October. The world is still very much on fire. It’s hard to feel the Halloween spirit when your favorite country is being carpet bombed by a mad dictator who today is ignoring a ceasefire that was established so that both sides could collect the dead bodies of their fallen soldiers after almost two weeks of fighting. Oh but by all means, ignore the war in Armenia and focus on a fly on the US vice president’s head, who by the way also gets more media coverage than any third party presidential candidate. And the Covid is still going strong too. Isn’t the world just grand?
I would really be stewing in it if I weren’t visiting family in California at the moment; yes, perhaps ill advised these days, but plane tickets were cheap. I had planned to do this trip in early September but the whole state was on fire so I had to reschedule. But as my last two blog posts show, the trip isn’t enough to distract me from what’s going on in Armenia. I have donated what I can, I really can’t do much else sadly. When I do get more money perhaps I can help with the rebuilding efforts.
This will be the month I debut my webcomic. Before the month is out. It is pretty much ready. I just have to work out the logistics of publishing it online. As for blog plans, well, we will see. It feels wrong to blog about frivolous Halloween stuff with the war going on. But my monthly tradition of talking about what music I’m currently into isn’t too frivolous, I guess. If only due to my stubbornness. The Azeris can’t take that from me.
Minuit Machine - Don’t Run From the Fire
“Don’t run from the fire. Fight.”
This song just came out at a timely moment for me, between both the war I previously mentioned and the fires in California. It works as an obvious metaphor. Don’t run away from your problems. Stand up and confront them. There’s another song by Boy Harsher, “Face the Fire”, that is really similar to this one, using the same exact metaphor. Not sure if there was any actual influence there, but I will put them on a mix tape together, for great justice. Minuit Machine features the same singer from Hante, which is her solo project. I found out about Hante first, but I really like Minuit Machine too, which sounds almost the same I guess.
Also, any music video that uses the Deliberate VHS Quality trope gets bonus points from me. I just like it for some reason.
Tearful Moon - Run Away, Simon (featuring This Cold Night)
We just had a song telling us not to run away, and here’s one with the opposite message! This song is strangely catchy. I have no idea who Simon is. The nerdy one from Alvin and the Chipmunks perhaps? Or Simon Belmont from Castlevania? That was a pretty hard video game, I ran away from it too. Anyway, this is a song about getting yourself out of a toxic situation if I’m interpreting the lyrics correctly, and it’s okay to run from that. My favorite line is “Run with the wolves, they shout your name”. Now I have to imagine a wolf trying to howl the name Simon.
I have been enjoying Tearful Moon’s music lately, and this song is my current favorite of theirs.
Slow Danse With the Dead - Monday Mourning (Another Day of Suffering)
I wish this song had been out when I was working at the call centers! This is the perfect “I hate Monday” song. This song captures exactly what it’s like to wake up after a day or two off and have to go back to an awful job that you hate, with your next day off in the distant future. To anticipate another day of suffering. Slow Danse With the Dead is best at conveying this type of existential depression. This is off their latest album I Look Like Death, and marks their third month in a row on my Top 3 Songs lists, which is an auspicious honor to be sure (lol not really).
Honorary Mention: SYZYGYX - Times Are Hard for Dreamers
I haven’t really been venturing outside my usual genres in the last month so I don’t have anything too different to put as an honorary mention. But I heard this song for the first time a couple days ago. I haven’t really had the time to sit with it yet so it hasn’t beaten out the other three I just listed. But I do love SYZYGYX. Times are indeed really hard for dreamers. You can’t focus on your dreams unless you’re already rich. Or just lucky. The title alone is enough to capture my attention. Surprisingly this song came out last year; times are even harder now. I need to get the album Fading Bodies, I think it is the only one of their’s I don’t have yet. Weirdly, the CD is less expensive than the digital album; I guess if you add shipping costs it isn’t, but still, maybe I ought to get a CD copy. Saves me the trouble of burning the MP3s on a blank CD like I always do.
