any music that you've listened to lately that you wanna share?
yeah sure! i don't really listen to a lot of popular/new music, i just sorta download stuff when it seems interesting to me. i tend to get really fixated on an artist or album for a long stretch of time, like if a track hits i'll have it on repeat constantly for hours if not days or weeks.
what, me autistic?
anyway i've been getting a lot of play out of John Carpenter's four Lost Themes albums. basically, they're soundtracks for movies that don't exist-- which means they're nonstop bangers start to finish, because unlike his actual movie OSTs he doesn't have to cater to the needs of dialogue and sound design. i especially recommend these albums if you, like me, spent a lot of time in the 2010s listening to the various Homestuck music albums. genuinely there are a bunch of tracks here that could show up in an [S] and you wouldn't even blink.
this is gonna be a pretty big bucket but i've been listening to a lot of J Jazz and City Pop. the three Pacific Breeze compilations, Tokyo Glow, and the four J Jazz: Deep Modern Jazz from Japan compilations have been regulars on my rotation. i have to be in a particular mood for the city pop but i can listen to jazz whenever. i'm really glad there's been a resurgence in attention for j jazz since they broadly kept the tradition alive and evolving after it fell out of fashion in the states, and that scene broadly formed the musical foundation of a lot of the greatest composers of Japanese video game & anime music in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
sorry to be a white woman but i love Vulfpeck. they're an ensemble of exceptionally talented and affably good-natured musicians who've picked up where the 70s left off and carried on as if they never ended. their most recent album, Clarity of Cal, is so wild. it's a live album recorded at a massive sold out show... performing music that had never been released before. this gives it the quality of a greatest hits compilation from an alternate universe. idk man i love these guys. i saw Theo Katzman live in 2020, literally the last good thing that happened in my life before the pandemic hit, and yes Joe Dart really IS that good. also highly recommend Cory Wong's solo stuff and literally every Fearless Flyers album.
there's a lot of soundtracks that tend to go through my rotation so i won't overload you with too many of those, but in particular i've been listening to the Wanderstop OST and the Challengers OST. extremely different vibes! Wanderstop is a game about making tea while dealing with trauma whose music is by C418 (of Minecraft), and of course Challengers is a movie about disaster tennis bisexuals whose music is by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross (of The Nine Inch Nails, as seen on Twin Peaks). the former just has such a depth of comforting textures and moods, while the latter is like "i'm having a panic attack but fuck it we thrive anyway."
the last thing i'll share is my favorite band: Murder By Death. i did a video about their most recent album like two years ago, and also wrote an entire novel based on another of their albums back in 2012. they're currently kickstarting what will probably be their last album, which i'm both incredibly excited for and sad about. they're a sort of apocalyptic country/blues/rock band (???? i'm terrible at describing music genres) who've done all sorts of concept albums with different sounds and driving ideas. they're the only band i've seen live more than once (three times, hopefully four when they come to seattle again later this year) and learning how to play & sing their songs on guitar has consistently been my strongest motivator in actually practicing on that damn instrument. i made a playlist on spotify touring through the phases of their career, but if i had to pick one song it's gonna be Last Night on Earth from The Other Shore. it's an album about people escaping from earth to find a new home for humanity (an evergreen topic for concept albums) and this track is the big finale. MBD is SOOOO good at finales dude. i love their music so much
