7gp ["seven good plays"] album-listening exchange

If I know that there's someone out there giving perhaps grudging, but well-meaning and fair attention to some niche favorite of mine, I'm more likely to put in the effort to listen to something *they* like a lot.

So I was thinking we could do something like this:

Each person who signs up for this "7gp" album exchange will agree to give seven good plays to an album someone else recommends, abiding by these two rules:

1. These should be seven honest, careful listens in a setting comparable to what you'd give an album you're getting to know by an artist you already like;

2. Each listen should be at least two days apart. So if today is Monday and I play an album (let's say it's the first time I play it), the second play should be on Thursday or after.

(Clarification for Rule Number 2: if you play it multiple times on Monday, or on Tuesday and Wednesday, it doesn't violate rules but the official "second play" won't be counted until you listen on Thursday.

My reasoning here is, my appreciation for an album usually grows when I give it space. If I play something seven times in a row one afternoon, I won't have engaged with it as deeply as if I play it seven times across the space of one month.

Also, when I *don't* like something, playing it seven times in rapid succession will just leave me laser-focused on the things I don't like about it. If I space out those listens, there's more chance for me to notice interesting things.)

So, whoever's onboard would recommend between one and three albums (if you recommend more than one, your randomly-assigned listener will choose only one; if you want to be helpful, you can write a 1-2 sentence gloss of each album you recommend, so that your listener has some vague idea of what they're getting themselves into when they're choosing). And each of us who's onboard would also get assigned one album.

If we got some momentum with this and kept it going, we could do a round every month or two.

I figure we who sign up should be ready for & open to all kinds of genres. ILM hosts all types. Let's try not to back out of an assignment because the album isn't the kind of thing we'd normally play.

And when we assign/recommend an album, let's be sincere. Don't recommend something you don't care for much. Knowing "I'm listening to something that means a lot to [fellow ILMer]" can help with the patience that's usually lacking when I'm trying out something I wouldn't typically go in for.

Anyone in?

it's 2025, sad state of affairs is I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing to give any album a single coherent, focused listen

I quite like this idea and would like to participate. A couple of possible issues/queries:

1) The randomly assigned listener might get assigned a choice from albums they already know. In this case I guess there could be a re-assignment? Maybe to be successful the exercise needs to gain a certain critical mass.

2) How do listeners report back on the experience? Like, do they say "I'm at listen number 4 and ____ is really starting to click," etc., or do they try to write something more comprehensive after the seven spins?

The Fall Forum used to do anonymous mix CDs without tracklistings that were randomly exchanged by a self-assigned coordinator. Then people would do a writeup of the whole thing, track-by-track (with as little or as much detail as they liked) and the compiler would then out themselves and respond. Maybe they still do? It was a lot of fun. 7gp takes out the compilation and guesswork labor (finding the song by Googling lyrics or using Shazam was frowned upon) while preserving the random element.

I like both ideas (mix CDs and individual albums). I feel like I would've had a much easier time with this 10 years ago though, seems like all the seemingly obscure stuff I dug has been thoroughly discovered now!

I feel like I would've had a much easier time with this 10 years ago though, seems like all the seemingly obscure stuff I dug has been thoroughly discovered now!

I'm guessing it might work better if you end up listening to something in a genre you don't know as much about. Of course some ILMers have considerable breadth of knowledge, but no one has heard everything. I would need to do some work myself to come up with three albums I love that aren't more or less well-regarded. Beyond that, some albums more obviously reward repetition than others — although the challenge to hear something different on the seventh spin of, say, a randomly chosen Ramones LP might be worthwhile.

I'm thinking of this partly in terms of what Carl Wilson does in his 33 1/3 album about Céline Dion's Let's Talk About Love, deliberately choosing something he hates to try and think more deeply about taste. (I tried an assignment once where my students did something comparable; for most, it really didn't work!) But of course the exercise doesn't have to go in that direction.

normally this would be exactly my thing but I have already made my life into a music discovery project and have no more time free for any new ideas. would take interest in thread though.

seems like all the seemingly obscure stuff I dug has been thoroughly discovered now!

― frogbs, Saturday, February 8, 2025 12:11 PM

i have read some very distressing and upsetting things on these forums in my day, but nothing scares me more than these kinds of sentiments. my condolences, frogs.

i'm interested in this. seven listens over 2 weeks seems like too much of an investment though. i'd give 3-5 days and three full listens. even with new stuff that i like a lot, that's how i listen to albums, revisiting as the mood hits.

maybe it's because most of the music discovery I do is on this board, or on hyper-specific Discords, as opposed to irl with my roommates and friends like it used to be. also as you get older more of your music listening is devoted to things you already like (which hopefully should be a ton of stuff by now) or rediscoveries, I'm not really interested in what's "new" these days like I used to be, but I probably should put more work in because I find cool stuff in Music League all the time

i get that. i hope new-to-you goodness continues to flow. in the past, your postings have helped me find a handful of great catalogue picks, so thank you for that!

NJS, I did think about that too --

1. Right, we could do a reassignment in that case. Alternately, if there are multiple options and all are familiar, the listener could choose the album they feel they know least well and have a nice bed-in, you know? There's a lot of stuff I've "heard" but not really "listened to." Hell, I don't think I've heard Exile in Main St all the way through twice.

-- which leads me to -- frogbs! On a general level sure, corners of the YMO universe and Hirasawa (these being the areas you've helped map that I've visited) have gained considerable traction. But how many people on ILM have heard Paraiso seven times? Let alone Technique of Relief? We wouldn't necessarily have to go ridiculously obscure, since chances are our listener won't be knowledgeable in our particular fields. And since you could list three albums, you could pull them from different domains -- I might know some Hirasawa at this point but I've never really listened to TMBG or Ween -- as NJS pointed out too.

