✪ mimi's listening diary index

Early Demos '91/'92 by Red House Painters: 30 March⁂

i celebrated my birthday on the 23rd! as you can imagine, it was just met with minimal celebrations from anyone outside of family, and that’s something that i don’t really mind as there’s not really a whole lot to be celebrated on days like these, at least for me… the last party i went to was a friend’s back in october, hosted at this huge mall. we walked around and did things like play in a scavenger hunt his mom organized for all of us and go to the local arcade. i rarely got to meet my friends in person, even when we all went to the same school together, and when we were separated from each other a couple of years ago, that likelihood became even smaller. so, as we grew more distant, first in person and then online, eventually reducing contact to a single friend and a couple of texts every month or more, i gradually retreated back to my room, doing most things solitarily since it brought me the most comfort by then.

being a girl who always lived in solitude – sillily, a solitude girl – has just become something of nature to me. there’s always a distinct warmth in that isolation that makes it bearable, enticing, and even preferable to the sort of busy afternoons where i stay with my mom and the rest of my family to keep them company. alone, in the time that’s allotted for me i can use for whatever i want that i have the ability to do in my room. it’s an intimate place, somewhere both my deepest and most normal thoughts and most of my favorite work and stuff takes place and originates in – intimate in the way that feels like home, a home where it feels useless to spend my free time outside of. after a while, it gets to a point where you start to find memories in your room nostalgic. nostalgia is a really powerful thing, a universal reason for longing as memories go from being a pillar of learning and reiteration to their secondary, much more felt purpose. a lot of music is about wishing that things could be the same as they were, and even though as of recently i’ve been trying to let go of these things sometimes you just can’t help but think about it.

i think for an emotional experience to stay with you, you have to press the right combination of buttons and make the right choices in that time to get something resounding out of it. “right” in this context wouldn’t mean correct, as there are a thousand different ways an emotion can develop and life is too unpredictable to decide on a long term thing that would be best from such a miniscule but still impactful contribution; it just means a way to get to the bank of that thousand ways.

when it comes to listening to an artist or a band’s music after i’ve listened to a release, demos are one of my favorite things to look forward to. i’ve always enjoyed seeing how the similarities shine and the many differences made for this song that, you could say, you feel like you’ve heard before, but in a different wavelength or a different world. normally demos only release through deluxes of albums or the spare lucky circumstances of them being released elsewhere, whether they be on social media or the album release themselves, but this album is fully compromised of demos… but i don’t think you can really call this an album anyway :p

red house painters has always been a fascinating band to me. their sound is really the main reason why; i remember when i first listened to rollercoaster, how it was sort of a pain to listen to. i don’t mean pain so much in an emotionally grating or laborious way, but it was more like i was pushing against a bike up a steep hill, and among the environment and sky were blurry, futile attempts to take my mind off of what i was doing, burdened by the physical and mental exhaustion of the weight, leaving me with empty cobbles of the failure of recollection that seemed to be otherwise easily attainable.

when i listened again, my mind was more refreshed since i listened to it the first time when i was really tired. i never get to have my sleep influence my listening experience (even for albums where it would’ve been cool to try, like time machines) just cause when i get sleepy i don’t feel like doing anything except being on my phone and sleeping… so i believe that was the main reason why it felt so jarring the first time, and once i did try again it became clearer and i enjoyed it more. as usual, after that i decided to move on and i didn’t think much of it until around a year later in september when i went into a little phase with the band. it started with medicine bottle, a relentless song full of the pouring of a single note of emotion, a single thousand meter high wave of the rush of a million emotions like fiber wires spanning the atlantic ocean. it was like looking into a second mind, with mark’s voice being the second mouth and starting to move with the ignition and fuel of resentment…

afterwards, i did relisten to rollercoaster and even listened to down colorful hills a couple of times… the album’s title track was another song that i was sort of crazy with; i won’t write much more about the songs themselves since they are both on this bootleg as well, albeit in a slightly different form just being slightly sped up. but i really liked that change honestly!! on this, it feels time’s slowing down when i listen to them, taking up 20 of the total about 90 minute runtime. i honestly thought the first disc of the album was longer than the second, but when i tested it out they were the same length :p they’re both songs that i still really like though, and funnily enough (this goes for most songs i like listening to), changing their pitch even slightly makes for a really interesting experience that breathes life into it in a really simple way. in hindsight, the phase wasn’t as huge and i didn’t listen to as much of their music as i had thought, but i thought about it for a second and then realized that’s sort of what makes it stick with me more… most of the playtime i had took place in a week or two, and really having a phase (i think you could call it being fixated on their music too) of listening to a specific band or artist’s music is really rare for me. all of it was sort of surreal too – it was like they clicked all of a sudden, after barely thinking about them for such a long time… their emotional impact still resonates with me. it’s slight, but it radiates and stings like fallout and it captivated me a lottt back then and it still does now.

listening to this album hit me hardest on my birthday. it’s not like what the songs are about relate to my birthday in any way, but instead i feel like it’s the overall melancholy feeling and the borrowing of each of these themes throughout. it feels like empathy; i’m not really an empathetic person (cuz i’m autistic), but music makes me feel things! sure, most of the feeling comes from just how good the music is to listen to and so i feel really good, but music that’s most profound always has the best chance of making me feel along with it while i’m listening. and the borrowing of these subjects kinda are like when faint memories that you treasure or maybe resent pop into your head randomly.

i feel like “faint memories” is a good way to describe this project. some of these you develop more than others, like how some songs on here are more fleshed out than others such as strawberry hill being a full song on rollercoaster that sounds completely different than it does on here while a million + 8 things was reused as an instrumental somewhere. meanwhile, you leave some others to rot, maybe cause you don’t like them anymore or maybe the best window of opportunity has left, so there’s not much point in continuing the dream of whatever it previously was. this is seen in songs such as headsore, which apparently was never repurposed in anyway. as a whole, however, all of these melodies have originated from a sort of emotional importance in your mind. they all mean something to you, not like the passing people or buildings in the background of your daily perspective but the things that you encounter in that same field of view. what you regularly go to and do can qualify as this, as well – but these are special things you may experience once or twice and want to feel again but don’t get to do so. they become memories the weight of a feather, but the significance of your pillow.

the lower quality of some of these recordings is something that you notice from the first listen. it gradually fades away as you get used to it, becoming less important after each listen, but every time i notice it again i realize that it adds to the music as well, intentional choice or not. i think the best way to go about explaining this is just to try to describe it in a couple of different ways :p one way i’d describe it is that it sounds and feels like older tvs and cameras and other tech. it reminds me a bit of watching movies on this tv my aunt gave us a few years ago. i’m not really sure what the technology is called, but both the tv and the music have the comforting static humming in the background, which yeahh is really characteristic of older music like this, but it’s just abnormal to me on here since it’s so much more prevalent cause these are just demos that probably were ripped from random places at random times…

another way you could describe this is like your voice being the only thing that you know is intact in a world where everything else is disfigured and distant from what you know. so, these songs are then a way of both journaling thoughts about the forced isolation that all the difference brings, leaving you unsure what to do, and a little bit of wondering what’s next for you… except you don’t really have much energy to think about that since the state that everything’s in feels so irreversible that it just feels useless to try to come up with any solution, so instead you just try to make the best out of what you have and continue what’s left of life from there.

also, as a result of the lower quality, the bass sort of fills the sound and resonates more in a fuzzy and messy way. it was a bit weird to hear it at first, but i got used to it and i feel like it’s a cool addition to what it sounds like, even if it’s slight. it feels kinda boomy, like just the shockwaves of an explosion, making it a little bit darker than normal – an orange lightbulb dying out and dimming itself in a room surrounded by the brown color of the wood walls of an attic or an old room.

though really, what it reminds me of most is how while you’re sweeping, sometimes there's little parts of dust and other little things left on the floor if you do it kinda weirdly. this is why it’s good to thoroughly sweep to ensure you don’t miss anything like that ( ofc :p ), but at some point you get so tired of everything that this sort of just becomes insignificant cause it really doesn’t seem like a huge deal, and the dust then accumulates quietly. whether you call this lazy or not is up to you; it’s a tendency that comes into play out of nowhere, unable to go away as a symptom of depression just cause of how easily it is to put things off. sadness has many faces, and what happens in scenarios like this is one of them: the messy outcomes that result from how malleable your mind is, murkiness from its susceptibility. both audio and visual forms of recording are able to deteriorate easily, so easily it’s as if the force of time itself was tearing it apart slowly… i’m not sure if that happened to some of these recordings, or if they just weren’t preserved that well or whatever, what i wanna say is that the music itself takes the shape of what it has been written to represent by its maker, and the way i think of this that early demos is a recreation of the depressing thoughts and the way life lives around mark and alike some of the thoughts that others feel as well, like me :p

to start talking about songs, unkle jo sort of stole the show for me when it comes to thinking about this bootleg. its simple downcast melody with the usual sopping amounts of reverb in both the instrumental and the vocals make for this amazing backbone that’s really infectious to me. i hadn’t realized this until now, but the selection of instruments that this band uses is really interesting as well. i meann it isn’t really that special compared to even some of the other music i’ve listened to in the last couple of months, but keeping that set of instruments used primitive and then filling in the gaps from there was done so well here, especially in this song. it feels effortlessly ethereal to me, like something that only comes to you in a reality you visualize for a second before it disintegrates just as quickly as it came. mark’s vocal performance here is also honestly one of my favorites in the whole discography i’ve listened to so far. it just feels sort of fragile and desperate which just makes it feel all the more personal. it strikes me as just wanting to share sorrows not particularly with someone, but really just wanting some sort of therapy or closure out of it in a way that you don’t expect but would make sense once it hits you. tbhh this sort of tone is something that’s pretty usual in a lot of what i’ve heard from this band, but that’s probably one of the reasons i like them a lot :p

having a dependency on a single person in your family when it comes to just living life can be really sucky. i feel like the connections and emotions felt whenever you’re just with family is really profound even compared to your friends or colleagues or others who you may like or dislike… most likely, they hold a huge presence with you throughout your childhood, and since these are years of development, what you feel about them holds a strong significance in how you develop and what you become. even if you just stop caring about your family before you move out (like i’ve mostly been trying to do), some sort of influence is still seen in you and a lot of that depends on what you wanna inherit or just what sticks with you from those years, and having just a specific person that you really liked in your family and maybe wanna do well in life for becomes a sort of goal in the back of your head that you strive for, whether it’s really a big thing or not.

another song i liked a lot was the lord kill the pain demo on the second disc. the release version of this was on rhp’s debut album, down colorful hill, and initially when i listened, i didn’t think much of it. one distinct feature that i remembered from that song back then was the guitar layer that was quiet but superposed everything else and moved along with the melody. listening back, it feels a lot like it’s a sort of mist lingering among the rest of the sounds maybe like a sort of poison that added to the song’s heavy and bitter feel; after this, though, i’m not sure if i even wanna go back to the released version :p something i found kinda weird is that most of the songs here do have at least a couple of noticeable changes, but the rest of the songs from down colorful hill which i mentioned earlier (medicine bottle / album titled) that are on here i can’t really tell any major differences to their album versions other than the change in pitch… i did like it a lot but i just found that fact a bit odd. but this version of lord kill the pain was really different and i actually prefer it a lot more!! to start, the composition feels a lot more open and the guitar rhythm especially gives me this feeling that i know that i’ve felt before when i’ve listened to music but i can’t really put a finger on how to describe it. it’s like a mix of euphoria and bittersweet, what the beauty in the feelings of depression feels like. something i’ve thought about is that there’s a sense of magnificence in wanting to die, maybe just cause of the spiritual significance of death? it’s something that i don’t really think about much nor probably would want to… there’s some people that are fascinated by death, maybe being compelled because of one thing or another against their will or not, and it’s really something interesting cause it can take the form of so many things and realize itself in so many places.

