Howdy traveler. It’s been a while. I wanna talk about music for a bit. I love sharing about music a bit. I’m thoroughly fatigued by Spotify, their crummy business model, and corporate surveillance. Let’s talk about some of the music I thoroughly enjoyed this past year!

Friendlier stuff

The Free Triple Live Album by Deerhoof

A 1-bit image of the album art for Deerhoof's The Free Triple Live Album. One guitar player is in center-focus, surrounded by other band members in soft focus in front of and behind them. The album name is rendered in a bold, all-caps sans-serif font, right-justified and set in the top right corner.

Hey kids. Do you like independent rock and roll music? Check out Deerhoof, dudes. I’m a life-long wannabe drummer, so I am forever delighted by the expressive stuff Greg Saunier does with a drum kit. Deerhoof is chock-full of skilled musicians and engineers just making stellar stuff.

some rap songs by Earl Sweatshirt

1-bit version of the album art for Earl Sweatshirt's some rap songs. Earl Sweatshirt (Thebe Kgositsile) is photographed in what appears to be a selfie. He grins widely. The shutter speed on the camera is low, so his movement creates significant blur. As a result, his features are smeared and stretched.

A richly textured work, pulsing with compassion and sadness. Reflections on family and self via caring collage. Samples pop, jump, and hiss. Kgositsile arrives and departs in spurts, sharing the spotlight with the assemblage of clipped vocalizations, declarations, words of thanks, and verses of poetry. His lyrics take precedence only by virtue of quantity. Like looking through old family photos with tears in your eyes. This might be one of my all-time favorite records.

Beat the Champ by The Mountain Goats

1-bit version of album art for The Mountain Goat's Beat the Champ. An illustration depicts a long-haired wrestler leaping through the air to kick his masked opponent. A referee watches from the side of the ring. A large crowd looks on from behind the wrestlers. The band name and album title span the top of the artwork

A Mountain Goats record about professional wrestling. Vivid, loving renderings of wrestling melodrama, mythmaking, worries, and work hazards.

"Butch 4 Butch" by Rio Romeo

A 1-bit image of the album art for Rio Romeo's Butch 4 Butch. A toy piano seems to float in space, surrounded by sparkles. A sculpture of a rainbow and clouds sits atop the piano.

Gay piano? Quavering singing about social performance?? Heavy rotation.

Scarier stuff

Cool World by Chat Pile

1-bit version of the album art for Chat Pile's Cool World. The band's spooky logo appears at the top, on a black background. The background creates a frame for a photograph in the lower 2/3rds, which looks like hills near a US highway, where a large cross and utility poles stand above the horizon.

If someone hasn’t already recommended Chat Pile to you then here I am, recommending Chat Pile to you. A concussive, scary, and emotional noise rock album. A soundtrack for writhing in distress. Haunted guitars moan and rumble. Snares crack like bones.

As Spoken by Knoll

This is some spectacularly dramatic blackened grindcore right here Traveler! What if you were stuck in the spin cycle of an unbalanced eldritch washing machine with an unabridged English thesaurus (complimentary)? Come for the noise, stay for the refined compositions and inscrutable lyrics. A band of fell creatures issuing recondite cacophony.

Infinite Mortality by Replicant

A 1-bit image of the album art for Replicant's Infinite Mortality. A figure is suspended in spider webs, surrounded by other robed figures, who circle them in an omimnous, ritualistic pattern. The band's scraggly, spooky logo is set to the right of the suspended figure.

An appropriate companion to Knoll. I’m gonna have to talk with you about what seems to be a tradition of convoluted, at times underwhelming, lyrics in metal, traveler. For now let’s just say the track title “Shrine to the Incomprehensible” is apt. Sick big tech death noise. I came upon this’n late in the year, but spent a lot of time dancing with it in those later, colder months. When I’m not here tending to the blog, you can find me in the kitchen shaking my ass to Infinite Mortality.

compound turbulence flexing for the heat by Ira Glass

1-bit version of the album art for Ira Glass' compound turbulence flexing for the heat. The bands name and album name appear in an elegant and uniform handwritten typeface, in the top left and bottom right corners, respectively. In the center, an sits an uknown device, like a sinister leg brace with spiked wheels at the foot end.

I’m nothing if not a sucker for freaky rhythms and harsh saxophone. A deep, dark assemblage of flitting woe and thundering dread. Have you listened to this thing? Listen to this thing. A nice contrast to the ways Knoll and Replicant sometimes falter under the weight of their excess. Ambiguity and understatement in the liner notes pair with Ira Glass’s varied howls, yowls, and murmurs to unnerve and upset beautifully.

Desolation's Flower by Ragana

1-bit version of the album art for Ragana's Desloation's Flower. In the center, the two members of Ragana, Maria and Coley, sit back-to-back behind a large bouquet of flowers. Their faces are reflected and arrayed in a ring around them.

I drink deeply from this sacred pool of tears. Ragana leverage the drama of their music to voice a poignant and furious love, brimming with reverence for the living world around us. Concise. Devastating. Electrifying.

All of Heaven's Luck by Rejoice

1-bit version of the album art for Rejoice's All of Heaven's Luck. A figure is rendered in big splotches of paint. Their mouth, brow, and eye sockets are heavily defined by shadow. The shadow overwhelms their figure from the neck down. They blur partially into the smeary background they stand in front of.

Nasty snarling anti-capitalist hardcore. Get in the pit and punch me in the face, fellow traveler 🤘😎🤘

Post Script

I think it’s really neat to see how many times my friends listened to "Redwine Supernova". It’s fun to be surprised by a record of your day-to-day behavior! However, I fear that big, high-resolution streaming media is not a sustainable model. It most certainly isn’t sustainable when media companies go out of their way to underpay and undermine the workers that make media possible.

To support artists, consider buying DRM-free music directly from artists through platforms like Bandcamp (Bandcamp is complicated still, as evidenced by recent songtradr acuisition and union-busting, but it’s a heck of a lot better than Spotify, I tell you what traveler). You can also use web stores like 7Digital in the US to buy DRM-free music from artists that aren’t on Bandcamp (why is 7digital never listed in mainstream artist’s “Listen to my album” pages?)

To learn about new music, Bandcamp is pretty awesome. Browse some music. You will find something sick. Go to your freakin' public library. You will find something sick. Also consider looking on freakscene to see what's going on in your area!

May we forever see striking art. May we help the artists that show us beauty in the world breathe easy. We deserve it, traveler.