Fives on Friday 3/15/2024
Watch your back!
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 « « « « «
Some rare good music news (at least in the States)! Reps Rashida Tlaib and Jamal Bowman have introduced The Living Wage For Musicians Act, which would create a separate pool of streaming income that would be paid directly to artists. I encourage you to take a look at this breakdown from the United Musicians and Allied Workers that explains the details of how the act works and lets you calculate the differences in streaming income if it were to pass. If you like the idea, let your congress rep know!
Speaking of good news for musicians, I loved the guest post on the Gunkyard Substack about the basics of booking shows. If you’re just getting your act off the ground and find the lingo confusion or the venue submission form too intimidating, this link is for you. What a great resource!
If you’ve been following my Drumming Upstream series, you’ll know that I don’t make too hard of a distinction between acoustic kit drummers and beat-making producers. This recent feature from Cabbages about the collaborations between jazz drummer Karriem Riggins & hip-hop producer Madlib are a great example of that porous relationship in practice.
The NBA season is rapidly drawing to a close, and though my beloved Chicago Bulls have mostly left me confused and frustrated I’d still count this year as one of the best for the sport in recent memory. The biggest reason for my optimism is the emergence of Victor Wembanyama, the 19 year old 7’5” French rookie center for the San Antonio Spurs, who, when not blocking every shot in sight on the court, spends his time with his nose buried in a book. I often refrain from telling my non-sports-watching friends too much about what excites me in the game for fear of alienating them with inscrutable minutiae. No need to worry with Wembanyama, (or “Wemby” as broadcasters and fans have taken to calling him, which I find 50% cute and 50% lazy) anyone with eyes can immediately tell why this guy is important. If you aren’t up on the hype, this piece by Cookies Hoops explains how Wembanyama alters the raw geometry of the sport and befuddles any attempts to project his potential going forward. It won’t be long before this kid’s power level breaks every scouter on earth.
This isn’t a recommendation per se, but I can’t let this week pass without taking a moment to acknowledge the passing of Akira Toriyama. As the creator of Dragon Ball and character designer for video games like Chrono Trigger and Dragon Quest Toriyama had an incalculable impact on the look and popularity of manga & anime across the world. Who could ever count the number of Goku’s that populate the margins of notebooks and spray-painted walls over the globe? In a small but real way Toriyama changed the how the world looks. Speaking personally I can’t imagine my childhood without Toriyama’s art. Though he’s most well known for his hard-bodied martial artists (give the weight-lifting anime fan in your life a hug, they’ll understand) he also had an unparalleled eye for strange critters, alien architecture, futuristic vehicles, and men’s fashion. He will be missed.
🪞🪞⚛️🪞🪞 The Self Promo Zone 🪞🪞⚛️🪞🪞
This week’s edition of The Self Promo Zone is dedicated entirely to my new album, The Lonely Atom, which will be available on cassette and digitally on March 29th. The cassette versions of the album come courtsey of a split release from America’s Furious Hooves and Canada’s People | Places Records. Each label is offering their own unique variant of the cassette, so I’d encourage you to pre-order your preferred version on the FH or P|P Bandcamps. I posted the long version of Cat Costa-Jones’s wonderful bio for the record earlier this week, but here’s the short version:
The Lonely Atom is the second studio album from the Brooklyn-based heavy alternative rock project Lamniformes. It is a concept album about the isolation of modern life, the fractured projections of the self that exist outside of us in digitally mediated spaces, and the struggle for real connection in an increasingly atomized world.
I wrote all the songs and co-produced them with Jack Greenleaf (Sharpless). The Lonely Atom features performances by members of Massa Nera, Semaphore, Husbandry, Wilderun, and Options among others. It is also blessed by guest vocals from Emily Reo, Anna McClellen, Saint Thrillah, Felix Walworth of Told Slant and Ella Boissonnault of Ladypills. Everyone did a fantastic job. This album is the best representation of my full musical personality to date. If you’ve enjoyed this newsletter’s blend of metal, indie rock, electronic and pop music, then The Lonely Atom might be your new favorite record. Listen to the first single and consider snagging a digital copy below:
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 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.
“Fascination” by David Bowie (Young Americans, 1975)
I mentioned a few weeks back that I’ve been closing up some gaps in my awareness of David Bowie’s catalog. Other than the title track and “Fame” I’d never given Young Americans an earnest shot before. I think I was scared off by the album’s “blue-eyed soul” reputation. That description ended up feeling reductive. First off, the band on this album rips, as evidenced up the groove on this track. And second, Bowie isn’t pretending to be Isaac Hayes. He simply sounds like himself and lets the contrast with the setting do the talking for him.