And thus back to NJS,

2. Either way. I'm definitely the type to come and comment as I go, but a single write-up at the end of the seven-listen run would be fine too. A really neat result of all this could be that, though I give seven listens to the album I've been assigned, I'll also end up checking out a lot of tracks based on what other people are discovering and reporting to the thread about.

I'm a diehard album head (even though it's 2025... people like me are out there) (it's my favorite art form, period!) but if a recommender wanted to submit a self-curated mix instead of an album, that'd work just as well.

although the challenge to hear something different on the seventh spin of, say, a randomly chosen Ramones LP might be worthwhile.

Yes indeed! The persistence might reveal a lof of things even about an album you know pretty well. I had my huge Dylan kick more than a decade ago now. I wouldn't mind at all being pushed to find out what I'd make of Blonde on Blonde if I gave it seven listens *now.* which is why I wouldn't stress the obscurity levels of what we submit.

deliberately choosing something he hates to try and think more deeply about taste

This is an interesting element too, yeah! If I got assigned a modern EDM-based pop album I would definitely flounder, but even so, the exercise would go a long way to clarifying what I like and don't like in an album or sound, and that'd be appreciated. Plus it'd be a good challenge / opportunity -- to really try to hear my way into it, knowing it's something that my recommender loves. (Which is why sincerity is key... if someone recommends something they hate just for the laughs, this won't work.)

Austin,

i'd give 3-5 days and three full listens. even with new stuff that i like a lot, that's how i listen to albums, revisiting as the mood hits.

That does fulfill Condition 1, so I'd say come on in! If the spirit of the thread takes you, you might end up playing the album more, or worst case scenario, your recommender will think "goddamit, I got Austin again. So be it, 3-5 listens it is." The listeners/recommenders would get shuffled every round so if we manage to get, say, seven people, the different combinations each round will become their own fun element.

Where's imago, by the way? I thought that with the amount of stuff he likes that the rest of ILM doesn't, he'd be glad of a captive audience.

Also -- say you recommend three albums in the first round. You can reuse the two that went unpicked next time around. And then, third round, recommend only one, thereby forcing *somebody* to play your still-unpicked third. (Or do all new stuff each round, whatever you fancy.)

So for now:

TheNuNuNu
Neue Jesse Schule
frogbs
Austin

We could make this happen with just four people -- I can't do math for shit, but we'd need what, seven or eight rounds before each of us had recommended something to the other?

Let's give it a few more days and see if anyone else can be persuaded. (Daniel_Rf to thread!) and more people might sign up in another round or three.

as you get older more of your music listening is devoted to things you already like (which hopefully should be a ton of stuff by now) or rediscoveries, I'm not really interested in what's "new" these days like I used to be

Exactly, that's what I've found to be the case too. And I'm perfectly happy with it -- I could probably spend the next four years barely venturing out of the Japanese folk-rock/synthpop kingdom. But (a) I did get into XTC and Gizzard and Hirasawa this year, and am better off for it; and (b) anything is worth it if I can get someone listening to Agata, mwahaha

I'm in.

I often miss how I listened to music when I was saving up my lunch money to buy cds. Even if I didn't like something I bought, I would try to like it because one album was precious back then. Some things that initially put me off I worked my way into out of stubbornness, and not wanting to waste money. The Velvet Underground & Nico sounded AWFUL the first five times I listened to it.

The sixth time was pretty good though.

Hahaha! YES! In the years of 3-5 new CDs a year... you had to just keep pushing... whereas nowadays I have to trick myself into similar behavior. One way has been to limit my buying on Bandcamp, and it works sometimes -- there's a different weight to an album when I know it's sitting in my Bandcamp collection. (And this, clearly, is another!)

Have you considered signing up for the Music League on here?? It’s a similar idea and you’ll discover all sorts of new things.

That one looks -- intense...! The amount of listening that needs to be done to keep up seems pretty high, and it feels more of a lateral than a vertical spread -- lots of songs to hear, but probably not multiple times? Plus song- versus album-focused. All exacerbated by my not having Spotify out here. But it's been a fun thread to peek in on.

Oh and "inflicting" something on others seems frowned upon, whereas here it'd be 50% of the point!

I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone willing to give any album a single coherent, focused listen

I mostly listen to entire albums that are new to me, and probably give each of them close to seven plays apiece. I'm more interested in depth than breadth, though I try to balance familiar acts or genres with ones I haven't explored.

have no more time free for any new ideas. would take interest in thread though.

I mean, I'm still following up on record reviews I read in 1986, not to mention all the books, magazines and websites and radio etc. since then. It usually takes more than one person saying "this is great" to tip the scales for me, but if someone recommends something that is already on my radar, I will diligently listen and report back.

Alright, so just the five of us. (me, Neue Jesse Schule, frogbs, Austin, Cow_Art)

Let's give ourselves a couple days to figure out which album (or, up to 3) we want to recommend this round. When you've figured it out, post here. By Wednesday, let's say? After that I'll do the random assigning, and we can begin.

Oh yeah, let's cap album runtimes at 90 minutes! In theory I'd love to be assigned something as good and as long as Sandinista but, we do all have our own other trips.

It usually takes more than one person saying "this is great" to tip the scales for me, but if someone recommends something that is already on my radar, I will diligently listen and report back.

Ah, Halfway -- does this mean you'd like to join the draw? (And recommend your own things?) If the rec(s) you get assigned don't mean much to you, you're free to back out of the round, and I'll reassign where necessary.Or were you just making a general statement about your following-up-on-recs habits?

Alright, my three:

HIS - 日本の人 (Nihon no hito) (1991)
An enka singer, an odd-voiced glam rocker, and emperor of weird synthpop Haruomi Hosono team up to pay tribute to the folk music they loved in the '60s.

あがた森魚 - ぐすぺり幼年期 (Gooseberry younenki) (2012)
A concept album about early childhood - the light and mystery, the fear and helplessness. Among the gentler records in Morio Agata's punk-folk catalogue. Lightly psychedelic arrangements, rootsy group vocals.

