Bloody Valentine - "What You Want" from Loveless (remastered) (2012)

I listened to a stream of this song embedded in a topic on an MBV forum in order to hear the glitch that everyone has been talking about. It's definitely audible at 2:46 and it is puzzling how this would escape a noted perfectionist like Kevin Shields. I don't really have any interest in the conspiracy theories swirling around this song now, though, and whether or not it's on the digital or analog master doesn't both me in the least. Also, seeing as it's my least favourite song on Loveless, I'm glad that the glitch, if there had to be one, happened here.

• Microstoria - _snd (1996)
• Pure X - Pleasure (2011)
• Sapphire Slows - True Breath EP (2011)
• SBTRKT - SBTRKT (2011)

I missed/skipped a birthday party last night as it was on the other side of the city and not very convenient to get to by bus. That's not a great excuse, and I was pretty annoyed with myself for not going. I wasted time on the internet instead, which, while it might be one of the most 2012 things possible, did not make for a particularly enjoyable evening. Although waking up without a hangover was nice, it didn't quite justify missing what was sure to be a great party. Anyway, listening to the Microstoria album in the dark with my eyes closed made me feel as if I knew what it's like to be a computer. Were I to make a cyberpunk movie, I think I'd want something like late-90s Milles Plateaux-style glitch to feature heavily on the soundtrack. I named Pure X an honourable mention in my best of 2011, and it's another release that I've come to feel I underrated. Were I to make the list all over again, I think I'd swap out Era Extrana for it. Sapphire Slows I learned about from a Dummy interview. I hadn't listened to this EP very much and I decided to do so. It's very pleasant, but I can't say that it grabs my attention. After it finished, SBTRKT's self-titled came on, and I let it play. It was one of my favourite albums last year, and I continue to love it (in fact, once again, I would probably change its ranking were I to redo that list; BNJMN's Black Square and SBTRKT would swap places).

• Shigeto - Lineage (2012)

Before going to bed, I put this on while I did some reading. Lineage was faulted when it came out for being so similar to a lot of other music that's out right now, and I agree that it's quite reminiscent of a lot of "ghostly" ambient-ish electronic music that's indebted to post-Dilla instrumental hip-hop. Nevertheless, it's well-written and produced, which scores it some points, and I find it quite nice to have on when I want something that won't fade entirely into the background but won't prevent me from thinking/concentrating on what I'm doing.

Sunday, May 13th, 2012

• Tim Hecker - Moogfest 2011 Set

I am generally not a fan of live recordings. I don't have many of them in my collection and I'm not one to seek out bootlegs. While I don't doubt that there are transcendent live recordings that are better than the studio recordings of the songs/music in question ever could be, I don't tend to get much enjoyment out of poorly recorded live shows. This set of Hecker at Moogfest in Asheville, North Carolina last year, though, is phenomenal. I love the way he works with his own material here to craft an engaging forty minute suite whose force and beauty would translate during a festival, not an easy thing for a composer of abstract electro-acoustic music. That the set climaxes with "Chimeras" feels fitting--almost like he's playing his "hit" that he's teased the crowd up to that point with the possibility of--and listening makes me want to see Hecker live very badly.

• Slint - Spiderland (1991)
• Slowdive - Pygmalion (1995)

Two of the great post-rock albums of all time, back to back, as I write this post. I'd had the opening guitar riff to "Breadcrumb Trail" in my head earlier, and as I hadn't listened to Spiderland in probably a year, I decided to give the album a whirl. If I don't love it quite as much as I did in high school, I still find it to be an engaging listen, and from the first notes I was pulled back into its spell. These days, I'm much more likely to pick Pygmalion over Spiderland, mostly because its quiet beauty matches my mood more often than Slint's brooding intensity and cryptic narratives. I can think of few albums that are more enjoyable at the end of the day than Pygmalion, as it feels like you're getting in touch with the dreamworld just before you go off to sleep. Its songs follow an oneiric logic that doesn't mean formless pleasantries--in fact, it recognises the darkness and discordance of dreams, the possibility that any dream can become a nightmare--but that makes it an intuitively right listening experience, as if the album must exist in the exact form that it does. All of its sounds hang together in the service of something that you're never quite sure of, which is a tricky feat to pull off well.

And with that, I'm done with #musicdiary2012. Hopefully you've enjoyed my (unfortunately) infrequent reports on my week's listening. As I said up top, I'll try and write up some of my thoughts on the whole project tomorrow.

MUSIC DIARY 2012: DAY 3 & 4 REPORT

#musicdiary2012 for Wednesday, May 9th and Thursday, May 10th, 2012

(If you don't know what this is, read this post or go here)

Forgive the twofer here, but I was unable to complete an entry last night and as today's is going to be a relatively light report, I figured I'd just combine them.

