josh blog

Ordinary language is all right.

One could divide humanity into two classes:
those who master a metaphor, and those who hold by a formula.
Those with a bent for both are too few, they do not comprise a class.

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28 Feb '24 10:29:53 PM

2018 ALBUMS
Autechre, NTS Sessions 1–4 (Warp)
Skee Mask, Compro (Ilian Tape)
Rezzett, Rezzett LP (The Trilogy Tapes)
Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour (MCA Nashville)
KEN Mode, Loved (Season of Mist)
The Ex, 27 Passports (Ex Records)
James Brandon Lewis & Chad Taylor, Radiant Imprints (Off)
Will DiMaggio, At Ease (Future Times)
Ashley Monroe, Sparrow (Warner Records)
Thou, Magus (Sacred Bones Records)
Container, LP (Spectrum Spools)
Miles Okazaki, Work, Vols. 1–6: The Complete Compositions of Thelonious Monk (self-released)
Julian Lage, Modern Lore (Mack Avenue)
Bugge Wesseltoft & Prins Thomas, Bugge Wesseltoft & Prins Thomas (Smalltown Supersound)
Trygve Seim, Helsinki Songs (ECM Records)
No Age, Snares Like a Haircut (Drag City)
Horrendous, Idol (Season of Mist)
Meek Mill, Championships (Atlantic/Maybach Music)
G Herbo & Southside, Swervo (Machine Entertainment Group/Epic Records/Cinematic Music Group/150 Dream Team/808 Mafia)
Tyshawn Sorey, Pillars (Firehouse 12 Records)
Various Artists, The Black Book (iDEAL Recordings)
Dave Holland, Evan Parker, Craig Taborn, & Ches Smith, Uncharted Territories (Dare2 Records)
Steve Coleman and Five Elements, Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 1 (Pi Recordings)
The Jamie Saft Quartet, Blue Dream (RareNoise)
Tierra Whack, Whack World (self-released)
Mark Fell, Intra (Boomkat Editions)
Nadja, Sonnborner (Broken Spine/Daymare Recordings)
Jürg Frey, 120 Pieces of Sound (elsewhere)
Vanligt Folk, Hambo (Kontra-Musik)
Mammoth Grinder, Cosmic Crypt (Relapse Records)
Noname, Room 25 (self-released)
Oren Ambarchi & Konrad Sprenger & Phillip Sollmann, Panama / Suez (A-TON)
William Parker, Voices Fall from the Sky (Centering Records)
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Wasteland (Rise Above Records)
Donato Dozzy, Filo Loves the Acid (Tresor Records)
Rosalía, El Mal Querer (Sony Music)
Sunwatchers, II (Trouble In Mind)
Witch Mountain, Witch Mountain (Svart Records)
Daniel Bachman, The Morning Star (Three Lobed Recordings)
Kikagaku Moyo, Masana Temples (Guruguru Brain)

2017 ALBUMS
Converge, The Dusk in Us (Epitaph/Deathwish)
Spoon, Hot Thoughts (Matador Records)
Electric Wizard, Wizard Bloody Wizard (Spinefarm Records)
Julie Byrne, Not Even Happiness (Ba Da Bing Records)
Brooklyn Raga Massive, Terry Riley In C (Northern Spy Records)
Rosalía, Los Angeles (Universal Spain)
Bob Dylan, The Bootleg Series, Vol. 13: Trouble No More 1979–1981 (Columbia)
Horse Lords, Mixtape IV (Northern Spy Records)
Karen Gwyer, Rembo (Don’t Be Afraid)
Maalem Mahmoud Gania, Colours of the Night (Hive Mind Records)
Prins Thomas, 5 (Prins Thomas Musikk) ****
Power Trip, Nightmare Logic (Southern Lord)
Sheer Mag, Need to Feel Your Love (Wilsuns Recording Company)
Cannibal Corpse, Red Before Black (Metal Blade)
Krallice, Go Be Forgotten / Loüm (self-released)
Suffocation, … Of the Dark Light (Nuclear Blast)
Meek Mill, Wins & Losses (Maybach Music/Atlantic)
Kehlani, SweetSexySavage (Atlantic)
Miguel, War & Leisure (RCA)
Shed, The Final Experiment (Monkeytown Records)
Lee Ann Womack, The Lonely, the Lonesome & the Gone (ATO)
Jürg Frey, L’âme est sans retenue Ⅰ (Erstwhile Records)
Lil B, Black Ken (BasedWorld)
Tombs, The Grand Annihilation (Metal Blade)
Eleh, Home Age (Important Records)

