It's like this and like that and like this. A culmination of over five years of material re-recorded and put on a double disc for yr listening pleasure. First off, the production is stellar. It's not glossy and polished so that it completely shines, but it's not like a lo-fi demo or anything. Have A Nice Life walks the line in between perfectly. As for a shoegaze band at heart, is it going to make you put yr hands over yr face in contempt for how apparent it sounds to all the old throwback 90's acts? Not at all. Sure, influences are widespread, from plenty of shoegaze bands, to drone acts like Sunn O))) to industrial and even metal. But Deathconsciousness as a whole contains its own identity and treads its own path. You know as soon as you sit down to listen to the entire thing and realize after it's too late that you're are completely sucked in and along for the ride. I love the tongue in cheek humor and feel it adds that much more to Have A Nice Life's charm. Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail? Genius. Makes me think of hipsters reading the latest Pitchfork review showering Xasthur in accolades over his cutting edge depressive black metal and then going out to indulge in the monotonous dirge that Scott Conner creates.
Sometimes, the conditions are just right for the appreciation of new music. I first started exploring Have a Nice Life’s double album debut as I was leaving my house at 5:45 am last Saturday, still in a somnambulist daze, feeling the cold winter night across my face while overlooking the city lights of Toronto from the lonely hilltop leading my street to the empty road heading south. It was in those moments of dreary isolation, where it felt like the only living souls were miles away in the distance, that the early moments of Deathconsciousness began to seep in. This is record, though far from perfect, delivers an emotional wallop that seems unparalleled. A mysterious synthesis of post-punk, shoegaze, metal and post-rock, Have a Nice Life’s ghostly ruminations aren’t just careful homages to their favorite genres and influences, they instead push the boundaries of them to get to their dramatic core, presenting a perfect summation of where the underground has been and where it will be going.

'Hundred Acres' finds Carey at his most confident, mature, and grounded, writing the strongest songs of his career. At its core, the album is a poetic treatise on what is truly necessary in life, a surprisingly utilitarian art project that underscores the power of enduring. Carey challenges himself and the listener to strive for a near-utopian ideal of returning to a simpler way of life, and loving those around you, to heal personal wounds.
Carey employed a smaller, more focused scale of instrumentation on 'Hundred Acres', centered around guitar, synths, pedal steel, strings, drums and percussion, with his soothing vocals front and center -- more distinct than ever. In effect, the album’s production echoes its underlying message: the beauty in simplicity. Relying on more traditional song structures instead of the Steve Reich-ian repetitions of his past work, a new balance is struck that creates something unique. The result is a collection of poetic yet clear-eyed songs that both stand brightly on their own and tightly weave together to create a powerful album.
credits
releases February 3, 2018
'Hundred Acres' was produced by Carey, with engineering and co-production from Zach Hanson and Chris Messina. The album was predominantly recorded at April Base in Fall Creek, WI, and features backing vocals by Gordi on three songs, musical contributions from Casey Foubert (Sufjan Stevens) and signature string arrangements from Rob Moose (yMusic), as well as art direction and photography by longtime collaborator Cameron Wittig.

