Thatguy

That explains the 'orrible vocals.

FACS - Maggot Brain 020324

AOSOTH - IV. Great band, great album. I listened to this album years ago on headphones on a long haul flight. I had it on repeat and kept drifting off to sleep then back into the music. I finally stopped listening and decided that I had fathomed all its convolutions but I was probably in fact dreaming. Excellent album but I haven't listened to it again since then.

I've been summed up in various ways over the years - the latest being my son 'with yer cool sunglasses and cool leather coat you look like a hipster, but we know you are in fact just an oddball' - but this actually gets pretty close to the essence of Thatguy too.

My brother gave me Tilt (the album this is off for those who don't know) for my 40th birthday. I listened to it - and this is the first track - for the first time as I was driving from Newcastle to Sydney as the sun set and as bushfires burned on one side of the road. My brother died some years ago now. As you can imagine, apart from this being a great piece of music, it has so many deep and emotional associations for me and like the best music reaches beyond the rational.

Yep. This looks like a cat who rules the household. I've been away - in Launceston looking after my brother-in-law who just had a hip replacement - and I've listened to many things. The two to mention are:- NIGREDO - Flesh Torn - Spirit Pierced LAUGHING CLOWNS - Law Of Nature

VERBERIS - The Apophatic Wilderness. Noice. An here is Thatguy's cat. Luna Bonjour (she came to us already named).

You can't believe you said that.

Thatguy does not hate kittens. But they have no business making music. KRALLICE - Dimensional Bleedthrough ASUNOJOKEI - Live Album:Island In Full No kittens were harmed in the making of these albums. NP - FOUR TET - Three

Not me. As long as they are not enhancing performance then the silly buggers should be able to take what they like - just like the rest of us silly buggers.

To display how open minded I am, I just tried it again. Yep. I still hate it. Dreary bouncy synthy kitten music.

ENDLESS LOSS - Traversing the Mephitic Artery NP - HENRY COW - In Praise of Learning. 'Violence completes the partial mind.'

Come on over. You know you want to.

Yeah, nah. I've never found the mix of church organ sound and rock instrumentation appealing. And yes, he can clearly play, but there are so many more interesting things you can do with an organ (no obvious jokes needed here thanks - those I'm talking to know who they are) - Messiaen, Anna von Hausswolf, Keith Jarrett - to name just a few. And then there's the fucking choir.

True and true. I guess it's partly the diversity of their output that has consistently put me in two minds about them. Partly I love their ambition and weirdness, partly I feel they just go on and on and not a lot happens. But they draw me back somehow. And talking about Jarboe, have you heard the album 'Neurosis & Jarboe'? It's pretty good.

MURG -Strävan NP - SWANS - The Glowing Man. I'm settled in for a couple of hours here.

Well. I haven't listened to Swans for some time and I don't have this one. I shall have to re-assess everything, my whole life probably.

ABBERATION - Refracture ATREXIAL - The Serpent Abomination. OK until they spoilt it with a wimpy last song. OUTLANDER - The Valium Machine NP - LYCIA - The Burning Circle And Then Dust

Get that into you!

Sadly, I must agree.

KANONENFIEBER - Kanonenfieber Live at Dark Easter metal Meeting WALLFAHRER - In Dubio Pro Misanthropia. Their new one. Very noice. About to be NP - ASUNOJOKEI - Live Album: Island in Full. I'm going to enjoy this, so fuck yers all.

ASEITAS - False Peace OWL - Crystal Delerium

Then you miss out on the lovely idiom - 'he trousered it' - meaning he nicked it, innit? And Barry Humphries was very old when he died a year or two ago, so he had plenty of time to do what he done. I am many things, not all of them worthy, but I ain't 'high falutin' and I reject the existence of that strange North Americanism in my world. Today...CORPUS DIAVOLIS - Elixiria Ekstasis YFEL - Beneath The Mountain's Vigil COAST - Live 2023 NP - LYCIA - In Flickers

Guilty as charged except for 'high faultin' - no Australian is 'high falutin' - whatever that means Let sleeping fossils lie. As for lyrics - it's like most things in life for me, it depends on the context. So, sometimes I do (care) and sometimes I don't. I like singing along to lyrics that inspire or amuse me, but most extreme metal lyrics do neither and it doesn't matter. And it's one-eyed trouser snake, GG, thought you probably knew that. Like much of the Oz argot that we think is ancient folk sayings, this expression was invented by Barry Humphries. NP - BLEMISHES - Ambivert. Just trying it out and it's a nah. So, GOROD next.

I didn't feel excluded. I was just offering my usual dry commentary. Back in the eighties...well, for half of the eighties I was a medical student, then I was an overworked intern then resident, and I had a young family to support and there was post graduate study. Jeez, I was busy. I still had time for music...I had no time to be in a band, but I played in hospital reviews and some jam sessions. There was still jazz - Anthony Braxton, Art Ensemble of Chicago, but also more mainstream stuff - Kenny Wheeler, Jan Garbarek, Keith Jarrett and electric stuff - Miles Davis, Weather Report, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Bass Desires, Bill Frissell, Soft Machine, Rock? Oils, Magazine, David Sylvain, The Church, King Crimson, Van Der Graaf Generator, Yes, Robert Wyatt, Zappa, Adrian Bellew, Art Bears, China Crisis, The Blue Nile, Steely Dan,The Psychedelic Furs etc etc You get the idea. And I still like all that music. Not a jot of metal until the late nineties. Then a lot of catching up and looking forward, not back to the fossils.