Zhanteimi

This opens with an orgasm of music, culminating in the beautiful, ethereal vocals of Amanda Parsons. The electric piano work on this album is extraordinary, and the evocative vocals and woodwinds just slay in their exquisite delicacy.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

This album is evocative and atmospheric (though perhaps not as deeply) like the Wardruna project, but it has heavier proper rock elements as well as a hint of black metal vocals on some of the tracks. The strength of this album is its collaboration. Even the sparse female vocals at the beginning give it a nice touch before disappearing forever beneath the strength of all-male choruses. The horns are at once droning and anthemic, a feat I suppose wouldn't be easy to achieve.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

He dances around the fire and sings about the rhythm having his soul, all while referencing the lives of coyotes and eagles. He has hands laid on him, he has the kiss of life revive him, his monkey is shocked into life and understanding (in this case, jealousy). This is the album of a man seeking inspiration and life beyond the ordinary as he encounters heretofore unknown cultures, meditates on modern-day cultural practices, and dips his toe into 1980s politics.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

Brown and Roach popped up on my radar in a casual chat about jazz. We were listing off our favorite artists/performers, and after I was done, someone said, “Impressive list, but you missed Brown and Roach”. Since I respected the opinion of the person who said that, I looked them up, and yeah, I missed them. I’m glad to be expanding my feeble jazz knowledge and not just falling into a fusion hole. I also have hardly anything from the 50s in my collection, and what’s there is mostly jazz now. By the way, this may look like a live set, but it ain’t. Sonny Rollins really elevates things with his tenor sax. There’s so much wonderful back and forth with the alternating soloing!

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

Apparently this album was played a lot at college parties. Since I missed that whole scene, I am able to enjoy this album. This is, however, one of the most front-loaded albums I've ever heard. As a bonus, I love how they got Joanna Newsom to play the mom in the video of "Kids". That song is such an earworm that everything after it on the album, though good, suffers by comparison.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

When I was a kid, “The Seven Chinese Brothers” was my favorite storybook. Water imagery and dark themes are often linked in art, and here it’s no difference. It must be part of the human consciousness, that inscrutable unknown that surrounds us, even when we cannot see it. I always feed a touch sad when I listen to an R.E.M. album. I guess it’s because of the texture of songs like “Camera”.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

This album is surreal, challenging, progressive, unexpected, beautiful, ugly, calm, and frantic. These musicians know what they're doing with all their instruments and with the variety of sounds they play with throughout, and they've got Mary Halvorson on vocals at least part of the time, so that's a big plus. This album is a sophisticated journey through music Animal Collective only wishes it could make. Here’s a sample of how fringe they go on the album.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

My new year begins, as it did last year, with thoughts of David Bowie. I wonder if this will become a tradition. Anyway, I'm spending this third anniversary of Bowie's death with my favorite album of his: the 1969 David Bowie, better known as Space Oddity.


I am continually astounded by the sheer creative beauty of this album, its illimitable poetry and magic. From "Space Oddity" to "Cygnet Committee" to "Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud" to "Memory of a Free Festival", this album catches the spirit of the late 60s perfectly: naive young people thinking music and love could save the world, dreamers forming clubs and societies for the sole purpose of getting together and creating art. "Cygnet Committee" just keeps on giving to me. Bowie creates a whole world in one song, from the ends of despair to the heights of an unrealized hope, from the small club of likeminded artists to the wide expanse of a future horizon. There's so much room here for my imagination to explore.

When Bowie was on point, his interviews could be incisive and profound, and probably my favorite of his is his 1999 BBC interview.


The BBC covers a lot of ground in this 16-minute sit-down with the contemplative, philosophical, exuberant artist. Bowie talks of his exquisite roleplaying ability, borne of a kind of shyness of the stage, even though he wanted in his youth nothing more than to write musical theater, and so he reinvented himself throughout the 70s, living out in rock lifestyle his dream of writing musicals. He was a creator, a storyteller, and not just a songwriter. Related to the constant adopting of roles, he seems to be happy in not knowing who he really is. I'm not sure if I believe him, though. He knows a lot about himself. Well, he's better at describing himself than identifying himself.

They also briefly cover substance abuse in the interview, and Bowie talks of when he was young and how he would sabotage relationships in order to create the tension he needed to write. I appreciate the brutal honesty about his alcoholism, too. Bowie was a man of such refreshing honesty.

And then they get to what I consider is the most fascinating part of the conversation: the internet. He is prescient in his appreciation of what the internet is capable of, and he touches on how it is a tool by which the artist is demystified in the estimation of the audience. It is the decentralized voice, image, and media through which listeners interact with music--the gatekeepers are dead, a fact he is very happy about. With the rise of genre identification, music has become more about the audience than the trailblazing artist who stands above everyone and leads, pointing the way to the stars. The internet exemplifies the democratization of ideas. And it isn't just as tool, as the interviewer believes. It's "an alien lifeform", both exhilarating and terrifying in its potential. This musing on what the internet means brings Bowie to a contemplation of the philosophy of art: that art is not completed until the the audience brings its interpretation to it. This is what the internet will highlight and expand upon.

Hats off to Bowie for grace in the face of idiocy. That interviewer is an obtuse, condescending, scoffing asshole.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

Somebody put something in the water at the end of 1970, stepped back, and watched from the shadows as all-that-is-awesome unfolded in the next year. The vocals on this album are so effortless and cool, the guitars cocky and energetic. One day I’m going to have to listen to this album as I watch the sunrise.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic

Zhanteimi

This is my favorite Stones album. I’m not a super fan of the band’s career in general, but I can’t deny how amazing of a blues rock album this is. I mean, it’s the kind of work where, at the end of every song, you just shake your head in disbelief and wonder if it can get any better. And then it does. It accomplishes perfectly what it sets out to do: make a cool, swaggering record of tavern blues songs. The testosterone-driven hedonism is strong on this one.

__________________
Zhanteimi

LetsTalkMusic