All of this music is via stupefying luck or human recommendation (noted where I could remember); if you are reading this and wanna rec me anything, please do so!!!
Some links fairly arbitrarily included, others not = Googlers will find everything recorded mentioned on yt, soundcloud, or bandcamp
- kim gordon / loren connors duo at issue
have wanted to see loren connors play for so long! watched from stage-side... shea and I talking abt watching kim gordon play sets for 15+ years, how we'll still be watching her play sets for many more... blessed quality of long, active careers... the setup was double electric guitars plus her automatic vocals... near the end she rubbed the strings on her neck against the strings on his (in a kinda borbetomagus style)... he played standing up, all weird strumming but more like brushed or blurred... a gaseous amp sound... he looked like he was having a TON of fun and gave her such a smile when she did the necks-together move... about a third of the way in he put on noise-canceling headphones? and definitely didn't stop until he was good and done... amazed, uplifted, and speachless'd by this... the best one 2014. was later surprised and pleased that jandek weighed in on connors!
- lazy magnet times square
the second to last lazy mag event was a relaxing monday nighter at a middle eastern restaurant in times sq until the platonic "psychotic disorganized and insane noise show ordeal" ideal descended... robert and I got there "on time" at 9pm and exchanged a confused "I assumed the flier for the manhattan restaurant event that said 9pm meant 9pm?"... doy-yoi-yoing... terrible broken sound system / restaurant workers kept turning it down / another band fully playing a different fully audible amplified event in the main restaurant room on a better pa / jeremy two hours late / gigantic downpours begin at midnight... BUT a million friends from all locations and eras were present at this in a weird "times sq ghosts from the sun" kinda way, and "fun" melted down into "twisted" as the show crept past 3am... worth sticking for "protect & progress" and "sugar mane" live versions... got home drenched at 4:30am, work in the morning... "that's a monday"
- lazy magnet final show stream from le dog's freight area
if all insane zones had live streams I'd be at a billion more gigs annually... the night after the times sq event, mickey streamed the final mag gig from her house... got to listen to this on headphones whilst painting, felt extremely special... here's a screenshot of jeremy checking the stream
- private all nite karaoke at thee eldritch
endless silliness in this bonkers night, for which I bow down to adam in thanks... walking downtown the next morning w/ jacob I thought I was gonna blow away on the wind... "'the worst hangover of my life,' long associated w/ drinking many '99 bananas' shots and going to see the barnes collection at 10am on a cold saturday in late 2001, has been updated," I reflected from the megabus
- vvaqrt at savage weekend
- vvaqrt at red light
I love vvaqrt
- brown recluse alpha / mv carbon / container at red light
still miss getting to see christopher play sets regularly
carbon played a reel-to-reel and two tables worth of stuff and a macbook under a table in a soft silver cooler bag, everything covered in a black sheet
watched ren's set from behind him and his gear... people flipping out to this
- 3lr / mr matthews at trans-pecos
drove to this relaxing and inspiring one with shea'sh =
have never seen telecult, though they're maybe my favorite group to wax about... mr matthews patched his house-synth sitting on the floor, sounded great... a guy called out "trip metal" before he played and he looked up and said "please... this is real life, not the internet"... calm reminder!
introduced myself to clint as having met lexington friends via "my early 20s low-level east coast/midwest-touring noise band," and this splintered into a fresh realization/sensation of embarrassment at having pushed so much dumb work into the world as an eager young man, combined with an equivalent awareness that I'll very probably continue to feel that way about everything I ever do as time passes and I look back at it ("work's satisfaction half-life"), combined with the joyful awareness that I have always felt this way and thus fundamentally don't care, and will just keep doing new ideas forever, though many straight-up won't work out... I used the momentum from thinking about this to recycle two flat-file drawers filled with older zines that never got the distribution their print runs called for at the time, start sketching sets, and start a "studio only" recording project that we're gonna put together "in 2015" (shot called/gauntlet thrown to floor (of empty room) (& how I'll feel when I read this next year))...
- yoshi & tashi wada at issue
father and son "legends of drone" event... long-loved "elephantine croco" = felt great to watch yoshi wada bopping around the issue space doing tones on a crank siren, on a "let your dreams touch air" basis... sh'sh & I met thomas and betsy at brooklyn inn and drank guinnesses after, a fine night
- eastern standard time "reggae on the boardwalk" events
I think we even planned other calendar stuff around not missing these. may/june/july/august monthly gigundo soundsystem / many DJs events... so much style and good feeling... wistful feeling as President Carter waves goodbye to nyc and insists that these events will still continue into the future...
- russian tsarlag at palisades
I know it's like, traditional that I write a tsarlag paean but as long as he's the best in the game, what else can I do? was semi-worried I wouldn't catch him this year! at the major risk of "describing something you need to open yourself to yourself," the opening routine was like, a tape playing old radio songs for 20 minutes... a sheet with a hole in it... the hole over a decanter filled with amber liquid... a table with a telephone... the tape finally lands on a loop and a hand reaches through the hole in the sheet and dribbles liquid into the decanter with a turkey baster... a minute passes... the hand returns and drops a metallic packet into the liquid... tsarlag crawls out with a black plastic bag on his head... he fishes the metallic packet from the liquid and unfolds it, it contains "the fool" tarot... he crawls to the mic and he taps it with the card... he folds the empty metallic packet into a boat and dips it into the liquid... he produces and opens a switchblade, stabs it through the bag on his face, cutting it off... he opens his mouth and produces a ring... he puts the ring on... he drinks the liquid from the boat... and then he greets the audience... STILL more passion, emotion, and cryptic reality-sliding imagery in a tsarlag set than in almost any other band's oeuvre, to say nothing of how most texts, paintings, movies, or stage performances of any kind measure up... if this assessment doesn't make any sense, I guess it's possible that you've never had a dream that continued to affect you way after you woke up
- farewell my concubine / father finger at red light
when mark was playing the "insaniac in a living hell material" I'm pretty sure the biggest "secretly ride" fan was me
everyone keeps telling me odwalla 88 is the new band to watch for but I haven't seen them yet
also I didn't get to see spiritual recess at all this year but I definitely feel it
angles usa - xilf: sticklemusick - mark was generous enough to drop me this project's wavs after I had a "WHAT IS THIS" moment in the shack behind red light district, where it played on loop during "burning fleshtival"... ummmm "it's our 'prairie home companion'" ???
