This one is just about shit I've been listening to. I've mostly been listening to podcasts at work all day, but these are the albums I've been super digging when I'm not. As always, these are in no particular order.
Angel Olsen - All Mirrors
Easily the most mind blowing album I've heard in 2020. It makes a very good fight for my number #1 album of all time spot, which seemed to be an unshakable spot of Autolux's - Future Perfect. This album is an unapologetic fucking masterpiece. You can feel the genuine emotions, effortlessly poured into each track. It's not just well written songs, it's a teleportation to exactly where the artist was mentally and it sucks you in from start to finish.
I have another post coming about this record, because lumping it in with "currently digging" just doesn't do it justice. This record just simply gets better and better with each listen. No silly blog post or verb will explain just how inspiring and wonderful this album is to me. Again, more to come on which tracks and why exactly this album blew my brain into bullcrap coming soon.
Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm - Trance Frendz
This has been the most listening to of the about to be mentioned albums. An old favorite, but a constant in my current rotation. I've written about it several times by now in this blog, but it still never seems to get old to me. It's the perfect blend of bed of warm, beautiful orchestral pianos wrapped with the most pleasant sounding synthetic patterns and sounds.
I know it sounds a little goofy, but there's such a futuristic, mature vibe to everything about this collaboration. The video below is one of my favorite things ever to get sucked into. Because some of this music can seem so "snooty" and serious, it's nice to see them just bullshitting while making food, then sitting down to just record these tracks live with the two of them. It makes the record sound 10x more interesting to me that it just fell out of them so elegantly.
Swans: Soundtrack For the Blind
This album is the most listened to actual music at work right now. Due to it's bipolar sonic narrative, it's really easy to get sucked into this without feeling like you're listening to the same album. Even long time Swans fans would agree that this album is one of a kind. From strange soundscape pieces, to dissonant attempts at pop songs - there is no way you'd be bored listening to this record.
Daughters: You Won't Get What You Want
Medicated Robots tried out a drummer recently, and we instantly started making music I said would be the soundtrack to a mixture of an anxiety attack mixed with a serial killers anger fit. He recommended I checked out this album by Daughters and it all made perfect sense to me. It definitely sounded like the sonic equivelent to a violent panic attack. The guitars were a MASSIVE tip of the hat to the world's best guitarist, Glen Branca, only this had "rock" type drums to the arrangements.
Music like this is very hard to explain. It's very angular, aggressive, without it sounding "chuggy" or meathead in any way. I highly recommend never listening to their first piece of crap album and only listening to this one.
John Carpenter: Lost Themes
I recently played this one for my niece to show her what horror movies used to have as their soundtracks and got hooked again. His music was instantly classic, without it being too cheesy. It's really hard to believe these themes were never properly placed into any movies because they sound cool as fuck. Tracks like "Mystery" especially stand out as pieces that definitely should've popped up somewhere. I really, really fucked up by not going the last year or so when he got a live band together to play this shit live. Something about hearing it all with live drums and instruments made it sound so much more ominous to me. More relatable too.
King Crimson: Red
This is definitely my favorite album to drum to as of late. I would never compare my music to how highly I think of my favorite bands, but the newest Medicated Robots music I've been making on my own definitely has a more obvious nod to this album than anything else I've been listening to. The melodies are always complex, but rarely do they lose you in the technicality of it all. It's fucking perfect. This band has decades of material, and by in large I honestly tend to gravitate more towards the 80's stuff with Belew, but this album is an undeniable great.
PPL MVER: The One and Only
This is a brand new band to me. The almighty Chris Bishop just showed me them last weekend, and I was instantly blown away. An abominal snowman, Bigfoot, and some other monster dude playing heavy, but catchy music, with the Ghost type mystery behind the mysterious masked musicians was right up my alley. After just a few minutes googling rumors of who played what, it seems to stem back to the band Brand New, which was very surprising because the music doesn't sound even remotely similar.
Alright bozos, hopefully you haven't heard at least one of these and now you have some cool shit to listen to.
-Novak