On heavy rotation this week in my brain: Atlas, by Battles. Formed from the ashes of several other like-minded bands, Battles is an experimental math-rock group who has released albums sporadically over the last 20 years. Atlas is a single from their first album in 2007, and it defies description. I originally fell down this rabbit hole when YouTube suggested a video of early math-hardcore band Helmet playing live in 1994; their second album Meantime was on heavy rotation in college, and their original drummer went on to co-found this band. This song and the video are amazing.
Shit. This was a bit of a gut punch this morning. I was never a huge fan of Albini’s music but his stamp on the music I’ve enjoyed over the last 40 years is undeniable. His list of engineering credits (he eschewed the title of producer as well as a producer’s customary percentages, most notably on Nirvana’s In Utero, which would have made him a millionaire) is long and legendary, and his writing on the music industry is just as impactful. He was due to release a new album next month with Shellac, his current band.
This is mostly for music nerds of a certain pre-Spotify age, but I found it fascinating: the oral history of Pitchfork from Slate magazine.
Greene: It was always, and only ever, a bunch of nerds writing essays about records. It was that before it became famous. And it was that after it became famous. It was only ever that, and those are the people who still come to Pitchfork, but I guess it wasn’t enough.
Somehow I missed this when it first came around. Stereogum interviewed the band Air and went through each track on the 1998 album Moon Safari to explain their influences and background.
ill peach, BLOOM. Dumb name for a band, but a good track. I like the beat, and the bridge at 2:01 is a lovely transition. Gives me some strong Metric vibes, minus the guitar. The rest of the album is hit or miss, but they have a couple of other good tracks from earlier EPs available.
The runner-up from last week:
Acopia, This Conversation is Getting Boring. Much more downtempo, but another good groove. I wish the bass was better quality; the sound is flat and sounds just a hair late on the rhythm and not in a good way. Other than that, excellent.
Jesus, I can’t believe this song is almost thirty years old, and somehow it got stuck in my head all week:
Ah, the days of frosted hair and puka shells.
Also: tangentially related: the time the guy from Creed got in a fight with the band at a bar in Baltimore. Good times!
The GAP used to be a central hub of the mall, back when the mall was the central hub of teenage life. A former GAP employee has been collecting the centrally-curated music playlists from two decades ago and building them in Spotify for everyone to enjoy. (via, via)
I read this morning that Pitchfork, the music review site that basically set the tone for criticism and indie approval in the early days of weblogs, is being folded into GQ Magazine after mass layoffs. Apparently they were bought by Condé Nast a couple of years ago and weren’t getting the kind of eyeballs some algorithm required. They lost their hold on the critical pulse of modern music years ago but they were still good to check in on every couple of days to see what was new. Stereogum is still going (and is an independently owned site again) and there are a couple of others out there, but this is sad news.
Strange, I wouldn’t have guessed this: kids using TikTok have exploded the popularity of shoegaze. Old-school bands like Slowdive are making a comeback (they started long before TikTok, actually) but new ones are sprouting up based on snippets included in video shorts.
Most compelling of all, is that the bulk of shoegaze’s fastest-growing acts are a cadre of super-young artists who most shoegaze fans over the age of 25 have likely never even heard of. All of 2023’s breakout stars are teenage solo artists making music in their bedrooms, bucking the conventional identity of shoegaze as “band”-centric music with a barrier to entry amounting to the cost of a pedalboard and a Jazzmaster guitar.
Music-Map is the kind of thing that shows up every couple of years with some new technology underneath it, and it usually disappears after a few months. In any case, this one does what it says on the tin: plug a band in and you get other bands that sound similar. Bookmarked. Also related: Gnoosic, which follows a slightly different format.