Not as trial-by-fire-rage-transcendent as some people might tell you. The title track begins promising and turns into one of the worst beats Funk has ever let his hand touch in ownership. But the turns of invention come back strong: "Tushe Love"'s clarion call to pure sex dirty freakout beat insanity, "Unborn Baby"'s strong commentary and invention, "Cheatin'"'s strange dance of need, and the following need FUCKED with "Meta Abuse," the "Russell" tracks' hate and unpredictable rush, and my favorite: the mushed out washed out drugged up fucked over melodies of "Halfway" that would sound like classical if the style of the last 10 tracks hadn't forced this into this sad role. Wowie.
"Calla" by Calla
Crazy and wonderful noise/rock record, with pure creep and texture mixing with spot on drumwork and vocals. It's very deliberate music, and despite its many faces (the slow grasping clutch of Tarantula, the simple walking bliss of "Only Drowning Men"), it feels controlled, like, well, an album. A connected album of half-noise music that really does focus on its noise is a special thing, and it's well-done to boot.
"The Book of Heads" by John Zorn
Oh I dunno. It's avant-garde and I can enjoy it for that. I wouldn't say there's a progression, but I can enjoy it for its inventiveness and commentary."Blind Light" by Anton Fier
Hear the Bjork on "Blind Light," it's title track, feeling like the explosion of "Pluto," and a lot of other similarities are there: dance influences, out-there female focus, noise and swelling motives, and a not-insignificant amount of artistry. But the album feels distended in its own trip-hop self, straddling over tracks the line between ambient chillout triphop and...well, music. Bass work is fantastic.
"Bjork Gudmondsdottir" by Bjork
After I stopped freaking out from how little Bjork was once upon a time, I got to enjoy the ups and downs of this heavily mixed (true) Debut. "Musastaginn" is pure cleverness and genius; I hear both some Sugarcubes songs and "Venus as a Boy" in it. "Arabadrengurinn" is also good, with punchy harmonies and a lot of wonderful dance flow. It feels like both a regurgitation of its time and a quiet prelude to Bjork's later work, and that explanation makes it easy to blame the album's many flops and pointless gestures on its time. But no, she's figuring it out. Good on her. It's the question posed by "Alta Mira": can she ever write beautiful music that isn't trite? Yes. Yes yes yes.
"As the Eternal Cowboy" by Against Me!
For me, the album flips between the epic and the not bad but forgettable. T.S.R., Sink Florida Sink, Potatos Rice and Bread, and Cavalier Eternal definitely stick along for the ride, and none of the other songs are bad or memorable. The only song I get frustrated on is "Raised Fists" It's a belabored point without any reward to it."Moonglow" Venetian Snares
Both of the venetian snares albums were heavily out of alphabetical order, but I wanted to revisit them. The A-side of this caught me immediately with its flashy jazz-punk tone, but in a lot of ways that flash is so important: these two songs are Funk confining himself to a certain vocabulary and being as creative as possible within it. And it isn't even something really self-indulgent like songs of fucking his then girlfriend, it's these wildly mixing beats and swells that appeal to more than just the beatnik than me. This Bitter Earth, especially, has this near-symphonic quality as its descending themes and samples swirl inwardly around the drums, sax, and most importantly the negative space. Restraint, something that Funk usually doesn't deal in, or only when there's an assured freakout later, lives here. It's a magical shot.
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