Thursday, September 5, 2013

Playlist Report

I haven't done one of these in awhile

 So here is one yay. Basically I'm gonna go through songs I've been listening to a lot and tell you why I like them. There's gonna be a lot of text here... I dunno maybe just skim it and see if there's any songs that look interesting. Maybe I should like... colour code them by genre or something. I dunno how to do that in a not obnoxious way, though. Okay yeah I'm gonna change the font color of the links to reflect the genre. Red is hip hop, blue is electronica, green is... neither hip hop or electronica.

1. Stereochan - "We Write at Two Five Five"

This list is gonna have a lot of stuff I like mainly because of ITG. Some is stuff I can pass, some I can't, others, like this, are very far in the latter category. Either way, I like songs where I can picture how the stepchart looks in my head. I love watching people play this song. The duhhh-duh-duh-duh-duhhhhhh part looks so satisfying. Someday I'll do 18s.


2. A$AP Ferg - "Shabba"

I loved his sung verse on "Kissin' Pink" as much as anyone but the prospect of a full-length Ferg album didn't really excite me until I heard this. It's got everything, Rocky's verse is solid, I love all the "patois triplet" flows, "motherfuckers like cavities/cause the nigga be too fake" is hilarious, and oh my god that hook is like the "All Gold Everything" of 2013. Music video is insane too.


3. DJ Sharpnel - "Gate Openerz"

This is another one I just wish I could pass in ITG. I can pass a babbymode 12 of it... but that doesn't count. Like a lot of Sharpnel songs this is all about the moment the vocals from the actual OP kick in, around the 1:10 mark, and then the big "breakthrough" around 1:40. The tu-tu-ru part is really fun too, I wish there was a stepchart that somehow... captured that rhythm... or whatever.


4. Run the Jewels - "DDFH"

Run the Jewels was awesome because it was just ridiculously solid rapping over ridiculously solid beats. It didn't really even matter what they were rapping about half the time, although obviously every line was gold. Here they're on some really hardcore conspiracy theory shit, which both of them gets on individually... El-P eats LSD and has some insights about the government or something. "Make a sane man walk around with a blunderbuss"... I'm not sure what exactly makes it all still sound so BADASS when nearly anyone else, on the same subject, would sound... lame as hell.


5. Run the Jewels - "Sea Legs"


This is probably my favorite track on the album. The beat is simply unlike anything else I've ever heard. Lyrically it's dense and hilarious, Killer Mike rips up Kanye and Jay-Z so casually and brutally. And the flow oh man, the way El-P comes in on his verse is insane, and then everything Mike spits from "I think I like the feeling" is certified next level. "Home of the eagle! Home of the anger! Home of the evil!" hahaha AWESOME JESUS WOW.


6. Danny Brown - "Pac Blood"

Since Old is coming out soon hopefully I've been going back to XXX a lot... I like the whole album a lot but there's a few tracks that I end up skipping most of the time. On the other hand there's stuff like this that I'll happily have on repeat for ~1 hour. The hook on this thing is in some sweet spot of catchiness and hilarity that I end up saying things like "rhymes that'd make the pope wanna get his dick sucked" with a casualness that is probably never appropriate.


7. DJ Sharpnel - "Jersey☆Spirit"

I can almost pass this in ITG... almost. Augh so hard. Oh man though the first time I tried it, my friend chose it and I didn't realize what song it was, like, what it was a remix of. And I kinda recognized it, there's that one little melody that's familiar, but obviously I'm concentrating pretty hard on just surviving. And then at 1:50 finally I was like "oh my god this song I love this song I know this song this is Rinne oh my god I have to pass this" but of course I still failed it. My favorite part is around 2:30 and not just because that's where there's a nice break in the chart.


8. Kanye West - "I Am A God"

Holy crap I love Yeezus so much. What an amazing album. Every track has at least one or two elements that still stun me every time I hear them. For this one, it's the whole outro, especially when the beat changes at 3:05ish... that's just PERFECT, the way he does that. The rapping on this, which, overall, is actually my least favorite part of the album lol, is pretty strong too, with future classix like "hurry up with my damn croissants".


