Tag Archives: Gosta Berlings Saga

Music of 2025 Update

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I’ve gotten terribly behind in my music updates: the last one was written back in March; meanwhile, the new music keeps on coming. In my defense I’ve been busy with the biography, and while I have indeed heard new stuff, I haven’t been able to spend a lot of time with it, let alone write about it. However, the last few weeks have found me in between authorial sessions, so I’ve had the chance to get caught up on the backlog. With the exception of two albums (Kauan’s Wayhome out November 7 and Seeming’s The World in December) everything has been released. Yes, the new Lunatic Soul is still a couple weeks away for you plebeians, but I’ve had it for a while. Of course the year isn’t over yet; there could be more out there. 

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The Music of 2025 So Far

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What have I been listening to this year? A few things have come out that I might go so far as to recommend. I have to say, what I’ve heard up to this point is better than a lot of what I heard last year; 2024 was one of the more mediocre years for music I can recall. I  have a lot of hope for 2025. 

The way things are going so far, this year looks to be one of those instrumental years. Not everything obviously, but there seems to be a fair amount of post-metal/post-rock, prog/jazz fusion, and atmospheric ambience/electronica in the pipeline. Speaking of upcoming albums, of course the BIG anticipatory release for 2025 is the new Lunatic Soul, which, last I heard, is supposed to be long enough to make into an old-school-style double album, 90 minutes worth of music (as opposed to a regular-length album stretched over two discs) and will hit in the fall. I expect we’ll learn more about that at some point (trust me…I’m a LOT more excited than I sound here!).

For some of ya, the BIG album is already out, the new Steven Wilson solo. Yeah, I’ll say some words about that.

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Albums of 2018: Numbers 6 – 15

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As noted in the Introduction (which I hope you read first, link here),  I have not actually ranked these albums, they are listed in alphabetical order.   They do not differ from each other enough for a ranking to even make sense.  They are albums that I play reasonably often, and/or have qualities that make them interesting, enough that others might find them worth pursuing (in fact some already have — some of these albums rank pretty high in other people’s lists).  And fully seven of the ten here are instrumental.

Dead Letter Circus: Dead Letter Circus

This Aussie post-punk/indie bunch burst onto the scene in 2010 with a powerful first album, which contained some thoughtful, heavy tracks and a lot of promise.  Alas, they never really seemed to be able to live up to that promise.  Their second album, The Catalyst Fire, quite frankly was a mess, while the third, Aethesis, was about halfway listenable.

This, their fourth,  finds them converging towards shorter pieces that are focused on their strengths: intense melodic rock, nicely-constructed, very consistent, even if the tracks begin to sound a bit the same towards the end.  If they continue in this direction they may finally come up with the album they are capable of making.

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