Mercoledì 8 Ago 2012, 14:20

This is another sort of back-logged entry, me writing NOW about music that I discovered about a month ago. Oh well. I'm trying to keep it semi-chronological, as in waves of music in separate entries according to when I discovered them. And then when I get to the present, hopefully I'll just keep up with these logs instead of having to batch-write three in a row again like this. :P The point is the write about the music I discover as I discover it. But, oh well, I'm trying.

This wave began with a very painful purge that had to happen and could not be avoided…the purging of all my badly-labeled classical music. Back when I first got it, probably seven years ago, I knew virtually nothing about classical except that I just liked it. But I didn't know what kinds I liked, or whether to label it with the artist or the composer when looking at some of the CD covers, or the difference between calling the track the piece or properly labeling it with the proper movement of the piece and all other sorts of crap that I can't even comprehend anymore (yes, I was that stupid). But I've added tons more classical since 2011 that I can be satisfied with, and the prospect of fixing all that old classical was so terribly daunting, so most of it, except the easily-fixed ones or my absolute favorite pieces, just had to go. Which is okay, because a lot of what went was monotonous harpsichord pieces, or CDs from the 80s that were better replaced with newer performances.

Now that my library is a few hundred tracks less messy and more prioritized, on to some new discoveries….

Let me just say again that Yamada Koshi is the most f##king AWESOME thing alive since sliced bread, second only to BUCK-TICK and its members.
———————————————-

Re-discoveries:

Juno Reactor
I always loved "Navras." I must have heard that song three years ago when I was first working on expanding my library a little bit to things like Apocalyptica, and other artists I had discovered through Pandora.

Harel Skaat
My sister is a big Harel Skaat lover, and so I've always heard a lot of him playing in the background, or when it's her music time. (I'm the musically dominant one in the family, forcing everyone to listen to my stuff blaring through the house, so times in which my sister gets to play her music out loud are kinda infrequent). I used to just listen to Harel Skaat for relaxation, at night, on sort of mellow days, because it was relaxing and didn't strike me as too mentally over-stimulating, or stimulating at all. I was wrong; his music was so much more deep and dynamic than I gave him credit for. I've started pioneering Harel Skaat's music all over again out of a new-found understanding that my sister's music taste is probably just as awesome as mine. My favorite album from Harel Skaat right now is דמויות (Dmuyot, and my favorite songs have to be "Muvan Li Achshav" and "1000" right now. I haven't investigated any Israeli Pop other than this, other then hearing a bit of Harel Moyal here and there from my sister. Not sure if I will look into any more Israeli Pop or not…. Harel Skaat seems cool enough for now….

Björk
Another artist I picked up from my sister's library. She introduced "An Echo, A Stain" and "Earth Intruders (Mark Stent Extended Mix)" to me. On top of that, I really like "Hyper-ballad" and "Jóga." Sometimes Björk feels/sounds a little too pop-ish to me (I've said many many times that I'm not a huge fan of mainstream popular stuff), but she's still pretty awesome.

Salyu
Another artist from my sister. I first experienced Salyu from this movie in which she and her music were featured, "Ririi Shushu no Subete," recommended to my by my sister. Salyu has some music published under the name Lily Chou-Chou (the music that was featured in the movie). Not much to say about Salyu right now. She's awesome. Her videos are awesome. Kagami and iris～しあわせの箱～ are two Salyu songs I'm really partial to right now.
———————————————-

New Discoveries:

Three letters.
A. S. P.
ASP.
I love ASP, don't know how I couldn't have heard any of it before, but I'm a fan! There's a lot of variety in ASP's music. It's considered ndh, but also classified as gothic rock or even medieval. I'm not feeling/hearing the medieval, but I can see where some people are coming from with that. Some songs, like my favorite A Prayer for Sanctuary have very gothic, almost Gregorian-feeling elements. Others contain more folk elements like violins, accordions, what have you, and others are still much more electronic, and others have the more typical ndh sound. In short, ASP is all over the place, some of it really creepy, some of it really catchy. Doesn't have the feel/sound of a popular/famous band at all. Some other favorite songs from them, for me, are Hunger, Tiefenrausch and Tiefenrausch (Reprise), Beschwoerung, Werben and the various mixes of Angstkathedrale.

