I think it’s going to be a short one this week. I’ve been really, incredibly tired. January sucks, not the least because February is even worse -- there is no light at the end of this tunnel. This January has been particularly weird and bad here in Nova Scotia. Lots of grey, rainy days with unseasonably warm temperatures.
To get on with some lighter conversation, I think I’ve finally found a sport to tide me over until MLB comes back. It’s women’s hockey. The PWHL is real good, and watching it right now still sort of feels like getting in on the ground floor of something new and exciting. You can amplify that feeling by following one of this year’s two expansion teams.
The thing about the NHL is that there is so much of it, and there isn’t really one convenient place to watch it all. Sportsnet has pretty much every Blue Jays game, but their hockey offerings are seemingly random. Many of them require upgrading to a higher subscription tier, and frankly I’m not even sure why I’ve stayed subscribed at the base tier during the Baseball offseason to begin with. Some NHL teams have regional blackouts, too. I’m probably going to watch the Canadiens game tonight, but it’s hard to really consistently follow the Canadiens. I can get pretty much all the Vancouver Goldeneyes I want though, just between Sportsnet and CBC.
I’ve been watching Basketball a little bit, but the NBA has the same problem as the NHL in terms of consistent game watchability. The PWHL has 8 teams and just doesn’t play that many games, so it’s easy to follow it while still devoting most of my sports energy to closely watching the transactions playing out in the MLB offseason.
I don’t have anything super deep to say about the PWHL. I like Vancouver’s colour scheme. I think it’s weird that Sophie Jacques’ name is pronounced “Jakes.” I’m impressed that in “Montreal Victoire” they found a name as dumb and bad as “Montreal Canadiens.” Maybe I’ll report back here if I ever develop anything more intelligent to say about hockey. But for now I’ll just give a blanket recommendation for the PWHL. The games are fun, the league is easy to follow, and the CBC streams games for free.
Bo Bichette is a Met. Fuck that. Remember that column last week where I seemed to come to peace with the idea that Toronto doesn’t really need Bo? That was a baldfaced lie, sorry. I am absolutely crestfallen. That his signing came just hours after the Jays lost out on Kyle Tucker to the Dodgers just made it all the more frustrating.
But I do still believe Toronto will be a strong team, even without further acquisitions. It’s the roster that murdered the Yankees last October, plus some cool new pitchers and Kazuma Okamoto. I love Ernie Clement, who doesn’t? I look forward to seeing much more of him this year.
However, that’s all cope. They took our boy. Vladdy and Bo aren’t gonna win that championship together.
Oh well. Life is change, Baseball is chaos.
All of my music listening this week has been focused on reviewing some albums from last year, in anticipation of a year in review edition of this segment. That project is not ready yet.
I did listen to a new album yesterday that was pretty interesting, though. It’s called Blue Fifty-Six, it’s the fifty-sixth installment in the Blue Tapes curation series, and it was made by Yapping Portal, a new alias of experimental musician Fire-Toolz. I only have a passing familiarity with Fire-Toolz, but this album came recommended by John Darnielle on Bluesky, so of course I checked it out. He noted that the liner notes suggest listening with your eyes closed. I wasn’t able to do that the whole time, but it was pretty cool when I did.
That is because Blue Fifty-Six is an experimental noise album all about soundscapes that conjure a surrealist sci-fi movie in your head. It’s like the Earthbound Soundtrack, if Earthbound took place entirely within the Magitek factory from Final Fantasy VI (if you’re going to make one reference only a few people will get, it’s good to pair it with a second reference the same few people will get). That’s not to say it sounds like the Magitek factory song, but that it literally sounds like you’re inside of a factory where sentient magical beings are being killed to create powerful weaponry.
I’m hesitant to recommend this album per se, because it certainly will not float most people’s boats. But it is extremely cool. These songs are made up of harsh noises that defy any real musical convention. It really pushes at the boundary of what one could even call music. There are discernable patterns holding each track together, though, so I think it counts.
A project like this sort of lives and dies by its sound design, and Blue Fifty-Six delivers in this department. I love all the crazy sounds on this thing. It’s all laser beams and heavy machinery. One imagines Yapping Portal holding a synthesizer at gunpoint to force it to sound like this.
From my description thusfar, the album probably sounds like a Polluck, like the audio equivalent of a bunch of random splotches and lines. It really isn’t, though. Each track has coherent patterns and structure, and as a result the insane noises form a tremendous atmosphere. When you do the aforementioned close your eyes experiment, Blue-Fifty Six conjures visions of an alien planet inhospitable to human life, beautiful in the same bright coloured way as a poisonous frog or insect. I was genuinely impressed at how immersed I felt when I gave this thing my full attention.
I should say, it isn’t exactly a fun listen. It amounts to an hour of feeling uncomfortable. But if that’s the kind of thing you like (it’s certainly the kind of thing I like) give it a shot. It’s a pretty stellar piece of work.
By the way, I’m thinking that reviewing new albums is something I’m going to start doing in this segment. I guess this is the first one of those. I’d like to come up with some kind of really arcane, stupid scoring system. If I do I’ll append a score to this review retroactively.
Rating: ☆