Bedroom Community

I would like to see this tour. But hey, I live in California.






Bedroom Community releases have gotten some backlash around the internet. I don't care, these are the best musicians on the planet as far as I'm concerned.

Erykah Badu - Window Seat

Well this is going to be another great album.

A To Z: Eccsame The Photon Band - Lilys

There are certain records in all of our collections that we might praise, but ultimately undervalue. "Yeah, wow that IS a great record, I almost forgot about it!"

I've had Eccsame the Photon Band for years and listened to it quite a few times. At the behest of some friends and contemporaries I was constantly reminded that I should give this album it's due, but typically brushed it aside. It's underrated, under-mentioned, nearly unheard in comparison to similar records of the era. I knew it was good, but it wasn't until recently that I actually realized how good this record actually is.

Always placed within the confines of the shoegaze genre, the Lilys foray into the wonderful world of distorted guitars sounds nothing like Loveless or Nowhere. Listening to the record, you can make out individual guitar chords, hear the lyrics and never feel overwhelmed by the oft-suffocating limits and compression of records that employ sounds we typically deem "shoegaze." Eccsame sounds and feels like it has room to breathe. These are ostensibly pop songs hidden beneath the veil of distortion and slow-tempos. There are instances of extended guitar flourishes and electronic washes, but the pop songs remain just under the surface - seeking their way out of the haze, embedding themselves in your head.

No, this isn't My Bloody Valentine or even Slowdive - this is a less epic Stone Roses, a Byrds album recorded for the autumn, it's almost Yo La Tengo. This album could only be a product of the middle 1990's, a product of every band doing similar things at that time AND those bands' influences. This isn't party music, it's not music to listen to while hanging out with friends. The album is taken in best when you take it in alone. That's what I've done many times over the past week. Do I think it's an all-time classic now? No I still don't, but I don't think I'll ever undervalue Eccsame The Photon Band again. It deserves a place among the giants of the genre and the giants of your collection.


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A To Z: Doremi Fasol Latido - Hawkwind

1972 is an absolutely incredible year in music history. I cannot help but think what it would've been like to be the age I am now back then. Where would I have stood musically? Would I find myself part of the increasingly popular Glam Rock scene? Would I find myself with long hair and a hog, listening to Deep Purple? Would I be at crux in my life - rejecting traditional rock n roll for the likes of the classical influences inherent in Progressive Rock? Could I be cool enough to have connections to people following the apex of the Brazilian music scene? Maybe I would just be listening to the popular stuff by Elton John, Paul Simon, and Stevie Wonder.

37 years past that particular year, I find myself wanting to be a part of all these scenes, loving many albums released during this year retrospectively. I have no context of what it would have been like to actually have BEEN THERE. I've seen concerts, I've read anecdotes, I'm jealous to not have lived through this time, just as I'm jealous to not have lived through any significant time in pop music history.

As a natural extension and rebirth of the hippies at the end of the 60's, perhaps the burgeoning Space Rock, psych folk, Glastonbury scene would've been the scene for me. These people held true to what they wanted to do, mixing pop, rock and electronics to create music that was similar to that being created in Germany at the time - but distinctly different.

The difference was Hawkwind.

Doremi Fasol Latido came out on the heels of the massive UK single "Silver Machine" - a song that was not found on any Hawkwind album at the time, but still featured a sound that would soon define them. Lemmy's vocals sound like Roger Daltry, the guitar and bass chugging is reminiscent of the heavy rock found in Uriah Heep and Deep Purple - yet there was this ambience added to the music. A constant humming sound that gently slid up and down the scales, not distracting from the music but definitely noticable. Imagine your rock band performing in the middle of a hurricane, attempting to send it back from where it came. You get the point.

Doremi was 7 tracks the first time it was released. Alternating between hard rock, proto punk, kraut rock, and a handful of British folk moments - many consider this their masterpiece.

I've never really understood the genre title of "Space Rock" beyond the occasional synthesizer whirlings. To me, I think of the serene, minimal, bleep blopp fizz captured perfectly in the soundtracks to movies like Solaris, Moon and Sunshine as something "true" to space. I see The Orb as much more indicative of the loneliness I imagine space to be rather than what Hawkwind present it as.

A party. A huge, drug-fueled, week-long, awesome party.

If those soundtracks (or even perhaps the 2001: A Space Odyssey score) are what I imagine the true sound of space to be like, Doremi Fasol Latido is the quintessential soundtrack for teenagers traveling to space in rebellion against their aging parents. You see, there is a sense of urgency and defiance found throughout the album. The guitar is harsh, the recording is shit and everytime lyrics and singing are introduced I can't help but feel that Hawkwind is trying to write some melodramatic space opera.

