Awww yeah! 2023, muthafuckas! Emo-muthafuckin’-son-of-a-cuntin’-clew (long delayed though it is) to a new year, and a new edition of Monday Morning Aural muthafuckin’ Sex! Somethin’ nice and simple to start us off, it’s the New to Me in ’23 Edition! I’ll just let y’all decipher what that phenomenally cryptic title portends for our delicate little ear holes this week. First of all, I need to mention that some of these are not teeeechnically new to me. They are all new to the podcast, but there are a couple tracks here that I discovered last year and just neglected to include them in any edition until now. What the fuck can I say? I dropped the goddamn ball. Specifically, the Kim Dracula track. I randomly stumbled across the video for that and just… wow. Very captivating stuff, in my opinion.

More specifically, “The Most Unwanted Song.” Holiest of holy fucks, that track is goddamn rip-roaringly hilarious. Do yourselves a favor and look it up on Wikipedia to get the full backstory, but to summarize, it features cowboy music, bagpipes, accordions, operatic rapping, tubas and a children’s choir urging listeners to shop at Walmart. All together in one 22-minute-long aural extravaganza. To be clear, it definitely takes considerable fortitude to sit through the whole fuckin’ thing, but good lord, I was in tears. Nobody who was unfortunate enough to be in my presence yojned it as I did, but it’s okay. Aural masochism is an acquired taste that I have no fuckin’ rhyme, reason, or idea how or why to acquire except my seemingly boundless curiosity.

Most specifically, and speaking of aural masochism, we have the “Nylist 666” track. I suppose it’s not so bad if you’re the sort of person who can listen to full death metal albums from start to finish; it is an hour long, which is about the length of a full LP. I actually sat through the whole thing, and Jesus fuckin’ Christ, it definitely requires high endurance. I’m burying the lead here, so I should also mention now that this is a world record setting track, featuring a whopping 666 vocalists. Seriously, scroll down to the last track, and check out the massive list of featured vocalists. You’re damn right I didn’t type all that shit out manually. Fuckin’ give myself arthritis prematurely just typing out motherfuckers’ names and shit. I actually did the math, and give or take, each vocalist has about 12 seconds each. What I’d love to know is how the process was conducted, what rules there were (if any), shit like that. There’s probably a mini-doc on YouTube or some shit that I have yet to discover. Anyway, the latter two of those will be mercifully buried all the way at the end of this edition, so only the bravest, most curious aural sex warriors can challenge themselves if they so desire.

Let’s seee, what else can I say about these tracks, hmm? Well, we’ve got a jazzy instrumental Frank Zappa track. Fun little departure there. My dad was a huge Zappa fan, and he made me one as well. I’ve either loved or appreciated pretty much everything I’ve ever heard from him thus far, and I have little doubt that’ll be the case going forward. Still have to read his No Commercial Potential book, though. My dad gave it to me ages ago, but I feel like I’ll appreciate it more now than I would have then. Moving on, there’s a group called Ankor here that just blew my mind. I saw their video for the track, “Prisoner,” and man, that Paramore-style chorus just came right out of left field and uppercutted me. Hope you all appreciate it as I did and do.

Oh, and in searching for the Nylist 666 track, this other group came up below it called 666FUCKTHECOPS… Perverts, what can I say? That name is fuckin’ hilarious. I have no idea where the top is for them, but they’re over it like a fuckin’ satellite. Lyrically, they’re amusingly preposterous; musically, they’re actually pretty cool. They have this weird sort of ICP bootleg thing going on too, so I don’t know if they’re actual juggalos tryin’ to get some attention their way or if they’re just parodying them as they seem to parody whatever-the-fuck else they come across. Anyway, now you too can be aware that they exist, so you’re welcome. Moving on, we have another spectacular Zardonic remix here. Dude’s fuckin’ Midas, for real. I keep waiting for something I hear to leave me cold, and just, nah. I actually have no idea whether or not Zardonic’s a dude since all I’ve ever seen is the mask, but talent is fuckin’ genderless.