• A Lull - "Summer Dress" from the Meat Mountain EP (2012)
• Richard Hawley - "Standing at the Sky's Edge" from Standing at the Sky's Edge (2012)

I listened to these on Wednesday morning as I made my internet rounds. The A Lull track caught my eye as I looked at Pitchfork, but I can't say that I found it particularly enjoyable. It seems to belong to the whole Vampire Weekend school of indie rock that I can't say I've got much interest in. I'd seen a few people talk about this Richard Hawley album, and given that his name was unfamiliar, I decided to check out one of the songs. The Quietus review, in which Julian Marszalek describes the album as "an album that looks more to the cosmos for aural inspiration rather than the surrounding of the People's Republic of South Yorkshire" before asserting that it's "the music Jason Pierce should be making," had me thinking that it might be a rock record after A Northern Soul. Unfortunate, then, that it might be just that and I couldn't quite warm to it. Based on the title track, there's nothing that I want to explore further. [Side note: with their Kevin Shields interview and Neil Kulkarni starting up a US version of his "A New Nineties" feature, The Quietus has been on point the past few days]

• My Bloody Valentine - EPs and Rarities 1988-1991 (2012) 

I put this on while I did some work coming up with ideas for an SF panel I'm trying to put together and had my face blown off. The sound is just glorious--especially after years of shitty mp3s and YouTube videos--and it allowed me to get into the material here in a way that I've never been able to before. Given how much I've listened to Loveless and Isn't Anything, it's nice to have something that feels genuinely fresh to listen to from My Bloody Valentine. And if the rumours swirling around the internet--rumours that Shields' interviews with Pitchfork and The Quietus seem to be confirming--of a new album finally being completed are true (the boards over here were buzzing about a July release a few months ago), well, that would be something. Of course, until I am actually listening to a new album by My Bloody Valentine I refuse to believe one will actually ever materialize, but a man can dream. Anyway, having heard the Loveless remaster when it first leaked years ago, I'm more excited to hear the Isn't Anything remaster--maybe that will allow me to understand why people (so many these days, it seems) love that album more than (the superior, to my ears) Loveless.

• Ultraista - "Smalltalk" (2012)
• Amirali - In Time (2012)

After coming home from a meeting and before heading out to meet a friend for dinner I listened to these. The first is the only song so far from Nigel Godrich's new band. It's not bad, but I'm not super impressed. To me, it sounds like Lykke Li singing over leftovers from The King of Limbs, and given that that was not my favourite Radiohead album by any stretch, I could take or leave it. I was expecting something a little more like Broadcast. The Amirali album is streaming over at Resident Advisor. It's good, but not so good that it compels me to keep listening. I'll keep half an ear open for his stuff from now on, though.

• Darkstar - "Gold" from North (2010)
• Burial - Street Halo EP (2011)

I listened to these as I walked over to meet a friend for dinner. I quite like North, and "Gold" runs through my head now and again. I put it in between Kanye West's "Paranoid" and the Weeknd's "Initiation" on a mix CD I made for a friend, and I think that that's actually an inspired three song mini playlist. Street Halo is my favourite Burial release (though Kindred is excellent), and "NYC" is my favourite Burial song. It was overcast and cool as I walked, which felt like a perfect time for Burial's melancholy.

• Music on jukebox at bar

This is the reason there was no report for yesterday. I don't really remember a whole lot of last night--what had been planned as a fairly low key dinner turned into a pretty wild and raucous night--but I can say that I put "Common People," "Tender," and "Cortez the Killer" on the jukebox at some point. Really, this entry should read like David Foster Wallace's report on the dessert competition at the Illinois state fair in "Getting Away From Pretty Much Being Away From It All," if I'm honest. I spent most of last night getting reacquainted with my dinner and much of today as a miserable, nauseated puddle.

• My Bloody Valentine - EPs and Rarities 1988-1991 (2012)

I listened to this again this evening as I browsed the internet. It still sounds fantastic and I keep finding new treasures.

Until tomorrow!

MUSIC DIARY 2012: DAY 2 REPORT

#musicdiary2012 for Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

(See this post or go here if you're not sure what this is)

• Four Tet - Jupiters/Ocoras 12" (2012)
• Lazer Sword - "Sounds Sane," "Missed a Spot," "Let's Work" from Memory (2012)
• Melody's Echo Chamber - "Crystallized" (2012)

I listened to these this morning on my laptop as I did my daily internet rounds. The Four Tet 12" is coming out on Text, his label, and it's quite good. "Jupiters" in particular is a great track, managing to bridge two pretty distinct halves. The Lazer Sword tracks I was not impressed with, though I can see how they might go over well in a club. I wanted to like them, and each one had at least one interesting thing happening in it, but in they end they weren't for me. I wrote about "Crystallized" yesterday, so I'll say no more about it for now.

• Four Tet - There Is Love in You (2010) 

I listened to this on my iPod as I took a walk to a used bookstore. I placed it at number two on my 2010 year end list, and it remains a fantastic listen. The way that the tracks evolve and develop is a wonder to behold, and Four Tet has a quite a way with melody. The songs are at once intricate like the innards of a watch, fragile and shiny like coloured glass, and inspirations to movement. Perfect walking music. 

• Unidentified indie folk

While I browsed in the bookstore the owner had some anodyne indie folk playing on the stereo. It was pleasant enough and largely inoffensive, but after the first few seconds I didn't really notice it. I'm guessing the band may have been local. Book shopping was wonderful: I picked up copies of Octavia Butler's Kindred, Christopher Priest's The Inverted World, and Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s A Canticle for Liebowitz to go along with a like-new copy of Marc Auge's Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity.

• POLARBEAR - "Monkey" and "Water" from the Chewing Gum EP (1997)
• Real Estate - Days (2011)

I listened to these on my walk home from the bookstore. The POLARBEAR tracks (Eric Avery's band after Jane's Addiction and Deconstruction) are the two best on the EP, and still sound surprisingly contemporary. Reading the history of POLARBEAR is a lot like reading about any doomed venture: you have to laugh so you don't cry. The band just never seemed to get any momentum going and for whatever reason capitalizing on Avery's past in Jane's Addiction didn't ever seem like a possibility for them. The one album they released, Why Something Instead of Nothing?, is even better than this EP, and features a lot of great songs.  In many ways their sound was ahead of its time, and if they released their music today, they'd fit right in. As for the other thing I listened to on my return trip, I'm a big fan of Real Estate and of Days in particular. There are a handful of songs on the album I'd kill to have written. But, as I've written about this album before, I'll point you toward that for right now.

