New Particles belatedly hand-snatched from the tube of the Large Genre Collider for the week ending 2023-03-24 in the federated search for connected joy.
| 1 |
a crowd of rebellion |
"Room key" |
single |
There's a touching irony to the idea that an old-gen print publication, |
| 2 |
Niki |
"ジッタードール (feat. Lily)" |
ERROR |
raised long ago on the conceit that writing about popular music can be as important as news, |
| 3 |
TOKYO TEFUTEFU |
"double - syoen, tou Ver." |
syoen, tou 5 |
could garner brief online credibility |
| 4 |
IA |
"MAIDEN BLUE (IA Ver.)" |
single |
by lobbing one of its most lucrative current subjects |
| 5 |
BABYMETAL |
"Mirror Mirror" |
THE OTHER ONE |
out of context as a critical philistine. |
| 6 |
KRD8 |
"NADESIKORANBU" |
single |
Whether Ed Sheeran does or doesn't understand the enduring cultural role of thoughtful criticism |
| 7 |
mercuro |
"Gekijyouhoukai literacy" |
single |
I do not really know, |
| 8 |
ExWHYZ |
"ANSWER" |
single |
although if you subject a demonstrably competent musician to a simultaneous barrage |
| 9 |
ALICETOPIA |
"Uroboros Symmetry" |
In Dreams |
of popular acclaim and critical disdain for long enough, |
| 10 |
BiSH |
"SPARK" |
Bye-Bye Show 2 |
you shouldn't really be surprised if they start to side with only one of those. |
| 11 |
Finally |
"Fighter" |
single |
I spent 12 years writing music reviews, once. |
| 12 |
Kolokol |
"Compass" |
Compass +1 |
I'm probably not going to do that again. |
| 13 |
PIGGS |
"BOO!SHUT" |
single |
I think, though, that anybody lining up to score points off of Ed saying nobody needs music reviews |
| 14 |
Su凸ko D凹koi |
"FuzokujyoTonoKoi" |
single |
is contributing less-useful noise to our shared cultural experience by smug offense-taking |
| 15 |
DIALOGUE+ |
"Marutto Jibun Jidai" |
Kasuka de Tashika 5 |
than Ed is contributing by continuing to play arena shows with a guitar and a loop pedal. |
| 16 |
RAINASH |
"Reprint of Tragedy" |
single |
Pretending that streaming hasn't changed the role of writing about music |
| 17 |
yuragi |
"I Liked You Through The Veil" |
single |
is obtuse and/or cynical. |
| 18 |
Nanawoakari |
"忘れないでベイベー" |
single |
We used to write about music in order to cross a moat of silence. |
| 19 |
Motohiro Hata |
"Life is Art !" |
Paint Like a Child |
Not entirely, of course, but anywhere off the summit of the monoculture |
| 20 |
Czecho No Republic |
"Journey" |
single |
you had to at least account for the likelihood that your readers weren't listening to the same music you were hearing, |
| 21 |
BUCK-TICK |
"Mugen Loop" |
Mugen Loop +1 |
and were vanishingly unlikely to change that while reading, |
| 22 |
RAZOR |
"GRAVITY EMOTION" |
GRAVITY EMOTION +2 |
whatever you egotistically imagined about what they would rush out to purchase after the experience. |
| 23 |
BabyKingdom |
"GAMUSHARISING" |
GAMUSHARISING +2 |
The craft of describing music in words is noble and refinable, of course; |
| 24 |
Kings and Queens |
"One Tiny Venue" |
single |
like portrait painting from life, |
| 25 |
MOLA BLUE |
"Not Meant to Be" |
single |
or keeping a coal-fired locomotive running at peak fossil-consuming inefficiency. |
| 26 |
poptropicaslutz! |
"ready set go" |
single |
Not all real skills are necessary. |
| 27 |
Fire-Toolz |
"The Great Allower" |
single |
We no longer have to write in the space between listeners and music, |
| 28 |
JPEGMAFIA |
"Fentanyl Tester" |
SCARING THE HOES |
or even really can. |
| 29 |
Brevin Kim |
"The Poison's The Weather" |
single |
We stand to the side, in loquacious disregard, |
| 30 |
James Ivy |
"L-Trip" |
L-Trip +2 |
lucky that written language gives us a way |
| 31 |
dashie |
"let it all out" |
single |