aphex - syro = I like this! and then the accompanying interviews on "noyzelab" were among the year's better reads (spoiler = he's either a 9/11 truther, or joking about being one?!)... slightly surprised not to have read anyone note w/ dismay that the old badboy still had to throw a "fucking whore" part on the record, "small thing" I know, but, zzzzzzzzzzz... reminder that the most obvious "difficult" & "transgressive" expressions regularly serve as deadening, boring, basic reinforcements of the world's stupidest norms... 2015 = another good year to be wondering whether your politics are sufficient, and if they're being sufficiently represented by your actions... like wouldn't it have been so much cooler/weirder if afx had included an unmistakably pro-feminist vocoder part or whatever
choubi choubi folk & pop sounds from iraq comp (via jeff)
earth enemy - amber alert = following our friend Joe Buzzell's death last december, Allen compiled the music Joe had sent out since 2009 (notoriously via sporadic emails featuring several gigantic attachments - he had no websites or other online presences or deployments of any kind that I know of) = listening or relistening to this archive was a big part of my year. "amber alert" is my favorite individual piece; that's here. the full archive is here.
expressway yoyo dieting - in the trauma center - this rules, endless plays / went nutso listening to pretty much all of the yyd and related stuff pat has on his blog after this came out
hailu mergia & his classical instrument - many repeats in the house last winter (via shea)
hanson records bandcamp - listened to abt two dozen of these at least once, and love at least a few ("sienna" got a lot of plays)... notable hat tip to dilloway's "shatter all organized activities (eat the rich)" (modern jester), a sentiment I identified with this year
ildjarn - son of the northstar - couldn't love this voice more / reminded me how much I loved cleansing wave!
khun narin electric phin band (via charlie)
lazy magnet 2009-2014 5xCD-R - I remember riffing in 2009 abt buying a billboard on westminster st in pvd congratulating jeremy on 20 years of lazy magnet. did anyone do this?... features wonderful hits obfuscate, sugar mane and kraft durch freude among a ton of other material
les rallizes denudes - '77 live - not sure how it took me so long to unlock this!!!!!!
martin rev - s/t - was glumly charlie browning around wishing there was another suicide record and it turned out there was?!
meerk puffy - listened to all available material mainly via YT (here comes the chaos) and his labyrinthine "world tunnel" blog (zz pot releases), which he reportedly made to "infect and corrupt peoples' itunes libraries"... if "anyone reading this" can hook me up with recordings please holler
okkyung lee - ghil - unbelievable record, major play
resonant hole - blowing up the workshop #31 - love this / might be the biggest jeanne vomit-terror fan also
sun ra - watusi live youtube (via shea)
telecult powers - live wfmu - "so, what can you tell me about telecult?" is a good email to send me if you're feeling a little blue... great live set, really like that at one point you can hear them like, chuckling?!
tsegue maryam guebro - piano solo (ethiopiques 21) (via shea)
thought broadcast - emergency stairway - on a winning streak
three-legged race - wrong element - this was the first thing I listened to last january that made a strong impression
three-legged race - rope commercial vol. 1 - meanwhile robert's music keeps getting better and better = we musta jammed rope commercial in the house a billion times
vvaqrt - detainee - highly anticipated and very pleasing record
listened to the complete, incredible three or four hour sun ra interview with schaap during the centennial birthday broadcast... strong and exciting feeling that I had only barely scraped the iceberg w/ sun ra, though I'd previously felt that I'd already gone kinda deep!
lengthy borbeto interview on afternoon new music
complete 1989 "fluxus anthology" rec was great to hear in entirety during staycation in october = love the ben vautier track on here, the joseph beuys track is funny
tom chess / dan kurfirst ney/drum = there's a very simple part in the middle (like 15 minutes in?) of this that made me get outta the bathtub to call the station at like 1am to find out what this was, and the guy was like, "It's a live performance; I'll post the recording [at the linked url]."
bach fest................. fuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkkk this rules every year
very pleasant returns to endless lux & ivy and trad gras & stenar, all year, esp. when company was over... recalling a 2010-era riff carlos had abt the phenom of mixed company hanging out in a room with an ipod, and the inevitable "it's on the ipod" and "everyone likes it" thing that gets put on is either t-rex or velvet underground = for me it's these two
oh yeah also I enjoyed compiling "mix mp3s" this year, haha - they're elsewhere on this website or on soundcloud
and also = walking thru red hook past an old dude hanging out his window onto the street, beaming, BLASTING blue moon... highly inspirational
feels extremely weird addressing "the internet" from my website but I feel that I've gotta "make a closing statement" so imagine me at a podium (actually a drafting table) w/ star spangled banner playing (actually jive talkin) in front of an american flag (actually full-frame ken burnsing images from the hubble) and saying, "If you are a human being... and you listen to music... and tweet abt it or talk to me abt it... or make the music you're feeling, and it gets to me somehow, and I feel it... seriously thank you so much"
and eternally, "thanks to the original uploader... for education purposes only"