New Particles belatedly hand-snatched from the tube of the Large Genre Collider for the week ending 2023-09-15 in the obsessive search for pervasive joy.
| 1 |
Gregory Dillon |
"Hot Scars, Pretty Lies" |
single |
If the royalty logistics of streaming have warped the creation of music itself, |
| 2 |
Geographer |
"You Never Know" |
You Never Know 5 |
which of course they have, because every change in an infrastructural reward system |
| 3 |
Desire Marea |
"If You Know" |
If You Know +1 |
affects how participants attempt to game it, |
| 4 |
BANNERS |
"Broken Hearted" |
Broken Hearted 5 |
and any reward system will be subject to gaming, |
| 5 |
A Story Told |
"Rodeo" |
single |
and maybe this is partly a sad truth about human nature |
| 6 |
FTISLAND |
"F-R-I-E-N-DS" |
single |
or maybe that's just how the concepts of system and reward and game interlock, |
| 7 |
Lonely The Brave |
"Victim" |
Victim / The Bear 3 |
but regardless, one of the attributed affects is the moving of choruses to the beginning of songs, |
| 8 |
Luca Brasi |
"'Til Forever" |
single |
to maximize immediate engagement, minimize skip rates, and cling desperately to the listener's finger, |
| 9 |
Bronnie |
"OH!" |
single |
hoping to hold it back from the NEXT button until the crucial :30 threshold |
| 10 |
V for Volume |
"QMDT (Que me deje el tren)" |
single |
by waiting until just after that to deliver the second repetition of that chorus, |
| 11 |
Charlie USG |
"Por si vuelves" |
single |
and we could offer Gregory Dillon's "Hot Scars, Pretty Lies" in evidence, |
| 12 |
Neverland Bari |
"Que Nadie Encienda" |
single |
because it begins with a literal copy-and-paste pre-echo of the chorus, |
| 13 |
Claudia Halley |
"Desierto" |
single |
fashionably muffled to sound submersed in a rotating pool, |
| 14 |
Adiós Noviembre |
"Demasiadas Veces" |
single |
before the sound snaps into clarity at :20 for a short, tense verse of waiting, |
| 15 |
Antonio José |
"Cómo Dejarte Ir" |
El Pacto |
building steadily to the first real chorus exactly at :50, |
| 16 |
Bebe |
"Besos de Judas" |
single |
which I guess is overachievement, because you only need :30 of elapsed time, |
| 17 |
Yarea |
"Tregua" |
single |
not :30 of non-chorus air, |
| 18 |
Laura Pausini |
"Durare" |
single |
which would be an alternative with very different incentives, |
| 19 |
LUNA AURA |
"BLIND" |
THE FICTION 5 |
although many of the most obvious potential beneficiaries with low chorus-centricity |
| 20 |
Dakota Rhodes |
"Here I Go" |
single |
also involve very long compositions, and currently any audio-bleed beyond :30 |
| 21 |
Charlotte Sands |
"use me" |
single |
is of only indirect value, at best, if it increases the likelihood of future repetition, |
| 22 |
Jesse Detor |
"Mirror" |
single |
and even as a fan of Tales From Topographic Oceans and Dronny Darko |
| 23 |
Leah Kate |
"Desperate" |
Super Over |
I will admit that seconds :31 to 22:22 of "The Revealing Science of God" |
| 24 |
Tsunami |
"Old City" |
Poodle b/w Old City 2 |
or 1:12:20 of "Polar Night on Titan", |
| 25 |
Worriers |
"Anything Else" |
Trust Your Gut |
although they coil elegantly in my memory, |
| 26 |
Pure Bathing Culture |
"The River" |
single |
are more likely to remain there, admired in silent retrospect, |
| 27 |
shallow pools |
"Golden" |
single |
than returned to my active rotation, |
| 28 |
Karen Zoid |
"Hou Bene Hou" |
single |
