doyourememberhow

[doyourememberhow]

Have a Nice Life - Deathconsciousness

I’m sitting in front of my keyboard right now, not sure if I have the actual ability to put my feelings about this record into words.

I first heard this record in 2012, and I was 17. I was in a fairly miserable situation at the time. I was stuck at home, day in and day out, barely scraping by my homeschool curriculum. The only real life social interactions I had were the occasional days I’d work at this shitty grocery store in my town, and I fucking hated every minute of it. I hated my boss, he was a bully and he preyed on my timidness and lack of world experience and used his position to put me in uncomfortable situations. I hated the customers, their demands and their uncaring wrath towards me when I didn’t meet their every tiny expectation or when we just didn’t have their brand of frozen biscuits in the warehouse in the back. I hated the work, cleaning these disgusting bathrooms every time I was there, vacuuming carpets and sweeping floors that would never stay clean longer than an hour or two. It was already a scary situation to my grossly underdeveloped psyche and I dreaded my time out there a lot. I ended up getting another part time job a bit later at a flower shop and I liked that job so much it made the shifts at the grocery store bearable. But that’s not really relevant to what I’m about to talk about.

I’m not actually going to mention the music on this album much at all, I’ll say briefly that I think the fusion of metal, spacious post-rock, shoegaze and industrial instrumentation all makes for a, in my opinion, beautiful experience, but I’m going to be dumb and sentimental and basically just write about my emotional experience with this record.

I first heard about this album through a friend, I thought that the album art using Jacques-Louis David’s Death of Marat was very interesting, and from what my friend had told me about it, I thought it would be right up my alley. A super sad industrial shoegaze album? Hell yeah. I downloaded it from a russian tracker site and plugged my shitty sony earbuds into my slow ass laptop. I laid back in my bed and hit play.

The slow ass guitar in “Conneticut” soothed me, but I wasn’t really grabbed by it initially. I was confused, I thought this was a booming industrial album, what’s the deal? This intro lasts quite a while, and my depressed thoughts sort of amplified and fired off in my head and I found myself to be in quite a terrible mood, to be honest. I think I started crying, if I’m being honest. Like I said, I really wasn’t doing well at this point in my life. Everything felt overwhelming. Everything felt crushing. I was in an abusive online relationship that wasn’t going well, I was alone in my room 90% of the time, I hated my job, my relationship between my brothers and my parents was crumbling apart and everything felt like it was on my feeble teenage shoulders. I didn’t know if I was going to make it to the next week. Fuck this. Fuck this album, it isn’t anything like I thought it was going to b-

“Bloodhail”, the second track, the REAL beginning of this album then began to play.

Oh. Oh fuck, okay.

That overblown bass riff with those compressed, booming drums felt like hammers inside my head. Like the album was telling me to shut the fuck up and stop focusing on my thoughts. I listened. I shut the fuck up and I listened. I sat through this hour and a half long album, barely moving an inch. It was one of the most cathartic experiences of my life. I couldn’t believe that somebody this fucked up, this depressed, this sick of existence could create something so beautiful.

After I finished the album, I immediately put it back on, and I began to write in my journal. I couldn’t stop. I wrote every feeling in my heart down. I wrote out all of my frustrations, all of my fears, all of my horrible hateful opinions of myself, all of my feelings of loneliness and isolation down and it filled 6-7 pages, front to back. I felt so tired after that. I closed my notebook and processed what I just experienced, in my room, at like 2 in the morning. Everybody in my house was asleep. At this point I was halfway through my third listen of Deathconsciousness. I took my headphones off, and went to the kitchen to drink a bottle of water. I walked back to my room and grabbed my notebook and my little trash can. I went outside and set the fucking thing on fire, in silence. I’ve never told anyone this story, actually. Feels kind of good to write down here, on this blog that no one will read. It was an incredibly cathartic night. I woke up the next morning, on like 3 hours of sleep and walked to my shitty fucking grocery store job. I felt like everything was going to be alright. I messaged the girl I was in a relationship with and apologized for whatever it was that she was angry with me about. I came up with fun things for my parents and brothers to do together, I stayed up late every night with my brother that was more suicidal than I was and listened to him air his grievances about everything going on. I tried my best at my job. For a while after that, at least, I tried as hard as I could to make the best out of my situation.

