June still doesn’t feel very long ago. Already the year is over half over, and from this point on the days shorten, and we slide back into darkness once more. For me July is kind of a transitional month. The last month in both the ancient Egyptian and ancient Armenian calendars. The hits have still been coming though, of course. And I’ve been working on more mixtape projects.
I do still plan on finishing that neopagan manifesto I started in my last blog entry, I just need time. I wrote a bunch of it out actually, and Blogger glitched out and deleted most of it. That was why I uploaded it unfinished in the first place. I think I better write in a separate document and then copy and paste it into the blog from now on.
As per my new tradition, be sure to have a look at the Top 3 songs of past Julys at the bottom. It’s always fun to see what patterns emerge.
Alone in the Hollow Garden ~ Aeon of Set π©
This is a 12+ minute long dark ambient track dedicated to the Egyptian God of Storms, Deserts and Chaos, Set. It’s mostly instrumental, but it does contain a prayer to Set, even calling Him by His Egyptian name, Sutekh. I came across it not long after it came out in December 2021, an odd upload from the YouTube channel Ghostshadow Shadowghost, outside of their usual genre. But it stayed around on my playlist of meditation music until I rediscovered it during my ongoing Egyptian mythology binge, and developed an appreciation for it. It even uses a duduk, a native Armenian instrument, although the musician behind Alone in the Hollow Garden is from Bucharest, Romania. So that gets bonus points from me. And the album cover is very aesthetically pleasing.
I made it the first song on my meditation playlist for Set, π©Dua Sutekh π©. I want to do one for all my favorite deities eventually. It’s my newest ongoing mix project after having finished the Wizard of Oz one. Those are hieroglyphs of little Sha animals, the possibly-mythical, possibly-extinct creature that Set has the head of. I found that on Wikipedia and I love using Shas instead of punctuation now π© Okay maybe not. You know, Set wasn’t always considered a bad guy in Egyptian mythology, despite what you might have heard. The myth about him killing Osiris came about later on in Egyptian history. He also helped the Sun God Ra navigate the underworld every night and defeated the Chaos Serpent. He saves the world every night from a malevolent eldritch abomination, and yet everyone hates the poor guy.
This is from the album Desert of Set, which includes two other, even longer tracks dedicated to Set.
Slow Danse with the Dead ~ Dark Ritual
The first official music video from Slow Danse with the Dead is finally out, done to the title track from their newest album. I’ve already been listening to this song for a few months, but a good music video always renews my interest in a song. Now is an exciting time for the band, as they are an official band now and not a solo project, and they’re starting to play local live shows. Nothing in my neck of the woods yet, but if it does happen I will be there.
Here’s their latest album which this song is from, also called Dark Ritual.
Pretty Addicted ~ Am I Sick?
As promised, Pretty Addicted has been releasing a music video a month since January. Their upcoming album, due out in October, is full of deeply personal songs. I’ve covered the song “Heather” before, which at least to me is the most relatable of the tracks that I have heard so far. This song is another great track, about having hypochondria. Too many people treat that condition like some kind of joke, but it’s definitely no joke to those who suffer from it, who might even know on an intellectual level that there’s nothing wrong with them, but they still can’t shake the feeling that they’re sick, or even terminally ill.
You can find the track here, buying it helps finance the new album.
THAL ~ Bei Mir
This sing has a groove to it. Very dancey. All I know about this band is that they’re from South Germany, I was only able to find their Soundcloud page through the description on this video. Soundcloud is like a foreign country to me, I’ve never really used it. So if anyone has any additional leads I’d be grateful. They do have their albums up on YouTube, but all I found on Bandcamp was a stoner rock band with the same name from Ohio. Perhaps we’ll be seeing a repeat of the Covenant vs The Kovenant feud soon?
Lost Loved Ones ~ The Dark
Here’s my retro pick this month. From their 1984 EP of the same name, “The Dark”, the UK post-punk band Lost Loved Ones. This song is infectious. My favorite part is that little yodel where his voice goes up, “Iiiii, would die for yooooOOOUU!” You’ll know it when you hear it. This is one of those songs you have to sing along to, and it’s okay if you suck at singing, it will still be fun. I don’t know why it isn’t more famous of a song. The best songs from the 80s are the ones that never ended up on MTV, I swear. And the fewer albums a band had the better the band was. The truly great ones just released a demo tape and disappeared. And I’m always uncovering stuff I haven’t heard yet.