even though i didn’t mind the layer of guitar in the album version, i feel like this new, slightly drawn back approach makes it wayy more personal and i guess heartfelt, kinda like making it harder for you to look away but at the same time it’s something that you wanna hear and work on since it’s so essential to you. something that i also like about this whole project is that everything is higher pitched than a lot of the music i’ve heard from this band. ya i’ve talked about this a couple of times already, but i think they make these songs more lively and fit them really well, especially the parts where mark really sings and his voice hits the most for me. a lot of the reason why i like this song so much is cause of the lyrics too. on down colorful hill, this was really surprising to hear for me since it was different from the rest of the songs on there as it was simply more upbeat while still having the same mood of lyricism that’s seen throughout the rest of the album. here, the lyrics are the same, and it carries that sort of energy on early demos too, although i feel like more songs on here are less gloomy and draggy on average. i think a lot of the reason why is just cause it’s so relatable to how i used to feel; hatred was something that i felt for every little bad thing that i went through and it was hard to just control my emotions and not want everyone else to go away forever so i could navigate life my own way… and i meann i still feel like i’d wanna go off the grid sometimes, but i don’t wanna do it out of hatred anymore, since feeling that constantly might honestly be worse than being sad all the time (that also kinda adds to the sadness as well tho). it’s not good to just want everything to disappear, since that’s pretty much impossible, but this song’s set in this little world where these thoughts rock back and forth and they’re all toxic thoughts that you wanna think about cause nothing else makes sense to you. i only realized this was written ironically after some commentators pointed it while i was looking for this song on youtube and honestly it makes a lot of sense cause it’s making fun of this part of depression and it’s done really well but at the same time it adds these layers of shame both cause of the subject matter and knowing that these thoughts are really dumb but you just can’t stop it.

i think the last song i’ll write about is million + 8 things. this is one of the more popular demos on this project among those who have heard it; it’s really really daydreamy and that by itself makes it stand alone among the rest of the songs. i’ve seen people wonder about how and where this could fit on either down colorful hill or rollercoaster, and it’s fun to think about that along with other songs like headsore and waterkill (which i’d like to say are great too!!), but i feel like this is so different from everything else that it’s a bit to see this on the latter and even more so on the former :p at the same time though, i'm not sure if either album's sound was really fleshed out yet, soo i think this song could've definitely had a different fate in another timeline, and besides that doesn’t mean i don’t think it’s cool of course!! i thought it was really sweet and calm and i liked what it was about; really, it’s very simple, just about journaling about someone and that special subduing feeling that makes you think about them all the time, and i admire it for its simplicity cause it’s also different in the way that it’s not very sad but bittersweet and sort of endearing. of course, most of rhp’s songs are just wayy sadder than this so i liked that difference as well U^ ^U i remember when i used to write in a diary a long time ago, just writing about the dumb things that happened in my life and stuff like that… it was fun but also a pain to write in since it became painful to write so much after a while. now, i really just like to keep stuff in my head most of the time. i definitely wouldn’t call this journaling, since i’m not keeping anything on record by writing it down (which kinda sucks tbhh), but it’s fun since i can bounce around in my thoughts really quickly and ofc i can just do it whenever i want. sometimes it’s fun to just be in your head since you can just gravitate around a topic you’re obsessed with and think what seems like a million thoughts about it and those develop more and more as you go on, sort of like writing a story or going on a continuous path. it can be a pain to be stuck in your thoughts too, but that’s just part of life – something i’m now willing to embrace after what i’ve gone through!

i saw a youtube comment about how this bootleg feels like something that’d be rumored but never be released or found and it really does feel that way at times… it feels like a huge grail, filled with so much interesting material that adds a lot to the world of rhp in terms of perspective which i love. there aren’t many things that are considered lost or unknown that i’d really wanna listen to or try to find, but having some sort of remembrance that is about them and sprouts memories about all kinds of things i think is really important in general since from anything something can be gained and built. and i think that’s one of the many cool, magical things about human nature; both the development and the finality of things can contribute to how we are, through our thoughts and experiences with those things which vary a lot between each person, even and especially in the worst of them. listening to rhp takes me back a little bit to those distant but familiar times, both those i remember and others which maybe didn’t even exist at all, and they take these things and apply them to a land more enjoyable, which is an embodiment in music whose beginnings are shown here.

Going Blank Again by Ride: 19 March⁂

writer’s block is a bitch. as someone who rly likes to do this stuff both as a hobby and as a way to learn both more about myself and the world around me, writing has become one of my go to mediums to express myself in recent times cause of how universal it is and the importance of refinement in terms of what i’m talking about. noww i don’t mean that i actually read over stuff before publishing texts like my entries (which has probably become obvious if you’ve read even a single entry all the way through), but really just writing and art itself is something that allows what i think and what i say to be closer to perfection… while i’m writing, i have to take the time to think, and since i’m still an overthinker even with how much i’ve relaxed throughout the last year, i often feel better about what i’m saying and how i’m articulating it through writing. actually speaking has never really been my strong suit, and even in simpler things like talking to others in class and talking about things, i often think that it would be much better if i was even just given five minutes to put together my thoughts so i can give you a less rough explanation of what i’m wanting to say rather than forgetting everything by the time words start to leave my mouth and i start stuttering and stuff.

when it comes to encountering these blocks, even though i’ve been finding ways and succeeding in making me more confident and making it easier for me to write without getting stuck too much, sometimes i still get caught in the block’s net. but honestly, couldn’t you say that the struggle is a good thing? if i was able to write out every single one of my thoughts that i wanted to about something without filtering anything using my thought process, then it would just be a garbled mess and i’d probably go on for too long about stuff anyway. as with everything, there’s a sweet spot, a balance that you wanna aim for every time you do something, and i think that each entry i write gets me even so slightly closer to that balance. i meann i might still reach beyond that balance if i feel like it, since that’s just how i am ( i try not to overshare sometimes cause it really just isn’t necessary lol xP ), but the learning that comes from it, whether i am consciously striving for that balance or not, is still super helpful for me either way when it comes to being both someone who likes to share her thoughts and keep expanding her thought process :P

remember when i said that the next month of my entries were probably gonna be “daily drivers” that you could listen to while doing stuff?? welll i’m still not wrong technically… ofc i was alluding to the fact that i was gonna be listening to likee mostly drone stuff and i did do that. however my backlog doesn’t really align with that lol… it’s been a really long time since i’ve paid attention to anything shoegaze, since most of the music i listen to currently is more focused on acoustic or softer electronic i.e. synth-focused music (although that’s not necessarily soft either) and guitars aren’t really at the forefront of them. i don’t think anyway!! i haven’t listened to much rock recently in general really, soo i’ve kinda forgotten the familiar structures in the music of this genre and how great they can be to listen to. along with guitars, the whole instruments side of things (when it comes to using rock as broad as the umbrella term is), like drums and percussion and basslines and stuff are on a completely different level when it comes to their use in this kind of music. thinking about it just reminds me of why i was so captivated by genres like post-rock back when i was increasingly getting into music. i was super into drums, calling myself like a drums girl and stuff (and i still definitely am), however i’ve forgotten just how important they were and still are to me because a lot of the music i can think of uses stuff like drums and percussion as sort of drivers of the music, whereas in genres of rock the drums take more of a forefront role, becoming a paintbrush of sorts in the canvas of the music, being able to paint in the empty spaces and / or as a general coat for what is being heard. i think my favorite instrument as of recently has to be synthesizers, which is pretty obvious considering how essential they are in stuff like drone and throughout music in general, however i think reactions that the prioritization of each different branch of instruments elicit in my mind are just really different depending on what is being prioritized, which maybe is why i was a bit tempted to associate my love for rock during when i was depressed, while now that my emotional state has changed drastically to be more optimistic, in some way that has made me more receptive towards things like synths because of their difference in compositions. maybe there’s something in this optimism and generally more positive state of mind that i’ve inherited that corresponds to what theses sounds are like and how much i like them… it might seem a bit silly since there’s a lot about this that could be elaborated but i’m not sure if i’d wanna do that as of now,, still super interesting stuff though!! :o

in these entries i always try to talk at least a bit about how i found each album and what really drew me into it, but i’ve thought about this album soo many times that i don’t think it’s worth it to mention every time that i’ve remembered and tried to get into it… i believe i first heard of it through this guy called captain brian on twitter that used to be on my timeline sometimes, making a tweet about the album saying that it was the happiest shoegaze he’s ever heard or something of the like. twisterella was likely my first encounter of this album; i don’t remember what i thought of it that much, but it’s unique enough to the point where i knew i got a kick out of it from my first listen. the smooth and cheery vocals felt fun to listen to and i thought the drum work was also especially great with how sizzly and quick the cymbals were. however, mouse trap was the song that really made me consider listening to this album. one day in the middle of winter break last year, when i decided to stay up all night every night to talk with my ex, i’m pretty sure i gave this album a go while designing this wikipedia user page i’d only use like once or twice… btw this was around the time i was super into boris for that unfortunately short period of time so i was definitely hungry for some new cool rock to listen to alongside them! cause i was soo tired, i didn’t remember anything afterwards and i decided to just stop listening by the middle of the album since i couldn’t really give new music the proper attention i wanted to, and right before i stopped i listened to mouse trap which was so so dreamy, amplified by how sleepy i was. it feels like a distant memory just thinking about it, like thinking about all the other songs that are stuck in my head that i haven’t gotten the chance to listen to ever again, and it was as pleasant as a dream opposite to the stuff i was going through at the time. except, of course, that wasn’t the case at all!! it became one of those songs that i’d return to every once in a while, making me ponder how it came to be and stuff like that… there were a bunch of additional steps that finally got me to budge, like the discovery of vapour trail (which sounds crazily different from going blank again now that i’ve actually heard the album lol) and stampede, but they are really just smaller steps that i could go on for another little while talking about which i’m not gonna do.