I would end up listening to Deathconsciousness many, many more times, and it’s still a record I hold very close to my heart. If I had to pick one moment that really kills me every time I hear it, it’s when the drums come in on “The Big Gloom”. It really quiets me, every time I hear it. I have to stop thinking and just feel it. It’s hard to describe, I guess, but it’s hard to turn my thoughts off sometimes. This album is one of the few that really, really quiet the thoughts down. It means a lot to me. Thank you.

More than a symbol More than I bargained for

The Big Gloom

[doyourememberhow]

American Football - American Football

What’s the meme album doing on here man? Never Meant, right? The meme album! That one!

I like it. I’ll talk about it briefly.

American Football are a cool band in my opinion. Sorry. It’s kind of a perfect shitstorm of an album, midwest emo kids don’t like it because it isn’t whiny enough, math rock fans don’t like it because it’s too whiny, etc. You can’t win with this fucking thing. People either love it or fucking DESPISE it. Christ. I hate the internet sometimes. Shut the fuck up. Sorry. Getting mad thinking about music fans again.

ANYWAY.

American Football are a cool band in my opinion. Just starting over and moving on now.

I first heard this album in like, 2013 I think? At the time of my listening, I hadn’t really delved super hard into emo music yet. I was into stuff like Snowing and William Bonney but I was still very new to the genre. I think when I first heard this album I considered it to be like, a fusion of Girlfriends (one man band that makes catchy math rock online) and Giles Corey. (solo project of Have A Nice Life musician Dan Barrett. Deeply sad) At the time, I thought it was pretty unique and interesting. I liked it. It took me a few years to really appreciate this record more but as time went on I really resonated with it more and more. It sounds like autumn, to me. Cold and brisk and soothing, and ultimately, sad. It’s a sad album. It laments failed relationships and teenage feelings, it’s an album full of regret and misgivings, and I think it’s a really compelling listening experience. It’s a very genuine album I think. It kind of sucks that this album is considered to be a meme or whatever, it kinda breaks my heart a little bit. It’s nice that the guys in the band take it in stride and embrace it online and stuff, and I’m happy that they’re still making music. Their new music kinda sounds like a mishmash of their old stuff and like, coldplay pop stuff. I like it, but it doesn’t really touch the greatness of this album, in my opinion.

Never Meant is the album’s opener, and the guitar riff is infectiously catchy. I love the way this song sounds. The drums are super jazzy and do a great job propelling the song forward, and then the vocals come in. The thing that really makes this album stand out. The vocalist of this band sounds so heartbroken. It’s really compelling and relatable, I feel like.

"For Sure” kind of sums up why I like the instrumentation on this album so much, it has a sweet and warm guitar driven loop that mellows out and then the trumpet comes in. So sad sounding. I feel like these guys listen to a lot of Jazz, they really tap into that songwriting style for these cuts. These songs feel so organic, like they were done in one take. I appreciate it a lot.

This album is cool. It means a lot to me. Thank you.

For Sure

[doyourememberhow]

Oneohtrix Point Never - Garden Of Delete

My experience with OPN is kind of unique. I think most people were first exposed to him with his album “Replica”, but my first exposure was 2010′s “Returnal”. That album is basically 75% soothing drones/ambiance, 5% synthpop and 20% harsh noise. The harsh noise fraction of that album IMMEDIATELY captivated me, as I was getting into noise music pretty heavy at the time and the fucking textures of Nil Admirari (the opening noise tune of Returnal) just melted my fucking flesh off of my face. It was amazing to hear. I was in love. I loved that album a lot, and for a long time it was my favorite of his. OPN has gotten super famous lately, making music with The Weeknd and doing movie soundtracks and stuff. It’s cool, happy for him, but in my opinion nothing has really been as interesting or captivating as 2015′s Garden of Delete. GOD is a very strange album in his discography. OPN is kind of a synth god, he’s been making forward thinking drone/ambient and experimental synth music for a very long time and he’s incredibly good at textures/ soundscapes, but he started doing sample based music for a while with a few albums and side projects. (remember vaporwave? yeah, this guy invented that shit. for better or worse. lol)

But after a few sample focused albums, he dropped an industrial album out of nowhere. I was surprised that he was touring with Nine Inch Nails in 2014 but I thought it was really cool as I was super into NIN at the time (and i still am, honestly). I didn’t think much of it but god damn, I guess Trent Reznor had an impact on him. It ended up being a beautiful nightmare.

