What are you listening to now? : Non-metal Edition

While working on my goth metal chart, I'm also gonna be working on my goth rock chart.  I've only heard about 45 albums for each genre, and practically no deathrock, so now's as good a time as any to get through some Christian Death albums.  Thing is, I find them overhyped.  Most of their songs sound the same, and I don't like how the singer limits himself to only one style of half-talk half-sing crooning.  The first two albums were pretty good, but Ashes is getting a bit boring in comparison.  Shame, I was looking forward to that "dark cabaret" influence RYM tagged it with.  Obviously, Tom Waits does it better.

Christian Death is a really weird band because arguably most of their career has basically just been living up to the fame of their first three albums, even just the first, for however long they've been going on, and barely anyone on those albums was still around even in the '90s IIRC. Considering how long they've been at it, you'd think more of their albums would have something interesting. The other long-lived goth band I can think of, Inkubus Sukkubus, even if they don't set the world on fire, at least make one song that's interesting per album.

If you're still listening to goth rock, might I suggest Human Drama and Autumn?

I like the obscure stuff.  Thanks.

MIKE - Burning Desire (2023)

Genres: Abstract Hip Hop, East Coast Hip Hop

Gonna catch up on my 2023 some by listening to some new albums RYM seems to love.  I find MIKE to be a bit overhyped, but I want to get into more hip hop anyway.  So far I like each individual piece, and the progression of its concept is going fairly well.  But the problem with this is that repeating the same simple beat doesn't give any piece to progress, so the switch from one type of song to another is a little bit jarring.  It's like modern hip hop is taking way too much influence off of side B of Abbey Road, which was more consistent and melodic.

I've finally gotten around to The Life of Pablo.  Some of it's brilliant, and some of the shorter tracks are too short and some of the longer tracks drag a little, so it had a lot of potential and lived up to most of it.  Better than Graduation.  94/100.

And now... my 13,000th album.

Planet Hemp - A invasão do sagaz homem fumaça (2000)

Genres: Rap Rock, Conscious Hip Hop

Looking through my log, I noticed: I don't have very many rap rock albums up there.  I've never had a rap rock binge, likely because few people seem to take it very seriously.  Well, since I'm back on a hip hop binge, and since the RYM charts have recorded over 1200 rap rock albums, mixtapes and EP's, I decided now was a good time as any to check out the genre.  However, I am NOT into RATM, so I didn't head to them.  I wanted to try somebody totally new to me.  Looking through each album's genre tags to see what I might like, I came to this Brazilian band which apparently included punk, dub and samba into their mix.  That sounded like a WILD ride, so

I have to say, for a consistently attitudinal album loaded with catchy and maybe poppy beats, this was one of the most varied albums I've ever heard. Each song has its own strong identity with different levels of attitude, different kinds of beats and genres, and some variations in rapping styles between the two MC's.  There was practically no way to tell what was going to happen next.  I mean, beat-wise, it took creative genius to keep it this catchy and experimental at the same time.  They made room for a couple of punk songs (one of which is constantly changing in its two minute runtime without ever losing its aura), and they even start off one song with a very psychedelic samba chorus before switching into hip hop with those same instruments playing.  They found a way to surprise me with a hip hop verse IN a hip hop album.  Damn.

Even on our third-to-last track, Quarta De Cinzas shos the band's fascinating ability to balance out hip hop vibes with the folksier instruments of their native home.  The beats and melodies are constantly operating at full power, and so every song is catchy in its own way.  But if I had to pick one song to take with me, it would be that beautiful song I just mentioned.  And the best part?  They follow it up with a hardcore punk song, and then with a reggae hip hop track as a closer, and it feels so right because they already used stronger hip hop influences in the earlier tracks to set up the atmosphere for the controlled chaos that makes the album so enigmatic.  In other words, this is almost an experimental album in the sense that the band has incredible passion for the whole world of music and not just for hip hop, and that's the kind of passion I find rare in modern hip hop.  Only a few highly diverse artists like Tyler the Creator and Death Grips have that special brand of musical passion.

