The Music Box.
Entries about the music I like.
Omicron Records // John Coltrane – Blue Train
Given my being down with what appears to be Omicron, if I were to write anything at all, it would have to require little to no looking at a screen. This is great for confessional rambling to the sound of John Coltrane’s classic, Blue Train, but useless if you actually wanted to know anything about Blue Train, other than the fact that it is among my favourite jazz records.
Thoughts on the Associates' Party Fears Two
On Party Fears Two, the Associates’ Billy Mackenzie makes 1 odd vocal choice after another; he takes chances that would be recommended by neither vocal coach nor armchair music nerd. But it’s because of these choices that when I try to describe the sound of the single, I think not to say early new wave, or minimally arranged proto-eighties, or melodic synth-based post-punk.
Culture // Music of the Week / Aug 22, 2021
This week's playlist is about culture. Culture isn’t the language you speak. Culture is holding the door open for the person walking behind you when there’s nobody on the other side to prostrate over your generosity. Culture is living within your means. Culture is attempting to buy respect or love or loyalty when you can’t be arsed to earn it.
Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Dropped on September 18, 2001, in an America deeply embroiled in that nation’s largest collective post-war trauma, Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtot became an accidental synecdoche. Sonically, the album captured something of the upheaval and incongruity of that era in the history of America and the world, while lyrically striking a tone of surreal apathy.
Deltron 3030 – Deltron 3030
Deltron 3030 is a rare artefact; it’s an hour-long hip-hop concept album about Deltron Zero, a hacker mecha-human from the year 3030, and his fight against an evil new world order that suppresses hip-hop and oppresses the people of the world. Del The Funky Homosapien (of Clint Eastwood fame) supplies the rhymes, and Dan The Automator provides the beats and atmospherics.
Mclusky – Mclusky Do Dallas
The components of a Mclusky track are simple: Falco’s shout-singing, supported by his hooky guitar and John Chapple’s crunchy, riffy bass, both distorted to the max, backed by Jack Egglestone’s four-bar metronomic battering of studio drums recorded in the natural, live-sound style of Steve Albini. Music like this is cathartic, a strange sort of meditation.
Slow & Steady // Music of the Week / WS 17-May-21
This week’s playlist has served as a soundtrack to my efforts to count my blessings, name them one by one, and stay the course, to just keep going: be it with Stranger Fiction, with work, or with life. It starts with the nightchill downtempo of A Forest Mighty Black’s Duo Trippin’ and ends with Kendrick Lamar telling you 'we’re going to be all right.'
A Forest Mighty Black – Mellowdramatic
I’ve spent the better part of the last month listening to the best album of nineties trip-hop I’ve heard from mainland Europe: Mellowdramatic by Freiburg’s A Forest Mighty Black. Its pitch is simple: it does something easy masterfully. Boom-bap inspired beats serve as a backdrop to light electric piano noodling and slow-moving basslines that engulf the album’s tracks.
Laybak // Music of the Week / WS 28-Mar-21
The word of this week is fursat: leisure time. My favourite spot in my new apartment is my fursat space: a bed surrounded by speakers and a screen. The music of the last week has been music experienced from atop a mattress that doubles up as a theatre-for-one, eking out every last second of fursat. I’ve been rediscovering fuzzy guitars and spare hip-hop beats.
Aesop Rock – The Impossible Kid
Every city is a city unwilling to acknowledge that its primary inhabitants are the lonely. It’s like Aesop Rock asks in Dorks, ‘if I died in my apartment like a rat in a cage, will the neighbours smell the corpse before the cat eats my face?’ Morbid. Maybe unnecessarily so? But is it really a far-off concern for the average inhabitant of the average post-industrial city?
Hope • Reset // Music of the Week / WS 21-Mar-21
It’s hard for me to talk about the last two weeks from a musical perspective because so much has happened in my life outside of music. I’ve alluded to the personal and professional changes in my life, so I won’t go into the tacticals here. I will, however, take this time to reflect on what those changes have meant for me emotionally and psychologically.
From Bam Bam to Bam Bam
Starting from Sister Nancy’s Bam Bam, the playlist obeys the following rule until it circles back to Toots and the Maytals’ Bam Bam. Each track from Bam Bam to Bam Bam is directly related to the previous one, either because their artists have collaborated, or they share producers, or an artist has released a prominent cover of the other artist.
파란노을 (Parannoul) – To See the Next Part of the Dream
After decades online, you can tell when you're listening to something that's going to become forum famous. As the intro of White Ceiling floods through my newly-set-up home theatre system, I can imagine years of greentext word-walls and /mu/ shitposts written by kids that look like younger versions of myself talking about that night they discovered Parannoul.
Everything & 1 Half // Music of the Week / WS 7 Mar 2021
It’s all been a little everything and a half last week. Musically, I deviated from the previous three weeks of punk, and explored the many worlds of electronic music. I’m likely to occupy this space for a while longer. In fact, but for Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping, you’re going to find virtually no obvious references to punk and its offshoots in this week’s playlist.
Shawn Rudiman – Conduit and Flow State
What’s truly enviable isn’t the rarified air of Mount Stupid. It’s the confidence that comes with true mastery. Yes it’s a fleeting confidence. But that’s the gold standard, I’ve always felt. That’s the quality I’ve found in Shawn Rudiman’s twin techno-adjacent tapes Conduit and Flow State, released in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
The Calm // Music of the Week / WS 28 Feb 2021
I’m about to take my next professional plunge, and am about to also take my next residential plunge, so this has been a week of planning, anticipation, and anxiety. As I sit down to write this week’s column, I’ve spent the last seven days running from house to house, furniture shop to furniture shop, and introduction to introduction. My mood is one of cautious excitement.
Various Artists – Simla Beat '70 and '71
The idea that a battle of the bands competition like Simla Beat even existed, with bands coming to Shanmukhananda Hall from all over India is proof of three things. One, that where there are teenagers, there will be idealism. Two, that those who braved incredible odds to form rock bands are indeed worthy of respect. And three, that psych rock really transcended cultures.
CHAI – PUNK
CHAI’s PUNK is an idiosyncratic mix of dance, punk, and J-pop. The Nagoya four-piece’s second album is both a bundle of joy and a statement of rebellion against modern (mostly Japanese) society’s view of women. Of the several albums I’ve spoken about in the past few years, including the ones I’ve featured on Stranger Fiction, it’s one of the few that are outright joyous.
Evolution // Music of the Week / WS 21 Feb 2021
I know it isn't good to toot one's own horn, but I really love the new-look Music of the Week. I spend most of the week really looking forward to writing it. It feels like a cathartic outburst of untrammeled self-expression, and reminds me of the reason I started writing stories in the first place. Twelve years ago, I published my first story online.
On Cambodian Rocks, a compilation of Cambodian psych rock from the 70s
Cambodian Rocks can be seen through two lenses. One, through the lens of historical significance. Two, through the lens of its being great music, which it absolutely is. Throughout the album, there are uniquely Cambodian scales and vocal stylings overlaid on the sort of American psych-rock that must’ve flowed in from neighbouring Vietnam during the American War there.