I am pretty certain that t+pazolite is a dude, and good fuckin’ Ganesha, this Diabolic Swing track is a max level fuckin’ banger. What I said about Zardonic being Midas, the same applies to t+pazolite. Feels unfair to be hoarding so much fuckin’ talent, but I guess we should all just be thankful that we have the music at all. Movin’ on, Meow Drop by Dubscribe is both hilarious and adorable. Don’t sleep on that one. The Allan Näslund rendition of Erik Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 had me shook on first listen. The melody is played by a sax, and it’s quite nice, except it’s a tad more prominent in the mix than I would have preferred or permitted. There’s also a soothing rain sound effect throughout, which definitely fits the mood of the piece. Great stuff, though. The Coakira track is brutal and creepy as fuck, in my opinion. Perhaps you’ll share my sentiment. The Razakel track with Damien Quinn and King Gordy called, “The New Horror Show…” Fuckin’ hell, man. Their lyrics are downright revolting, but uhhh, hello? What is horrorcore if it doesn’t horrify? To be sure though, they take the lyrics to far darker realms than ICP has ever gone. Honestly, I could see horrorcore purists not even caring much for ICP except perhaps to appreciate their obviously massive contribution to the genre. Not even sure there is such a ridiculous person as a horrorcore purist, but I digress.

Another Shirobon jam here! Always lovely to find a new gem from him. Definitely expect an All-Star Series edition for him at some point this year. I posted about it back in 2019, but when I found him, I sat and listened through his entire catalog in one sitting. That shit does not happen regularly, lemme tell ya. Some sexy little jams by Kayzo here, as well. I feel like I haven’t played much by him lately, but I found Moonlight (or, rather, MOONLIGHT) in my Discover Weekly playlist. Really loving what I’ve heard from Siiickbrain too, but yeah. Apparently, Kayzo put out a whole new album last year that flew entirely under my radar, and that made me reflect on a number of things. Most importantly, how often that exact thing occurs unbeknownst to the vast majority of us all. Even our favorite artists likely have all sorts of things we’re unaware of, and if only we had the curiosity, we could discover endless amounts of fucktacularity.

I know I’m positioned somewhat uniquely to be able and willing to explore said curiosity, what with my driving for living, but I’m almost 100% positive that people have time they could easily devote to exploring new music if only they cared enough to do so. To be sure, I know that crippling mental and physical illness keeps some of us from exploring, and that is truly heartbreaking to me. The rest? Shit, I dunno. Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see what’s so difficult about hitting shuffle play on a playlist while you’re going about your day. Maybe even saving the stuff you like on a different playlist the way I do. Maybe even sharing it with someone you care about, or the world via social media. Doesn’t really matter whether the effort is successful (however you might define it), just that you made the effort. That spark, that which compels you to make said effort, that is life itself right there.

At the risk of sounding even preachier, life can be so much more bearable if only you take the time and effort to explore new stuff. Whether you love or hate what you find is beside the point. The point is to find stuff that moves you, that causes some reaction in you, because fuckin’ hell, so much of life can be agonizingly fuckin’ monotonous. Just seemingly ceaseless, perfunctory tedium occasionally punctuated by moments of extraordinary emotion. That’s most of our universe, honestly. I can scarcely imagine duller ways to drift through life than being incurious, listening to the same couple hundred or so tracks that you’ve been stuck on most of your life. We should all be exploring to whatever extents we experience emotions and intellect, and then pushing those extents to go beyond them and learn new things.

Of course, we don’t live in the reality that should be, but we’ll never even get close if we don’t bother to try. That seems like a good place to wrap up this fuckin’ Tolstoy. Real quick, I wanna shout out my man Phil McDermott, aka Buried Antenna. He’s a phenomenal artist whose mind-bogglingly detailed work I randomly stumbled across a few years ago. Do yourselves a huge solid and check him out at www.buriedantenna.com. Anyway, I got a message from him a few days ago about a new YouTube series he’s starting, and we chatted a bit, and he mentioned that he has actually checked out this podcast a time or two. Had to stuff my blown-ass brain back in whatever was left of my skull after that one, and no idea if he’ll catch this shout out, but y’all should seriously go see his work. Maybe even support him by buyin’ something. Shit’s been exceptionally shitty for artists these days what with the rise of AI art and all, so I have no doubt he’d appreciate it.

So with that, I wish you all a happy fuckin’ New Year. I’ll