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What have you been listening to this week?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
Ewan Dobson playing Bach. He's posted 4 videos to YouTube over the past few days and they are pretty awesome. I want to start working on learning Prelude. He has links to free tabs in all is videos. I would only suggest that if you download them you consider donating. Pretty cool of him to provide so much for free!
*Edit - Here's a link
Found this comment via your profile (I was snooping after your reply to me in the ~books topic)... you're the first person I have ever seen mention Ewan Dobson online! I fucking love that dude so much... one of his tracks was actually one of the first things I posted to Tildes way, way back in May last year!
https://tildes.net/~music/75/ewan_dobson_paganinis_hip
That's awesome! I've never seen him mentioned either. He's been my favorite ever since he blew up with Time 2. I've spent so many hours trying to learn his stuff. So fun to play but even after years of practice I'm not even close to touching his speed. Best I can do is halfway decent versions at like 80% speed of a couple of songs LOL.
Yeah, it's really a shame too since he is fantastically talented and continues to put out great stuff but doesn't seem to get much recognition.
Have you checked out any of the other CandyRat Records artists? They have a remarkably impressive catalogue of insanely talented musicians, including many of my favorite polyphonic guitarists, some of whom you may recognize as well, E.g. Andee McKee whose video went super viral over a decade ago.
YES! I love drifting. I can play this one pretty well, but I haven't practiced it in a bit so I'd have to brush up. I also really like his version of Tight Trite Night, which brings me to another of my candy rat favorites - Don Ross. That dude is madman on guitar. He's cleaned up his look more recently but in his older videos he's all disheveled looking and with his play style he is literally and figuratively a beast on guitar. Some others I really like include Craig D'Andrea, Antoine Dufour, Calum Graham, Stefano Barone...I don't know there's too many to list (also like the kalimba guy, Trevor something, his name won't come to me). Too bad it didn't work out with Ewan and Candy Rat. I'm not really sure what happened there but he seems to be doing well recently. Was getting worried over the past couple years he was starting to look really unhappy. Feeding the birds has done him well!
Hah... yeah, a lot of the candyrat artists have cleaned up their look over the years, including McKee who lost a lot of weight and shaved off that glorious beard of his. Funnily enough though, Dobson actually seemed to have gone the other way after splitting with candyrat and was rocking his own glorious beard for a while there. I was pretty sad when he released his new tracks a few months ago sans beard. :(
Trevor Gordon Hall. I think the Kalimba is a bit of a crutch he uses since he's not quite as talented as some of the other candyrat musicians, but I still really like his stuff too.
LOL, IKR? Although one you didn't mention that I particularly enjoy is Gareth Pearson. That dude can fucking play and I especially love his Jackson 5 cover. Last year he was in Kingston, Ontario at the Canadian Guitar Festival (about 3 hours drive from me) and I really wanted to go but couldn't manage to make the trip. Sadly the festival is cancelled this year too, due to some zoning bylaw bullshit. :(
That's too bad about the fest, I would love to make a trip for that some year assuming it makes a come back. Gareth is so awesome too. When he moonwalks while playing Billie Jean? Pretty rad move lol. I just missed Andy Mckee on tour. Still haven't seen him live, I wish I could've made it. I've seen Ewan a couple times, and I went to a show in NYC with Craig D'Andrea & Pino Forastiere. My freakin jaw is dropped the entire time I watch these guys play. The talent level and creativity is hard to fathom.
Better Oblivion Community Center (eponymous). It's absolutely brilliant. It's varied, sad, fun, and well-performed. The lyrics resonate with me.
It's by a new band (late January this year), but the two members were already established musicians. I think they work well together. I would happily suggest to you to give it a listen.
Pretty much anything, honestly. I've recently got a new hifi headphones setup and everything I knew sounds super fresh on it. I keep discovering things I've never heard before!
To pick one specific song I like a lot lately: Living Room by David Maxim Micic. Progressive metal, instrumental. Pretty uplifting fun stuff, recommended if you like Plini or similar musical style.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ekqqz1NUps
David Maxim Micic is great. If you don't mind non-instrumental, make sure to check out his band Destiny Potato as well. They changed their name to Sordid Pink last year, which I hope means there will be a new album coming out before too much longer.