No skips, no bad songs, all surprises and hip hop attitude.  This 2000 album is practically a tribute to all those 90's genres that the radio burnt out, but also justifying what was so beloved about each one.  I honestly can't believe what I've heard.  This is the kind of rap rock album I would've done, although I might've chosen different genres.  Plant Hemp needs to make more albums, they really do.  This album alone proves that they had a creative capacity on par with the future artist Tyler the Creator.  I'm thinking this is a top ten hip hop album for me.  In fact, I'm seriously considering putting this in my top 100.

100/100

Various Artists - "Angola Prison Spirituals" (1959)

Queensrÿche - "Empire" (1990)

The Washington progressive metal kings' fourth full-length is the first & only one of their records that I bought immediately upon release, fresh off the back of being blown away by the title track on underground metal radio. It's a beautifully produced record too with stunning performances from all of the contributors, particularly super-talented front man Geoff Tate. What I wasn't quite prepared for was the more commercially accessible sound that the band had opted for on this occasion though & it took a bit of adjusting to. You see, "Empire" isn't technically a metal record as it only contains a couple of metal tunes which also happen to be the highlights of the album (see "Empire" & "One & Only"). The rest of the record sits very much in the progressive rock & hard rock space, sounding kinda like a more complex version of "Hysteria"-period Def Leppard more than anything else. Now, that's not a problem in itself & there is no doubt some of Queensrÿche's best material to be found here in patches but there are some clear inconsistencies in the quality of the song-writing that I find to be an issue. The wins (like the wonderfully seep & stripped-back prog rocker "Della Brown") certainly outweigh the losses & make "Empire" worth exploring but radio-friendly tracks like "Jet City Woman", "Another Rainy Night (Without You)" & "Resistance" & "Hand on Heart" go a long way to convincing me that this was the least impressive Queensrÿche release to the time.

3.5/5

Interesting. When I was still listening to Queensryche, I thought of Empire as a continuation of the more commercial heavy metal direction from Operation: Mindcrime, though with less progressive focus, and only a few lighter songs for the radio (*cough* "Silent Lucidity" *cough*). Promised Land would further deviate from their metal roots before the band dropped most of it in Hear in the Now Frontier, as far as I can remember. I'm gonna have to revisit and review Empire and Promised Land to make my memories with those albums clearer and determine which of them are metal. It's not explicitly part of my side of the Roots of Metal project because the band started in the 80s, but it's a nice continuation to the concept.

Be my guest Andi. Just bear in mind that my call on the metal credentials of “Empire” has nothing to do with how heavy the album is as hard rock can often be just as heavy as heavy metal in my opinion. In stating that the album doesn’t warrant a primary metal tag I’m simply saying that for the majority of the album the instrumentalists are employing rock techniques rather than metal ones.

Rory Gallagher - "Wheels Within Wheels" (2003)

Deep Purple - "Shades of Deep Purple" (1968)

Despite being included on Metal Archives & receiving a dual Hard Rock/Heavy Psych primary tag on RYM, Deep Purple's debut album shouldn't really qualify as anything more than your standard psychedelic rock model. There's only really one track that I'd suggest is heavy psych ("Mandrake Root") while there's bugger all hard rock to speak of. It's not a bad record though. I don't mind it.

My day's likely going to be spent with DJ Shadow.  He's got a new one out and I've only heard his debut and a singles compilation.

A few blues records from the weekend:

Eric Clapton - "Sessions for Robert J" (2004)

Son Seals - "The Son Seals Blues Band" (1973)

Freddie King - "My Feeling For The Blues" (1970)

Raphael Weinroth-Browne - "Worlds Within" (2021)

Described to me as "layers and layers of cello" which is one of my favourite instruments and so I was straight on this within minutes.  Soul soothing stuff.

If you enjoy Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Vinny, I strongly recommend you check out The Visit's 2015 album Through Darkness Into Light. It was my AOTY for 2015 and features Weinroth-Browne on cello and piano with vocalist Heather Sita Black. It's a beautiful album that deserves to be much more highly acclaimed than it is. In fact, I am going to go and listen to it again now.

