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2020 Albums of Note

jimmy

December 21, 2020

Here are some albums in no particular order that have grabbed my attention this year. What’s notable was despite the overall shittiness of the year, the music was pretty damn good. Either that or I finally paid attention. You can load your Spotifys and listen to these tunes. You’re fucking adults. And if you really like them, you can purchase a copy of your very own that won’t be subject to the fickle whims of content license agreements. Most of these folks are on Bandcamp.

Mamaleek – Come and See

Black metal fucking jazz fucking avant-garde fucking noise fucking our oppressive inside spaces and how they affect us. It’s appropriate this was released on my birthday. I’ve been listening to it off an on throughout the year, and it’s always held my attention. I want it to cum on my face.

clipping. – Visions of Bodies Being Burned

Slash me up and stab me and fuck me and leave my body a messy maggoty steampile, but don’t forget to leave no evidence.

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou – May Our Chambers Be Full

I already talked about this album a few weeks ago. It woke me the fuck up.

William Basinski – Lamentations

When you want to wallow but fuck those who want to comfort you. You just be left alone in the horror and misery.

Merzbow – Screaming Dove

Loud ambient screech drone torturefuck with razor-implanted hardons. It’s Merzbow.

Hum – Inlet

I feel bad I gave them a bad review in the UCSB Artsweek section of the paper back in 1998. This is a very shoegaze album that doesn’t mention missing trains from Mars or any of that shit.

Yaeji – What We Drew

MY PEOPLES! You can dance to this without any guilt. It’s not the K-pop that we’re weaponizing against the world you stupid wypipo.

Annie – Dark Hearts

More somber and reflective songs from my favorite Norwegian pop queen.

Run the Jewels – RTJ4

El-P and Killer Mike slay again. “walking in the snow” is an absolute showstopper. The soundtrack to the 2020 protests.

Stabbing Westward – Hallowed Hymns

What did we have to do to get Stabbing Westward to cover the Cure, Ministry and Echo and the Bunnymen? Just wait decades for them to reunite the kablammo with a pandemic.

Thou – Blessings of the Highest Order

The Nirvana cover album you didn’t know you needed.

tricot – 10

Japanese pop punkish math rock and roll sprinkled with aspartame. They make me smile.

Arca – KiCk i

More melodic and less abrasive? Definitely something I can seize to.

Havukruunu – Uinuos Syomein Sota

I heard a hilarious rumor years ago that Syrian refugees who resettled in Finland were so bored they wanted to leave. This black metal group would make me want to stay.

Blog 1 comment emma ruth rundle, may our chambers be full, music, thou

Emma Ruth Rundle & Thou – May Our Chambers Be Full

jimmy

November 27, 2020

Where the fuck have I been? I don’t know what blanket of depression I’ve been living under, but I’ve been ignoring music for far too long. Sure, I’ve listened to what pops up on Spotify or just some glancing items that I see on Facebook. Somehow, someway, I saw this album pop up, and after 53 seconds of ambient noise and feedback, a burst of music pumped out of the speaker ushering in a wave of pleasure, regret and mourning right over me.

I had no idea who Emma or Thou were, whether I should have known who they were or anything like that. What I heard is music that is a harder version of Seaweed with the folksy haunting voice of Emma accompanied at times with the demonic screaming of Thou. It’s the dirtiest of early 90’s Seattle regurgitated into the swamps outside of Baton Rouge near the Comite River and emerging in a sweaty Frankensteinian mess that reaks terror.

I eventually figured that Emma Ruth Rundle is a singer-songwriter from Louisville and Thou are a sludge metal band from, appropriately enough, Baton Rouge who made a Nirvana cover album earlier this year and had somehow been featured on NPR. But all of this I found out after a couple of listens to this.

I don’t know if the nostalgia of the sound hit me, or if was how gorgeous the juxtaposition of Emma’s voice was to the music that threatened to drown her out but never managed to. But I just thought about how I could have missed out on this and how my stupid depression just kept be in a haze that allowed me to ignore everything and stay in a cocoon by myself. And that I must wake up and emerge into whatever world this is.

Sure, this world they paint through these seven songs and 36 minutes is scary and ugly. In “Ancestral Recall,” “I’m not of this world, this decaying existence / I’m not shackled to their cold, cruel and morbid logic / It tells a truth known to everyone who / Truly knows me.” This is a dark world not for us designed to keep us tied up. But there is a dangle of hope there, that we can like them be unshackled to this, that we can get over it.

In “Magickal Cost” which starts out mournfully and explodes in a guitar-fuelled battle, it ends with “My voice reaching back / Of rippling impulse / True, real raw hunger / My voice reaching back.” What we need to fight is within us anyhow.

Maybe I’m making too much out of this. I do acknowledge that the lyrics can come off as a bit cheesy and prog, especially as the album ends on “The Valley” with “You see them there? / Ancient and seething / Up in a pyre / Get them out of my way.” But I guess we need a little of that in our lives sometimes. I mean, how many fucking people loved Game of Thrones?

But I like that despite the bleak narrative, there is something within us that transcends all of that bullshit and help us become free.

Hopefully I can find a little more of that.

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