Rocknerd

Guess it’s been a while since I touched the dusty old boxes of CDs — I only just found out that CD database FreeDB shut down some time in early 2020, and the MusicBrainz mirror of FreeDB shut down in 2019.

I learned about Flower Face (Ruby McKinnon) because someone tweeted the lyrics to Spiracle, and I liked it well enough to listen to the whole record.

B.E.F.: Music For Stowaways (Cold Spring) — Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh split from the original Human League in late 1980 and formed a production company, the British Electric Foundation.

CAPSULE: Metro Pulse (Unborde/Warner) — Yasutaka Nakata‘s much-anticipated synthwave masterpiece, finally released at the end of last year.

Nineteen years isn’t a bad run, for a baby band that blew up and then fell apart several times along the way.

I like to put an R.E.M. mix on while I’m baking.

Fall Out Boy have once again regenerated.

So, as I mentioned in my post about Snow Patrol, in November of 1988 I had an epic musical missed connection when I confused the Happy Flowers with the Happy Mondays, and didn’t realize what had happened until thirty-odd years later when I read Cider with…

The Top 10 hits in the US in 2022 accounted for fewer than 1 in every 200 streams.

Shelf-reading has two purposes: one, to make sure everything is in its right place; and two, to discover works you would not necessarily have though to look for, left to your own researching devices.

The War On Drugs led by songwriter Adam Granduciel, have been a band since 2005.

Late Night Listening: a home for things that might might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird.

Some of these are old.

In this week between Christmas and New Years I am attempting to de-clutter both my house and my head.

“Henceforth, all toys in this company will be designed by computers.” — Mr.

As a second of a pair of 30th-anniversary reviews, the shoegazing psychedelia sounds Ride graced The Forum, Melbourne, on November 30 to celebrate and remember their debut album “Nowhere”.

“This Is the Day…This Is the Hour…This Is This!”

FATHER JOHN MISTY: Chloe and the Next 20th Century (Sub Pop/Bella Union) — Father John Misty, aka Joshua Tillman, started out as the drummer for the Fleet Foxes.

I am forced to begin with the fact that I began my descent into a Snow Patrol-shaped spiral by confusing them with the Arctic Monkeys.

Raymond Chen is an engineer at Microsoft.

In an attempt not to be too late to the game, post-rock (I still don’t like that term) stalwarts Maybeshewill released a new album last year entitled “No Feeling is Final” and it is quite a piece of work.

It seems to be all a little bit disturbing to write shortly after the death of Klaus Schulze, that one must also put finger to keyboard to comment on the loss of Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou, better known as “Vangelis” on May 17th.

Musicians who have a casual attitude to the continued use of their eyes may want to look over this advertising image and see if they can spot a single thing right about it: holding it like that lipstick with a reed instrument mouth is slack, can’t play a…

Responsible for a stunning sixty-plus albums over six decades it is obviously impossible to give an appropriate tribute to the recently (26 April 2022) deceased electronic musician and producer Klaus Schulze.

P.H.O.B.O.S.: Bleaker Beater (Megaton Mass Products) — An unpleasant bloody racket.

I was asked to come up with five albums from 2021.

RHYS FULBER: Brutal Nature (FR Recordings) — in the subgenre “old industrial musician from way back makes a new album during lockdown.”

It’s blatant advertising time now, with the new CD from Arkady Rose of this parish just released today!

Today’s episode features Wet Taxis, Porcelain Bus, Feedtime, Ups & Downs, Mick Harvey/Bad Seeds, John Kennedy’s Love Gone Wrong, and a big 1985 roundup.

B-Side #13, December 1985, was when the magazine started getting much fatter.

MINISTRY: Moral Hygiene (Nuclear Blast) — A new Ministry album!

I’ve had these long enough, now you can have them too and I can close some tabs. esteemed colleagues, I regret to present the most infuriating track list on any album ever pic.twitter.com/UwmSCuvQmi — S.

Robert Brokenmouth: Nick Cave: The Birthday Party and Other Epic Adventures (Omnibus, 1996) — Amazon I love this magazine photo of the Birthday Party.

More procrastination on other things!

Yeah, ran through another pile of scans.

Well, this is an obscurity I never expected to hear online.

I’m procrastinating like a bastard on all manner of other stuff — though a news story fell on my head around lunchtime that I had to scramble into action on — and so here’s B-Side #10 for your delectation.

Finally starting to get the B-Side scans up.

S:BAHN: Queen of Diamonds (Polaks) — I remember seeing S:Bahn back in Melbourne in the mid-1990s, I think.

And that about wraps it up for Vortex!

I’m on a roll here, or I’m procrastinating like hell on other things.

I said previously I’d have the rest of Vortex up by the end of 2020, no worries.

SNOG: Lullabies for the Lithium Age (Metropolis) — Snog have embodied the virtue of consistency for the past thirty years.

VARIOUS ARTISTS: From the River to the Sea: The Horrible Truth About Palestine — A Fundraiser for the United Palestinian Appeal (Audio Antihero) — Jamie Halliday had stopped doing Audio Antihero, but has revived the label for this compilation.

SLOW DOWN MOLASSES: Minor Deaths (Divine Schism/Noyes) — “Shoegaze” at the far-noise with a soupçon of pop end of the spectrum, around Swervedriver and My Bloody Valentine.

Art is ephemeral.

Heard a joke once.

THE HUMMINGBIRDS: loveBUZZ (RooArt) — Sometimes the background story behind how certain record labels are formed can be more interesting than the music they release.

SOLAR FAKE: Enjoy Dystopia; Masked (Out Of Line) — The new Solar Fake album is out, and the best review I’ve seen of it was on the Something Awful electro-industrial thread: “seeing that their new stuff isn’t trying to reinvent anything and is just more of

THROAT: Bareback; Bareback (Stripped & Remasked), Decade of Passive Aggression 2009-2019 — I think this was a review item — I have this as a pile of MP3s that someone clearly sent to me — but I can’t find the press release, so I’m flying blind here.