I like This Heat

12/14/2023

This Heat was a english band active during the 70s and early 80s. They were quite an interesting and bizarre group (my favorite kind) and really ahead of their time.

I don't really remember how I found out about them, I'm always looking for experimental bands like that and have a lot, a LOT of artists and albums I want to listen to. Unlike some others I listen to they're pretty well known from what I've seen, since they were very influential to lots of genres of music. I'll talk about their stuff that I've listened to.

This Heat (1979)

Their debut album and my favorite by them. Very abrasive and varied sound and their most revolutionary one, a prime example of the agressive experimentation this band had to offer. It's very captivating and memorable since it's weird as shit.

Horizontal Hold is an insane noise rock piece that's as chaotic as it can be. Good drummnig too (a common thing for This Heat). Not Waving is also very notable, a drone piece with haunting, obscure vocals. Twilight Furniture follows that same direction but with more instruments and less droning sounds, which sound even more hopeless in my opinion.

Of course you can't forget of one the big highlights of this band's entire discography and a surprising one: 24 Track Loop. 70s precursor eletronic music is always interesting and this one is no exception. It's really impressive for something made in 1979, if I didn't know about it and somebody told me this was an Autechre demo I'd believe it. It's mesmerizing, though not my favorite song on the album. That title goes to the The Fall of Saigon, which is this repetitive, bizarre, dreadful ambient song. Absolutely perfect closer to this very unique album.

One time i listened to this album at like 1am when I was half asleep and it was a horrifying as it was fascinating experience. Recommend it to everyone!!

Health and Efficiency EP (1980)

This one's fantastic. Fast-paced and extremely noisy 8-minute long rock song, with stellar instrumentation (and again, good drumming). Catchy vocals and the background sounds with loud ass guitars in the rest of the song are great. About the other track in the EP, I only listened to it once and remember nothing about it. Either the first one absolutely stole the show or the second one just sucks. Probably the latter honestly.

Deceit (1981)

This Heat's second and final album was much different from the first, being way rockier and less electronic, and with more (sort-of) conventional song structure. It was still mindblowing though, and of course still very weird. By the way, it was the first This Heat album I listened to!

The album starts Sleep, which has my favorite vocal perfomance of the band. It's so catchy and iconic to me, even at days when I'm not really thinking about This Heat or music at all I catch myself humming "sleep sleep sleeeep, go to sleep...". Paper Hats is a repetitive experimental rock masterwork with great vocals as well. Did I say this band has amazing vocal performances? Cuz they do.

Cenotaph is my favorite. It's a more conventional rock song but it's still very weird and crazy. The instrumental in the second verse suddenly becomes so pretty together with the vocals, its gud i like it. Makeshift Swahili is one of the weirder rock songs, I have NO idea what the lyrics are trying to talk about lol. A New Kind of Water is also a highlight, it's very haunting.

So yeah, that's This Heat. Good band.

... Wait, John Peel Sessions? What's that?

Cathedral, by Castanets

08/06/2023

Hotline Miami is one of my all-time favorite videogame franchises of all time. Recently, I've decided to revisit the soundtracks for the two games in the series, and I listened to two albums with songs featured in the games: Coconuts' self-titled, and Castanets' Cathedral.

Castanets were a country/folk/experimental rock band led by musician Raymond Raposa until he died in 2022. They made 8 studio albums, with Cathedral being their debut from 2004. Raposa initially wanted to publish a novel to accompany the album but that didn't happen (wish it did. would love to read whatever it could've been!). It's a very interesting album, with a melancholic and dark atmosphere, specially on songs like No Light to Be Found and You Are the Blood, the one featured on Hotline Miami 2. One thing that helps a lot to create that atmosphere are the quiet, gloomy vocals by Raposa.

Another highlight of the album imo is the opening track, a folk song with a really cool keyboard in the background and moody female backing vocals (which also appear in the other songs I've mentioned). There's also Industry and Snow, which starts fairly slow but then in the end explodes in this crazy-ass country rock madness with a bunch of glitched feedback sounds and it's great. It also perfectly transitions to the next song, which is something I always appreciate in albums. Though after that, the albums just gets progressively slower and sadder.

The improvised part in the end of You Are the Blood is great. I always like it when artists do improvised segments or songs because it often shows a lot about the band as a whole, how each member plays their instrument individually instead of just one song written by the leader. And if I'm talking about that song, of course I can't forget about that top-tier sax that plays during most of it. It adds so much to the song.

So yeah, pretty damn good album. Glad I found out about it, apparentely Castantets is not very well known.