As with a lot of older bands, I don’t think their stuff is on Bandcamp.
ΠΡΠ°Π½Ρ ~ ΠΠ°ΡΡΠ΅ΡΠ°
It’s been a good while since I latched onto some Russian post-punk. And in the middle of summer too. I always found that Russian post-punk just feels more right when you listen to it in the winter. You can listen in the summer, but you can’t truly feel the song. It has to be cold outside to truly appreciate it. But, this particular song had such a beautiful gloom to it I could enjoy it even when it’s humid and miserable outside here in Florida. This band is called Gran, or Edge according to Google Translate, from Chelyabinsk, Russia. And I didn’t know that the song title was going to translate to “Cassette”, but I had a feeling it might. One of my favorite things, of course. I’ve been trying to learn to at least be able to sound out the Cyrillic alphabet even if I don’t understand much Russian. Learning Russian by listening to Molchat Doma, about as effective as learning German by listening to Rammstein, I guess.
And this was another of those cases where I was able to find the band on Bandcamp, but not this song in particular. They have a bunch of albums up on there though.
FEVR ~ I Think I’ve Fallen For You
A catchy love song rarely graces my blog, but here one is. At least it’s goth. I first got into the Los Angeles, California band FEVR late last year when I heard the song “I Can’t Do it No More”, one of those songs where the lyrics are much sadder than the upbeat music suggests. And I think I’ve fallen for FEVR.
This is off their brand new album Fate, which came out on July 6. It’s out in cassette too! I need to get me a copy.
TOP SONGS OF JUly THROUGH THE YEARS
20 Years Ago ~ July 2003
I got out to the record store a lot that summer, always coming back with new CDs of bands I already knew I liked, and bands I was taking a risk on because they had cool album cover art. Kotipelto was one of the latter. Their album Waiting for the Dawn was ancient Egypt themed, and had this Egyptian guy standing in this colorful temple. See, even back then I was into ancient Egypt. I hadn’t quite heard of the band Stratovarius just yet, who Timo Kotipelto is the lead singer of, this being a solo album. The song “Chosen by Ra” is about the reign of Ramses the Great. Pretty nerdy thing to sing about. You’ll never hear that Post Malone guy singing about ancient history. “Dawn of Eternity” by Cradle of Filth is one of those songs with a badass epic opening. I can still rock out to that song today when I’m in the mood. And “Acid Theater” is back, it stuck around for two months in a row.
15 Years Ago ~ July 2008
I was just starting to get into dark electro more. I had first gotten into Das Ich back in 2005, but I hadn’t really sought similar sounding bands until around this time. Mindless Faith is a great band that I would say are the same genre as Das Ich although the vocal style is very different. I found them through buying their CD at the record store as well, which was already the old fashioned way of doing things in 2008. And “Destillat”, still one if the best Das Ich songs. But I am always annoyed by how everyone loves the VNV Nation remix better than the original, and it gets played at all the clubs. I like the original, specifically the version with female backing vocals. There’s also a version without that and it’s kinda “meh”, but I still like that better than the VNV Nation version. And then there’s Hanzel und Gretyl. There was a time I really liked that band, although now I see them as a bit problematic. They try to get away with things by saying they’re a parody of German stereotypes, not sure if I buy it.
10 Years Ago ~ July 2013
This was the month after I went to that Ayria concert with my fiancΓ© and I was still enjoying the CDs I bought there. One was of course Ayria’s newest album at the time Plastic Makes Perfect, and another was a freebie that was given out to everyone at the concert by one of the local opening bands, The Break Up. I liked a few of the songs on it. I think their band name has since sadly become a self-fulfilling prophecy, last I checked. And I was still into Zombie Girl at the time too. Yay.
5 Years Ago ~ July 2018
While yes I was miserable at the call center job during this time, this was the month I got to see Das Ich in concert in Tampa, Florida. And that remains to be one of my favorite concerts of all time. And it’s interesting to see Das Ich as a running thread through this look back at the Julys of my past. Maybe five years from now I’ll have another Das Ich craze, seems to happen every ten years. Too bad I hadn’t heard of them yet in 1998. Crazy to think that I could have. Anyway, Buzz Kull is a great band too, still like a lot of their stuff. Although it’s been a while since they came out with a new album. And then yes I was still working my way through The Cure’s early music at this time too. When I had time and wasn’t chained to a desk in a cubicle being harassed over the phone.
No comments:
Post a Comment