Not bad at all! In the 1990s, I loved “Pet Shop Boys” (PSB) – they were innovative, managed to blend intelligent lyrics with electronic music and psychoacoustics to make the listener feel good. There was an époque, when PSB were constant in my music consumption habits.
Then, with the Internet, the “Music Industry”, and/or music itself, changed forever. The sudden availability of the entire world’s music, not only changed business models, but also exposed people to creations previously unknown to them, increasing competition, highlighting differences, and causing seismic changes in tastes and listening behaviors.
Past PSB music, remained engrained in me as “great!”, but some releases, from the late 2000s and 2010s, failed to seduce me – there was better music to listen. The “Market of Attention” was causing its disruption.
Today, on Spotify, I decided to listen the latest PSB album, titled “Hotspot”, and I have to admit “not bad at all!”. In fact, “pretty pretty good”, as CYE’s Larry would say.
“Hotspot” is no “fly away” album. It does not cut roots, nor could or should it. Still, it feels a real “creation”, not a mere reformulation of the old. It has building work in it. You can feel the pain of the need to balance PSB’s past signatures with something new. It hurts; not all tracks are seductive. The closing track, “Wedding in Berlin”, was a poor finish, to me, but, overall, the album is fresh and enjoyable.
I am back to PSB. I will now (re)discover what they’ve been selling for that past decade.
Category Archives: Spotify
Spotify – the music streaming service
Kai Whiston, HDMIRROR Remix – Fall in Your Hands
I have absolutely no idea who Kai Whiston is, except for the URL he (?) publishes on Twitter:
http://smarturl.it/DEARBOYEI
What I know is that KW’s music probably leaves very few indifferent, or at rest. It induces change, shock, contrast. It is charged, menacing, so unexpected at times, that I enjoy it and revisit it, to shake/unlock myself in my own creative activities.
This music probably gets classified as “electronic”, but the classification is now vague, embracing nearly all the music that is produced, if the term is interpreted as “involving artificial, electronically produced rhythms”.
The “fall in your hands” track is the sixth from the album “No World Eternal”, which is quite a work of art and joy, for my ears.
Moby – All Visible Objects (bah!)
I am a “Spotify Explorer”, heavily relying on the service’s “Discover Weekly” feature, to find new good music. As I age, I find myself steering away from music with vocals, since too many lyrics seem “empty” to me, nothing but near-literal repeats of what was sung before. This is one motive to be an “explorer”: to find whatever still rises above the regular offerings and manages to enchant me.
I compile my findings in these public playlists. Check if you enjoy some.
I am listening to Moby’s “All Visible Objects” (2020), and I am appalled with the album. It is so weak, so poor, so unimaginative, that the 5 million people that listen to this garbage on Spotify, myself included, should be ashamed of have given attention to this farce, instead of rewarding any other new artists who are indeed creating.
What happened to Moby?! The signals were there since 2016 with the “remixes” and the “sessions”, but the occasional good track kept hopes alive, until this. This “All Visible Objects” album is garbage.
Track #1 (of 11) is trash disco; track #2 is a girl saying “my only love” all the time; track #3 is nothing but a mix of loops with brainwashing lyrics; track #4 tries to break out the literal crap, using richer samples and voices, but the vulgarity formula soon starts scoring in background.
At this stage I stopped my Spotify session. I do NOT want Spotify to suggest me “more like this”.
It is sad when so many extraordinaire artists have near zero monthly listeners and frauds like Moby 2020 eat all the revenue cake, just because of past hits and sheep culture.
Bah! Double bah!
Disgust yourself:
CSaA – The Emancipation Procrastination
I am a “Spotify Explorer”, heavily relying on the service’s “Discover Weekly” feature, to find new good music. As I age, I find myself steering away from music with vocals, since too many lyrics seem “empty” to me, nothing but near-literal repeats of what was sung before. This is one motive to be an “explorer”: to find whatever still rises above the regular offerings and manages to enchant me.
I compile my findings in these public playlists. Check if you enjoy some.
Superb album. Different in many senses.