So, it’s finally April. Except
April, like March, has been cancelled (except for rent and credit card
payments, of course). Everyone enjoying their quarantine? Got enough toilet
paper? I mean, a pandemic was pretty much inevitable. Like an earthquake or a
hurricane. Everyone acts like it’s never going to happen until it happens. Nothing
like a good pandemic to expose all of society’s flaws. Everyone’s got cabin
fever, people are getting laid off and evicted, losing their health insurance
when they need it the most, society is unraveling and everything we thought was
real is a lie. But, at least we still have music to stave off our existential
crises. Or at least, that’s what I’ve been doing.
I like to take the time during these
Songs of the Month entries to discuss my future plans for the next month or so
on the blog. The next thing I plan on posting will be 1986 in Music, which I’ve
already been working on. Already got the Spotify playlist up too. Those Years in
Music blogs will keep going for a long while if I’m doing like 3 or 4 a month.
Later this month I’m going to continue my Birthright Armenia series by
recounting the System of a Down concert in Yerevan and the 100th anniversary of
the Armenian genocide, which I was in Armenia to witness in 2015. Around May 8th
or so I’ll talk about my trip to the unrecognized Republic of Artsakh as well.
And my 34th birthday is this month! A quarantine birthday, woohoo.
So maybe I’ll write about that. I’ll probably write once more this month
about the coronavirus and my personal experiences during the pandemic. I may
even begin my Oz reviews this month. Hopefully. I’ve been rereading the first
book little by little, it just takes me forever to read books now. I also just
received a new Oz book by a new pal of mine, which might as well review it when
I’m done. I’m sure other topics will strike my fancy. The possibilities are endless, after all.
These
are the top 3 songs that have been powering me through these times, plus one
more honorable mention. SYZYGYX (which as you’ll remember is pronounced kind of
like “scissor kicks") and Lebanon Hanover have kept their iron grip in the top
two places that they’ve had for the third month straight, but I think I’m
likely going to start listening to other bands soon. Maybe with my stimulus
check I’ll get some new music!
SYZYGYX
– In Pieces
The music video for this song helps
give it context, with scenes of busy cities and computer screens flashing. This
is a song about modern society. Our attention is always divided, we’re always
busy, we’re always bombarded with screens. If we’re not sitting in front of a
screen at work we’re sitting in front of a screen at home. Our attention spans
have been reduced to mere seconds. Our consciousness is in pieces. I’m as
guilty of this as anyone. The song and its video seem to be looking at our
society from the outside. It makes you question why things are this way. What
exactly is normal? What is reality? The world is a strange place when you actually
stop to contemplate it, but so few people ever do. It’s a good song to listen
to during those bouts of depersonalization and derealization. I myself have, as
of late, felt disconnected from my body and from reality itself, like a puppet
growing aware of its strings. I discovered this song at just around the time
this started, although it was released early last year.
“No one likes each other, in the 21st
century”. It’s another song about today’s society. I love the emotional guitar
riff that plays throughout. Lebanon Hanover can do no wrong in my book, I’ve
liked every song I’ve heard. I really only started listening to them last year
although they’ve been around for a while now. Anyway, another reason I like
this song so much is because it reminds me of the protagonist of my upcoming
novel! A young girl from the Land of Oz who, because you can’t die in Oz, gets
trapped under an avalanche and is stuck for twenty years before the ice melts
enough for her to escape. This is set to be on the unofficial soundtrack. I’ll
blog more about it when it gets closer to actually being published, for now I’m
keeping the project mostly under wraps. But if you want to be a beta reader you
can let me know.
This song has one of the catchiest beats I’ve heard
in a while. It’s infectious. This will get stuck in your head, be warned.
The only downside to this song is it’s too short. I always want it to keep
going when I get to the end. I’d love to hear an extended version. Velvet Kills
is a band from Portugal which has had a few albums out by now. This song as
well as the album it is on, Bodhi Labyrinth, was released just last
month, making it the newest song on the Top 3 this month. You can check them
out on Bandcamp.
