What are you listening to at the present? (genres helpful)

Post by **Sano** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 3:25 am

Cher - If I could turn back time

Post by **strangenova** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 1:57 pm

I've been listening to BabyMetal...and I blame Super Mario Maker for it.

Post by **Nemoide** » Mon Jun 27, 2016 9:39 pm

Oh man. I listened to Godspeed You! Black Emperor's "Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven!" for the first time in years.

I forgot how amazing this is. I had to lie down in darkness with my headphones, tears streaming from my eyes because it's just THAT GOOD.
Amazing amazing album.

HLTB · Post by **Xeogred** » Wed Jun 29, 2016 7:11 pm

Been listening to Quake 2's Sonic Mayhem OST a lot lately, so I looked into them the other day and their new stuff sounds pretty freaking cool to me:

Any recommendations from here? I see old fans dogging on the change in style haha, but I dig it. Frankly I think music like this would have been even better than Doom 4's style. This gets me amped and I can't help but picture a frantic FPS in action to it.

Post by **noiseredux** » Wed Jul 06, 2016 10:44 am

El-P/The Blue Series Continuum
High Water
2004, It's no secret that I'm a fan of The Blue Series Continuum. But I've also been following El-P's career since I was in high school and a friend duped me a copy of Company Flow's album Funcrusher Deluxe. Since then - and since CoFlow folded, El-P has gone on to do many interesting and awesome things. His resume reaches far beyond his solo output but also touching on the veritable Def Jux label that he headed in the 90's and early 2000's and eventually gained some much deserved notoriety in recent years after teaming up with Killer Mike and launching the incredible Run The Jewels. The thing is that knowing El-P's credentials shouldn't make you think he'd ever record a jazz album. Nor should you necessarily think it'd work. But it does. Oh how it works! The album was produced, arranged, composed and mixed by El-P and it seems like he really knew what kind of material to give this group to work with. Perhaps the most defining trait of El-P's production work has been the layer upon layer of sound. There's no doubt that he had to have been inspired by The Bomb Squad. And High Water manages to sound like a jazz album produced by El-P. (Sidenote: Can you imagine if The Bomb Squad had produced a jazz album?!) The tracks here are layered and well thought out. There's a somberness to much of the (brief) record - like on "Please Leave (Yesterday)" - that still feels akin to much of the claustrophobic output that El has released on his own. And while this is the one record bearing his name where he never raps a single line, there's definitely something very personal in having his own father (Harry Keys) show up to provide some of the only vocals on the track "When The Moon Was Blue." This is a fantastic album that doesn't really sound like hip hop and jazz trying to coexist. Instead it sounds like a jazz lover who happens to be a hip hop producer getting to let a capable band perform the sounds he hears in his head.

The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble
Summer Suite
2007, The Last Electro-Acoustic Space Jazz & Percussion Ensemble is probably the most prolific offshoot of Yesterdays New Quintet, having released three albums in just a couple of years. Summer Suite was their first release and was only released as a bundled bonus with early copies of the Yesterdays Universe compilation album. It did eventually see an official, albeit limited release in Japan a couple years later as well. Summer Suite was also the first in a (obvious) planned series of "Suite" albums for each season, though as of 2016 we've still only seen this and the Fall Suite see the light of day, so maybe that plan has been abandoned at this point. Who knows with Madlib? At any rate, Summer Suite is excellent. The entire album is a single 40-something minute track that does indeed have separate songs but none of them are titled, and all of them just segue from one to the next (thus, a suite). But it's the Summer part of the title that really means something here. This is bright, airy, upbeat music. This is perfect for driving around with the windows down. It's happy and careless and free. It'll make your head nod for sure. The album ultimately concludes with a cover of "Summertime Madness," that is totally brilliant. And for those of us of a certain generation we may hear this as a cover of "Summertime" by Fresh Prince and DJ Jazzy Jeff. Either way, this track is ubiquitous with Summer, and this record as a whole feels like a wonderful soundtrack to the season.