to bid for the spare senses. |
| 32 |
kennedyxoxo |
"goodmorning los angeles" |
single |
What will we do with them? |
| 33 |
Stand and Wave |
"Easygoing" |
Shamble Into Frame 4 |
The canonical rejoinder to Ed's nominal rhetorical dismissal, |
| 34 |
SayWeCanFly |
"Amor" |
Beneath The Roses |
reiterated plentifully enough to kind of make his point as much as dispel it, |
| 35 |
Dev Lemons |
"Dizzy Vision" |
single |
is that we write about experience to explain its cultural importance and context. |
| 36 |
NOILION |
"Divine Speed (feat. Foggy-D)" |
ELEMENTS 5 |
And yes, of course, that's a thing, sometimes done. |
| 37 |
As Everything Unfolds |
"Slow Down" |
Slow Down 5 |
Can't Slow Down does it. |
| 38 |
A Dark Reborn |
"Illusions" |
The Flight 3 |
Major Labels does it. |
| 39 |
Enchantya |
"Collective Souls" |
single |
It's harder, but still doable, at shorter lengths with shorter lead-times. |
| 40 |
Asylum Pyre |
"The True Crown (I seek Your War)" |
Call Me Inhuman |
It's also very clearly not what a lot of perfectly good writing about music mainly achieves, |
| 41 |
Ignea |
"Dunes" |
Dunes +1 |
or even intends to. |
| 42 |
Eleine |
"We Are Legion" |
single |
Most of our experiences are far more experience than culture, individually, |
| 43 |
Scarlet Aura |
"Rock în sânge și voință" |
single |
and share a cultural significance with countless similars. |
| 44 |
Floor Jansen |
"My Paragon" |
Paragon |
You can explain the use of autotune as a deliberate sonic element |
| 45 |
Decadence Dust |
"Rejected" |
Lighthouse |
rather than a surreptitious corrective |
| 46 |
LYRRE |
"Chariot of Sun" |
single |
once, |
| 47 |
Dragony |
"The Dead Queen's Race" |
single |
but there were a hundred songs that seemed briefly novel for their mechanized discretion, |
| 48 |
Smoulder |
"Victims of Fate" |
single |
and now it's just a thing we do. |
| 49 |
Ihsahn |
"The Observer" |
Fascination Street Sessions 3 |
Songs outnumber cultures. |
| 50 |
Pyramaze |
"Fortress" |
Fortress +1 |
If you only write about one to explicate the other, |
| 51 |
Teramaze |
"Chaos In The Way" |
single |
you can afford to hibernate or learn to shovel coal with the years between changes. |
| 52 |
Nerve End |
"The Big Sleep" |
single |
We keep writing about music in between upheavals, if we do, |
| 53 |
Excalion |
"Amuse Me" |
Once Upon a Time |
because it's a thing in itself, a learnable craft |
| 54 |
Magnus Karlsson’s Free Fall |
"Holy Ground" |
single |
with its own capacity for elucidating joy or evoking it. |
| 55 |
Arjen Lucassen's Supersonic Revolution |
"The Rise Of The Starman" |
The Rise Of The Starman +1 |
We write into the thrumming spaces around the music |
| 56 |
Lion's Share |
"United" |
single |
for the same reasons we dance, or air-drum, or hold hauntedly still: |
| 57 |
Hanging Garden |
"The Construct" |
The Garden |
to form a participatory space around majestic inspiration. |
| 58 |
Marianas Rest |
"Auer" |
Auer |
A less-glib put-down of Ed Sheeran wouldn't be "I made up my own mind and you suck", |
| 59 |
Kalmah |
"Drifting in a Dream" |
Drifting in a Dream +1 |
it would be "nobody feels inspiredly and expressibly more human while your soulless songs are pointlessly humming". |
| 60 |
Immortal |
"War Against All" |
single |
Except, as is usually the case, refining your hatred clarifies your own weaknesses. |
| 61 |
Keep Of Kalessin |
"Hellride" |
Katharsis |
Ed Sheeran's fans aren't living any culturally impoverished way that substituting Elliott Smith would enrich. |
| 62 |
Wormwitch |
"Weapons Against Despair" |
single |
Arguably Ed Sheeran is exactly what you get by turning Elliott Smith's depression down far enough that he stays alive to keep making music, |