• Mister Lies feat. Jessica Blanchet - "I Walk" (2012)
• Mister Lies - Hidden Neighbours EP (2012)

Inspired by the "Rising" feature on Mister Lies up at Pitchfork, I made my way over to his Bandcamp page to check him out as I browsed the internet before dinner. I can't say I'm a huge fan, though. It's pleasant enough, but, like the unidentified indie folk in the bookstore, within a few seconds the music stops registering with me and fades into the background. Maybe he deserves another, closer listen, but I don't really feel motivated to do so at this point.

• Bark Psychosis - Hex (1994)
• Menomena - Under an Hour (2005)
• Insides - Euphoria (1993)
• Mogwai - "My Father My King" from My Father My King EP (2001)

After dinner I spent most of the evening reading The Inverted World (excellent so far--I'm about two-thirds of the way through it), so these were all playing in the background. Hex is amazing, and in addition to being one of the albums in the running for the position of being my favourite album of all time, it also has a song that is in the running for the analogous position. If you haven't heard it, you need to do so as soon as possible. Nitsuh Abebe called it "the sort of avant-garde the whole family can enjoy" and "a little like dub reggae might have sounded if it had developed in the English countryside," and neither of those claims is inaccurate. The Menomena album is one that, like the Lokai album I listened to yesterday, doesn't get talked about anywhere near enough. It lives up to the promise of its title by being under an hour (actually around fifty three minutes) of wonderful instrumental music that's great for doing work or reading to, but that also rewards close listening with inventive arrangements and clever playing. I highly recommend it. Insides make more sense along with Bark Psychosis as they were another one of the bands that Simon Reynolds dubbed "post rock" in his genre defining piece. Euphoria is a great album (as is the album that the pre-Insides band Earwig made, Under My Skin I Am Laughing) that doesn't really sound like much else--a more melodic Disco Inferno? A more rhythmic Slowdive? After all that, "My Father My King" was a little more of a forceful note to end on. A titanic slab of rock, it's probably Mogwai's best epic (yes, even better than "Like Herod" or "Mogwai Fear Satan") and one of Steve Albini's best engineering jobs. 

I'm off to bed, so once again, until tomorrow!

MUSIC DIARY 2012: DAY 1 REPORT

#musicdiary2012 for Monday, May 7th, 2012

• Lapalux - When You're Gone (2012)
• Girl Unit - "Ensemble (Club Mix)" from the Club Rez EP (2012)

I listened to both of these this morning on my laptop as I made my daily internet rounds and got ready to go to campus. The Lapalux is quite good; I'm planning on writing a review of it sometime this week. It does a really nice job of framing the Brainfeeder aesthetic as a kind of warped and distorted party music that is quite catchy. I listened to the Girl Unit song after reading Larry Fitzmaurice's review of the EP for Pitchfork. I didn't enjoy it as much as the review led me to think I would. Oh well.

• CFCF - The River EP (2010)

I listened to this on my iPod as I waited for and then rode the bus to campus. Quietly beautiful and enchanting, this EP is quite hypnotic (which makes it great as music for commuting). It's not quite as good as the just released Exercises EP, but still a worthwhile listen, though. "Frozen Forest" is a definite highlight, and if the title track's noisy climax is marred by some out of place drumming, it's a pretty thrilling song regardless.

• CFCF - "Exercise 3 (Building)" from the Exercises EP (2012)

I listened to this on my walk from the bus stop to the office (again on my iPod). I've written enough about this EP lately, so I'll just say that this quickly becoming one of my favourite songs of 2012.

• Four Tet - "Glue of the World" and "Twenty Three" from Pause (2001)
• Mogwai - "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong," "Like Herod," and "Glasgow Megasnake" from Special Moves (2010)

I listened to these on the way home from campus (once again, on my iPod). The Four Tet songs are great when it's sunny out as they make the whole world seem magical. I particularly enjoy how well they work together; as a pair, they're one of the better 1-2 punches in his catalogue. The live version of "2 Rights Make 1 Wrong" is my preferred take. Something about the glitchy, vocodored vocals is even more affecting than usual on this album. Both "Herod" and "Megasnake" were to drown out the people sitting behind me who were having a loud conversation about their personal lives that I had no desire to overhear (or to have thrust upon my hearing). Luckily, those are two really awesome songs to drown people out with!

• R.E.M. - "9-9" from Murmur (1983)
• CCR - "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" from Cosmo's Factory (1970)
• Melody's Echo Chamber - "Crystallized" (2012)
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor - "Outro" from Song of the Silent Land compilation (2004)
• Last Step - "Microsleeps" from Sleep (2012)

I listened to all of these on my laptop after I got home from campus as I wasted time on the internet, answered emails, and thought about what to make for dinner (it ended up being spaghetti, for those who might be curious). I'd had the R.E.M. song buzzing around in my head the other day (particularly the "Conversation / Fear" part at the end), so I decided to look it up on YouTube and get it out of there. Same thing with the Creedence track. I really like that song because I associate it with a great road trip to California I took with some friends a few years ago. Also, there is some killer guitar playing throughout and the song itself just cannot be touched. The next three all came about via Pitchfork, with Melody's Echo Chamber (great band name) being the big winner: a warm, blown out bit of psych rock that's perfect for the higher temperatures (and humidity) that we've been having. The Godspeed track is nice and pretty, lacking a lot of their usual bombast, and given how quiet the recording is (and its quality), I was surprised to discover it's a live track. The Last Step (an alias of Venetian Snares) track was boring. I did not enjoy it at all.