The Very Best Jazz Remixes
2007, Alright so this is just pointless, really. This is one of those CD's that I only picked up because it was dirt cheap at a yard sale. The Very Best Jazz Remixes is a two disc set that compiles a bunch of old jazz vocals and remixes them. None of the producers are anybody you've ever heard of. And none of the remixes are very interesting. Really, it's like they just took the old tracks and then synched up some uninspired loop to match the tempo. It's the kind of inoffensive (read: boring and safe) remixes that may appeal to non-jazz fans solely because they're easy to ignore and treat as background filler.

Post by **J T** » Wed Jul 06, 2016 1:27 pm

I love the Blue Series Continuum too noise.

I got into it around the time DJ Spooky put out "Optometry", which is one of the better albums in the series in my opinion. My other favorite is Guillermo Brown's "Soul at the Hands of the Machine". Are they still releasing Blue Series Continuum albums? I used to buy them all up as they came out, but it's been years since I have looked for one.

Post by **noiseredux** » Wed Jul 06, 2016 1:49 pm

Optometry is the record that got me into them as well back in 2002!

DJ Spooky
Optometry
2002, The Blue Series Continuum have always been fascinating to me. Matthew Shipp's loose collective of friends and geniuses will often get together under this name and invite some outsider of the jazz genre to cut an album. And the results are always super interesting. Optometry, the record they released citing DJ Spooky as their leader is utterly fantastic. First of all, seriously look at that band. I mean, I'm sure that putting Spooky's name as the headliner sold more records to folks interested in electronic music at the time. But along with Shipp's wonderful piano playing you've got William Parker on bass, Joe McPhee on horns and the always brilliant Guillermo E. Brown on drums. Of course these guys could cut a great jazz album. How could they not? But by including Paul "Spooky" Miller into the mix, they've created something absolutely astounding. Few records can blur the lines of hip hop and jazz well. This one blurs hip hop, jazz, spoken word, electronics, DJ'ing, found-sound, modern classical and whatever else Spooky could think of into a mind-spinning blend that amazingly always feels rooted in jazz. Somehow, it always feels organic. Opener "Ibid, Desmarches, Ibid" is a total showpiece. This is one that you'll want to hear again before continuing on. "Reactive Switching Strategies For The Control Of Uninhibited Air," is a downbeat track that shows off Shipp's restraint and ability to cross over to a hip hop crowd. There's some great guests here like 20th century composer Pauline Oliveros on "Asphalt (Tome II)" although I've got to confess that I don't really love High Priest's verse on "Absentia Absentia (Dialectical Triangulation III)." I don't hate it but it feels somewhat clumsy within the mix somehow. Having said that, I'd barely call it a misstep. I honestly think that this is one of the most interesting and overlooked jazz recordings of the early 2000's. It's also an utter success at whatever form of modern fusion we might want to classify it as. It's just really good music.

Anyway, as far as I can tell the Continuum seems to have sort of fizzled out in the mid-00's. Which is a shame. Though obviously a lot of those guys still keep busy. Shipp has a pretty prolific discography on his own.

Post by **J T** » Tue Jul 12, 2016 4:36 am

David Duchovny: Hell or Highwater

I probably shouldn't like this album as much as I do... it's kind of a vanity project for Duchovny full of simple country blues songs with sad lyrics about rain, but I do really love it. My wife and I went to his concert last year largely just to meet David Duchovny after we did a little X-Files marathon. We listened to this album throughout a road trip to Canada listening to the album to see him perform, and then again soon after on another road trip to Mount Ranier. I have a soft spot for the album now because it reminds of good times on the road.

Here's a video we took from the show where he did a surprise performance with Nicholas Lea, the actor who played Krycek on the X-Files:

Post by **Sano** » Tue Jul 12, 2016 7:39 pm

Every Little Thing - Fragile

Post by **noiseredux** » Wed Jul 13, 2016 2:25 pm

I realized that this marks a full year of me doing these little jazz write-ups. I managed to do 49 of them in that time.

archive: http://thelowendtheoryofnoise.weebly.com/

What are you listening to at the present? (genres helpful)

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