Aboard the 1125 Broadstairs to St Pancras Normally, I write these on a Thursday. Have a few drinks and see how long I can focus whilst putting together something that is coherent. It is Friday and, in my opinion, too early to start drinking booze. Caffeine is still literally and figuratively on the table and I am intrigued to see the effect it has on the writing. Usually I'm journaling around this time, sometimes I write poems, sometimes I try more avant-garde forms of expression. Sadly, it is mostly asinine thoughts about my emotional state or recalling a weird dream I've had. Perhaps that's what this fateful entry will become, although I know realise that most of my blogs (and indeed blogs in general) are asinine thoughts. Whatever, this is now a music blog. Here's a review of my Spotify Wrapped-Up: The way I listen to music changed this year. After last years Wrapped-Up I was interested in the inner workings of Spotify's algo, I had questions like: - How does it calculate if it thinks I'll like something? - What are the triggers that indicate enjoyment/interest? - What are the most impactful ways of influencing the algo? Turns out Spotify's two most impactful actions are skipping a song and adding a song to a playlist. So tired of how hit and miss my "Discover Weekly" was I began trying to influence the algo to see how good it was at finding me new music that I like. So, I began religiously listening to my "Discover Weekly" and adding any songs that I did like (or genres I wanted more of) to this playlist. That playlist is probably the thing I've listened to most this year, it was easy to throw on on drunken journeys home, long drives to the coast, and is a highly concentrated shot of musically interesting ideas (even if the execution isn't always perfect). Not like 2021 me. Nosireee, I used to listen exclusively to albums. Have a rotation of my favs for that month and inevitably get bored or find another album to fall in love with. However finding a whole album that has that level of stickiness is...tough. Turns out writing 40+ mins of constant bangers is super tough. Which meant that the rotation of artists could stagnate and I'd dive back into the well of the past and listen to the classics. But old habits die hard and this year I found four albums that I just could _not_ stop listening to (lowest to highest playcount): _Distil_ - Crash of Rhinos This album is *loud* from the moment the thing opens with "Big Sea" they do this cool production trick where it sounds like the mic is too far away from the amp, pauses, then you're hit with this BIG wall of distorted guitar, bass, and can we just talk about how sick the symbals sound? Genre-wise I guess you'd lump it in with the British "emo" scene that was emerging in the 2010s inspired by the mid-west revival going on over the pond. One the reasons I think this album got so many listens out of me is how well they balance noise with lyrical clarity and there are some stand-out anthemic bursts of poetry that make me _feel things_: "half a chance to make it right half a chance to fuck it up" - Big Sea "I have a future in failing" - Stiltwalker I keep trying to describe the sound Crash of Rhinos have and put it into a neat genre box, but I'm struggling. Here's what RateYourMusic says it is; "midwest emo". Fucking nailed it lads. Despite all this praise I completely forgot I listened to this album this year and it was a pleasant surprise to rediscover. _Witness_ - Modern Life is War After my Discover Weekly played me D.E.A.D.R.A.M.O.N.E.S I was hooked by the vocal performance and song writing. I think it was the endless screaming of "D.e.a.d.R.a.m.o.n.e.s" that is the climax of a song predominantly about feelings of isolation and being misunderstood that drew me to listen to the rest. The album opens with "So what the fuck are you going to do kid? Still rattling at the chains of the gates of the world?" It's the kind of album that evokes the seemingly unlimited levels of anxious and nihilistic anger and that dominated by teenage years and early adulthood. Sonically, they remind me most of post-hardcore bands like "Worthwhile" or "Comeback Kid." Like _Distal_ it's a great album, I don't think it would appear on my "top [genre] album of all time" list. What it is is 27 mins and 1 second of solid hardcore with some standout lyricism. _Diaspora Problems_ - Soul Glo Now we're getting into the good stuff. One of my biggest critisicms with emo and punk these days is that, hot take incoming, sad/lonely/angry white guy has been done. Similarly with the concerning number of cases of grooming being reported in the emo scene, it's hard to take these sad guys seriously. Like, I related a lot to the feelings of isolation and loneliness a while back but man, so many of the issues in my relationships were/are caused directly by me and my issues. IDLES are a great case study in modern punk done right. Angry at the systems of opression in play, I don't think it's enough just to be angry as a white guy now. Sure call me a racist, but if you're going to produce art about how fucked up something is can we at least make sure that we acknowledge that ultimately the system has been designed to mostly benefit a single social class? It's really difficult to not sound like a gate-keeper here about what (and who) is allowed get annoyed by whatever. Perhaps I'm projecting. Personally, I've found listening to punk and emo bands with songs not written by white males more interesting and effecting. ANYWAY. Diaspora Problems is makes me feel like I've just heard The Dead Kennedy's play "Pull My Strings" again for the first time. Like, what I'm listening to makes me uncomfortable with both it's sound and content. From the screeching howls and barely decipherable rap to the constantly shifting orchestra of instruments, it keep's you on your toes. Then there's how oppressed Soul Glo feels by modern society. "Driponomics" is a song that's about how black men are oppressed by consumerism keeping them poor and desperately chasing empty goals of acquiring branded goods. "" Little snippets of Soul Glo songs keep getting stuck in my head and the only cure is to listen the album again. _Just Got Back from the Discomfort We're Alright_ - Brave Little Abacus Forget everything I said about not being interested in listening to white men. This album. This fucking album. Christ, where do we begin? First things first, it came out ages ago (200X) but still sounds unique and fresh, somewhere between _The World Is a Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid to Die_ and... I dunno, _Anamanaguchi_? I don't feel equipped to talk about this album as it feels like a forgotten piece of emo history. Like, *post ends here* #music #musicreview