• Lone - Galaxy Garden (2012)
• Lotus Plaza - Spooky Action at a Distance (2012)

I had these on in the background as I did some cleaning (my apartment is a wreck right now from the chaos of the end of the semester). I'm still not one hundred percent sold on the Lone album, though there are bits that make me perk my ears up and take notice. The Lotus Plaza album I quite like and I'll try and get a review up in the next week or so. For me, it's the best Deerhunter member solo project release (though I do love Logos) and the best Deerhunter related release since Microcastle.

• BNJMN - "Lava" from Black Square (2011)

I listened to this after I finished cleaning while I looked at twitter. I've written about BNJMN and this song before, so I'll point you in that direction and leave it at that for now, other than to say that this song still holds up.

• Flying Lotus - Pattern+Grid World EP (2010)
• Gonjasufi - MU.ZZ.LE (2012)
• Lokai - Transition (2009)

I listened to these as I wrote a draft of this post (after I accidentally deleted a draft I'd written earlier--serenity now!). The Flying Lotus EP (along with Cosmogramma) was my album of the year in 2010, and it still blows my mind how much stuff is going on in those songs. I've written on the Gonjasufi mini-album, but it's taken on an added hallucinatory quality tonight as lightning keeps flashing outside my window. The Lokai album is a low-key (sorry!) gem, really overlooked, and great music to read and write to. I rarely hear it mentioned by anyone (and by "rarely," I mean "never"), but it's been in fairly consistent rotation since I picked it up a few years back. "Salvador" and "Volver" are probably my favourite tracks on the album.

Until tomorrow!

MUSIC DIARY 2012: WHY I'M DOING IT, WHAT IT IS, HOW YOU CAN TAKE PART

Around this time last year, I was reading this blog post from Nick Southall and feeling incredibly annoyed that I didn't take part in his Music Diary project. I'd had plenty of excuses not to--school was quite busy, I didn't have regular access to the internet, no one I knew was taking part so I couldn't share the experience with anyone--but none of them were really reason enough. In short, I'd been lazy and hadn't done it even though I'd known I'd wanted to. It was especially annoying not take part in it because Southall's writing for Stylus Magazine when that was a going concern had been so important to me as a music lover and listener who was gradually maturing in his interests to become concerned with how he was listening to music (not only in how I used the music [i.e. to soundtrack doing the dishes], but the very physical process of it: Headphones or no headphones? Stereo or laptop? Radio or iPod? With others or alone?), how he was exposed to the music to which he listened, and what the relationship might be between those things and his attitude toward and enjoyment of what he listened to. I've mentioned this all before. A chance to participate in something he was organizing that explored those very issues was too good to pass up, and yet I did.

So this year, I am taking part in Music Diary 2012 (#musicdiary2012 if ya nasty), partly out of a desire to make up last year to myself, but mainly to find out some new information about myself. How do I listen to music? Where do I listen to it? Why do I listen to it? With whom do I listen to it? What do I listen to? For those of you unfamiliar with the Music Diary project, its purpose is to "attempt to document, over the course of one week" answers to exactly those questions I asked above. The only qualifying criteria is that "you would ordinarily be listening to music in that week or any other week." Those of you at home who would like to play along, here are the "rules:"

For seven days this spring, from Monday the 7th May to Sunday the 13th May, anyone who wants to take part will keep a diary of everything they listen to, and publish it online somewhere. How detailed that diary is, is up to you. It might be an annotated list drawn from last.fm scrobbles and chucked onto a Tumblr; it might be a Tweet or a Facebook status every time you play a new song on your iPod; you might keep a detailed spreadsheet and post it on your blog at the end of the week [I'm doing a modified version of this one]; you could even keep pencilled notes in a Moleskine, photograph them, and upload them to Flickr.

It's surprising how quickly the actual process of simply recording your listening materials--to say nothing of annotating them for time, place, device used, other people present, purpose in listening, thoughts on what you listened to, etc., etc.--begins to reveal information about you and your listening habits. Of course, that quickly leads to a certain amount of self-consciousness, but the Music Diary project counts on this to a certain extent. The point is to keep the self-consciousness on the right side of deliberately fudging data:

Obviously keeping track of everything you listen to will change the way you listen, and you shouldn't ignore this fact, but the point is to try and record usual patterns of listening. It isn't about who listens to the most music or the coolest music or the most eclectic selection of music [Does this even mean anything in our current maximalist, post-everything, internet-fueled omnivorousness?]; it's just about understanding the different ways we listen.

Without further adieu, then, here's to seven days of thinking about listening to music!

Day 1 Report

Day 2 Report

Day 3 & 4 Report

Day 5, 6, & 7 Report
Concluding Thoughts

"YOU REMIND ME OF..."

In the aftermath of 2011, many of the music websites I read on a regular basis are covering the last of the 2011 releases that got lost in the rush of the usual year-end lists, etc. There are a few 2011 releases I've picked up in the new year that I'm listening to and enjoying (Pitchfork's review of Jacaszek's Glimmer led me to that album, and after a few listens I'm very impressed), but nothing has really altered my conception of the best releases of 2011--even chopped & screwed versions of The Weeknd couldn't make me love those albums any less.

