I'm really out of touch. The only one I recognize in that group is Brandi Carlile.

Holy shit....brilliant and scary at the same time....he's gooooood......

 

5 hours ago, skullguise said:

Holy shit....brilliant and scary at the same time....he's gooooood......

 

Unholy carp, that was insanely great!  I got choked up multiple times listening to that just once.

Intense.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001jlf2

A Gilles Peterson 3h show in memoriam to Wayne Shorter. Just started with Speak no Evil.

I'm still dealing with the fallout of moving (something that is scheduled to continue indefinitely) and most of the time I have to listen to music I just fire up SomaFM's Synphaera channel.  Synphaera is my current favorite ambient/downtempo/psychill/call it what you will label.  

The rest of the time, when I'm out and about in the world, welll...  it's death metal.  Florida death metal.

Death - Individual Thought Patterns (1993).  Chuck Schuldiner's "angsty" album where he continued his struggle to outgrow the blood and guts imagery of the band's early works.  It's got Gene Hoglan AKA the best drummer in metal on it and is one of my favorite \m/ albums, full stop.

Morbid Angel - Blessed Are The Sick "Full Dynamic Range" re-release from 2019.  The idea of an "audiophile" edition of a death metal album might seem silly, but TBH this version really IS better.  Brickwalling ruins any form of music including death metal.  Also BatS is better than Altars of Madness and I've been willing to die on this hill for 30 years now.

 

Deicide - Legion (1992).  The legend of this album, which has persisted for decades, is that the band had to record it twice.  The first time it was so fast that the entire thing clocked in at ~25 minutes.  That wasn't long enough for an album so they had to re-record it, "slower."  Three decades on, if the original faster version exists, it has never seen the light of day.  Tragically, there was no special 30th anniversary release last year.

Cynic - Focus.  Specifically the 2004 14-track remaster.  There have been a bunch of vinyl re-issues in the last decade, but precious few CD versions.  The funny thing about Cynic is that they're not a one album band.  The returned 15 years later with 2008's Traced In Air, which to this day I have never heard.

Massacre - From Beyond (1991).  This album got maligned as a "Death wanna" on release, and I have never agreed with that.  Similarly, when Massacre released the abysmally bad Promise in 1996, I think it re-ignited hate for From Beyond.  Promise is indeed spectacularly bad.  I have listened to the entire thing 3-4 times in 25 years and it has never improved.  With that said, From Beyond is a bit of a sleeper classic.

That was this weekend.  This week's gonna include Malevolent Creation, early Cannibal Corpse, Nocturnus and maybe some Obituary.

I should be listening to new music, but instead I'm stuck in a young-people-listening-to-old-songs warm musical swamp. 

 

 

Meanwhile, I'm listening to old music and I'm old and no one's watching me... I hope. 

Edited March 6, 20233 yr by robm321

59 minutes ago, robm321 said:

Meanwhile, I'm listening to old music and I'm old and no one's watching me... I hope. 

Is this you? 

 

I've been loving some reaction videos, mostly to Heilung, recently.  One favorite is a woman who goes by "The Charismatic Voice" and she is quite the Heilung fan-girl; she is amazing at picking music apart.  Another was a woman, whose outburst of "Holy Shitballs" may be my single most favorite reaction expression....

 

 

 

Edited March 7, 20233 yr by skullguise

On 3/4/2023 at 7:50 PM, Voltron said:

 

 

I first came across this group here...

 

 

4 hours ago, skullguise said:

I've been loving some reaction videos, mostly to Heilung, recently.  One favorite is a woman who goes by "The Charismatic Voice" and she is quite the Heilung fan-girl; she is amazing at picking music apart.  Another was a woman, whose outburst of "Holy Shitballs" may be my single most favorite reaction expression....

 

 

 

I'm a big fan of The Charismatic Voice.

50 years ago Rossington and the boys be playing.

Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd
Lynyrd Skynyrd
1973

https://album.link/i/1470518458

Example:

 

Fred Hersch & Esperanza Spalding - Alive at the Village Vanguard

He plays. She sings, and talks here and there.

