josh blog
Ordinary language is all right.
One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.
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Winter listening diary, January 10:
En Vogue – Funky Divas
I think I would have understood a lot of things differently from middle school on or whenever if I had realized that 'My Lovin' was built around a 'Payback' sample.
Posthuman – Back to Acid
Absorbing and chunky.
Ben Lamar Gay – Downtown Castles Can Never Block the Sun
Well there's certainly a lot going on here, isn't there.
Art Ensemble of Chicago – Certain Blacks
DO WHAT THEY WANNA, DO WHAT THEY WANNA
Jaimie Branch – Fly or Die
Does a lot with a little, enough to make something that must be pretty old (I keep thinking of Sketches of Spain) seem continually fresh.
Justin Brown – Nyeusi
Wild future synths in throwback fusion.
Yak – Alas Salvation
I guess these are mostly what are called 'rave-ups' (there is even a skronky saxophone!). The singer spends every moment strutting and imploring and such but he really seems too anxious and British to be very sexual. There's more than a little Nick Cave / Birthday Party in their notebooks, I reckon, but just as an expedient. It sounds intriguing on laptop speakers but thin and a little uninspired on headphones. Sometimes I wonder how it is that the kids get into rock music these days. But compared to what i heard in SMASH BURGER last night I guess Yak would seem positively thrilling.
Winter listening diary, January 9:
All jazz or jazz-adjacent today.
Sasha Masakowski – Art Market
It figures that it would take an actual musician to make the kind of fusion-of-styles record I am always being teased with but rarely really hear.
Vanishing Twin – Dream by Numbers EP
Vanishing Twin – Choose Your Own Adventure
They have their own sound and I'm sure there are lots of reference points that explain the similarities, but the simplest comparison—which I'm surprised I haven't seen more reviewers make, since it seems really obvious—is that they sound like Stereolab (especially whenever organs or vocal harmonies show up) if you took away the interest in motorik pop and drone rock. Their structures are ambling and slightly distractible and the songs' moods maintain a lightness despite an inclination for the pretentious. The drummer Valentina Magaletti has sensitive judgment and gets a nice beat going with a snare.
Camila Meza – Traces
This record has many charms but the most apparent one on my first couple listens is that Meza is a guitarist and singer, and she will often double her own lines, even when improvising. This gives her sound a very poised kind of control that I realize I don't always associate with guitar-playing, singing, or maybe even improvisation. You hear someone making music and you tend to focus on the aspect of the sound that seems like it could get away from them, even though you recognize that the spontaneity with which they make the sound stays their own throughout. Meza can play and sing at once in a way that makes the sounds seem too close to her to even be able to get away, which is to say, she lets you hear them as self-controlled.
Julian Lage – Modern Lore
One of those kinds of extremely listenable albums that exposes its slightly obtrusive bits more readily because it wasn't necessarily designed to be played on repeat—but that will smooth out with familiarity. Colorful and melodic guitar trio. There's one part that reminds me of Blue Öyster Cult!
Winter listening diary, January 8:
Chris Forsyth & The Solar Motel Band – The Rarity of Experience
I still don't really like this guy, sometimes because his melodic sense seems too corny, but sometimes like here maybe because he plays like someone who's fonder of melodic playing than he is able to write melodically. I dunno though, whatever.
Richard Hell & The Voidoids – Blank Generation
None of the songs are ever as cool as the title cut, which is way too late (at the end).
Rites of Spring – End on End
Ancient enough that you can actually hear bits where they sound like a band who couldn't help but listen to 80s metal.
Ritual Necromancy – Disinterred Horror
Not as much verve as Dead Congregation, but alright.
Obliteration – Cenotaph Obscure
Loose drumming, with a bit more ferocity or unhinged feel in the riffing they would be all the way there.
Soundgarden – Down on the Upside
Idris Muhammad – Power of Soul
Understated drumming, for a drummer.
Rezzett – Rezzett LP
I like how the beats turn up surprises over the runtimes of the tracks, consistently. Lots of techno artists are not that good at transformation.
Herbie Hancock – Head Hunters
I don't know which drum i like Harvey Mason hitting best.
Bardo Pond – Dilate
You should never completely trust anyone who can't like at least some music without vocals.
Coptic Light – Coptic Light
I read a review that complained that mostly all they did was 'jam', that's the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, people who write record reviews should learn something about other kinds of music so they can say something more insightful than 'jam' when a rock-style band plays three things in 45 minutes and actually uses, like, musical thinking to do it.
('One of our responses to this plurality of definitions has been to rely on “Jamesian Confidence.” James’ (1890/1950) famous phrase: “Every one knows what attention is.” is implicitly (often explicitly) invoked whenever researchers report work on attention without supplying a concrete definition. The presumption is that the researcher’s sense of attention will be clear from context and that James’ exhortation can be taken to imply more than it says, that is that everyone knows what attention is, and they all think it is the same thing. In fact, communal practice reveals that we do not. Attention is subdivided by modality (visual versus auditory), level of analysis (feature versus object), and spatial extent (focal versus global). Attention is invoked as the label for a general preparedness to respond. Attention as vigilance has both a negative aspect (in that one may fail to detect a target) and a positive aspect (where one fails to inhibit a response when presented a non-target item). Attention is treated as a vector where there can be deficiencies in magnitude (implied by the phrase attention deficit) or direction (implied by a term like disengage deficit). Attention can also be given a temporal dimension when people speak of an attention span. None of these senses seem quite what James had in mind as the obvious one. …')
('Benennen und Beschreiben stehen ja nicht auf einer Ebene: Das Benennen ist eine Vorbereitung zur Beschreibung. Das Benennen ist noch gar kein Zug im Sprachspiel, – so wenig, wie das Aufstellen einer Schachfigur ein Zug im Schachspiel. Man kann sagen: Mit dem Benennen eines Dings ist noch nichts getan. Es hat auch keinen Namen, außer im Spiel. Das war es auch, was Frege damit meinte: ein Wort habe nur im Satzzusammenhang Bedeutung.')
('… things are not seen sharply "save those for which the mind has prepared itself."')
(Hence, a natural ground for an idea of 'coming to terms', of discovering or choosing what to say (of things) when; and a natural attraction, in certain proceedings, to ad hoc attention to language.)
It's not that the philosopher, as theorist, is too distant from the world of everyday experience; it's that he imagines he could get the sharpest focus while at the greatest remove from all objects, be at once furthest from, and nearest to, everything; each thing.
Looking around, getting a closer look, a glimpse—none of these sorts of operations form part of the recognized idea of what a philosopher will be up to.
To see more closely you have to get closer; go from here to there. So an account of where you are, and how you go, how you go about going, will form part of what you say about what's there.