Richard Dawson - Nothing Important (2014)
Dark, minimalistic, literary, gnarly, qawwali-indebted, distorted folk music. The forum search shows it made some mark on ILM in 2014, but hasn't come up much since. Home to two of the most unsettling and touching songs I know.

does this mean you'd like to join the draw? (And recommend your own things?)

Maybe if we were all stranded on an oil rig near Antarctica with nothing but CD collections to exchange. But that kind of time investment right now requires that I'm already intrigued by a record.

So participants name three albums and we get randomly paired up?

1-3 albums, yep. And then I'll do the random pairing.

(You only need to choose one album each round.)

(As a listener, I mean. As a recommender you can recommend up to three, *if* you want to give the listener who'll get your assignment some volition.)

I do think seven plays in a month will be demanding — in 2024, that was the max I played any album the whole year. (Question: How many times do those of us who reviewed albums professionally usually play them?) But I'm up for the challenge, partly because my own listening habits feel a little moribund lately.

I'm mulling over my selections. TNNN has stressed that we should love the records we choose. I also feel like I should choose titles I'd be willing to play seven more times in a month myself, which I wouldn't typically choose to do with an old favorite. Of course projecting myself into the mind of the imagined listener is a little pointless, but I want to imagine how the experience could be worthwhile.

I also feel like I should choose titles I'd be willing to play seven more times in a month myself

Yes! Very much a part of my own thinking.

Thank you for your thoughtfulness, NJS. I'm excited about this project.

I could overthink this, but I'm just going to go with the last three albums that I have actually listened to repeatedly over an extended time because they were new to me and I liked them a lot.

1. Sinéad O'Connor - Throw Down Your Arms (2005)
Reggae covers recorded at Tuff Gong with Sly & Robbie. Music to alleviate doom.

2. KD Lang - Watershed (2008)
Solid adult contemporary, lushly produced in the best way, sometimes reminiscent of Histoire de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg with a bit of Muppet banjo.

3. Teenage Fanclub & Jad Fair - Words Of Wisdom And Hope
As a middling fan of Teenage Fanclub and Jad Fair, I find this to be the best of both worlds.

yeah trying to think of albums that I'd actually listen to 7x in a month myself. when we kicking this off, tomorrow?

Tomorrow, o Amphibian!

Or whenever you, NJS, and Austin get the recommendations together. I'm not a draconian sort.

Cow, all three of those sound enticing (and all new to me!)

here's 3 rando personal classics that i have strong connections with. trying to be mindful and pick albums under ~45mins. i'm including spotify links for reference (+youtube when available):

gary burton quartet ― country roads and other places (1969) JAZZ
gary burton-vibes (+sometimes piano)
roy haynes-drums
steve swallow-bass
jerry hahn-guitar
not a full blown country/jazz hybrid sound, but definitely more folky funky than the standard post-bop of the day. recent revives around bill frisell got me thinking about this kinda "urban rural americana" sound. this album kinda sorta nails it.
https://open.spotify.com/album/7yGbCVYfpeGrWBdil0pOmo?si=3Qdovu0kQOWoVa_MUniPJQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Fz-G82uiAw

the roots ― from the ground up ep (1993) HIPHOP
even though i didn't hear it until after illadelph halflife, the band's first ep remains one of the most charmingly idiosyncratic and refreshing hiphop releases of the 90s. from scott storch shoutouts to malik blunt identifying himself as such, it almost seems quaint by now. however even with the cynicism towards the band flowing thoroughly for the past decade and change, i can't overstate how fucking awesome this music is.
https://open.spotify.com/album/67el5xZUlIE1u0Z6CdZ0so?si=uUx7bRZfQ-S7hAyIkGHTcw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbacy3t8Kzg

terry callier ― i just can't help myself (1973) R+B/FOLK
gonna skip the 2 preceding (more revered) albums in favor of this one, mostly on the strength of "can't catch the trane." musical homages can be be a slippery slope, but terry understood the assignment completely. the rest of the album is more of a gritty soulful folk rock sound.
https://open.spotify.com/album/1PIkkbEskqfpCLCNpXTdbf?si=kdbOAClmRMmXVQy7tQvwoA
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mSKhc6bH3g2m6ee-3tGQdns_BWkvtOJMc

let's goooooo!!

Excellent. One act I've been half-meaning to check out for years and two totally new to me, and apparently Takashi Matsumoto of Happy End liked Terry Callier because a few years later he wrote a song called Satin Doll too -- unless they're both referencing something else? Anyway, I would be delighted to draw either of you, and I can't imagine that frogbs or NJS will disappoint either. More & more hyped for this daily.

Oh indeed, Satin Doll is a Duke Ellington cover. So be it. Still, just read through the whole Terry Callier thread -- intrigued -- bridging the gap between John Martyn and Gil Scott-Heron, you say...

Okay, here are my 3:

Sora - re.sort (2003)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i87AYSywcVA

In the first half of the 00's "folktronica" was a pretty big thing, in online circles at least. It didn't really last though and I assumed the music hadn't held up but I think it actually sounds better now than it did back then. Like what the "music of the future" should've been. Sora is interesting because he's a total enigma - outside of this one album there is almost nothing else to his name (a couple of tracks on 90s electronica comps, but that's it). Spread entirely through word of mouth and online folks who were into this kind of thing. Didn't go very far. But somehow, about 5 years ago, it wound up getting a reissue, and for whatever reason really took off then. Despite its 2003 release, 99% of its ratings on RYM have come since 2019. I know I posted about it in one of the ambient threads here and people seemed to like it. It's really great, stuffed with jazz and bossa nova samples, which I think sets it apart from similar albums. My favorite is the final track "Satellite Towers".