GOD opens up with a distorted recording of a teenager (child?) laughing, and then the first “song” is “Ezra”. Holy fuck. Everything you need to know going into this album is summed up in this track. If you like Ezra you’re gonna love the entire album. Glitchy rhythms, soaring synth textures and explosive drums. The structure is so interesting too, it crests and wanes, it’s insane. Amazing tune. This entire album is full of cuts like this. I appreciate how disgusting and slimy and HEAVY it all sounds. It sounds like a 2010′s take on an 80′s dystopian future, it’s wonderful. The fucking guitar parts. The fucking animal crossing-esque vocal refrains. The fucking booming bass and percussion. This is the type of album I would’ve loved as an edgy teenager and it’s an album that I cherish deeply as an edgy adult.

In 2015 I had gained the confidence to start posting my music publicly for human consumption, and I was on a real emotional high for most of that year, I felt invincible kinda. I was working on a lot of music, I was discovering lots of new stuff to listen to, I was branching out online and meeting new people, and I was working hard and saving up money. I felt awesome. Good year. Fuck.

I feel like this album kind of summarizes how I was feeling at that time. Hype. Hopeful for the future. It’s an album I’ll always appreciate. OPN is my synthesizer dad. Thank you.

Ezra

[doyourememberhow]

5 down, 25 to go. cool. probably be done with this in 2023 at the rate i’m going

[doyourememberhow]

The Log.OS - λόγος

The Log.OS was a project by Ken Barrientos, as far as I know this guy hasn’t been involved with any other music projects since this album dropped (on this very website, notably) in 2011. It’s kind of interesting that this album came out on this website around the year I started using it, but it remained completely unknown to me until I encountered it on a /mu/ sharethread in 2018.

When I discovered this album I was kind of immediately bewitched, it was really unlike anything I had ever heard before. It had an experimental electronic pulse but it was cloaked in a smooth and sexy RnB/Trip Hop coat. Like if Massive Attack’s Mezzanine was created by somebody with depression more severe than Robert Del Naja’s. It’s a very comforting(?) and warm sound. Familiar to someone like me that listened to a lot of Trip Hop during their formative years.

Anyway.

λόγος starts out with “Drm Sqnc”, a super ethereal synth piece with a smooth and forward moving bass guitar line. Some beautiful chorus-like vocals come in the mix about halfway through and remain until the song ends. It’s a beautiful introduction, and it sums up what the album is about really nicely, I think. This is an album that is fragile sounding, but much heavier and deeper than it may initially present itself as. There’s etherealness but there are many, many layers to what you’re hearing. Synth textures moving side to side in the mix, drum patterns that repeat and gently hammer into your skull, it’s all very nice. I’m not going to talk about the technics of this album that much because I’m honestly not that good at that sort of thing, and it isn’t the focus of this dumb blog anyway but I will take a moment to list a couple of moments that make me go “holy fuck” as a musician myself:

The sax part in “Cancerous”, the vocal harmonies in “Sand”, and the fucking incredible drum programming in “Dunes (Rebirth)”. I’ll go into detail on these in a bit but first, please allow me be super subjective and emotional about this collection of songs.

I think “Blades” was the first song I heard from this album, some random fuck had uploaded it to youtube on its own and the guy that shared this album in the sharethread had linked it as the preview to listen to before downloading it. I clicked it and when those drums came in, cradling the beautiful vocal performance I was hearing, again, it was like listening to Massive Attack or Portishead for the first time. I was in love. I downloaded the album and then listened to it like 5 times in a row that night. (It’s only like 30 minutes long, okay.)

I just love the dreamy atmosphere of this album so much, but it’s so technically impressive as well. There’s jazz, IDM, house, RnB and drum and bass influence here, and it’s all packaged so uniquely. It’s ridiculous that more people haven’t listened to this fucking thing. It’s great. Fuck. This is getting long winded so I’m gonna talk a bit about the three moments I mentioned before and wrap this thing up. I’m probably going to be writing fucking novels for my personal top ten so I might as well keep it as succinct as I can for these lower ranked ones.

