Last album(s) listened to (in full)

[nrh]

last month. fwiw the morgan wallen is awful, baffled why it was treated as anything more than the generic radio country it is.

[rischka]

currently

[greennui]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSmXaFLbnLI

[Pretentious Hipster]

Been pretty much exclusively listening to this for like 3 weeks now: Animal Lover by The Residents. Honestly, at points this reminds me of Coil, especially the album Ape of Naples. Absolutely incredible experimental pop.

Contrast fascinates me with music, and I feel like this one is one of the best cases for it. It's eclectic as well so it always keeps you on your toes. The contrast is that The Residents are known for being ultra serious (They wear eyeball masks with top hats), but this album is INCREDIBLY serious. To make the tone more weird, they got stuff like silly and dissonant instrumentals, as well as the vocals, but the tone of it just feels borderline scary. Since it's such a huge contrast it emphasizes both ends of the spectrum.

The track Two Lips highlights this. The vocalist sounds like Daffy Duck through a vocal filter, and you've got an informal choir, but it's somehow still serious, even when this is by far the silliest song in the album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b_RRyf9Lqk

The track My Window is probably the highlight of this entire album. If you honestly told me this was an unreleased Coil track I might believe you. The mood is almost exactly the same. Just prepare yourself, this is incredibly depressing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg7tS6xFjGY

The ending of it, also dealing with death like the track The Window, is terrifying dark ambient. What a great highlight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wYQzaA9LA8

I didn't expect a pop album to reach such a mood, especially with a band known for doing silly things, but this actually might be all time top 10 material to me.

[niminy-piminy]

this is by far the silliest song in the album.

ha, what a song! i like the lyrics full of tulips ("I have nothing but tulips to lose")...

[Chorus]
Oh, we have to buy a tulip
Yes, we have to buy a tulip
Oh, we have to buy a tulip
So we'll sell our home
And we'll sell our clothes
And we'll sell our shoes
Everything we own
We'll sell to you

[Mr. Skull]
Well, my doctor bought a tulip
And my banker bought a tulip
And my lawyer bought a tulip
So I'll buy one, too
Maybe I'll buy ten
Maybe I'll buy more
All my friends have scored
Tulips in galore

[Chorus]
Yes! We have to buy!
No! We don't know why!
Yes! We'll buy or die!
Yes! We have to buy!

No! We don't know why!
Yes! We'll buy or die!
No! We don't know why
Yes! We'll buy or die!

[Mr. Skull]
Would you like to buy a tulip?
Would you like to buy a tulip?
Would you like to buy a tulip?
You can pick and choose
I have sold my wife
And my children, too
I have nothing but
Tulips to lose

[Chorus!]
No!

(Yes! We have to buy!
No! We don't know why!
Yes! We'll buy or die!)

[Curtis, baby]

__harlem world (mase)__
this is pretty crappy. wonder what there is between children of the corn and this

__da storm (ogc)__
this is insane fire. i would say starang is t5 oat

__the m-pire shrikez Back (ogc)__
thi is a bit poppy but it's still fire. but i wouldn't say it's insane fire or anything like that

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 60

__ogc > 1996 > da storm__
this is insane fire. i would say starang is t5 oat

__ogc > 1999 > the m-pire shrikez back__
this is a bit poppy but it's still fire. but i wouldn't say it's insane fire or anything like that

__boot camp clik > 1997 > for the people__
yeah this is pretty fire. if i'm tbh? i actually thought the guest spots were fire. it's interesting, i'm not SUPER huge on sean shit till he was sean, but starang is just my fav out the gate. da storm is probably my fav pre-lifestylez rap album, except maybe enter the wu-tang

__random axe > 2011 > random axe__
these beats are fire. maybe i should listen to more guilty. but first i will probably listen to some black milk solo

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 61

__jadakiss > 2001 > kiss the game goodbye__
it's mean in a way i don't rly like. hate upward, not downward. but "show discipline" is insane fire. like fire of the utmost heat

