Scott-O -- as in Scott Walker and SunnO)))

but yeah anyway this album seems like an instant classic

The last two Swans albums are great ways in. The current one is dead accessible. It's groovy!

children of god, every time

which is v abrasive in places but also often surprisingly pretty and seductive

For some reason Swans seemed so stupid to me during their phase one era and I guess I've given them short shrift ever since. Which is dumb, I should try to snap out of it.

fwiw all the talk of 'difficult' needs context. it's weird what can be difficult to people. when i was in high school i was listening to some of the free jazz/avant-garde stuff happening in chicago (ken vandermark etc.) and found nine inch nails (which a lot of my friends were listening to) really awful and abrasive. i also inexplicably found chrissie hynde's voice to be like nails on a chalkboard. but i took almost immediately to scott walker, having discovered both "tilt" and his late '60s stuff at about the same time (though for some reason i got particularly attached to 'climate of hunter,' and i still love that album as a kind of queasy mid-way point between MOR and his later outre stuff).

nowadays i love all of these things (though i guess jazz is still much closer to my heart).

re swans i've always been a little wary of stuff that seems to try really hard to be shocking, which may not be a fair description of swans but that's something i took away from their earlier stuff. i will try the aforementioned LPs and see what i think!

i also had a weird relationship with the "flat" singing voices of a lot of freestyle in the '80s. i loved it as a kid growing up, then in high school and college could barely stand to listen to it (I remember yelling a friend to turn off the car radio when some freestyle cover of a cyndi lauper song came on), but more recently can't understand why i ever hated it.

this is the least interesting detour

anyway, i'm really off topic, sorry.

scott walker

haha xpost

wanna hear earth record with david sylvian now

though for some reason i got particularly attached to 'climate of hunter,' and i still love that album as a kind of queasy mid-way point between MOR and his later outre stuff

i kind of think climate of hunter is his most "difficult" for this very reason

hmmm, that's an interesting thought

i like how it occasionally sounds like a oddball MOR record (billy ocean backing vocals, sizzling guitar licks and all)

though it pointedly has very very few drum fills

climate of hunter is actually a pretty catchy album ("...run out of recognize...")! and there are parts of tilt i find myself singing in the shower etc. ("can't go by a man from Vigo..."). I have a harder time conjuring up hooks from the last two records.

you can /almost/ hear some of "climate" sung and arranged in Scott's earlier mode: "The shadow of the son made the son a shadow" etc.

i think that one might actually have been released as a single btw

My favorite goose pimple moment on that record:
And the ceiling is rising and falling...

I'd literally loose a couple of toes to hear an album recorded by Antony Hegarty and Sunn O))).

I guess this is more about amateurist's view that calling Tilt 'difficult' is something a sixteen year old would say.

that's not what i wrote. i agree that "tilt" is difficult.

the review i was paraphrasing said something like "tilt is the most difficult album ever made"

it was the "...album ever made" part that seemed not just hyperbolic but juvenile

the "difficult" part i agree with

it's so easy to misread people online, isn't it...

...and i must be getting sloppy with my online communication b/c it seems to be happening more and more to me recently.

FWIW the AMG review that I was paraphrasing seems to have been replaced. i remember, back in the early 2000s, there was a rather short and uncomprehending review of tilt that had the "most difficult album ever made" line in it. I think it was written by stephen thomas erlewine. it's been replaced with a longer and more sympathetic review.

apologies for misunderstanding you amateurist

oh, it's no problem. i think i'm getting bad at communicating, or i just use a shorthand that nobody else can understand or something.

im going to church tonite

wish i had gone but i'm feeling rather lurgee-ish atm.

This is the film he's scoring, starring Robert pattinson & Stacey Martin

http://www.thechildhoodofaleader-film.com/2014/10/13/scott-walker-will-compose-score-childhood-of-a-leader/

When I saw it was a "Robert Pattinson movie" I was really, really hoping it was the new Herzog.

the playback was pretty great with a super dooper soundsystem

in the middle a homeless woman who had been outside when people were queuing and asking what was the event appeared out of the gloom at the front unannounced and began an interpretive dance for quite a while unmolested before a man arrived to ask her to leave but she didn't seem keen and then two men arrived and began to manhandle her out and she dropped to the floor to resist and then people started booing and the two men backed sheepishly away and she danced a while longer before sitting down on the step during an extended section of variegated drone until she got bored and put her coats back on and left

o_O

"Please stop - this music is NOT for dancing to"

NO GROOVING

Oooh, this is good stuff. Scott's trying a bunch of different vocal techniques -- it sounds like he's very much in control of his instrument these days.

yeah he's lucky his voice has retained its dynamism. imagine if scott's voice was like leonard cohen's croak.

i love this record

what are they saying in that one hook? "barmond binkie" or something. i can't listen to it at work to check.

in which track?

the one where he repeats a similar phrase 100x

maybe he's saying "bunghole binkie"

or "bar tab binkie"

"Bump the beaky" on Bull.

i hear "both are peaking" or "bumf or beaking"

in other words, i dunno.

ah ok xpost.

anyway, that part of the song is catchy

I've had the lyric sheet for about three months now and that bit still makes me go, 'Eh?'

Well, that and about 30% of it.

'Beaky' is the cute name I call my other half - a corruption of 'vicky' fwiw. So I haven't heard the album yet and won't get to until next week but already it's incredible that this is happening.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAUMipyQPKA

Pretty smug that I correctly identified "bump the beaky" when cloth-eared would-be internet comedians were suggesting it sounded remotely like "fuck the bacon" or "butts are leaking"

Re voice he's said that he keeps it in fine condition by basically never taking it out of its case until just before recording, when he will warm up by singing a blues or something. I think the different vibrato-free voices he employs here - the shouty one and the idk snotty? one he uses in the "whip-poor-will" bits, both of which made an appearance on "zercon" - are another example of Scott's whole keep it interesting/keep the listener on her toes deal, like not using bass or letting the music get too nice

Btw how funny is "whip-poor-will (wh-tssh! wh-tssh!)"? I love how shameless he is with the wordplay/sound matching sometimes

looking cool there lads, original photo

― online hardman, Thursday, 17 July 2014 16:12 (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

old man in jeans and a baseball cap = embarrassing as fuck m8

― online hardman, Thursday, 17 July 2014 16:13 (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

bet Fetish is a haunting rumination on man's innate perversion and the lengths he goes to to sublimate his truest desire

― online hardman, Thursday, 17 July 2014 16:13 (3 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no cow sacred enough to escape wd's withering gaze