LISTENING: Cylob – IN DYSTOPIA

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New Cylob!

I first heard Cylob way way back in the Rephlex days with songs like “Cut The Midrange, Drop the Bass” and “Rewind! (Vocal),” both of which can be found on the CYMPLY THE BEST 93-01 compilation along with many other greats. I played the hell out of both on my radio show.

The songs on IN DYSTOPIA feel both similar and far removed from the feeling of those earlier tracks. Here we have songs with unexpected chords and progressions, arpeggiated in lock-step, but also like a sort of free jazz where it feels like anything could happen at any moment. The unifying factor is the dominant use of vocoder, text to speech, and other robot-like vocal effects which, for me at least, are timeless. While I might have a tough time wrapping my head around some of those songs, I’m always drawn in by the vocals. Especially on the album closer “I Achieve Full Freeze” which I’m pretty sure is simply about vocoding. Can relate.

PHOTO: This is What You Want

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Working on a custom paint job for the Cross Bone Gundam Maoh and realizing it’s a bit like the (literally) crazy robot in Hardware, one of my favorite movies. Really. If you like industrial music even a little, you need to see it. It’s kind of beautiful (and kind of bad, but still). I covered “The Order of Death”, the PiL song used in the end credits. It’s in the Endless Compendium.

ACQUIRED: Earth Tongue – DUNGEON VISION

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Got the new album DUNGEON VISION from the New Zealand fuzz rock duo Earth Tongue. Artwork is fantastic (I passed on the super deluxe version) and perfectly reflects the music’s mystical and arcane feel. The amount of power these two infuse into their often dirge-y yet playful classic metal songs is impressive. Their videos are also all spot on and worth checking out.

PHOTO: When the Heat Goes Out

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photo of auguste sitting very close to the space heater.

We’ve been having some mystery issues with our furnace and water heater that are (hopefully) now resolved. But the other day the heat went out in the evening which here in northern Minnesota means that the house started to get cold pretty fast. Because of this potential situation we have a few electric space heaters that keep things bearable while we wait for the nice furnace men to arrive.

Auguste, our almost 18 year old orange and white tabby cat, does not have any problem with this situation. He and the heater became fast friends and I suspect that he’d be fine with this being a permanent feature.

LISTENING: KLOUD

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I’ve been listening to a lot of KLOUD lately which I recently described as “lizard-brain levels of hard techno and I am here for it.” I know next to nothing about the artist behind the skin-tight full-head black latex mask, and I think both he and I prefer it that way. His music is simple (positive) and relentless. Perfect for background music while building plastic robot models, driving too fast, or filling a room full of mostly white dude-bros (see above). A lot of the tracks are pretty interchangeable, but “Synthetic” is one that I keep returning to.

PHOTO: What’s He Building In There

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grainy low-light photo of a very small plastic skull and separate jaw clamped to a DIY cardboard block

My wife and I have fallen back into the grip of Gundam/Gunpla building. We more-or-less straight built a few of them decades ago, and this time around we’re learning more about painting and detailed finishes. I have to admit that I don’t enjoy painting nearly as much as building them, but it’s been an interesting new process to learn about at least.

Unsurprisingly I’m drawn to the more esoteric models, like the one pictured here, the XM-X9999 Crossbone Gundam Maoh. Obviously it’s all about the giant shrieking laser skull for me (although at 1/144 scale it’s laughably small.) I have big plans for a completely different paint job, and if it works you’ll see it here first.

I promise this (probably) won’t turn into a gunpla blog. But I do have…a few more waiting in the wings.