something cool that rym added recently was a separate “scene” label for music releases to bring attention to the cultural movements that are associated with the music which gives extra perspective to how and why it’s created like it was. i think it’s a pretty cool change since it’s better to not overlook that stuff even if the increased awareness was just being another line on each album page, but i meann that’s what everything else is and they are effective as well soo just calling it another line would be diminishing of its importance in giving people info about an album in just an eye’s glance you know? :P for going blank again, it belongs to the madchester scene, which was already sort of on its way out by the time this was released. i did a tiny bit of research about the scene and listened to two hours’s worth of essentials from npr's world cafe to notice what key characteristics there were about the scene before i started to write this entry soo before i start talking about the album itself i think i’ll list some of them off here. i am not a music journalist nor do i wanna cuz that requires wayyy more research and intelligence than what i’m about to show here lol…

madchester, the name representing the 80’s city scene at the time, had two major sides to it: its psychedelic, more rocky side, which is more of what the scene is associated with, and its acid house ravey side. the first side grew from soul and funk and the other grew especially from chicago house. during this era, clubbing and psychedelics were the main things that characterized the movement, and this was shown through happiness and peace in the imperfection of making music in this scene in contrast to the further emphasization of quality and rigidness elsewhere. sidenote here… i find it super cool how common psychedelics are especially in the themes of some other genres and movements, like more dreary or calm music like time machines; i’ve never realized how versatile they were until i had learned about these two things i guess since i’ve never stopped to think about why they were so common in the first place :P the playlist i listened to had both sides of madchester. its rock was structured of continuous passages and spinning halls of patterns that can easily put you in a trance, but in a more funky sort of way rather than a dreadful or hypnotizing one. the guitar turns into a flying instrument, using its voice to twist and turn throughout the music both to consistently keep pace and uplift the music’s spirit, and assortments of background voices throughout complimenting the various different instruments while being companions to the main vocals. the drums felt metaphorically filled with sand, spraying with every hit (don’t make fun of me for this i think it’s a cool visualization…), and the accommodation of sharp tambourines and other percussion completes the edges to make it feel more refreshed without being too sharp. all of these things that i noticed throughout just reminds me of how big stuff like keeping your spirits up and feeling alive in a unique sense that came with not only youth but letting go of the strictness that was expected of you, and this was especially expressed through how important club culture was in madchester at the time, some place that ultimately just demanded you to be at your funnest and grooviest.

i think my favorite song from the world cafe playlist ( such a cool name btww <3 ) was fools gold by the stone roses, specifically the 9.53 version! it was grooviness at its purest, with a super steady rhythm written out by the “sandy” drums and cymbals along with that round bassline throughout that never gets old, a boisterous while reserved ever-evolving guitar that gains a little bit of a flanger later on in the song, and bongos that perfectly filled the empty space left by the scared, creating this full platter with all the vegetables and meat and other stuffs just like a good meal. i think it’s really cool how the uk has all of this cool music as i’ve more so accidentally discovered throughout the past few months with a variety of albums and definitely will do so as i continue to listen to new music… it’s not necessarily that surprising but whenever i find out that i’m listening to yet another british band i find it really cool since there’s just so many things that you might not think comes from there which is the case :P fools gold is like an amazing song to capture and encapsulate the spirit of madchester, as it reminds me of all of the carefree quirks and qualities of the clubbing that was so essential to the movement and encouraging these things through the sheer groove that is too strong to ignore; it sticks with me a lot just how great it is and i think the stone roses and their discography are something that i’ll have to come back to eventually cause of just how much revolutionary british music i’ve found myself listening to…

in comparison to what madchester’s rock half was, going blank again expands that and mixes it with shoegaze in a magnificent way, soaring in a new direction full of rush and energy. throughout the album, you can easily find a lot of qualities that are taken from madchester, like the high usage of guitars and background vocals to accompany and fulfill the roles where the main ones don’t in a more spacey way. but unlike the exclusively funky flavor of guitar seen a lot in previous madchester works, it takes on shoegaze, with its fuzzy, thick structure and turns it from a more ethereal or sad feeling into the eager spirit of madchester. i think it’s a welcome change of pace for both styles, and it shows to be a great mixture when you realize how well it was excited as seen on the album. it serves a lot like an extension of an image or a new adaptation of a story, adding plenty of details that completely revamp how it was originally thought… i feel like you rarely come across music that blends multiple genres as well as is done here; something i think is important to note as well is that the influence from the characteristics of both styles is super apparent here, and that’s what i think sets this so apart from a lot of the other music that i listen to which experiments with that sort of stuff, as really does most music as you’re taking what you like from the music you listen to and going off of that. it’s such a beautifully prepared blend of things, like a really tasty smoothie on a warmish summer day that becomes a part of the nostalgia that comes from a great season and at the same time of tasting the combination of things, you can distinctly tell each ingredient apart through their own respective richness and texture.

when i say this album is unique and special and stuff like that, i really really mean it!! after all, when was the last time you’ve heard “happy” or any other word of the like used to describe shoegaze in your life? i’m a bit scared i’ve said that already lol… but i really feel like it can’t be emphasized enough just how novel this album is, shown by its ushering of a new future in music by bringing in all the best parts of the old and new in ways that others might be scared to do or can’t execute nearly as well as done here. when i thought of this, it reminded me a lot of los peores 7 km de mi vida, which is the only other album i can remember off the top of my head that vividly demonstrates the blending of multiple genres into one; it mixes post-rock and screamo, something that honestly makes a lot of sense when you actually can find an example of it happening but still feels a bit weird just thinking about it. when it comes to the implementation of mainly these two genres themselves, it’s apparent that characteristics from both genres are used in it, like the drifting guitars and synths in the post-rock sections meanwhile the transition into the rough distortion present in the sound of screamo, and it makes me think of this album just because of what characteristics were selected, likewise shaping the sound of the album to create a completely new shape via recycling what was most appealing and fun to the band.

alsooo the pace is so hard to ignore for me and i can’t help but try to pay attention to it each time i listen… something nice about madchester is that i think a lot of the music that came out of it, both from its rock and house portions, are faster in tempo to accommodate for the club atmosphere, which is something cool as well since it fits with some other main things about the scene like the aforementioned carefree spirit and stuff like that! rock is something that can be super fluid in pace – some genres are associated with slower paces like stoner rock while others are the opposite with wayy faster stuff like metalcore and punk rock, although really any tempo is acceptable with rock and there’s not many guidelines in terms of such i don’t think :p how fast each song is along with the sort of, i guess, organically clangy sound of the drums and cymbals is one of the things i look forward to listening to the most each time i listen!! i’m not sure if it’s just me, but this kinda makes me think of summer or early autumn and breezes during this time… the breezes represent the fast pace of the album and i don’t think it’s very far fetched to think of it as likee a summer album if that summer wasn’t too hot like it’s getting where i live lol. the last thing i’ll say about this is that i wanted to mention time of her time cause it’s my favorite example of how the quick tempo makes this sound so good, along with the various parts where the drums sort of stop for a second, sometimes even leaving a little bit of high-ceiling breathing room before they fade in again. i love this a lot since they’re so emphasized and are kind of like a short build up to make what comes after hit a lot harder than if it just kept continuing, it makes for a special touch on this song that you don’t really see everywhere in rock which makes it more awesome.

cool your boots quickly became one of my favorite songs on the album as soon as i gave it a listen… like really quickly. this might be a bit of a weird comparison, but it reminds me a lot of will we survive by swans based on how this song progresses so much like the other. of course, it’s not as dramatic as the huge, patient crescendo that the former has, but it’s very reminiscent cause of how most of the singing stays in the first half, while as the song goes on, it becomes more loose, a bit like it’s losing its grip but in a grandiose and powerful way that is the opposite of a deterrence. the synths softly fall down with the vocalizing in the latter half while the guitars and relentless drumming maintain the otherwise bright, hazy atmosphere like a mist that enchants the endless drifting. it (and most of the other stuff on this album, really) is repetitive at its core, with the same pressing patterns that keep extending, but i thought about it for a second and it’s like marble’s appearance or building bricks to make walls. there’s a strong purpose for it to be so repetitive, and i think the energetic nature of this song makes it mean more, which i always feel a lot since this song is a blast to listen to.

the penultimate song, time machine, does feel like a more routinely dancier song on the album with how different the arrangement of instruments are compared to the rest of the album. after the sort of deceiving intro ( which would’ve been awesome to hear as a full song :P ), each little part of the song comes together in this cascading fashion – not as strongly as that, but as stylish as it can be. it doesn’t have a climax to lead up to per se but that’s fine as it stands out excellently nonetheless. one of my favorite parts about the song is how the plucky guitars sound and the little piano pattern repeats throughout. i think it additionally makes me think of jazz since it just feels arranged similarly for some reason… like the similarities in how silky smooth it feels and how each part plays their own strong role while overlapping with each other; you can easily distinguish the differences in the texture of each instrument, but they all move steadily in the same direction of the song, like a unit. to me, in contrast to what the rest of the album sounds like (even though it really isn’t all that different…), it feels like something that plays – that is, as if the song was a person itself and playing it was a way was a method of existing for it – in a more easy yet still heavy way. there’s definitely other ways to describe it better, and i’ve definitely felt how i feel listening to this before, but i’ve totally forgotten what it would be called or how i could even say it in thee first place, soo i’ll have to bare mostly with the image i have in mind, which is just a mess!

i’m gonna go a bit out of order here soo hopefully y’all don’t mind that. leave them all behind was a song i held back from listening to, but something that drew me a lot to listening to the album cause of how badass it seemed. i didn’t give myself anything to go off of about how it sounded, but it interested me a lot cause of how highly rated it is on rym (4.50) and also cause of how long it was… i try not to mention song length as a reason why i like a song since it does seem a bit silly to mention it when there’s really much more that goes into that which is assisted by the song’s length and composition and stuff. but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t make me wanna listen more!! i don’t think “an epic” would be the best way to describe this, instead maybe you could use a cool escapade or something of the like (i never have used that word before but it fits now that it popped in my head) the bassline is especially huge on this song, taking lead throughout a good portion of the song while all the rest of the usual assortment of instruments like the glistening tambourines and daring guitars singing this catchy tune alongside everything else. i don’t think i’ve mentioned this yet and it’s intentional but there aren’t really a lot of front vocals a good portion of the song, putting the focus largely on the instrumentals; this is something i’ll talk more about in a little bit but i like it a lot!! :P i just like his voice a lottt and the way it’s mixed in with what’s going on feels like the rest of the music is just lifting the vocals up with their hands like cheerleaders do.

the last portion, something that is kinda like a wall of sound that everything leads up to, is such a worthy ending to the song!! the bassline comes back from taking sort of a background role throughout the vocal part to resonate in the center as this last screeching synth slowly gets louder and tries to overpower everything while the rest of the instruments just do their usual things… while writing this, it kinda made me think of, like, a descent into madness, and i’m not sure if i’m fully into the analogy yet but i don’t hate it either!! cause maybe the bassline and drums could be the sound of your brain thumping and then everything else stirring below the screeching feels like the world being ripped apart when you’re feeling crazy, which makes it sound even more cool when you put it that way!! maybe you could put it that way :o

okayy and last i of course have to talk some more about mouse trap. this one’s the most cathartic to me because of how it’s filled with so many good things about high spirits and stuff like that, and it’s kinda hard to describe despite how much i’ve listened to this. while i was looking around at the rym page for this album, i saw this review that mentioned how lacking the lyricism was in this album, but that didn’t really negatively affect the listening experience much since ride were able to compensate for that because of their craft when it comes to just shredding their instruments. as i kept listening, i did notice this throughout; i never really had a problem with it, and it applies in this song too since there’s really just two short verses and then the vocalizing fills in for the rest, but this part is so important to what makes it special. it’s a sentimental kind of thing, like it sounds like singing not in a carefree way but like you just found that spirit in you and now you can’t help but feel really happy. it sounds like different streams that you hear combining into one, like the ride cymbals i love listening to which adds to the starry texture of the song and the rest of the drum kit rapid splashing, both of which makes me think of it like a violent explosion of emotions which end up looking like what this song’s bliss feels like. i love the few lyrics that are sung here too thoughh… “the earth spins, my head spins me back round to you” was my absolutely favorite line every time i listened <3 they top the music off in a sublime way that's sort of cute and so earth shattering at the same time.