9. Exit Trance/Rev feat. MAKI + R.Cena - "四角い宇宙で待ってるよ"

The best genre of all time, hard confirmed, is denpa trance remixes of anime songs. This one here is a remix of one of the Saki EDs, so I get all the happy memories of watching Saki rushing back. I love picturing how fun a stepchart for this would be whenever I hear it, which is really engrossing too. This song is just WAY TOO CUTE. It's happy and full of mahjong terms and wow it's just an absolute delight.


10. Chief Keef - "Love Sosa"

The one I link here has the great video but doesn't have the AMAZING intro from the mixtape, so make sure you track that one down. It samples this video. This intro is like... absolutely everything I want out of this genre. It's just absolutely rabidly intense. "SHUT THE FUCK UP!" etc. Seriously, chills. And then when they start in with those distant, disconnected vocal samples... "Raris and rovers"... damn, that's like, legitimately artistic. His flow on this is really like nothing else, it's so linear, so steady, and yet so grimy and reckless.


11. Kendrick Lamar - "Money Trees"

When GKMC came out last year I listened to it a few times and liked it alright but I think I was on some sort of stupid "overrated" shit where I figured, like, this was hip hop for people who didn't like hip hop, and I didn't listen to it a whole lot... well, now, like a full year later, like, a whole year after it would be cool for me to like this or get away with saying things like "ya bish" (wait, could I ever have gotten away with that?), I feel like I finally get it. So much so that I really don't remember what my beef was in the first place. This whole track is catchy, moving, soulful, thought-provoking... it's so varied and every element is basically ideal.


12. Yung Lean - "Hurt"

 I wasn't as late to this one... still later than I should be probably. I am like allll about sad boys now. It's like, some magical anti-based thing. Just overwhelming negativity. Last year, if someone had told me that the whole vapourwave aesthetic was going to result in something like this, I would have given them all of my money. We get just so many layers and waves of aesthetics, often completely conflicting, even more with the video, and then the guy rapping over it says stuff like "Louis duffel bag filled with heroin", "bitch I light up the skies, call me Charmeleon"... we live in amazing times.


13. Kendrick Lamar - "Swimming Pools (Drank)"

 Okay yeah there's something lame about just having the two most popular (I think?) songs off the album... uh but screw it. This was my favorite when it came out and it's still probably my favorite now. Kendrick flows like really really on point throughout, the hook is in some crazy sweet spot of pop catchy and haunting. I love tracks that feel very unified in purpose but actually have a lot of distinct and interesting elements.


14. Blue Sky Black Death & Nacho Picasso - "Rammin'"

I dunno what got me back listening to this track... I think someone just played it sometime and I was like "wow this is so catchy". Straight brag rap, and damn clever at that. "When I'm rammin' she gon need a stand-in" is like Killer Mike tier... in fact, I think it might out-Mike Mike. Production is obviously flawless, that is mathematically true just by reading the artists. This song also has the thing where the lines in the hook are in the verse too which is awesome. "I'm like the statue of David except I'm more endowed", "Everything I touch turn to gold, King Midas", "Why they like me, I look like Spike Lee", hilarious.


15. Mr Pokeahole - "The Scales of Struggle"

This is more ITGcore. Originally this was made as a Guitar Hero III custom song... but we don't care about that sorta ish. This song is just way too exciting. I love fast piano stuff, I love stuff that sounds fast and then gets faster, I love the combination of very maximal and minimal sections. I love the cheesy guitar and synth tones and the actually respectable piano tone. The titular scales are catchy and fun to try to whistle along with. And oh man when they punctuate the runs with chords around the 2:30 mark, so exciting.


16. DJ Sharpnel - "Vendita Di Magia"

DJ Sharpnel again, this time with a Madoka remix that's at a real sweet spot for challenge in ITG for me - easy enough that I don't really worry about failing, but still challenging enough to feel very satisfying when I pass well. The song itself, is, once again, all about the moment when the original song comes in, this time around 1:40. Before you get into this nice tense atmosphere with well-chosen quotes - oh man are the Madoka VAs amazing or what? The bridge is exciting with fun rhythms and then at like, 3 minutes or so we just get pure pumped up trance action, full streams, ahhhh so fun.


