...

i guess id like to talk a bit about the music i listen to and what has been most influential on me or inspiring and what i like and stuff. this list is by no means all my favourites or what i think the 'best' music is or exhaustitive or anything. its just the ones i can think about or remember right now. i just wanna talk about music i guess. i will do more of these as and when i feel like it so this is part 1.

***

Coaltar of the Deepers - newave (2002)

this album is incredibly important to me. its not my favourite album or anything and its not even my favourite coaltar of the deepers album, but it was probably the album that introduced me to 'good' music and shaped my music tastes in a massive way. i first discovered it in the forums of an anime sharing website when i was a young teenager and i had never heard anything like it before. i had never listened to shoegaze or much of anything really that wasnt mainstream pop, radio metal & emo pop, and anime osts. the etherialness of it all, the walls of sound, heavy riffs, brazilian influences, haunting repeating melodies, NARASAKI's upbeat but melancholic singing, id just never experienced anything like it before and it blew me away. i would just get lost in it all and found i could express & feel emotions through it that i hadnt really understood before. my japanese wasnt very good at the time and could understand very little of NARASAKI's mixture of english and japanese lyrics and yet i felt deep emotional resonance with a lot of the songs and key words or lines that i could understand would stick with me. it was also one of the first times i would just put on the entire album and get lost in it rather than just picking out individual songs i liked.

i still love this album and recommend it to everyone. there honestly isnt another album shoegaze or otherwise that sounds anything like it. id describe it as very consistent with itself & overall sound. like, coaltar of the deepers' arguably most popular album Yukari Telepath has some incredible tracks on it that i love, but the album overall is pretty inconsistent and doesnt really have much that holds the various tracks together and feels more like a compilation of songs. newave on the otherhand just has this unique and unifying sound and feel to it which threads through it from start to finish. and i really think it has that especially rare thing within the world of shoegaze in that there really isnt anything else that sounds like it. its pretty atypical from the rest of coaltar of the deepers' discography and so its not what i would recommend to first time listeners. i would probably suggest starting with NO THANK YOU as the best example of their quintessential sound (an amaaaaazing album btw one of my favs). but newave will always be the most important to me.

how has it influenced me personally? well apart from starting my love of shoegaze and stuff. i love the way a lot of songs have one simple repeating element that repeats throughout almost the entire song. its not just coaltar of the deepers who do that there are other influential bands & musicians to me that do that, but its something i do a lot in my music and something i like a lot in general. i like the mixture of NARASAKI's pop vocal melodies with heavier & noisier riffs and instrumentations. i like the unusual mixture of genres, the brazilian inspired sounds in the final track for example. honestly i could just keep talking about coaltar of the deepers for hours. i saw them live once and it was honestly one of the greatest shows ive ever been to and a defining moment in my life. i might make a post about coaltar of the deepers some other time id like to talk about them more i think. oh yeah my favourite tracks are 'entreaty' and 'snow again'.

***

Furukawa-P - peams.E.P (2011)

i used to listen to a lot of vocaloid music. i mean i still do but mainly just my favourites ive listened to 100s of times before. i still love it and have such fond memories of the scene and culture surrounding it in the early 2010s. this isnt to do a disservice to the producers still making amazing music with vocaloid. there is still amazing music being made but im just no longer very knowledgeable or up to date on it. there are lots of artists i could talk about and maybe i will make a post about my love of vocaloid and my memories & stuff. but for now i will just focus on one. i was thinking of talking about wowaka's 'unhappy refrain' but i feel like its more well known so thought id focus on something maybe less familiar. i could talk about 'a world of impulse' by Yonakiyasya (who i actually met irl!) but decided to go with the compilation album of Furukawa-P/ Fullkawa Honpo's vocaloid work.

for a compilation of tracks everything flows together surprisingly well. its beautiful, sad, lonely, longing. a lot of the tracks just have one repeating melody, usually an ascending progression (dunno what thats called im sure theres a proper term for it maybe) that just repeats throughout the entire song with a vocal melody on top. different intrumentation might come and go and addittional elements get layered on top and build up over time. 'Alice' is probably the most famous song on it and a good example of what im talking about. its simple and i love it. i really love this minimalistic songwriting style and its definitely influenced the way i write songs.