There were a few 2010 releases that I picked up in 2011 that changed my view of music released in 2010, though. While I encountered most of them right at the start of 2011, some of them (most notably Darkstar's North) didn't get a listen until a large part of the way through the year. The Darkstar album is one I make note of because it is, outside of Four Tet's There is Love in You and Flying Lotus' Cosmogramma and Pattern+Grid World EP, the release from 2010 that I played the most in 2011. Had I heard it before the summer of 2011, North would easily have been my number three on my list of top ten albums of 2010 (behind Flying Lotus and Four Tet). I have to admit that I don't really find "Aidy's Girl is a Computer" as amazing as everyone else, but "Gold" is pretty much perfect: a truly revelatory cover that transforms the original and adds heretofore unknown dimensions to it. However, my two favourite moments on North are the introduction of James Buttery's vocals on "In the Wings" and the first forty five seconds of "Under One Roof" (the rest of the song is also great, but those forty five seconds get to me in a way I'm not really able to explain--the emotion is entirely different, but the strength of response is not dissimilar to the entry of those chords right before the vocals in "Hyph Mngo"): 

Darkstar - "In the Wings"

Darkstar - "Under One Roof"

The critical consensus on North seems mixed, with a lot of middling reviews, and Zone Styx Travelcard offers an interesting critique (set off against an interview with one of the members of Darkstar) of North in relation to Darkstar's earlier work (which I've got to be honest and say I haven't checked out, mostly because it is supposed to be so different from North). I understand Mike Powell's point that the album seems suffused with nostalgia for the feelings that synth-pop can evoke, rather thanwith  those feelings themselves, and that this makes it a conservative album--points that Zone Styx Travelcard also makes ("There's a patina on every sound: they keys and Buttery's vocals are all fractionally distorted, as if they were working on the assumption that that would [add] character, backstory, fallible humanity to the sound. But what about the poignancy of cold machined perfection? They seemed to know what that was before")--but while the album might not push the boundaries of synth-pop, I find that I respond to the emotions expressed, loneliness, longing, alienation, distance, coldness, much more directly and with greater empathy than with someone like Depeche Mode. If it's derivative of the 1980s, it has at least purged from those sounds some of the aspects that make me self-conscious and unable to respond to synth-pop with anything other than embarrassment. For me, the fact that the music on North, in addition to whatever else it might be, is "familiar . . . [and] beautiful, too," according to Powell, is enough. As cold as the album might be, as much as it might suck the light out of the room, I find in it something (and whether it's sonic or emotional I couldn't say) relatable. In its own way, North is much more three-dimensional and redemptive than people seem to give it credit for being.

This is really apropos of nothing other than a grey and rainy day reading Virginia Woolf (whose writing makes me feel grey and rainy) and North coming on in the middle of it and entrancing me just as it did the first time I heard it. I hope there will be great music that comes out in 2012--and I have faith that there will be, despite all doomsayers' predictions--but even if nothing is "important" or "great" in the grand scheme of things, I'm fine with there being some albums and songs that can be great and important for me on rainy days while I'm reading. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm over the holiday slump, so bring on the tunes, everyone!

I WISH I LIKED THE COCTEAU TWINS

I've said this a number of times, but I really wish I could love the Cocteau Twins. They are one of my favourite bands to read about because, when a decent writer discusses their music, it usually turns into a description of everything I love about music. Unfortunately, when I listen to the Cocteau Twins, I don't have the same experience. Part of it is the production--everything sounds impossibly dated and awkward (this is probably aided by reading guitar magazines as a teenager, which tended to demonize any and all uses of the chorus effect after its abuse in the 1980s)--but part of it is something I just can't nail down. I love Elizabeth Fraser's voice in other settings (Massive Attack's "Teardrop" or This Mortal Coil's version of "Song to the Siren," for example), but I often feel vaguely embarrassed when listening to her within the context of the Cocteau Twins. Similarly, I recognize how gorgeously detailed and layered Robin Guthrie's guitar sound is, but in action it often leaves me cold (or worse, bored). Thus, despite the fact that the Cocteau Twins helped invent/refine the kind of music that I love, I've pretty much shied away from listening to them. This is all the more surprising to me in light of the fact that I do really love a lot of things that sound like/bear an obvious debt to the Cocteau Twins, like Seefeel's Quique.

This is not to say that I hate the Cocteau Twins or actively dislike them. If anything, I'm ambivalent toward their music. I'll enjoy the odd song when I come across it, but the only album I own is Heaven or Las Vegas. Inspired to give that album another spin after writing about The Weeknd, who sample "Cherry-Coloured Funk" for "The Knowing" and have their own song titled "Heaven or Las Vegas," I was reminded how much I love the title track. Fraser's voice in the chorus is just perfect, lightly tripping through the syllables, and Guthrie's guitar is as neon and sparkly as the titular locales would suggest. Really, it's just a wonderful piece of pop that's sweet as the sugariest treat. I've always felt that the colour My Bloody Valentine used for the cover of Loveless is the perfect colour for that music (my own weak experience of synaesthesia). Similarly, the combination of Fraser's voice and Guthrie's guitar in "Heaven or Las Vegas" suggests the exact shape depicted on the cover of the album.

Browsing for the video for "Heaven or Las Vegas," I came across a band that, like the Cocteau Twins, I tend not to enjoy, despite their similarity to many other bands I do enjoy: Lush (whose album Spooky was produced by none other than Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins and who were also on 4AD). My brother is a Lush fan, and I remember him playing their albums while I was on the computer and he played video games, or vice versa.* One song I don't remember him ever playing, but that I've come to really like, is "Undertow" from their album Split (I think my brother stuck to things like "Desire Lines" and "Never-Never," though he didn't like The Cure, surprisingly). It's not hard to figure out what I love about "Undertow:" the opening drumbeat, so metallic and mysterious, the industrial-strength bass, and the swirling, sensual music (which owes not a little to Guthrie) that threatens to overwhelm the vocals until the lovely a cappella end. This is as heavily sexual as My Bloody Valentine, but unlike the fairly ambiguous/androgynous Loveless--and here is as good a place as any to acknowledge one of my favourite lines in any album review is Heather Phares' description of Loveless as "suggesting druggy sex or sexy drugs;" that's just so apt--the sexuality here is fiercely feminine, something like "Loomer" or "Blown a Wish," but deeper and darker somehow.

