Fives on Friday, 3/1/2024
Fan Cramp Buy Day!
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!
» » » » » GET REC’D « « « « «
Here’s a long read but a good read from Brandon Taylor on the importance of “Moral Worldbuilding” in fiction. I’m very out of touch with modern literary fiction so I don’t have much context for the books that Taylor is critiquing in this essay, but the broader points about the influence of cinema and restricting interiority are very interesting.
I’d wager that some of my subscribers are here because of my podcast The Human Instrumentality Podcast where Joseph Schafer and I talk about old anime and kaiju movies. Those subscribers might find this piece in The Baffler about the new English translations of Shigeru Kayama’s original short story treatments for Godzilla and Godzilla Raids Again worth a read.
My friend Daniel Ott sent me this incredible little website dedicated to the greatness of Final Fantasy VIII. I know that sounds like the kind of thing you’d stumble across on the internet in 2005, but this one is brand new. If you’ve been craving the weird, wacky, idiosyncratic old web and agree that Final Fantasy VIII is grossly underrated compared to its predecessor, then this one is for you.
On the subject of low-scale passion projects on the web, I’m enjoying this YouTube channel that does sitcom episode length reviews of 1970s prog rock albums. I especially appreciate the details about album budgets and the extravagant lifestyles these dorks were living when prog was a big ticket genre.
While I was writing my lengthy Barbenheimer essay I had to carefully balance keeping up with what the rest of the world was saying about the movies and consciously avoiding pieces that might hue too close to what I was going for. This is how I’ve only just read Brian Phillips take on Oppenheimer for The Ringer. No surprise that we both ended up going with a flashy non-linear structure. I think it’s obvious that I like that movie a whole bunch, but I think Phillip’s observation about how Nolan’s clinical approach clashes with the subject matter is a smart one!
# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #
GOOOOOOD MOOOOOOORNING!!!!! It is Bandcamp Friday RIGHT NOW. Holy cow! That means it’s the best day for me to sell you music on the website Bandcamp because they’ll let me keep all the money instead of taking a cut for themselves. Does this mean it’s the best day for you to buy music? How should I know? If it is, well, you’re in luck! I’d recommend the Lamniformes album Sisyphean and its remixed companion You Can’t Do This Alone. If you like them both, why not buy a shirt?
If you’d prefer that your hard earned cash goes somewhere more useful than my pockets consider purchasing For Palestine. This compilation, organized by the good folks at GUNK, is raising proceeds for the Palestinian Youth Movement and Anera. It features tracks from Mutual Benefit, Frankie Cosmos, my buddies in Told Slant and Small Wonder, and many, many others.
Speaking of the GUNK crew, I’ll be sharing the stage with them on March 15th when Bellows and Sister open for Frog at the Knitting Factory. It's the first Bellows show of 2024 and we might have some brand new tracks ready to play for you!
If you’re an avid television watcher there’s a chance you’re already a couple episodes deep into Shogun, the new series on FX. A few years ago The Human Instrumentality Podcast had the absolute pleasure of talking to Emily Yoshida about Evangelion 3+1: Thrice Upon A Time. Near the end of the conversation Yoshida told us she was working in the writer’s room on Shogun and you can hear Joseph and I collectively lose our minds. Congrats to Emily Yoshida and the rest of the Shogun team!
This is your last warning. On Monday my paid subscribers will receive something extremely cool. Join the club now for $5 a month to receive this special surprise along with access to the full Drumming Upstream Archives. As a result of this extra exciting bonus, March’s Behind The Kit is being pushed back to April. New entries of Drumming Upstream are on the way as well. Everything’s coming up Lamniformes!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 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.
“Called, Invoked, having been summoned” by Ingri Høyland (Ode to Stone, 2023)
In my on going effort to complicate the narrative that Pitchfork “went pop”, here’s a slow-burning composition that I wouldn’t have heard of without Phillip Sherburne’s review of Ode to Stone. Absent its title this track might sound like a pleasant, if melancholy, ambient track. True to its name however, the piece ends with a monstrous low end drone that rises out of the depths. Big fan of the way the electric piano notes beat against their echoes.