Simon Bookish - Everything/Everything (2008)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWX0MblnWm0

I'm guessing some ILXors know about this album. One of those things that seems like it would be up the alley of anyone who posts here. Simon Bookish is an experimental electronic artist who, for some reason, decided to make a grand, overwrought pop album. And it rules. It's sort of an amalgam of stuff like Todd Rundgren, David Bowie, Brian Eno, Thomas Dolby, etc. - but it's got its own thing going on too. It feels a bit like a musical. Lots of horns, no guitar (I think). Really catchy tunes. The album did okay, I think Pitchfork liked it, but his career didn't really take off and he went back to making more experimental and formless stuff after this. Seems like the sort of album that'll get rediscovered and lionized some day.

The Bran Flakes - Help Me (2017)
https://open.spotify.com/album/1LFN5fcTGiaqIsJXSbXs4X
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZEUYrP_XbM

The most recent album from a couple of Canadian plunderphonics weirdos. Originally they were maybe a bit like Negativland, some of their early work is downright disturbing, but over time they became more fun and demented, leading up to this, honestly one of the most fun and bonkers album I know. They sample a ton of stuff from the 50's through the 70's - kids records, educational tapes, polka 45s, commercials, TV shows, etc. Their prior album I Have Hands is also really fun, but I picked this because it's shorter. Despite being real gimmicky I think I did listen to this at least 7 times the month it came out. Just so many bits that stick in your head, I couldn't get enough.

Posted a Spotify link of that one since the YouTube playlist has some junk in it, like all album playlists do.

Have fun :)

Thank you for your thoughtfulness, NJS. I'm excited about this project.

My choices won't win any obscurity contests, but here goes:

Coachwhips - Bangers vs Fuckers (Narnack, 2004)
This is basically the “randomly chosen Ramones LP” I considered upthread. Eleven garage rockers in 18 minutes, with largely inscrutable vocals chortled through a busted telephone mouthpiece atop crushed-out drums and organ blaring through as if from another planet. On the face of it, it might seem to say all you need it to after a single listen (or, according to taste, a fraction of one). But there’s something compelling in this extremely overdriven recording that seems intent on clearing your brains out of your head. Will documenting the cumulative effect recover said brains? Your best choice if pressed for time!

Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns (Asylum, 1975)
A justly celebrated and endlessly rewarding, mysterious album. So many sounds and textures (a bit lite fusion plus folk balladry, but that sells it short) accompanying Joni’s more or less direct singing, a real fever dream of an album. It’s a peculiarity that I’ve been listening to this for twenty-five years but still only vaguely know the lyrics, despite the reputation of the lyricist.

Jan Jelinek - Tierbeobachtungen (~Scape, 2006)
I think this came along when the moment for glitch/microhouse had started to wane, so it’s relatively overlooked. I hear it as a dark take on “all watched over by machines of loving grace,” where the dank whooshing and washing and whistling sounds obliquely suggest “nature” even as their repetition signals its uncanny absence. But the album is also be quite soothing: is the title (Tierbeobachtungen = animal observations) anthropocentric or zoomorphic?

Don't you fret, NJS, two of those have never crossed my radar. And the Joni, acknowledged classic though it be, is like Exile, I've only played it all the way through twice. And that was years & years ago.

I think I'd be happy with *any* of these twelve.

Alright now. Draw time...!

And, the results (courtesy of www.random.org/lists... for a more thrilling experience next round I should do this old-school, with names written on paper, and scissors and a hat)

> Neue Jesse Schule chooses one of mine.

> Cow_Art chooses one of NJS's.

> frogbs chooses one of Cow's.

> Austin chooses one of Frog's.

> I choose one of Austin's.

Sampling Austin's three. Embarrassment of riches.

Gonna go with Terry Callier. I swear by Al Joshua, and I love the mystical edges of the Van Morrison catalogue, and Curtis Mayfield's There's No Place Like America Today (thanks to a Sinead O'Connor rec), and (Alley-Wind Song was my sample) this is putting me in mind of all them.

On first listen: feels like there's a lot of interesting stuff happening quietly in the background of Side A, stuff that will take a few listens to unravel. I think I noticed a tendency to fade out / end on a great repeating vocal melody. As for Side B, though, holy fuck. How did I not know about this album sooner? Astral Weeks and Veedon Fleece should be packaged with a sticker that reads, "Next station on the line: I Just Can't Help Myself."

Just seen this thread, good idea! Is there room for another next time around?

Absolutely!!! Would love to have you on board, Mare.

Jan Jelinek - Tierbeobachtungen is what I’ll be listening to. I’m a huge Joni fan so I know Hissing Lawns backwards and forwards. Garage rock is something I was more into as a youngster, so Coachwhips are out.

I don’t know much about glitch/microhouse, so this should be good. Glitch to me means Oval’s 94 Diskont which I love but it’s the only thing i’ve heard like that. Microhouse is like…. Gas? I have a Gas album that I like. Looking forward to this!

Speaking of the Coachwhips, garage rock is not my native ground, though I do adore Dead Moon. But if I'd drawn NJS, I would've seriously considered choosing it just because NJS's write-up is so good.

Thanks Nu, look forward to it!

Did Terry just sing "the famine and/or feast wind" ?

Side B raises the hairs on the back of my neck.