where they would have to displace 7-24 eagerly polished pop miniatures |
| 29 |
The Staves |
"You Held It All" |
single |
like Gregory Dillon's "Hot Scars, Pretty Lies", |
| 30 |
Tia Gostelow |
"Poison - triple j Like A Version" |
single |
whose gruffly simple chorus I am, obligingly, eager to hear again, |
| 31 |
Esang De Torres |
"Hold Me" |
single |
and I grant that my eagerness to hear it and the song's eagerness to deliver it again |
| 32 |
Laur Elle |
"Lost Cause" |
Lost Cause 5 |
exist in a pragmatic symbiosis that we might cynically refer to as modern pop's short attention span, |
| 33 |
Lucy Sugerman |
"kiss the algorithm" |
spiralling (over discourse on the internet) 6 |
as if before 2009 all music listening was conducted with great ceremony |
| 34 |
Hannah Diamond |
"Poster Girl" |
Poster Girl +3 |
in upholstered parlors with carefully brewed cups of Earl Grey, |
| 35 |
iskwē |
"End Of It All" |
single |
each composition thoughtfully apprehended in its meticulous whole, |
| 36 |
Myrkur |
"Mothlike" |
Mothlike +1 |
followed by a spirited discussion group facilitated by a visiting musicologist |
| 37 |
Soma Plume |
"Trauma" |
In The Black Water |
from a distinguished local college, |
| 38 |
Brutus |
"Love Won't Hide the Ugliness" |
single |
but this fantasy nostalgia won't hide the beautiful persistent truth |
| 39 |
IKINÄ |
"Syvämeri" |
single |
that our love for music was never predicated on its scarcity or preciousness or acquisition cost or production expense, |
| 40 |
Stam1na |
"Muistipalatsi" |
single |
and thus that it's exactly as possible to sequence fragments of love, |
| 41 |
Blackbriar |
"Forever and a Day" |
Forever and a Day +3 |
one after another from wherever you are to any chosen horizon, |
| 42 |
ANGRA |
"Tide Of Changes - Pt. II" |
Tide Of Changes 2 |
as to accept them only 8 or 12 at a time, |
| 43 |
Anaria |
"Circle Of Love" |
single |
neatly divided into halves, |
| 44 |
Stream of Passion |
"Tonight" |
Beautiful Warrior 5 |
except not so neatly in the LP era, because the sonic fidelity of spiral grooves |
| 45 |
Beyond God |
"Aphantasia" |
single |
decreases as they wind in towards the heart, |
| 46 |
The Haxans |
"The Dead And Restless" |
The Dead and Restless |
until "The Revealing Science of God" reveals that the god of LPs never reached out a hand to change the side for you, |
| 47 |
Never Obey Again |
"What If" |
single |
and I reject any patronizing ploy to recast this as some kind of listening work-ethic |
| 48 |
Nungara |
"Still Waters" |
Reflections in Stillness 4 |
unless you're going to follow through and claim that recorded music vacated the moral high ground, |
| 49 |
Doro |
"Bond Unending" |
Bond Unending +2 |
in a time of floods, |
| 50 |
Apostolica |
"Gloria" |
single |
once you no longer had to crank the victrola |
| 51 |
Altarage |
"Enigma Signals" |
Worst Case Scenario |
with your own hands, |
| 52 |
Wolves In The Throne Room |
"Initiates of the White Hart" |
Initiates of the White Hart +1 |
like joy is a worm you have to draw out of the intestines of its hosts, |
| 53 |
Iron Savior |
"Curse of the Machinery" |
Curse of the Machinery +3 |
and then you have to answer for the ways the turntable changed music, |
| 54 |
Eunomia |
"The Search" |
The Chronicles of Eunomia, Pt. 2 |
and later the separation of woofers and tweeters, |
| 55 |
Theocracy |
"Mosaic" |
Mosaic +1 |
and earlier the factional schisms of clefs, |
| 56 |
Symphony Of Sweden |
"That Night" |