17. Kanye West - "I'm In It"

This song is just like absolutely filthy. Thank you based Yeezus. I find this song still genuinely "shocking" on some level even after how many dozens of listens. I don't know how a song with lyrics as bluntly perverse as this can also have such a nice smooth subtle part as it does around 2:50... but that's not what I'm here for. I'm also not here for Kanye's rapping which, although sometimes hilarious, has a sort of flow that doesn't really satisfy me. Nah... I'm more here for that frantic fast patois flow, and ESPECIALLY that dog barking in the background. Oh man that's possibly my favorite part of the whole album, that dog barking.

18. DJ Sharpnel - Dokudenpa

This is probably the hardest song I've passed in ITG so naturally I'm obsessed with this. The chart for this is an absolute blast. It's hard to describe what makes a chart that's mostly streams good or bad... since streams are basically just streams. Well, this one is at just the right speed where, if I'm able to go that fast, it's super super satisfying and I can do it well. And the breaks are well timed and have interesting but not frustrating rhythms. And the music is so fitting too! It just sounds fast, like, way faster than the ~175bpm that it actually is. Something about that very light and delicate tone alongside those drums, and then the other synth coming in around 2:40ish, and the tantalizingly abrupt end. Oh man so cool. Dokudenpa is such a cool word too. Denpa is the term for radio waves that gained infamy after a pyscho-killer type claimed that they influenced his actions. Now it serves as an ur-aesthetic in Japan, that which spawned my beloved denpa-pop... doku is poison, so you get poisonous radio waves. Cooool. My only complaint is the rapping part in the middle, which is, in this context, very badass and gets me really pumped up, is actually from this which I find just unavoidably lame.


19. Exit Trance/Ma15 - ハナマル☆センセイション

Another denpa trance remix from Exit Trance. This one is from Kodomo no Jikan, which I haven't seen... but it feels almost just like a matter of time, at this point, I am on the slope, I have been slipping continuously for a long time, it isn't that much further down... anyways I always really liked this song, mainly from Nico Nico medleys and such. The voices are just so cute and spontaneous. The rhythms of the chorus, like at 1:20ish, are just so infectious, and the way it cumulates in the simple "boom boom boom!" is really satisfying.


20. Kanye West - "New Slaves"

Okay so I really love Yeezus. And other people... people with taste... do too. But okay okay I could see why some people are having a hard time with it. A track like this is pretty abrasive, the beat is harsh, the lyrics are bleak... it isn't the funtimes rap that Kanye used to deliver. Fine. But oh man, what I simply cannot understand is how someone couldn't see the artistry in here. How someone could say this was a bad album, or Kanye being lazy, or whatever. The density in production of this track is basically unparalleled in his discography. The flow is varied and precise. The lyrics are provocative, obviously very personal and important to Ye and worth study. And the ending, oh my god, that is one of the most satisfying moments in music this year, period. How someone could listen to this song and not say something like "holy shit", even if they hate it, is beyond me.


21. Ol' Dirty Bastard - "Hippa to the Hoppa"

This has everything I love ODB for. He's got incomprehensible lyrics that, when deciphered, are absolutely absurdly hilarious ("Rhymes come stinky like a girl's poo-poo"/"I keep my breath smelling like shit so I can get funky") along with random "Al Green shit" singing. The beat is equal parts delirious daytime TV, classic kung fu b-movie, and Thelonious Monk piano plinking... Actually, let's focus on that piano, 'cause that's my favorite part of the whole thing. Something about the schizophrenic arhythmic feel that seems both urgent, delayed, and comatose, and how somehow the melody and the rhythm have that same indescribable feel. I feel ODB must've liked it too 'cause other parts of the synth have it too, but the piano is my favorite. A later song on this list captures this sort of thing even better, although when I hear this I feel skeptical of that.