disc 2 has a bunch of alt versions of various tracks many of which i prefer to the originals and some that are incredibly different as well. it definitely doesnt feel like just an interesting bonus or anything, but as much a part of the experience and entirely worth listening to in their own right. Alice (AIW ver) i almost prefer to the original. hanare, banare (re-record) is probably my favourite track and just absolutely beautiful. when im feeling the sort of sadness where something loud and intense is just too much right now, peams.E.P is something i often listen to. its a comforting melancholy and takes me back to a time and place on the internet that was comforting to me. oh and in case it needs saying the production on this entire thing is just incredible. some of the minimalistic soundscapes sound very ahead of their time imo. oh and Fullkawa Honpo released new music last year for the first time in over half a decade so thats cool.

***

Lonesummer - There Are Few Tomorrows For Feeding Our Worries (2011)

one of my favourite albums of all time. if i were to make a list of my favourites this would probably be in the top 3 maybe. its pretty much the perfect album to me. the sound is absolutely incredible and in my opinion just the most perfect sounding music. the noise, the despair, desperation... the emotional resonance is unlike anything else. its an album i can listen to when im incredibly sad but it can also make me feel happy. there isnt really too much i feel like i can say about it, but i honestly love it so so much.

i guess the main thing i would say is that i consider it like the gold standard when it comes to how music should sound. by that i mean that for me personally, the emotional connection through music or like how it resonates with the listener is the most important part. everything else is secondary. clean production, good songwriting, technical musicality, being in time or in tune, all of that is secondary to the emotional authenticityy of the music & how it conveys that to the listener. in short making you feel something. i dunno i dont really know how to explain it. but i feel like this album is the perfect example of what im trying to explain and why, to me, its some of the greatest music ever recorded. ive definitely overexplained something that probably doesnt really need explaining and ive probably failed to explain what i really mean. so i will just say again that i love this album.

***

Black Dresses - LOVE AND AFFECTION FOR STUPID LITTLE BITCHES (2019)

i remember the first time i heard HERTZ it just moved me & resonated with me in a way i cant really explain. i think i listened to it about 40 times on repeat that night. i listened to the whole album the next day and it was an indescribably moving & important experience to me. STATIC might be the greatest opener of all time. im trying to think about how to explain what this album means to me and why but honestly i dont really know how. but its incredibly important to me. its definitely a contender for my favourite album of all time. i cant really think of anything else that i like more than this, so this probably occupies the number 1 spot. i think it has some of the greatest songwriting i have ever heard. i love everything about it. the incredible noisy production, catchy melodies that stick in your head forever and the moving & emotive & powerful lyrics. i just cant get over how amazing everything sounds and just how perfect it is from start to finish. again i find it difficult to talk in any depth about things that emotionally move me or are deeply important to me without feeling like im killing or disipating the magical energy that something holds. so i guess i will just say that the first time i listened to this, i felt slightly less alone.

the music of Devi McCallion is very important & inspirational to me. i genuinely believe she is the greatest lyricist alive & making music. this album might be my favourite thing of hers that shes been involved in but its difficult to say because her solo work also includes some of my favourite music & albums and i will definitely want to talk about some that are specifically important to me later. im also a big fan of Ada Rook's work although i discovered her more recently through Black Dresses. there are few other artists that im more excited to hear new music from.

if im able to make music that has the emotional impact that this album had on me, then i will be happy

***

i have a bunch more to talk about and i have a lot more written out but i think i will leave it there for now. my head is really messy atm and i cant think clearly at all. i had a terrible migraine a few days ago and im still feeling kinda out of it which is frustrating because this topic is important to me and i want to give it the attention that is deserves & stuff and i want to share my thoughts and influences and stuff. but i feel like im not doing a good job of that. but oh well i think for now i will go play more final fantasy or watch mr bean or something.