hello, little thing! where did you come from!

from the sky!

neat! i like the way you sound. you sound like silky alginate passion

that metaphor was a little forced-quirky, wasn’t it?

uh … so tell me about yourself

my name is “Jaago” by Lifafa! my genre on apple music is listed as “Electronic” but i am much more than that, i think

i think so too. what all is the purpose of such a vague signifier? what on earth am i meant to understand about the album’s content from seeing that?

well, that there are non-analog sounds in me, i guess — a lot of them!

fair enough! i accept that there is perhaps not really much of a “genre” for what you are, and what’s there is more of a placeholder than anything, cause we’re supposed to be in some kind of Post-Genre world now anyways, right, what with the internet having this unfathomably large repository of music for any old schmuck to find and be inspired by, instead of the old days where you were limited to what was, like, at the record store, or what your friends at the time were fucking with, or whatever

are you going on a Music Writer’s Tangent?

oh, heavens no! not in front of company. i’ll save that for my blog.

you have a blog?

yeah! i listen to sounds and i describe how i feel about the sounds

why did you phrase it like that? are you ashamed of your work? do you feel the need to abstract it to me in some kind of false-humility “haha it’s nothing much”-type way?

i don’t appreciate this

you should tell them about me. on your blog.

how come?

because i’m good! i’m an excellent piece of work! i am so excellent! just listen to me!

i gotta give it to you there. you do sound amazing. you’re this, like, supple mess of fog and brick and mortar, shaped into a swan

what on earth is that supposed to mean?

i don’t know. it seemed appropriate at the time.

you read too many pitchfork reviews huh

shut up! metaphors are COOL

you’re a *reads the pitchfork Kid A review once* meme waiting to happen

i’m COOL

nuh uh. dork

you’re just mad because i can express my feelings creatively, without cynicism, and

whatever oh my god! just feature me on your blog already, music boy

ok. you do sound beautiful, after all. especially your track “Mere Saath”. what a stunner!

i know.

^~*

hi, SECAT here!

great news, everybody! i have a very special GUEST BLOGGER here with me today to say some words about Shinichiro Yokota’s “I Know You Like It” — acclaimed french music critic PHILIPPE ÉCLAIR!

take it away, philippe!

ahh, thank you, thank you, mister ZECAT

first i must say: ahh, zis record! it is like a breath of fresh air, oui

i listened to mister Yokota’s record Do It Again and Again when it released in, eeh, two thousand and sixteen

and, eeh, frankly, i was not so, how do you say, “enamoured” with it (ah, LOVE — ze most French of emotions … )

it kind of, eeh, sucked le ass, à mon avis

but zis album, zis, eeh, I Know You Are Liking It! oh, mon dieu! it is sensationnel

first off — première — zis is one of ze most wonderfully un-self-important house records i have heard in all my esteemed, eeh, 40 years as a music critic

mister yokota, you see, his only concern for his work, is zat it be pretty, and good-sounding

nice chords zat stack on top of very ethereal, inconsequential percussion (zere is a great focus on the HIGH END here that is eeh, how do you say, perhaps “lacking” in some contemporaneous projects) —

it is a plasticine creation

made out of spun sugar

its only thought is, eeh, to entertain

and it is all ze better for doing so

if one was in a mood peu charitable, zey could perhaps complain zat ze effect is, eeh, very “cloying”

which is fair, of course, but, ah, mon ami! —

isn’t it lovely in zis day and age to have zis nice little record that does not demand your attention or your critical ear

and just sounds nice

and makes you want to dance!

beaucoup, beaucoup, BEAUCOUP belle.

back to you, zecat 🙂

thanks, philippe! ditto to all that.

shinichiro yokota produced possibly my favorite house track of all time, “Do It Again”,

and this whole record pretty much matches that standard of quality. of particular note at time of writing are the tracks “night drive 2.0” and “lens (1992)”. yokota creates such tightly enclosed mixes. it is kind of like you are in the aural equivalent of a sensory deprivation tank, or a small cupboard

so take it from both philippe and me — this is totally worth checking out if you’re a fan of dance music! ^~*

i started listening to this EP (this EP being “and departt from mono games” by loft) maybe five seconds ago and immediately thought “i want to liveblog this experience” because well, right from the start, it is just ah

ooh

ouch

so the first song is “Lassanamae” and i feel like i’m gonna fucking die

there are wiggly creature shudders and somebody whispering at me and i want to go home

it’s great

oh my god make it stop

i love it?!

you get the sense that she opened up the ol’ DAW and just did what the fuck ever

“And Eats Itself and Eats Itself and Eats Itself” goes in a more conventional direction — if SOPHIE were spinning at berghain or something (dumb metaphor, sorry)

loft LIKES her aggressive stereo panning yes she DOES

this EP makes me feel physically ill

like i’m being digested by

oh my god it’s

ok i’m no good at describing this as it happens because i’m sitting here trying to think of a metaphor and then the noise stabs me in the eardrum and i have to collect myself

no alright here’s a metaphor: “it is like a poisonous caterpillar is being rubbed against me, such that its deadly lil spines (spines? threads? stingers? what do you call a caterpillar’s poison-deliverers) do not actually go into my skin, but brush against it in a uniquely horrifying way —

you are physically made to feel how close you are to death.”