*There were three bands I can remember him playing in this situation: Lush, Buffalo Daughter, and Portishead. Clearly, only one of those three took. Actually, I think that Beth Gibbons and Elizabeth Fraser are not a million miles removed from each other in terms of technique, approach, subject matter, etc. This just makes my ambivalence toward the Cocteau Twins more confusing.

REFLECTIONS ON ALBUMS OF THE YEAR COUNTDOWN

I spent the past eleven days cataloguing my favourite albums of 2011 (it was supposed to be ten days, but I was in no mood to sit in front of my computer and write on Christmas Day). All told, it worked out to a little over 7750 words on fifteen albums. If you add in the two pieces I wrote on eleven songs I really liked in 2011, the count is up to almost 9500 words. That is a lot of words (if you've read your Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that clause should prove I am human. I will also say to you if you are very tall, "Oh, you're very tall!"). Anyway, the point here is not to toot my own horn about writing a certain number of words about music (akin, I suppose, to telling someone just how long you danced about architecture). Rather, I just wanted to think out loud a bit about my experience writing this list.

I. Format

I am surprised at how easy it was to decide on a format for the write-ups themselves. Basically, I knew that I wanted to avoid a general discussion of a particular album's strengths (cf. Pitchfork's Top 50 Albums of 2011, not that there is anything wrong with that approach, necessarily). This was to be my list and it had to explain my understanding of the album (I made a conscious effort fairly early on to avoid the second person. I don't think it appears in anything after the Neon Indian write-up). Of course, entirely subjective and personal criteria do not necessarily make for great evaluations--a point I try desperately to make clear to my students--so I wanted something slightly more objective/universal and review like to accompany my own relationship to the album. Thus, the two paragraph structure seemed ideal. It was flexible enough to shift with albums whose place on the list owed more to the explanation accompanying the more objective components and with those whose place on the list owed more to my own encounter with them than anything else. Hopefully, if one paragraph wasn't engaging for the reader, the other paragraph would be. If neither paragraph was engaging, well, maybe the links to YouTube videos proved satisfying.

In terms of the actual number of albums, I picked ten (with five honourable mentions) partly to force myself to evaluate albums rather than picking a number large enough to allow me to just list every album I listened to this year and partly for practical reasons: ten seemed like a good number that would keep this doable and lend some weight to the selections. I kept the albums separated into the top ten and the honourable mentions rather than top fifteen for much the same reason. It seemed important to have a demarcation between "good albums that I enjoyed" and "the best albums of the year" (I guess this is my own personal good record/important album distinction). Before I actually sat down to do the list, I assumed that several albums from the honourable mentions list would make the main list and I was somewhat surprised at how easy it was to separate the two lists once I started working.

II. Schedule

I anticipated that writing something every day for a set number of days would be difficult. I don't tend to work that way on anything. Doing the list this way proved to be both challenging and rewarding. There were a few entries on the list for which I had some notes written in advance (Neon Indian, Kode9 & the Spaceape, and Tim Hecker), but I tended to avoid using them. As much as possible, I wanted this to be a process of sitting down to the computer each day as the desire came over to me and writing the piece while listening to the album in question. In two or three cases I found my way into the write-up the night before, and wrote a few sentences or a draft paragraph, but largely these were drafted as I listened and then edited/expanded. Sometimes this task seemed daunting and unpleasant, with the desire clearly not about to come any time soon (My thought process: Another one? Really? Whose stupid idea was this? Oh, wait...), and at other times, all the desire in the world couldn't produce a useful sentence. During the second half of the list, my own schedule for this became increasingly rigid--generally, it was wake up, start working, finish and post by mid-morning. I'm not sure I really achieved this with any of the entries, but it gave me a structure within which I could work.

What made this worthwhile was not that it built in a sense of obligation or anything like that (though it did just that), but rather that these write-ups fed off each other, illuminating connections I'd never noticed or, at the least, never articulated to myself. If I'd just written these in a concentrated burst over a couple days or haphazardly as I felt like it, I doubt those themes would've emerged. In a similar way, I found that shared aesthetic properties (and the aesthetic properties that ultimately led me to pick these albums over others) became clear for me in a way that I think I was only subconsciously aware of prior to writing. Though I didn't take advantage of this at all, I also appreciated that doing the write-ups one album at a time allowed me to reconsider the list as I wrote it. There were a few minutes of dithering at times about the place of an album (especially 6/7 and 3/4), but I decided to stick with the order as I initially determined it.

III. Overall Reflections

Despite some complaining at times on my part, this albums of the year list was by far the most fun I've had with this blog. It felt like a simple and straightforward way to get back to why I started this blog, to have a place to write and think about music. In an age of such widespread access to music (via YouTube, Spotify, torrents and P2P, etc., etc.) there's bound to be at least a whiff of genre tourism to any list outside of one with a specialized focus. I don't really know a lot about the genres (hello, bass music!) out of which many of my favourite albums emerged, so I'm probably more of a tourist than most who are writing these lists (this was also part of my reasoning in focusing so heavily on my response to albums as the contextual framework, even when discussing an artist's past work and the new work in relation to that corpus). I hope, though, that the aesthetic and thematic connections that emerged in the write-ups offered something like a picture (if not clear, at least muddy) of my own aesthetic preferences. That is, I'd like to believe that taking into account the things I very clearly like (via what I said in the write-ups), nothing on this list should be too surprising or out of keeping with the other entries. This is the second year I've done an albums of the year list* and I plan to keep it up for as long as it remains a fun activity. It will be interesting for me (if for no one else) to see if the aesthetic concerns that are already apparent after two years of this continue to crystallize or if there is a radical shift.

