SALÒ – Glock 17
Genre: Post-Punk, Pop Punk, New wave
The music grouped under the “post-punk” umbrella is all about discomfort. It’s not the kind with which noise artists operate. It’s the anxiety of regular life, of bad conversations, bad relationships, and a nagging feeling about the world going to hell in a handbasket.
Many of the genre’s greatest artists involved themselves in this kind of annoyances actively. Mark E. Smith, for example, if stories, are to be believed, used to spend his days sojourning through various bars, letting the locals get on his nerves, and then writing about it.
Mitteleuropa sounds like a good place to find inspiration by the sound of SALÒ’s Glock 17. Unimpressed with the architecture and all of Vienna’s pretty statues, The Austrians sound like they’re in the middle of planning a riot. Because if you think that oppression is terrible in other places of the world, according to SALÒ, you should see what the Austrian police is up to.
Sophrosyne – Woolly Mammoth
Genre: Indietronica
Similar artists: Boards of Canada, Tycho, Dan Deacon, Clams Casino, Jamie XX
If you would have asked John Lennon, likely he would have told you that there are two types of modern music. There’s wallpaper music of the soft-rock variety. And, there’s hot-stepping, fast-moving rock n’ roll.
With that being said, we can only assume where Lennon would have classified the work of partner Yoko One.
The truth is that pop culture either tries to get your attention long enough to ask you if you’d like to buy something. Or, alternatively, it attempts to take over the background, slowly working its way into your mind.
Sophrosyne cuts the difference on the song Woolly Mammoth. Jason Van Pelt’s Sophrosyne works almost like a highly complex diagram made using sound. There’s certainly a map here. And, it’s likely to point you in the right direction. Learning how to read it is up to you though.