ANYWAY.

The sax in “Cancerous”. Take an already deeply catchy and melodious song, with infectious vocals and synths and then add harmonizing saxophones and vinyl hiss(?) sounds. It’s incredible and makes me happy every time I hear it.

“Sand”. A wailing, pained interlude with bells, swelling synths, distorted bass and screeching pads. The song sounds like it’s crying out in agony. It’s gutting. It’s incredible. Might be my favorite cut on the album, honest to god.

“The drums in Dunes (Rebirth)”. The entire song feels like it’s building up to something huge, with forboding instrumentation and haunting vocals, and then it kind of doesn’t at all. It’s so strange. The song fades into nothing, and then quickly comes back with timpani strikes and a very subtle drum break backing it up. It kills me, every time I hear this. It’s something else.

This album rules. I’m bad at writing how I feel about it but it’s super unique and worth hearing. Thank you.

Blades

[doyourememberhow]

Daedelus - Invention

invention is a really special album to me. im gonna attempt to talk about it while not actively listening to it (it’s been a few months since i’ve listened to it) because it’s late at night and i’m two cups of chamomile tea deep and i’m trying to stay awake and this is an album that sedates me further. (editor’s note: he fell asleep at this point, so from here on out he is reviewing the album while listening to it. also i am the editor also. thanks.)

anyway

invention is a subtle album, it’s kind of difficult to actively listen to because it’s so sleight and quiet, but it is ultimately the most calming and pleasant album ever, i think. when i want to feel calm, this is the album that pops up in my head 9 times out of 10. there’s a faint melancholy here, not really moody but quietly sad and subdued. it’s an album that can fade into the wallpaper if you aren’t paying it enough attention but it is worth giving your attention.

there are kinetic moments on this thing but only really in the context of listening to the album fully and appreciating its range of quiet and calm to slightly less quiet and slightly less calm. the accordion part in “experience” might not sound special on its own but in the context of the album leading up to it, it is powerful and sad and moving. daedelus really carved out a unique and special sound here, utilizing the technique of sampling in his own way. this album sounds like an antique store, and i mean that in the nicest and sweetest way possible. dusty and ancient and delicate and mesmerizing. thank you.

Pursed Lips Reply

[doyourememberhow]

Flying Lotus - 1983

i mentioned previously that flying lotus was a large part of my introduction to music. the first album of his i heard was cosmogramma, and at the time it really changed the way that i listened to music, it really affected me deeply. i would hear tunes like astral plane and galaxy in janaki and it really did shit to me. i can’t really listen to cosmogramma anymore, i burned myself out on it really hard and i don’t really like the jazz influences on that record. i appreciate them being there because of flylo’s heritage and shit but i’m just not really into the way he does jazz. no disrespect, it’s just how i feel.

1983 was the first album he released under the flylo moniker, for plug research, a little label that was best known for artists like bilal, i think. he’d move onto warp records after this one, a much more deserved label placement, but yeah, kinda interesting.

1983 was an album that i remember having trouble finding online, i, for whatever reason at the time, couldn’t find a stable torrent or zip or whatever of the album, and i remember asking my friend to dropbox me his cd rip of it. he explicitly said to me, “be warned, it isn’t a masterpiece or anything”, assuming that my exposure to cosmogramma and los angeles would’ve made it an underwhelming experience for me, but goddamn, he couldn’t have been more wrong. 1983 is a much simpler album than those two but i think it’s stronger for it.

1983 is a really cool and (for the time) unique take on j dilla-esque hip hop beats fused with autechre-esque idm glitch shit. it’s insane to me that this album came out in 2006, it must’ve blown the fucking balls off of the people that heard it at the time. like it could’ve killed somebody.