22. A$AP Ferg - "Lord"

Featuring Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. No, seriously! I bet you thought you were dead. Everyone I've shown this too has said something like that. Not like, irrelevant or retired, but literally dead... it does seem almost probable that at least one of them would have been literally murdered by now. But nope. And beyond that oh my god can they still rap. How can a bunch of men who are basically middle aged now display such lyrical athleticism? Ferg spits one of his most solid verses on the album and then gets absolutely bodied four times in a row. Special shoutouts to Bizzy Bone's verse, his flow is Busta-tier and then the modulation they give it at the end... spiraling into some dark chaos shit for a few lines, in then in the last one he climbs all the way back up to that sickeningly smooth BTNH flow for "no Cairo". Damn!

23. Kanye West - "Blood on the Leaves"

This is like... I dunno, in some ways the inverse of how I feel about "New Slaves". I think it seems even more impressive in a lot of ways initially, it feels very "grand" and "definitive". Plus obviously the strange fruit sample carries a lot of weight, stuff like "we coulda been somebody!" seems important... but I kinda feel like this song isn't really about... anything? Like it feels like it's about past relationships, but if there's an even more grand thematic narrative to it, it isn't obvious. Um, I think I might just be trying to prove that a (likely nonexistent) person's initial impression of what the song is about is inaccurate.... seems stupid. Anyways my point is that with song, all I'm about is dem TNGHT horns. That and the "heyyy!" sample, and singing along to the autotuned verse. I'm somewhat about the idea that there's currently like ~10000 words debating the meaning of this song on rapgenius and god knows how many on KanyeToThe, but mainly I don't care. Kanye's like Smash Bros, you have fun no matter how deep you go.

24. L.E.D. - "The Shining Polaris" -kors k mix-

Oh my god this song is so exciting to play and somehow even more exciting just to listen to? Probably because I don't have my own heartbeat screaming at me and I can make out the subtleties... actually, no, there are no subtleties here. That's exactly the way I like it. The vocal modulation at the start is so infectious, kors k is brilliant, it has almost that same urgent-delay feel of the ODB beat, but not quite, 'cause here it is very rhythmic while only feeling arhythmic... if that makes any sense. Anyways kors k is a genius because he keeps pushing the envelope with the vocal chopping until he can't, and then he stops and that feels refreshing, and by the time he brings back THE SHINING POLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA etc at 2:35ish, except now without the chopping, it's like, anthemic. If there is a science to excitement, this is lab-grade.

25. Yung Lean - "Gatorade"

For awhile I was mishearing the hook and I thought it was "shorty what you sipping on? Gatorade/shorty what you smoking on? Gatorade" and I thought that was hilarious. This song is still good though, like, wow it is just next level wavy. The modulation on the verse on 2:10 is some emotional trap shit, I love it. "I drink ice tea all day/catch me in a hummer with your momma" etc. Great.

26. DJ Sharpnel - We Luv Lama

This is probably my favorite DJ Sharpnel track. This is also like my long, long, long term ITG goal. I feel like once I can do it it will be infinitely fun. This is 210bpm, not funtimes anime streamz but real talk In The Groove speeds. The vocal samples are hilarious immediately before they lodge themselves in your ear permanently. The military-type rhythm on the bridge around 1:10 sets the stage for just an absolute war between your brain and this song. Then there's a solid 3 minutes of ottack, just pure streamy goodness. Oh man oh man is this fun to listen to.


27. Notorious B.I.G. - "What's Beef"

Absolutely legendary track. The mafioso beat is slicker than slick, the sort of thing that always seems like the prelude to a murder. The hook is menacing and iconic to the extent that if anyone asks me "what's beef?" or even "is that beef?" or "have you had the beef shawarma" I think, if not answer, "beef is when you need two gats to go to sleep" etc etc. Mainly though I like the the laugh he does at the beginning. Ha ha ha ha haaaa.

