Fives on Friday 3/22/2024
Plus, my appearance on the Death//Sentence Podcast!
Happy Friday! Congratulations on making it to the end of the week. As you head into your weekend, here are five track reviews and five album micro reviews. This week also features a Reading & Viewing list of movies and books that inspired my brand new album, The Lonely Atom. Maybe you’ll find something new to read, listen to, or watch this weekend. See you next week!
🪞🪞⚛️🪞🪞 The Self Promo Zone 🪞🪞⚛️🪞🪞
I was on the latest episode of the Death//Sentence podcast to talk about my upcoming album The Lonely Atom! Normally Death//Sentence focuses on books, so I sent host Langdon Hickman a list of books and movies that inspired me while I was working on the album. We talked about the contents of that list, (which you can see below) and the influence they had on The Lonely Atom. Langdon also asked a bunch of smart questions about my creative process and how this album relates to my previous records. It was immediately clear to me that Langdon did his homework before this interview. It’s very flattering to have someone as smart as Langdon take my work seriously! Here’s that reading/watching list:
Reading List
The Face of Another by Kobo Abe
About Looking by John Berger
Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
Mao II by Don DeLillo
Mad Men: Carousel by Matt Zoller Seltz
On Photography by Susan Sontag
E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction by David Foster Wallace
Viewing List
Ways of Seeing by John Berger
The Conversation by Francis Ford Coppola
Annihilation by Alex Garland
Playtime by Jacques Tati
The Matrix by The Wachowski Sisters
Mad Men by Matthew Weiner
The Lonely Atom arrives on the internet on March 29th. You can pre-order the album cassette from Furious Hooves and/or People | Places Records. Each label has its own unique variant! You can also listen to the album’s first single “Prayer of the Open Plain” and pre-order the digital version of the record via my Bandcamp 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.
“Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)” by David Bowie (Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), 1980)
Of all the gaps in my Bowie-awareness, Scary Monsters was probably the most glaring. The sense that I get is that this is the most conventional pick for the last great Bowie record until Blackstar. As staunch a defender as I’d like to be for Bowie’s 90s/00s output (more on that next week), I can’t deny that Scary Monsters is a cut above. Big fan of the way Bowie’s understated flat delivery contrasts with the manic relentlessness of the rhythm section. The deeper into his discography the more I appreciate how little Bowie himself changes from album to album. It’s the setting and context that he puts himself in that changes.
“Angels Feast On Flies” by Afterbirth (In but Not Of, 2023)
I’ve listened to extreme metal for long enough to know that chasing heaviness, extremity, and brutality is a fool’s errand. Instead the feeling that I pray for when I hit play on a left-of-center death metal album is bewilderment. You can tune as low as you want and blast as fast as you can, but unless you surprise me at least once you won’t last long on the turntable of my mind. Case in point, there are plenty of death metal bands heavier than Afterbirth, but few that make me ask “wait, what is happening??” quite as frequently. Even though their singer sounds like he’s fresh off a shift hyping up the Sardaukar, the guitars stretch out into unexpectedly pretty territory at every opportunity.
“Plus Ou Moins” by Daniel Wohl & Transit (Corps Exquis, 2013)
I believe this record was a recommendation from Lamniformes percussionist Adam Holmes. Good call, Adam! As the title suggests, Wohl’s compositions combine several unrelated disciplines into a single body. The limbs on either end of this piece are tendrils of electronic whirs and fleeting gestures on acoustic instruments. At the center of the corpses’ gravity is a pumping unison line between piano and bass clarinet that reminds me of Philip Glass at his most aggro or Colin Stetson in horror movie mode.
“Bell” by SANAM (Aykathani Malakon, 2023)
Heady, loopy, improvised hypno-grooves from Lebanon. The rhythm section burrows in deep so that everything else (bells, whistles, vocals, etc) can float across the surface without leaving a mark. This is one of those tracks that feels like it could go on forever, building up infinite momentum as it revolves. Once your track is pushing six minutes it is a high compliment to say that it feels too short.
“Spaced Out” by Gouge Away (Deep Sage, 2024)
Even as COVID recedes into the background hum of national discourse it looks like we haven’t even scratched the surface of records responding to 2020. Take this track from Gouge Away, which might as well be “I Wanna Be Sedated” for the COVID-era. The equal and entwined desire for personal space and total oblivion should resonate for anyone else who spent 2020 stuck in a small apartment with only the worst news you’ve ever read in your life to connect you with the outside world.
\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /
Here are five micro reviews of albums from my high school/college CD collection. 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.
The Hawk Is Howling by Mogwai (2008) - Post Rock
This cover & title combo always cracks me up. That’s not a hawk! More downcast than the two records before it, but otherwise indistinguishable from other 00s Mogwai records. You could accuse this album as having diminishing returns for this style, but I bet if you flipped the release order of this and Mr. Beast people’s perceptions of those records would flip as well. Equal parts pretty and moody. A solid record.
Through Silver In Blood by Neurosis (1996) - Post Metal
I remember picking this up while hanging out with Lamniformes collaborator Saint Thrillah back when we were in high school because it was cited as an influence on Zao, a mutual favorite of ours. We were not ready what happened when we hit play. This is considered thee Neurosis record for a reason. Other records may have better individual songs, but start to finish this thing is an experience. Dense, nightmarish sludge with lots of samples/ambient noise, as well as very tasteful strings and piano. An achievement in heavy music, unfortunately marred by the band’s ignominious end.
Twilight of the Thunder God by Amon Amarth (2008) - Death Metal
I don’t have the numbers to back it up, but I bet this was their best selling album to date in America. Might still be. They had really hit their stride with the previous album and this one streamlined their songwriting even further. Arena death metal. While most of these tunes are “I am a viking and I have killed you” yarns, this album has two tragic lyrics near the end that are surprisingly touching for a band this meat-headed. “The Hero” in particular feels like a short story in metal form.
The Eternal Return by Darkest Hour (2009) - Metalcore
Their first record after Kris Norris quit, which made me skeptical of it. I had wrongly assumed that Norris was the band’s special sauce. This album cut away a lot of the clean singing and softer stuff from their last album, so I guess you could call it a “back to basics” release. This thing just zips by. I don’t know if any of these songs would make my top 5 for Darkest Hour, but it is a strong and consistent record. More aggressive than the previous two, but still informed by the Swedish melodeath sound and thus still catchy as hell.
Show No Mercy by Slayer (1983) - Thrash Metal
The first Slayer record, back when they were more of a “spikes and makeup” band than a “camo shorts and oakleys” band. Way more indebted to the early 80s British metal sound and thus far goofier than their later material. Low stakes teenage satanic camp with some classic 80s lead guitar. If they had stayed this way they would have been a less remarkable band historically, but also probably an easier listen.