i think i got super carried away writing about this album. i’m scared i kinda seem like a broken record in this entry soo sorry if that’s the case… reallyy, the bottom line is that it’s something i loved listening to and i’m glad i came back to rock for the first time in a while cause it brings me back a bit!! by the way something weird i found out though is that i think the videos that ride posted on their youtube channel with the audios to each song sound noticeably different than what is on spotify… yaa i know that the ones on spotify are remasters but for some reason the changes were really apparent and it made me feel a bit weird but i think it would be cool to listen to that version eventually since i’m interested now lol :p yes i’ve been pretty reluctant to use local files for the past year or something now but that’s cause stats.fm has kinda had me in a chokehold since i just love how good its stats are and stuff. but that’ll change soon hopefully!! you’ll see what i mean…

Time Machines by Time Machines: 10 March⁂

i’ve gotten my hands on a couple of research papers about cybernetic and generative music that i plan to start reading soon. it’s for a couple of albums that are down the road which i’ve been looking forward to looking into since like the start of the year… throughout the past couple of entries, i’ve been trying to find ways to just make my writing better, as people often do and probably should xP and while some of the different techniques i’ve tried out like differences in grammar and changes in the outlook of what i’m listening to, i think learning more about what what i’m listening to is about and the inspiration behind it, if i can get a grasp of it, is probably one of the best things i can do.

to be honest i probably won’t do that much for this album since admittedly, i’ve been super lazy lately UT~TU but i think it’d be a huge help in general, especially when it comes to creativity. what i mean by this isn’t necessarily that i’m gonna be looking into the artist or band themselves and their music and stuff, but that i want to look into more of the subject matter or into the album’s composition and conditions as i kinda hinted at previously. whenever i write my entries, i want to focus on writing about things that come from my imagination as a sort of log for the things that what i listen to makes me think as a writing exercise. even though i am currently working on my ability to write about real world things seriously in academia, actually writing critically about things stresses me out sometimes, which is why i wanted to do something else when it came to writing about music. i will admit too that i make sure to warn people who come by to read my stuff to be wary about how they feel about my writing, since i mostly just write stuff on a whim and cause i don’t really like the negativity that comes from music communities… i’ve been trying to tune all that negative energy out as of recently. y’all shouldn’t even get mad at me for these anyway!! there’s always something better to get mad at anyway lol…

but that’s not really what i wanna focus on right now!! there’s some reasons in particular why i’m choosing to be interested in academic sources (most commonly papers) instead of larger forms of literature like books. ya you can probably tell that it’s cause it’s been getting harder for me to read books as of recent; early works has had a tremendous impact how i go about my daily life, but i’ve barely been able to read it just cause of my tendencies like usualll :/ however there’s more than that, since it would be silly to go from something that requires deep thought to stuff that could seem more boring just “cause” of that… after all, when’s the last time you’ve read a thesis?? well, i think something that draws me to them is their vulnerability compared to other things that people write, i guess as in emotionally.

of course, theses are written based on what you are studying in university, and this can be a really really lengthy thing which allows for the observation of the breadth of your understanding about what you’re studying as well as your technical ability to comprehend, analyze, and find conclusion about whatever you’re looking into. in addition to that, just writing about something that is as important to you as what you’re majoring in would at least make me want to make sure i get everything right, and i think you could probably notice this as well if you look into it hard enough. academic writing is probably something you think of as a really deadpan medium of writing despite its importance (hence probably its ability to communicate information), but there still will be all kinds of quirks that you find within each person’s style of writing, some that you gravitate towards more than others.

and i think the curiosity that comes from the way that vulnerability makes me feel the same way i feel when thinking about different albums to look into. art is your place where you can express vulnerability in many different ways, both explicitly and when it comes to how the artist creates the art. it’s this sort of visceral feeling that can be difficult to point to when you look at something, and this feeling is extraordinarily relatable. after your first view and reaction to what you found, it sticks in your head and you ponder it for a while, maybe finding meaning to what you saw, connections to other things that you feel are close in resemblance or structure to this art, or maybe instead you get even more of an incentive to look deeper into what it truly means, whether that be through the artist and their perspectives or the creation of your own interpretation.

time machines is an album that incited this kind of reaction i’m talking about, sprouting just from its presentation and my curiosity growing as time passed on. coil is a band that i think is well known on rym, but i never really looked into them prior to this album. i have written in my diaries about how much i’ve loved album covers in the past, finding them really interesting since i think that they are an essential part of the creative responsibility and tasks that come with making an album. even though i don’t really like to talk about them much, since i feel like it’s a topic that becomes kind of a low hanging fruit to mention when i want to talk about the music (i don’t mean to be disrespectful about it, but that’s just how i feel), time machine’s cover was unique in that it was especially important in making me really want to listen to this album.

for albums with so little tracks, like this one, i stay away from listening to the material since listening to so much of the album in one preview would kind of ruin the element of surprise for me :P also, even though i am kinda driven by my “journey” into discovering new drone music, and this album was likewise unique in the way that it was primarily categorized on rym as “drone” and just drone, which is something that you don’t really see often… that definitely wasn’t everything that i thought about. i had this album on my backlog since the start of the year, considering pushing it back further as i listened to other things and found new albums to be interested in, but every time i saw the album’s name on there, or i thought about it, the first thing that my mind went to was its cover. it’s super imposing – a single infinitely dark and empty ellipse in the center of an empty, beige landscape that to me looks like sandpaper, envisioning an invisible roughness that comes from the endurance, possibly it running over all of your skin at once. and it’s true that the first thing that came to my mind when i saw the cover was a black hole, or maybe a void, but maybe instead it’s the imagination of deception, with the coat of a thousand ugly feelings blended with the slightest touch of roughness from outside in the otherwise lack of texture but instead a gradient that makes its burn too easy to feel. here, you can feel vulnerability itself as well. it’s in both the messaging, the feelings of creation that the illustrator condenses onto a single canvas, invisible yet so visible if you can find what it is, but also in terms of feeling; vulnerability is a strong strength, and a strong weakness. vulnerability is flexible, and that can help your best interests, but what if this flexibility ends up being too much to endure, and too easy to manipulate into the worst of things?

this album is many things: strange, elusively so; relentless, confined by the limits of the its fuzzy potency; the embodiment of reshaping both reality and fiction to create a grotesque recreation of the highest magnitude of isolation and despair in sonic form, something so simple to chew yet so onerous to digestive; or maybe hypnotic, maybe enough so that it can tantalize your desires, sweeting reducing you to a single frequency. it does all of these things at once, and you feel the accumulation, but you only realize it one step at a time since the process is beyond comprehension (you feel one thing but taste another). it’s a kind of radiation that is more than physically harming, kind in the way that it doesn’t let you feel these things, but instead its versions of purgatory that are infinitely thick notes that span a touch longer than the entirety of time itself, their dissonance and the songs being overall containers of them. it’s unable to be dissected into different parts with how distorted and mixed every element of it is, instead just being a soup of things that’s so cold it itself goes into a cycle of scorch and frost from the exhibition of hyper and hypothermia; but all of these things you can’t tell if you’re for or against it, as your emotions are rendered useless and replaced with the translation of the materials into mental signals, freely rearranging you without orchestrating a single thing, because this is itself.

maybe it’s like the total yield of a string of characters which have no meaning at face value or a painting which has a thousand meanings using familiar pictures that suggest just one, but in any way it can be described, i think this album is pretty astounding in its entirety. i remember hesitating for a little while before i started listening to the album for the first time because i had no idea what it would even be like… drone is such a versatile genre with every texture you could think and forget welcome, and even with the descriptors on rym i probably still wouldn’t have gotten close to the actual sound without listening first. even though its staticity throughout may underwhelm some people (i wouldn’t call it simple but it’s not the most beautiful or complex sound either, qualities that are more conventional to focus on), it was something that brought me in from the start. obviouslyy drone as a genre is very repetitive, and i think this album is a great showing of how lengthy that repetition could be and how it could be utilized, with its dynamics that are as brutal yet graceful as a replica of a feather’s descent, but it’s done in a way that i’ve never heard and feel like i’ll never heard again, but i can’t put a finger on how and i think that it fits this album a lot.

i don’t think i could remember a time where i could say music or anything else in life was hypnotic in some sort of way, since i mostly just feel the same feelings of things getting stuck in my head that i may enjoy or not and then it’s super amusing to listen to but then it wears off after a little while and the cycle repeats. or maybe there’s not much of a reaction from it. even in other drone music i can’t really say i’d describe it as such, since i think i’d more so just describe it as consciously moving along the flow of a stream instead. but i think time machines is different in the way that it is the first thing that genuinely felt hypnotic to me; in this regard, i think instead of moving along the stream it’d be more like becoming the stream itself, or becoming one with it. i don’t always feel this every time i listen to the album, but if i get a chance to get really into it then it’s super super effective with that. maybe hypnosis is like the structure of one thing fluidly breaking apart and then melding itself together into thoughts using a replica of the coating of your usual thoughts. it replaces itself into something familiar, something easy to grasp with a nearly infinite amount of possibilities in what could be encoded into the thoughts.

telepathine was a song that reeled me into the album’s landscape in an instant. i think a good way it connects with the name “time machines” itself is that it – and really the rest of the album – captures the emotional whiplash behind the travel that seemingly has nothing to it because of how easy it is, and how it shrinks down the passage of time itself into a miniscule rolled pathway that can be traversed in a blink of an eye. in (media), imaginations of time machines are mostly portrayed to function in a very short time; maybe this is for watchability’s sake or some do believe that a real time machine would function that way, but a large question about this process is how it would affect the space it inhabits and the person who is using the technology, and how those two will end up after the process is done. i think this could be like an interpretation of the pouring of the energy that is transferred in said process then encoded into the format of sound from another format, whatever that may be. ( and from this, one question that could be posed is if emotions are energy at all and can be “translated” as such? they begin from the plane of your mind which i’m not sure could be considered energy or matter at all but then it contributes to actual transfers of such, so i’m not sure what you could call it… )

doet/hecate continues the sound of bleakness with a constant repetition that kinda sounds like mechanical croaking. it does feel like somewhat of a continuation of the previous song, but it’s as if some of telepathine was split into multiple bandwidths and it diverged further until it desperately enveloped what was in its path. all of these songs warrant description in the form of personification in some way, except i’m not really sure what the silhouette of its sound would look like, instead just treating it as a foreign object or one even without a look. or even without a sign or an object, however that would work, with their effects being without a way to attribute them, without a plausible source or explanation. its limbs are still able to reach you, but there’s no beginning to them, no gradient to signal change in product.

and with this, i think that these patterns have the ability to take whatever form they’d like at any strength they’d like, using the more than liquid consistency of emotions to its advantage as both a sort of spiritual fueling and a thing to fidget with to its liking. you could say that the length of these songs are extreme and i probably wouldn’t disagree with that but i don’t think it’s to the detriment of the album since it becomes this really captivating experience which toys with the human ability of attention itself and i think is a huge reason why it is able to be as hypnotic and shape your perception as much as it can. it goes beyond stopping at how much someone could possibly care, making for an experiment of how long could go by with a tone, something so simple and such a tiny building block of other songs and playing with the mind the slightest bit and going beyond that to see what happens.