The
Kentucky Vampires are, as their name suggests, a goth band from Kentucky. I
never thought I would hear a band I liked from there, but here we are. Last
month, in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, they made the very generous
decision to make their new album, Crimson Curse, available on Bandcamp
at a “name your price” rate, since money is tight for a lot of people right
now. So really, if you find yourself liking the music on this album you have no
excuse not to buy it. I’ve liked the album so far, although I need to give it a
few more listens. The intro is a nice pipe organ piece, which reminds me of old
metal albums I used to listen to like from Cradle of Filth or Dimmu Borgir that
have a dark, epic-sounding instrumental opener, but this music doesn’t go on to
be nearly as heavy. It’s just gothic rock. I like the track Saint Vincent
because it’s an ode to the late great Vincent Price, one of my favorite actors,
and starts with a voice sample from him; thus joining the ranks of Michael
Jackson’s “Thriller” and Theatre of Tragedy’s “And When He Falleth” in making
perfect use of Vincent Price’s voice. There’s a niche topic I should do a blog
entry about someday, songs that sample Vincent Price.
So, it’s been March for over a week
now. It still hasn’t really sunk in for me that it’s March. We have the Spring Equinox
coming up soon. I’ll be doing a write-up on the Armenian God Vahagn in honor of
his birthday on the 21st, time permitting. I’m also going to
continue posting my Years in Music mixes for however many months it’s going to
take me to get through them all, and at some point, I want to start reviewing
the Oz books. I’ve started re-reading the first book already, and it’s my first
time going back and rereading it since I binged the sequels so it is an
interesting experience. Starting in April I’ll be periodically blogging about
my time in Armenia in 2015, delving into my old journal entries and such. Stay
tuned for whatever else strikes my fancy as well, anything goes on this blog I
suppose.
Anyway, this month I haven’t
actually been listening to a whole lot of new music. But, I have been
continuing through Lebanon Hanover’s discography, gradually, and I’ve come
across some SYZYGYX and Boy Harsher I hadn’t previously heard. Here’s the Top 3
this month, and the honorable mention.
SYZYGYX
– Dangerous Creature
"Scissor Kicks” makes it to the
top 3 for a second month in a row, because I’ve been in the mood for dark music
with female vocals for the past several months (which all of these songs have
in common). This track, “Dangerous Creature”, is off their album Fading
Bodies which came out last October and I only now have been able to listen
to. As with other songs from this band, like “Blood Moon”, I’ve found that the
lyrics are more minimalistic than they seem. The band says on the Bandcamp page
for Fading Bodies “We’ve kept the lyrics minimal, because we believe in
the power of sound and the power of it to make you feel.” This band is really
good at doing that. You don’t necessarily need lyrics to guide your thoughts
for every song. Let your brain do the work. The music takes my brain somewhere
else every time I hear it.
While
SYZYGYX doesn’t need lyrics to get their point across, I often find that the
lyrics are my favorite part of a Lebanon Hanover song. This comes from their
2012 album Why Not Just Be Solo. Which I’ll definitely have to remember
when it comes time to do my 2012 in Music mix; although I hadn’t heard of them
yet back then. I was too busy being obsessed with And One and Ayria. The
opening lyrics are “Perhaps an ideal way of life leads to an ideal way of
death, it’d be good to be you but I’d rather be dead.” It makes me think of
those type of narcissistic people who give you unwanted advice, disapproving of
your life choices and acting as if their way of life is “ideal”. Know-it-alls. I’ve
known a few people like that. We’re all going to die in the end, no matter how “well”
we live. The rest of the song expresses a desire to get away from people with “fashionable
minds” and move somewhere where one can see the northern lights. I want to get
away from the fashionable minds myself. It would be nice to see the northern
lights in person someday. I bet it’s amazing. I’m not sure when that would ever
happen. If I leave the US for a trip I’ll likely either go to England or
Armenia, too far south to see them. I should go to Norway one day.
