Fives on Friday, 1/26/2024
Writers on video games, a video game podcast on writing, and more!
Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five recommendations, five track reviews, and five album micro reviews. Access to these curated links and tunes will only cost you your time and five pieces of self-promotion. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or do this weekend. See you next week!
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With all that’s going wrong in the industry and with all of the competition for people’s time and attention, it’s easy to fall into a cycle of self-doubt about whether its worth it to even continue writing new tunes. God bless Black Bird Spy Plane for this well considered and soul searching essay about whether the world “needs” more of anything. While the subject of this essay is clothing, many of the arguments apply to any art form, as does the conclusion: only do this if you truly love it.
I loved this piece by Hanif Abdurraqib about replaying Red Dead Redemption 2 during the COVID lockdowns. For all of the ink spilt about the power fantasies that video games indulge in, the medium is also perfect for evoking feelings of powerlessness in the face of the inevitable. I’ve never played Red Dead, but I can certainly relate to replaying a video game and desperately trying & failing to change its outcome.
On the subject of video games, I’ve been going through the Insert Credit podcast archives while waiting for new episodes. I really enjoyed this older episode where Brandon Sheffield, Frank Cifaldi and Tim Rogers abandon the usual focus on video games to instead go deep on their thoughts on writing in general. Longtime subscribers will know that I am a massive Rogers acolyte, so hearing him speak plainly about his process and writing philosophy was an absolute treat. Maybe you’ll get something out of it too!
The more I learn about music outside of the Anglophone world, the more humbled I am by the web of connections across the globe that don’t involve the United States one bit. Case in point: this Burning Ambulance piece traces how one Fela Kuti song became a regional favorite in Colombia.
My friend and frequent Lamniformes Radio guest Langdon Hickman just hosted the second of his on-going critical examinations of Kazuo Ishiguro’s corpus on his podcast Death//Sentence. This episode covers An Artist Of The Floating World, a novel that I haven’t read but seems right up my alley. Even if you too have not read any Ishiguro, this pod is worth a listen for how Langdon tackles the trope of the guilt-ridden war criminal in post-WW2 literature.
# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #
Speaking of Langdon Hickman, he and Kosmogyr singer Ivan Belcic joined me for a Lamniformes Radio roundtable about the surprising reunion of drummer Mike Portnoy and the progressive metal titans Dream Theater. I regard my ability to speak with confidence about Dream Theater to be something of a curse, so I appreciated the company for this conversation about Portnoy’s influence on us as drummers, Dream Theater’s long career, and what we expect from this reunion.
Fresh off our rousing performance at Windjammer, Laughing Stock are returning to the stage of February 2nd in Manhattan! This gig is going to be a much smaller affair than the last few, so if you’re interested in coming out hit me up directly and I’ll share the details.
Bellows are back, baby! After a winter hibernation, we’re returning to the stage to open for Frog at the Knitting Factory on March 15th, alongside our homies in Sister. This will be the first time I’ve performed at Knitting Factory since the venue moved back to Manhattan. Exciting!
I planned to have the latest entry of Drumming Upstream out this week, but I ended up having a lot more to say about High on Fire than I expected. Instead DU#41, in which I learned how to play “Cometh Down Hessian” and consider the pros and cons of being a heavy metal lifer, will arrive in the inboxes of my paying subscribers on Monday. If that sounds interesting to you, consider subscribing now for only $5 a month!
Speaking of Monday, I have a call scheduled with my label that afternoon to go over plans for the next Lamniformes album, The Lonely Atom. I’m unbelievably excited to share these new tunes with you, and I have some fun surprises on the way that will set the stage for the album and give you a sense of what I’ve been up to for the last few years. In the meantime, I’d encourage you to check out my latest single “Prayer of the Open Plain”. In fact, why not watch the music video, made up of edited footage from my last full USA tour:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a playlist with all of this year’s tracks at the bottom of this section.
“First Yoke” by Daniel Romano (How Ill Thy World Is Ordered, 2020)
Luc Swift recommended this album to me while we were recording some tunes for Dan Rico’s Fictionss. I bet you can connect the dots to how Daniel Romano’s Outfit came up in conversation. This tune does a fine job answering the question of what if Springsteen instead specifically asked for a junior Ginger Baker when looking for a new drummer. Heartland rock with heroic horn arrangements and an absolute energizer bunny behind the kit.
