Albums A-Z #1-3

I had this thought the other day that I haven't listened to most of my music library for a long time, and have stuck with the same 25 or so albums for a while. So I decided to listen to my ~8,000 songs in alphabetical order by album name and do a short writeup on each. Mostly because I think it's a silly idea!! So here are the first three:

_SNDWRK/gh by greenhouse

First on the list is the reasonably named _SNDWRK/gh by greenhouse, one of Emma Essex's many aliases. Ironically, this is one of the 25 or so albums I've been listening to regularly, so it's not new at all!

I'm a huge fan of Emma Essex's output under her Halley Labs label. I only discovered them a couple of years ago, but they've been producing music for years and years. This is one of their newest albums, and I bought it right away.

This whole exercise is going to be me stretching myself to writing about music, because frankly I have no idea how to describe this. It seems like a riff on "IDM", a genre I love despite the name being the worst thing imaginable. So sort of jungle-y but more ambient and with lots of changeups in the rhythm. It's a mellow album even when the tempo reaches ridiculous speeds. It fits in perfectly with other Halley Labs output, particularly the more ambient and less dancey albums like ura. and ASTROANTEDILUVIAN. But it has this infectious, poppy, and hopeful energy. 

It's also more or less what I imagine video game music from the future would sound like if the future didn't suck. If we went down the path of shiny plastic and infinite resources for everyone, it would sound like this album. 

also weed lol

So yeah, it's a goodun! Highly recommended.

...EP by Mandy, Indiana

Here's a weird one: a UK based band with a French lead singer kinda-sorta name themselves after Gary, Indiana. What genre would you expect from that?

I know I wasn't expecting a sort of industrial, thumping beat mixed with vocals entirely in French and a sort of sad quietude in the midst of it all. It's a pretty angry-sounding album, but I don't speak French! 

I'm pretty sure I just discovered this on my friend Miffy's last.fm playlist - this will become a recurring theme, trust me.

Honestly this one sort of slides right off me - I think it's good, but it doesn't do anything for me unfortunately. But I still recommend giving it a listen because it's unlike most anything else I've ever heard. Plus they just released a new album - I should give that a try.

"Rat Killer" by Geneva Jacuzzi

I am not entirely sure why I got this - probably because of the cool cover art, and also maybe my friend Daphny listened to it and I saw it on their last.fm page. The first time I listened to it, it did nothing for me and I completely forgot about it.

But yesterday I listened again and holy moly this rules. 

It's very, very lo-fi and definitely sounds like it was recorded in a bedroom somewhere. It is just dripping with reverb and cheap drum machine sounds. The lyrics are often repetitive and most of them don't make any sense to me. The total effect is pretty stunning - music made completely to one person's idea of what music should sound like.

I find this extremely inspiring as someone who really, really likes to create things but has a hard time shaking off expectations around those things. This music rules despite not following any of the guidelines about what it means to make "good" music. It's funny, occasionally catchy, always weird...yeah. It's great.

This is apparently her first album, but listening to her later stuff it doesn't sound like she's changed all that much. In other words, the lo-fi-ness is intentional, and not something borne out of necessity. 

Here's my favorite song off the album (apparently also released on another album):

I recommend giving the full thing a listen sometime. Unfortunately, it's not available to purchase anywhere I could find...but you know what to do...and go buy her other stuff on bandcamp!

Okay, that's it! Hope y'all enjoy this, I'll probably be writing more of these very soon.