[M-Mu] Music Obsessions, April 2024

...Miss me ? I have a lot of music to catch up on for this post, and this list is only a fraction of everything interesting I've listened to since my last post. While I want to reflexively make some kind of apology for not having this out on the 1st, the reality is about half this list made its impact near the end of the month, and my art kept me violently busy. Expect this to get pretty...verbose



| Where's My Utopia? | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |

Anticipating an album is a very rare thing for me, often I drift along and take in what comes across me, but Yard Act is a band that got to be a giant exception. On the wall behind me is the 12x12 print people who preordered the album as my little historic marker got, alongside an art card signed by the band members, a CD copy, and a neat little orange cassette. I put down money on the significance of this album, and for once I actually had anticipation, suspense, watching the days, not knowing the full picture of what I'd listen to at first.

Then the digital release came out before my order actually got here, because it shipped from some place in Northern Ireland, and I abstained from listening until I got to hear the personal copy that was specifically mine. On the first listen, first impressions, first takes ?

Dense, different, hard to process all at once. It took me a good while to actually form my opinions on this one, just because it feels so...dense with ideas, I got no better words for it. One listen turned to 3, turned to 5, became double digits, jotted down notes whenever I wanted to re-listen, tried to figure out which track I felt was better than others, took in other perspectives to challenge or reaffirm my own. I can pretty confidently state in the here and now that Where's My Utopia is a fantastic album, and my fears of monetary investment in it being good were unfounded, based in my own weird, hypercritical view of my own opinions and their validity. Where's My Utopia, while still being dense in its ideas, feels extremely focused and personal at times, especially when compared to how broad spectrum political The Overload felt, which is not me critiquing it in any way, it's just...different. I like different, different is good, I like when I can't predict where art takes me.

If every album in the future from them continues the idea of being its own unique sounding concept, its own intricately carved pillar forming the foundation of their whole discography, then I genuinely think we're in for something legendary to look forward to, and follow the history of. This album wastes none of my time, and is a deep favorite of mine.



| Dark Side of the Moon | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |

I need to explain two odd quirks with me. One is, I'm a musical island. I really don't look into what other people say too much when it comes to what music is good, what album is bad. I kinda avoid circles online where musical opinions are magnified, and popular opinion decides what's worthy of history remembering it. The music I consume is in my little isolated island, and the only ones who get to visit my island to share their music opinions often only visit to share what they love, not to bash what they hate. The people I allow safe passage to my island are often only those I respect the opinions and perspectives of, where I know if they suggest something to me, that morally I have a desire to take it seriously, to see their perspective so I may grow my own. The second quirk is, I'm not absolutely totally isolated, I know just through exposure to others what albums have been socially accepted as important, as incredible. When I know an album, an artist falls into that kind of category, I immediately lose a huge chunk of my interest in exploring it, as I like hearing the things that less people talk about. I find it's easier to talk passionately about the things people may not be exposed to, over what they likely already know about. This is just how I function, and I've never found a reason to change this.

Still, when someone managed to sail to my little musical island, they brought with them several albums that I knew fell under the category of "ultra popular, why bother", but my morals overrode that instinct, and I knew I had to take these suggestions seriously. I had a flight coming up this month, and I felt that the first listen of something historically popular deserved a good view alongside a focused listen where I had no choice but to lose myself in the music. I'm going to leave my fully unedited notes I wrote here, along with the view I had around the time I was listening.

But for my more present, focused thoughts after a few listens, I'm struck with a feeling of modern versus classic, of trying to draw a line where progressive starts, and blends into experimental. To me there's so many sounds and ideas that felt incubated in a dark corner of a room seen by few, only to be laid out and poured over time and time again, that to me feels really experimental. But, the most common labels I see lean into Progressive Rock, and I find that interesting on my own personal level. None of this detracts from the album though, because I enjoy both genres pretty equally, and just overall really enjoy the ambiance, the atmosphere, the emotion and soul very clearly put into this. Despite being released so long ago, the general ideas and themes put into the album feel very timeless. I'm also struck with an odd feeling I'm not used to of knowing what the original context behind the album's name and meaning is, and no longer being sure how many other people who know about it are also aware.

As a child growing up, my few bits of exposure to music were from games, the radio, and whatever my mother would download off BearShare to be loaded onto an MP3 player, and often the only things that were on that MP3 player were just the radio hits that existed when she was growing up. Through that little player, I did in fact hear bits and pieces of Pink Floyd's work, and even as a child it sounded very unique and irregular in a good way that, despite only a few listens, stuck in my head hard.

