some random albums 2 · 8:06pm Mar 15th, 2021
Title kinda says it all really. Before getting into it though, I can finally announce that after weeks of tearing my head out at it, I'm currently finishing up Chapter 2 of Starlings with one last sliver of a scene remaining, ready to be served to and scrutinised by my editor (me) before it gets pushed up on the site in the next couple of hours.
In the meantime, to prematurely celebrate, here's another list of five niche albums I've randomly picked out from my massive hoard to recommend to you guys. Like before, all of them are tagged with their respective genres. Unlike before, I've added any and all relevant links that will take you to where you can listen to them online, the ones I'm able to find anyway. I've also embedded a video that showcases my favourite track off each respective album which you can use as a sample of sorts.
Without further ado, here they are:
First Utterance
Comus
Art rock, progressive folk, freak folk, psychedelic
FAVOURITE TRACK - THE HERALD
If there was ever a band from the '70s that had been criminally overlooked. Named after a masque in honour of chastity written by English poet John Milton, as well as the Greek god of revelry that inspired it, Comus the band crafted an album that is as every bit macabre and mesmerising as its cover suggests, taking the familiar sounds of folk and drenching them all in an animalistic atmosphere paying tribute to a long lost divine as they sing their pagan stories of violence and murder.
Long considered a cult classic, this was an album that lead me, as it did so many others before, into a mystical and morose wonderland, intoning to me grim folktales all too close to home in spite of its mystical sheen. It's one of many albums I often return to in search of inspiration, especially for my more somber works. As such, it's to be expected that I highly recommend giving them a shot. I promise you'll be in for a lovely treat.
Noirabesque
The Thing With Five Eyes
Dark jazz, future jazz, drone music, electronica
FAVOURITE TRACK - NEHEX
The light and the dark coalesce together in this brooding jazz ritual of an album. Each track takes you on a spiritual journey worlds that have been and worlds that are to come. Where each singular experience is conjoined to the last. By the very end, you might emerge from this windswept pocket more lost and confused than enlightened, but you will find it all to be rather enthralling experience.
Dutch musician Jason Köhnen is no stranger to the genres he's toying with here. Aided by French-Algerian singer Leila Bounous, the musical world he has deftly crafted here is immaculate and intricate, allowing the listener to effortlessly sink into this simmering realm and be taken through places undiscovered. It is this conjuring of worlds, of atmospheres dense yet alluring, that I find myself listening whenever I need to properly define the blurry paintings I have in my head into words. All that's needed to be done here is to sit back, close your eyes and listen.
Your Wilderness Revisited
William Doyle
Alternative, electronic, ambient, synthpopSpotify • Apple Music • YouTube Music • SoundCloud • Bandcamp
FAVOURITE TRACK - MILLERSDALE
What words I have to describe this album pales in comparison to William's own, so I'm going to go ahead and share what he had to say about it instead:
"When we're talking about the suburbs it's always looking outwards and up the train tracks to the big cities, but this wasn't it, it was always much more inwards, not a feeling of wanting to transcend, but sinking into it.
You're sold this lie that you can get this breadth of experience through mountains and nature, and while that is great, so are avenues and cul-de-sacs. The promised land doesn't have to be the Lake District, the Rockies or Alps, but a coppice in the middle of a suburban estate - it can be down the road.
One day I went out I didn't follow the usual routes that I'd done, but gone to a bit of town that I didn't really know or have any reason for going to other than walking, but then I came back to my room and felt like everything had moved by half an inch, that sense of newness upon returning to a place I knew well just because I'd gone the same distance somewhere else.
It's not about 'wasn't it great when we were young and going around on our bikes', that stuff doesn't matter. All of the revelations I had about place and my role in that were based in solitude, it wasn't a golden summer, a nostalgia era in my head. So rather than get people on that level I wanted to introduce the idea that this was a way I dealt with my surroundings and learned a lot about life, myself and my sensibilities, and through revisiting.
I could have moved on and continued the trajectory of my life, but it wasn't until I wanted to make a piece about the experience of living in this sort of place that I realised how fundamental it was for me."
Truly remarkable.
The Isle of Ailynn
Mappe Of
Avant-folk, classical, progressive, electronicSpotify • Apple Music • YouTube • SoundCloud • Bandcamp
FAVOURITE TRACK - KINTAIL
A conceptual album that explores mythical landscapes and the stories that inhabit them, this lush collection of works by Canadian musician Mappe Of (real name Tom Meikle) that explores the ideas of humanity in our world within a delicate and lush backdrop. Fictitious as these elegies may be, the flourishing palette of instruments being utilised here colours it vividly, one that would send your humming imagination soaring as it takes you on a journey most ethereal.
Fantastical as albums go, at times to its own detriment, one cannot argue how it captures this nonexistent realm so evocatively as it goes along. The details in the instrumentation here lends credence to its magic and majesty, so much so that by journey's end, I found myself wanting to return to it. To be lost in these mountains and valleys once more. A very lovely listen.
Wraith
Teeth Of The Sea
Progressive rock, post rock, psychedelic rock, noise, industrial, electronicSpotify • Apple Music • YouTube Music • SoundCloud • Bandcamp
FAVOURITE TRACK - VISITOR
A sculpture of blinding chaos, the music in this album is brutal yet bountiful. Bleak yet beautiful. The sounds here cascade and ripple in a sea of angular steel pillars, all of which thrum to a pulse reverberating just beneath. Yet as ferocious and merciless as it was, it is in no way unwelcoming. In fact, it reaches out to you, sits you down before its maximalist glory and, with every earth-shattering step, takes you through the titanium ruins of its neighbourhood with a glass wing around your shoulder.
UK rock outfit Teeth Of The Sea created nothing short of a metastasized masterpiece that flawlessly tips the balance between homely and harrowing. It proves that even in a world as broken as the one they crafted, glory and grandeur may yet reign supreme as the instruments crashes like cymbal within its hallowed halls. In more ways than one, this is an arresting piece of work.
Thus ends the list for now. Next one will probably come with the next chapter of Decadence, or with something else down the pipeline instead. Who knows? We'll see how things go.
For now, thanks again for stopping by! WritingSpirit, signing out!
Anything on Bandcamp, I will listen to. :D