Thursday, April 19, 2018

Peep Your Sleep

If you ask a normal what they spend most of their time doing, they'll probably say something like "work" or "moving, nourishing, believing," but I'm here to tell you that really it is SLEEPING. I'm a regular snoozin' boyle. In the words of wolfpupy, "I hit the hay all day." But what does this have to do with the music-centric focus of this fantastic blog?

Because I live in the political and geographical hellscape that is Australia, I have gotten used to sleeping with a fan on over the summer season. Unfortunately, this means that now that it is starting to cool down a bit, I find it hard to snooze without that breezy white noise in the background. Silence is scary.

As a result, I present to you- my favourite things to play from tiny phone speakers at a volume of 1 as when you're trying to snooze because it is too cold to turn on your shitty Big W fan!:

Selected Ambient Works Vol. 2 by Aphex Twin
Duh. Pros are that it is very long, so it might outlast your insomnia if you are having one of those nights where you keep thinking about the things you need to do at work tomorrow. Cons are that while parts of it are v beautiful, some are downright eerie and may cause you to think there is an invisible demon standing over you RIGHT NOW. 7 zzzzzzz's out of 10

actual photo of the musician responsible

Kid A by Radiohead
An oldie but a goodie. Pros are that it is relatively gentle to begin with so will work well if you are quick to snooze. Cons- there are a few cacophonous bits (The National Anthem, Idiotheque) that might rouse you, personal con for me is that my partner can't stand it and has terrible nightmares if I put it on. YMMV! 3 zzz's out of 10

The Fall Into Time by Oneohtrix Point Never
I have this one permanently available offline in my spotify account because it's my go-to drowsing music for travel. Combine with some noise-cancelling headphones for a v surreal transit experience. Possibly just one of my straight-up fave ambient albums ever, v. soothing and vaguely sci-fi without being eerie or downbeat. No cons try it yourself tonight! 10 zzzzzzzzzz's out of 10!

i also love this album cover

Cover the Windows and the Walls By Grouper
Basically witch music- sad lady with reverb turned to six million and ten. If you are easily spooked probs won't work for you as a snoozelisten. This is my personal favourite Grouper album though and it works well for me! It has probably fallen out of rotation in my sleep listening because of the strong efforts of Oneohtrix and Max Richter though. 6 zzzzzz's out of 10.

Sleep by Max Richter
Surprise- this album is called sleep and it is good to sleep to. Slightly more vocal/choral?-based than the others in this list, so if you're feeling a bit plagal hit this one for your sleep cycle. It goes for eight hours, which is about the amount of time you're meant to sleep, right? I don't know what much more I can say on this one. You'll need to make sure your phone is charging so it doesn't drain your battery overnight!, and good luck if you're in a place where you don't have wifi and need to stream it. Also a fun surprise if you can catch the end of it in the morning when you wake up. 8 zzzzzzzz's out of 10.


Happy snoozing!



Monday, January 29, 2018

Good Things You Might Not Have Listened To

Hey, it's me, your favourite music author since Pitchfork got bought by Conde Nast! Just remember, I'm still a garbage writer and I'm not above publishing a shitty listicle.

And that's what I've done here- I'm generously providing a brief write-up of three things that are good that I suspect you may not have heard of! Please know that this is coming from a "nobody has ever talked about this music to me" place, not a "I'm a snob who knows all these cool underground musicians" place. Even tho I am and I do*
*or did, when I was younger and didn't spend 90% of my spare time being abused by adult men in Overwatch

Presenting, THREE GOOD THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT HAVE LISTENED TO:

1. HOLY GHOST!

In the mid naughties this whole dance-punk thing was taking off, due in part largely to the success of The Rapture and their six hundred billion contemporaries. However, that's also when skinny jeans were just coming back in to fashion and people dyed their hair black and were too cool to dance in public? Is that trend dead yet? ANYWAY It's a shame/blessing that Holy Ghost!'s first album came after that wave- in 2011. Much like The Rapture by that point, they threw off the punky shrieking and went in for straight-up New Order style pop. But, it's all really good. Their self-titled debut is especially good- stand out tracks include "Jam for Jerry", "Do it Again" and "It's Not Over."

Here's a good taster, the song "Wait and See", dive on in:



2. REBECCA FERGUSON

If you are from the UK this may be a surprise inclusion because I think she was a runner-up on X Factor or something over there so maybe she's not that unknown? I don't know and I don't care- her first album Heaven is really, really good. She's a "soul" pop singer in the vein of Adele, so if you're interesting in giving your life a Bridget Jones rom-com style soundtrack, get on to it. Here's the anthemic album closer, "You're Too Good To Lose:"


3. JUNIOR BOYS, sort of

Okay, most people know the Junior Boys because of their ripper album "So This is Goodbye." But, that came out FOURTEEN YEARS AGO. They released an album in 2016 called Big Black Coat which is so grouse it hurts. It's pretty moody so they've obviously embraced Canadian #gothlife- for egg the song "Over It" includes the happy phrase "it's better if you have a single bed." I just really love that futuristic "cyberpunk anime" synth sound that they've perfected over the years. Listen to Junior Boys BIG BLACK COAT go go go the outro in this song "C'mon Baby" is THE BEST



The end see you in another ___ months!