“The Formed” by Krallice (Mass Cathexis, 2020)
I’ve also been trying to catch up on the deluge of Krallice albums from the last few years. This band’s work ethic and creative restlessness are admirable. The last decade or so has seen Krallice accelerate the pace of both their output and their stylistic development. Not every twist and turn in their branching aesthetic has worked for me, but this track nailed me to the wall. In some ways “The Formed” sounds more like what I expected from a Mick Barr & Colin Marston black metal collaboration than the early Krallice records. Lightning fast, repetitive guitar playing and riffs that feel like they’ve been arranged by dice rolls. Early Krallice was also never this concise.
“Yesterday’s Price” by Cautious Clay (KARPEH, 2023)
Shouts out to current Lamniformes bassist and my former Shalom bandmate Sam for putting me on to this killer jazz fusion track. Though the rhythm section on this tune are killer, love the contrast between the richness of the upright bass and the clacky staccato of the drums, but this one is all about the horns and woodwinds. Framed by spoken interjections (samples?) the soloists move a ton of air and quickly.
“Children of Sorrow” by Health (Rat Wars, 2023)
It seems that after keeping themselves a sleeveless arm’s length from the musty world of heavy metal for years Health have fully embraced the chug. I guess I assumed that these kinds of dirtbag riffs were beneath Health’s fashionable L.A. cool, but I’m glad to hear them give in to their inner Rob Zombie. The harder their guitars, the stronger the contrast with their vocal delivery. Though I imagine they’re intended to sound detached and apathetic, the glistening iciness of the vocals give Health a sweetness that I don’t associate with the average industrial metal construction crew.
“Perpetual (Movement)” by Jun Fukamachi (Quark, 1980)
This album has apparently won the algorithmic lottery on YouTube and started popping up in the recommended feeds of intrepid web surfers. I haven’t been graced by its presence, sadly. I just saw the album cover on RateYourMusic one day, thought to myself “cool frog” and hit play. I’m honestly surprised that I haven’t been served this record given how much Oneohtrix Point Never I listened to last year. True to its title “Perpetual (Movement)” is powered by a synthesized bass arpeggio that wubs and blubs in the background from start to finish. As the bassline busies itself moving from one channel to the other and back, Fukamachi takes his time drifting across his keyboards, each new chord and timbre changing the character of the ostinato beneath it. Extraordinarily vibey.
\ \ \ \ \ 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.
Hell Awaits by Slayer (1985) - Thrash Metal
I bought this when I was playing in a thrash band in college. At the time I was only familiar with the title track, but I quickly developed an annoying affectation of saying this was secretly the best Slayer album. It is no such thing. They would take all of the best ideas from this record and tighten them up within an inch of their lives on Reign in Blood. Still, there are stretches of this that kick serious ass.
Kezia by Protest The Hero (2006) - Progressive Metal
Saw them open for Dragonforce (lmao) and thought they were smug assholes. I later came around to them as their instrumental skills were too good to be dismissed. Kezia is a three act concept record about a woman wrongly sentenced to death, told through the perspective of the guard, the executioner, and the prisoner. It bites off more than it can chew, but the blistering pace keeps it fun even when the band’s hands get heavy. Like Dream Theater if they were a skate punk band. Ridiculous, but very entertaining.
The Mind is a Terrible Thing to Taste by Ministry (1989) - Industrial
Having been introduced to Ministry through their 00s reunion material, it took me a while to find the right records from the early chunk of their career. I was thrown off by how little they resembled a metal band by comparison to their thrashing later stuff. This album is an interesting time capsule of experiments with electronic and dance music from the late 80s. The rap tune is very bad, and some of the other bass focused tunes are neat but drag on. Not my favorite of theirs. Still sounds like a rough draft.
Hymn to the Immortal Wind by Mono (2009) - Post Rock
Highly anticipated, at least by me, due to the presence of a chamber orchestra in addition to Mono’s already gargantuan sound. Instrumental, but has an accompanying poem that reads like a children’s fairytale. It’s good. Mono have an ear for stirring melody and a great sense for when to kick into high gear. That said, the orchestra can be a little much. The effect of all that reverb, delay, and string legato is a sonic soup where individual melodies are hard to pick out. This issue would only intensify over the next few Mono albums.
Waking The Fallen by Avenged Sevenfold (2003) - Metalcore
Their last metalcore record before a vocal injury and the prospect of being a way bigger band made them pivot toward an updated take on hair metal/hard rock. This is a lot of fun, actually! Mixes classic metal riffs with Bad Religion style vocal harmonies and a touch of polished SoCal pop punk. Even if Matthew “M. Shadows” Sanders (whose cleans sound GREAT on this) hadn’t blown out his voice, I bet they wouldn’t have slummed it as a scene band for too much longer. Their ear for pop hooks was simply too strong.