Sockpuppet Blog.

What I’m listening to

I feel like doing these approximately once a week is a pretty nice cadence. So I think I’ll start scheduling these to go up every, say, Saturday. Yes, that sounds good.

Here’s some musical-listening highlights since the last one:

• two months of moments by glaciaere: some really nice heartfelt FM synthy stuff that spans a bunch of different genres
• Six Foot Moon by Distractor: 80s nu-wave for the modern era
• Full Of It by Summer Cannibals: Some great female-led power punk rock, I’m totally here for it
• Black Box of Jazz: This is an amazing compilation of some of the best music that jazz has had to offer. I happened upon this collection when I was visiting Hong Kong back in 2000, and it’s an essential for anyone who has any interest in the genre.
• The Great Concert of Charles Mingus: Speaking of jazz, this one is also particularly amazing, although it probably helps to be familiar with a bunch of jazz already to fully appreciate some of the musical humor in it. Mingus is one of the jazz greats.
• Pivot by Amoeba (one of the many projects of Robert Rich): I’m not sure how to describe this as anything other than “experimental rock.” There’s some great grooves in this accompanying some great noises. I’m not sure how I ended up with this in my collection (way back in 2019 if my file timestamps are to be believed) but I’m glad I did.
• Duo de Bois: Six Sonatas for Flute and Violin: It’s a shame Magnatune has ceased operations because they had some really excellent classical music on offer. This is an excellent recording of a great classical work. I can only seem to find it for sale on Apple Music these days but it’s licensed CC by-nc-sa so it should be possible to obtain freely. If only there were a way.
• Drum Machine Dreams by Stevia Sphere: Nice lush ambient music to fill your ears to
• Expert in a Dying Field by The Beths: This album was the big hotness when it first came out a couple years ago, and it’s well-deserved.
• FREQUENCY gift by glitched puppet: Really awesome lo-fi abstract ambient chillwave groove things.

Music (re)discoveries

It’s been a week since the last one of these, and I figure I should post some more albums that I’ve listened to recently.

• little fires by miscellaneous owl: Lots of great earnest indie music in various genres
• Heartbreak on Vinyl by Blake Lewis: The sophmore album of my favorite American Idol finalist, with some pretty nice lush electropop/dance vibes on this one
• Fly! by The Flashbulb
• Rock!!!!! by The Violent Femmes
• Verve//Unmixed vol. 3: Some really great jazz classics on this one (and on the whole Verve//Remixed and Verve//Unmixed series, for that matter)
• Song Fight!: Her: This is one of those fights from the era when a lot of folks were bringing their A-game, and there’s some great songs in this one

Music (re)discoveries

So hey, I’ve been working on improving the tag browser in the releases section, and have it to a point where the browser itself is, I think, really good? All that’s left to do is to tag all of the songs. I have, uh, a lot of tagging left to do. I built some tools to make it a bit easier, at least, but it’s still going to take me quite some time.

Anyway, while tagging music, I’ve been spending some quality time just listening to other peoples' music. Here’s a few things that I’ve enjoyed recently.

Bandcamp Friday picks for December 6, 2024

Hello my lovelies! December 6 is the last Bandcamp Friday of the year. On this day, Bandcamp waives their share of the sale price, leaving musicians with a bit more money from their hard work.

I of course have my latest album, Transitions, and quite a few other albums available, including with a deep discount if you opt to buy my entire discography all at once.

There are also a lot of other artists that I think you should consider supporting!