single |
and the inevitable realization awaiting us |
| 57 |
Ronnie Atkins |
"If You Can Dream It (You Can Do It)" |
single |
as we reason forwards and backwards between transformations |
| 58 |
Brother Firetribe |
"Just Another Night" |
single |
is that all of these countless transitional eras seem significant from within them, |
| 59 |
Ronnie Romero |
"Mountain Of Light" |
Too Many Lies, Too Many Masters |
in detailed contrast to whatever prevailing context we had most intimately internalized, |
| 60 |
TesseracT |
"Echoes" |
War Of Being |
but by two or three revolutions later all the previous ones will have begun to blur together, |
| 61 |
MOLYBARON |
"Set Alight" |
SOMETHING OMINOUS |
and we don't just forget what it was like when mass-printed sheet-music destroyed everything that was serious and noble about music, |
| 62 |
Ivy to Fraudulent Game |
"追いかけて" |
追いかけて / 花火が鳴って 2 |
but that any time before the most recent past existed as anything but a homogenously irrelevant blur |
| 63 |
Rides In ReVellion |
"YOAKE SAIZENSEN" |
YOAKE SAIZENSEN +3 |
that has nothing to teach us, |
| 64 |
XANVALA |
"本能" |
single |
and we have no time to go back and raise it out of savagery, |
| 65 |
Damian Hamada's Creatures |
"The Beginning of the End" |
single |
as much as we pity its monolithic ignorance, |
| 66 |
Utsu-P |
"いのちをそまつに (feat. 初音ミク)" |
HAPPYPILLS |
because we are needed at the cultural front in the war of sacred human agency against demonbot AI, |
| 67 |
CALETWOLF |
"DOOM" |
DYSTOPIA 3 |
which, suspiciously, we seem intent on fighting with "prompt engineering" |
| 68 |
MANAKO |
"Sleep Well" |
Re:color |
instead of, say, loud guitars and bracingly good Japanese alternative rock bands willing to write whole albums of great blurry rock songs that don't necessarily start with the chorus despite only having 17 Spotify listeners in Toyko and no more than 4 anywhere else, |
| 69 |
AIBECK |
"YOZORABOSHI" |
single |
and this is a thing that makes us human, |
| 70 |
MyDearDarlin' |
"Planetarium" |
single |
or at least a thing that exemplifies a humane approach to the condition of humanity, |
| 71 |
Quubi |
"scent" |
single |
which is that, yes, any reward system will be gamed, |
| 72 |
CYCLONISTA |
"Youth" |
VERSUS 2 |
but every reward system is itself usually a thin layer draped hurriedly over activities done for their bare inherent worth, |
| 73 |
MANACLE |
"Tabibito" |
single |
and not only do most songs still do whatever they need to do to be themselves, |
| 74 |
レイラ |
"いつかの君へ" |
single |
in whatever uncooperative form that takes, to whatever tiny assembled audience, |
| 75 |
Lil Darkie |
"NATION ETERNAL" |
single |
but when was a deliberate bracing immediacy ever not one of the most often employed creative techniques, |
| 76 |
Mr Traumatik |
"Avalon" |
single |
and do we think that Gregor Samsa awakens as a bug in the very first sentence due to sophisticated eye-tracking sensors |
| 77 |
Big Narstie |
"Gas The Set" |
single |
embedded in 1915 issues of Die weißen Blätter that only paid contributing writers |
| 78 |
CASISDEAD |
"Matte Grey Wrap" |
Matte Grey Wrap 5 |
if readers continued to at least the 3000th word, |
| 79 |
GWCCI |
"I’R GÂD" |
single |
or have we conveniently forgotten that Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, the most classical of classics, |
| 80 |
Mischa |
"Dear" |
Crashing Up 3 |
obtusely sectioned to accumulate only 4 royalty-bearing plays from easily a 12-song album's running-time of material, |