It's a little less heavy than a lot of his other stuff, but this is probably my favorite "headphone song" by him: 500 Seconds Before Sunset
That's a cracking tune! Going to be checking some more of his stuff out :D
Just listening now, they sound a TON like polyphia to me, which is pretty cool!
I've listened to Thanks for the Feedback by The Presidents of the United States.
They're my favorite band and it somehow got past me all these years that they had a live album. So I've listened to it a few times to catch up on what I missed.
Never heard of this band before, but I love their name.
I just went to go see Casper Babypants last week, and have been listening to their stuff almost nonstop for the past year.
I've been listening non-stop to Car Seat Headrest. Finally getting a chance to see Will and the band live later this year and I'm completely stoked about it. I used to be really close minded about my music choices and have tried to consume as much different music as I can, but when I heard CSH I completely fell in love with the sound and Will's lyrics. The newest stuff is much cleaner and has moved away from the early lofi aesthetic but has kept the personal nature it's always had. 100% must try in my opinion.
I have typed and retyped a response to your question but can't really come to a final conclusion. Which one do I listen to more? Face to Face, hands down gets more playing time for me, it's so clean and still full of emotion. Mirror to Mirror has a more important place in the story of my life, and it will never get pulled out of the rotation.
Big fan of traditional English folk music, and discovered a couple of songs that I want to learn myself:
Song of the Men's Side - A Rudyard Kipling poem set to music, totally badass.
The Last Dance - A song I heard sung without instrumentation at a folk club in my hometown, and I've been desperate to find it for years. Finally stumbled upon it, and it's a corker.
Pauper's Cotillion - An instrumental track I'm learning on the guitar to be able to play with my dad and brother, fun little tune but it's a devil to play!
That's the weirdest. Do you think you'll ever get used to it?
I listened to Regional At Best by Twenty One Pilots hundreds of times, and they "unreleased" that album and put some of the tracks on their next album Vessel. Now I can't help but expect the incorrect "next song".
Season 2 by Pizzagirl.
The catchiness of pop mixed with the nostalgia of vaporwave. Gymnasium is one of those songs that just gets stuck in your head.
I really like this album, I've been listening to it a lot. I don't even really know what other artists to compare it to, they seem pretty unique. Do you have any other bands that you'd recommend that are similar?
When I was younger, I was a huge fan of the German (punk-ish) rock group "Die Ärzte". (I'm still a big fan, but they've barely released anything new in the last 10 years, and I have since broadened my musical taste.
Anyways, towards the end of last year they announced to release their "complete works" including a whole bunch of bonus material (old demos, unreleased songs, etc). While this was very tempting, it was also pretty pricey. Luckily, they decided to also release only the bonus stuff seperately. So yesterday that arrived in the mail, and I've been absolutely loving it!
Three albums come to mind:
Metronomy's Nights Out (2008, Electronica)- I have a little rule that if I walk into my local record store, I have to walk out with an vinyl record. With the $1-3 dollar bins, this is normally easy. Last time I went I really struggled to find anything that I was interested in, but when I saw the album cover of this record, a watercolor painting(?) of a man leaning against a Honda Insight, I knew I had to get it. It doesn't feel like an 11 year old album, but it does feel like a 2008 album. This just means I'm out of touch with time.
Newsboys' Adoration: The Worship Album (2003, Contemporary Worship) - I visited a church service in Louisville, Kentucky a few weeks ago, and they held a theme of diversity. It was actually performed very well, and a culturally (and language) diverse group led the musical portion of the service. One of the songs they played was He Reigns, which is from this album. I've listened to it a few times lately. It's been a good throwback.
Wolves at the Gate's Types & Shadows (band link, album does not have an article) (2016, post-hardcore) - I just love this album. It's hardcore but also very easy on the ears.
Saw a live performance of Philip Glass's 3rd Concerto for Piano and Orchestra over the weekend. Masterful. I think the recording of it has just come out.
And I've been reading Richard Powers' Goldbug Variations while listening to the referenced Bach Goldberg Variations. A treat.
I'm still vetting for the l2t best of 2018. One of the albums that came up is getting stuck in my head to the point where it's interfering with my ability to listen to the rest of the submissions, so that qualifies as what I've had on repeat more than I should this week. This album is so god damn catchy, pushes all my late 70s/early 80s nostalgia buttons in all the best possible ways. That's my first solid must-listen vote for the bestof.