“Suspiro en la Eternidad” by Vórtize (Desde Bajo Tierra, 2023)
I wrote about Vórtize briefly in my 2023 best-of list. If that blurb didn’t convince you to check them out maybe this tune will. “Suspiro en la Eternidad” has just about everything I want from a retro metal tune. Memorable vocal melodies, a memorable solo, and thrilling finish. It’s the simple tricks that go the furthest, like having a descending melody in the verse and an ascending one in the chorus, or using a nylon acoustic guitar for the solo instead of an electric one. This track overflows with personality.
“Never The Same River” by Harry Stafylakis (Calibrating Friction, 2023)
In this house, winter is a time for prog rock. Perhaps you could already tell from the podcast about Dream Theater. This tradition stems from the same impulse that leads people to hunker down with the meatiest of the classic Russian novels when the temperature drops. By the way, I’m about 200 pages into a 1455 page copy of War and Peace and let me tell you, that book rocks. If you also seek something long, complicated, and deeply rewarding in the colder months then you should get a load of this guy. Stafylakis takes a Hollywood-ready piano motif and slowly cracks it open, revealing a teeming mass of rhythmic tensions that spill out into a disjointed prog rock jam before receding back into near silence.
“Dysnomia” by Dawn of Midi (Dysnomia, 2013)
Here’s another rhythm-centric track, though Dawn of Midi are working with a much smaller batch of tools. Three instruments, piano, stand-up bass, and drums, and about as many notes between them. Dawn of Midi forgo melody and harmony almost entirely, instead focusing solely on rhythm to build and release tension. If you enjoy the brain flossing effect of Horse Lords, or wish you could listen to a Meshuggah song in a classier setting, this one is for you.
“Timber, part 4” by Michael Gordon (Timber, 2011)
Lamniformes percussionist Adam Holmes sent me this record while we were brainstorming about arrangement ideas for an upcoming EP. Gordon takes Steve Reich’s concept of rhythmic phasing and applies it to blocks of wood. As the differently pitched blocks move in and out of sync with each other the resonance from each strike start to overlap in increasingly strange ways. I imagine you’ll either find this meditative or anxiety inducing depending on your disposition. Will it have an impact on how the next Lamniformes EP sounds? Only time will tell.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Now, onto the five micro reviews. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.
Nova Lux by Mustard Gas and Roses (2006) - Ambient
Mike Gallagher of Isis’s solo project. I bought this after seeing Isis live in 2006.1 Mostly ambient guitar loops and effects. Perhaps a slight record on its own, but it’s an enlightening accompaniment to the Isis discography. It is helpful to hear how Gallagher’s sensibilities and guitar playing differ from Aaron Turner’s. Useful context to hear Isis’s music anew with greater clarity.
Yellow & Green by Baroness (2012) - Brewer Metal
A turning point record for this band away from metal and toward a type of metallic hard rock. More studio experiments & bigger choruses. A record that audibly stretches what this band is about. It was received to mixed reviews. I bought this after college. I felt it was too long at the time, and I feel like it’s too long now. “Eula” and “Green Theme” are terrific though, and I like the ambition of redefining what this band was capable of. FWIW this material is great live.
Terminal Spirit Disease by At The Gates (1994) - Death Metal
The middle point between At The Gates’ early counterpoint style and their later streamlined all-hooks style. I bought this while working my way backwards from Slaughter of the Soul, so I thought this was cool but not a big deal. Returning to it I had forgotten, and taken for granted, just how good At The Gates are. They’re still working out some kinks on this EP, but all their best qualities are here.
Red Album by Baroness (2007) - Brewer Metal
One of the only albums I ever bought entirely on the strength of its art and promo sticker (“Recommended If You Like: Mastodon, Explosions in the Sky, Clutch, High on Fire, Mogwai, Isis, Municipal Waste” I like most of those bands!). This record and its sequel are the moment where brewer metal became a “thing” imo. Nonstop guitar interplay on top of a locked in rhythm section. That sticker could just as easily reference Thin Lizzy, Rush, and Television (that might be a stretch, but it’s what I’m hearing). It is not a surprise that this band got as big as they did.
Frances The Mute by The Mars Volta (2005) - Progressive Rock
This album cover was everywhere on the music forums I visited in the 00s. Hard to square how a band making music this long winded and over the top were so popular for a spell. I loved this album in part because it could cover my commute both to and from high school. The lyrics are beautiful nonsense and the music is incredible. A combination of classic prog/fusion styles with post hardcore, huge grooves, salsa breakdowns, and ambient noise. An essential 21st century prog album imo.