Yamantaka-tastic! This spider has no chance.
Yamantaka // Sonic Titan - Reverse Crystal // Murder of a Spider
Track from Yamantaka // Sonic Titan’s brand new CD/LP, YT//ST, on Montreal’s Psychic Handshake Recordings (PSY-009).
www.ytstlabs.com
You can purchase YT//ST on CD or White Vinyl LP (w/ Digital Download) from the following website:
www.psychichandshake.com
YT//ST is also available in digital formats on Yamantaka’s Bandcamp page http://yamantakasonictitan.bandcamp.com/ and on iTunes
First track off Blue Moon Transmissions, the full-length debut album from Joshua Noel Tanner.
This song has an airy melody, slick/sweet guitar double-stop solos, mystical lyrics, and imagery that makes you want to find that old lantern in your shed and go explore those caves you’ve always wondered about. Ear-candy, if I do say so myself.
The entire full-length feature debut album is available for streaming and purchase at joshuanoeltanner.bandcamp.com. Oh, and by the way, did I mention the album artwork? It’s neon-gasmic.
The Daytrotter Session features Sam Beam and Rosie Thomas doing some intimate acoustic renditions of three new songs and one classic. If Kiss Each Other Clean’s pseudo-70s-inspired sound left a bad taste in your mouth, this short video may help wash it out. You will also be relieved to know that Sam has not traded his trademark facial hair for a fro, disco pants and a flowered shirt. He is still wearing a small bear on his face. And I love it. But I love his music more. Even the weird falsetto kinda gets to me.
By the way, on a completely different train of thought. I realized that the song “Flightless Bird, American Mouth” is about a penguin. Think about it—“flightless” bird? Just listen to the song again with a penguin in your mind’s eye. Pull up a picture of an Emperor penguin on Google Images if that will help. A little baby Emperor penguin. It makes the whole song make perfect sense. And as for you cynics out there, the answer is no: it could not have just as well been written about an ostrich or an emu. Those birds are ugly and stupid and Sam Beam would never waste his time writing a song about birds that are raised primarily for their meat or to be laughed at. Ostriches and emus … how ridiculous. Does the photo below depict a man who writes ridiculous songs?
This is so much more than hippies banging on drums in the desert. This is Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, a 10-plus member band who sound like they haven’t figured out how to hate anyone yet. Or maybe they already have and they’re past it now. Whatever the case may be, they argue the case for love—romantic, universal—with poignant and varied tools. You’ll get some whistling, some ukulele, acoustic guitar, trumpet, banjo, piano, and male and female vocals. And you’ll find that it’s all knitted together with down-to-earth but somehow numinous lyrics that bring out the transcendence of the most basic of human desires.
“Home”, “40 Day Dream”, and “Janglin” are the standout tracks from the album. But you wouldn’t be hurting yourself to listen to the whole album, Up From Below, with all its thought-provocation and strange desert daydreams.
Mumford and Sons—four West London folksters—really know how to lay a wallop. The song “White Blank Page” is replete with all the smashed-glass anger and quiet-weeping stillness of human beings post-break-up. Gentle and scratchy, tender and begrudging, this song begins as a question, morphs into a rebuke, and phases out as a melancholy but lively coming-to-terms acceptance.
Other songs to check out on the debut album, Sigh No More, are “The Cave” and “Little Lion Man.” Also plug your ears into “Timshel”, which is a track that features an introductory vocal harmony that would make every single one of the Fleet Foxes come a’wandering from the other side of that pale green mountain pasture.
Let’s put it this way: Cocaine wishes it could make people feel as good as this song does. King Charles is some kind of moderately known urban melody man, a songwriter who apparently knows that music doesn’t have to be super complex and overtly philosophical in order to be effective. He goes to the core of how “Love Lust” makes you feel, which is also, consequently, the name of the song. He also did a cover of “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with entirely updated verses for our modern times. Give King Charles a chance and be happy.
peace. Watch radical-magical animations depict what he’s saying as he speaks to a 14-year-old interviewer who snuck into his hotel room one night.
“On Melancholy Hill” is a dose off of the Gorillaz’ latest release, Plastic Beach. While I’ve only listened to the album as a whole a couple times through, I’ve listened to this song over 20 times. In short, this song is a post-modern lullaby. In ancient days, in lands of black sands and other mysteries, fearful mothers sang songs to their infants in order to protect them from spirits of the night. Even today, people still fear these dark presences, and many of them can’t sleep unless they have a night-light, an honest lover, a plasma screen, or a bottle of Ambien. Well, now there’s another option: a trip with the mod-faced Gorillaz to “Melancholy Hill”.
Washed-out, fuzzy-flowered sunshine kissing on your face. That’s what it’s like. If you took all the stress from skyscraper push-buttons, junkyard nightmares, and computer callouses and re-cycled it, you might have an idea of what it sounds like. It’s the sound of re-healing. It’s the sound of the cartoon Americans snoring like sinking submarines.
More on this album later.
This is how humans made music before the great forest fires of 2019.
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