last.fm collage thrad

[Ⓐaron]

We don't have enough music discussion here these days so here's yet another thread idea I'm stealing from /mu/, which should probably work better for my purposes here since threads won't disappear overnight. Go here, make a 5x5 collage of your last week's worth of music listening, and discuss/rate others' selections. If you don't have a last.fm, get one. I think you should be able to attach image files here. If it's something only admins can do make a comment about it and I'll try to come up with a solution.

As is probably obvious I went full weeaboo this week. The artists in Japanese characters for those who want to look them up are Shiina Ringo, Midori, and Goto Mariko.

This collage doesn't reflect how much prog I've been listening to, but apart from the two Sekbha-Chott albums with ridiculous numbers of tracks, prog usually doesn't have enough tracks to show up on charts like this unless I listen to albums more than once.

One last note: some of this album art is nsfw.

 

[Ⓐaron]

And I'm also going to do the last month's charts because that's probably way more accurate. The other Japanese language artist name featured here is Koenjihyakkei (although only their name and a couple of their album titles are Japanese; most of their lyrics are in an unknown language of their own invention).

Again, some of these album covers are nsfw.

 

[Ⓐaron]

It might also make sense for people to describe what they've listened to and their reactions to it. I will do this tomorrow, as I need some sleep for now.

 

[SoulReaper]

Fine here's mine I mainly have been listening to some 2013 metal.releases I missed from last year, I was particularly impressed by the Blockheads album, excellent Grindcore, the Hardcore Punk/Black Metal by supergroup VHOL, the US Power Metal from Attacker, the Br00tal Death Metal of Wormed and Crossover Thrash of Power Trip.

That and Frank Zappa all day, every day. Currently digesting the fascinating Civilization Phase III but that image doesn't show up. Avant Garde to the bone. The Road Tapes Venue #2 also is AMAZING with the band that played on the ubertight YCDTOSA Vol. 2 album.

I don't know anything about 'weebo' music, I'm not very interested in Japanese Indie and pop/rock.

 

[Ⓐaron]

Cool, I'll probably check some of those out soon

What happened to your play count btw? You had way more plays than I did last I checked. Now we have about the same amount.

Sebkha-Chott: Reminds me a lot of Zappa, Mike Patton, and other similar artists. I like it and will probably be going back to it frequently. These albums have a ridiculous number of tracks. I've since grabbed the versions from their Bandcamp which have a reasonable number of tracks.

Shiina Ringo: The only one I've really listened enough to absorb is Karuki Samen Kuri no Hana. Wikipedia has this to say about its genre: "Alternative rock, Electronica, Folk music, Traditional music, World music, Orchestra, New Wave music". Sounds about right. Pop music doesn't really get any stranger than this.

Bill Hicks: One of the great comedians for sure.

Kayo Dot: Hubardo is one of the best albums of 2013, if not the best (I still haven't heard several important albums released last year but I feel confident in saying it's the best album released last year that I've heard). Choirs of the Eye is also a classic. Anyone into avant-garde metal needs to hear these releases.

Mass of the Fermenting Dregs: Fun shoegaze/post-rock/pop mix. The vocalist is really good. Shame they broke up.

Midori: I wouldn't have thought a punk/jazz hybrid would work before I heard this group. Now I almost can't get enough of it.

Hate Forest/Ildjarn: This is the first Ildjarn material I've heard and I'm pretty impressed by it, although apparently it isn't very typical of their sound. I wonder why neither artist released their material on this split at the time. I honestly like the material on this more than Hate Forest's 2001 full-length.

Weezer: Pinkerton is a really enjoyable album even if the lyrics are often (intentionally, for the most part) cringeworthy. The last song is pretty heartbreaking.

Magma: The originators of zeuhl, a specific subgenre of progressive rock that you get when you throw John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, and Carl Orff into a blender. It's probably every bit as weird as that description would suggest, if not even more so. Magma went to the trouble of inventing their own language for their material, which probably gives you an idea of the kind of minds you're dealing with here.

Koenjihyakkei: Like Magma, but even weirder. All four of their studio albums and all four of their live DVDs to date are great.

Discordance Axis: One of my favourite grindcore bands in history. Original Sound Version has a ridiculous number of tracks, which is pretty much an inevitability when you have over an hour of grindcore material.

I think that covers everything I listened to.

 

[SoulReaper]

Cool, I'll probably check some of those out soon

What happened to your play count btw? You had way more plays than I did last I checked. Now we have about the same amount.

Might happened when you decided to listen to Discordance Axis, Assuck and whatever Grind albums around 100 or so times. I for instance, couldn't bare the thought of listening to some grind albums (or albums in any other genre) that much, though I obviously love the genre. My listening tendencies are pretty simple, I barely download anything, I buy a lot of music, some of which I sampled of youtube. I give every album I buy approx. 10 listens, which is a perfect number of plays to decide if a record is shitty, mediocre, good, very good or awesome. Some records I buy simply because I'm fan of the band, like Sodom, although the last album isn't that good and I'll probably stop playing it after 10 ten times. Then again I've just bought the debut albums from Captain Beyond and Weidorje (Basically Magma without Vander) and I'm pretty sure I'm going to jam the shit out of those records.

 

[SoulReaper]

That Sebkha-Chott sounds pretty interesting. I guess this thread only will be inhabitated by us haha. Anyway now on rotations:

Suicide - Currently I'm digging into this whole post-punk thing and this influential minimal Synth punk duo made some pretty interesting music with only a synthesizer, drumcomputer and unnerving vocals. Music that gets under my skin.

Killing Joke - I've been meaning to check them out for years but I finally I managed to do so. Currently listening to their debut album, and this rules. Violent, pounding rhytms with a killer metal-like guitar sound. Pretty damn heavy and obviously very influential.

Captain Beyond - Another band I've been meaning to check out for ages and this some serious classic stuff, with ex Deep Purple singer Rod Evans. Progressive Heavy Rock that borders on Proto-metal, this kicks more ass than some of Deep Purple's classic stuff. Blasphemy maybe, but it's really THAT good.