In the present with a more trained, focused, and experienced ear, it still gives me those feelings I had as a child, but branches out much further with an appreciation for the emotions that a strong, comforting ambient foundation can lead to when I'm stressed, or the lyrics and emotional ideas in the lyrics that I can resonate with when I need to feel out vague ideas about my own existence. There is a near infinite amount of history, ideas, context, and paratext (yes I'm using that terminology very loosely to just talk about media that surrounds the album about it) for one to dig through if wanted. Personally, the idea of a dive that deep on something that bottomless just gives me tension of drowning in it, but I an grateful to have this album in my head as something I've listened to in the middle of a quiet, dark night, or feeling stuck on a plane several miles in the air. The tracks feel very inseparable as a larger concept and feeling, and I feel a sense of frustration within myself that I can't fully elaborate on what I enjoy the most about this album, but it has quickly become a pretty important one to specifically me. This is the kind of album that I suspect will age better and better with time, as newer generations and fresher perspectives experience it for the first time



| The Wall | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |

If we continue with the analogy of the musical island, The Wall is what happens when someone sails to there and just plasters a bunch of graffiti everywhere, ruining a perfectly wonderful building with their shitty, unfunny, profit-driven takes. Graffiti isn't even the right word I'd say, because that implies Doug Walker is an artist in the present day.

On that same flight I listened to Dark Side of the Moon on, I immediately threw on The Wall, and I hate that the bits and pieces I did recognize were through someone else I do not like, that I do not respect, that my initial listen will not have the same magic to it because someone sailed here first. Memory and associations are a big part of what I value in music on a personal level, and fantastic music can turn to something unlistenable if the associations are sour enough. Scrubbing off that metaphorical graffiti can take a good deal out of me, but after a few more listens on my own time in an atmosphere where I was able to sit down with the lyrics and break apart the story bit by bit, I found myself able to wash away the graffiti, and enjoy what I was recommended.

What also didn't help my first listen was not having the lyrics in front of me, or any way of digging into references or meanings to things pulled directly from interviews, forced instead to sit wifi-less on a plane, and contemplate the shreds of ideas I was able to pick up on. It's likely why it accidentally lingered in my head for so long, and why I found this part of the post the hardest to write. It's a very raw and clearly personal album. It is massive, it is inaccessible, it is incredibly dense, and it's a tough listen at times but I think there's a ton of great ideas, personality, and legacy surrounding it. Enjoyed it the most in a dark, empty house with some warm tea



| The Eraser | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |

Sometimes I have a craving to listen to something I recognize, and have familiarity with. Something with a solid ambiance to it that I can have paint the background of my existence that is not explicitly *just* ambient music, but also has some depth to it in case I decide I want to ditch what I'm doing because I'm enjoying the music more.

This is my main theory why I've listened to this album as many times as I have since being introduced to it a month or two ago. It has a surface level polish and accessibility to it that I feel makes it a broadly good album for a lot of different situations, but there's a good amount of depth in it too if you have a craving to dig into it with focus and passion, and a lot of very unique feeling auditory ideas to chew on, especially with the synths and finding melody in things that aren't necessarily melodic. The production also feels pretty expectedly immaculate, which probably contributes to that accessible trait of it.

That or I just click on it because I have an odd thing with Stanley Donwood's linocut stuff and how it speaks to me, and the neurons in my brain urge me to click whenever I scroll around my Favorites tab. The world may never know...



| Guero | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |
| Modern Guilt | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |
| Midnite Vultures | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |
| Mellow Gold | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |

...We're really doing four of these ? Okay, let me try to explain while keeping this as concise as I can manage, and not completely unhinged.

I listened to four different albums by Beck this month, and spent far too long trying to decide which one I felt should be on this post, so I decided to just cut my losses, and talk about all 4 in singular paragraph chunks, instead of trying to decide which I felt is the best, because in my opinion, they all do something unique that gives them a specific appeal over each other in certain categories. Not categorizing this by release date, but instead literally just letting a random feeling determine the order

Guero - Of an artist known for needing to expect the unexpected, the accessibility of different ideas on this album has accidentally landed it as probably the most relistened of the four this month, despite Beck apparently (I say apparently because I have to wade through the waters of other people's views to see what people like and don't like in order to cement what I want to talk about the most) being known best for experimenting and genre blending. Once upon a somewhere, during some point as a teenager, I heard E-Pro in passing as my first exposure (explosure ?) to Beck, and subsequently explored no further because I wasn't a very curious listener in general. Probably has the stickiest auditory ideas of all four albums here, any casual listen tends to coat the inside of my skull with various catchy lines

