samedi 3 Mai 2014, 14h48m
Diary #1
Here I'll paint happy little thoughts about happy little songs, and in the corner there I'll add some happy little links and that will be our secret, ok?
Artist - Chelsea Wolfe
This week I discovered LA artist Chelsea Wolfe and I was instantly hooked on Pain is Beauty (2013). Based on the album cover, I expected something gothy, but I was pleasantly surprised by the eccentric stripped-down rock/electronic soundscapes and the haunting vocals. The minimalistic approach to music, which evokes raw and deep feelings, becomes more subtle once a brooding progression unfolds, breaking the straightforward blinding black & white motif into thousands of nuanced shards. The resulting kaleidoscope is ominous, beautiful, sometimes chaotic, but always powerful and heavy. It leaves you wanting for more, it is the beginning of an endless journey, and once a song finishes, it is up to you to build the rest of the broken bridge towards an ethereal destination. Nature and love, as well as the Baudelaireian correspondences between the two, are the thread of the lyrical web. The former is always untamed and unpredictable, the latter is always troubled, incomplete, and both reflect an apparently irreconcilable inner struggle.
I also listened to Apokalypsis (2011), and various songs from the other two (or three if you count Mistake in Parting) records. My favourite tracks overall are: Pale on Pale (perhaps the most doomy song on the two mentioned albums), Winter, Feral Love, We Hit a Wall, Demons.
Pain is Beauty (Full Album)
Apokalypsis (Full Album)
Live Performance
Album - Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
I've listened to this album several times now, and it keeps growing on me, although my favourite GYBE work remains Slow Riot for New Zerø Kanada. The first couple of listens you'll be mostly bored or struggling to ingest & digest the sound of the band, but once you go past sound and into a sea of emotion and a process of living and a rite of dying, suddenly everything falls into place and you can appreciate all the pieces of the maddening puzzle of (non-)existence. I will keep coming back to it, since every listen is a new rewarding experience.
Album - Wu-Tang Clan - Enter the Wu-Tang: 36 chambers
I'm not an avid hip hop listener, but I stumbled on the Fantano review, and I thought I'd give it a shot. It was definitely worth it. I felt like I was listening to a fantasy concept album on ninjas from da hood, their real struggles and their sick imagination. The lyrical frenzy, the crazy vocal styles and the amazing songwriting got me hooked. It takes a while to get used to all the intermezzos and samples, which sometimes are all filler & no killer, but with these exceptions noted, the meat is there: da ass was fat. Highly enjoyable, original and very catchy. Dolla dolla bill y'all.
EP - bewitcher - Wild Blasphemy
This EP got most of my overall play time during the last month. The fresh black'n'roll, or as the band calls it, black/speed, opus is insanely addictive, filled with densely packed riffs, over the top yet not pretentious lyrics, vicious rhythm and a short'n'sweet bass solo (Black Speed Delirium 1:43). The four songs are of consistently high quality, but my ears were especially delighted by Black Speed Delirium, an authentic, yet inevitably tongue-in-cheek, ars poetica that can be summarized by the chorus: "Heavy metal at the speed of Satan / Rock'n'roll on the wings of the devil". The clean production works surprisingly well on this black hybrid, and makes everything louder, more vivid, more energetic and more fun. I really like the album cover, and some basic reverse image search suggests it's a Parisian circa 1910 postcard, which is bizarre to say the least (link 1, link 2).
Misc
I also watched this (see related videos for parts 2,3,4) short and mediocre documentary on Linda Perry.