Shall Be Released: Braindrops by Tropical Fuck Storm + Playlist: Gareth Liddiard’s Favorite Albums on Vinyl

Paradise the brand new song by Tropical Fuck Storm was dropped sometime earlier this 24 hours. Also the word is out the new second TFS (Tropical Fuck Storm) album entitled Braindrops will be released August 23rd on Flightless Records in Australia, pre-order coming soon. Joyful Noise Recordings is the overseas label which they will be saying something about it very soon too. Paradise was the unknown song to me they been playing live on Euro/UK tour which I did blog a week or so ago. I wasn’t going to blog so soon about them again but I’ve been stuffing about with this post so I’ll just double whammy it now!

Tropical Fuck Storm’s BRAINDROPS tracklisting:
1. Paradise
2. The Planet of Straw Men
3. Who’s my Eugene
5. Maria 62
6. Braindrops
7. Aspirin
8. Desert Sands of Venus
9. Maria 63

Album artwork cover is gotta be by Joe Becker again!

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Gareth Liddiard singer-songwriter of TFS plus the one and only solo album also formerly of Aussie band The Drones too. Way back a lifetime ago in 2013 when I See Seaweed was the brand new album then of his former band. He named eight of his fave albums to listen to on vinyl for a magazine called Smith Journal. The two page article was entitled My Records with kind-of sub-title: “These are his favorite albums on vinyl.” Breaking copyright laws again on my little blog I’m recycling page 101 here and with embedding youtube links but please do buy all albums on vinyl and pretend Gaz is in you living room telling you this, the italics below is quotes by him from that mag:

The Empty Foxhole by Ornette Coleman (1966)

This is a real trip of an album. Ornette Coleman is an avant-garde pioneer and he went all the way out there. I’ve always been a big jazz guy, I listened to jazz before rock and roll and played Sax before guitar but gave up because it’s too fucking hard. I could kind of compete Hendrix but I can’t compete with Charlie Parker or John Coltrane. Coleman’s son plays drums this albums, he’s 10 years old and it’s so good it’s not funny. A kid playing drums really suits what Coleman does. He’s the master of weird.

Note: the mag names the album as The Anti Foxhole, when the hell was their jazz editor?

La Divina by Maria Callas

I’m a Maria Callas fiend, she and Ella Fitzgerald, they can really sing. Guys are good singers but the women are the best. This absolutely melts my brain. A lot of these opera singer are thoroughbreds; they’re great athletes but they’re a bit sexless and there’s not a lot of humanity in them. If you’re not upper class you might feel a bit snobbed off, which I guess is why a lot of people are turned off by opera, but I think it’s because they haven’t heard Maria Callas. She just does it better than anyone.

Note: cut and paste from Wikipedia “Her musical and dramatic talents led to her being hailed as La Divina.” The mag does have a photo of all the album covers page 100, this one has a black cover with photo of older looking Callas, I can make-out an orange price tag $9.95 but looking for the very same album is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Gaz did play Poveri Fiori on DoubleJ radio last year, linked here.

Lost Blues and Other Songs by Palace Music (1997)

I’ve had this forever and it’s so good it’s not funny. The most out there, fucked-up country music ever. Will Oldham is such a great singer and this is his really early stuff; he must be 19 or 20. I heard that he didn’t even mean to make this album. He was trying to be an actor and just dabbled in music but that’s how you sing. You should sing like you laugh or cry, or like a dog howls. That’s what singing is and he does that.

Piano Music Vol. 2 by Erik Satie / Aldo Ciccolini

I love 20th century piano music like Bartok, Debussy or Prokofiev and this one is just insanely good. Satie is known for Gnossiennes which is sort of the world’s greatest dinner music and I mean that in the best way but this is earlier than all or that. It’s solo piano with a weird left hand. The left bass chord hand digs around for the weirdest fucking combinations of stuff while the melody has to deal with it on top. It covers a lot of ground from major chords to diminished and augmented weirdness.

Note: once again, needle/haystack but here’s the album on Discogs website linked and did find one cut Sports Et Divertissements on YouTube, I think?

The First Four Years by Black Flag (1983)

This is killer, it’s a compilation of all of Black Flag’s stuff from 1978 to 1983, pre-Henry Rollins. It’s got Keith Morris who later went and played with Circle Jerks and is in a band called OFF! Morris is the first singer I heard who made me think I could sing. Up until then the bands I was in… we had sa singer but they were a bit shit shit. I didn’t think I could do it until I heard Black Flag. It’s amazing, just out of control. Full of life and the guitar playing is the best thing since Hendrix.

The Second Album by Suicide (1980)

All of my albums are pretty scratchy now and fucked-up but that’s part of the charm. We have a history together, I’m the one who damaged them. This one has a bonus second record of The First Rehearsal Tapes which was made before any Suicide’s official releases. It sounds like  it was recorded at most AM hour possible. I’m just surprised they had that in the vault for so long because The First Rehearsal Tapes are probably as good as the rest of their output.

For Piano (Children’s Corner Suite) by Claude Debussy

This one’s interesting because it’s just solo piano but it’s got a thing called Children’s Corner Suite. It really nails the weird wonder of being a child, the joy you feel and the disturbing stuff. When you’re young you see the world through pretty raw eyes. Something normal like a frozen pond in winter is full of mystery. I grew-up in London and Wales and the snow as magical as it was also had a dark side. You know that film Pan’s Labyrinth? Kind of like that, Phantasmagorical. It’s quite disturbing for a child and this music really nails it.

Sabotage by Black Sabbath (1975)

I didn’t get into Black Sabbath in high school. No one showed them to me which was a bit fucked. This came into our record collection from a drummer who did things for money to support a certain habit. When I think about vinyl and how it sounds when it sounds good, I think this album. You can play it at a million decibels and it still wouldn’t hurt your ears. Even though it’s really heavy, it’s quite nice and mellow. All those funny things people say about vinyl, this sums it all up.

GL on bicycle with TFS

The couple of songs released earlier this year by them:

This is the second type of list of fave albums by him I’ve blogged about, that other time was from Aussie rolling stone mag around the time of 2008-9 linked here which has a couple of the same acts on both lists but not same albums, you know?

Cheers 🙂