Oh holy fuck,

Beware of the East wind,
A god of man and beast wind,
A famine and/or feast wind,
And the last but not the least wind,
A threat of silver fleece wind,
A follow great release wind,
Blowin all across the land,
Blowin all across the land,
Where you stand,
Where will you stand,

No more looking up lyrics, this is cheating, this is too good

really happy you're diggin it!! he's incredibly articulate and that album has some of his best words.

i chose sora, mostly based around the lore recounted in the comments. three tracks in and very pleasantly reminded of the integration of this sort of thing into more radio-friendly indie and some mainstream bands. a very dated sound, but in a nice way. browsing through the "fans also like" (i'm listening on spotify) and there's rei harakami and nuno canavarro among the lot ― figures i love it. and oh hey, as i was typing this, a bill evans sample popped up. lol yeah, i won't have any issues thoroughly soaking this one up. thank you, frogs!

some noteworthy environmental notes:
it's pouring rain right now, but i'm able to be inside next to an open window with Re.sort playing on a small bookshelf stereo. "traces" sounds absolutely perfect accompanied by the natural sound of rain outside.

this whole project is cool as hell, thank you for this

my picks: Sylvie Courvoirsier & Mary Halvorson, "Bone Bells"

https://sylviecourvoisier.bandcamp.com/album/bone-bells

This is new, and announces itself from its opening chords as something special -- "special" because very thoughtful and intentional, and because it's playing with expectations -- melodically, harmonically. In the same universe as Matthew Shipp, but doing its own thing. In a week, it's become, for me, "that one record I wanna hear again"

https://schwebung.bandcamp.com/album/mauve-district

Stephen Mathieu does ambient drone; this is a single forty-minute drone. Mathieu's textures shift and pulsate with no drama -- everything's a matter of degrees. To actually listen through to a piece like this once is a whole expereience, I'm intensely curious about the idea of listening seven times to it with attention -- I often let Mathieu play in the background.

https://battletrance.bandcamp.com/album/blade-of-love

Battle Trance is a saxophone quartet. They've made three albums. "Blade of Love" was my introduction to their work; they compare, I guess, to other saxophone quartets like ROVA, but I think of ROVA in an improvisational space whereas this is composed music for four saxophones. it's dense in a way that's intensely pleasant and provactive for me.

I am late to this thread so if it's too late to participate I apologize for muddying up the proceedings

I’ll try to post my pics by tonight!

You're right on time, Edgar, welcome!

Paging frogbs and clouds.

I'm in! just give me a bit to pick some new albums :)

hey everyone! happy april fool's! it's my second favorite holiday after arbor day ―and that's only my favorite because they refuse to commit to a specific day, those absolute jokers― and i have been really looking forward to this. i do have some negative feelings because i don't really post in-depth. i know this was supposed to inspire deeper discussions with deeper listens. i can never compare with the articulate posts like jesse makes, so i haven't tried. i hope i'm not letting anyone down. last round's picks inspired a lot of discussion that i lurked through and stole recs from, but didn't really contribute to.

feeling like i'm already kind of tenuous, i'm going to push things further and rescind my pick of the kanazu tomoyuki album. listened a bit more and it's pretty boring. i mean, it's okay but... meh, not for this.

instead, an album that i considered an instant classic: how i do by res from 2001.
youtube
spotify
i was working in a couple different record stores at the time and i played it all day every day from august onwards. she sounds like stevie nicks. doc from esthero fame did a lot of the beats and santi white cowrote all of it. just amazing, captivating, world-building pop music. genreless coffee shop fodder in its day now sounds incredible coming straight out the gate with phrases like, "now you're the prince of all the magazines but then there's girls like me, appalled at what we've seen." i still go back to songs from this album.

anyway, already perusing the recs and can't wait ti dig in. i'll try to be more present. thanks again, everybody. i hope you're having a really goid day and saw or did something silly that inspired a chuckle.

also xpost re: the coctails
glad it made a good first impression! love that band, but especially that album. a good footnote to the early sea+track trajectory as well.

gah, THE SEA AND CAKE

No call feeling tenuous, Austin, I love that you're part of this!

Okay, it's late and I've got to go to bed but I need to come up with three albums.

KD Lang - Watershed: a holdover from last time. I love this album and the production and the whole vibe.

Chappell Roan - The Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess: This is probably the last album that really lit our entire family on fire. We played it constantly in the kitchen while cooking. It really gets better with every play. Maybe everybody has heard it already?

Roberta Flack - Blue Lights In The Basement: I found this in a dollar bin at a local record shop and picked it up, not expecting much. I had tried Flack earlier and she didn't do much for me. This album though totally won me over. Like KD Lang's Watershed, it's a grown-up album about relationships that has some surprising musical directions. I started listening to this again after she died and it stayed on the boombox for a while.

Maybe everybody has heard it already?

I haven't -- in fact, I've yet to see an album I know well appear in anyone's recommendations. I was thinking earlier about how "major" we could probably actually go in this project. I could throw in YMO's Technodelic or Naughty Boys and, with the right draw, have the chance to blow a mind... this endeavor of ours is wide open!!

Alright - here are the 3 I'm going with:

Mouse on Mars - Parastrophics: released in 2012, this album of hyperactive, scatterbrained electronica was not particularly well-received, in part because Mouse on Mars' more popular material is way more chill than this, but also because I genuinely believe this was well ahead of its time. It's obnoxious and the mastering makes my ears hurt but it's also a genuinely fascinating journey, like a car crash involving several of my favorite genres.

Harmonia - Deluxe: in case there's anyone here who hasn't heard it! I saw Michael Rother live recently and it really hit me how crazy it is that this music is 50 years old. The analogue synths do date this but they still sound amazing. To me this is one of the most joyous albums ever made. I could listen to it every day.

FM Skyline - liteware: 35 minutes of bubbly and catchy MIDI synth music. Sonic the Hedgehog combined with the grooviest hold music you've ever heard. This stuff is like dopamine to me, then again I grew up obsessed with informercials and Weather Channel music, so your mileage may vary.

The old NHK weather music is my favourite, pity they changed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gH1wVbOsOiA

Alright then! We haven't heard from clouds, so let's do this. Handwritten names on squares of paper in a hat, for real! Old school! And it really does feel more intense this way.

[imagine the scene for yourself]

The first drawing-of-lots ended dramatically -- with a repeat -- so I did the whole thing over. No repeats the second time. The procedure this round will be...

> I choose one of Jesse's.

> Austin chooses one of mine.

> frogbs chooses one of Austin's (which had a late substitution, o amphibian, just as a reminder).

> Maresn3st chooses one of Frog's.

