My monthly eMusic downloads are always a roll of the dice. I use it to take risks. This month's tracks range from old favorites (Bach) to completely unfamiliar (Wye Oak).
Scorn - Gyral. Long ago, probably in my Trance phase, I heard something off this album and wrote down the name. It's a thudding, repetitive after-midnight thing with a lot of off-kilter highlights. Not club music, but more of a creepy soundtrack.
Steve Reich - Drumming. Recommended to me many times, I finally got it. Overlapping rapid polyrhythms dance circles around each other here. It reminds me of the nominal third Ambient album produced by Brian Eno, the Laraaji "Day of Radiance" piece. Though the influence was surely the other way around.
Bach Preludes and Fugues. In my late teens I inherited a boxed set of three vinyl LPs of Bach's preludes and fugues. I love the atmosphere they give. It's music for Halloween, a soundtrack to a bent man pounding away in the night, his white hair flying. Actually, I'm not as thrilled with this download as I was with the original.
Wye Oak - If Children. Every month I check out my "neighbor recommendations", where eMusic compares your downloads to others' and finds artists you might like. The drawback is that it only uses tracks you've purchased; there's no way to tell it what you already own. Maybe that serves to keep it in tune with your current tastes. Anyway, this was one of those. There's a lot of variety here, from quiet acoustic to noisy electric, from accessible to strange. It is pointedly not electronic. Some of the vocals remind me of Cat Power. I'm enjoying it.
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