What album are you listening to right now?

sweet new dalek is out. heres a review from pitchfork 7.8 out of 10

title: Asphalt to Eden

The subversive indie hip-hop outfit Dälek return from a hiatus with a revamped lineup and a newfound confidence and profundity.

given hip hop's longevity, global reach, and power as a paradigm-changing social force, it's still relatively rare when rap artists make a splash with a coherent, actionable left-wing message. Of course, Public Enemy and KRS-One gave audiences a new vocabulary for questioning the power structure, which the majority of hip-hop acts rail against in some form or another anyway. Today, we can point to several contemporary acts—The Coup, Immortal Technique, Killer Mike, etc.—whose rhetoric follows the same path, but none can claim to be as musically subversive as Dälek, an outfit that almost two decades ago fulfilled hip-hop's potential to exist in an alt/underground/experimental universe while staying true to its roots.

Dälek (a play on the word "dialect") parlayed atypical hip-hop inspirations—My Bloody Valentine, The Velvet Underground, etc.—into sumptuous billows of noise. Groundbreaking albums like 2002's From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots, 2005's Absence, 2007's Abandoned Language, and 2009's Gutter Tactics combined the brutalistic drive of industrial music, the density and grain of heavy guitar music, the painterly textures of ambient music, and the thumping backbeat groove of classic hip-hop. And while it makes sense that the band landed on Mike Patton's Ipecac label and on stages with the likes of the Melvins, Tool, and Godflesh, it bears repeating what an ongoing accomplishment it has been for Dälek to break down barriers while keeping both feet planted firmly in hip-hop.

On Asphalt for Eden, Dälek returns with a revamped lineup after going on hiatus in 2010 upon the departure of co-founding producer Oktopus (Alap Momin). That the new incarnation—frontman/bandleader MC Dälek (Will Brooks), longtime Dälek guitarist-turned-producer Mike Manteca, and DJ rEk (Rudy Chicata), the group's original DJ back in '95-'96—manages to craft yet another hybrid of hip-hop with outside elements isn't especially surprising. It isn't even necessarily all that surprising that Dälek 2.0 goes a long way towards reinventing its sound while still retaining its essence. But no matter how used to this group's agility we've become, it doesn't make the step forward it takes on this new material any less impressive.

Not unlike Gutter Tactics, the backbeat on Asphalt for Eden is far less monolithic and bass-heavy, often sounding like a beat filtered through a haze of static, hip-hop as a remnant of a civilization long expired several light years away. This time, though, Manteca and Brooks (who also produces) dial back the blast-furnace intensity of that familiar Dälek wall of sound and opt instead for more delicate layers that verge on minimalist ambient electronica. But make no mistake: nothing is actually missing here. In fact, the stripped-down composition of the music arguably gives it more power than Dälek's previous work. Manteca and Brooks weave together layers of sounds that they atomize into overlapping clouds of fine mist. And because they leave so much space in their arrangements, the new material reveals Dälek's ear for harmony in ways we might have felt but hadn't necessarily heard before, because the older albums packed such a strong punch in the gut.

As usual, Brooks addresses the encroaching forces of human control—big business, globalization, totalitarianism, post-colonial American hegemony, war, etc. This time, though, rather than make didactic statements, he focuses on the internal angst of the individual coming to terms with and trying to navigate an increasingly dehumanizing landscape. And in another fresh twist on previous work, the sounds on Asphalt for Eden have an almost playful tone that dithers between ominous and optimistic. An Aldous Huxley spoken-word sample over a spectral ambient throb on "Masked Laughter (Nothing's Left)," for example, recalls Orbital's plea to collective human awakening on their 2012 album Wonky.

Filled as it is with so many gorgeous colors, Asphalt for Eden could have underscored actor Rutger Hauer's iconic "Tears in rain" monologue at the end of Blade Runner. In fact, the music becomes all the more moving when it directly contrasts Brooks' chilling shards of imagery. The dulcet electronic ripples of "Masked Laughter," for example, conclude with a repeating loop of the word "terrorism." If there were a manga based on dystopian sweatshop-induced urban poverty and that, in turn, were turned into an anime film, you couldn't do better than Asphalt for Eden for a soundtrack.

