Among the broad expanse of Emma Ruth Rundle’s oeuvre, you’ll find psychedelic tinged shoegaze, Pink Floyd-y post rock, no-holds-barred art rock, dark folk, doom metal, and more—not to mention her expansive visual work.
Even as far-reaching as her catalog is, nothing can prepare you for EG2: Dowsing Voice, the second of her experimental, instrumental records released under her name. But where Electric Guitar One still mostly stayed within the realms of post rock, this record is positively feral.
It’s said that there is a fine line between genius and madness. I’m not sure just how universally true that axiom is, but in the case of Sixty-nine, the debut full length from British dream pop duo (note: they coined that term themselves), they ride that line like Slim Pickens at the end of Dr. Strangelove.
The record is fiercely experimental—to the point that it’s almost a wonder that anyone agreed to release it. Nevertheless, the record became a huge influence on trip hop, post rock, and shoegaze.
I want to be clear that I love this record. There is nothing quite like it. But as is often the case with these sorts of artistic milestones, the scope of its influence may far outshine the record itself. Not everything thrown at the wall sticks. In fact, depending on my mood, this might strike me as completely transcendent, or as the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever heard. Continue reading
Bjork has become kind of a punchline in recent years. And if we’re honest, both the fae princess schtick and her increasingly experimental electropop are pretty rife for parody.
But before the swan dresses and coy word salad interviews, we have to remember why Bjork was thrust into the spotlight in the first place—and that reason is her brilliant sophomore record Post, an album sharpened to such a bleeding edge that it still sounds modern two decades later.
Last week, while recording an episode on experimental music for my new podcast (oh yeah, I have a podcast now), I remarked that part of what makes Radiohead great is that they take the harsh weirdness of far more inaccessible bands and mold it into pop structures. “Radiohead would be the first ones to tell you, ‘just listen to Autechre,'” I said, and then I realized two things.
One: I didn’t know how to pronounce Autechre.
Two: I had never listened to them.
I promptly sought to correct that, and within half an hour of listening to their pioneering opus Tri Repetae, I ordered a copy. And now, I’m not sure which is harder to believe: that this record came out in 1995, or that humans had anything to do with its creation.
Few musical movements are as weird, wonderful, and influential as Krautrock, a collection of West German bands in the 1970s that pushed the boundaries of what music could actually do to its extremes. The movement had an incredible influence on post punk, progressive rock, new age, shoegaze, and the birth of post rock. The shape of modern, electronic leaning pop music can be traced back to Krautrock, specifically the synthpop pioneers Kraftwerk.
But perhaps no band in Krautrock was more influential than Cologne’s Can, whose sprawling jazz-and-funk jams, improvised vocals, psychedelic exploration, tape editing techniques, and ambient experimentation went on to define Krautrock and influence everyone from David Bowie to Radiohead to Joy Division to the Flaming Lips to Kanye West.
Among their monstrous catalog (they recorded ten albums between 1969 and 1979), most fans and critics agree that the pinnacle of their career was the trilogy of records featuring vocalist Damo Suzuki, which includes the criminally underrated Future Days, the seminal Ege Bamyasi, and this, the eldritch, immense Tago Mago.
While it’s difficult to distill the whole of Melvins’ eclectic essence into a single release, the Trilogy, released between 1999 and 2000, came pretty close to doing so between three records.
While The Maggot saw them indulging their most volcanic heavy metal instincts, The Bootlicker was almost a complete rejection of their metal influences, exploring elements of jazz, funk, and psychedelic. In fact, many refer to The Bootlicker as one of the band’s most “pop-oriented” albums. But given that we’re talking about Melvins, there’s still plenty of wonderful weirdness here.
By 1999, Melvins were already a band of legendary repute. Their uncompromising adherence to noisy rock and roll experimentation that blurred the line between grunge and sludge metal had already landed them—and lost them—a major label deal. The late Kurt Cobain had already called them one of his favorite bands, and they had already influenced scores of similarly noisy and experimental acts, such as Japan’s Boris, who are themselves named after a Melvins song.
And in 1999, Melvins released one of the most ambitious projects of their career: a trilogy of albums that each leaned into a pocket of their sound. The Maggot is the first and most aggressive of these albums, and even in a catalog as harsh and abrasive as Melvins’, it is a challenging album. But that challenge brings a great reward, because it might also be one of their best.
Read more at ayearofvinyl.com #melvins #sludgemetal #grunge #avantgarde #noiserock #vinyl
Few bands have such celebrated reputations as Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They are inarguably one of the pillars of the post rock movement—and rightly so. Their body of work is marked by a fiercely uncompromising vision, their albums filled with lengthy compositions that make no effort to be accessible. At this point in history, fans and critics alike revere their experimental ethos and artistic stubbornness.
But debuting with that sort of vision without the benefit of the legacy is a different sort of monster. The legendary post rock collective might be able to get away with releasing an album with two twenty-minute songs with multiple movements and no lyrics, but as a debut? That’s a bit more difficult to sell as an introduction.
Lucky for us though, Godspeed didn’t let pesky things like marketability or accessibility get in the way of their debut record.
As much as I love metal, I don’t usually mess around with technical death metal. By and large, I’m not totally interested in musical pissing contests to see how fast and brutal a band can play.
But I’ve faced a new mystery lately. I’ve had trouble sleeping on and off my whole life, and while it’s not a new thing for me to wake up in the middle of the night, it is a new thing for me to wake up to vinyl purchases that I don’t remember making. These purchases are usually albums that I’ve been meaning to listen to but haven’t yet. The first was Smashing Pumpkins’ Adore, and for the most part, my subconscious purchases have been on a hot streak.
So when I woke up to this order, I thought perhaps Sleepytime Nat had finally stumbled. After all, he should know I’m not into tech death, right?
But to my surprise, this album is staggering. Blood Incantation manages to avoid the pitfalls that ensnare so many of their contemporaries. They don’t abandon the conventions of the genre, but they aren’t limited by them either. They stretch into ambient, psychedelic, and prog, creating an album that feels truly transcendental.
The art world is filled with archetypes. Take for example how every precocious pop starlet from Britney to Lady Gaga to Ariana Grande has garnered comparisons to Madonna.
On the other hand, it’s almost impossible to overhear any discussion about quirky art pop femme fatales (see: Bjork, St. Vincent, Regina Spektor) without the name Kate Bush being dropped somewhere.
But for all my love of the inventive artists often compared to her, I hadn’t actually spent any time with her work until a few months ago when I decided to spring for (what I understand to be) her seminal record, Hounds of Love. That leap of faith was rewarded tenfold.