23 minutes, 4 seconds

Assemblage 23
Ground

Assemblage 23 will be playing a live date in Seattle next week, and I might go. But as I get older, my willingness to schlep out late on a weekday night to see bands has greatly diminished. I'd do it for a band I've never seen live and really want to (Current 93, In the Nursery), and I might even do it for a band I've seen several times but am always blown away by (Death in June, Laibach), but there's a vast middle ground of bands that I need to really motivate myself to go out and see. Assemblage 23 might be one of those bands.

And then there's this new phenomenon that this woman who cut my hair last week was telling me about: people who go to shows for the sole purpose of starting fights. Rolling Stone did a piece recently on these ruffians, who apparently call themselves FSU (Fuck Shit Up). Now, I doubt they'd bother with Assemblage 23 fans, but who knows? And wimpy 98-pound weakling blogger that I am, I'd just as soon stay home rather than risk having to explain that I got my head bashed in not at a hardcore punk show...but at a synthpop show where a mod, black-clad dude sang sensitive lyrics to a techno beat.

Also today:

23:02 Plastic Noise Experience, Smalltown Boy
22:59 Project Pitchfork, Trialog
22:55 Severe Illusion, Panopticon
22:50 Project Pitchfork, One Million Faces
22:44 Project Pitchfork, View from a Throne
New arrival! 65:33 Helmond, Licentia Poetica
New arrival! 51:30 Dark Water Memories, The Rejuvenation Ballet

55 minutes, 30 seconds

Assemblage 23
Defiance

I listen to music as much and as often as I can. While I get dressed, while I brush my teeth, while I eat, while I drive, while I work. Unless, of course, Mrs. Total Time is around, and then, as a courtesy to her, I turn it off. (She's not too keen on the loud electro-industrial stuff, and the neofolk music creeps her out. Quite rightly.) Given that I work from home for the most part, I get to listen to a lot of music on any given day. It's on almost constantly.

That gets me to thinking about whether this music, which once had the power to surprise and even frighten me, has lost its potency. In other words, is it now just so much aural wallpaper?

Of course, I'm not necessarily picking on Assemblage 23, or any other more traditional song-based bands. Tom Shear makes what might be called pop music, after all, and that can demand more-active listening. But it's the soundscape-ish stuff I'm wondering about, the more abstract music--ambient or noisy--that makes me think I'm becoming inured to what it has to offer.

I still appreciate certain recordings above others, so perhaps it's the sheer quantity of CDs I own that creates a vast middle ground of music that fails to make an impression. But part of me worries that because it's on all the time, and because I'm doing other things while listening to it (such as, um, blogging), I'm not fully engaged with it. I'm not truly "listening."

Maybe. Or maybe I've heard so much mediocre crap, it takes much more to get me to perk up my ears. That's the snob defense.

Also today:

55:29 Seven Pines, Nympholept (CD 2 of 2)
55:28 Andreas Resch, Requiem
55:28 Ulf Söderberg, Nattljus
55:26 Dead Can Dance, Into the Labyrinth
55:25 Digital Poodle, Division!
55:24 Accessory, Titan
55:24 Controlled Fusion, Unnatural Causes
55:23 In the Nursery, Era
55:23 Project Pitchfork, Eon:Eon

New arrival! 57 minutes, 29 seconds

Assemblage 23
Meta

Always interesting to hear what Tom Shear has to say. I haven't spent enough time with this new album yet, but first impressions are good. I might have mentioned this in a previous post a while back, but the thing about Shear is that he packs a lot of emotion into his lyrics and vocal stylings without ever verging into the realm of the maudlin or the cheesy.

But it is sort of funny (funny strange, not funny ha-ha) to think that goth kids nod their heads and dance to a song like "Disappoint." That must be weird for Shear, to see kids move their feet to a song about his father's suicide.

Also today:

57:04 Estampie, Materia Mystica
57:04 Prospero, Spreading the Infection (CD 1 of 2)
57:03 Kreuzweg Ost, Edelrost
57:03 Ministry, Twitch
57:02 Lisa Gerrard & Jeff Rona, A Thousand Roads
57:00 FabrikC, Gleichstrom
57:00 :Wumpscut:, Music for a Slaughtering Tribe
56:59 Lamia, La Máquina de Dios