Monday, May 4, 2020

"It's all up in the air, girl/ it's like a snare, girl/ in all its manifestations"

--Thurston Moore

Spent the majority of April listening to Sonic Youth. Particularly their post Dirty-era, which I largely abandoned at the time—between their side-projects, experimental self-released material and their more accessible Geffen albums—it was tough to keep up. Turns out, their career had a pretty great second half. The jams sound more mature, some in line with their longer-form “verse-chorus, verse-chorus, NOISE shred” pieces of the past while others embraced a new, more concise, albeit still somewhat “anti-pop song” style—both of which maintained the band’s patented anthemic apathy and aggression edge, and totally hit the sweet spot.

BRETT'S PICKS VOLUME ONE (1994-2009: post Dirty-era):


BRETT'S PICKS VOLUME TWO (1994-2009: post Dirty-era):


BRETT'S PICKS VOLUME THREE (1994-2009: post Dirty-era):



Added "to-do" playlist projects: Sun Araw, Tuluum Shimmering and Psychic Ills (and yet, another crucial loss, Tres Warren RIP):



check it out:
Marina Rosenfeld and Ben Vida Vertice (Fridman Gallery 01) april 2020
The Green Kingdom Residence On Earth (Past Inside The Present) April 2020
Home Diaries series (whitelabrecs)
Asuna + Tomoyoshi Date + Federicl Durand In The Open (Dauw) April 2020
Élodie Le Nid D'Ivoire (La Scie Dorée 2419) January 2020
Psychic Ills' "Never Learn Not To Love" b/w "Cease To Exist" (Sacred Bones 248) April 2020
Howling Hex, The Knuckleball Express (Fat Possum 1725) April 2020
Alva Noto's "A Forest" (Noton 48) April 2020
Sun Araw Rock Sutra (Sun Ark 60) April 2020
Felicia Atkinson Everything Evaporate (Shelter Press 121) April 2020
Cornershop England Is A Garden (Ample Play 129) march 2020
Corey Fuller Sanctuary (self-released) march 2020
Maggi Payne Arctic Winds (Innova 2010, reissued by Aguirre) March 2020
Derek Rogers Immersions (We Know Better) march 2020
Portable The Transit of Mercury (Khoikhoi 05) march 2020
Velvet Desert Music Vol. 2 curated by Jorg Burger (Kompakt 416) march 2020

Also finished reading Trust Exercise by Susan Choi and Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa—both pretty good, but if I had to recommend one, I suppose it’d be Yoko Ogawa’s Memory Police, if, for no other reason, than its ability to convey long-arc, many-layered and often frightening themes of loss in such a beautifully simplistic and calming language.