Love Transcends
Jackie Venson
2021

https://album.link/i/1583290638

Example:

New to me. I really have enjoyed this 2021 release. I will see about her other work. I liked the raw Acoustic tracks (example) a little better than the full productions. But all was worthy.

Sofia Gubaidulina – Dialog: Ich und Du; The Wrath of God; The Light of the End
Vadim Repin, Gewandhausorchester, Andris Nelsons
2021

https://album.link/i/1584322440

Example:

Modern Living Composer Sofia - with three of her recent works. I was a little unsure at the beginning, but the works really grew on me, I found the themes powerful and connecting. Well recorded and performed. 

One more listen today of note - there have been others - not of note.

Songs from Rainbow Hill
Ben Crosland
2018

https://album.link/i/1441414140

Example:

There is a lightness and delicacy to his writing and playing that I find attractive. It almost has a Ghibli feel to some tracks. He seems to do different things and projects, the piano based work I have liked the most. 

 

I really enjoyed this set this morning.

Added albums to my listening queue

Occasionally, you have to revisit the legends.

SACD

So I started a project. 

I was listening to an Album in my queue:

Prokofiev: Violin Works
Tianwa Yang, Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, Jun Märkl
2021

And I was not too enthralled with it. Not that it was bad, but I was never drawn in by the performance or recording. 

It got me thinking. I have not used the streaming service for one of the main things that it could be very good at. Listen to every version of Prokofiev Violin Concerto #1 that they have.

After some searching I ended up with about 47 versions. I set about a task earlier today to listen to them and find versions that like. I started by listening to just the second movement. Some I could reject right away because of the recording quality. This is suppose to be something that I enjoy, so even a good performance could have been rejected because I probably would never go back and listen to it. I was able to eliminate a pile in that first pass and I have narrowed it down to the following 18 that I will do a deep dive on. 

The nice part is that I don't have a real bases, a standard, for this work (like I do for the 2nd concerto).  I don't know/think I will listen to all of these completely.  Some sounded just interesting enough to make it to this round. We will see how it flushes out. Some, like the Perlman (upper right) and Stern (lower left) are front runners and sounded fantastic. When I was first playing all the versions, I tried not to look at who was performing before I started playing as to not be too influenced. And some really surprised me, and some major ones got dropped very fast. 

So, I will be listening to these and narrowing it down a bit, and then I may have some fun with the final 8 or something. March Madness bracket time. 

You are a warrior, Mikey. 

I'd like to benefit from your massive understanding, so let us know the one you liked best. 

2 hours ago, mikeymad said:

So I started a project.

I did a similar project with Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 13, II. Allegro molto e vivace. which is a lot easier as it's only 2 minutes long. And weird as I am not really much of a classical listener. But that little bit of music is one of my favorite things to hear. My takeaway was that Glenn Gould is someone I like a lot.

 

 

Napalm Death - From Enslavement To Obliteration remaster (2012)

Napalm Death - Scum 25th anniversary remaster (2012)

Remastering proto grindcore strikes me as a silly idea.  I had both of the above albums on cassette in the late 1980s.  At that point Napalm Death were considered a death metal and/or hadcore band.  I think it was nearly a decade later until I heard the term "grindcore."  I downloaded a LUFS app for OSX yesterday and I'm going to run some of these remasters through it.  ND is an amusing band, but they're not really my cuppa these days.  With that said, one of their founded members went on to form a group I really like:

Godflesh - Streetcleaner 2CD remaster (2010).  This really is one of the heaviest albums I've ever heard.  I remember first hearing on college radio in '89.  That was a time period when: (A) I was listening to a lot of metal.  (B) I was listening to a lot of college radio.  (C) Both were experiencing a renaissance.  Revisiting Streetcleaner, it has aged like a fine, dystopian industrial metal wine.  

Godflesh - Slavestate, original 1991 version.  There is a 2013 remaster, but I have not heard it.  An almost funky and danceable EP compared to the mechanical gloom of the previous album.  I actually didn't like it much when I first got in '91, but it's now one of my favorite releases by the band.  

I did not plan this, but every (non ambient) album I've listen to in the last month has been on Earache records.  Funny what a hugely significant label they are for extreme music.

Some of this years Eurovision Earworms (Sing along!)

 

 

 

I have never heard a 6 octave range from a male singer, until now.