| 63 |
Mork |
"Indre Demoner" |
Dypet |
but now who's settling for cheap soundbites that don't reward scrutiny? |
| 64 |
Breath Of Wind |
"Feelings" |
single |
And isn't that the only aesthetic judgment that matters, or at least endures? |
| 65 |
Ne Obliviscaris |
"Misericorde I - As the Flesh Falls" |
Exul |
When you pay attention, does it buy you anything? |
| 66 |
Oath Of Cranes |
"Puja - Celebrate the Negation of Hope" |
single |
We do not read about art to be taught the correct response, |
| 67 |
Bonjour Tristesse |
"Against Leviathan" |
single |
nor usually to be taught the correct elements of a canonical repsonse; |
| 68 |
Usnea |
"The Compleated Sage" |
The Compleated Sage +1 |
we read for the same reason that we listen: |
| 69 |
Liturgy |
"Djennaration" |
93696 |
to appreciate encodings of joy. |
| 70 |
Zbava |
"Riedegost" |
single |
We read while listening to appreciate multi-modal encodings of joy. |
| 71 |
Kjell Braaten |
"Savannah" |
The Cabin 5 |
The channels persist in emotional time, |
| 72 |
Smorodina Reka |
"Путь домой" |
single |
which allows for long books about short records |
| 73 |
Cruachan |
"The Queen" |
The Living and The Dead |
or brief illuminations of barely condensed weeks. |
| 74 |
Shores Of Null |
"Darkness Won't Take Me" |
The Loss of Beauty |
Failures of synergy are sometimes merely victims of mismatched scale. |
| 75 |
Antichrisis |
"One Last Time" |
single |
An 8-second visual loop would have to be pretty dense to reward the amount of scrutiny |
| 76 |
A Pregnant Light |
"In Gaul" |
Capacity For Living |
a 3:42 song proposes. |
| 77 |
Depeche Mode |
"Never Let Me Go" |
Memento Mori |
A dismissive tweet echoes a couple times before exponential decay takes it |
| 78 |
Herbert Grönemeyer |
"Das ist los" |
Das ist los |
and the song remains. |
| 79 |
Saltatio Mortis |
"Taugenichts" |
single |
We write about music exactly to liberate ourselves from enforced simultaneity, |
| 80 |
Subway To Sally |
"Weit ist das Meer" |
Himmelfahrt |
to make a world in which we are not always required to attend in a room |
| 81 |
Killus |
"Grøtesk" |
Grøtesk |
to experience unloneliness, |
| 82 |
Viva Suecia |
"Últimas Voluntades - Canción Original De La Película" |
single |
and thus one in which we are not required to trade agency for love. |
| 83 |
Carmen 113 |
"Lánzame Hacia Ti" |
single |
Feeling superior to people who don't hate Ed Sheeran |
| 84 |
Ed Sheeran |
"Eyes Closed" |
single |
is no more virtuous than hating people who like ice cream |
| 85 |
Dulce María |
"Pienso En Ti" |
single |
because there aren't enough flavors for everybody to have one that only they love |
| 86 |
Indica |
"Vuonna 95" |
single |
and 30 that only they despise. |
| 87 |
Katri Ylander |
"Hautaan asti" |
single |
Do you know how to dance with your eyes closed? |
| 88 |
One Blood Namibia |
"Kautira" |
single |
Or in the dark? |
| 89 |
Nhii |
"Warawa Wara" |
single |
Or to a pedal loop with something simple and earnest sung over it? |
| 90 |
Mychildhood |
"The Soil My Perfect Family Theme sonng" |
single |
To something loved by millions of people you don't know? |
| 91 |
Sbahle |
"Ubani Obayazi" |
single |
Or don't understand? |
| 92 |
Nthabeleng |
"Malome" |
Siki e fetang lerato |
Arguably Ed Sheeran is to music what vanilla is to ice cream, |
| 93 |
Cevuzile |
"Kuyashisa" |
Isazochomelana 3 |
and I'm exactly the kind of person who invariably orders the strangest flavor they have today, |
| 94 |
Indiya |
"Amaqhaw'ezulu" |
Lezo Ntuthwane |
but that's only an explanation of how ice cream and music impose different physiology. |
| 95 |
Bobomfanawepiki |
"Anombamba nibuyenaye" |
Mighty Worrior |
As these playlists ruefully and correctly suggest, |