I
don’t think I’ve discussed Boy Harsher yet on this blog, have I? Anyway,I first
heard them back in 2018 when I came across their song “Pain”, which was one
that slowly grew on me, I wasn’t that into it at first. Then last April I think
it was, I heard that they were doing a concert in Ybor City near Tampa, and I
went to the show with my wife. It was a fun night out. When I was at the
concert I bought their album Careful on cassette, because I have a thing
for cassettes. What I didn’t know was that there were bonus tracks on the
deluxe vinyl version that I was missing out on! It always irks me a little when
bands do that. But, I guess if you’re going to pay more for a vinyl version you’d
need some extra incentive to not just get it on MP3. R.O.V. was a song that
didn’t make it onto my cassette. Kind of a rare track in that regard, at the
moment deluxe editions are sold out so there’s not really a way to legally pay
for this track right now. Hm, pity. Although YouTube has it. I need to get a
turntable one of these days. But, I’m more of a cassette and CD person really.
Honorable
Mention: Lebanon Hanover – Sadness is Rebellion
“Northern Lights” beat this track
out for the music, but I like this one best for the lyrics. “Sadness is
rebellion”. I think it is rebellion, at least within American culture, where we’re
all expected to be happy, productive workers providing excellent customer
service while licking the boots of the wealthy class. When we do become sad about
our bleak, meaningless existence, the doctors throw pills at us and tell us to
get back to work. Sadness is looked at as weakness, and mental illness. I think
it’s a sign of self-awareness and intelligence to be depressed. The happy
people are the insane ones. The song makes another good point. “You say popular
music is contamination. It won’t stop if the public is too blind.” My thoughts
exactly. I don’t want to sound like a snobby elitist, but, I do believe that
the music pushed by the corporations is less thought-provoking, and less
musically complex, than independently released music or music released on small
album labels. Because music that promotes happiness and doesn’t make you think
is better to keep the masses obedient; that’s why it gets played in all the
grocery stores and such. But, I’m going on a tangent.
“In my
age, as in my youth, night brings me many a deep remorse. I realize that from
the cradle up I have been like the rest of the race – never quite sane in the
night.” – Mark Twain
I
think about this quote from Mark Twain’s autobiography quite often. I first
came to hear it in the claymation film The Adventures of Mark Twain,
which everyone should see, by the way. None of us are quite sane in the night. You’re
not the same person at 10am that you are at 10pm. You’re not of the same mind.
Not quite.
Nightwalk
is my most recent mixtape to date, made in mid-November 2019 at the beginning
of the month of Տրե
(Tre) on the ancient
Armenian calendar. I’ll be making some new ones soon. I do these bimonthly,
except on special occasions. I made this mixtape shortly before starting this
blog. For context as to what was going on in my life when I recorded this
(because that always influences my mixtapes, even if only subtly), the seasons
were changing, the world darkening, the depression catching up to me and
causing me insomnia. I was between jobs again. I felt lost. A couple weeks later
that would motivate me to start blogging; to write and do what I want. It has
helped.
I
made this mix during a restless night, on a 90-minute tape. It is very
conceptual. There’s a story behind this tape. Picture being unable to sleep,
being kept up by dark and unhappy thoughts, regrets from the day that just
passed, and deciding to just get up, go out the front door and go for a walk in
the middle of the night, just to clear your head. The moon and stars are
overhead, the only light shining down in this dark world. The starlight
traveled hundreds of lightyears to reach this speck of a planet, and your eyes.
There is beauty in the darkness. A kind of comfort. You breathe the cold night
air, pick a direction, and just walk through the abandoned neighborhood, no
cars on the roads, everyone’s asleep, leaving you alone with your thoughts.
Each song is another set of thoughts that occupy your mind for a period. The
songs on Side A kind of start you the journey into the night. The two songs
bridging Side A and Side B are instrumentals that make me think of staring up
at the night sky into the stars, and contemplating your place in the universe.
If it had a music video, it should be a series of photographs from the Hubble Space
Telescope. After that we have songs about dark thoughts, and then restlessness
(Silent Em’s “No Rest” being the fastest song on the tape). The last song,
Fornicata’s “Daylight”, symbolizes dawn; that moment when you’ve had insomnia
for so long you start to see light through the curtains or blinds on your
window, and you realize you now have to get through the day on very little
sleep. The nightwalk is over, time to return home.