2016 ALBUMS
Autechre, elseq 1–5 (Warp)
Coffin Dust, Everything is Dead (Unholy Anarchy Records)
Sheer Mag, I–III (Wilsuns Recording Company)
Heron Oblivion, Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop Records)
Juan Atkins & Moritz von Oswald present Borderland, Transport (Tresor Records) ***
Schoolboy Q, Blank Face (Interscope/Top Dawg)
Horse Lords, Interventions (Northern Spy Records)
YG, Still Brazy (4Hunnid/CTE/Def Jam)
Moodymann, DJ-Kicks (!K7 Records)
Jeremih, Late Nights: Europe (self-released)
Daniel Bachman, Daniel Bachman (Three Lobed recordings)
Prins Thomas, Principe Del Norte (Smalltown Supersound) ***
Prins Thomas, Principe Del Norte Remixed (Smalltown Supersound) ***
Blood Incantation, Starspawn (Dark Descent Records) ***
Mats Eilertsen, Rubicon (ECM Records) ***
Wolfgang Muthspiel, Rising Grace (ECM Records) ***
Isaiah Rashad, The Sun’s Tirade (Top Dawg Entertainment)
Oren Ambarchi, Hubris (Editions Mego) ***
Trygve Seim, Rumi Songs (ECM Records) ***
Krallice, Hyperion / Prelapsarian (self-released)
Camila Meza, Traces (Sunnyside Records) ***
Posthuman, Back to Acid (Balkan)
Stephan Mathieu, Radiance I–XII (Schwebung)

2015 ALBUMS
Horrendous, Anareta (Dark Descent Records)
False, Untitled (Gilead Media)
Black Breath, Slaves Beyond Death (Southern Lord)
Yellow Eyes, Sick With Bloom (Gilead Media)
Miguel, Wildheart (RCA)
Speedy Ortiz, Foil Deer (Carpark Records)
Tinashe, Amethyst (self-released)
Kehlani, You Should Be Here (self-released)
Deafheaven, New Bermuda (Anti-)
Christian Mistress, To Your Death (Relapse Records)
Yasuaki Shimizu & Saxophonettes, Goldberg Variations for Five Saxophones and Four Contrabasses (Avex Trax) ***
Floating Points, Elaenia (Pluto/Luaka Bop) ***
Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti (Swan Song Records)
Meek Mill, Dreams Worth More than Money (Maybach Music/Atlantic)
Coffins, Perpetual Penance (Horror Pain Gore Death Productions)
Future, DS2 (A1/Freebandz/Epic)
Young Thug, Slime Season 2 (self-released)
Krallice, Ygg Huur (self-released)
Jeremih, Late Nights (Def Jam)
Noisem, Blossoming Decay (A389 Recordings)

2014 ALBUMS
YG, My Krazy Life (CTE/Def Jam/Pushaz Ink)
V/A, Studio One Rocksteady (Soul Jazz Records)
Coffin Dust, This Cemetery, My Kingdom (Unholy Anarchy Records)
Spectral Lore, III (I, Voidhanger Records)
Tinashe, Aquarius (RCA)
Lee Ann Womack, The Way I’m Livin’ (Sugar Hill Records)
Moodymann, Moodymann (KDJ)
Spoon, They Want My Soul (Anti-)
Horrendous, Ecdysis (Dark Descent Records)
Thou, Heathen (Gilead Media)
Dead Congregation, Promulgation of the Fall (Martyrdoom Productions/Profound Lore)
Pallbearer, Foundations of Burden (Profound Lore)
Mare Cognitum, Phobos Monolith (I, Voidhanger Records)
Theo Parrish, American Intelligence (Sound Signature)
Tony Allen, Film of Life (Jazz Village)
Lee Gamble, Koch (PAN)
Angel Olsen, Burn Your Fire for No Witness (Jagjaguwar)
Vladislav Delay, Visa (Ripatti)
Exordium Mors, The Apotheosis of Death (Iron, Blood & Death Corp.)
Midnight, No Mercy for Mayhem (Hells Headbangers)
D’Angelo & The Vanguard, Black Messiah (RCA)
Gunnar Haslam, Mirrors and Copulation (L.I.E.S. Records)
Panopticon, Roads to the North (Nordvis Produktion)
Stargazer, A Merging to the Boundless (Nuclear War Now!)
V/A, Guruguru Brain Wash (Guruguru Brain)

2013 ALBUMS
Carcass, Surgical Steel (Nuclear Blast)
Magic Circle, Magic Circle (Armageddon Shop)
Aeternus, …And the Seventh His Soul Detesteth (Dark Essence)
VHÖL, VHÖL (Profound Lore)
Kacey Musgraves, Same Trailer Different Park (Mercury Nashville)
Chance The Rapper, Acid Rap (self-released)
Laura Marling, Once I Was an Eagle (Virgin)
Daniel Avery, Drone Logic (Phantasy Sound)
Ulcerate, Vermis (Relapse)
Paysage d'Hiver, Das Tor (Kunsthall Produktionen)

2012 ALBUMS
Converge, All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph)
Black Breath, Sentenced to Life (Southern Lord)
Christian Mistress, Possession (Relapse Records)
Krallice, Years Past Matter (self-released)
Daniel Bachman, Seven Pines (Tompkins Square Records)
Flying Lotus, Until the Quiet Comes (Warp)
Pallbearer, Sorrow and Extinction (Profound Lore)
Steve Lehman Trio, Dialect Fluorescent (Pi Recordings)
Ricardo Donoso, Assimilating the Shadow (Digitalis Recordings)
John Cage, James Tenney, Sonatas and Interludes for Prepared Piano (hat[now]ART)