If you enjoy Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Vinny, I strongly recommend you check out The Visit's 2015 album Through Darkness Into Light. It was my AOTY for 2015 and features Weinroth-Browne on cello and piano with vocalist Heather Sita Black. It's a beautiful album that deserves to be much more highly acclaimed than it is. In fact, I am going to go and listen to it again now.

Cheers Sonny.

Forcing myself onto an avant-garde jazz kick to see if I can get a few more jazz albums in my top 1000.

A good starting point if you wanna check out free jazz.  It's a little more accessible than all the free jazz I've heard so far.

To maintain my music log's balance in ratings, I gotta listen to a couple of albums that I'll likely think suck before heading to an avant-garde jazz album, because apparently bad avant-garde jazz albums are more difficult to find than I thought.  So I'm checking out the first bad band I can think of that I haven't checked albums out from yet, and today it was Tokio Hotel.  They really don't suck as bad as people said, but they're very standard, like Busted standard.

Today's jazz album's going to be Pharoah Sanders' Thembi.  More on that later.

Pharoah Sanders - Thembi (1971)

Genres: Spiritual Jazz

Pharoah Sanders is a personal favorite of mine for his heavily spiritual sound, more so than the more consistent artist John Coltrane.  Coltrane was a master of many things, but two people beat him in the spiritual atmosphere department: Pharoah Sanders and Coltrane's own Wife.  The thing is, Thembi is a bit overambitious.  This album is infamous for having six very different types of songs, and thus the consistency is damaged.  We have a slower fusion track taking the intro, but immediately after is a rambling mess of artistic recreations of nails on chalkboard made to sound like an orchestra.  And though it definitely succeeds at this, this is as great an inconsistency issue as "21st Century Schizoid Man" and "I Talk to the Wind."  We even have a five minute exclusively bass-driven solo on Side B.  And most of these songs are absolutely gorgeous, and potentially jazz classics.  The problem is that the ALBUM as a whole is a beautiful mess.

93/100

Robbie Basho - The Voice of the Eagle (1972)

Genre: American Primitivism

This is one of the most beautiful albums I've ever heard.

Glass Beach - Plastic Death (2024)

Genres: Indie Rock, Art Rock

At the risk of sounding like Diane Chambers, I have to say, this is the most innovative albums I've heard in the vein of balancing melody with genre experimentation.  It's incredibly balanced and consistent, yet surprises me constantly.  The only flaw is a simple one: while the lyrics are charmingly cryptic, they don't have that personal grip that other cryptic artists like Paul Simon do.  It's a little "too" cryptic and random at times.  Of course, I'm only halfway through.  There has to be a major screwup for me not to give this five stars by this point, and they just pulled out the violin for an indie ballad.

Shpongle - Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland

Genres: Psybient, Psytrance

Trance is loaded with many generic, repetitive and overlong albums.  This is not the case here.  This is proper psybient, with many unpredictable and constantly progressing songs.  I admit it's difficult to take a band named "Shpongle" seriously, despite the fact that they invented a relevant and influential genre in the EDM scene.  But this is an album of pure intelligence, having shown that the style they've been supposedly forming since their debut is now at full force.  The genre-tagging on RYM is way off.  There's not just psytance / psybient, here; this is a very experimental album with a perfect flow.  I don't even know what genre I'd call this song.

I've never been able to get into Shpongle, despite having quite an appetite for Psybient & the darker end of Psytrance during my 2000's electronic music heyday. They were simply too quirky for my taste.

I've never been able to get into Shpongle, despite having quite an appetite for Psybient & the darker end of Psytrance during my 2000's electronic music heyday. They were simply too quirky for my taste.

Quirky is exactly what I love... as long as it doesn't mess with the flow.

Speaking of quirky...

Exuma - Penny Sausage

Genre: Caribbean Folk

After this album, I'll be only one album away from hearing the full Exuma catalog.  His late-career albums have been way harder to find over the last few years, but now the only one I need is From Africa to America to Junkanoo to Armageddon, which I only found the opening track for.