SUGIZO
Recommended to me by an awesome person I've mentioned before, on the basis that SUGIZO and Juno Reactor have some similarities and even collaborated, which is cool. Enola Gay was the first song by SUGIZO that I heard, and it remains my favorite along with Synchronicity, and ASIAN MYSTICISM feat. JUNO REACTOR. Great stuff, can listen to it for hours, lots of variety, awesome electric violin on some tracks. SUGIZO is awesome.

The Nagoya kei genre.
The artists I mainly looked into were cocklobin, GULLET and 9GOATS BLACK OUT. I had heard 9GOATS a few months ago and took note of them, but now I finally got a chance to go back. I really like the idea of toning down the visual aspect of Visual-kei/Visual kei and focusing more on creating complex music. Sometimes the visual-ness of Visual-kei bands really annoys me. And though I'm getting over that, Nagoya kei was a really nice discovery. Some favorite songs right now are in the rain by 9GOATS BLACK OUT, 剥離 by GULLET, coil by cocklobin, the Draw mini-album by 9GOATS BLACK OUT, and the mini-album DARK DESIGN CATALOG by cocklobin.

美空ひばり (Hibari Misora)
I LOVED Kyoh De Owakare, and the fact that Hibari (along with my other favorite artist 櫻井敦司/Sakurai Atsushi) also sang a Japanese version (愛の賛歌 / "Ai no Sanka") of Édith Piaf's Hymne à l'amour. Of course, Misora Hibari's version of Ai no Sanka came loooooong before Sakurai's cover of different version of it (something like that; confusing). Anyway, back to the subject. I need not even say here how incredible Hibari Misora is.

ガレージシャンソンショー (Garage Chanson Show)
This isn't a new discovery really, since it was another Yamada Koshi collaboration project. But this particular collaboration (the two albums ガレージシャンソンショー and 狂歌全集) hadn't made it into my library yet. With these albums, I heard some older versions of some of my favorite Yamada Koshi songs, and just rediscovered again the awesomeness of Yamada Koshi. Nothing more to say. <3 Koshi-san.

Lastly, as an aside, I was REALLY impressed with the new BUCK-TICK cover album, PARADE II -Respective Tracks of BUCK-TICK-. The first PARADE album of other bands covering BUCK-TICK songs didn't have a huge impression on me. But PARADE II was amazing; a lot of the band's covers felt really interesting/unique and imaginative. I loved Romanesque a whole lot, possibly most of all the covers. And, unlike with PARADE I, there weren't any covers that I disliked or just didn't care for. Even love letter grew on me after a first listen. And the fact that I loved PARADE II so much led me to give PARADE I another more open-minded listen, and I discovered that I LOVE Living on the Net (Ken Ishii Remix). Good stuff. I'm definitely going to investigate the artists featured on that album.

And I'm really excited for the new BUCK-TICK album 夢見る宇宙 to come out. Can't wait.
———————————————-

Things I tried but didn't really like:

ADAPTER。
Probably being slightly unfair; I wasn't very patient on the days I tried out ADAPTER. But I'm just not a fan of vocals being that synthesized, and the electronic aspect was too overplayed. Just didn't feel very…balanced. I will have to give ADAPTER. another try in the future, but for now it proved to not really be my thing. The guy's beautiful! But the music felt kinda flat/blah.
———————————————-

Things I discovered but haven't returned to:

- The Crüxshadows
———————————————-

Awesome things I may have neglected mentioning in previous journal entries:

増田俊郎 (Toshio Masuda)
The Mushishi soundtracks are amazing. I had decided before even finishing the anime that I had to have the soundtracks. Songs like Yama Nemuru (FAVORITE!) and Kagari no Gyou are the best, and there's a fair share of really creepy-sounding tracks too. Such thought-provoking music.