Anyway, if you read any of the list, I hope you enjoyed it. If it introduced you to any new music, or reintroduced you to an artist you'd lost touch with, or just made you reevaluate--for even a second--something you dislike, then I think the list proved its worth. Onward to 2012 and more great music!


*Last year's best album (in my opinion, of course) was Cosmogramma by Flying Lotus (paired with the Pattern+Grid World EP). The runner-up was Four Tet's There Is Love In You.

REMEMBERING FIRST LISTENS

Well, I'd hoped to do a post a day during this break, but I didn't quite manage that. Oh well, nothing to do but press onward.

It's pretty rare now because of the way I listen to and consume music, but the first moment of listening to something new used to be quite the experience. I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as I start to consider what might be on an end of year list for me music-wise. I've heard so much this year (I can see arguments against both of them, but for me, 2010 and 2011 have been great years for music), but I can't specifically remember hearing it all for the first time. When I was in high school we'd just got the internet, and I spent hours on Allmusic, Pitchfork, and other websites reading, researching, and imagining what things sounded like (I even spent some time in music chat rooms on Yahoo!--speaking of which, I'm very intrigued about what relationship could be drawn between chat rooms and social networking as it exists in 2011). Pre-YouTube and high speed internet, it was still really difficult to hear any of the music that I was finding out about (krautrock, post-rock, IDM, basically all the references someone with "good" taste should get), and I had to make guesses as to what something could sound like when based on reviews and descriptions. After all the reading and guessing, then, to hear the actual music was an enlightening moment. Was I ever disappointed? Oh yes, all the time. Most of the time, though, I was able to come to love what I heard, even if it was only years later. Sometimes, I'll come across a song or band now that sounds like what I expected some of those genres to sound like before I'd ever heard them. For example, Mouse on Mars' "Tamagnocchi" sounds like what I expected Neu! to sound like, and what I've always kind of resented Neu! for not sounding like.

Anyway, there are a couple first listens that I can remember with particular intensity. I first heard Loveless, for example, late in the afternoon on a weekend (I have a feeling it was a Sunday, but that could be a projection based on other things). I remember the colour of the light and the way that even though it was right about the time on a weekend afternoon when I tend to get the kind of ennui that Douglas Adams' called the long, dark tea-time of the soul, Loveless was strange enough, different enough, new enough to cut through all of that. It's hard not to pay attention after the first five seconds of "Only Shallow."

The first listen that I remember above all others, though, is my first encounter with Verve's (pre-The) A Storm in Heaven. I'd read about it for weeks (months?): "the group's 1993 full-length debut, A Storm in Heaven, was based on buoyant, extended psychedelic passages. Looking back today, it was an interesting and original musical direction, since at the time, angst-ridden Seattle bands (and their many copycats) were all the rage." That was the sum total of my knowledge prior to hearing the music. I knew "Bittersweet Symphony" and "Lucky Man" obviously, but those were, I was told by the review, a different animal altogether from A Storm in Heaven and the early singles. And those singles! Oh, the mythology that was built up in my mind around them based on their reviews was immense:

"One Way to Go" and "Man Called Sun," however, show off their tendency to groove, building moody songs out of repetitive phrases that are the perfect backdrop for Richard Ashcroft's acid-tinged lyrics. With its minimalistic, echo-laden guitar, droning bass and heavy backbeat, "Man Called Sun" is the first Verve classic."

The band truly comes into its own -- Richard Aschcroft sings like a man possessed and Nick McCabe's guitar is positively oceanic, producing tidal waves of drone which crash and break over the hypnotically liquid rhythms of SImon Jones and Peter Salisbury. . . . [A] dreamlike beauty, tapping into an energy just outisde the realm of consciousness -- it's music which transcends space and time, with a purity unmatched by anything else in the Verve catalog.

"Gravity Grave" finds Verve augmenting their echo-drenched, fuzzed-out guitars with harmonica and flute. Underpinned by a pulsing bassline and heavy backbeat, the end result is euphoric, mind-blowing psychedelia.

It didn't hurt that the covers of their singles and albums--designed by Brian Cannon and Microdot--were amazing pieces of work. They had just the right mixture of surreality and menace to appeal to a teenage me. There's an NME feature with cannon talking about many of these images alongside his other work with Oasis, Suede, et al. Reading through his descriptions of the Oasis sleeves, you really get a sense of how they were the nostalgia mode. Everything is based on rehashing a rock and roll myth that had already become cliche. That one of their members was named "Bonehead" and suggested many of the ideas seems only too fitting.

A Storm In Heaven, front, back, and interior

"She's a Superstar"

"Gravity Grave"

"Slide Away"

Incidentally, it took many years--until YouTube appeared--for me to actually hear the full version of "Gravity Grave," despite the fact that for a number of years, if pushed, I would've said it was my favourite song (Now? Who knows? My stock answer for was Bark Psychosis' "Eyes and Smiles," but I don't know if I'd still say that). Knowing there was more to it that I hadn't heard actually helped its cause, really. The fadeout made me want more, made me need to know what was missing, and preserved the mystery of something that I already found inscrutable--what does "To me you're like a setting sun / You rise and you're gone" mean? I listened to "Gravity Grave" for the first time in a few years the other day and was taken away again. It was glorious. If there's one thing that I really long for from music it's transcendence, and early Verve delivers that in spades for me.