Brooks spent five years away from Dälek fronting the comparatively traditional rap group iconAclass (and doing remixes for the likes of Black Heart Procession, Zombi, Palms, Broken Flowers, etc) but he takes a huge leap on his return to Dälek, which sounds not only revived here but permanently altered not unlike a friend who comes home after years abroad—or even from a traumatic experience like, say, prison. In other words, the profundity here comes across in the most restrained gestures.

Though Brooks opts for a more oblique lyrical approach on these new songs, the modern horrors that populate Dälek's previous albums are never too far off, and the foreboding sense of the world going to hell in a handbasket hovers over your shoulder the entire time. The song "Guaranteed Struggle," for example, contains a sample of Brooks delivering a disconnected verse fragment about "f***[ing] around and watch[ing] the whole world crumblin'"—basically, the story of our lives for anyone who can afford to spend leisure time on music or entertainment in 2016. But the more ambiguous emotional notes in the album's sonic makeup at times parallel the more subtle blossoming of consciousness also unfolding on the world stage. Dälek took hip-hop into new stylistic realms before. This time, although Brooks and company may not have specifically intended as much, on Asphalt for Eden, hip hop ascends into the noosphere.

ive been a big fan since the begining

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cvo0oKxQTjY&list=PLpl5-t6ClQx9WEnUh3MmmrF6ppEKHqqRM
 
I just put out a record by this band Wicked Bears from Salt Lake City, UT. They're kind of a Lookout! Records, Descendents/ALL, 90's pop punk sorta band... but less Ramones-core.

FREE DOWNLOAD: www.wickedbears.bandcamp.com
For CDs/Cassettes: www.hiddenhomerecords.storenvy.com

View attachment 35210

Let me know your thoughts at [email protected] or on twitter @hiddenhomerecs

hey they got reviewed at punknews. they gave it a two and a half out of five but the review reads like it should have been a three. not bad for a debut
 
Glenn Madeiros - It´s Alright to Love (2016)

This is how a star keeps sparkling........ Cheese Fraud take note

Benny-the-British-Butcher
 
The Coathangers "Nosebleed Weekend"
 
I remember a funny conversation with Me trying to get my parents to remember the difference between John cale and JJ cale. They like a lot of music. Anyway I'm listening to the new modern baseball album which is pretty rad though sad. Songs about missing people and one of the song writers bipolar disorder and suicide attempt. They had to take five weeks off for him to get treatment. Hope he feels better

Modern baseball - holy ghost
https://blog.bandcamp.com/2016/05/0...-holy-ghost-talk-growing-up-and-calming-down/

Also listening to Lars from fancies new side.project band which is a image to British oi bands. Second album and forth overall outside rancid. Lars and the bastards debut is also great

Old firm casuals - off with there heads from this means war
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7F6Fq2z-RUY
 
Today I drove from Galway to Dublin and back and listened to four albums in the car: 'Night Thoughts' by Suede (excellent), 'Brett Anderson' by Brett Anderson (good), 'OK Computer' by Radiohead (very good) and 'You are the quarry' by Morrissey (bloody brilliant).
 
Today I drove from Galway to Dublin and back and listened to four albums in the car: 'Night Thoughts' by Suede (excellent), 'Brett Anderson' by Brett Anderson (good), 'OK Computer' by Radiohead (very good) and 'You are the quarry' by Morrissey (bloody brilliant).

Quarry is of course great. Love radio heads first two but can only appreciate everything after objectively as accomplished. In rainbows was pretty good though with a really Great title. Didn't like night thoughts as much as blood sports but it's still good and I'm glad they're succeeding. Brett's best solo album is slow attack I think and I've a really special spot for wilderness but the debut gets o erlooked a bit. Some blah songs here and there but still really strong. Love is dead, Scorpio rising (I wonder if Brett is a really big BILLY idol fan as I always thought the suede song money kinda reminded me of money money) and one lazy morning gets stuck in my head all the time. Black rainbows was also really good and I still listen to the acoustic version of brittle heart a lot. Wonder if the title was inspired by radio heads album as I doubt it was inspired by Cohen and Cambrias though that'd be funny or just black rainbows in general. Wish they, suede had recorded I don't know why though as I really liked that song. Uptempo and it had some really good lyrics with a super catchy chorus
 
