carry my joy on the left, carry my pain on the right

after many months of no promising music releases come two very important and highly mesmerizing albums. the first is, of course, björk’s medúlla. when it comes to music, björk is always one to experiment. on this album she goes even further by using human voices more than instruments. beats are done by beatbox artists such as rahzel and dokaka. and even mike patton (that ‘faith no more’ guy) does some growly bassy stuff. the song “oceania” was apparently written for the olympics and sung at the opening ceremonies (curse me for not having seen it!). it’s beautiful how the choral background singing spirals and swoops around throughout the song, giving it a much more dynamic feel. the album is hard to get used to, since it doesn’t have that familiar feel. you really have to pay attention to it, so i won’t be surprised if a lot of people hate it. people like stuff that they don’t have to pay attention to… like children.
the second pivotal album of the last two days is omar a. rodriguez-lopez’s a manual dexterity: soundtrack volume 1. omar is from the mars volta. this solo album is mostly instrumental and features such guests as volta vocalist cedric bixler-zavala and chili peppers guitarist john frusciante. i love how this album has a lot of the same progressive psychodelicness of the mars volta, but also diverges into schizophrenic outbursts of delusional dreamlike states. i can really relate to that.