+ waiting for black metal records to come in the mail

have a nice life "deathconsciousness" (enemies list 2008)
i didn't get around to talking about this album much because i came to it so late in the game but it ended up as one of my favourites from last year. combining an ambient shoegaze buzz over a doom-drone framework, i suppose you could throw names like nadja, swans, jesu and 4ad around as a point of reference but it's not really like any of those. it's far more melodic and emotionally-weighted and at times really quite ghostly and sparse sounding (which just shows that you can come out a black metal band and still make pretty music).

lyrically, it sits well within the depresso-core genre which may not be everyone's cup of tea (even by their own admission, they're aiming for “most depressing record in the history of music”) and even though it's not mine either generally, this record became a companion at the right possible moment when i was feeling pretty bleak about things. not so now, but the music still resonates deeply.

that said, there must still be some sense of humour maintained when you have song titles like "waiting for black metal records to come in the mail" (itself the most upbeat, like a less abrasive version of a place to bury strangers) and "holy fucking shit: 40,000". so perhaps by that reasoning, you could say it's just music for shut-ins (made by shut-ins - a band incidentally of 2 dudes from new england getting their masters in history, and recommended to me in the first place by a self-proclaimed shut-in.)

anyway you can stream most of the album from last.fm (not all probably because it's too long, clocking in at just under 90 minutes) or download my most favourite track 'bloodhail' from the built on a weakspot blog.

extra golden "thank you very quickly" (thrill jockey 2009)
not really what i expected, even with no expectations to begin with. kenya benga meets american indie rock. actually less indie and more, a.m. radio/paul simon-esque territory. as with dengue fever, and to an extent, macha, it's 'world music for white kids' in a way that is far less disingenuous than say, vampire weekend.