Today…
Person(s) of Interest: One Thing - a newsletter that does what I’m trying to do - present interesting topics or thoughts or ideas in a well-crafted concise way. The big difference between me and them? They’re very good at it. From their Substack page: “We send out short newsletters on taste, authenticity, and recommendation culture every Tuesday and Thursday”. The last five topics included jazz, sunscreen, Instagram, wool shirts and house hunting in Europe. Random yet well-crafted every time. Check out their archives and their work - It’s worth your time.
Random: Here’s an incredible essay on the current state of hard rock and heavy metal. “It ain’t good” is the general theme, but Eli Enis of Stereogum does an incredible job of providing an overview of How We Got Here (to be honest, he does go a little too far into the deep end at times, where even I, an astute and worldly observer of the Metal arts, get a bit lost). Music, especially the music I enjoy, is in a weird unfamiliar place: album sales gutted, music “fans” treating the art as background or wallpaper, venues demanding cuts of merch revenue, and a pop culture machine that seems to be flattening everything in its path. I will always continue to search for new artists, to appreciate the older ones, and to share good music wherever and whenever I can. Like here on Permanent Waves.
Band o’the day: Aristocrats - (click for the artist’s main online hub)
*New band alert!
After writing about Blackfield last week, I went down a Steven Wilson rabbit hole, and found the Aristocrats. How did I miss this?! The pedigree of this trio is something else: From Tcat on Progarchives: “Well, surely you've heard of "The Raven Who Refused to Sing", the amazing, excellent work by Steven Wilson, right? Both Govan and Minnemann were on that album and in Wilson's band. Govan also worked with Asia, GPS, Hans Zimmer and several other bands, Minnemann also works with The Mute Gods as their current drummer and part of the prog supergroup The Sea Within. Beller has also been around playing in Joe Satriani's band and also with Steve Vai, James LaBrie and Dweezil Zappa”. So yeah - pretty, pretty, pretty good:
If you’re new here, welcome! Here at Permanent Waves, I write a little blurb about every single band and solo artist in my Spotify Artist list. This newsletter will also serve as a journal, documenting each step of creating a more purposeful life with commitments to ideas and projects I have bored all of my friends with over the past half decade. The last few years have been a blur, and I’m starting this year by working on the discipline to make the things in my head real, or at least attempt to see if they can eventually walk on their own.
See you soon!