#ash blogs

[motionlessmusic]

Guayaba Presents: Fantasmagoría, by Guayaba

10 track album

I’ve been following Guyaba online for several years, but I never got around to listening to their music... shame on me. I made time to listen to this album and fully expected a weird, dark, and lofi rap album but this is so much more and so not lofi. Guyaba explores bossa nova through horrorcore and a psychedelic filter with super tight production. This album has a dark atmosphere, catchy and haunting melodies, beautiful vocal harmonies, and an eclectic instrumentation. Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro), Mariposa Mala, and Sanguijuela are songs where Guyaba raps and sings in equally excellent quality about the intersections of being a queer fat afrolatina weirdo within the context of horror, both real and “film” type, and existentialism.  And Thus, I Remain Crepuscular..., Guyaba imitates the sounds of nature with haunting music that would fit perfectly in any horror movie ending the track with intense metal vocals.

I feel entirely unequipped to do this album justice with words. I hear something new with each listen, the music is dense, but not too thick that anything is lost in the mix. It’s beautiful and dark, it’s grounded in common genres but takes them to experimental territory. 

[motionlessmusic]

Blacklisted, by Neko Case

14 track album

I first listened to this album sometime in 2019, I Wish I Was the Moon came up on my spotify discover weekly. I saw Neko Case and I remember seeing her name around the internet a lot through the years so I decided to give it a listen. I immediately fell in love with the album. It’s Country, but not quite, the arrangements on each song inform some other influence. Runnin’ Out of Fools feels, to an uninformed country listener like me, to hark back to classic country songs. Meanwhile, Lady Pilot, has more of an Indie feel (for lack of better terms). The way she delivers her lyrics feels so personal. Deep Red Bells and I Wish I Was the Moon hit particularly deep and I cry nearly every time I listen to them. Every song is a journey, exceptionally composed and exceptionally produced.

On a more personal note, I’ve slowly but surely been gravitating more towards Country music. I’ve been really into 16 Horsepower for years, and there’s some “freak folk” I still love, but I listened to Johnny Cash’s When the Man Comes Around during the summer of 2018 and it put me in such a mood. I dug for anything I could find that was similar, some sort of biblical apocalypse country folk jams. I hovered around some almost satisfying Outlaw Country but eventually found my way back to an old favorite, Martial Industrial Neo Classical act, Puissance. Their album, Grace of God is a trip through christian slanted misanthropy draped in a beautiful and terrible synth drudged martial classical landscape. This is the music I want to make and perform: deep personal songs about the hell of growing up queer and friendless over vaguely country music accompanied by synthesizers, samplers, and symphonies.

[motionlessmusic]

Pony, by Orville Peck

12 track album

I have a knack for being completely oblivious to anything popular. I was turned onto to Orville Peck by a friend on New Year’s Eve. We watched the videos for the songs Dead of Night and Turn to Hate and I was pulled in by the whole aesthetic of it: the slightly altered but undeniably classic country sound, the mask, the videos that seemed to be filmed in strip clubs or brothels in the desert. I listened to the whole album the first chance I had and I was not disappointed. The production on this album is incredible. The album puts you alone in a dreamy desert, every instrument drips with a little reverb while drones play on in the background of a classic tremolo guitar sound with an often low voice serenaded you in tales of loss. 

Orville Peck manages to pay great homage to country legends while sneaking in heavy doses of 90s Alt Rock influences. Buffalo Run is a particularly interesting song in this regard in that it closely follows the structure and build up of Velvet Underground’s Heroine. The song slowly builds up, getting faster as it moves towards its climactic finish which would fit perfectly in a punk adjacent 90s Alt Rock song.

[figjelly]

update: I was finally able to get the weird bloody clot thingy out of my nose so I'm no longer sniffling

+1 improvement on day

[figjelly]

oh boy so my anxiety is at full power and last night was awful. I couldn't sleep so I tried watching videos, playing games, cleaning, talking to others, and I still couldn't shut my brain off until like 3am and then my sleep was plagued with night terrors/sleep paralysis and just mostly not good shit

so i feel like poop

[ashestothewind]

clock out/clock in

7/31/16 11:30pm  /  8/1/16 11:30am

ok, so yesterday i did some things.  i have to remember what those are now.

put up a big projects list in the basement studio (now to be referred to as the Constellations studio)

took inventory of the projects that are already started

determined the problem with the Motor Box 

listened to a bunch of tapes and some cds

practiced guitar

ruined the tongue drum in an attempt to improve it (don’t worry, i have another plate ready to replace the one i wrecked)

put together a shopping list for current projects

watched Lord of the Rings

worked on the podcast

great!  today i hope to 

finish normalizing and editing the podcast

remove recycling from my room

add intro, outro, and break music to podcast

laundry

schedule eye exam

at the very least, i’ll be happy if i can do that stuff... and I just remembered my original plan for today involved the home depot and some manual labor, oh well.

[ashestothewind]

Clock in

7/31/16 11:30 am

Ok so the past two weeks I’ve been awful at doing anything but sleeping but there are some updates. I’ve started making progress on my residency project, I got some good demos of the recent instruments I built, I finally started on that podcast, and I finally decided to become a manager at my day job. I’ll start training for that in about 2 weeks. I'm gonna make a post of what I do today when I click out

.

[the-effervescent-companion]

It's been a long while since I've had a migraine that Excedrin hasn't made bearable/go away. Oh god, I forgot how bad these are. I feel like I'm going to puke every time I move my head too much. The sound hurts. BUT MY POSTER ISNT DONE YET AND I HAVE TO FINISH IT SO I CAN PRINT IT TOMORROW. In other words, I'm nauseated, in pain, and having to work at a computer while thunder rolls. Its not a good night.