My love for Godspeed You! Black Emperor's F#A#∞

06/02/2023

One of my favorite music genres is post-rock. I think it's one of the most beautiful types of music out there, some post-rock artists really helped me through rough times (as corny as that sounds), and one of these bands is canadian Godspeed You! Black Emperor, one of, if not THE most well known and acclaimed acts of the genre.

One of their records that I most hold close to my heart is their second album, F#A#∞. It was launched in 1997 through Constellation Records (later in 1998 to CD through Kranky). The album has a dark and apocalyptic vibe, which would later become a pretty common theme in their later records and in the whole post-rock genre.

The Dead Flag Blues

The Dead Flag Blues starts with a sampled recording from an old unfinished film made by the band's guitarrist which describes a dystopian world ruined by crime and corruption. and it really sets the tone for the song and the album. After that, a melancholic melody starts with a kinda lonely guitar and sad violins. It's the first exposure you receive for the actual sound of the album, and it feels really mysterious.

"The car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
And the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
And a dark wind blows..."

Then, the Slow Moving Trains movement starts, with a bunch of field recordings, first of a train and some weird suspense noise, and a genuinely horrifying tornado siren.

10 minutes and 10 seconds in, the The Cowboy movement starts. This is the final part of the song, an even more melancholic western style instrumental with two guitars, violins, and bells. This movement is one of my favorite parts of the album. It's depressing, it hits like a truck, specially on a first listen. The guitars are the biggest resposible for the more western feeling, and if there weren't the violins, this part would have a really different vibe. They are supremely important for the sadder feeling of this song. The Dead Flag Blues is an heavy hitter, and the best possible opener for F#A#∞.

East Hastings

East Hastings starts with a street preacher screaming with bagpipes in the background, which quickly switches to The Sad Mafioso... movement. The movement starts with the guitars, and eventually drums and suspenseful violins. This movement is more like some sort of build-up, a lot more epic than the final one in The Dead Flag Blues, but also more dreadful. This movement is what waiting for the worst sounds like, it's hopeless.

Soon, all of the instruments, specially the violins and drums, get even more suspensful. It's like the worst has finally arrived and everything goes wrong, the song starts to freak out. And after that, there's no pay-off like The Dead Flag Blues. The Drugs in Tokyo movement starts with, again, weird field recordings until the song ends with electronic buzzing. It's like the freak out is over, but it's still not alright at all.

This track is named after the east part of a Vancouver street called Hastings, and that part leads to the outskirts of the town, with poverty and drugs all over. In April 2023, the Vancouver goverment forcefully removed the tents of homeless people in the East Hastings area, with the folks living there having pretty much nowhere to go.

Providence

The final song of the album begins with a recording of two men talking about the end of the world. One of them claims "the preacher man" says the end of the world is coming, which he disagrees with. After a weird drone-like sounds, the Dead Metheny... movement starts. The guitars are a lot more quieter than the other tracks, and the violins sound a bit suspenful like East Hastings, but in a more sadder style than dreadful. The bells are back, but with the addition of horns too. The drums kick in, together with the horns, again building up for something. The guitars start getting more intense, but not in a freak out way like East Hastings.

All the instruments stop. A sample of Hazel Dickens' Gathering Storm starts. In constrant to the actual lyrics, it sounds sorrowful. After it's over, the guitars are back, in a lonely and melancholic way, like in The Dead Flag Blues. The drums come back too, but not building up. It's like the song is acknowledging what caused the freak out in East Hastings, and at the same time gathering hope. The drums and violins get more epic, same with the guitar. This is the Kicking Horse in a Broken Hill movement, the most beautiful moment in the album.

That moment ends as quickly as it started, and is followed by the sampled phrase "Where are you going?". The voice again sounds sombre. The drone sounds are back, as if, finally, after all those feelings, things start to stop. Inner calm has been achieved. It's comforting, but bleak at the same time. The song ends with the J.L.H Outro, after almost 4 minutes of silence, an epic pay-off for everything you've experienced in this album. Providence is surreal. It's as amazing as a closer as The Dead Flag Blues is as an opener. It's like a reminder that, even in a scenario as dark and oppresive as this album, hope can be found. That's why I think it's the most beautiful song.

Conclusion

F#A#∞ is one of my favorite albums of all time. Godspeed followed it up with other absolutely stellar albums like Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven (which may even be objectively better than F#A#∞), but something about this 1997 record that captivates me in a way can't be found in the later albums. It's a true rollercoaster of emotions, it's magnificient. An magnum opus of post-rock, for me at least.
This album is very special to me, it introduced me to Godspeed and the world of this one weird rock subgenre. I love it now, and I'll love it for the rest of my life, forever being one of the best experiences I've had, even outside of music.

So yeah, it's pretty great.