But the drawn-out, mind-melting, feedback laden instrumental passages rock. This isn't space music to float around to. This is the your soundtrack to conquer space.

It's not a perfect album, I don't think it's even the best Hawkwind album, but it's fun to pull out every now and then and listen to loud. Grow your hair out, put on some bizarre threads. Hell, paint your face if you must. It might not be your version of space, but it's theirs. And it is one hell of a fun vision to have.

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PS. Album includes 4 bonus tracks - none of which I find as good as the any of the preceding 7.

Annihilation War and Annihilation Conquest

I have zipped up all the comics you need for the Annihilation War story arc of the Marvel Cosmic universe as well as the subsequent Annhilation: Conquest arc. The original Annihilation arc is better, but the Star-Lord mini that is a prelude to Conquest is probably the best mini out of the 8. Everything is in order or includes a reading list. Includes the preludes, tie-ins and everything else.

Reading comics on your computer is easy. You can use Jomic if you have a mac. Or Comical if you have Windows. Have some fun, I like these arcs and I find the space-based Marvel stuff much more intriguing than most of their other comics. Anyway if you want a review or whatever, look em up online. Shit is fun, art is mostly good, so just download and read them over time.

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Multiupload, etc.

Another update post. Apparently multiupload went down sometime today, which is where all my recent files are mirrored, so if you're trying to get the 4 new things I've posted, you can't. That blows.

I'm hoping it goes back up soon, because it's a good service. I have some posts planned out and will get back to posting once this is resolved.

A To Z: Chessa - Shuttle358

We tend to give ambient music two distinct purposes:

1. To serve as inoffensive background noise for activities like studying, sleeping or perhaps barely waking up.
2. To serve as a special soundtrack to a unique situation we may find ourselves in: weaving through travelers at an airport, riding on a morning train, watching the snow fall outside.

I know of few people who choose to listen to ambient or drone music as a means of sparking lively conversation or who elect to share their new favorite microtonal artists with their peers. It is not an entertaining music, nor is it a significantly artistic music. Yet somehow these sound sculptures can manage to be the most quiescent or the most absorptive music we listen to.

We have heard over the last 30 years of the brilliance found within the minimal compositions of masters like Brian Eno and Harold Budd. In half the time, we have been able to add artists like Wolfgang Voight, William Basinski, Christian Fennesz and Stars of The Lid to that list. What was once a genre that few tread within, dominated by tape loops, hazy guitar pedals and the tinkling of keys on a synth or piano, soon blossomed during the laptop age of the early 2000's. Anyone could be a sound musician. I tried, you tried, we failed.

And though the genre of microtonal ambient music is far from dead - it is altogether saturated by carbon copy artists, all clawing (softly) for that one standout review handed out by a major publication every year.

I love ambient music, and while I'm in no way someone who follows the actual scene (and there is a true art-based minimal scene in every corner of the western world), nor am I even learned enough to be able to write for mapsadaisical, I delve into many new releases every year that happen to catch my attention during the hyperbolic ramblings of their press releases or Boomkat reviews. Every year many of them are nothing but boring, soulless electro-acoustic meanderings that start nowhere and go nowhere. "A guy, a laptop and a guitar walk into a bedroom..."

It is funny that we can consider a music with no specific form to adhere to but whatever one hears in their own head as "soulless", yet many releases within this genre are exactly that. Dan Abrams aka Shuttle358 is anything but soulless.

All positive reviews of ambient music make reference that a particular release is good because of the "warmth" and "humanity" that the music brings up for the listener. Specific memories in time are recaptured, current moments in the present are captured for the first time. Chessa is warm, Chessa is human.

Recorded and released during the apex of the click-and-beep madhouse of 2004, Shuttle358's third album on 12k has spoken to me for 5 years now. The fuzz, the chimes, the buzzing sounds, the looped guitar - these are all elements that can be found on releases by any ambient composer - and yet, this release sticks out from the others. I listened to this album four times this afternoon as I watched the rain come and go out my window. As night set in, earlier than it should have, the music continued to soundtrack my evening. Every track seems to find itself matching my breaths as it clicks along, every track placed perfectly in context with the exact emotion I encounter upon this experience.

It is a quiet album, a beautiful album - one that has many situational uses. It just turns out that its beauty has not allowed me to tie it to one situation in particular, but many. And few albums can do that.

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