2011 ALBUMS
Tombs, Path of Totality (Relapse Records)
Krallice, Diotima (Profound Lore)
Psychic Paramount, II (No Quarter Records)
Ebo Taylor, Love and Death (Strut Records)
Matana Roberts, Coin Coin Chapter One: Gens de Couleur Libres (Constellation Records)
Handsome Furs, Sound Kapital (Sub Pop)
Marisa Anderson, The Golden Hour (Mississippi Records)
Eleh, Floating Frequencies/Intuitive Synthesis (Important Records)
Joe McPhee's Survival Unit III, Synchronicity (Harmonic Convergence)
Tilbury & Duch & Davies, Cornelius Cardew Works 1960–1970 (+3DB)

2010 ALBUMS
Spoon, Transference (Merge Records)
Electric Wizard, Black Masses (Rise Above)
Pan Sonic, Gravitoni (Blast First)
Bardo Pond, Bardo Pond (Fire Records)
Joanna Newsom, Have One on Me (Drag City)
Swans, My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky (Young God Records)
Flying Lotus, Cosmogramma (Warp)
Mary Halvorson Quintet, Saturn Sings (Firehouse 12 Records)
Berliner Philharmoniker, Sir Simon Rattle, Rundfunkchor Berlin, Simon Halsey, Kate Royal & Magdalena Kozená, Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (EMI Classics)
Eleh, Location Momentum (Touch Music)

26 Feb '24 05:04:16 AM

'Being in Crimson is a little bit like having a low-grade infection: you're not really sick, but you don't feel well, either.'

3 Feb '24 01:17:39 AM

'Ideas are by no means essences. In so far as they are the objecs of Ideas, problems belong on the side of events, affections, or accidents rather than on that of theorematic essences. Ideas are developed in the auxiliaries and the adjunct fields by which their synthetic power is measured. Consequently, the domain of Ideas is that of the inessential. They proclaim their affinity with the inessential in a manner as deliberate and as fiercely obstinate as that in which rationalism proclaimed its possession and comprehension of essences. Rationalism wanted to tie the fate of Ideas to abstract and dead essences; and to the extent that the problematic form of Ideas was recognized, it even wanted that form tied to the question of essences—in other words, to the 'What is X?'. How many misunderstandings are contained in this will! It is true that Plato employs this question in order to refute those who content themselves with offering empirical responses, and to oppose essence and appearance. His aim, however, is to silence the empirical responses in order to open up the indeterminate horizon of a transcendental problem which is the object of an Idea. Once it is a question of determining the problem or the Idea as such, once it is a question of setting the dialectic in motion, the question 'What is X?' gives way to other questions, otherwise powerful and efficacious, otherwise imperative: 'How much, how and in what cases?' The question 'What is X?' animates only the so-called aporetic dialogues—in other words, those in which the very form of the question gives rise to contradiction and leads to nihilism, no doubt because they have only propaedeutic aims—the aim of opening up the region of the problem in general, leaving to other procedures the task of determining it as a problem or as an Idea. When Socratic irony was taken seriously and the dialectic as a whole was confused with its propaedeutic, extremely troublesome consequences followed: for the dialectic ceased ot be the science of problems and ultimately became confused with the simple movement of the negative, and of contradiction. Philosophers began to talk like young men from the farmyard. From this point of view, Hegel is the culmination of a long tradition which took the question 'What is X?' seriously and used it to determine Ideas as essences, but in doing so substituted the negative for the nature of the problematic. This was the outcome of a distortion of the dialectic. Moreover, how many theological prejudices were involved in that tradition, since the answer to 'What is X?' is always God as the locus of the combinatory of abstract predicates. It should be noticed how few philosophers have placed their trust in the question 'What is X?' in order to have Ideas. Certainly not Aristotle. … Once the dialectic brews up its matter instead of being applied in a vacuum for propaedeutic ends, the questions 'How much?', 'How?', 'In what cases?' and 'Who?' abound—questions the function and sense of which we shall see below. These questions are those of the accident, the event, the multiplicity—of difference—as opposed to that of the essence, or that of the One, or those of the contrary and the contradictory. Hippias triumphs everywhere, even already in Plato: Hippias who refused essences, but nevertheless did not content himself with examples.'

31 Jan '24 10:11:29 PM

'… intervals that can't be erased…'

29 Jan '24 10:46:25 PM

'… when he finally wraps his arms around his forbidden lover, he realizes that she, like him, like all of us, knows almost nothing.'

25 Jan '24 12:21:47 AM

'… high culture, which really ought to be called sanctified culture, and what’s sometimes called popular culture, but ought to be called everyday culture…'

16 Jan '24 05:24:52 AM

'… the subordination of the haptic to another kind and degree of proximity, a social mode of temporality—simultaneity…'

14 Jan '24 05:11:50 AM

Seven Wafer-Thin Slices of Life (French)

11 Jan '24 04:35:50 AM

’Par exemple, de Pierre, qui est mort, je puis dire : « il aimait la musique ».’