August 2021

2021-08-01, Sunday

Spent the weekend on Stord. Have been listeing to some new music lately.

Most of all I have been listening to the King Gizzard & The Wizard Lizard’s new album, called Butterfly 3000 – and it is such a blast! It’s a synthy album with lots of catchy tunes and vocal parts. Brilliant!

Their music vids are interesting too: Bye-bye Shanghai reminds me of the Gerald Scarfe’s animations for Pink Floyd, while in Catching Smoke they all have lost their eyebrows! And what’s with that sheet music?

Also recently released (according to my standards) is Greta van Fleet’s album The Battle at Garden’s Gate. This album gives off such positive vibes: Listen to this!

Kamasi Washington’s song Fists of Fury from Heaven and Earth, has been on heavy rotation lately. It is such a powerful tune! The lyrics just striking:

People who know me will attest that I mostly listen to stuff from the seventies, but as the above indicates I have lately tried to keep my eyes open for new stuff. There is just so much music being made every year! And even the old stuff gets better, in the sense that remasters and high resolution versions are now available. Did a comparison of different versions of Bohemian Rhapsody here the other day, and the HD remastered version was so clear and just a bliss to listen to!

I have also been discovering new old stuff. Over summer, I have been reading a (quite academic) book on psychedelic pop music: Psychedelic Popular Music – A history through musical topic theory by William Echard. One thing I learned from this book is that the music from Western movies had a big influence on early psychedelic pop. The book also has so many examples, which I have gone online to listen to while I read, and this has opened my ears to stuff like The 13th Floor Elevators and The Yardbirds. Perhaps the most trippy is I had too much to dream last night by The Electric Prunes.