1983′s opener, the eponymous song is super cute and bouncy sounding, like, it does the same thing to my brain as “mario music”. it’s difficult to describe but it feels like cozy, nostalgic mario music. i remember seeing a video a long time ago about flylo on videogame music, and he mentioned having super mario bros on the NES on in the background for hours just so he could hear the overworld music on repeat because he just liked it so much. i feel that shit a lot. his production process is something i feel like i could probably relate to a lot.

tracks like “bad actors” and “hello” are simple as well, repetitive  and hypnotic and catchy, just really nice. my favoritte track on  the album is “pet monster shotglass”, the longest joint on the record by far, at over 6 minutes long it spends a lot of time repeating and shifting slightly, until  a little over halfway through when the track transforms and evolves in a supremely satisfying and cathartic way. flylo’s production becomes a lot more refined and masterful later on in his discography but i think he kind of peaks here. the simplicity that he masters and nails so well here is so utterly charming and cute and nice to me, i just really appreciate this little record. it’s the epitome of short and sweet. thank you.

Pet Monster Shotglass

[doyourememberhow]

Teebs - Ardour

teebs. one of the world’s most underrated musicians.

so, my introduction to teebs was probably in 2012? the beginning of 2012 was the start of my real foray into music, i’ve always loved music as far back as i remember but as far as actually putting in an effort into discovering stuff on my own, that started in late 2011/early 2012. before that i really just listened to what my friends told me about and i just accepted it as being what music existed in the world.

with my discovery of online music forums and archived zip files of albums and russian piracy websites that featured tons of music to download and listen to, i found the music of flying lotus and my dumbass 16 year old brain just kinda went “oh, shit” and i spiraled into the los angeles beat scene. brainfeeder and ninja tune and all that “chill lofi hip hop beats to study to” patient zero shit. i was absolutely in love with it, like, more than i can describe. it changed something inside of me, i couldn’t believe how beautiful all the music i was hearing was. i couldn’t even fathom that the more i dug, the more cool stuff i was finding and listening to. it was incredible, honestly. one of the coolest points in my life i think. i felt like i had discovered a new passion, a new thing in my life that i could really really feel in my soul and it was the catalyst for me beginning my own journey as a musician, really.

but i’m getting way, way way off course here. i’ll shut the fuck up and talk about teebs now.

so teebs is a contemporary of flying lotus. i’m sure flying lotus is a name you’ve heard before because he’s a big deal, but teebs is a lot less known i think. i’m pretty sure teebs and flylo just became friends outside of the world of music and they just sort of fed off of each others’ creative and musical energies and they ended up sort of inspiring each other musically. ardour is a very “flylo-esque” album. it’s clearly inspired by his music, but with a very unique take on it. two sides of the same coin if you will. where flying lotus’ music is very hip-hoppy and IDM-y (and later, to my own dismay, jazzy [i might talk about that later. i like jazz music but i don’t like flylo’s take on jazz. jesus christ this has so many fucking tangents in it and i know i’m not going to edit this shit down. i’m like an insane person, reading this shit back]) but teebs’ music is a lot less kinetic. it’s a lot more atmospheric and gentle, a lot less “head-nodding music“ and a lot more “laying on your back and staring at the ceiling music” if that makes sense. not to say that teebs’ shit doesn’t bang in the whip, it totally does, but it’s a lot less easy to bang your head to this stuff. it’s so fragile and gentle sounding. a lot more sweet. a lot more quiet. music that makes you wanna drink a cup of chamomile tea and not masturbate.

ardour is made up of 18 “songs”, each of them are really more like little art pieces that breathe and grow and change subtly instead of having a traditional song-like structure to them. this a much more introverted and atmospheric take on an already introverted and atmospheric style of music. it’s not for everybody. a lot of people would probably find this music to be, frankly, boring as hell, and i’d kind of understand why they’d say that. but i get it. it clicks for me.

each of these songs feature a piece of teebs’ soul, songs like “moments” and “arthur’s birds” feature a lot of cool sidechainy effects that, when used with these ethereal ass soundscapes, sound like falling in love, sound like a heart fluttering inside of the chest of the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen. i swear to god, i mean it. it’s music that could bring world peace. it sounds like love, to me, in my heart and mind, it makes me feel love.

there’s undertones of sorrow here too, though. most of the albums i’m gonna be going through here are pretty sad so whatever, prepare for that i guess. i’m a sad sack of shit and i like sad sack of shit music. but anyway, yeah, this album has a very bittersweet feeling to it. i think this album is about his father, who to my knowledge, passed away while the album was being written. loss is a theme here, in addition to love, and tranquility and discovery and inspiration. these are ethereal songs but they’re grounded in something real, something moving. you can feel this dude’s soul. he poured himself into this album.

musically, again, these songs are very ethereal and spacious but they’re also surreal and dream-like. i would absolutely love to sit down with teebs and talk with him about his biggest musical inspirations because i struggle to wrap my head around how someone produces music that sounds this, frankly, beautiful, on a computer. i’d love to pick his brain.

anyway yeah. ardour is a beautiful album that sounds like peace, and clarity, and love. thank you.