New modern baseball album is out and I'm excited. Rehabs Jordan k will be as well. Anyway here's the pitchfork review. Sad to hear about the guys suicide attempt but glad he got some help. Hope he's careful with the touring


Modern Baseball became a popular band writing songs about Facebook and Instagram and emulating the selective communication of those social media platforms: revealing personal minutiae without ever having to be vulnerable. Throughout 2012’s Sports and 2014's You’re Gonna Miss It All, Jake Ewald and Brendan Lukens sang mostly about girls, social insecurity, and punk rock hypocrisy—nothing that the average person in their audience hadn’t experienced themselves.

Since then, Modern Baseball have unexpectedly evolved into an important band. After canceling an Australian tour last fall, Lukens went to rehab and was diagnosed with manic depression, alcoholism, marijuana addiction, and cutting behavior, all of which was unsparingly detailed in their Tripping in the Darkmini-doc. Every Modern Baseball interview in the time since has doubled as advocacy for destigmatizing mental illness and encouraging the seeking of medical treatment. They’re not alone: Along with Sorority Noise, the Word Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, the Hotelierand basically any leader of emo’s 4th-wave, Modern Baseball demonstrate an undeniable sonic ambition and social conscience in a genre still reduced to a “Sad as f***” T-shirt. Their extracurricular candor is a necessary complement to Holy Ghost, which asks for difficult things out of its audience—space, patience and acceptance.

In the past, MoBo’s appeal often lied in how they looked like guys who came to their shows straight from a Drexel lecture hall, singing about things that happened to them just that day. On Holy Ghost, Ewald and Lukens admit that even a wholly unpretentious, image-free band like Modern Baseball might have to put on an act sometimes just to make it to the next gig. “The glare from our stupid, spineless words just whining, every f***ing day/what do I really want to say?,” Ewald spews on “Note to Self,” one of the many road-weary tracks here. Throughout Holy Ghost, Lukens and Ewald mostly want to say “I miss you,” “I love you,” or, “I’m sorry.” But with their friends, family and Philly often hundreds of miles away, Modern Baseball either internalize or end up directing their anxieties at each other.

There was a point where it was unclear whether Modern Baseball would make it to Holy Ghost,and the tension is audaciously presented in a Speakerboxxx/The Love Below-style split condensed into less than a half hour. Ewald is given the first six tracks, while the remaining five are Lukens’. Even up to last year’s excellent MOBO Presents: The Perfect Cast EP featuring Modern Baseball, new listeners could be forgiven thinking the band only had one singer. At this point, Ewald and Lukens seem like total inverses of each other.

Holy Ghost will inevitably take on a new life as its lyrics become status updates. All the zingers will be Ewald’s, but since his hooks are as densely worded and occasionally unwieldy as his verses, the shoutalongs come from Lukens. Ewald’s side builds towards “Everyday” and “Hiding,” the most compositionally complex and ornately arranged Modern Baseball songs to date. Lukens, meanwhile, claims he wrote all of his lyrics in the last three days of recording. His songs are urgent, frenzied and compact, with titles that read like inside jokes used as placeholders (“Breathing in Stereo,” “Coding These To Lukens," “Apple Cider, I Don’t Mind”).

The format serves each writer as an individual. While the shift towards tempered indie rock often robs Holy Ghost of the instant gratification of early MoBo, there isn’t a single clunker lyric that was wedged in for the sake of cleverness. Taken together, Holy Ghost feels inevitably unbalanced. Modern Baseball probably didn’t have much of a choice; shuffled in any way, it just becomes nonsensically disjointed.

The sequencing makes more sense upon hearing the closing “Just Another Face,” whose chorus alone more than makes up for any denied catharsis. Based on The Perfect Cast and their live Killers covers, an album full of this kind of bombastic arena-emo would be certainly welcome. It consolidates every improvement over You’re Gonna Miss It All: Ewald’s compositional ambition and patience, Lukens’ newly theatrical high range and for both, a desire to recognize the bittersweet way in which the relationship between them and their audience has changed.