__david bowie > 1983 > let's dance__
this is catchy and good. i like it

__david bowie > 1973 > aladdin sane__
this i don't like so much. not sexy, and not very fun

__now, now > 2012 > threads__
i haven't listened to this in a long time. it's fire. so fire. as a cogent work perhaps even firer than their first album. but other than "school friends" there are like no bangers. but it's a fire listen, cover to cover

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 62

__now, now every children > 2008 > cars__
honestly fairly gangster. but in a weird way the highs are so high that the (relativd) downs are forgettable. "not one but two" (1), "friends with my sister" (5) and "cars" (11) are all insane tuneskis of mucho fire. "everyone you know" (2) is almost enough to hold the first half together but it's not a v fire cover^2 listen. has 3 of their 4 largest, most gargantuan songs, yet threads is for sure a firer album. that is of note (to me)

__prhyme > 2015 > prhyme__
this is big time fire. mucho heat. it's not royce at his best (i think his best is like the last 5 yrs), but his bars are significantly firey. guests spots were of a range, but the verses by mac miller (2) and more so scHoolboy q (8) were of a consistency typical and appreciably specific to each guest artist



LERNEN, DAY 63

__the national > 2007 > boxer__
i listened to this as i got up. the end was more listenable than i remembered. i don't remember how i felt when "slow show" came on, a coincidence that i've not failed to appreciate

__prhyme > 2018 > prhyme 2__
this is actually more fire than the first one. nicer bars. the ethic-aesthetic positioning is expressed with broad gestures, but it suits the dual sensibilities of inferiority and superioty complexes. roc marciano's verse is fucking fire

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 63 (cont.)

__royce da 5'9'' > 2016 > layers__
i had only previously heard the title track, which is obvs fire, but actually the wbole thing is fire. don't worry i will listen again soon



LERNEN, DAY 64

__the national > 2005 > alligator__
ok cool, i've probably listened to the whole thing before but i didn't remember anything and for good reason. this isn't that interesting. hm i wonder if other than the masterpiece high violet and the odd elsewise song ("slow show" and "about day" foremost on that list) the national are actually not insane fire or anything? it's possible. don't worry i will look into this

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 64 (cont.)

__matt pond pa > 2002 > the green fury__
i haven't listened to these guys in a long time. this album is dope or whatever i guess. is "canadian song" based on a true story? i wonder

__matt pond pa > 1998 > deer apartments__
this one is boring tho

__matt pond pa > 2005 > several arrows later__
pretty gang i guess

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 65

__scHoolboy q > 2016 > blank face lp__
i actually haven't listened to this front to back in a long time, the end is more interesting and peculiar than i remember, but kanye's "freestyle" on tHat part is obvs the worst thing ever in an otherwise flawless album



LERNEN, DAY 66

__scHoolboy q > 2019 > crasH talk__
i might've not listened to this bastard in even longer tbh. i liked it more than i remember, it got my body moving, but i still think there's a bit of empty calories there, but it's still fire obvs

__children of the corn "collector's edition" [remastered in 2011]__
oh this is actually way better sounding than that disc they did in 2003, the already fire lyrics come across even firer as a result. this is straight fucking heat, v gang, v tasty. i would say that the most yummy thing about this album is that big l, and especially kam and mase, are all at points where they are ELITE rappers in a particular and SPECIFIC brand of rap. like, wu-tang has at least 3 (depends whom you ask) elite rappers, but only rae and ghost are really on the same vibe. not in a bad way. method man is so different than gza than odb than masta killa. take black hippy, k and q are helllla different, jay rock and ab-soul are too (i don't like ab-soul but jay rock is often god tier on songs and i need to give his albums proper listens). ferg and rocky, probably not coincidentally, are two contemporary reliably fire rappers are on some parralel shits for sure. pusha t + malice are probably the all-time duo, for sure. but 3 rappers working together and painting the same picture? gotta say it's big l, killa and mase. just unbelievable talent