Ditching your aesthetic (hairy noise-rock troupe) in favor of its polar opposite (neatly groomed pop-dance trio) is a sure way to get some pre-release hype, but the transformation of Chromatics has been so effortless that it's still easy to be wowed by the results. Those who caught the swooning glide of the Chromatics' "Nite" single last year-- or their contributions to the After Dark compilation earlier in 2007-- won't be shocked by the similarly sleek Night Drive (aka IV). But listeners who are only familiar with the band's forays into shambling punk will certainly be surprised by Night Drive's assured songwriting (which would wow even if the band had been chasing this narcotic Eurodisco sound for years) and how it wrings ravishment out of electro moves that should be long-drained of their charms.
Credit some of this to Johnny Jewel-- Chromatics member, one half of Glass Candy, and the economical production whiz/secret weapon in the much-feted Italians Do It Better camp. I have no idea how duties on Night Drive were divvied up between Jewel, founding member Adam Miller, and vocalist Ruth Radalet. But you can certainly hear all of the IDIB trademarks: doleful disco-punk guitars (the menacing clang of "Healer"), starkly monochrome synth patches (especially gorgeous on the bumping goth club slow-jam "Let's Make This a Moment to Remember"), watery keyboard progressions (ditto), and exploitation flick arpeggios ("Tomorrow Is So Far Away"). Even as they've dumped the genre's sonic baggage, Chromatics have retained punk's taste for spare arrangements, but drawing on overripe Moroder-style dance music and early 1980s synth melancholia makes for some sumptuous spare arrangements.
Of course, sumptuous production is often not enough, especially if all you're doing is cloaking a dead heart in good taste. But while the languorous, mid-tempo Night Drive may sway like it's half-drugged, its heart is still beating, thank you very much. The record opens with a female voice (presumably Radalet) dialing her lover as the club rats scatter home from their nights out, and when she winsomely closes the call by telling him that she loves him, she proves that (however much she comes across like a cutie pie version of Nico) she's no ice queen. Even when she sounds half-tranquilized, it's Radalet that adds the very necessary soft touch to all those implacable sequencers. Throughout Night Drive, whether at a kittenish whisper or a husky, longing sigh, her cauterized range fits the band's vision of disco recast as heartsick pop. And even when wholly instrumental on "The Killing Spree"-- forget the title, the sinister descending keyboard fuzz does a perfect job evoking a murderous robot sci-fi flick on its own-- the band uses what could be sterile pastiche to pull your strings. Tastefully.
Night Drive's peak is the rightfully praised cover of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", where the band shifts the focus of the (already minimal) arrangement onto three sour keyboard notes and a dapple of guitar. Radalet sounds like the school wallflower trying on the queen of frou frou art-pop, her unsteady hold on Bush's delivery cracking into a yearning coo at the chorus (about as demonstrative as she gets), making for the only moment on the record where the band really lets their emotional guard down. Haters and fans alike often call this neo-disco stuff "cold" and "dark," but I think that's just code for "not kitschy" (on the plus side) or maybe "not emotionally open enough" (on the minus side). But while Night Drive might not be warm, it does feel intimate, like a 3 a.m. ride home, where you're not alone but exhaustion and intake have made talking impossible, the city is silent, and the traffic patterns are as comforting and regimented as a drum machine click track. One of those moments, to paraphrase Ms. Bush, when you should be crying, but you'll be damned if you let it show.
-Jess Harvell, October 11, 2007

Sharon Van Etten’s Remind Me Tomorrow comes four years after Are We There, and reckons with the life that gets lived when you put off the small and inevitable maintenance in favor of something more present. Throughout Remind Me Tomorrow, Sharon Van Etten veers towards the driving, dark glimmer moods that have illuminated the edges of her music and pursues them full force. With curling low vocals and brave intimacy, Remind Me Tomorrow is an ambitious album that provokes our most sensitive impulses: reckless affections, spirited nurturing, and tender courage.
"I wrote this record while going to school, pregnant, after taking the OA audition,” says Van Etten. "I met Katherine Dieckmann while I was in school and writing for her film. She’s a true New Yorker who has lived in her rent controlled west village apartment for over 30 years. Her husband lives across the hall. They raised two kids this way. When I expressed concern about raising a child as an artist in New York City, she said ‘you're going to be fine. Your kids are going to be fucking fine. If you have the right partner, you’ll figure it out together.'” Van Etten goes on, “I want to be a mom, a singer, an actress, go to school, but yeah, I have a stain on my shirt, oatmeal in my hair and I feel like a mess, but I'm here. Doing it. This record is about pursuing your passions." The reality is Remind Me Tomorrow was written in stolen time: in scraps of hours wedged between myriad endeavors — Van Etten guest-starred in The OA, and brought her music onstage in David Lynch’s revival of Twin Peaks. Off-screen, she wrote her first score for Katherine Dieckmann’s movie Strange Weather and the closing title song for Tig Notaro’s show Tig. She goes on, “The album title makes me giggle. It occurred to me one night when I, on auto-pilot, clicked 'remind me tomorrow' on the update window that pops up all the time on my computer. I hadn't updated in months! And it's the simplest of tasks!”
The songs on Remind Me Tomorrow have been transported from Van Etten’s original demos through John Congleton’s arrangement. Congleton helped flip the signature Sharon Van Etten ratio, making the album more energetic-upbeat than minimal-meditative. “I was feeling overwhelmed. I couldn't let go of my recordings - I needed to step back and work with a producer.” She continues, “I tracked two songs as a trial run with John [Jupiter 4 and Memorial Day]. I gave him Suicide, Portishead, and Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree as references and he got excited. I knew we had to work together. It gave me the perspective I needed. It’s going to be challenging for people in a good way." The songs are as resonating as ever, the themes are still an honest and subtle approach to love and longing, but Congleton has plucked out new idiosyncrasies from Van Etten’s sound.
For Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten put down the guitar. When she was writing the score for Strange Weather her reference was Ry Cooder, so she was playing her guitar constantly and getting either bored or getting writer's block. At the time, she was sharing a studio space with someone who had a synthesizer and an organ, and she wrote on piano at home, so she naturally gravitated to keys when not working on the score - to clear her mind. Remind Me Tomorrow shows this magnetism towards new instruments: piano keys that churn, deep drones, distinctive sharp drums. It was “reverb universe” she says of the writing. There are intense synths, a propulsive organ, a distorted harmonium.
The demo version of “Comeback Kid” was originally a piano ballad, but driven by Van Etten’s assertion that she “didn’t want it to be pretty”, it evolved into a menacing anthem. Cavernous drones pull the freight for “Memorial Day,” which fleshes out an introvert in warrior mode. The spangled “Seventeen” began as a Lucinda Williams-esque dirge but wound up more of a nod to Bruce Springsteen, exploring gentrification and generational patience. Van Etten shows the chain reaction, of moving to a city bright-eyed and hearing the elders complain about the city changing, and then being around long enough to know what they were talking about. She wrote the song semi-inter-generationally with Kate Davis, who sang on a demo version when the song was in its infancy.
Since her last album, Van Etten has had a young son, and family life is joyful. Preparing and finishing these songs, she found herself expressing deep doubts about the world around him, and a complicated need to present a bright future for him. “There is a tear welling up in the back of my eye as I’m singing these love songs,” she says, “I am trying to be positive. There is strength to them. It’s— I wouldn’t say it’s a mask, but it’s what the parents have to do to make their kid feel safe.”
Alongside working on Remind Me Tomorrow, Van Etten has been exploring her talents (musical, emotional, otherwise) down other paths. She’s continuing to act, to write scores and soundtrack contributions, and she’s returning to school for psychology. The breadth of these passions, of new careers and projects and lifelong roles, have inflected Remind Me Tomorrow with a wise sense of a warped-time perspective. This is the tension that arches over the album, fusing a pained attentive realism and radiant lightness about new love.