28. Run the Jewels - "A Christmas Fucking Miracle"

I remember seeing this on the tracklist and thinking like "uhh what" and "umm I don't think I want that" or something... I wasn't too optimistic. And when I first heard it and it started in with the jingle bells stuff I was like uhh hmmm but when El-P hits with that first like "That was me in BK on Atlantic"... something about that line, something about all the memories and power encapsulated so casually in delivery. Then the process of him intensifying over the verse... Oh man I was running awhile ago, and I knew I was getting to the end of how long I could run, so I figured I would make it to the end of this album and then stop, and when this song came on I was so excited, 'cause I knew I was gonna be inspired and stuff, but I couldn't prepare myself for just how intense it was. I felt like every sports cliche was coming true and I felt like trying really hard and all of the lyrics were really "speaking to me". The way Mike says "OK, honor y'all? No way/Still spell America with the triple K", oh god wow just too powerful. 


29. Gucci Mane - "Darker"

My favorite thing about Gucci Mane is the way some of his songs demonstrate a real appreciation and desire to illustrate something I'd call... the rapture of total aesthetic unity. The idea of the song here is that everything is getting darker, "everything dark this summer". I feel like in the line "the kush came in this time a little darker" has a lot of power here. It's like, beyond his control, to an extent... it's just the product of a world of increasing darkness. Or like "the niggas around here drink lean not water"... he's really illustrating a world that operates through an aesthetic law. Uhh I dunno, hard to explain. His flow at the end of the second verse is great, I love the whole thing about him buying a dark car and painting it even darker, Keef's verse is great and the pairing is just generally made in heaven... All it needed was a beat as iconic as "Lemonade" but whatever.


30. Danny Brown - "30"

I'm getting hyped as hell for Old, every track I've heard off of it has been fantastic... but I think if there's one thing I'm worried about is that there won't be a track like this. Like, how could there be? There's no way he could top it, and to attempt to... just seems foolish. This is the hybrid at his most disparaging: how can a song have both the lyrics of "sent your bitch a dick pic and now she need glasses" and "the last ten years I been so fucking stressed/tears in my eyes let me get this off my chest" and have both of them sound so authentic? His flow switches up between the extremes of nasal ear invasion to rugged n raw growling with an ODBesque efficiency. And that beat oh my god skywlkr is a genius, sampling Metronomy's chilling Nights Out.


31. Big Sean - "Control"

We really seem to be in a cool age these days where hip hop is really on the forefront of critically respected/analyzed pop music. Like we get BNM at the pitchfork is basically what I mean... lots of people to thank for this, probably #1 is Kanye but I think Kendrick is way up there too, what with gkmc getting all sorts of instant-classic type reputation. That's why we get like, probably CNN at this point running a story on his "Control" verse. And yeah the response has been 99% hype, mostly just by white bloggers (haha like me) and b-list rappers looking for some 15 minutes of relevance (and one amazing response from a god tier ?-lister) and as far as I know, none of the named rappers have really "stepped up" in any beefy-type way... ...anyways, the important thing to note is that, aside from the blatant namedropping and the "King of New York" stuff, and usually even alongside it, everyone seems really eager to say stuff like "well, the main thing is that the verse is really good." Which it is! And it's so cool to see everyone all excited for someone like, rapping well, and discussing what makes a good verse, and talking about stuff I find really cool about his cadence and flow and stuff. Oh god yeah his flow gets absolutely crazy on this one. He sounds legitimately angry on the last lines, the whole plane part. Pretty heavy handed but whatever, it's provocative and addictive to listen to. I love that beat too. Big Sean and Jay Electronica's verses are good too. Jay sounds really triumphant after the Kendrick blitz. And I love the "we trying to be better than everybody that's better than everybody/rep Detroit everybody/Detroit vs everybody" part. Great song.

32. Zun - "Reverse Ideology"

I have been too lazy to try to get DDC to run... as soon as I heard that some people were having problems I just assumed I'd be one of those people and preemptively gave up. I've been listening to the soundtrack some though, and this is my favorite, which is great 'cause I really love Seija's design and premise and such. This is such a fun complex lively tune. I especially love the piano parts and the really fast bassline in the background. Suitably, the reverse audio version sounds good too. I can't wait for the remixes.