This
is the part of the blog where I usually share my playlist and at least attempt
to recreate the mixtape on Spotify. A lot of these songs are not only fairly
new, but obscure too. Even though I actually found the likes of Mindless Faith
and Lovataraxx on Spotify, they didn’t have their newest releases. I wasn’t
able to even find the title track for the tape, ”Nightwalk” by Frail. Alas, Spotify
has failed me in trying to put together a playlist based on this tape. I’ll
probably always have an easier time replicating my old mixtapes on there from
back when I listened to more popular music off the radio. These new ones are
going to be difficult. Sigh. They had 14 out of 22 songs though. I’ll link to
the missing tracks on YouTube.
And by the way, I could no longer find “In
Every Face” by Brigade Rosse even on YouTube. Me and my niche tastes. Just go
support them on Bandcamp (support all the artists if you can), if anyone is really serious about recreating this mix. I doubt anybody is, but ah well.
(This should be the last interruption of my top 10 albums that changed
my life. Tomorrow it’s back to our regularly scheduled programming. And after
that I’ll write about stuff besides music for a bit just to change things up.)
Nobody: So Suren, what kind of music have you been listening to lately?
Me: Well I’m glad you asked, Nobody!
I’ve had this monthly tradition dating back to the year 2000, stemming
from radio shows I used to listen to back then where they’d go through the
weekly Top 20 songs on the charts for alternative rock. I wanted to have my own
top list. But I chose to narrow it down to three, and make it monthly. These are determined by which songs I've had stuck in my head a lot, which songs I've identified with at a given time, or which songs I've just really liked. Why I
keep weird little traditions like this I don’t even know, maybe I have an
undiagnosed mild case of OCD or something. I guess the purpose it really serves
is that every year I make a mix tape (recorded on a two-hour blank cassette)
which I update with the first two of my top 3 songs each month. I’ll put the
number 3 song on the tape if one of the other songs has been on for two or more
months in a row (because I’m not going to put a song on the tape twice), or if
one of the other songs is too long (I can only dedicate a maximum of ten
minutes to each month on a 120 minute tape or else I’ll run out of room; although if I go under ten
minutes I do have extra time to work with in future months). Whenever there’s
extra room on the tape at the end of the year, I pick my favorite number 3
songs from throughout the year and include as many as will fit on the tape.
These tapes are a nice time capsule to go back and listen to, and are something
I’ll likely blog about more at some point. It’s what I like to call my
“audiobiography”. I have written records kept in old notebooks that go back to
when this tradition first started. For the first entry, in October of 2000, my
top three songs were “Undone” by Weezer, “Mope” by Bloodhound Gang, and “The
Inevitable Return of the Great White Dope”, also by Bloodhound Gang. Obviously,
my tastes have changed quite a lot in 19 years.
The tradition gets stranger though. In 2010 (by the Gregorian calendar),
I grew tired of the Gregorian calendar, with its Roman Catholic-influenced “this
month has 30 days, this one has 31, and this one month randomly has 28 days
except on certain years” bollocks. I learned about the ancient Armenian
calendar. Every month had thirty days even, with an extra five to six days before
the New Year which weren’t part of a month and were basically set aside for
partying. The ancient Egyptians had this type of calendar first, and that’s
another culture I admire. By the ancient Armenian calendar it is the year 4512. That's the number of years since the legendary hero Hayk led the Armenians out of
Assyria, defeated the tyrant titan Bel in battle and established the Kingdom of
Armenia, around the Lake Van region in historic Western Armenia. The anniversary
of this battle, called Navasard, is the calendar’s “New Year”, falling on August 11 on the Gregorian
calendar. This website has more information on the calendar:
I bring this up because I now decide
my top three songs of the month on the first day of the month on the Armenian
calendar, and I start my Year Tapes on Armenian New Year. December roughly
corresponds with the month ofՔաղոց (Kaghots), which begins on December 9. I’m
posting this blog a day late because I don’t want to do two posts in one day and bury the blog about And
One I just posted. Later this month I might just do a “Top songs of 2019” blog, or a blog about the 2010’s in general. I probably will, even though it'll really be the years 4502 to 4512. Just to satisfy the rest of those who conform to that flawed Gregorian calendar. So
