Heart ache.....ruined

I love this EP, but I don't listen to it anywhere near as much as I should. The main problem is I seem to get a form of musical ADHD whenever I sit down to listen to stuff, unable to listen to a whole album or even an EP. So I just put my iPod on shuffle and let waves of randomness wash over my barely conscious entity.
Anywho, this is the first release from Jesu, the new and rather amazing project of former Napalm Death, Godflesh and Head of David musical genius, Justin Broadrick.
Where Godflesh ended musically, Jesu pick up the baton and run with it into new, sparse, desolate and unimagined landscapes. Over the course of Jesu's discography, Broadrick dabbles with Industrial noise, Ambient, Techno, Post-Rock, Post-Metal, shoegaze, drone and anything else he chooses fit.
The first release from the project, the two track 2004 EP entitled Heart Ache, is Jesu in prime ambient drone territory. Despite only being two tracks long the release does clock in at just over 40 minutes, and you feel every one of them. If you were to put this EP on in the background whilst you busied yourself with other tasks you might hardly notice it all, simply having waves of guitar wash over you. If, however, you actually sit down and listen to it (as you should with all music) then you'll experience waves, nuances, twists and turns that reward the patient listener. This release is still drone in nature, though, so don't expect riffs or to be constantly kept on tenter-hooks throughout, because that's not what this beast is. Also, unlike later releases, the vocals take a back seat here, in favour of the hypnotically droning guitars and punishing drums.

It's hard to big this release up enough, so just do yourself a favour; download it and give it a try. What have you got to lose?

Jesu Christ

Slaying the Capricorn

Alabaster Suns is the new band from Nathan Perrier and Kevin Williams, the two guitarists formerly of the rather kick ass (and sadly now defunct) Capricorns.
I posted their former band's last album here and said how much I enjoyed their laid back, stonerific brand of sludgey metal. Alabaster Suns continue in a very similar vein but now with the added bonus of vocals thrown into the mix. This makes them feel like a more 'conventional' sludge band, with a little less of the atmospheric turns of their previous outfit.
However, this means the songs are often more direct, driven and rocking. I'm still a little undecided whether I like the new sound as much as I did Capricorns, but that's probably a little unfair of me. Based on their own merits, Alabaster Suns kick ass; in the shadow of the work that has come before, it's a little disappointing in it's straight forward-ness.

Anywho, here's their only release, an EP or full length release depending on which report you read, but either way it's 5 tracks are definitely worth more than one or two spins.

Pass the rolling papers...

Feeling lazy and generally in a 'really can't be arsed' kind of mood, so I'm just going to post a few Youtube videos that fit my lethargy.

First up, another of my all time favourite songs. No matter how many times I hear this song I'll never grow tired of it. This is the kind of song to sit and listen to when you want to drown in your misery, lethargy, sadness, mellow state of mind or whatever mood you're in. Maybe that's just me. R.I.P. Layne Stayley, Alice In Chains died when he did.

Alice In Chains- Nutshell


Next is Sebastien Tellier's La Ritournelle, perhaps one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded. In all honesty, without a hint of exaggeration, I believe I could listen to this song every day for the rest of my life and never grow tired of it. Sometimes I listen to it three or four times in a row, that's how much it touches me.


To finish off this rather uninspiring post is At The Gates' The Scar. The main reason I like this track is because it was such an unexpected moment of melancholy from an otherwise frighteningly crushing album. The soundtrack to the end of your life....perhaps

You could be sitting next to me and I wouldn't know it

Bit of a change of pace here, and not before time. As much a fan of heavy metal in all it's guises (well, most of it's guises) I am, I do also enjoy a lot more besides.

So here, in a continuation of the Best of 2000s series I've got Doves' debut album, Lost Souls. This has got to be one of my all time favourite albums, it's got a brilliant mix of up tempo indie rock in the form of Catch The Sun and Rise along with some mellow, chilled out acoustic numbers like Break Me Gently and The Man Who Told The World; there's even some lounge jazz elements to Firesuite. The real gem of a track, however, has got to be Cedar Room. It's a 7 minute epic of haunting beauty that, no matter how often I hear, never gets tired. The chorus is chilling and, for some reason, strikes such a chord with me that the first time I heard it on the radio (it was the first single released from the album) I rushed out to get the album. It also has greater sentimental meaning than that to me and will forever be up there in my imaginary 'All time Favourite Songs.'

I'm aware that I've not spoken a great deal about this album in comparison to most of my other posts, but for some reason words just aren't flowing at the moment. Don't let that reflect upon the album in any way at all as it's a goddam stonker!

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And I tried to sleep alone
But I couldn't do it
You could be sitting next to me
And I wouldn't know it
If I told you you were wrong
I don't remember saying

Amplifier Worship

Boris....what can you say about this band that would adequately surmise their sound and back catalogue? If I'm honest, and in no way attempting to be 'clever', the only word is Boris. I'll write what little I know about this stupendously awesome band and you can judge for yourselves...
Boris are a power trio from Japan, named after a Melvin's track from Bullhead, and originally formed from the Japanese hardcore punk scene. This sound is mostly evident in their earlier releases but they soon moved on from this to embrace such wide ranging genres as drone, doom, post rock, 70s hard rock, stoner, psychedelic and ambient. Their back catalogue is sprawling and, at first, can be quite daunting and confusing, especially when one release can be so disperate to the previous and subsequent. As such it's hard to pick their 'best' or even most popular albums as each fan will prefer one genre, and therefore album, over another. As such all I can do is attempt to present a few (I fully intend to post more of their albums at a not-to-later date) of my favourites.