> Cow_Art chooses one of Mare's.

> J. Edgar Noothgrush chooses one of Cow's.

> Neue Jesse Schule chooses one of Edgar's.

Looking forward to listening to of Chachi's choices! Hope to listen to them this weekend.

never listened to the Coctails despite being way into TSAC, this should be fun

Tough call, cause I would have been happy with any one of Frogbs' choices I think, but I've gone for Harmonia.

I have the first record, but I've never heard Deluxe, until today when I listened to the first track on streaming and thought 'I think I might need this on vinyl...'

Luckily it got a decent reissue a few years back, and they can be bought fairly cheaply, so one is winging its way to me, that'll count as one of the 7 plays, at least.

I'm going with Rhys Chatham - Die Donnergötter. All of Mare's choices were enticing and new to me, but after listening to two minutes of this one I found a copy on Discogs and ordered it. I'm a huge Spiritualized fan and they must have heard this; there's a long instrumental thing they do called "Electric Mainline" that sounds just like the first 13 or so minutes of Die Donnergötter.

I'm looking forward to exploring Jesse's picks (and enoying the accidental reciprocity -- me drawing Jesse and Austin drawing me!).

I've heard *of* Coleman but never knowingly listened, and the other two are completely new to me.

I might be a bit late making a choice because we're in the midst of a five-day holiday -- when I don't have work, my prime listening opportunity falls away. But by Wednesday the 9th I should've had a chance to play all three.

I'm glad we've expanded to seven. I can't wait to hear what everyone makes of everything.

"Music will never fall short of an honest effort when it has love, talent and sincerity in its performance" - Ornette in the Empty Foxhole liner notes

Feeling too excited -- had to play the first minute of each of the three albums -- thrilling stuff! John Maus hits right away with the great synth sounds and the beautifully cheesy fanfares, followed by that seductively low and low-mixed voice... Ornette's has the crystal clear tone of his saxophone against the mountain wall bash of his rhythm section... and the Joyce is a pure lush blanket of cloud, mesmerizing instrumentation and voice -- the chameleonic Yoko Kanno, one of my favorite artists when I was a teen (as usual, I listened to hardly anything *but* Kanno for several years in a row) did a song in that genre in '03 (one single song; in Portuguese too!). It's in my longlist of favorite songs ever but I never heard another song like it, until today...!

Hopefully the full listens will incline me one way or another. If I had only this first minute of each to go off of, it'd be a brutal choice.

instead, an album that i considered an instant classic: how i do by res from 2001.

I'm goin in on this one, first track sounds amazing

oh wait I have misunderstood the procedure n/m! I'll just enjoy this record and wait for my pick

oh wait wow I'm really fog brained now, got it. I will listen to KD Lang's Watershed seven times with care!

hey jclc! i owe you a drink, that album rules. wish more folls knew about it. i'm not joking when i say i was shocked to get 6 votes. i expected maybe 3!

nu i'm just gonna go all in on all of your picks and then focus on a specific one to respond to here. all of your descriptions are enticing, and i need some new flavors.

hoping you dig that coctails album frogs. i definitely had it in mind because of your recent postings on the sea+cake topic.

nu i'm just gonna go all in on all of your picks and then focus on a specific one to respond to here. all of your descriptions are enticing, and i need some new flavors.

Awesome!

I'm wondering whether I might want to take the same approach with Jesse's three. I played Ornette in the background this morning while preparing lesson plans, thinking that (since it's jazz, a field of music to which I'm still 90% outsider) it was the album least likely to be my final choice -- yet no, I was charmed and intrigued. Side A seemed to be over after just five minutes, not eighteen.

I've been treating frogbs FM Skyline rec as a side dish to Harmonia, and it's really great in spots.

It does raise questions within me that I fear I might be a little old to properly soak in the cultural nuances embedded in that kind of music perhaps, which is not a bad thing, of course. But Harmonia definitely resonates stronger.

John Maus: the vocals sound decadent, what I can make out of the lyrics is desolate, the drums and bass are pretending this is a party, all while the basement synth tones grope for the transcendent.

Now to try Joyce, and decide on the record to consistently write back about.

Alright alright, Joyce's Natureza it is. It seems like a miracle that there's an entire *album* (or... entire genre?!) that sounds just like the Yoko Kanno song I've adored half my life. (Is an experience like this mean ignorance has its good sides?) The record sounds gorgeous, even when the audio quality slips a bit from Track 3 and on (I was expecting something a lot more lo-fi from the notes on the Bandcamp page), and mysterious. The structures seem to meander in just that way I love, abiding by a hidden internal / emotional logic more than by any pre-existing conventions -- or is that just my ignorance of this genre speaking? In any case, I floated right through that first listen, marveling every half minute or so at how lavishly beautiful the instrumentation or the vocals were. Six more listens over the next few weeks? Yes please.

I'll probably be keeping the Coleman and Maus in rotation too, but listening time is more abundant than writing time, so I'll make Natureza my official pick, and comment on the others if time permits.

Thank you for the amazing picks, Jesse.

checking in. after giving everything an initial listen, here's some thoughts:

the beats and music on parallelisme are completely captivating. after one listen, i have no impression outside of the fretless bass and the polyrhythms that are just... everywhere. very 80s in vibe, but without context for me, so quite a promising one.

i didn't care for orphans+vandals. i can sorta see what's appealing about it, but i need some sort of refrain to come back to, at least sometimes. it had sections and parts that i wish were expanded and made into the main parts, but like the narratives here, the songs are also a little too susceptible to tangents. competent, not my thing. the whistle/theremin duet on "incognito" was my favorite thing and i will 100% listen to that song again because there simply isn't enough whistle/theremin music in my life.