33. kors k - "The Sampling Paradise"

This song makes me want to learn iidx. There's some fun charts for it in ITG but this is so tailor made for the iidx experience that I really feel like I'm missing out. The rhythms are so fun and all the samples manage to excite after what seems like hundreds of listens. What is the guy saying before "Let's get scratching!"? I have no idea whatever. I think my favorite part of this, and my favorite part of a lot of iidx music, is when you have a really chaotic feel, and then from that emerges one singular but still very complex very catchy melody, that builds up and then just like, goes full strength for awhile. Like at around 2:30... you leave all the party peoples and such and it's just that one line for awhile. Wait no by far my favorite part is at 4:05, the chopped up voice, and then the way that same line comes back after. It has that sort of arhythm that I keep wanting to talk about. Oh man what an exciting song!


34. Death Grips - "Birds"

Oh goodness Death Grips just won't stop coming up with new ways to scare me. This song is just... Jesus it seems evil on some levels. Like if the Manson Family was around nowadays they wouldn't need The Beatles. Actually, somehow, this song reminds me of a Beatles song... something about the structure? And maybe that wonderful engrossing haunting guitar tone, which is the best example I've ever heard of this wobbly arhythmic rhythm that I keep trying to describe. Lyrically it's just... beyond me, way beyond me. "Fuck this bird man drink this bleach" is about the most menacing thing I've heard on record. The whole thing has this feeling of tension, and then releases that seem to further aggravate instead of releasing the tension... I dunno, hard to explain. Intense.

35. A$AP Ferg - "Hood Pope"

Okay so like right away the title of this song probably gives you a completely accurate idea of what you're getting and if it doesn't then maybe the full quote of "It's the hood pope/chain hang low, red rubies and the gold" will... what's probably surprising is how emotive this song actually is. More than any other song on the album, Ferg really gives us a bleak and real picture of the hood, especially on the second verse. "God, he was a little child, he was a good kid for awhile", that hurts man, that just hurts to hear. When Ferg calls himself the hood pope he's actually taking on this burden, I guess. Um maybe he should stop hitting the sherm so hard though like what's with rappers talking about that so casually?

36. Perfume Genius - "Hood"


This is about the area that Ferg is pope of. When Put Your Back N 2 It came out last year I remember seeing it getting BNM and thinking "I don't care to listen to this"... it just seemed, I dunno, uninteresting to me. It wasn't until recently that I saw the music video for this and I was completely blown away. This guy man, his voice, his subject matter, his instrumentation... it's all just perfect. I think of it like a more minimally focused Sufjan Stevens, like, where Sufjan has all sorts of maximal instrumentation and development in a lot of his stuff, Perfume Genius has this sense of almost bleak limitation. All the songs are so short and they rarely have any extraneous structures. Here we get like, two verses, the second patterned after the first. And there's that wonderful escalation on the piano... "I will fight, baby, not to do wrong", boom wow.

37. Captain Murphy - "Between Friends"

So awhile ago adultswim started funding these collaboration singles between p4k-type rappers and producers and such... they were all pretty good from what I heard but the best was "Between Friends", featuring Earl in a scarce performance at that time alongside mysterious rapper Captain Murphy on a Flying Lotus beat. Of course Murphy ended up being FlyLo and Duality is great, Earl's back full time now, so for the sequel they had to up the mystery by bringing in DOOM in the rare getup of Viktor Vaughn. It's fantastic too. DOOM's verse is classic DOOM stuff, tight rhyming patterns over truly maverick language. Earl seems like he can basically phone in a verse this good at this point, which is insane. Captain Murphy is the most impressive, though. His lines are hilarious and his Madlib-style mixup is addictive.