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 66 (cont.)

acid house kings > 2011 > music sounds better with you
yeah i mean i guess but it's just inferior 'sing along with the acid house kings', so



LERNEN, DAY 67

acid house kings > 1997 > advantage acid house kings
i'd heard a few of these songs but i'd never listened to the album. it's fire. it's not as fire as 'sing along', obvs, but at least it's proto-'sing along' and that in itself is very fun. it's like comfy towel music, except the towels are gucci

kendrick lamar > 2013 > untitled unmastered
this is the only one i've listened to front-to-back before, so i just gobbled up the shallow end, just to get my feet/digestive muscles moving. i guess my hot take is that this is almost entirely interesting because of what we get to see and experience of kendrick's process. i mean i guess that's obvs, but what it means for me is that it's not at all appropriate for the background. i would never listen to this unless i were doing the explicit task of listening to music, and (for the most part) putting my concern on the music

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 68

__blue sky black death's jay-z & az remixes "j(A)y-(Z)" [released in 2009]__
yep the science is in, this is as fire as i remembered it. jay has really grown on me a lot over the yrs to the point where i feel the need to reappraise his entire catalogue to find out what i'm missing, because it's something. that being said that AZ songs are such a tighter fit... well i mean, they're all of the same original album. listening to the AZ songs makes an insanely fire lil mini bastard



LERNEN, DAY 69

__kendrick lamar > 2012 > good kid maad city__
speaking of missing shit, this is the punishment i deserve for never listening to an entire kendrick album in one sitting (besides untitled unmastered). like i'd always heard songs like backseat freestyle and been like, yeah it's hella hot. or like his verse on the tHat part remix, it's like fire-ass bizarro bars, but it's like, weighty and seems sorta like sonically unsustainable... like there's no such thing as 80 minutes of this mood. but then his albums are just like hella greek-ass melodrama and shit, so it's ike, yeah no shit bro we're gonna be bouncing around here like there's this beautiful thing he does... he has these appollonian rhythms and rhyme tendencies, like strongly emphasising the rhyming syllables, especially like the main syllable in a 3-syllable rhyme, of which he may alternate b/w rhyming all the syllables and like cheating on the middle one. but then he gets crazy with it cos like sometimes he's actually emphasising the cheat syllable, and then boom it's part of a new scheme, or he just like gets what seems like off-rhyme but then there's like new schenes that pop up... a lot of the time almost saying to you "bruh, i been here, he brought me in 2 lines ago and just now you see me?" so then in addition to that you have like various types of skits and interludes that all seem sorta like stepping into semi-preserved mementos. like no one's touched that dresser in yrs but now there's dust, and you touch something and now the dust is disturbed. you know when like some shit's dusty or dirty but then you like move or wipe some shit so there's this very noticeably clean spot? and it's like, when the whole shit was dirty you were walking by this shit and not even taking note of it. but now you like step in the room and you're drawn to that clean spot, almost like the clean spot seems like the parts that are wrong. anyway, that's the vibe i get from this album, like, it's honestly just insane fire and like for sure one of my favourite albums ever

__ransom & nicholas craven > 2020 > deleted scenes__
sometimes you hear rap and you're like shit, this is like 80% fire. but sometimes you hear shit and it's like, this is just 80% of a fire. like this is tight i guess, the beats are like a somewhat typical but reliably "sinister" and the bars are honestly quite fire. but the bars have nowhere to go rly on those types of beats. i only knew of this cos nicholas craven produces for tha god fahim and mach-hommy sometimes, but i'd definitely be more interested in checking out some ransom sans nicholas craven moving forward

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 70

__american football > 1999 > american football__
been a while since i listened from front to back. well obvsiously this is one of the very greatest albums ever

__neutral milk hotel > 1998 > in the aeroplane over the sea__
now that i've sampled and recorded over "king of carrot flowers pt 1", it's hard to feel that RUSHHHH when the album starts. however, this is a fire album. i decided like 15 yrs ago that i wanted the title track to be the ONLY song that plays at my funeral, and i have not for one moment wavered from that