afterwards comes 5-meo-dmt and i instantly knew this was going to be my favorite track as i heard the careful ascent into the rapid phasing of the music’s waves begin to sound… honestlyy i think this is the track that takes the longest to get into its minutes-long core despite its length – each song has this but there’s not really much build up that leads to it, unlike this song. the first thing i thought of was the descriptor of crystalline, as its structure felt extremely rigid and smooth, maintaining the trope of suspending a single idea into the hands of infinity and making its progression one with itself. i forgot to mention this earlier, but another thing that this album does differently is that it utilizes the binaural playing field a lot, allowing the music to spin around and play at whatever parts it wants to create even more intimidation and immersiveness from their placement. i will admit that in music, this is taken into account a lot since artists will mix parts of the music to play in different parts of the surrounding space of sound (the imagination of such), like slightly to the left or to the right, or exclusively one of those sides. however, time machines relies on this heavily and it goes full force when it comes to using this, which is shown as the tones fearlessly rotate and bend around the listener countless times to add another layer of emotional manipulation and disorientation, teasing you as it jestingly and intentionally (plays with) your increasingly malleable brain.

the gargantuan closer psilocybin ( i like to call this one indolol too cause of just how i find that kinda cute xP ) to me is an amazing depiction of negative, lengthy feelings like dread and exasperation rolled into a line of music that solemnly explains its existence to you in a meticulous manner that you can easily understand but can’t comprehend how it’s doing so in the first place. it is the last moments before the end of your journey, the meeting with these higher than supernatural, extradimensional beings that are beginning their last phase with you – not with your life, but with your mind and soul, forever changing your being in familiar ways that are attained through impossible means.

the song is composed of two phases, the second compounding on the first and somehow becoming even more frightening than before. a deep swath of stark teeth pulsating in an exigent manner, changing the result of each of the album’s feedback loops with the same rusty framework that will be the one to use for the next million years, encouraging the amplification and flourishing of the larger and smaller effects that make it worse and worse as you experience it more and more. it persists and ends, not with an immediate alteration of the outside or anything else but you, or even you in a normal sense, but subtly changing things about you that are not easily perceptible, at a level above chemical but before the logic of different realities and objects themselves. both the song’s fabric and you beg simultaneously, one unconsciously and the other knowingly, one desperately and the one in control, in a useless attempt to deceive because it has already accomplished what it has wanted to accomplish, only further developing all it’s ever wanted with the time it has left with you.

something obvious that i realized early on is that all of the songs are named after different psychedelics… it was later on that i realized that each song was designed to be like a reimagination of their effects as well, but unfortunately i don’t have the experience to give an answer on how well they represent them or the ability to listen while under their influence Uu.uU however, something i think that’s cool is that these songs could be the closest thing that someone could get to experiencing these effects without actually consuming them… their excellence in reconstructing the hypnotic properties, as if they extracted them from the psychedelics themselves and put them in the music’s formula, is really effective in emulating these emotions. the songs are much more mysterious, full of hallucinations that derail from what they truly are, and many other things that give you a vague pointer but nothing more to what is going to happen when you listen and what will come after. i think this is probably similar to their real life experience too, a nearly indescribable, unique experience that comes with the unlimited ability to toy with the mind in ways that not a single person could think to do.

i imagined describing time machines was gonna be difficult, and i’ve been thinking about better ways to write in my diary, soo instead of majorly trying to describe what it sounds like, i just wrote what came to my mind instead. that’s kinda why it seems to meander a tonnn, but i think that these encapsulate some of the being of the music in an authentic way as well, although they are probably still not very well written, but that’s okay :P it’s kinda like telling a story in real time, and so are the songs, however the progression of the story and of the thoughts become really distorted and go in all sorts of directions, so you have to pick one since that seems to be the right option and continue from there. you use the general idea you have in your head about whatever you’re thinking about, and you keep building on that, just like any other story, but it just gets messier and weirder and there isn’t really a decent ending in sight so you just stop where you are – or at least you should.

Immunity by Jon Hopkins: 25 February⁂

after writing and spending so much time with exai, at this point moving on to the next entry feels kinda difficult to do. the second half of the school year is something that i’ve noticed is exceedingly quicker than the first half… i haven’t thought about what makes it so – maybe because the start of sports leagues is the slowest part, or the trouble of getting used to the swing of things in school again, or maybe the change in seasons to fall and to winter slow down time, or a bunch of other things… whatever it is, waiting for the right time in the right conditions, in these conditions, isn’t really the best option for me since i’m so damn lazy!! so that’s kinda why i’ve been wanting to push myself for this entry, along with some other things :P

there’s not really much of a backstory about my discovery of this album… i do remember that i found it in this hugeee playlist that had all kinds of different music that i found searching for studying music. but that was a while ago, and i listened to open eye signal once, and i didn’t really think much of it – of course, it was still nice, but i barely remembered what it sounded like, and so i didn’t feel like i wanted to check out the album in the future. however, the reason why i’m checking this out is because of my last review. prior to choosing exai, i had actually chosen and listened to immunity for around a couple of days before i decided that i didn’t feel like listening to it then; besides, i found out that a copy of exai was coming to the library as it was listed in the library’s database, but i couldn’t check it out at the time. i was wayy more curious about that album soo i ended up prioritizing that album instead, promising myself to return to immunity after i was done with exai.

soo i’ll start here… it is really cool!! every song (thematically and literally) leads into one another and it makes for this experience that you could describe in a bunch of different ways but i think what this album kind of goes for is a sort of intimate feeling. the songs light up with the same atmosphere that stuff like orange streetlights bring at night, or really a lot of environments filled with dim artificial light. at its core, the music is tender, but it’s structured so elaborately with so many things clicking and connecting with each other, which is seen in how the music just feels and breathes. strings of yarn keep the music together, and if you try to touch the yarn itself it will be soft. however, what you touch is just one tiny piece of the gargantuan machines of the music, larger than any wall or canvas than can attempt to withstand the sound’s picturing. one thing i admire a lot is how meticulously constructed and drawn out each movement are, as the songs themselves and the changes in dynamic within each song, and how immediately obvious this realization is. it feels as if each buzz and each instrument and each chunk of music were planned to have a purpose, contributing patiently to what comes next. you really can’t ignore the amount of detail and polish that can be heard here… it all sounds so clean and refined. at times the music can get emotional, whether it be savage, frail, or restless, but it’s all so dignified that it manages to control these within the structure of itself while also being able to elicit these emotions in a stronger way. this level of creation from what seems like so little makes for a novel experience that i can’t think of anything to relate to, it really is great!

but the thing about all this is that it just doesn’t really captivate me that much. it’s not that it’s not interesting by itself, since there’s so many great things that can be said about the album, but all it boils down to is that i don’t feel anything when i listen to it. every environment i’ve tried it in, whether it be in deep concentration like my school’s library reading a book along with it, to listening while working or in the background of random games, it’s not really had much impact on what i was thinking or how it was feeling at the time. it wasn’t even like it annoyed me at times either, since its company was really nice and it was good to listen to, but it just stops at that for me… and while i do admire music that sounds good to listen to, i base a lot of my rating and general enjoyment of music on emotions and how it makes me feel. for me to truly enjoy music, it has to pique my interest in sound and feeling. it’s a shame cause another thing i really like about immunity in general is that the whole composure of the album feels so gripping, yet i guess that grip doesn’t really fit me as well as it does for others. it isn’t the album’s fault nor is it detrimental to the actual material of the album itself; it really is just a me thing UT~TU

however, like every album i listen to, there was an overall like theme that i thought of that goes along with the music. while thinking of things to write about, i also did write a couple of notes down like i did for exai as well, and i think my favorite thing was that this album makes me think of the remaking of a creation and a destruction of a world made from nothing. visualizing this depends on how you think of the creation of a world itself, whether it be something material like a big bang for example or something else truly from nothing. this world is then rearranged and then unarranged, which is represented in the music’s progression and dynamics. every element is tangible and is used or not used in however fashion is shown on the songs. these particles are tangible yet they seem to run out of your hands whenever you keep them in for too… when they do so, like grains of sand blown by wind, they aren’t rearranged, but instead just disappear. this kinda ties with some of the stuff i talked about philosophically before (form, arrangement of propositions, etc. etc.) but it is much more materially focused than logically so. to be honestt it was a fun exercise thinking about what binds reality together metaphorically, which then translates into physical binds and links and stuff, really for the fact that it encompasses everything and i hadn’t thought to think of the world from such a miniscule, invisible perspective… i think i always just think materialistically or maybe spiritually more of the time, which makes sense but it definitely is important to look from a “literal” lens as well!!

one of my favorite songs from immunity is open eye signal, the song that fully sets the scene after the opener that leans a lot into next. what i like the most about this song is how easily it can reel you in with the slow and dramatic rises and falls throughout, especially in the centerpiece synth which has this really catchy rhythm. you can tell that it’s a slow burner, but it’s like that burner’s already up at a scorching temperature and it just keeps getting hotter. this is a bit of a silly analogy, but whenever i listen to this it feels like the drums, kicks, and static (sizzles) are all like the pops and heat of the song, and then the synths are like the steam that comes out :P like i said earlier, this album is super gripping, and this song exemplifies it… it feels so tense and so tight that it feels like it could grab you in a chokehold and you’d instantly faint. but even though it’s so rigid, it still flows effortlessly and so easily, through your ears and through your mind!! it is such a compelling song, built and arranged in seemingly such a simple yet effective way, with so many different parts to the crystallized form of this song you could take a look at a section of it and notice a plethora of different things that both are individual and work with before and after in the music.

the other track i wanna talk about is sun harmonics, which is the descent before the tender outro that is immunity. i’ve mentioned how excellent the stripped down production is executed on this album a couple of times, but i’d say it shines the most here. it feels like you can see the song and how it slowly develops, but the song’s image spans the entire dimension you’re now floating in, giving color, texture, and substance through just one complex medium. through this, you can hear the song at the same time as well, but it’s the only thing you can sense – the only thing you can feel and touch. for the music itself, the pads continually change in texture, but it feels as if they all have the same direction and are pursuing the same thing. it’s irresistible, so well done and compelling!! i hadn’t really heard of microhouse before listening to this album since i just hadn’t really looked into much house at all, but i think it’s really innovative and interesting since it’s just another way of challenging yourself through making a general style of music using different materials. it’s like using a certain framework or type of framework to create something at a different scale or with different materials. as funny as it sounds, it kinda reminds me of doing little experiments like building a tower out of spaghetti in school… although that can be a replica sometimes but i think it fits too since you’re trying to use the same architectural principles to build something that can stand up. the entirety of this entry has been kinda silly honestlyy but that’s kinda what i want at times as well since i don’t wanna be serious and pretentious all the time you know?? :P

immunity is yet another great album that i’ve found on my journey of finding cool music to read and just relax to. i’ve listened to structures from silence a bunch of times recently and it’s reminded me a lot of why i’m so interested in this little “mission” even though i’m not really committing to it or anything… i’m just going through my backlog right now :p as for my enjoyment of the album, it wouldn’t be fair to say that i think it’s hopkin’s fault to any capacity that i didn’t like it as much as i’d hoped i did, because that’s not true at all!! it’s definitely a great album, an unmistakble force that uses its resources and runtime well, and it’s great that many other people see that too, it just hasn’t really clicked with me emotionally. but it may do so in the future, and it would be cool if it did, cause liking all kinds of stuff is cool! U^ ^U