38. Yung Lean - "Lightsaber"

This is prolly my favorite Yung Lean song... actually maybe "OREOMILKSHAKE" is but whatever that's too hard to get a download for. This just has everything I love about sad boys, basically even all just in the hook: "Optimus Prime, do it from behind" - conflation between 90s sorta nostalgiacore and really crude stuff, "Police knocking at my door I've done my time" - addition of the criminal element, "focus on whining, whining" - the whole mission statement. Oh man I mean "Why do I gotta be alive/I ain't bout that life", that's hilarious, that's just sad boys in a wonderfully bleak and beautiful and funny nutshell. The beat is flawless and the way his flow builds is like Tupac or Nas basically. "Anime shorties be stripping" haha awesome.

39. Perfume Genius - "Put Your Back N 2 It"

This is such a sweet and beautiful song. There really isn't anything you want to add or take away from it... it's so kind and pleasant. There's no tension or anything, but there's still a strong feeling of fulfillment. The melody seems vaguely sacred, it has that sort of very scale-based simplicity. The way he sings the title at the start, wow, aw man, so nice. It has a very smooth version of that compelling arhythmic feel... the exact opposite of Death Grips.

40. Gillian Welch - "Time (The Revelator)"

I'd say the last sort of genre I expect that someday I'll want to get into is like... Americana folk/country stuff. I have a hard time getting into it, I find it lacking in some sort of dynamic that I need to keep my attention. Hopefully I can mature into it. For now I just keep stumbling on the occasional track that really catches my interest, like this one. Gillian Welch's voice is stunning, the guitar work is starkly unresolved and really compelling. I love the rhythm on the chorus... The whole song is so rich and atmospheric. She's like... the Perfume Genius version of Joanna Newsom. Yes, when you have a minimal version of Joanna Newsom it's still 6 minutes long lol.

41. Broken Social Scene - "Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl"

I went to the Arts and Crafts festival this year and saw Stars, Bloc Party, Feist, Broken Social Scene et al... I thought maybe it would spur me into a new era of loving indie rock but lol instead I just listened to You Forgot it in People a bunch and then moved on to just listening to this song over and over. It's really really addictive. It hits this really sweet spot between a compelling amateurish indie aesthetic and something with a lot of professional polish that you can really sink into... like, the repetition and buildup and vocal modulation and such has the panache of a real veteran band, like, c'mon, the way the strings get worked in there, that's someone who just KNOWS that it sounds good, but then the vocal tone, and oh man ESPECIALLY the lyrical content suggest a band that's just starting out, simply overloaded with ideas and passion... it's fantastic, it's just a fantastic song from start to finish. It feels both anthemic and secret.


42. Perfume Genius - "Dark Parts"

So before I was talking about how "Hood" and the title track seem to me to be like, the heart or core part of a Sufjan Stevens song, without any maximal flourish... well, this song is like, a whole Sufjan album's emotional range, compressed into one song. Somehow. Miraculously. 'Cause I love Sufjan Stevens, a whole lot. But it seems to me that this hits both the rush of "Chicago" and the deep of "The Seer's Tower" in ~3:00. Oh no that must be hyperbole... That can't be. At least that's the sort of skepticism I have all the way through the first half, I keep thinking, "there's no way the tone shift to the second half can still be so powerful, can actually feel so sad coming after this", but then, boom. The way the titular lines are staggered is so engrossing, so mysterious. It's very beautiful and tender. It makes me want to be very calm and still and sad.


43. Hommarju feat. R.Cena/Exit Trance - 超妻賢母宣言


This song... no, this whole album, is simply wonderful. I really can't deny it. I am straight up addicted to it. I turn to it in times of need, in times of desperation, or in mere hedonistic excess. It is like a drug. I want it all at once. I want to experience all of it simultaneously. I want stepcharts for all of it and I want them to be at a perfect difficulty that I can play them all and then just collapse in a heap. It simply overpowers all conflicting emotions. Especially this song. This song has everything. It is denpa, like, literally, I think these are the sort of electric waves that we should be worried about re: insanity. More than once I have spent all day just listening to it over and over.

1 comment:

Zaia said...

hello, I made the original stepcharts for The Scales of Struggle and WE LUV LAMA. Solid songlist, looks good. Always been interested in Exit Trance. Check out Back to the Gate and Over the Fullereneshift in Sharpnelstreamz volume 2