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 71

__club 8 > 1996 > nouvelle__
yep it's good. it's a solid listen. i wonder if "me too" will just haunt me until the end of my life (circumstances). it's possible! anyway, the last 3 tracks, which i believe weren't on the original release, are by far the finest, hottest, freshest and overall just most neato. anyway, generally acid house kings are more neato than these peeps, but could one even say "london school of economics" is as fly as "me too"? one could, if one lied

__racecar > 1995 > girlish__
i don't rly dig the high intensity stuff, but "saying it's over" will always be one of my favs. i'd like to know more about where these various members went. i know the singer went to sing in lorelei and did the vox on their first EP, their v flyest release. what about these folks jamming on their tambourines and whatnot? it's something to look into, for sure

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 71 (cont.)

__canibus > 2003 > rip the jacker__
well yeah it's maybe the most consistent rap album ever. maybe even the most consistent album. or piece of artwork period. i'm not saying it's perfect, that's stupid, that's a stupid concept. it's an entirely cogent exploration of one idea as manifesting in one situation in one person's life. fire!

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 75

__john frusciante > 2004 > shadows collide with people__
you know this is a weird album, there's something that's not clicking for me. the first song i ever heard was "the slaughter" and i was like oh that's gang, that's fire, that's hot shit. it's probably the dopest song about being an addict ever (nerds might say it's elliott smith's "twilight" but that song is not about being an addict, it's about being unable to maintain a relationship b/c of addiction. that is different. that is sad. "the slaughter" is bittersweet. some ppl do not understand how bittersweet being an addict is. it's something i try to explore in my own music. it's like, yeah, cats do this, cats do that, all for the drug. but it's like, bro! do you realize how fucking fire that substance must be? that's what "the slaughter" is all about. it's about the pain of detox and that safety of falling back into your familiar habits, and that is fucking fire). anyway, when i listen to this album, and i listened to it twice on this day, like, i don't have any reference point, outside of maybe the first track, until at least the 11th track, "song to sing when i'm lonely". i feel like i'm floating, like nothing's firm. am i missing something? or am i missing that i'm not missing anything? it feels like a concept album, but i don't really vibe with the concept until the last track, and that is confusing to me. more listens are in order

__starflyer 59 > 2016 > slow__
i listened to this bitch twice too. you know, it's quite bizarre. jason martin is basically my fav artist of any medium, and like, from what, like 1992 until 2005 he was just killing it? like basically 0 misses? then it's just like this dead period. like i listen to this album, and it's like, how is this same bro did "hazel would" or "leigh and me" or fuckin "the fashion focus". it feels sterile! i've listened to his 2019 album a few times and it was the best of his in the past 15 or so yrs. maybe i'll listen to it again

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 76

__red house painters > 1992 > down colorfull hill__
this one of those albums i really don't wanna talk about it, i feel like i connect with mark on a lvl that is explicitly extra-semantic. same with ian. no one else



LERNEN, DAY 77

__jadakiss > 2004 > kiss of death__
fuck he's gonna be a bit of canibus hey. such bars on bruh but i'm just not a fan of the beat selection or production in general. man i've been trying to come up with a list of mb 10 firest rappers, or maybe 20, and it's hard, but i had thought jada would be on this last once i explored him but he's firest on his guest spots and radio freestyles. that's probably my favourite thing about kiss, he seems like he could just drop 48 with no punch-ins yet never really stop or even slow. best breather in rap, for sure. best flow

__jadakiss > 2009 > the last kiss__
hm this one was on roc i think. yep i prefer it. that one song was fucking stupid and also hella fucked tho