| 96 |
Karyendasoul |
"Jacaranda" |
single |
I would eat all of the ice cream flavors if there were any way for it to not make me fat again, |
| 97 |
Thembelani Mbilini |
"Ezulwini" |
Ngena Noah |
and the "again" is neither idle nor unrelated. |
| 98 |
Artwork Sounds |
"Awesome God" |
single |
Vanilla ice cream is awesome. Vanilla is a lovely and unmistakable flavor, |
| 99 |
L.A. Guns |
"Diamonds" |
single |
and we are probably lucky to live on a planet that supports it. |
| 100 |
LeBrock |
"Can't Breathe" |
Can't Breathe +3 |
I don't think we need to head off into space on generation ships |
| 101 |
Hoity-Toity |
"G.W.I.F.O.T.Y." |
As Above 5 |
to verify that other worlds have completely different flavors they have contrived to regard as mundane, |
| 102 |
Royale Lynn |
"Redneck Rockstar" |
single |
but even were we to land on one and find it teeming with indistinguishable redheaded loop-pedal dullards after all, |
| 103 |
Alana Springsteen |
"if you love me now" |
TWENTY SOMETHING: Messing It Up 6 |
no amount of sharing can nullify joy from outside of your heart. |
| 104 |
MEG MYERS |
"A NEW SOCIETY" |
TZIA |
I try to make these playlists shorter. |
| 105 |
Jai Wolf |
"Want It All (feat. Evalyn)" |
single |
I spend all week trying, and I could have flicked out Ed, |
| 106 |
Sophie Ellis-Bextor |
"Everything is Sweet" |
Everything is Sweet +1 |
or all but one of those maskandi songs I would assuredly fail to re-identify or tell meaningfully apart |
| 107 |
Hemliga Klubben |
"Tänk om vi dör!" |
Tänk om vi dör! 5 |
on any discerning exam. |
| 108 |
Christina Novelli |
"Heavy" |
Heavy +1 |
Grim discernment is a skill you can teach yourself, |
| 109 |
Sena Şahin |
"Bambaşka" |
single |
but not in itself a productive craft. |
| 110 |
Joker |
"Şerefe" |
single |
You can't consume all of the joy. |
| 111 |
Wednesday |
"TV in the Gas Pump" |
TV in the Gas Pump +3 |
I don't sneer at the vanilla ice cream, |
| 112 |
Ginebras |
"Billie Max" |
¿Quién es Billie Max? |
I leave it behind with a painfully wistful regret. |
| 113 |
Kate Davis |
"Fructify" |
Fish Bowl |
I ate what I could, knowing it was not enough. |
| 114 |
Bully |
"Days Move Slow" |
Days Move Slow +1 |
I tried to get sick of more of these songs, but I ran out of time. |
| 115 |
BLOXX |
"Television Promises" |
single |
Ed is fine. Taylor flies her jet too much, but her songs are good. |
| 116 |
MALKA |
"Flashlight" |
single |
If you want to read Minecraft fanfic or play Wii badminton while you listen to music, |
| 117 |
Komisarion Koirapartio |
"Haudatkaa minut kuin majesteetti" |
single |
instead of having it put into richly informed cultural context, |
| 118 |
SKAAR |
"As Far As We Go" |
Mad Woman, Pt. 1 |
then please feel welcome here as well as strange. |
| 119 |
Let's Eat Grandma |
"From The Morning" |
single |
That's a skill you can learn, too, |
| 120 |
Katie Gately |
"Howl" |
single |
the craft of feeling both welcome and strange, |
| 121 |
Oakland Rain |
"Edderfuglen - Dikt av Ibsen" |
single |
an antidote you can auto-synthesize to the jaded terror |
| 122 |
Tielle |
"by your side" |
Light in the Dark 6 |
of liking something you weren't supposed to enjoy. |
| 123 |
Janelle Kroll |
"I'm over being cool" |
single |
If I had to bet on it, I'd bet that Ed said something more complicated, or more contextual, |
| 124 |
Dorthia Cottrell |
"Harvester" |
Harvester +1 |
and isn't at all confused about the power of words coexisting with music. |
| 125 |
Ásgeir |
"Dans nos rêves" |
single |
But he's also smart enough, and familiar enough with the oceans around our islands, |
| 126 |
Cruel Diagonals |
"Penance" |
Fractured Whole |
to ask the fish, politely, to self-identify, |
