The Music Box.
Entries about the music I like.
H O P E // a mixtape to self
Some time in 2016, I clearly felt something intensely enough to make a neck-breaking playlist of punk, post-punk, and alternative songs running at a tempo of 150 bpm +. While I was 4 years younger then, my neck was not made of rubber; I have no idea what it was that I was so enraged by that it allowed me to a make this muscular a mix without suffering any serious whiplash.
Disco Inferno – The 5 EPs
Music like the 5 EPs triggers an oddly specific sense of nostalgia for no obvious reason. I didn’t grow up listening to experimental alt-rock by a band that attached MIDI triggers to their instruments, triggering evolving samples with each strum, with each snare hit. In fact, the vocabulary of this sort of music would’ve seemed completely alien to me in the mid-90s.
12 RODS — Split Personalities
12 RODS' Split Personalities is among the most cathartic experiences in modern rock history. Existing in that weird valley between hard rock, alternative, and indie, every song in the album is a cathartic burst made for days as blue as its album cover. And Red, song 2 from the album is my candidate for best hard indie rock song ever.
Reuben — Racecar is Racecar Backwards
This record taught me three important things. First, it taught me that racecar is indeed racecar backwards, whoda thunk it? Second, it taught me that I had shed my distaste for sing-then-shout vocals. It was possible for me to exit the ‘either shout or sing well, choose one’ camp. Third, it taught me that I could fall in love with an album primarily based on the (analog) drumming, which is what contributed to my first several listens of this album many years ago.
First message in a bottle
At the start of the covid crisis, which, for many people, started at the helm of other crises, I started sharing happy dispatches including a few of my favourite things to make it easier to get through the crisis. These include songs, stories, writings, movies, et al. The first dispatch is a playlist and a colour that I really like.