“sSLABicks” —

somebody is throwing up on me

this is so fucking cool

this probably is not as terrifying on speakers but on headphones you are being dangled over a pit of lava and the heat singes your eyebrows

point of criticism: this is absolutely structureless

wait no it’s not

fucking hell i don’t know

you know that stupid quote that’s like “talking about music is like dancing about architecture”

for the first time in my life i am begrudged to admit that maybe it holds water, on occasion

“That Hyde Trakk” started while i was writing about “sSLABicks” and it’s actually my favorite holy smokes smokes smokes

impeccable accelerated buildup to THE TIGHTEST breakbeat shit i wanna kiss and hug the tentacled monster that is this thing, smooch its gruesome beak

it might devour me but i’ll be Damned if it does not define Savage Beauty

am i being hyperbolic? yea, probably, aren’t i always with things i like?

whatever!! passion is cool. music is cool. it’s so fun to be excited about things. you have no idea.

i think this loft person hates & loves me in equal measure, yes

i might call the production “needless flexing” if i weren’t so enamored with it. it is certainly doing the Very most

it’s at like its climax now and oh my god this shit is too LOUD my ears are going to explode (but i daren’t turn it down!),

and then it ends.

“and departt from mono games.” by loft. go listen to this god damn!!

music is awesome

i need to take a nap what the hell

i have. i fell asleep to Aggromancer’s “Turbera” this evening, infact

and the album was less than 30 minutes long, so, well

i’m not sure if that’s a good sign

my thoughts before i fell asleep were that the album was a solidly arranged techno project with brief flashes of textural brilliance obscured by the cliche sawing synth womp-womps and bloops that every other techno producer seems to regard as de rigeur for the genre

that’s a little mean but what i’m trying to say is that this album sounds cool until it doesn’t, and when it doesn’t, it doesn’t for a while

at least to my ears

to my tired ears

i need to go to bed earlier

~~~ by Ana Roxanne, more specifically

i was trawling around r/ambientmusic, i think, and someone had recommended this as one of the better ambient projects of the year 2019 thusfar

ok! yeah! i can get behind that claim

it is a good ambient album

i think

i’m not so sure what constitutes a good ambient album (or, sorry, EP) —

it is the genre that i most frequently operate in when i make music, and yet i feel so disconnected from its ethos at times.

earlier in the day i listened to Xièxie by Celes, for example,

and people have been raving about that one online, too —

but it brought me pretty much nothing at all, emotionally. it all sounded nice. it was certainly hypnotizing — it didn’t feel like a whole hour and thirty minutes had passed by its end.

still, though, so much of the listening experience felt like dead air to me. the noise did not move. it would pick up its bags and walk a few steps and then sit down on the stoop and have a glass of water.

which i think i am capable of enjoying at the right times, but, well

it wasn’t the right time. not a good period of my life for meditative art, for ambience.

i am so very anxious.

i am starting a very new, very scary thing in my life soon.

i cannot let my ears sit still enough to revel in a texture right now. i can’t even really listen to my own ambient works.

my life is at odds with my creative and artistic instincts. isn’t that awful?

you’d think the outside tumult might make it easier to retreat into that space — to envelop myself in it — but, no, not quite so.

things will hopefully settle down soon enough for me.

anyway, three tildes.

it is very blissful and moving.

it is not anything that i can quite bear to experience right now, but I still listened to all of its thirty or so minutes — and i think that speaks to its fundamental beauty. it is worth looking at, if you possess more serenity than i.

music is good. i’m not sure if music is what i need right now.

i may have to remove myself from it for a while.

maybe in a month or so, i can enjoy things like this again, without feeling like i’m wasting my time.

okokokok

this fucking album

it’s really cool

it’s apex cool

it is the apotheosis of cool (that is HYperbole but dang nabbit if this album aint gettin me stoked! it’s lovely)

wait, sorry

it’s The Age of Immunology by Vanishing Twin in case you were wondering

back to gushing — it’s a delicious psych swirly-wirly jam session of loveliness

it sounds maybe like what a very cool ghost would listen to, like;

the ghost gestures for you to come into their home which is inside a huge hollowed-out tree; they pop VANISHING TWIN on the ol’ phonograph (because, like, duh they have a phonograph, they’re an Old Spirit)

and they’re like “yeah i like this it sounds real tight”

and you’re there in the corner of the tree hollow just losing your mind because

because this RECORD! it’s so AIRY and LIGHT and PLAYFUL, and beautiful — you dissociate to “You Are Not an Island” — it is like the kind of song that plays when you are in a movie and you are driving through the Pacific Northwest, or something

you keep looking over at the ghost like Are You Hearing This Shit? and they’re like tappin their little ghosty feet and nodding in that kind of low-key way that people and/or incorporeal entities with good taste have when they show you the shit they like

this ghost, man

you HAVE to be their friend. you’ve decided.

maybe you can get them a vanishing twin poster for their birthday or something? you bet they’d love that.

the record ends and you ask when you can see them again

there is so much cool wibbly shit happening in the background — so many shapes and textures, yes

the mix is very thoughtful — things are placed all around your ears, great application of reverb to add space to a mix rather than pushing everything out to some awkward middle distance of ringing frequencies

my very favorite songs were the aforementioned “You Are Not an Island,” as well as “Backstroke,” and “Language Is a City (Let Me out!)” (the capitalization of these song titles strikes me as very considered — what’s with leaving “out” in lowercase there? i’m sure there’s a reason. this is a very well-thought out experience)

(or maybe they just haven’t read the Chicago style guide)

but yes anyways

what a freakin album

i don’t know if i have a score in mind for it — with things i like, i tend to be very skittish with assigning a numerical value to the quality of the experience, cause then i get caught up in, like, categorically ranking everything i enjoy into a numbered list, and that kind of kills the magic — like, i’ll be listening to something and catch myself thinking stuff like “hm this is better than i had initially assessed, i’d better move it up a few spots in my list” and then my head starts hurting when i try to mentally adjust its position — moving it up, simultaneously moving other things down, etc.

it’s kind of like the thing where you can’t visualize a billion or even a million cupcakes or your brain starts to fold in on itself

what i’m saying is that it (it being The Age of Immunology by Vanishing Twin) is very good, and that i would recommend it.

hell yeah man

music is awesome