Orlando Music News
Yeah, That’s Heavy: Autechre, How to Destroy Angels and more on this week’s playlist
Howdy ya’ll. My name is Jared Oates Haggard. Yes, relation. This post marks my first blogging entry with the Orlando Weekly. Every week, I plan to bring you my Top 5 favorite records, along with some honorable mentions I can’t elaborate on in the best interest of your time and a customized Spotify playlist featuring all the week’s new music you should be listening to. My most familiar styles tend to lean in the direction of metal/hardcore, experimental, electronic and alternative country, but I can assure you they will not entirely monopolize these entries, as I don’t think there’s a style, aside from mainstream country and dubstep, that I universally despise. Eh, I even like Borgore if the mood catches me. These playlists started as a way for me and my girlfriend, Stephanie Ruiz, to easily share new releases we enjoyed, and now it’s your turn to reap the benefits:
Autechre – Exai
Groups like Autechre instill a personal loathing against the buzz language of limitation, or genre, IDM (“intelligent” dance music) mostly because who has the right to determine what music is intelligent, and there’s no way anyone can effectively dance to anything labeled as IDM. Autechre laughs at categorization yet again with Exai, a covertly organized 90(ish)-minute opus. To find the pulse amongst the chaos, you’ll need a couple listens to find the pocket, but initial listens warrant a flood of appetizingly bizarre sample selections. Song tracks look as though they were named by recording the inputs of keyboard amidst a menacing office rage-out in which the culprit employee was wielding his/her keyboard like a maul in the face of their bourgeois adversaries.
Rotting Christ – Kata Ton Damimona Eaytoy (Do What Thou Wilt)
Greek spotlit blasphemers Rotting Christ always come to my mind when someone says melodic black metal. Do What Thou Wilt comes pre-soaked in a myriad of vocal diversifications and fluid mood progressions. Most tracks cascade from a solemn and throaty brooding towards an even tempered – and sometimes heavy tremmed – diligence expected of an attentively produced metal record. Deep-seated chanting and hefty textural bells clear way for the marching of chugs, harmony and warrior-pulse-paced percussion. Even if you don’t like black metal in the slightest, I would recommend this record to any metal listener regardless of their exposure. This record would work as a wonderful gift, or Spotify link, to any rookie metal fan looking for something fresh.
How To Destroy Angels – Welcome Oblivion
For those unfamiliar, this band features notorious NIN head case, and I say that in the most endearing way, Trent Reznor, his equally talented wife Mariqueen Maandig and Oscar-winning composer Atticus Ross. Before you listen, this effort sounds a little like NIN, but it does brandish paramount vocal synergy between Trent and Mariqueen combed together with an unobtrusive mixing selection to maintain their naturally diaphoretic power amidst the mostly electronic composition. Welcome Oblivion does exactly as it’s titled: ushers the listener into a series of spacious cycles that relax you to the point of floating like a feather through the post-modern dream of an emotional super computer. Progressions are delicate and consequently mesmerizing without having to kick the door to your brain down. So just relax, appreciate each breath and take it all in. Man.
Horn of the Rhino – Weight of Coronation
Solid doom metal records don’t come out every week, so it’s nice when Doomentia Records has new releases. Spain’s Horn of the Rhino aren’t going to floor you with originality regarding Weight of Coronation, but they’ll certainly warrant a second look once you see the album cover, which depicts an unbelievably pregnant corpse toting a stomach the size of a cannonball. Then, after a tap of the play button, you’ll be met with some tightly woven nomadic length D00/\/\ metal. The riffs don’t flutter around or fall off either, they’re here, and mature enough, to stride right through the finish line. The singing is what really captured my heart and why I had to double-check that they’re from Bilbao an’ not somewheres in Dixie. Singing with a stoner rock, or arguably country, twang leads forth the caravan just as their godfathers in Sleep have done. If you like it when yer metal takes its time, then you’ll wanna give this one a go, I tell yuh what.
White Widows – S/T
These dudes have easily claimed the honor of rookie of the week. I’d never heard of this band before today, but these arachnoid Brooklyn bros have conjured an ear-catching sound that hits your cochlea like a bear trap to the eyes. Or thousands of infected spider bites, whatever. Nasty hardcore only gets better when you employ bends with which to bludgeon and neck-jerking half-times to hasten the mosh. Combine all of that with guitar tone akin to the sound of a UAV drone being dragged across NYC concrete by a runaway Corvette lacking a driver, and you’ve got White Widows! I personally cannot wait to hear their sophomore release. Don’t be a wuss, start head banging.
Honorable Mentions
Son Volt – Honky Tonk (Alt Country)
Suuns – Images du Futur (Psychedelic Rock)
Chelsea Light Moving – S/T (Noisy Indie Rock)
Caitlin Rose – The Stand-In (Alt Country)