| 81 |
Dessa |
"Decoy" |
single |
begins, literally, with its definitive hook, |
| 82 |
Nihiloxica |
"Source of Denial" |
single |
in an age dependent on a much earlier sense of "royalty", |
| 83 |
Hitler SA Massive Production |
"Ama Password" |
single |
so maybe the main thing about streaming |
| 84 |
Chongo De Flavour |
"Tshwara Fase" |
single |
is the same as the main thing about court orchestras |
| 85 |
Mjolisi |
"Hamba kahle" |
single |
and sheet music |
| 86 |
Tsa Manyalo |
"Boshiwana Bjaka" |
Boshiwana Bjaka |
and books and movies and friendships and breakfast, |
| 87 |
Son of Africa |
"WELILE (VUMA NKOSI YAM)" |
single |
and sometimes we are ecstatic from the first second |
| 88 |
Mbongeni Ngema |
"Thina Bant'a Bamnyama" |
Thina Bant'a Bamnyama +3 |
and sometimes we begin pensively, inviting you to slowly move from the world you were in, |
| 89 |
Maqhikiza |
"Akulaleki" |
Ibhodwe lenjabulo |
3 minutes ago, into a slightly different one with its own subtle variations on the rules you think you know |
| 90 |
uDulasi Magubane |
"Ukuphath mali" |
Izibe |
and the ones you think apply, |
| 91 |
David Jones David |
"Darling Jesus" |
single |
so that you can experience the contrast of how other people think about the rules they obey |
| 92 |
Bombino |
"Alwane" |
Sahel |
and thus maybe our individual myopic delusions, rephrased as beliefs we hold in order to share, |
| 93 |
Tinariwen |
"He Layla" |
single |
can be smashed against each other, |
| 94 |
Nobuhle |
"Imali" |
single |
into a confetti of glittering shards, |
| 95 |
Avela Mvalo |
"Thetha nam - Radio Edit" |
single |
and dancing among them, in vulnerable grace and shared-resistant shoes, |
| 96 |
Francois van Coke |
"O, My Donner" |
En Vriende II 5 |
we are always new and always the same, |
| 97 |
Modern English |
"Long in the Tooth" |
single |
and willing to give ourselves wholeheartedly to the moment |
| 98 |
Darkways |
"Inexistence" |
single |
instead of blaming it for every lingering reticence, |
| 99 |
Anders Manga |
"Adrift" |
single |
not because we are ever perfect |
| 100 |
TVAM |
"Costasol" |
single |
but exactly because we are never perfect or immune, |
| 101 |
Shoreline |
"Needles" |
single |
and thus have the choice between scripturalities of guilt and trepidation |
| 102 |
das blühende leben |
"Korsika" |
single |
or cosmologies of beckoning stars, |
| 103 |
Felleng |
"Stég" |
single |
the same choice ultimately in every revolution, |
| 104 |
Kapelle Petra |
"Auf Null" |
single |
every crisis, |
| 105 |
Spidergawd |
"Sands Of Time" |
Sands Of Time +1 |
every conversation, |
| 106 |
Valley of Chrome |
"Walang Takot" |
single |
dauntless |
| 107 |
Gridlink |
"Pitch Black Resolve" |
Coronet Juniper |
and frenetic |
| 108 |
Shipwreck Karpathos |
"SCENE IX: Almost Colossus" |
single |
and as often distended in our catharsis |
| 109 |
Explosions In The Sky |
"Loved Ones" |
End |
as concise in our regard, |
| 110 |
Collapse Under The Empire |
"Forgiveness" |
single |
because the new systems still convey the same love |
| 111 |
Divided by Design |
"The Cosmological Constant" |
The Cosmological Constant |
into the same starlit spaces between us |
| 112 |
Aðanda |
"Eldstormur" |
single |
where we have gathered to hear it, not knowing what it will be, how it will start, when it will end, who we would be without it, who we will be in :30 or 3:00 or a lifetime. |