Icedancer by Bladee: 16 January⁂

winter has always been my favorite season of the year. while i’ve never really put much thought into the initial question, seeing as i kinda relegate it to being unimportant because of it being a very drawn out process the earth goes through all year every year (maybe wrongly so), i still think my answer to it makes sense for who i am and have been. i like the cold a lot more than the heat, especially their extremes; the festivities and things that go on and i’ve enjoyed throughout my life like school (it keeps me busy but i don’t like it anymore); the excuse to stay inside more and the potential for snow days, like what’s happening right now with the huge snow storm that came in at the beginning of this week… i just feel like it has fit me a lot more than any other season throughout my life. of course, as of recently maybe i could reconsider if another season fits me more, maybe because of how i love the breezes of fall or how i can’t stand hot chocolate (i just can’t drink hot beverages in general U>_<U) – examples of how malleable people are as they grow older – but i feel that no matter what, winter fits me more than any other season does.

after writing my entry on asalto navideño, i was looking forward to finally writing my first entry on a rap project, but it took me a tiny bit to decide which one i was gonna take on first. most of the music i’ve discovered over the past at least year has been from me browsing rateyourmusic or maybe finding other albums that people like who have found them probably because of rym as well… while you can definitely find tons of rap and hip hop projects on there and i’ve rated some and found some others, i’ve been wayy more into rock and drone stuff. discovering lots of cool rock music like invisible and sprain last year was really awesome and i can’t deny that it’s helped me massively and has had a positive effect on me, i haven’t really shared the same love as i have with some of the other rap stuff i’ve found during the year. i still listen to a lot of it, ranging from genres like chicago drill to some plugg, and i started off listening to a tonnn of digicore and of course i’ve recently fell in love with tek lintowe (hopefully i can get to balance eventually), but beautiful guitars have taken my world by storm and i don’t think i’ve really written much about rap projects on rym… so i wanna at least mend that a little!! since i still do have some rock, jazz, droney, and some other stuff i’m looking towards writing about as well, i’m not gonna be able to really have a streak of rap projects ( this is the umbrella term i’ll use for this entry since idk what would be better) i write about and look into, but this year, along with a lot of things, i wanna work on that since there’s lots of cool projects that i don’t wanna leave waiting! :>

since it’s the wintertime, i figured it would be a great time to listen to icedancer. i’ve never really been all that festive to be honest, or even really cared much about the seasons to where i use it to help me with what i wanna work on next, but i figured since i already did something festive, i continue with the theme of snow since it would be fun! alsooo on the anniversary of the mixtape, a bunch of insta accounts including the trash island label’s account might’ve teased the release of an icedancer cd… i found out about it when a tweet by @dailybladee on twitter just had the picture of the apparently never before seen ( i think :o ) cd that was shown on the trash island post. i freaked out a little because it looked super cool and i really just like the whole presentation of the mixtape so it getting a cd release for the first time would actually be really cool!! when it comes to collecting cds, one of the main reasons why it’s not larger than it is right now is that most of the ones i buy are projects that i actually like or have at least listened to. my first cd, melt my eyez see your future by denzel curry was an exception to this, and while it was a really cool experience to listen to an album i didn’t know about for the first time on a cd player, i’m admittedly really stingy with my money and so if i ended up not liking the album, i would’ve been sad xP because of this, whenever i find out that an artist is going to release physical music (or at least teases it), i really wanna listen to the music itself before i buy it!! of course, i can’t remember the last time i actually went through with this, but the photo of the icedancer cd was another reason why i wanted to get to it!!

bladee of course has been someone that i’ve known for a little while now… i can’t exactly remember how or when i first learned about him, but i’m pretty sure i remember who introduced me to him. i’ve talked about her once or twice on my diaries before since she definitely had a huge role in changing my music taste by introducing me to soulseek and gatekeeping (i don’t rly do this anymore tho) and there were some artists that she liked a lot that we both talked about like octi and others i found out about indirectly like tek, but the artist that was probably the most popular would be bladee. it was really fun talking to her about music! i remember we both talked about artists that she listened to a lot and ones that i listened to a lot, and i think we definitely did exchange a decent amount of music with each other, but back then i was still bad with following through with listening to the projects that my friends recommended to me and this included bladee. i remember that she mentioned crest a few times, and from what i can remember i tried to listen to it a little bit but i guess i didn’t like the album which was a shame but it doesn’t really surprise me since things have changed a tonnnn from then to now.

around a year later, i listened to 333 on my first listening diary back in 2023 and it was awesome!! although i knew it was gonna b different from bladee’s sound both before and after, it still impressed me a lot!! after that though, i didn’t really listen to much more bladee until recently. first i started listening to a couple of songs from icedancer. okk was the first song i listened to and it kinda set the mood for what icedancer was gonna sound like. there were a lot of things to like about the song and i don’t rly remember specifically what really sold it to me but i think hearing a tougher version of bladee along with the production, especially how much reverb it had which sounded really nice, made me like it a lot and it became kind of a rotational song for me.

i also really just liked his flow… i always knew that bladee could be good with flow as i learned on both 333 and of course on be nice 2 me, but okk was on another level and i just couldn’t get it out of my head!! this was probably likee two months ago by now but i remember listening to it while i was on a field trip at this art museum downtown and i remember just walking around while this song was on and it was just great!! i really like listening to rap/hip-hop stuff while just going through my daily life since it honestly lifts my spirits up and helps me focus and wanna finish what i’m doing… i remember doing it the most while doing school work but rly i like listening to it anywhere. i’ve never really wondered why it works so well… i’ve listened to a ton of different genres of music while at school ( even noise cuz i wanted to experience what it was like xP ) and of course i think ambient works the best but i really like listening to stuff like plugg and trap and it’s a close second which surprises me a little bit but i think it’s rly cool!

and then waster was the main song that actually compelled me to wanna listen to icedancer. i first heard a snippet of the song cause of this twitter account i saw on my timeline that (probably) posted a “waster wednesday” video every wednesday that had this biking on ice video in the background and i thought the song sounded amazinggg soo i listened to it for the first time and it rly was amazing!! the higher vocals and slightly faster pace while it had this rly ethereal vibe made it super addictive… i think it was here when i realized that i absolutely loved the electronic drum kits that are used for the production on these tracks, both waster and okk. their crispness and velocity was so pleasant to listen to and their patterns emphasized both the beat and bladee’s vocals and it really elevated the listening experience in a way that i haven’t felt in a while. after listening to it probably 40 times, i decided that it was finally time to give the album a listen!

at its essence, icedancer is nothing short of sensational. i can’t stop listening to it!!! to be honest i think rap projects are the most universally replayable at least for me from the music i listen to since a lot of the stuff i listen to depends a lot on how i’m feeling. some genres and sounds just are harder for me to listen to at times but it’s something about these projects that just make it easier to listen to more of the time… to be honestt icedancer is rly unique as well though and rap can take any form as seen with projects like death grips and bedwetter and stuff. the production here is soo amazing it rly exceeded any expectations i could’ve thought of especially with how good the songs i listened to before the album were with that!! i didn’t rly have any expectations but i was blown away by how masterfully the beats were created… the melodies make the songs both fun and stoic and are absolutely ear candy, the way the elements of the beat progress make for this really nice formula (somewhat) that’s super catchy, and everything being drenched in reverb just makes it all stick in your head more. there’s a really nice balance between sharper and more delicate sounds as well throughout both in bladee’s approach and delivery and the beats. a few use piano samples which is cool and some other are kinda like journeys with how dynamic the beats are at times, like on close and topman… but all of them have some quality that make them stand out a lot more positively from most of the other rap projects i’ve listened to in recent memory. it’s soo flashy and electric while also giving these feelings of focus and introspectivity with how many different parts of life are talked about and conveyed through the music :o

something that i really like about rap projects that’s essential is the lyricism. to be honest i’m rly bad with paying attention to lyrics and actually having a feel of how good they are but for this i was looking forward to changing that since i wanted to see how good bladee was when it came to this. i don’t really remember much from 333 but i remember liking some of the flow and other stuff on that album and i was hoping that it would be better here and it again was crazy how good it was!! while 333 was more relaxed on the directness of the flow which i think was a good decision since of course it went production was much more soft, it was kind of a 180 for icedancer… the flow just goes harder with more pace and it’s more cohesive with how every line fits in one after another. probably not the best explanation but i just really really like how good the flow is on this project!! this is kind of a minor thing and may seem a bit silly but when i listen to rap projects i really like noticing the references in the lyrics to other things like tv shows and other people. it’s a really cool way to add more flair and fun to the song as a whole with how they are implemented and stuff!! a lot of the time i don’t get the references (cuz i’m dumb) soo i have to look them up or i just miss them in general but i think that’s still really cool cause it’s kinda like a subtle way for artists to let people know more about them since i think a lot of the time the best references will come from stuff they enjoy and are able to mention while writing their lyrics about whatever they want :P

another thing that i wanna talk about that’s seen throughout the album is features. this in general on rap projects is another way of creative expression that i don’t really encounter much in a lot of the other music i listen to… i think it’s more prominent in mainstream music (mostly pop / rap) but i don’t rly listen to that much soo it’s more rare for me :P i think the more artistic albums like rock, drone, and other genres of projects that i listen to don’t really have features because the way the music is created by the author is supposed to exclusively show a unique vision or multiple visions throughout the project in a consistent way. due to this, the author(s) work towards realizing this themselves and there’s not really much of a need for having details made externally unless it is in the author’s interest of doing so… but something that’s cool about rap projects is that in addition to the music, the lyrics and the different deliveries and styles that come from features help flesh another manner of expression that’s not seen everywhere in music. this all might seem like a reach or just doesn’t make sense or something, but i feel like “more artistic” albums, like the types and genres of projects that i’m thinking of made by artists or bands that deal with more delicate or intricate sounds and subjects, are kinda inherently introverted if they were to be personified, while rap projects are more extroverted and open, if that makes sense! of course, this can be untrue for some of either, as music is infinitely fluid, but i say this cause i think icedancer is a project that kinda fits the “extrovert” way of creation.

