Hello again,
Issue #3 of Crow’s Nest is here. Powering into making this a habit and that so hopefully things stick and aggregate from here. Like a nest, perhaps?
Normally this would be the time and space for a year-end list. I’m not doing one because 1) I don’t feel like it and 2) I don’t really believe in year-end lists. It might be my late December birthday or some half-remembered Gramsci passage on new years but it always seems weird to suspend the last 2-6 weeks of the year in a liminal state of reflection on the past 46-50 weeks. Apparently new things don’t happen and opinions change during this period. That might explain Capricorn season or something. Then again my economic world does not strongly revolve around selling things or drawing as much attention to myself as I can, so …
There’s also the arbitrariness to ranking things that rankles me. It’s not a new insight but comparing, even subjectively ranking dance tracks alongside neoclassical suites against singer-songwriter albums vs. Important one-time listens while curating the best pop songs seems damaging to music analysis. I’ve spent too much time (re: any) caring about decimal differences in Pitchfork scores so I assume you get the gist. It’s many kinds of dumb.
Bandcamp Daily has said much the same thing (but better and more articulately) in jettisoning their ordered lists, and I would encourage you to read them in full on the topic if you haven’t already. They’re not the first outlet to do this though Resident Advisor definitely made the correct call a few years earlier given the significant economic impact their rankings had on performer/DJing fees.
What’s interesting about criticism isn’t the Final Judgment—it’s not the numerical score or number of stars. What’s interesting about criticism is the argument. But, if all you’re arguing about is whether or not something deserved to be 17 instead of 27, you’re not really arguing about the substance of the art at that point—you’re arguing about numbers.
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Anyway let’s get to some tunes and stuff.
Last Bandcamp Day (there are more coming next year, for better and worse) Kara-Lis Coverdale put out her album Aftertouches to a wider audience. Wonderful mezzopiano stuff as you might expect.
I’m not a big fan of Third Man Records and its olde timey guitar aesthetic—though I do understand its importance—but this compilation of late 90s space rock from Detroit is really great. One of the few with many more tracks I enjoy and need to look into more than those I simply tolerate.
Divorce court ain’t no Mudd Club, or C.B.G.B., noted.
Highlights from the latest New Yorkers:
-Ben Taub contextualizing the life of Daphne Caruana Galizia, the Maltese journalist who died in a car bombing following the disclosure of the Panama Papers
-Douglas Preston on the corpses at Roopkund in the Himalayas. I can only continue to go 🧐 at it.
A limited time compilation from Nyege Nyege Tapes. The world awaits.
I can’t say I’ve ever really enjoyed Pole’s music before, but I listened to his latest while faded per everyone’s recommendation and oh, that’s why.
I’m gonna try to avoid posting the same artists repeatedly, which is why I’m not blurbing Avalon Emerson and withholding one on Clouds too. Anyway, Shit and Shine was in the first issue but not the second, that’s far enough. Another excellent archival release is up on Bandcamp.
The Quietus has an excellent op-ed on the nature of ‘hardness’ in music, and how the 3 t’s of technology, time, and toxic masculinity have affected our perception of what’s hard. I found a central point on Marc Acardipane to be instructive—when I listened to his retrospective earlier this year, mostly as wallpaper music from my ‘listen through’ playlist, I didn’t really consider it hard. (Then again I once nearly fell asleep in the front row of a Skrillex set.) It’s also worth noting this when listening to Evident Ware, a recent compilation from Sneaker Social Club that literally put “Hardcore has survived three decades/Will it never die?” on the cover. My favorite track is easily the least ‘hard’ of the bunch, from Irish producer ELLLL. Who needs distorted breaks when your flutes sound like this?
The shop is down atm and I must admit I was skeptical that one of my favorite venues in the city claimed its sweatshirt is the softest I’ll own. However I’m happy to admit to being wrong
Supposedly I listen to things other than compilations (I know, wild) … here’s another from RVNG Intl. Go find something new to enjoy
As someone for whom being at the 2 last ever Postal Service shows is a huge part of my personality when that’s reasonable to bring up, it is weird how some songs like We Will Become Silhouettes feel relevant to ~current circumstances~. It is also nice to hear these songs anew, especially the vocals as clear as they are here.
As someone prone to getting unreasonably defensive about my home metropolitan area when others criticize it, by which I mean I’m a Chicagoan on Twitter, this article asking why Netflix hates the Windy City is a good read. (They mapped Logan Square to Back of the Yards! C’mon!)
Mica Levi surprise released her debut solo album last week. A bit surprised that this is her first solo album, but not by its contents.
Another intriguing article from The Quietus recently, How Anime Offers A Solution To Our Global Crisis. I am deeply, deeply skeptical of the premise given “cultivating empathy”’s abysmal at best 50+ year track record on the environment and the problematic premise of doing so towards lying, Buchanan-esque assholes like ExxonMobil who are unwilling to put their money where their enormously loud mouth is, to say nothing of how that will end the scourge of, say, drive-til-you-qualify in large, shitty, murderous trucks. But the piece does raise interesting points about how the genre addresses anthropogenic catastrophe, and tells stories from which we may work towards a better non-hell world for the rest of our lives. Perhaps it is indeed time to Give Anime A Chance.
[The] old stories are only meant for individuals, not for a whole species. It is only Prometheus’s liver being pecked out daily; it is only Faust who is damned for eternity; only Icarus fell into the sea. The rest of us get away with it. Nowadays, with the risk of Armageddon, we don’t have that luxury.
Here is another clear parallel with Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the sacrifice of millions justified by the powerful. But the Second Impact is an environmental disaster first and foremost, and in SEELE’s eyes it’s a necessary cost of “progress” – just like 2020’s catastrophes are the necessary cost of industrial “progress”. When characters mention the mass extinction of species, rising sea levels, and misinformation about the human cause of the disaster, Evangelion becomes chillingly prophetic.
Yet another compilation, yes, from Planet Mµ, celebrating their 25 anniversary. You know what to do
Some blasted synth sounds I’ve enjoyed a bit recently.
A fitting tribute to this ass year.
Alright we’re done here now. Again, if you’ve gotten this far, thank you for reading and I hope you’ve enjoyed something within. @embirdened on twitter but you can also reach me other ways if you’d like.
Another animal from my phone as I wrap this up:
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