Remarc - Sound Murderer - Planet Mu
Amen, cut, spliced, stuttered, and shreddeded-ed. Old school junglist mayhem from the mid 90s. Fun fun fun. I'm sure some of this is essential, if you were there at the time. I wasn't, I was next door, in the techno room. Don't get me wrong, I like me drum and bass, (is one a subset of the other?) but I could never do a whole night of it. The steady whoomp-whoomp-whoomp-whoomp spoke to me on a number of levels. Jungle speaks to me, but on different ones, and not as many. Plus dancing to jungle was always a lot more work.
LFO - Sheath - Warp
Mark Bell picks up the LFO name. Harder than I expected (although not as hard as Speedy J), but that's a good thing. I dunno, time will tell with this one.
Suburban Knight - my sol dark direction - peacefrog
A mix of old and new stuff. Guess he's not been particularly prolific. Still, the classics (midnight sunshine, art of stalking, noctubuous behaviour) are fine, and the new stuffs not bad either.
Aaaaargh! Too many albums, too little time! What's making it worse is that it's getting easier and easier to acquire mixtapes, and those mixtapes are getting better and better. Currently I have about 14 hours of unlistened material in my winamp queue, having plowed through another 21 in the last couple of weeks. This is time that would previously gone 100% towards albums. Albums that, I should note, are piliing up on my desk. The RU 2 compilation, New York Noise, The Who at the Isle of Wight, Philip Glass - Solo Piano, half of Tackhead - Power Inc vols 1-3, Herbie Hancock, Ghostly International, compilations from Mosquito, and Quatermass, and that's just the stuff within reach. I know there's another couple of piles next to the decks.
I'm used to having a pile of books to be read, even having a couple of games, or a film awaiting my full attention, but music? Music used to be voraciously consumed. I'd get in the door, with a bag of wares, and wouldn't be away from the decks until every last thing had at least been tasted.
Ahh, that's it. My primary listening venue has shifted. It's now at work, with the headphones on, while doing something. Whereas it used to be, in the lounge, with a bunch of other music obsessives, all clamouring to hear everyones new grooves. Even if they made absolutely no sense to anyone.
Do you know what else? I'm not as adventurous in public as I used to be either. I remember and playing that 99 track Straight Up Detroit Shit compo, Panasonic, Plunderphonics, or some other weird shit, and at least getting a hearing (usually in exchange for more easy listening, noodly jungle, or whatever). ... Eh? Hmm, well that's because I no longer live in a shared house full of music lovers, but in a happy married flat with my wife, who knows what she likes, and I guess I should at least be thankfull that her tastes largely overlap with mine. Hmm... I wonder. No, actually, it's not just that, I'm not actually buying as much 'out-there' stuff as I used to either. Quite possibly because I'm having enough trouble drinking from the firehose as it is....
Mosquito Records - bite the sound that feeds you - Mosquito Records
Much better than I'd previously been led to believe. Still, I've seen Vogel mix, and he's funking brilliant, and I've heard some of his records, and they're a mess, but some of them are rather good too, and the same goes for a lot of his mates. So far, this is mostly good, and makes me want to go and rummage through the vinyl again (which is another minor rant in waiting).
Hmm. Y'know it's difficult to write about this stuff, knowing that's there more studied, and more professional writers out there, carefully recording, cataloguing, and generally documenting far more esoteric stuff with far more precision. Well, fuck it, this is what I like, and listen to, and seek to listen to more of, if you know what I mean.
PS This is rather good.
Posted by inpHilltr8r at September 29, 2003 07:25 PM