Category: Playlists

Weekly playlists culled from my physical collection

Playlists

(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 78: The Thankful Aftermath

I’m exhausted, tuckered out from lack of sleep, work stress, having my son home, and getting through the Thanksgiving family madness. I’m also back to writing regularly, and ready to go once again for the daily new release catch-up that I started last December. So think of today’s playlist as a laid back, “get ‘er done” one, though I will always stand behind the music selected. I got a fresh pot of coffee and a (for now) empty/asleep house, so let’s get to it.

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Playlists

(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 77: Dumb Fun

Sometimes you want to fall into the depths of a great song or album, stretching your senses around and in between the notes, feeling the rhythm shifts and tempo changes. Sometimes you want to dig into the marrow of lyrics, searching for analogues to your life and experiences. Sometimes, though, you just want some DUMB FUN. That’s this playlist: dumb, mindless fun for my soul. Note that my definition of DUMB FUN may differ from yours…and that’s perfectly okay. Let’s get it.

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(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 76: The End (Of year) Approaches

I can’t speak for everyone, but when it comes to this metal fan, the end of year season begins with Decibel Magazine’s annual “Beat ’em at their own game” posting (sans commentary) of their Top 40 of the Year. This year’s list was just released, and there are the usual biases and prejudices along with a handful of surprises. But guess what? That’s true of every list, and while I’ll admit I do look to see where my own tentative picks have landed (or been omitted entirely), I mainly use it to fill gaps in my listening and re-evaluate albums I may have glossed over. So this week’s playlist is a cursory listen and evaluation of those gaps and glosses, with a little reaction summary.

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(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 75: FLAC Attack!

I’m starting to get back into the groove. I’ve got stacks of CDs and vinyl records waiting to be spun and reviewed, we’re going to start formally crossing over with Nine Circles, featuring the metal reviews I write over there over here (hence the new menu option – will probably load them up on Sundays) and to top it all off I snagged a sweet DAP (Digital Audio Player) from FIIO, popped a 1TB microSD card in it and started loading my Bandcamp collection in FLAC format to it. Got about 4,000 tracks in it so far, and so I grabbed my headphones, hit the Randomizer, and this is what came out:

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(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 74: Calm After the “Dead” Storm

We did it. Well, I did it. I got through the 12th annual Hooptober marathon, reviewing 31 films with only one re-watch, and I ALSO finished the 900-page biography of the Grateful Dead, complete with deep dives into their studio discography (well, up to Blues for Allah, anyway) with detours to some of their best live documents. Now it’s November and I have stacks of CDs and vinyl arranged according to 2025 releases and older box sets and reissues I want to try and get through before the end of the year. So despite the massive stacks of album in the queue, this does feel like a calm. So let’s get into this week’s playlist, half of which are new releases and the other half is more of the stuff recently arrived in Consuming HQ.

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(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 73: Revisiting Wallet Chains

Back in the early 2000s I met this guy Sean. Like my friend Erik, my high school friends Mike and Steve, or Henry Rollins, he was another curator. Each had or have their pocket, and with Sean it was the indie rock and pop that suddenly blasted off at the beginning of the millennium, stretching onward. He would send me huge .zip files of albums to check out, and it was through him that I was drawn into bands like Tegan and Sara, Deerhunter, Stars, and more. I would take everything and load it into a playlist I playfully titled Wallet Chains, after the accessory that was maddeningly popular at the time, and that Sean himself wore around the office with pride.

For some reason this week I looked back and fell back…hard. It triggered the realization that it had been years – in some cases over a decade since I engaged in a lot of music I love simply because I was obsessed with something else (prog, the Dead, you name it). So this is a quick look at what I turned and tuned my ears to over the past week in that vein.

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