TROG
Robert Logan@TROG How are you finding the album?
@Cognessence I haven't been able to listen to it fully yet. Work has been really busy this week and I missed most of the listening party yesterday. Had to come into the city for work last minute today but I plan on listening to it on the train ride home this evening.
Will update later. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well.
@Cognessence Still waiting on my physical copy too. It'll be nice to listen to it on the good headphones and amp.
@Cognessence Update 1: I listened to the first 4 tracks walking through downtown Chicago to the train. It fitted the hustle and bustle of rush hour pretty well.
@TROG Ah - nice photos, and I can absolutely see why the music would fit. 👌
I'll admit I'm really enjoying the new album, even if I can see it provoking some less favourable responses out there. :D It probably helps I've already got a weird openess to some things it reminds me of - including jazz, contemporary classical, thorny chamber stuff, even occasional "new music" works - but his angle is somehow both warmer and colder sounding where it needs to be and does feel like an evolution.
In fact it's more interesting to me than most of the last few albums (not that I'm dissing them.) The chamber sounds, mix, and especially fearless dissonance and unusual, angular harmonic writing - it seems genuinely adventurous. To dismiss it as being the same as its inspirations would be unfair too, imo.
Most of all it sounds like someone doing what they want, with no apparent anxiety about being remotely trendy. :D (I keep noticing a kind of sketchy dance music, a reenactment of old pop, a studied unambition doing the rounds, for example - so this was a nice counter to some stuff I've been sent recently.)
Don't want to sound overly dismissive there; I understand the pull toward supposed "directness", toward music that feels communal, unguarded rather than supposedly hermetic and complicated etc. But yeah: Squarepusher playing quite wild, beautiful and strange music with an entire chamber orchestra against a lurching live rhythm section, on his own terms, 30 years in, with no apparent interest in whatever narrative is currently supposed to be going on...that feels really fresh too. Even if he'd probably laugh at my added framing there. 😄
A brilliant album overall. In some ways, an album I'd been hoping someone would make for a while.🙏
(And that final organ track is just gorgeous!)
@Cognessence I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it. I agree with your assessment for the most part but I'm still processing it.
There's a word you mentioned that is predominant for me now: anxiety. This album seems to contain and produce some level of it while listening. My partner immediately said it too when I played it in the car the other evening.
Going to keep re-listening and picking apart why/how it makes me anxious and what that could mean.