Blonder Tongue Audio Baton (sometimes spelled Blondertongueaudiobaton) is a 1993 album by Swirlies, released on CD, LP and cassette. The majority of the album was recorded in the summer of 1992 at Q Division Studios, Boston with engineer/co-producer Rich Costey. It is possibly their best-known and most critically praised work, with many critics citing it as a "lo-fi" answer to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. Allmusic calls it "a mainstay of early-'90s indie music."

Nashville’s Hammock follows up 2017’s critically-acclaimed Mysterium with Universalis, the second installment of a planned three-album series. While Mysterium took listeners down a horizontal path that explored themes of death and grief, Universalis begins a vertical, upward movement back toward the light.

At times, Universalis calls back to Hammock’s 2006 album Raising Your Voice… Trying to Stop an Echo, while also retaining Mysterium’s deep ambient, neoclassical style. The band also finds itself rediscovering some of its earliest influences, including Low and Red House Painters. With Universalis, Hammock invites listeners to lose themselves within its layers of sound, while also embracing the beauty in its raw openness and silence.

To achieve the sound of Universalis, Hammock brought on Francesco Donadello (A Winged Victory for the Sullen, Olafur Arnalds, Johann Johannsson) and Peter Katis (Interpol, Jonsi, The National), who each mixed portions of the album. The album artwork was curated by The Fuel and Lumber Company with drawings by Pete Schulte, and Matt Kidd (Slow Meadow) returned to play piano and provide additional engineering.

The Get Up Kids are an American rock band from Kansas City, Missouri. Formed in 1995, the band was a major player in the mid-1990s Midwest emo scene, otherwise known as the "second wave" of emo music.

For her third album Quiet Signs, Jessica Pratt offers up nine spare, beautiful & mysterious songs that feel like the culmination of her work to date. "Fare Thee Well" and "Poly Blue" retain glimmers of On Your Own Love Again's hazy day spells, but delicate arrangements for piano, flute, organ and strings instill a lush, chamber pop vim. The record's B-side, meanwhile, glows with an arresting late-night clarity; the first single, "This Time Around," pairs the Los Angeles artist's intimate vulnerability with a newfound resolve. Ultimately, this confidence is what sets Quiet Signs apart from Pratt's previous work, the journey of an artist stepping out of the darkened wings to take her place as one of this generation's preeminent songwriters.

Vinyl LP pressing. 2010 sophomore album from the singer/songwriter. Sharon Van Etten came to Brooklyn via Jersey via Tennessee via Jersey. Along the way, she sang in choirs, rejected her school's music program, worked at an all-ages venue, trained as a sommelier and got a full time job at a record label. She also had a few bad experiences in relationships. More than a few. Epic lays a romantic melancholy lining over the gravel and dirt of heartbreak, without one honest thought or feeling spared. She sings of betrayal, obsession, egotism and all the other emotions we hate in others and recognize in ourselves. Van Etten's grounded and clenched vocals convey the sense of hope--the notion that beauty can come out of the worst of circumstances. Epic is indeed that beauty.

經典原版於1987年6月面世，相對前作E.V.O.L.滲進更多搖滾肌理，吸引了更多原本視SY為地下洪水猛獸的樂迷。