You’ve Changed

[doyourememberhow]

Kode9 - Nothing

kode9 is an interesting presence in the music world to me. he’s the founder of hyperdub, a record label based in the UK that hosted a couple of musical acts that are quite important to me, including (most importantly) the music of burial and dj rashad.

kode9′s music is definitely something that i had always sort of been aware of, i had listened to his two albums with mc/poet/lyricist/artist spaceape, and i thoroughly enjoyed them and thought they worked well together. when i heard that spaceape had died, i was pretty upset about it, and then dj rashad died very quickly after that as well if i remember correctly, so it was kind of a two-part tragedy in the world of hyperdub and in music in general. kode9 was clearly close to these two individuals, and it was clear that the loss of them both affected him pretty deeply.

when i heard he was releasing his first solo full length LP i was very interested in hearing it. i’d heard a lot of his solo material already, singles and EPs and stuff but tackling a full length album by yourself is always a completely new experience and it’s not easy to do, especially when your discography of LPs previously had always involved collaborators, i imagine. either way, i was very interested in hearing what he had to say on his own.

nothing is a very unique album. musically, it’s very minimalist, very cold, very precise and very subdued. it features a lot of mechanical and ambient production and interesting sampling techniques, instead of going for instrumental hip hop or dub music, like he’s pretty much been known for, he kind of gives us his take on juke/footwork tunes, most likely inspired by, and to the homage of the late dj rashad, one of juke’s greatest artists of all time.

his take on juke is very emotional, very cold and isolated sounding. these are songs that you could theoretically dance to but they feel so somber and icy and spacey. it’s hard to put into words, i’m not good at this shit.

“void”, is a good example of all the stuff i’ve talked about so far. this is a song that features an incredibly catchy and dynamic groove to it, like, it’s a song with a fucking pulse. it’s a track that just lets its samples breathe and they repeat and repeat and repeat and the drums propel them forward. it’s kind of a perfect song. it’s a beautiful piece of music, it just bleeds out. it feels empty and spacious at the same time, and it’s just wonderful.

the entire album is full of cuts like this, some are more understated than others with minimal or no percussion but generally these tunes all have fantastic beats as an essential part of their skeleton. the entire album really grooves, if that makes sense.

album’s even more compelling if you consider, for a moment, the idea that spaceape was potentially supposed to spit over these tracks. i’m completely guessing here but just from listening to this album hundreds of times over the years this is the conclusion i’ve come to, and with this context in mind the album’s cold and icy feel becomes much, much more sad and melancholic. it’s kind of a heartbreaking record. his friends are dead and this is what’s left. nothing. nothing is left.

“third ear transmission” features a spoken word posthumous feature from spaceape, ran through a lowpass filter with a lot of glitch effects making it sound like he’s speaking to us from far away, if i may be so bold, maybe even from beyond the grave. “9 drones“ samples one of kode9′s most popular songs of all time, “9 samurai”, a song that spaceape spits over and a song that many people would say defines their musical relationship. it’s the penultimate song here and what used to be a massive, catchy tune is now broken sounding. deconstructed and turned into something new. sampling your own music is something that beard-having flannel music journalist dudes would probably say is “pretentious” or “self fellating” but i don’t really give a shit, i think it works and i think it’s a compelling thing to do. i get it.

the entire album sounds like a man grieving the loss of his loved ones, and it’s an album that has fascinated and moved me for years and years and it will always be something i appreciate listening to. kode9 if you somehow stumble upon this page and read this review, i hope i didn’t sound that stupid and i hope you understand how much this album you made means to me. thank you.

Void

[doyourememberhow]

so this is going to be a secret blog where i’m going to slowly make my way through my 30 favorite albums of all time and talk about how they have impacted me. it’s gonna be lame as shit. just something i want to do for myself