| 127 |
Arooj Aftab |
"Haseen Thi" |
Love In Exile |
but then also cut the head off of the tiniest one and throw it back among the others |
| 128 |
Karfagen |
"Birds, Pt. 1" |
Birds |
to cross-check the suspiciously prevalent claims of non-shark benevolence. |
| 129 |
Exploring Birdsong |
"Pyre" |
Dancing in the Face of Danger 5 |
Left too alone, too ungoverned, we allow the inevitable azonal construction of castles on hills, |
| 130 |
Spirit Adrift |
"Death Won't Stop Me" |
single |
in which our loneliness then resounds. |
| 131 |
Botanist |
"Epidendrum Nocturnum" |
single |
The kingdoms drawn in around these grave errors of solipsism |
| 132 |
Thy Catafalque |
"Néma vermek" |
single |
can choose to be synchronized in mob envy |
| 133 |
Nathan Wagner |
"Silver Linings" |
single |
or unified by compensatory protest ballet. |
| 134 |
Elevation Worship |
"More Than Able (feat. Chandler Moore & Tiffany Hudson)" |
single |
If I, as an atheist, can learn to love mordantly reverent groupsong, |
| 135 |
Byrdy |
"Seen Better Days" |
single |
then I'm pretty sure you can learn to hear Ed Sheeran less patronizingly, |
| 136 |
Acadence |
"Gauntlet" |
single |
no matter how integral to your personality you think avoiding the loopbeat has become. |
| 137 |
Through Mists |
"A Breath After Surfacing" |
single |
Sometimes when you scrutinize things you realize that the crash cymbals are fake and always exactly the same volume. |
| 138 |
Skindred |
"Set Fazers" |
Set Fazers +1 |
Like everything else, that only becomes an abraded flaw or a revealed charm |
| 139 |
Bernth |
"Never Make It" |
Never Make It +1 |
once the muscles in your face decide which direction they're going to pull. |
| 140 |
Arcana |
"king of alcatraz" |
17 The Star |
The fact that you can explain a culture of austerity |
| 141 |
Rachel Nusbaumer |
"Triomphal Castle" |
single |
doesn't mean you have to occupy it. |
| 142 |
Drew McDowall |
"ARVAL" |
single |
Castles on hills, moats of silence, thrashing sharks, predictable and unpredictable noises: |
| 143 |
Mathias Grassow |
"LYRANIA 12" |
LYRAMOS |
these all outlive their original myopic purposes and are remanded back into our care. |
| 144 |
58918012 |
"&" |
Red |
We could stage a reductive tournament to pick the next Elsa, |
| 145 |
URTH |
"Hethor" |
The Claw of the Conciliator |
and allow the castle to retain its isolated nobility, |
| 146 |
MONO |
"Lucia" |
Heaven Vol. 1 3 |
or we could watch the ballet about balistraria |
| 147 |
Mimir's Well |
"S I R I U S" |
single |
and then turn the castle into a museum of elaborate regret |
| 148 |
taennya |
"sorbus" |
sorbus |
and a theater of restorative redemption. |
| 149 |
Regal Lily |
"リッケンバッカー - With ensemble" |
single |
Take a song you distrust, or already love, and give it to a string quartet, |
| 150 |
Demi Lovato |
"Heart Attack - Rock Version" |
single |
or some other attentive machine of transformation. |
| 151 |
Saxon |
"Tales of Brave Ulysses" |
More Inspirations |
Steam engines turn out to have been a terrible idea, |
| 152 |
Sirenia |
"Twist in my Sobriety" |
single |
but we made the best bad decisions we knew how to make. |
| 153 |
The Animal In Me |
"No Scrubs" |
single |
I don't want to meet you nowhere, |
| 154 |
Soviet Soviet |
"In Between Days" |
single |
I want you to come down here and dance with us in the weird, unresolved spaces between the eroding castle heights and the rising sea levels. |
| 155 |
The Regrettes |
"Dancing on My Own" |
single |
So far away; so near. |
| 156 |
KAYLA KING |
"Flowers" |
single |
The things you hate echo punishingly in your head. |
| 157 |
The Foreshadowing |
"Such a Shame" |
single |
I believe in escape. |
