Weekly Track Roundup #22
Photo by Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP
You know when you're on Youtube watching the disaster that was the Chainsmokers and Halsey at the VMAs and you end up in the part of Youtube that's literally just "Skinny Love" covers? At Aural Wes we are all too familiar with this phenomenon, and on this edition of Weekly Track round-up, we indulge our slightly pretentious, slightly absurd side.
The suriks & lydia Grace - "Winter Wind is Blowing"
This is the odd duck of the series. I actually heard about this record not from Youtube but from Internet radio station Shirley and Spinoza. The Sursiks are known for turning found sounds into compositions. Here they recorded the voice of 3 year old Lydia Grace, who made up all the words you hear on the spot, without any musical context. Then they arranged all these into songs. This is one of the better cuts on that record; if I recall, they are ska musicians by trade, but this doesn’t sound anything like ska. Rather, it sounds like the band is channeling DJ Shadow collage. In any case, it’s a real testament to the editing skills of the musicians involved - Will King
"░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░" - プロミセス「▣世界から解放され▣」
Vaporwave (ｖａｐｏｒｗａｖｅ) producers often get flak for rehashing old ideas without making any creative changes to the original source material they borrow. However, through unusual looping techniques, discordant sample layering, and pitch manipulation, ░▒▓新しいデラックスライフ▓▒░ creates an uncanny sonic atmosphere that explores what sample based music is and how it sounds. Also, as with most vaporware, "プロミセス「▣世界から解放され▣」” is a slow burner. - Dylan Levine
Giles Corey - "Destructionist"
Hailing from the neighboring town of Middlefield, Connecticut, Giles Corey is an acoustic project with themes surrounding history, suicide, and ghosts (oh my!). The album "Destructionist" isn't necessarily an album, but a philosophical tool "designed to induce trances, possession states, and out-of-body experiences". Clocking in at around an hour and a half long, "Destructionist" is accompanied by a booklet that is supposed to be read before listening. If you're looking to have an out-of-body experience/hallucinate without the use of psychedelics, follow all of the instructions and give the entire album a listen. - Allison Hsu
Lummus Maximus - "My Song 31"
So, it turns out that searching for "My Song 31" is an amazing way to find peoples Garageband noodles that they directly uploaded to Youtube under default titles. Its a treasure trove, and this particular piece, "My Song 31" from Lummus Maximus had a whopping 2 views when I stumbled on to it.
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A gentle ambient intro augmented by horn hits and an ascending Major 7th chord rounds out the arrangements brief, but powerful journey. Hints of Eno, Aphex Twin and Avant Garde greats like Steve Reich and Terry Riley simmer and stew, inviting the listener to wonder, and marvel at the cornucopia of digital flavors on display. Top Notch. - Ryan Breen
Tatsuro Yamashita- "Love Talkin' (Honey It's You"
1980s Japanese pop-funk, it turns out, is a vast reservoir of perfect summertime highway-cruising tunes. Tatsuro Yamashita’s Love Talkin’ (Honey It’s You) is just one of these many bass-plucking, synth-keyboard coated, soft-edged gems. It’s the kind of embarrassingly elevator-music like tune that you can’t help but fall for, with its steady cowbell beat, synth-harp interludes and background harmonies. Yamashita’s vocals carry a surprising amount of poignancy, and even though I can’t understand the majority of the lyrics, it doesn’t seem to matter. When was good funk even about the words, anyway. - Ezra Kohn
Död Mark - "Paranoid schizofren"
You know how some people "get lost" when they're on Youtube? This is me whenever I go swimming through Spotify for new music. In a recent dive I found loads of Swedish surf-rock that's pretty rad, but alongside my new discoveries I found this gem: "Paranoid schizofren" by Stockholm based band Dod Mark off their album, Drabbad av Sjukdom, which Google translates as Afflicted by the disease. The title of the album seems to make appearances in the lyrics of the song, but it's unclear because I don't know Swedish. Either way, it's made its way onto many of my recent playlists and the rest of the album in pretty interesting. - Kelsey Gordon
German Kids - "TNT by AC/DC"
This specific cover of AC/DC's TNT by small German children has, for some reason, been my jam for years. You definitely don't want to miss it. ( that guitar solo ) - Adam Manson
A song so obscure, it can't be embedded….