“Eutanasia” by Violencia (Viviendo Tiempos Aún Más Oscuros, 2023)
Ok, is this powerviolence? I’ll admit I’m still a little fuzzy on the difference between some hardcore punk subgenres, but c’mon. Violence is in their name! If the last track put you to sleep, this one will rocket you straight through the ceiling. Fast and loose hardcore with a mean streak.
“Enduring The Snow Drought” by Panopticon (The Rime of Memory, 2023)
What is this, a song about New York City weather between February 2021 and January 2024? Panopticon albums are so dense that I imagine some listeners might have bounced off of The Rime of Memory before making it to this absolute unit of a tune. Compared to a lot of the American Black Metal scene Panopticon have a much closer lineage to the classic Scandinavian sound. The project’s best work however, like the triumphant guitar and bell melody that guides the first half of this tune, betrays a shining optimism that feels distinctly American. The mood darkens eventually, this is black metal after all, but Lunn keeps even that obligatory turn interesting by switching to 7/8. Great work!
“Space Road” by Casiopea (Casiopea, 1979)
I’ve gone my whole life assuming that the association of happy-go-lucky jazz fusion and fast cars in video game music was an invention of the suits at Nintendo. Turns out the link pre-dates Mario Kart by years. In hindsight it isn’t hard to see why the guys in Casiopea paired their music with high speed racing. Their tunes are fast, require pin-point finesse to play, and the end result makes you want to go “weeee!!!”. Look, I’m not going to try and tell you that this song is “cool”. We are firmly in mullet fusion territory. I’m just saying that it’s incredibly fun.
“Something In The Air” by Yukihiro Takahashi (Neuromantic, 1981)
Drummers go solo and immediately start singing about stuff being in the air, it is a law of nature. No massive run down the toms on this tune by Yellow Magic Orchestra’s drummer, but you can tell the person who wrote this spent some time behind the kit. Everything is arranged so precisely. Listening to this song feels like looking at the inside of a watch. I love that buzzing sound that pops in and out in the chorus. If you’re put off by Yukihiro Takahashi’s understated singing voice, take a look at how cool he is in this video. When you look like that you can sing like this.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of albums from my old CD collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020. 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.
Shrinebuilder by Shrinebuilder (2009) - Doom Metal
A Neurosis/The Obsessed/Sleep/Melvins supergroup. Despite the big names, this project hasn’t had much staying power in the culture. Probably would have made a bigger impact if it had come out a few years later when the modern doom scene really exploded. It’s fine. It sounds like it was more fun for the band to record than it is to listen to [Editor’s Note: to the degree that anyone would describe Scott Kelly as “fun”]. Never congeals into more than the sum of the parts.
Character by Dark Tranquillity (2005) - Death Metal
Just like At the Gates I checked this band out to do my homework about the Swedish influence on American metalcore. The video for “Lost In Apathy” convinced me to start here. This one is a return to form after a very spotty goth period. I love the use of keyboards on this album, they give it a light sci-fi touch. Some really great tunes on here, this is a good starting place if you’re interested in melodeath.
At The Edge of Time by Blind Guardian (2010) - Power Metal
I last listened to this to get hyped on my way to a viewing party of the Game Of Thrones finale, since there are a few songs on this record based on the books. No album, no matter how good, could make watching that finale exciting. This record deserves better associations. It suffers from the orchestral gloop that all late Blind Guardian albums are burdened with, but there are some fun tunes here when they pick up the pace. “Voice In The Dark” is killer. I’d put it on par with at least Game of Thrones season two.
What We All Come To Need by Pelican (2009) - Post-Metal
Their first record after weathering the averse critical reception to City of Echoes. [No tears shed for the fall of Pitchfork in the Herweg household, I’d imagine]. Also the first Pelican record with vocals. This album had a lot of uphill battles to fight. It starts slow, but once it gets going its one of their best. Still as sonically dense as their early stuff, but less aggressive and more relaxed. It’s a mood that fits their skill set better.
Darker Handcraft by Trap Them (2011) - Hardcore
I was very into the grimy “entombed-core” wave cresting in hardcore around 2011. That summer I saw Trap Them open for Converge at Santos Party House and bought this immediately after their set. This is the best record of that whole movement and “The Facts” was the anthem of the moment. Great, airtight songwriting that mixes technical playing, metallic aggression, and rock’n’roll swagger. A huge influence on the hardcore era of Lamniformes.