rap projects having other people, either actually on the song or behind the scenes to enhance the experience and create new connections, can be such a cool part of an album and i think that it’s something that icedancer does well too. yung lean, cartier’god, and thaiboy digital are all featured on this mixtape and of course their parts sound really good!! it was cool to listen to more of each of them, especially cartier god and thaiboy since i haven’t listened to their music before. interludes are a common thing seen on a lot of albums and while most of them are cool but not really that notable, which makes sense since they’re not really meant to be anyway. i wanted to mention cartier’god icedancer rly quickly though since it’s just really unique in the way that it’s just an amazing interlude… that’s it. his voice itself sounds amazing and the smooth flow and vibes of the song and the production work great with each other… it’s so simple but it works so well and it’s in a really good spot on the album too. it’s a great addition that feels both like an awesome bell and whistle and something that makes the continuity of the project stronger at the same time :P

to move on to my favorite songs, the first one i wanna write about is frosty the snowman. earlier i mentioned how a couple of songs on here sound like journeys made from bladee’s dreams and different life experiences merging together into usually the most mellow songs on the mixtape, and this is my favorite realization of that :P i say it cause one thing i thought about this track is that the parts where the pass filters are used in the beat made me think of an image of running through a valley full of snow with tons of hills to climb and run on. i absolutely luv pass filters (i think that’s what they are called anyway!!) in beats cause they can be really fun… from being used really quickly a few times like in kind of a sweeping motion to a more broad usage as a way to start or end a song by reducing the sound palette to a certain range, there’s a lot of ways filters are used in rap songs, and it’s safe to say i really liked how they were used here :>

i really liked the vocals on this song as well; i think the song is a lot about seclusion among other things and i thought using frosty the snowman as part of the lyricism was nice… it kinda contributes to the human aspect to his music which i’ve come to really like. the nods to frosty like the line “change shape for me, i know you hate on me” are cute too!! frosty the snowman himself is kinda fantasy but he’s also kinda a guy and the connections between the character and this song are cool to think about… i don’t really wanna get into it too much since i’ll probably look even dumber than i probably look right now but bladee talking about just being by himself using frosty the snowman as an allegory of sorts since he was designed to be kind of a temporary friend since he melts away cause of the heat in the spring was so well done. of course, an album called icedancer is kinda supposed to be like for the winter season from the start but the inclusion of this song as a whole sells it a lot more for me since i really like this song and it adds a lot to the winter / even holiday spirit which is awesome!!

since i wrote a lot about features, i wanted to make sure i wrote about a song that had a feature. originally i was gonna write about side by side which is another good song and i thought thaiboy’s feature on it was great ( and the fact that he played it at his wedding was so sweet!! :o ), but now i’m gonna write about inside out. i know a tiny bit more about yung lean since i’ve listened to a couple of his songs and i was also introduced to him by my friend but i never got to him which doesn’t surprise me but it’s still not cool!! i think she recommended me unknown memory which will be the album that i listen to when i get into yung lean… which i’m not sure when i will do so but i definitely wanna look more into drain gang eventually!

but anywayy the reason why i wanted to write about this song instead is rly just cause the lyrics are really cute! when i looked at the lyrics for the first time, which was actually just a little bit ago as of writing this, i realized that they are hopeful and really sweet too. here, bladee talks about the things he’d do for his s/o, like staying up at night and fighting and defending her from whomever to make her smile. i think @dailybladee posted a tweet that had a much more recent picture of bladee with his girlfriend and remembering it now when i’m learning about what’s actually being said during the song makes it even sweeter U^ ^U i remember being eager and really wanting to do whatever i could to make my s/o happy… it’s so cool to see bladee make a happy love song in general!! and yung lean’s verse is really nice too. it fits so well in the middle of the song with how good his voice sounds it matches the mood of the song a lot!! the lyrics for his verse as well are really nice; the fact that he mentioned sunsets since the whole symbolism behind them is awesome and his verse in general is just very thoughtful and optimistic about the future which is awesome too. the whole song kinda reminds me of hype and i think both bladee and lean do really well with it since they do just have that vibe at times when i listen to their songs. i’d also to quickly mention that as always the production is great on this as well; the idea behind the hype feeling i get from this track is kinda primarily because of the beat. something that i wanted to mention when talking about frosty the snowman that i forgot to write about is that i really love how the simpler production is still so effective. i wouldn’t really describe it as basic, since at times that word’s just used to degrade things, so maybe like stripped back or something?? all of the essentials are there, like the pads and other synths to drive the melody, the bass to add more depth to the song, of course the snares, cymbals, and kicks are integral, and the little things like the triangle strikes to have a bit more flavor in the song, and they all are controlled and used so well to where every beat is great to listen to and they’re able to both reciprocate and create the feelings of the songs, which is why i feel how i feel about the song and in turn how the song makes me feel!!

i don’t really like to write much about the intro to an album since it obviously always is really good and i like to talk about some other tracks that i think are underrated, but i can’t help myself from talking about smartwater since it’s just too good!! this song has a tonnn of things going on and it throws them all at you at once in the span of two and a half minutes that feels all too short. it’s like how time seems to go a lot faster when you’re not paying attention to it… it’s a really unique feeling that not even convoluted songs i can remember can emulate quite like this song can. at the same time, the song is actually really thoughtful, and it sets this mood of wanting to be hopeful and look towards towards the future while also being blunt at the same time. i think the genre of tweets that show lyrics from songs (like the genius pictures) are really cool and it actually helps me appreciate bladee more because once i actually looked at what he’s saying, it made me appreciate him both as a musician and a person more. i’ve written about it a bunch already, but what really compelled me was seeing a picture with the line “if you stand for nothing, what would you fall for?”... it surprised me a lot when i first saw it and it made me wonder more about the intricacy of his songwriting and i realized that he’s just crazy good at it :P it kinda goes back as well to the simple fact that i really should try to pay more attention to the music that i listen to.

i also wanted to write about waster since it definitely is one of my favorite tracks on icedancer, but i didn’t want to write too much about it since i talked about it earlier and to put it shortly its brilliance shines more once you listen to it and i’m unsure if i can really describe how so even if i actually write about it at length. waster makes me think of really bright lights. the fact that everything is high pitched also gives me this heavenly feeling… at the same time, it makes me think of a strong autumn breeze blowing against you. this song just makes me think about and feel lots of things; it has this both electronic and very relatable and life-like sound that manages to feel like it combines the best from both worlds in an unprecedented way. it’s so catchy and sticks in my head so easily!! i really think this is an amazing staple, both of this mixtape and of bladee’s discography in general and finding it and immersing myself in it reminds me of how i felt when i found some of my other favorite songs from rap projects and artists. addictive could definitely be a way to describe it, it’s really great to think about and i’m happy this was what convinced me to look into icedancer :>

because of how much i’ve written already, i don’t really wanna get too deeply into other songs on here, but i wanted to show some love to the second side of the mixtape since other than waster i didn’t extensively write about this side at all. it’s probably apparent that i prefer the first half over the other ( the first 5 tracks are literally just hit after hit after hit lol xP ) but there’s still some really good material here too!! dg jeans and feel like are shorter songs soo i don’t really wanna go on a whole tangent about them but the instant transition between the two was super unexpected when i first listened but i absolutely loved it too cause the change in rhythm just makes so much sense. it goes from this kinda spacey beat to a more lofty one and the choice to do this was such a good one since it kinda hits you hard but it’s not jarring at all, it just instantly moves from one to the other.

i also wanted to write a little bit about for nothing and anything since this is one of my favorite two track segments on the mixtape. i don’t really talk about closers a lot (ya this is kinda like a closer to the album even though silent boy is right after) but i thought these two were too good to pass up mentioning. i’ve been trying to not talk about it a lot since i didn’t wanna use it as a sort of explanation too much but the prod on anything is just super wintry. it’s so calm and the high synths remind me of actual christmas songs, more so from cartoons than anything else. i thought this song was really cute too cause of its lyrics, especially the lines of “it’s so cold, it’s so cold / it’s the coldest night” and “bad adrenaline, oh, they just say anything / just know they'd do anything to be in the spot you're in” i think about the latter a lot cause it sticks in my head since it makes me think about my life a lot. this is another example of how this mixtape’s actually helped me realize how interesting and good bladee’s discography is, and i think it’s great how sweet he can be at times. i also really like for nothing cause it’s one of the more straightforward songs on here and his flow is really smooth. the beat is also cool… it’s kinda hard to remember if guitars are even used anywhere else on the mixtape, but they’re used really nicely here and compliment the more energetic tone this song has. what the song itself is about kinda reminds me of when people say they do whatever their mind tells them to, like quinn had as her spotify bio for a while, since it’s just about not really feeling fulfillment or having a set purpose in life. it’s a pain to feel like this but thankfully i haven’t felt it in a while!! even though there really isn’t a universal set goal or purpose, that just means you can dictate what you wanna do in life however you want, even if it feels like you can’t attain it right now, just like how i felt and kinda still do sometimes :P

honestly, icedancer is a project that by all regards just feels revolutionary. everything here just comes together to make for a really great project, both in listening experience and its general expertise and process of creation!! i like looking into more well known releases since ofcc i wanna know why people like them a lot and i’m happy to have looked into more of bladee’s music since his music is just rly interesting and drain gang and the community around it (including the twitter accounts like yung lean brasil and dailybladee stuff) are fun to come across every once in a while xP icedancer is iconic, sensational, addictive, and every other cool thing you could call it!! i understand why so many ppl on the internet like it now and i’m happy that i do U^ ^U

Asalto Navideño by Willie Colón, Héctor Lavoe, and
Yomo Toro: 3 January⁂

something that’s become rly apparent to me throughout the past couple of months is that i’m quite frankly rly ignorant on a lot of things that i should know more about. most of the time, it’s not intentional, since i just have a habit of sticking to the same things and having a hard time with keeping up with other things that i don’t really have an interest in or just thing i guess you can say i take for granted or i don’t notice much in my daily life, but i’ve been wanting to work on that since even though ignorance is bliss, as the phrase goes… i don’t wanna be ignorant!! one thing i’ve admittedly been rly ignorant about is my heritage… my family is puerto rican, but i was born and raised for my entire life in louisville, and because of that i’ve just been more adjusted to the american setting and a lot less knowledgeable about my family’s culture and what it’s like to just be puerto rican and stuff. sure, we eat puerto rican food at home, i always make sure to talk in spanish at home ( both for ease of communication and for practice so i maintain my fluency xP ), and a few other things, but i definitely could be better with knowing other things about what it’s like to be puerto rican.

