Artist: Tartit
Song: Aitma
From album: Ichichilla
Sounds like: Rebirth
[Buy this album][Website]

I found this song on a site that was hotlinking some of my african hip hop, which I don’t really mind anyway; and somehow it gives me an intense feeling of déjà vu.

The place it takes me is somewhere I’ve been before, somewhere in the real world of soil and bones. Somewhere faraway serene, alone, and piercingly gorgeous. Six Organs tread similar climes; but here, instead of wooded stream, we have island cliff. A solitary grove of eucalyptus; and in place of intoxicant mist, a molten sunset that lasts forever.

Standing in the channel of light, staring at infinity, it’s the kind of moment that makes people believe in god. No sound but wind in the leaves; the burning earth for you alone.

A dirge for the dying of the sun.

Image source

Artist: BOaT
Song: Goodbye my Strange Number 28
From album: Listening Suicidal
Genre: Sedimentary Rock
[Buy CD(2)][Website]

Short on time, long on things to do. I’m drinking green tea straight from the pot, it’s like a giant mug of keep working. So this will be brief.

Here’s BOaT again. A song that piles up in layers like years of experience, and unravels like giving up all your grudges.

What does it sound like to you?

Artist: Uri Gagarn
Song: Resistor
From album: ? ? (no title)
Genre: Minimal Indie Impression Conduit
[Buy CD][Website]

To me this song, and to some extent the video, sounds like it was made underground; like it’s the bubbling internal conflict of a man imprisoned in solitary confinement with only trace elements of hope and a burning regret or uncertainty.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be in solitary confinement. We spend so much time scrambling for survival, to learn to work in order to make money to eat in order to stay alive in order to go to work again. In all this seemingly meaningful (pre)occupation we don’t have much time to think and ponder meaningfully. Our thinking comes in short bursts like automatic weapons, rarely in long trains of thought slowly meandering through the hills. I am tempted to think that it wouldn’t be so bad to have everyday to meditate on ideas, to think things through completely from every angle, in a sense to really know what I think.

Of course, for most people that end up in solitary confinement involuntarily there will be an element of internal conflict that could turn the time into torture. With no external input, no external answers, one can only look to oneself to find or create a meaning for things.

This song sounds like that to me: a struggle of the mind longing to find within itself an answer for things outside of it, and a reason for its place among them.

Artist: Number Girl
Song: Zegen Vs Undercover
From album: Sappukei
Genre: Id-Rock
[Buy this Album][Website][Keikaku Profile]

Number Girl is an absolute indie force.

It’s simultaneously tragic and liberating that some of the most profound experiences in life either require, or engender, a paradigm shift. They aren’t accessible to everyone, just those accidentally on the cusp. It’s my opinion that Number Girl, like Downy, and much underground music, has a similar, if not parallel requirement. To fully appreciate this [very great] album/band, you may need to acquire or bring with you a disillusionment with the pretenses of human conduct, and a willingness to burrow down into hotter, darker, and more membranous strata.

Good times.

Artist: Hikaru Tanimoto ?????
Song: Thanks to Music!!
From album: Thanks to Music!!
Genre: Guitaristry
[Buy CD][Website]

This Hikaru Tanimoto fellow seems to be riding his song like a furry dog-dragon thing à la The Neverending Story (It’s the innocent glee and over-excitement that evokes the comparison.). He seems almost too joyful and excited to be playing it himself; yet, empirical evidence suggests that he really is.

At first it’s hard to believe that all the sounds are coming from one kid and one guitar. You hear it pouring out in thick layers like cake-batter, and he’s upending the bowl, licking his lips. He seems giddy with almost surprised love for each note that appears as he flys by them. It’s a joy so devoid of self-consciousness, a delight, not in the fact that he plays music, but in the idea that music itself exists.

I thought it refreshing.

Artist: Rocket K
Song: Super Drunken Christmas
From album: DEPARTURE OF THE GROOOVIE DRUNKER
Genre: PunkDistortion
[Buy CD][Website]

I’m going to post this in the past so that it seems more date-appropriate, better late than never eh.

I hope everyone had a nice holiday and new year and all that. Mine was good, though busy and probably not super drunken enough… ah well.

So I searched my library for something season-esque and this is what I came up with. It’s Rocket K, it’s super distorted, super drunken, and probably somewhat super Christmas in its own way.

Artist: Peterpan Complex
Song: You Know I Love You
Genre: Kpops
From album: Transistor
[Buy CD][Website]

This song by Peterpan Complex sounds like a younger and korean version of muse meets radiohead sung from a more optimistic outlook, and played through rose-coloured speakers.

He insists that you know that he loves you, but does he believe it himself? Is he clinging to what he knows out of a fear of change or disappointment? Is he advocating his love in denial of its triviality when, deep down inside, a feeling of transience is tearing him apart?

Well, I don’t think there’s any reason to think so. Then again, there’s no reason to discard the possibility.

Also: merry Christmas eve! You know I love you.

Artist: Envy
Song: Left Hand?????
From album: All The Footprints You’ve Ever Left And The Fear Expecting
Genre: Epic-core
[Buy CD][Website]

This is Envy, whom I have mentioned previously. This image is from the same photographer, another dynamic slice. I’m not sure what to say about such a staple of Japanese melodic-abyssal-shoegaze-core except that they are worthy of the often carelessly-slung descriptor, “epic.”

Not just in adjective form, but in the original noun form as well. In historical epics all the feelings and understandings of a culture, all their thoughts about the world and mankind were condensed, redacted, and molded into a narrative structure that attempted to approximate the outlook of the society. It seems that much the same object and process are evident in Envy’s records. Tumult and anguish show their faces, but so do awe and quiet serenity and a proliferation of emotion that seems to evidence a near-total self-investment.