ぐすぺり幼年期 is awesome. musically kinda reminiscent of some altcountry and americana stuff i know. agree that it feels like a bunch of pieces that will form together more tightly with more familiarizing... but also like, idk, robert wyatt energy for me. i've never really checked him out before. this is a great first impression though, because i'm not intimidated at all by the size of his discography.

probably will focus most intently on parallelisme, but also quite happy with the morio agata album. will check back. peeking at other recs also.🙂

sidebar nu―
found+added you on rym!

Sorry to hear Al didn't steal your heart, but very glad Miharuomi and Agata made an impact. Parallelisme should only reveal more beauty over time -- enjoy!

Already did a second, if less focused, listen to Natureza. I'm looking forward to flooding this thread with "good lord, the flutes at 3:07 of track 6!!!!" messages. I'll try to contain myself and be more reserved and articulate, but... no promises...

Will collect my thoughts soon, but I'm a couple of very pleasurable listens in with Harmonia, and it is dovetailing beautifully with the spring weather outside my window.

second listen to parallelisme and the rhythm on "サンタマンの森で" is in a syncopation that makes me expect the amen break to drop at any second. because it doesn't, the song hits in 2025 like some dreamy post-d'n'b that knows the listener's expectation, and so intentionally dodges it

of course, linear time makes these thoughts and this post confusing as hell.

Listening to The Coctails again. Surely there is nothing snarky or ironic about this? No way could you make music this contemplative and beautiful with a tongue in your cheek.

i mean, elsewhere they covered sun ra, did star wars themed instrumental cues, and played 50th wedding anniversary banquets. soooo... i can't imagine any "camp" present in their music was anything other than incidental. some of their jazz stuff ―equal parts martin denny and sun ra― wouldn't have sounded out of place on tzadik imo. they really were one of the most esoteric bands of the scene.

as for me, second or third listen now to parallelisme and i've ingested some cannabis. this is cool how they soundtracked the snes a decade before the console existed. neat stuff, especially the

hi cannabis ingested. button pressed prematurely. doing okay.

anyway, the brilliantly titled "capricious salad" has some especially memory-scrambling synth patches that i swear ended up in the super nintendo's sound bank.

reading reviews, her voice gets critiqued. i don't get that at all. she's not amazing, but i've certainly heard worse city pop vocalists. the album is mostly a success because of the music+production, but i can't imagine what other kind of vocals would fit this music.

Yes, the light of the SNES is strong. I grew up adoring Uematsu, Mitsuda, Kikuta, and Ito, so getting into Hosono and YMO in my thirties and discovering that all those geniuses of the SNES era were, in fact, diehard YMO fanboys, and that all the beauty and mystery of the SNES era could be traced straight back to Hosono and Sakamoto... that was something! It was like my past and my present united in one coiling mass of electricity. One of those moments where you hear a voice telling you, "you've been on the right track all along."

My newfound Yumi Matsutoya obsession has swept most of my other listening plans out of the way, but (official report from Station 2) Natureza sounds strong and clear and refuses to be swept away. The opener is absorbing (and ten minutes long!), the second track similarly lovely but shorter, buckling you in, then all of a sudden the third song switches lead vocalists -- my point is, there's always something really attractive and interesting going on, and I find the album flowing right by, and I wish it was longer.

My early favorite is Ciclo da Vida. I love the cinematic intro in this song and one or two others. As far as I can tell, they have nothing to do melodically with what comes later in the song, they're just an extravagant setting of the mood -- it's a great conceit. I'm captivated by the quiet eeriness of Ciclo da Vida's guitar figure and chord progression. Now that I check, I see the song is 8+ minutes long -- I had no idea, it feels like half that.

How can songs so richly arranged still sound so light and airy? It's magic.

Waiting on my CD of Die Donnergötter to arrive. I have an older car with a CD player, no other inputs. I want to blast it while driving around.

Thank you for the amazing picks, Jesse.

As usual I'm being the poster boy for late reports here. (I never really could keep up on ILM.) I've listened to each of my choices twice. All of them come from contemporary art music worlds I don't really know anything about, with the partial exception of the Stephan Mathieu who has his hands in a lot of contemporary German electronic music.

Blade of Love deliberately suggests environments — the harbor, the desert — as Battle Trance make their instruments evoke wind, marine horns, coyotes. (I was reminded more than once of Nico's Desertshore.) With a name like Battle Trance, it's not surprising that the group should sound like a force to be reckoned with — there's metal riffage, the buzzing onslaught of multiple horns from Roland Kirk or Ornette Coleman groups — but also quite different sources like early Steve Reich or sax melodies not too far removed from Whitney Houston records. Because Blade of Love's three pieces unfold over fifteen minutes or so each, this wild array of sounds and styles actually forms a pretty coherent statement.

Listening to Bone Bells reminds me of how little time I've spent listening to piano-guitar duos, which I would stereotype as making laid-back, groovy sounds to enjoy, ignore, or both. Bone Bells is not that. It seems to have as much to do with European art music traditions as jazz; like Battle Trance, Courvoisier and Halvorson make a variety of unconventional percussive sounds with their instruments (is that a treated piano or a treated guitar?, I found myself wondering). Composed melodies give way to comical and disquieting improvisations before returning to theme again, or not. I heard bits of Debussy and Ravel, Tom Verlaine, Penderecki, Carl Stalling; the music is playful but it's arguably too difficult to be described as "quirky." Listening to it reminded me of when public radio was left on in my childhood home, and it would play music for which I had no real reference. This was "pure music" in an institutionally legitimated form that seemed to exist basically for itself. As much as there seems to be comic intent (song titles include "Silly Walk" and "Nags Head Valse"), I find something quintessentially lonely at the heart of this music. This is no doubt partly a projection!