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 78

__the american analog set > 2001 > know by heart__
this is hot shit and i will listen to more of them. i listened to this mf 2 times, put it back on immediately after it ended. the long instrumental breaks at essentially the end of the first 1/4 of the album of beginning of the 4/4 of the album were interesting, and also fire and just generally hot and dope shit. sometimes people will call an album cinematic and usually that is stupid but sometimes it's not. this is not that but it did feel like a novel in a way, in its symmetry, in its focused meandering. there is not a word for "like a novel" to my knowledge. like shit can be filmic, so what, novelic? neither novel nor romantic work. literal doesn't work because i'm specifically talking about the traditions of novels, and tbh i couldn't even see myself using literal to mean "relating to written words" these days. it also struck me how stupid the genre of "pop" is. this has far more in common with rocketship than with third eye blind (two artists i love). maybe genres in general are stupid. there are two different kinds of vocals tho, you can rap or you can sing. you can talk too but that's not vox, that's an element of the audio design

_bon voyage > 1998 > bon voyage__
i haven't listened to this in a long time but yep i really love. i still have the same 5 favs (tracks 1, 5, 8, 9, 10) but i'm honestly like not dying over them or anything. honestly i'm starting to think that at this new stage of my life maybe i don't feel like jason's music understands me so perfectly anymore? perhaps mark is the new champion? but identity-wise it will always be ian

__laura > 2005 > mapping your dreams__
you know what, i really did enjoy it, but the two i'd already heard ("we are mapping your dreams" and "we should keep this secret") were by far top dogs for me. oh well, i really did enjoy the other tunes... but i would not sacrifice my life for the honour of this album or anything

__laura > 2006 > radio swan is down__
hmm you know what, like the first one except it doesn't have those 2 insane bangers that i enjoy so. still cool, and i still want to listen to more, and also find out what's up with these musicians and labels and shit (i think their next album was on a different album)

[Curtis, baby]

LERNEN, DAY 78 (cont.)

__laura > 2008 > yes no maybe__
first i listened to the first two albums again, then went straight into this. ok that was whatever cos yeah this one is hella different. loud! crash crash bang! not a huge fan, nope not huge at all. i looked into this label business and this was their only disc on this yankee label. yeckers! no thanks! the first two were on a hella small australian label that has barely anything at all, and so i will listen to that. later in their career they started self-releasing so maybe the fire in my belly will strike once more

__american football > 1998 > american football__
ok so i've only heard 99 and that's fucked cos 99 is tbh like one of my oaaaats, like impossible to overstate. "never meant", "honestly?" and "stay home" and just insane insane insane fire fire. so i listened to this. yep fire, will mucho more listens including today methoughts, but for now, yep fire

__american football > 1999 > american football__
"the one with the wurlitzer" hits diff after you've heard "the one with the tambourine" i can tell you that fucking much, brevs

[rischka]

https://open.spotify.com/album/4ZCrk8P8 ... l_branch=1

it's a perfect neo-soul album

[rischka]

CALL ME IF YOU GET LOST

[greennui]

https://open.spotify.com/album/65YAjLCn ... bd2ZPxC4bA

[rischka]

the last one was carter family, clinch mountain treasures

[rischka]

https://youtu.be/VDcjPR48E1w

i like the cover and there's a song about sally

[niminy-piminy]

“Destroy the Nations. England is dead! Destroy America. Sheuggghhhh on Canada!”

https://youtu.be/8ERTEtZB8Iw

[niminy-piminy]

https://english.radio.cz/b4-pair-win-pl ... na-8111555

B4 have been around in different forms for over two decades but now comprise the duo of David Freudl and Tomáš Procházka. The outfit are self-proclaimed adherents of krautrock and their online profile refers to such names as Can, Nurse with Wound, Einstuerzende Neubauten and Money Mark, though they also bring to mind Warp acts such as Plone. Their latest release Plastová okna (Plastic Windows)...

https://youtu.be/jG82sJepcCY

[rischka]

Leaf and liege - perfect for autumn

[nrh]

playing emmylou's elite hotel this afternoon, wish i had a copy of liege & lief!

edit - forgot i had sandy denny's north star ravens. great recored!