Background beats with beautiful and original patterns that contrast the crowd, not only in their mathematical structure, but also in the instruments used, which range from rhythmic frictions on surfaces, to mechanical bells and voices.
Still, the foreground wind instruments are the true signature of all that I have listened from Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah (CSaA): strong in intensity, dynamic in amplitude and, above all, so beautifully arranged, mixed, made harmonic with the whole, that the end-result is a clear display of mastery in genres and musical “landscaping”!
Congratulation to this gifted artist.
The Dale Cooper Quartet – Metamanoir
I am listening to The Dale Cooper Quartet’s “Metamanoir”. I would describe this album as slow atmospheric jazz. The best moments are the long tracks heavily based on wind instruments. There is vocals too, but sparse and also slow, hence complying with the overall soberness. Very good music!
Here is a playlist:
Listening to Roman Flugel's "All the Right Noises"
This is fine and original electronic music. I am not sure if I had ever listened to RF’s creations, but even if I did, it was not as original as in this album. Since I appreciate Pet Shop Boys, Daft Punk, etc., and RF has remixed them, there is a chance this is not my first contact with his style; yet, again, this is different. These are not remixes. These are original rhythmic ambiances, nice for setting a productive mood, even for concentration, but not all tracks – some might be too fast.
Here is a Spotify playlist:
"Springsteen on Broadway" – what a surprise!
I am listening to Bruce Springsteen’s “Springsteen on Broadway”, which I avoided for a long time, because I knew it is not “just” Springsteen and his music. When I first browsed and sampled the album, twice I landed at spots on the timeline, where and when Bruce is entertaining a laughing audience. I detest laughing audiences, since the days when TV shows started trying to induce such behavior on viewers, as a Pavlovian response. I feel so repudiated by mechanical forced laughing, that a few seconds of what I assumed was it, were enough for me to keep this album at a distance, for over one year. My mistake.
Today, I was fortunate to get distracted and let a Spotify playlist flow deep into the album. Indeed, if without context, landing at certain random moments of the monologue that Springsteen has with the audience before performing his “regular” music, one can question the moment’s purpose. However, the fault lies entirely on such lack of context, which does not happen in linear listening.
I got lucky and let the tracks play, and play. The feared monologue moments turned out to be precious insights on Bruce’s past. This is Springsteen sharing some relatively personal stories, from very young age.
I adored the “report” about when he, at age 7, got his hands on a 25 USD guitar that his family could not afford. Moreover, guitar lessons were “boring” and did not work; still he performed for the neighbors, doing everything with the guitar “except to play it”.
The golden passages are the ones about “how good he is” – this is a quote -, and you will have to listen to the tracks yourself, to understand why. Contrary to what the quote can suggest, these are humble passages, from a man that reached the summit. He understands the “imposter syndrome” and links it beautifully to the overall of his music – “never worked on a factory, yet it is all I ever wrote about”. Imposter he surely is not.
The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble – "From the Stairwell"
This is the best Jazz I have discovered in a long, long time.
The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble is deep, slow, focus-inducing, acoustic nutrients for the brain.
Extraordinary use of wind instruments, superb sensibility for instrument arrangement and positioning. A wonderful rarity.
I am enjoying all their albums, but listening to “From the Stairwell”, as I code on the computer.
Listening to Rena Jones' "Indra's Web"
Original slow electronic music, composed with comforting and contrasting singular arrangements that decorate effective rhythms, relaxing and helpful for mental tasks. As ever, I find it hard to put the music I listen to, into words. In the end, music is a vehicle for subjective emotions and the only way to capture the personalized message is to be subject to it.
The key aspect in this Rena Jones’ work is that the listener will understand its uniqueness. Combinations of deep regular beats with foregrounds of higher treble instruments build a musical experience with a distinct signature.
Listen to it:
Listening to Shida Shahabi – "Futo"
Slow, somewhat dark but not depressing, beautiful single composition. It feels “classical”, and indeed is piano centric. However, this is “sound landscaping”, meaning that the music reproduction builds a convincing audio environment and uses it to communicate a mix of emotions.