The self-pity of the verses are simply and petulantly worded to recall MoBo’s earlier phase and Lukens’ real rock bottom (“I’m a waste of time and space,” “entering a well-known phase, I scream ‘get lost, I hate everything’”). A number of people might be the voice talking to Lukens during the unabashedly uplifting chorus. Perhaps it’s his family, or Cam Boucher, the Sorority Noise frontman Lukens credits with pushing him to seek help. Maybe it’s a girlfriend, as the title references a lyric from the first song Lukens ever wrote ("How Do I Tell a Girl I Want to Kiss Her," naturally). It could be the other members of Modern Baseball, who Lukens claims “saved my life.” Earlier on "Note to Self," Ewald hoped to build “something that cannot leave the ground/unless we lift it up together,” and Holy Ghost makes good on that desire: Every performance of "Just Another Face" will end with Modern Baseball and their audience yelling at each other, “I’ll be with you the whole way.”

Modern baseball - Holy Ghost
 
queen-the-works
 
Tiny moving parts - celebrate


Indie emo for those who love guitar though it's a bit toned down on this album than the one previous. Still got some Kathy jazzy elements to it

Head wound city - a new wave of violence


A group consisting of members of the blood brothers, one of my favorite bands, the locust and that guy from the yeah yeah yeahs (the guitarist). Sound more like the blood brothers than anything else but I liked the locust and the yeah yeah yeahs are alright though this sounds nothing like them at all. Not as crazy uptempo as the locust or the blood brothers which is a shame. I wish the blood brothers would just reunite as burn piano island burn and crimes were phenomenal albums
 
New modern baseball album is out and I'm excited. Rehabs Jordan k will be as well. Anyway here's the pitchfork review. Sad to hear about the guys suicide attempt but glad he got some help. Hope he's careful with the touring


Modern Baseball became a popular band writing songs about Facebook and Instagram and emulating the selective communication of those social media platforms: revealing personal minutiae without ever having to be vulnerable. Throughout 2012’s Sports and 2014's You’re Gonna Miss It All, Jake Ewald and Brendan Lukens sang mostly about girls, social insecurity, and punk rock hypocrisy—nothing that the average person in their audience hadn’t experienced themselves.

Since then, Modern Baseball have unexpectedly evolved into an important band. After canceling an Australian tour last fall, Lukens went to rehab and was diagnosed with manic depression, alcoholism, marijuana addiction, and cutting behavior, all of which was unsparingly detailed in their Tripping in the Darkmini-doc. Every Modern Baseball interview in the time since has doubled as advocacy for destigmatizing mental illness and encouraging the seeking of medical treatment. They’re not alone: Along with Sorority Noise, the Word Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die, the Hotelierand basically any leader of emo’s 4th-wave, Modern Baseball demonstrate an undeniable sonic ambition and social conscience in a genre still reduced to a “Sad as f***” T-shirt. Their extracurricular candor is a necessary complement to Holy Ghost, which asks for difficult things out of its audience—space, patience and acceptance.

In the past, MoBo’s appeal often lied in how they looked like guys who came to their shows straight from a Drexel lecture hall, singing about things that happened to them just that day. On Holy Ghost, Ewald and Lukens admit that even a wholly unpretentious, image-free band like Modern Baseball might have to put on an act sometimes just to make it to the next gig. “The glare from our stupid, spineless words just whining, every f***ing day/what do I really want to say?,” Ewald spews on “Note to Self,” one of the many road-weary tracks here. Throughout Holy Ghost, Lukens and Ewald mostly want to say “I miss you,” “I love you,” or, “I’m sorry.” But with their friends, family and Philly often hundreds of miles away, Modern Baseball either internalize or end up directing their anxieties at each other.

There was a point where it was unclear whether Modern Baseball would make it to Holy Ghost,and the tension is audaciously presented in a Speakerboxxx/The Love Below-style split condensed into less than a half hour. Ewald is given the first six tracks, while the remaining five are Lukens’. Even up to last year’s excellent MOBO Presents: The Perfect Cast EP featuring Modern Baseball, new listeners could be forgiven thinking the band only had one singer. At this point, Ewald and Lukens seem like total inverses of each other.