for starters, my mom has asked me rly basic things about puerto rico sometimes, like who their president is, who some famous celebrities who are from there / are puerto rican as well are, and other trivia stuff that a native / person who descended from a native / anyone like the first two who’s not dumb lik me should easily be able to answer… most of the time, i remember struggling to even come up with an answer to the question; the first time my mom asked me if i knew who the president and the first lady of puerto rico were, i think i just told her i had no idea and she made fun of me a bit for it U>_<U ( the way my mom makes fun of me is okay thoo it’s in a friendly way and i don’t blame her for doing so xP ). she knew i had an interest in learning stuff about other countries and just general geography but she found it funny that i didn’t know anything about the place where she came from and in hindsight that definitely is very silly of me!! tbh i didn’t really look into these other countries either, but the fact that i just didn’t bother to look into puerto rico at all was not cool… sure, everyone has gaps in their knowledge about their favorite places or their native places and stuff like that (i don’t rly know much about louisville either honestly, but i’ve been wanting to for a little while as well!!), but it’s different for me since i just didn’t know anything! :>

so, in my quest to slowly start getting better with learning more about lots of different things and being less ignorant, i decided to do something that goes with the holiday season!! now, i know that this entry will probably be published at least a week after christmas ends, and i’m not even sure if people are feeling festive anymore, but i don’t care since i knew this was gonna be late anyway…

a couple of weeks ago, my mom told me about jibara while we were in the car going somewhere. my mom and i always just talk randomly in the car, mostly cuz she just says stuff to me or asks me something, and i respond and we go from there. but i was interested about jibara, since you know how much i luv music, and i asked her what it was, and she put it on for me in the car for a little bit and i thought it actually was really cool!! later on, i listened to a couple of jibara songs from this playlist i found; i haven’t gotten through much yet, but i guess i found canto a borínquen interesting, maybe cuz of the cover or the name or the fact willie colon took part in making it, but whatever it was, i kept it in my liked songs and left it for the holiday season since i didn’t feel like working on my charmed entry at the moment :P

i honestly don’t think i listened to canto a borínquen that much, especially compared to a song like charmed, but it still remained in my mind because of a different reason. i like my spanish class both cause it’s easy and cause of my teacher. she’s really nice and we’ve talked a little bit throughout the semester, with us even sharing a couple of music recommendations between each other! like the loser i am, a majority of the people i’ve talked at school has been with my teachers… they can afford to hear me run on about silly things (mostly music) that most other people don’t care about, since they get paid for it anwyay UT~TU but that doesn’t matter right nowww… since i wanted to do something special for the last class of the semester, and since it was the last class she was gonna be my teacher since she was rotating to another class for the next semester, i decided to make a playlist for her to put on in the background full of spanish songs and she thought it was a cool idea and along with a bunch of other of my fav spanish songs, i put canto a borínquen on there. i thought it was a really cool pick and even though i’m not really good at making playlists nor do i make them often, i think i did a decent enough job!! not that i mattered anyway since there probably wasn’t anyone listening to the playlist… xP

i haven’t really had much experience with salsa. it’s something that, of course, i’ve heard a bunch since i grew up with a puerto rican family, made by artists like willie colón and jerry rivera, but my family also just listens to other music a lot more of the time. my mom loves reggaeton, and my grandparents mostly listen to christian music (majorly latin pop), so i don’t really know much salsa music or know any salsa musicians. not to mention that i also have been listening to my own music for a long while now… as you can tell, a lot of it is caused by my aforementioned ignorance, but i also just haven’t really had as much exposure to it. for the longest time, i didn’t go out of my way to ignore what my parents listened to, but i mostly just was going down a very different path, with very different mediums to find new music through, so it was obvious that i wasn’t really gonna know much about what my parents listened to. over the years, i’ve picked up a few artists that i’ve hear in the background over the years and actually started to listen to them, like aventura and bad bunny, and it’s been really cool since i’ve come to find music that, originally of course sounded good to me, with more depth to me than ever before. it shows me more about why my parents like them so much and allows me to appreciate my upbringing a lot more in a way that’s special to me, which is really nice!!

however, salsa is something that i haven’t looked into much until now, and with listening to asalto navideño, i thought it would’ve been a great first experience with salsa made by the greats willie colón and héctor lavoe, along with yomo toro!! i don’t think you could ever go wrong with colón; from what i’ve heard, his music is really good, both from the songs i’ve listened to and his ratings on rym, and i thought now would be a great time to try to tackle another thing i’ve been struggling with, since the new year is upon us, while doing it through a medium that i love… music!! U^ ^U

first thing i wanna write a bit more about regarding the music itself is canto a borínquen, which was the song that introduced me to this album. i have listened to a couple other songs that colón has made, like triste y vacía, and i’ve also already written about how the salsa genre itself has been in the background of my life - albeit, not very often - but, i still have yet to actually dive into a salsa album and see what’s so good about the music. the first thing about salsa that i’d probably think about is likely how important trumpets are… trumpets are a really cool instrument and i don’t think that a lot of the mainstream or even a lot of the music i listen to nowadays make use of it. it makes sense, since it’s definitely not the most universal instrument to use as its tone especially is more rough than say, a saxophone or something, but it still definitely is a versatile instrument that can take part in creating really vibrant and awesome soundscapes that other instruments may not be as effective in shaping. i think the way the trumpet took the lead in this song was something that convinced me a lot in wanting to look more into salsa, as it’s just so amazing to listen to how eager and enthusiastic the melody sounds. how the cuatro is then layered to where it kinda reminds me of sprinkles on a cake, yet they still bring so much energy and brilliance to the song, was something i just realized and it’s really cool how it’s done, especially on here.

then, of course, i have to mention the percussion, but it’s not drums this time!! i absolutely love all kinds of percussion… when i was in the school band a couple years ago, i stuck to percussion, and it was really fun being able to look at and learn how to play all of these different instruments that add so much support and even drive songs. the percussion instrument i like the most here are the congos. congos are an instrument that i rarely hear in the songs that i listen to, which is fine as well since there are places where they are not as well suited as others, but i think they are still really versatile as well and i really like their sound and pace. even though they are kinda always in the background for me, they still seem like an essential part of the song and they have their own flavor of impact on the song that i can’t remember hearing in a ton of the music i primarily listen to. it feels as if every part of the song feels like their own separate channels but when put together, they are extraordinarily cohesive in a way that is unique to salsa, and i think this is one of the things that makes the genre so attractive and makes me wanna keep coming back and listening to it.

it makes me think of how the compositions of songs are visualized at times, where there’s these 2d and 3d diagrams of spheres in a certain space. i think in a lot of music, the drums are the foundation, acting like a floor to everything and is where everything is built on. other times, that definitely isn’t the case, as songs can be led by other instruments or conventional drums can just not be needed for it at all, but for songs like this, and maybe this could make sense as a way to describe the genre of salsa, but it feels more like a different kind of shape where there is no certain foundation, but instead it’s like a pentagon or a hexagon or a square. every point can be connected to another in a straight line and while the music doesn’t come crashing down if you take a specific side out since there’s no specific foundation that everything is built of that each separate instrument builds off of in the music, everything still works together so well, and the lack of a specific foundation possibly makes it all work together even better since instead of each part of the music just being connected to different joints of the composition of the music, it’s all arranged in a roundabout way where everything has a more circular and closer connection to each other than they would if it was arranged with a specific foundation. this might seem likee kinda crazy, but i hope it makes sense to at least someone xP

another song that i really liked would be traigo la salsa. from first listen, i absolutely loved this song cause it just captures the cheerful vibe that i love about the genre so well!! my favorite part of the song would definitely be soneros… the first verse is really cool because of just how they sound, and the lyrics are written really well. even though they are pretty simple, from the vocalizations at the start to it sounding kinda like a christmas carol about spice, they are just really really fun and that’s what makes them really nice to listen to for me! i also like how from there, after lavoe starts singing, they change to a more supportive role in the song, but they still have that same emotion and energy that they had from the beginning. this along with how good lavoe’s singing as well makes it even better.

when i listened to this in the car for the first time, which was still before the new year began, i instantly fell in love with it, and it actually made me feel even better and really hopeful for the next year!! it’s rare for me to feel emotions when i listen to music, and even though it’s easier for me when i listen to new music, it was different for me this time since it felt really unique and heartfelt which i was happy about :> another percussion instrument i’d like to quickly talk about is the maracas!! i think they are something that’s seen in a lot of salsa music, and it’s something that i like hearing here a lot. they do take on more of a background role, but i think it’s great at supplementing and shaping how the music sounds. it has really nice rhythm that along with the congos work well to overall make the song more fresh and pick up the pace in a way that would definitely be more difficult if only one or the other were in the song. i don’t really do it much, but it’s really cool to learn more about the structures of genres sometimes and look into the roles of each instrument and stuff like that!! that’s something that i could try learning more about this year as well… xP

pescao is the start of the second volume of asalto navideño and i’d say that it’s probably my favorite song on the compilation!! to be honesttt i think the second half of the project is better than the first by a noticeable amount, and this is a really cool way to start it off. i noticed that there’s a distinct shift in style that separates the first half from the second… maybe it’s just cause the cuatro is deeper and so is the trumpet at the start of the song or maybe how they both start playing at the beginning makes it different?? i’m not rly sure :P

but basicallyy this song is split into half from a standard salsa segment to the second half getting rid of the trumpets and instead you can primarily hear a whistle, maracas, and some bells!! i’m not sure if they are bells, but they kinda sound like them :P they really remind me of flashing christmas lights, where they each light up at their different times and they light up the room a ton. something i forgot to mention and look into before was the bass that you can hear throughout the songs also, but it’s something that i most notice in the second half of pescao. even though i think bass melodies are a lot simpler than other string instruments’ parts are in songs, they still definitely are important since they are an instrument that have the ability to drive the rhythm and i think it sounds really nice here too! with the lack of trumpet on this part, i find myself really resonating with how the bass kinda feels like it’s hugging both my ears and the song itself, maybe like a yarn coat or a sweater that feels really nice :o i think it’s really cool how much you can hear the bass throughout salsa music, at least how much it’s used throughout the album, but it stood out so much here that i just had to talk about it since it would be really silly of me to just let it pass by me!! :P

the last song i’ll write about is doña santos… i absolutely love this song cause it’s another really simple one yet it’s still so fun to listen to!! it’s all about dinner on christmas day and even though i don’t really eat much ever even if it’s during a special time like christmas ( which is a shame tbhh :< ) i still like eating foods during themm since the cooking is always really good!! i especially love arroz con gandules, which is one of my fav dishes ever; it’s a staple of puerto rican food and my parents make it a lot since it goes with a lot of things like meat and stuff :P i don’t really eat pork a lot but it tastes good as well!! this song honestly makes me happy to listen to since it’s great to just embrace the fun spirit of the song cause of how good the christmas food can be. what makes it better is that the cuatro especially shines on this song with how much more involved and free it is compared to the rest of the album and the trumpets sound even more joyful and loud here which is just so cool to hear since with the volume the tone changes as well!!

i also really like how prominent the piano is on the intermissions throughout the song… i find it interesting that the piano is something that is used a lot throughout the album, since it’s definitely not something that i’d think of a lot when thinking about the music or salsa in general, yet it actually fits really well here. how it’s used kinda reminds me of how jazz uses the piano as well, yet in contrast to jazz where it’s integral to the music, it takes more of a background role here. but, a lot of the time, you’ll hear it not just in this song, but in throughout the album as well where it goes along with the melody, which adds some more depth to the music. it’s cool to me how universal and versatile the piano is, more so than even guitars and the more standard instruments are… you can find them anywhere, whether it be the craziest to calmest of genres and sounds, and this is a great example of how cool the piano is!! i’m no pianist, but i still recognize its greatness nonetheless U^ ^U

i know that i am super super late to the holiday season by now but the goodness of this album really just makes me not care about it anymore xP i don’t think i’ve done something creative for the holiday season (like art and stuff) in at least a long time so it was nice to be able to do something for that since i wanted to get involved with the holiday spirit this year!! next holiday season when i get even more involved (you’ll see…) i hope to still be writing in my diary and write another holiday themed entry or at least make some art or something since that would be awesome!! alsoo it would definitely be cool to look into some more puerto rican music, whether it be by colón and lavoe or by someone else! to be honest, i already have an album in mind that i think would be cool to write about someday!! it’s a shame that more people on rym don’t look into puerto rican music… colón and lavoe are the only know that i know that are remotely well known and even then i don’t think they are that popular. bad bunny is the only other artist i can think of that is kinda well known on there but he’s crazyyy popular so that doesn’t surprise me. they are definitely missing out!!! :P