Anyway, this is supposed to be about my first encounter with A Storm in Heaven, so I guess I should talk about that. Sitting on the floor, staring at my stereo and flipping through the booklet (Ashcroft looking not quite of this world in his photo--you can really see how he sort of got away with his faux-messianic thing to start with; shame it all went to shit), as "Star Sail" begins. That first chord, like "Only Shallow," is immediately captivating.* But rather than the violence that follows "Only Shallow," a fade back out, an opening of immense spaces, and finally "Hello, it's me..." That guitar solo (it's like some god's vacuum cleaner in the best possible sense). The feeling that you really are hearing a transmission from somewhere out in space. I was changed. I've been looking for anything that sounds feels like "Star Sail" since that moment, and never really found it ("Gravity Grave," in my opinion, is even more captivating, but not in the way that "Star Sail" is). There are other high points: "Already There" and its alarm clock feedback in the chorus, "The Sun The Sea" and its wonderful horns (courtesy of the Kick Horns, whose contributions to Radiohead's "The National Anthem" had already blown my mind), "Butterfly" and its barely-keeping-it-together vibe. The real gem of the album, though, after "Star Sail" is "Virtual World." Again, that sense of unending space, of Ashcroft coming to you from somewhere else, and a return to the flutes that helped out "Gravity Grave."

It's no so much that I'm nostalgic for that kind of experience (or rather, I am, but it's not only that), but I do think something is lost in sitting in front of my computer, browsing online while an album plays. Much of this is on me, obviously, and I recognize that fact. Nevertheless, how can I remember the first time? How can I change my listening habits and adapt to this new mode of listening? How can the current listen have meaning without a memory of the first listen, even if that memory is a myth? Perhaps it needs to be a myth,  a personalized fiction of listening, in order to develop personal significance, personal resonance? This seems, somehow, related to music and atemporality. I need to think about this some more.


*This is something of an anachronistic reflection. When I heard "Star Sail," hearing "Only Shallow" was still a year, if not two years, away. They're two of the most striking album-opening chords I'm aware of though, so I tend to group them together.

R.E.M.: A BRIEF STORY ABOUT BEING AND NOT BEING A FAN

Taking a break from grading for a moment--why do I always leave myself with the majority of papers to finish grading the day before I've said I'd give them back?--I thought I'd offer this short comment on R.E.M.'s breakup. I was at one point, from grade six through grade nine, a more intense fan of R.E.M. than of any other cultural force/object. I still have a poster of Michael Stipe in my bedroom back home. The "Daysleeper" single was the first CD I ever bought--I still think the version of "Sad Professor" on there trumps the version on Up.* Obviously, given the past tense above, I am no longer such a fan. I can trace the decline in my fanhood to two things, basically.

1. The internet: we got the internet at my house in grade eight. While this was initially a boon to my obsession--I could find out more information about the band, albeit on a painfully slow dial-up connection--it also made it possible for me to find out about all sorts of new and exciting music (although again, thanks to said dial-up connection, I could often only read about this music, not hear it). In grade nine, I had Napster, and I started listening to all sorts of stuff that made R.E.M. seem kind of tame and pedestrian.

2.  Reveal: I've often found that discovering a band in the midst of the down time between albums can be trying--especially if it's a long wait until the next album. If it's an established band, by the time I've gone through the back catalogue, I have pretty set opinions about the band's sound. The new album can often be something of a let down, and this was especially devastating when I was young and had an astonishing amount of libidinal energy invested in bands. R.E.M. is the prototypical example. As Up was the second album I bought on CD (after Weezer's Blue Album, which, shockingly, was cheaper than the "Daysleeper" single), and as I considered it my favourite album and R.E.M.'s best, I was stunned to discover that I didn't particularly like Reveal. In the wake of some of the music I'd started listening to thanks to the internet (especially sites like Pitchfork and Allmusic), Reveal was boring. Its electronics were nowhere near as exciting as Kid A's, for example (say what you will about that album, but it was genuinely revolutionary for a kid in the suburbs whose only experience of electronic music was "Firestarter," Fatboy Slim's You've Come A Long Way, Baby, and the Chemical Brothers' Dig Your Own Hole).

It's been years since I've actually paid attention to R.E.M.--basically since the release of Reveal--and even the kind of "return to form" reviews that surrounded Accelerate and Collapse Into Now couldn't lure me back into the fold. For one thing, R.E.M.'s form, in my eyes, was shaped by the manner in which I experienced them. Reckoning and New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Murmur and Monster, everything they'd done existed simultaneously for me. No single album they released could possibly recapture my sense of their sound and scope.

I'm not horrifically upset by the band's breakup. I'm not even really upset. I am a little wistful, though, as I sit here and think back to the hours I spent flipping through the CD booklets and listening to the music, trying to piece together what the songs were about. The early albums especially, Murmur through Fables of the Reconstruction, were as culturally alien to me as anything I'd ever heard--I knew nothing of the lore of the South, and I shared no cultural common ground with what Stipe mumbled about. I have no grand conclusion to draw from R.E.M.'s breakup, but it has given me a chance to go back and re-listen to some fantastic music. So, here are some of my favourites.

"Leave"

"Country Feedback"

"You"

*Another source for my fascination with representations of academics? Perhaps. I didn't think of that until right this minute.