The Music Box.
Entries about the music I like.
Dry Cleaning – New Long Leg
Your calves age you: each muscle, each sinew, a record of every mile you’ve walked, every minute you’ve milled about, every kilogram of excess weight you’ve carried. Lately I’ve been thinking about how the human body serves as a map of one person’s journey through time and space. I've also been listening to Dry Cleaning's New Long Leg, 2021's best post-punk album.
Thoughts on the Associates' Party Fears Two
On Party Fears Two, the Associates’ Billy Mackenzie makes 1 odd vocal choice after another; he takes chances that would be recommended by neither vocal coach nor armchair music nerd. But it’s because of these choices that when I try to describe the sound of the single, I think not to say early new wave, or minimally arranged proto-eighties, or melodic synth-based post-punk.
Slow & Steady // Music of the Week / WS 17-May-21
This week’s playlist has served as a soundtrack to my efforts to count my blessings, name them one by one, and stay the course, to just keep going: be it with Stranger Fiction, with work, or with life. It starts with the nightchill downtempo of A Forest Mighty Black’s Duo Trippin’ and ends with Kendrick Lamar telling you 'we’re going to be all right.'
Evolution // Music of the Week / WS 21 Feb 2021
I know it isn't good to toot one's own horn, but I really love the new-look Music of the Week. I spend most of the week really looking forward to writing it. It feels like a cathartic outburst of untrammeled self-expression, and reminds me of the reason I started writing stories in the first place. Twelve years ago, I published my first story online.
Bush Tetras – Boom in the Night (Original Studio Recordings 1980-1983)
The story of Bush Tetras is familiar. A band with an innovative sound makes waves in a thriving New York post-punk scene that goes on to spawn future stars like Talking Heads and Sonic Youth. They become a band’s band, with English post-punk band Gang of Four, e.g., describing their sound as ‘… both jarring and warming.’ But ultimately, they get no record deal and disband.
H O P E // a mixtape to self
Some time in 2016, I clearly felt something intensely enough to make a neck-breaking playlist of punk, post-punk, and alternative songs running at a tempo of 150 bpm +. While I was 4 years younger then, my neck was not made of rubber; I have no idea what it was that I was so enraged by that it allowed me to a make this muscular a mix without suffering any serious whiplash.
The art of storytelling as expressed through playlisting
Playlist one consists of eight hits from the world after punk. It’s the soundtrack to my pacing around a room and worrying about the future. It’s a bunch of men like me stressing about the ‘kind of men’ they are and the ‘kind of world’ they inhabit. This transitions to playlist two, consisting mainly of hip-hop hits about bouncing back and ‘showing them’
The Cure — Disintegration
Through most of Disintegration, the Cure wallows in a gentle midtempo; Thompson’s guitar does more repeating than noodling, Gallup’s bass rumbles patterns that are reminiscent of early Joy Division, and O’Donnell’s synths add an orchestral sparkle that has since become a staple of goth. Drones and esoteric keys handled by Smith and Thompson crackle and pop for effect.
![Molchat Doma — Stairs [Молчат Дома — Этажи]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5e2ad127a2dc434ac477aa46/1607251595430-Q4LXOHB02ID3G4K1VKKK/sbr3037-molchatdoma-1800_1024x1024.jpg)
Molchat Doma — Stairs [Молчат Дома — Этажи]
Is the world going to end? Is there no hope for us in the face of all the challenges we’re no doubt going to face in the coming years? But then this: at what other time of human civilisation could an Indian find it this easy to get his hands on a British-post-punk-inspired Belarussian coldwave album first released by a German label, then reissued by an American label?
KennyHoopla — how will i rest in peace if i’m buried by a highway?//
Ok, prediction. Some future version of 23-year-old KennyHoopla will become quite huge, likely in the short to medium term. I’m basing this off of how will i rest in peace if i’m buried by a highway?//, his really good post-punk inspired electro-rock EP. Expect driving rhythmic percussion, muted synth stabs, jangly guitars, emotive (but often childish) vocals, all passed through rich reverb. Think Joy Division and Bloc Party, but with a richly inventive approach to vox.
Punk music
At the start of the covid crisis, I started sharing happy dispatches including a few of my favourite things to make it easier to get through the crisis. This dispatch includes a playlist of punk music and its several offshoots: post-punk, pop-punk, hardcore, post-hardcore & new wave.