Monday, April 4
8:45 AM: Watching videos on VH1. The first one is by The Secret, I think? Terribly boring. Switch to mun2 - Veze Skante, "Die Famous." Daddy Yankee, "La Despedida." Gloria Trevi, "Me Rio de Ti."9:00 AM: One of mun2's two shows dedicated to regional Mexican music (banda, norteño, duranguese) begins. I watch for about 15 minutes.
10:00 AM: I'm out walking around for about an hour, running errands. I listen to most of Cryptopsy's Whisper Supremacy (six tracks out of eight) and half of Gorguts' Obscura (six tracks out of 12) on my iPod.
11:30 AM: Olde Growth, s/t. A CD that arrived in the mail. I make it about halfway through.
12:30 PM: Victor Griffin, Late for an Early Grave, while preparing questions for an email interview.
1:15 PM: Calle 13, Entren Los Que Quieren.
2:15 PM: Tried to listen to Brain Dance by Carlo de Rosa's Cross-Fade, but gave up after about 30 seconds. Put on Cavalera Conspiracy's Blunt Force Trauma instead.
5:00 PM: Liturgy, Aesthetica.
Tuesday, April 5
9:00 AM: The work day begins—listening to Asking Alexandria's Reckless and Relentless and reviewing it.10:00 AM: Out on daily walk. Living Colour, Time's Up (tracks 1-5); Fishbone, Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe (tracks 1-3). Time's Up has not held up well. Corey Glover is a lamely overemotive, totally un-soulful vocalist and a terrible lyricist.
11:00 AM: Tried out Indian's Guiltless (which I'm gonna have to review next week), lasted half of one song. Not in a mood for sludgy doom. Switched to Power Quest's Blood Alliance. Screaming, shredtastic power metal—that's more like it.
12:30 PM: Archie Shepp, Kwanza. By the way, I should mention that everything I'm listening to at home is on my laptop (but through Philips noise-canceling headphones, not the laptop speakers). I don't use the stereo much; I'm not alone in the house, and anything that's gonna be broadcast in that way has to be by mutual decision.
1:30 PM: Winds of Plague, Against the World. Sometime next week, I'm gonna have to review this album. Right now, I'm just listening to it for the hell of it.
2:15 PM: Klaus Schulze, La Vie Electronique 2. A three-CD set totaling nearly four hours of 1970s analog synth ooze.
8:00 PM: Endangered Blood, s/t. A jazz album I'm reviewing for BurningAmbulance.com.
Wednesday, April 6
8:00 AM: Two songs from Saint Vitus's Mournful Cries, while walking down the blog to get breakfast.8:30 AM: Watching videos on mun2. De la Ghetto's "Jala Gatillo" (see above), a couple of other reggaeton acts. I change the channel when Rihanna's "S&M" comes on; I don't like that song or its video.
10:15 AM: Out for a walk. Black Sabbath, The Dio Years (tracks 1-2); Behemoth, Evangelion (tracks 1-3). Behemoth's music is hard to take—it's relentless, the drumming a constant machine-gun barrage, the guitars and vocals a buzzsaw battling a blast furnace. I'm impressed by what they do, but it's a little too unrelieved for me to listen to on a regular basis.
11:00 AM: TV on the Radio, Nine Types of Light. The label emailed me a download link for this. I've never listened to a whole album by these guys; I'm gonna try to make it all the way through this one...Nope. I only lasted to track 8 (there are 13 on this "deluxe edition" download, two of which are remixes). They're good at what they do, but it's not for me. I'd have to give a lot more thought to explaining why than I'm willing to give, but at its base, I just don't see how their music fits into my life. Music is a life soundtrack for me, and I'm never in a mood or a social situation where a TV on the Radio song is gonna be the perfect music for that moment. If it was playing at a party, I would know I was in the wrong house.
1:00 PM: Krallice, Diotima. I'm gonna have to review this next week, but I'm getting a head start on it because I think it's gonna require multiple listens to sink in and make sense. I think it'll also give me a different perspective on the new Liturgy album (both bands are from Brooklyn, both are rooted in black metal but go much further out than that term implies), which I'm gonna listen to, again, next.
3:30 PM: Cactus, 'Ot 'n' Sweaty. Half studio, half live, all awesome.
5:30 PM: Does watching Tron: Legacy count if I mostly watched it to hear the Daft Punk score in action? I'm gonna count it.
Thursday, April 7
Off to a slow start today; didn't really feel like watching music videos as I ate breakfast this morning. So:10:00 AM: Liturgy, Aesthetica (tracks 1-7).
11:00 AM: JD Allen Trio, Victory! Allen is a Detroit-born, NYC-based tenor saxophonist who records with a sax-bass-drums trio; this is the group's third record. It's very compressed music; the longest of the CD's 12 tracks is 5:04, and most of them are under three minutes long. (The whole thing runs 36:46.) The disc will be out in mid-May, and I can already tell it's gonna make my year-end list for the Village Voice jazz critics' poll.
1:00 PM: Liturgy, Aesthetica (tracks 4-12).
1:40 PM: Ayumi Hamasaki, Duty.
Friday, April 8
8:00 AM: Music videos on VH1 and mun2. Jennifer Hudson's terrible new single, Two Door Cinema Club's "What You Know," Jay Sean w/Lil Wayne guesting, and some other stuff I don't remember.9:00 AM: John Coltrane, Coltrane (the 1957 album on Prestige, not the Impulse! title from 1962) and Coltrane Jazz.
2:00 PM: The Gates of Slumber, The Wretch. Heavy as a really heavy thing doom metal. Coming out in the US on May 10 or thereabouts, already out in the UK. Here's YouTube footage of one of the new songs:
4:45 PM: Morbid Angel, Covenant.
11:00 PM: Klaus Schulze, Moondawn.
Saturday, April 9
Not going to be a lot of music listening today, as I've got an interview to transcribe.10:00 AM: Wolf, Legions of Bastards (tracks 1-4). The latest album by a...let's say "classicist" instead of "retro" for a change...Swedish metal band. It sounds a lot like Judas Priest circa 1978-80, so for the return trip (this is what I'm listening to while walking to and from the post office) I switch to the originals: Judas Priest, Stained Class, tracks 1-3. Interesting to hear their '70s work, back when they were still playing riffs that could have come off a pre-MTV ZZ Top album ("White Heat, Red Hot" and "Better By You, Better Than Me" are straight boogie).
11:30 AM: JD Allen Trio, "I Am - I Am," "North Star" and "Pagan," from I Am I Am, which inspires me to listen to John Coltrane's Lush Life, the only album he ever recorded with a trio (supposedly only because the pianist booked for the gig didn't show up).
12:45 PM: Kelis on YouTube: "Brave" and "Scream." Flesh Tone is such an underrated, overlooked album.
Sunday, April 10
Not likely to be much (recorded) music listened to today. I'm going to a movie in the morning (Hanna, the score to which is by the Chemical Brothers, so maybe that counts), but I'm not sure I'm gonna be listening to anything else between lunchtime and when I leave in the evening...to go see Rush at Madison Square Garden.10:30 AM: Howlin' Wolf, The Chess Box, while driving to and from the movie theater (approx. 20 min. each way).
6:00 PM: JD Allen, I Am I Am (on the train into NYC).
8:00 - 11:00 PM: Rush, live. Full review and photos to come on MSN.com.
11:00 PM: Morbid Angel, Domination.
And that's the week!
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