Midnite Vultures - Grandiose, funk-oversaturated, overproduced in the best ways in certain spots, like the soundtrack to an avant-garde movie about a planet-sized house party battle in the not too distant future of 2070. Of a discography that feels at times moody, I love how much this stands out, how much what surrounds it accentuates the strangest and most hookable parts of it, which only makes the bizarre lyrics to it all the better. Reminds me of the kind of people who are very passionately and deeply explaining something to you, and you have no idea what they're saying at all, but bits and pieces stick to you because it almost just barely makes sense to you, and you get lost in their conviction and confidence as you begin to adopt their madness for yourself. I don't feel like the same entity I used to be after Pressure Zone at the very least

Modern Guilt - Fun fact, this is the very last album I wrote about in this post, but that's not because I found it hard to find anything to say, far from it honestly. The problem comes from not quite knowing how I want to phrase the abstract thoughts and feelings I have. When looking into opinions of Midnite Vultures, I found a strange amount of vitriolic emotions around anything having pop elements that I just fundamentally did not understand, as if their skin would turn inside out upon a single note reverberating through their head holes. The only way I can honestly describe my feelings about this album is with a tea allegory that totally has nothing to do with a recent tea obsession. While each album here is doing something really crazy and unique that gives me a little caffeine rush as it fights me in a fun way that I can engage with, this is a more mellow, soulful album that doesn't want to fight me, it wants to sink into me, comfort me. If anyone came up to me about any of these 4 albums and started talking about how godawful it is, this is the only one where I would have no interest in engaging with their perspective whatsoever

Mellow Gold - Hey, remember how I said E-pro was the first Beck track I ever heard ? This is a soft lie, as I suspect I actually heard Loser before that, but I'm not too confident to make confident statements, as Loser was seemingly played everywhere for a time. More recently though, I remember throwing this on while doing laundry after hearing bits and pieces on a long ride to the airport months ago, and I suspect if anybody saw my ventures between places outside my apartment while I was listening, they might think that I was listening to someone be gruesomely murdered. The reality is that of this list, Mellow Gold is the most experimental, and the least accessible (at least for a first blind listen), but the ideas within are downright fascinating. We aren't exactly at Merzbow levels of inaccessible here, but I definitely wouldn't casually recommend it to someone who doesn't consume albums whole, or hasn't had a thought about leaving tape recordings of their conversations with people scattered about a thrift store. Unrelated to the merit of the music itself, I also can't unsee the parallels between that album cover, and the album art for Iron Maiden's Dance of Death. Mellow Gold is far more tasteful and reserved though comparatively

I can't tell if this section is the greatest or worst thing I've ever written, but I hope it got some passion across. Beck has a lot of variety, and within a rather stacked discography that I get a feeling there's at least one album, at least a few tracks that will resonate with someone. Worth your time in my opinion, none of these albums felt like they wasted mine at the very least



| All This Time | [Deezer] | [Spotify] |

Unknown, obscure, and at risk of sounding like Alternative Nothing, I had this in my To-Listen queue for what felt like ages, and I had thrown it on in a haze while working out just to say that I've listened to it, but I remember needing to pause my routine for a moment to lie there on the floor, and process that this did in fact have something to it that stood out to me.

When I had no more adrenaline in my system a day or two later, I re-listened with a more focused ear, and had to pause again halfway through it to go lie down, and finish it while staring at my ceiling, before curling up and realizing I was carrying around fragments of not okay emotions around without realizing it, and was able to let go.

It takes a good amount of nerve out of me to stand my ground when listening to something that likely few have ever heard, and have the confidence to make a definitive statement that there's something worth listening to, worth your time if you're receptive to certain emotional ideas and sounds in music. What this does, it does in a highly polished and focused way. Past me put it best...

"It feels like one of those albums I have some memory connected to that makes me highly protective of it, but I know I've not heard it anywhere else, and it made me completely re-evaluate a chunk of how I see music. That a certain feeling I have towards specific albums where I disregard any critique or issues with it because it is an album that I have tightly wound memories with during some part of my life, that my enjoyment of it comes from those connections, those memories, and the actual qualities that make it good come second. This though was striking the precise same feeling as that, yet was not something I had heard before, and it made me question that habit I have with memories and music, and if what I have memories tied to has some requirement of actually being good music as well."




Anyway, I have a flight to catch in less than a week, more music to write about, more art for nobody, and more days to push through before I find my own utopia. I imagine writing these kind of posts on bits of palm bark from my musical island, and casting them off into a vast digital ocean that will likely forget me.

But for as bleak as it might sound, none of this bothers me. I enjoy the process of creation, of pushing my limits and polishing my own thoughts to a mirror finish, and if people enjoy the look of that polish, and resonate with the things I create, that's a wonderful bonus 💛