Holy Ghost will inevitably take on a new life as its lyrics become status updates. All the zingers will be Ewald’s, but since his hooks are as densely worded and occasionally unwieldy as his verses, the shoutalongs come from Lukens. Ewald’s side builds towards “Everyday” and “Hiding,” the most compositionally complex and ornately arranged Modern Baseball songs to date. Lukens, meanwhile, claims he wrote all of his lyrics in the last three days of recording. His songs are urgent, frenzied and compact, with titles that read like inside jokes used as placeholders (“Breathing in Stereo,” “Coding These To Lukens," “Apple Cider, I Don’t Mind”).

The format serves each writer as an individual. While the shift towards tempered indie rock often robs Holy Ghost of the instant gratification of early MoBo, there isn’t a single clunker lyric that was wedged in for the sake of cleverness. Taken together, Holy Ghost feels inevitably unbalanced. Modern Baseball probably didn’t have much of a choice; shuffled in any way, it just becomes nonsensically disjointed.

The sequencing makes more sense upon hearing the closing “Just Another Face,” whose chorus alone more than makes up for any denied catharsis. Based on The Perfect Cast and their live Killers covers, an album full of this kind of bombastic arena-emo would be certainly welcome. It consolidates every improvement over You’re Gonna Miss It All: Ewald’s compositional ambition and patience, Lukens’ newly theatrical high range and for both, a desire to recognize the bittersweet way in which the relationship between them and their audience has changed.

The self-pity of the verses are simply and petulantly worded to recall MoBo’s earlier phase and Lukens’ real rock bottom (“I’m a waste of time and space,” “entering a well-known phase, I scream ‘get lost, I hate everything’”). A number of people might be the voice talking to Lukens during the unabashedly uplifting chorus. Perhaps it’s his family, or Cam Boucher, the Sorority Noise frontman Lukens credits with pushing him to seek help. Maybe it’s a girlfriend, as the title references a lyric from the first song Lukens ever wrote ("How Do I Tell a Girl I Want to Kiss Her," naturally). It could be the other members of Modern Baseball, who Lukens claims “saved my life.” Earlier on "Note to Self," Ewald hoped to build “something that cannot leave the ground/unless we lift it up together,” and Holy Ghost makes good on that desire: Every performance of "Just Another Face" will end with Modern Baseball and their audience yelling at each other, “I’ll be with you the whole way.”

Modern baseball - Holy Ghost


When I first saw a video by this band I thought it was a joke. This music literally sounds as though Bobby from King of The Hill formed a rock band. It's obnoxious to the point of nausea.

As for his depression diagnosis, wow, I'll bet that was a revelation. What did he do, walk into the doctor's office and say "hey, I'm sad and I want to kill myself and I sing in a shitty post-everything emo band about how girls don't like me because I'm a short fat eternally-14-looking little dork?" And they said, "hmmm, you may have depression." ?

I'd have depression too if I looked or sounded like this little pudwhack bitch.
 
When I first saw a video by this band I thought it was a joke. This music literally sounds as though Bobby from King of The Hill formed a rock band. It's obnoxious to the point of nausea.

As for his depression diagnosis, wow, I'll bet that was a revelation. What did he do, walk into the doctor's office and say "hey, I'm sad and I want to kill myself and I sing in a shitty post-everything emo band about how girls don't like me because I'm a short fat eternally-14-looking little dork?" And they said, "hmmm, you may have depression." ?

I'd have depression too if I looked or sounded like this little pudwhack bitch.

Well they're on there third album and going strong so I doubt they care to much what you think. They're a pretty own to earth group and very east coast Imo which is fun to see as I'm also an east coast guy. Catchy funny modern and at times very witty and very honest In there lyrics. Try not to get so hung up on labels aNd you might be able to Calm down a Little bit. It's just a form of guitar music that happens to be popular at the moment. I love them myself
 
last couple days...

"David Live" (2005 edition) David Bowie
"A Cure For Loneliness" Peter Wolf
"The Walking" Jane Siberry
"Southpaw Grammar" (re-issue) Moz
"Live At The Rainbow '74" Queen
 
Gloss - trans day of revenge


Seems appropriate and almost supports there claim that they are from the future
 
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