Chachi's description of Mauve District pretty much gets it — "everything's a matter of degrees" — and certainly it makes good background music. I was most reminded of some of Eno's ambient pieces where you have a few piano notes being plucked one by one in a minor key. There are times when you have that and times when you don't. When you don't, the bed of sound makes a major chord, before you're reminded of the relative minor's dominance by the piano. I suppose that major/minor distinction isn't super interesting, but it has something to do with the "space" of the music, always "safe," and its temperature, which varies slightly (now let's put on another blanket, that's too warm so let's try this other sheet). As with Bone Bells, I'd approach this music in institutional terms, albeit for different reasons: it was produced for an art exhibition and named for a specific painting which I feel a bit at a loss to relate to it, except that the "mauve" of Frankenthaler's piece radiates in ways that might compare to Mathieu's. Another question I was thinking about is in what sense this music, and maybe music writ large, is "inside" or "outside." This seems like very inside music, but given that the title alludes to a district I think we're invited to think about the consequences of that.

I'm leaning toward committing to Mauve District, although the temptation there is to conceptualize a bunch without necessarily talking a lot about the music. My other choice would be be Bone Bells, the harder one, where I don't really have the vocabulary to describe a lot of what's happening but nonetheless think it would be useful to try and figure out what makes it "hard" for me.

getting into this Coctails album, first impression is it really drives home how important Archer's playing is to TSAC. second impression is it's 45 degrees outside and not the right time to listen to music like this :)

also not sure who is singing on this but they sound an awful lot like Prekop!

Al Schmitt, who did the mixes for the two hi-fi tracks on Natureza, has also mixed the last few albums by Yumi Matsutoya, the artist I've been listening to on repeat for a couple weeks now. Maybe Schmitt is a big enough name that he moves in all kinds of pop circles, but this struck me as a bizarre and wonderful coincidence. Before this 7gp round, his name would've meant nothing to me.

Oh yeah, I didn't report in from Station 3. My main impression was simply of pure and sustained enjoyment, but two thoughts did present themselves:

1. The jam that ends opener Feminina is incredible. The "song" ends after three minutes or so, but the musicians play ecstatically on for eight more.

2. The final song, Pega Leve, emerges out of Cicla da Vida's patient, eerie questing, and returns the album to its main mode -- sunlight and good cheer -- but it's both the album's shortest song, and the weirdest of the cheerful majority. It's pleasantly disorienting.

I wanted to link the Yoko Kanno song that I wrote about above -- the one that gave Natureza its wide and straight highway to my heart. I though Jesse might like to hear it.

I also wanted to link another song from the same Kanno album that, as it occurred to me on second listen to Natureza, also has a heavy Joyce-in-'77 vibe to it.

So I betook myself to YouTube, and discovered that the name of the vocalist on those two songs of Kanno's is Joyce Morena.

Google turned up the official history on Joyce's website:

In 2003, Joyce was invited by the film composer Yoko Kanno to participate in the sound track of the anime Wolf's Rain, shown on Japanese TV.

Further digging reveals that not only did Joyce sing those two songs, she wrote them. And her husband Tutty, whom she got to know around the time she was making Natureza, plays drums on half that (Kanno) album.

Unbelievable.

7gp is an incantation; 7gp warps the world!!

So here you are, Jesse: two Joyce/Kanno collabs from 2003:

Coração selvagem (quoth me, April 5th: "in my longlist of favorite songs ever")

Run, Wolf Warrior, Run

Now excuse me while I collect the scraps of my skull from the floor.

I've been playing The Coctails as frequently and carefully as if it had been my official pick, so I might as well report back the same way.

So, Coctails Station 3:

Man, this goes down smooth.

That's partly because it reminds me of other music I've loved over the years -- it's got ditch-era Neil's drift and emotion, it's playfully technical like early-'70s Jethro Tull, the vocals are charmingly frail like Meddle-era Floyd, and speaking of Floyd, the acoustic songs call to mind the agrarian Zabriskie Point/Atom Heart Mother period.

Partly it's the slacker vibe. You get the sense that they could put a lot more lyrics and vocals on these songs, but just don't feel like it. Some songs I wait and wait for someone to start singing -- it really feels like someone's about to -- but instead the songs float contentedly away on gorgeous chord progressions.

Things kick into gear for a single song right before the album ends. "Aw hell, we have all this leftover energy, why waste it!"

But the actual end of the album is a pump organ jam that *also* sounds like Neil, except contemporary Neil this time -- although Neil wasn't using his pump organ to record haunted ambient instrumentals.

Stronger than the slacker vibe is the sense that I'm an outsider, peeking in on a band who have been modestly committed to their artistry, outside the public eye, for years. Despite the reference points, they don't sound like people who listened much to Neil or Tull or Floyd -- it sounds like they're playing this way because nothing else would fit.

It's been a day of rain and mist, and I listened while biking through the park as usual, along the shore of the bay -- no one around, the paths glistening, the mountains dim and blue, the spring day cold. Hard to imagine a better setting.

I ordered my pick on CD but it turned out it was from Canada, not inside the USA. Should be here any day....

I'm on the 4th listen to that Coctails album - its def very easy to listen to. though the last track always makes me think my phone glitched and threw something else on :)

Naturenza, Station 4: what a wildly all-star band this must have been. Everyone is playing so imaginatively and passionately that the ear hardly knows what to attend to. And it's no small ensemble!

Natureza, Station 5: only on this listen did it fully hit me that I was listening to an early album by the writer and singer of Coração Selvagem and Run, Wolf Warrior, Run. This was so exciting that I found myself impatient during the two Mauricio Maestro songs! It's wonderful to be aware that the same artist can be this good in 1977 and still just as good in 2003. Really doesn't happen often.

Been a slow round for me -- I'm swamped with work and have had trouble clearing the mental space for good listens -- but maybe that's a nice thing in this case, as each next listen to the Joyce has felt significantly more beautiful and profound, and maybe it wouldn't have in quite the same way if I was "on time," listening every three days.

How are you all? Cow Art, did your Die Donnergötter make it?

No! It’s taking longer than it should, perhaps packages are going through the post slower because of Canada/US relations? Not sure. I broke down and soul-seeked it and hope to give it a proper listen today.