First up I'm going with Akuma no Uta from 2003, mainly cos it's probably my favourite Boris release (right up there with Pink, which I hope to post next.) I suppose the first thing to do is explain the cover; it's an homage to the Nick Drake album Bryter Layter. Upon seeing the cover, my dad (who's a Drake fan) couldn't seem to grasp quite why they'd copy the artwork from an album that didn't musically reflect anything on their own. To this all I could respond with was it was an homage, a way to convey their respect for a truly great artitst that doesn't get anywhere near enough acclaim. Obviously, the most notable difference between Drake's and Boris' covers is that the latter features Takeshi holding his custom double guitar/bass instead of an acoustic. This instrument allows the guitarist to quickly swap between 4 and 6 strings live depending on the song/passage.
Musically, Akuma no Uta is perfect, featuring ambient post rock and straight up hard rocking, 70s style garage psych in the style of the Stooges. The tracks Introduction and Naki Kyoku are the primary ambient offerings while tracks like Ibitsu and Furi smack the listener from any atmospherically induced lethargy with balls to the wall, fuzzed out punkish rock.

In one breath you're washed over with waves of ambient drone, then next you've got the waft of weed infused, fuzzy punk rawk filling your lungs. Really, do not miss the chance to experience one of the world's most innovative, talented and fearless bands:
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Drinking From the Necks of the Ones You Love

I have absolutely no idea where, when or how I first heard These Arms Are Snakes and as much as I'd love to say that the very first encounter monumentally altered the course of my life for ever, it didn't. With such an introduction need I really sell the band any more?
These Arms Are Snakes are a progressive, post-hardcore band from Seattle. To be honest, this is pretty much all the information you need. If a sentence containing a band name as fucking awesome as that coupled with those two genres isn't enough to get you scrolling to the bottom of this post to the download link then I don't really know if I can adequately sell it to you.
In the truest sense of what I understand the post-hardcore genre to be, the music of TAAS is, in a nutshell, schizophrenic. It has that mix of lilting, fragile beauty and ear drum splitting cacophony. At their most 'post-hardcore', TAAS are nowhere near as dangerous and insane as At the Drive-In but the music is just as powerful, hard rocking and intense. All that being said, there is more atmosphere and melody in the releases of TAAS. That isn't to say that the band is airy fairy in anyway, but more that they lean towards the more melodic 'post' aspect of their genre than the balls to the wall, circle pit loving 'hardcore' part.
At times they do tend to verge on Math Rock, with complex rhythms and angular guitars. There are times of dissonance, staccato rhythms and atypical song structure but these apects never threathen to over come the music as a whole.

While At the Drive-In always give me the impression of a group of insane individuals who all hate each other (and their instruments) squeezing into a tiny box room and thrashing out an album in about an hour with instruments they found in a 2nd hand shop, These Arms Are Snakes seem to be the antithesis within the same genre; they're artful, considered and (compared to AtDI) their chaos is harnessed and restrained.

This Is Meant To Hurt You is the band's 2003 EP and the first release of theirs I heard and owned. It's 5 songs are all perfectly brilliant, each song a highlight, each boasting a different aspect that has those hairs on your neck stand to attention. This is exactly what EPs should be; almost a mini album, a few songs of brilliance, rather than stop gap dross that other bands put out. And the cover is brilliant, every time I see it I fell culpable in a gritty, New York crime. Time to take a shower to wash the guilt off....

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The trend buck starts here

Every music blog you seem to visit now (or a few weeks ago at least) were all getting their knickers in a twist over their 'Best of the noughties' lists and countdowns. As much as there is something rather pleasing (and OCD indulging) about creating lists and ranking things, I also think it's an ompossible task. One minute you can't get enough of some obscure Latvian NSBM band that only you and 15 other people have heard via the internet and the next you're going ape shit for the King's of Leon's brand of pop rock.
Therefore, my very own inadvertant countdown of the Best of the 2000s has taken on a greater meaning. When I started it I never intended for it to become a retrospective look at the decade's best music, but rather a poke in the eye to all the people who seem to regard new music as some great unwashed being. Sure, the heyday of British Prog rock, the fleeting yet deadly grip that Punk had over the world for a few years in the 70s, the glorious early 80s chaos that spawned Thrash and the brutal language of Death Metal spoken beautifully in Florida and Gothenburg up til the mid 90s...they're all gone, never to be recaptured. Equally, there is undoubtedly a shit load of imitators and fakes trying to emulate those golden sounds for new audiences and selling it like it's some new, great beast, but it's not. Thus was spawned my concept of trying to sell the music of the decade rather too enthusiastically (in a very embarrassing British, Carry On brand of titillation) dubbed 'the noughties.'
And now I find myself wading through numerous such rundowns on all the blogs I visit, but much less in a sense of how epic some of the music was from the last 10 years and more in a sense of 'this is the shit I'm into, check my e-peen biatch.' Very few of the lists I've read threw up any surprises or anomalies with regard to genre and blog content. So in a 'this is the shit I'm into, check my e-peen biatch, I'm so fucking eclectic it hurts' manner I shall continue my Best of the 2000s whilst sticking two fingers firmly up at all those blogs that seem to think the last 10 years just means 'your favourite albums you can remember from the last few years.'
Eat shizzle and die, nizzle.