pretty much everyone else besides myself and like two other people. I have to think about my audience, after all. (*crickets chirp*) Ahem. So anyway, as long as I keep this bizarre tradition, I might as well blog
about it. You can think of this as music recommendations. These are my top three songs this month:
Mindless Faith – Moth Without a
Moon
Mindless Faith is a band I discovered way back in 2007, in what was probably another case of a CD being placed in the wrong genre section at Rasputin Records back in Pleasant Hill, CA. Their album Momentum introduced me to a new electronic sound I hadn't encountered up to that point; similar to Das Ich but more trance-like. I’ve
been following them throughout the years ever since, and I tend to like
whatever they put out. This song comes off of their new album Insectual;
which appears to be bug-themed. I guess concept albums do still exist in the
streaming era. I plan on buying the album when I can. This song has grown on me
in the past month. I do love it when they use female vocals, which isn’t
something this band does all the time. I didn’t know moths were associated with
moons. Do all moths have moons? Maybe it’s because moths are attracted to
light? I really don’t know what the song’s about to be honest but I love the
sound of it. I suppose genre-wise this is industrial. Or
dark electro. 2. Buzz Kull – Avoiding the Light
This song is on my chart for the second month in a row. I wish I’d heard this song
years ago, but it only came out late last year. “I can’t face the day, and I’d rather the night. My death is
impending: I’m avoiding the light.” I’m like a vampire when it comes to sunlight
and will do what I can to avoid being directly exposed to it, and I certainly
prefer nighttime. And everyone's death is impending. It's one of those songs that's almost a good theme song for me. I really relate to this song. It’s a perfect goth
song. Makes me want to do the goth lurch, which is a kind of dance where you
try to look like you’re too cool, dark and mysterious to be enjoying yourself.
Buzz Kull has already been on my charts a few times now, I’m digging them more
and more. The music video is pretty cool too. Old school photography development and such.
3. Silent EM – Machine
Silent EM has been growing on me in recent months. Another song of theirs I was really
into a couple months back and still like is “No Rest”, a song that I felt
encapsulated the stress of the temporary full-time call center job I was
working at that time. This is their second song on my charts. I’ll have to buy
an album from them soon, when I can. If the “EM” is silent, should I be
pronouncing the title of this song as “achine”? Anyway, Silent EM is a New
York-based solo project of Jean Lorenzo, and I have it on pretty good authority
that it’s in the coldwave genre. If I were to make music myself it would be
coldwave. At any rate, since “Avoiding the Light” was on my mix tape last
month, this lucky song gets to go on there this month.
Now
it was a very close race this month. If it hadn’t been for “Avoiding the Light”
being in my top 3 for the second month in a row, there would have been a
different number 3 song, obviously. So I decided to give an extra song the benefit
of the doubt for this blog and talk about my number 4 pick as an honorable
mention. Don’t get too used to this, mind you. 4. SYZYGYX – Pins and Needles
This is a band I’ve been following since late last year, about the time they started
to gain notoriety in gothic circles. They came out with three albums all in one
year in 2018, which I purchased last Spring. Then they put yet out another album
this year, so I'm no longer all caught up. How prolific. They must always be writing and recording new songs. How do they find the time to tour on top of that? They are going to be playing in Orlando in a couple days, but sadly because of lack of funds and the need to take care of the baby I can't go. Sigh. Hopefully they'll come back to Florida next year sometime. At any rate, I believe their name is pronounced “Siz-eh-jix”.
Almost sounds like “scissor kicks”. It’s derived from the astronomical term “syzygy”,
which is when two or more celestial objects are aligned with one another. The
husband and wife duo of the band are certainly in alignment with one another, as can be seen by how well their music flows and harmonizes. How romantic. I kind of wish I
could start a goth band with my wife. But I’m more of a writer, and synthesizers are expensive. I’ve had this
song stuck in my head on and off for the past month, but it hasn’t quite risen
above the other three. Still, very catchy! Something to bob your head to. Not
all of their music is this high-energy, but I’ve liked nearly every song of
theirs that I have heard.
I’ll
do this again on January 8th, the beginning of Արաց (Arats), so stay tuned for some music recommendations.
