The only year-end list that matters is here, and so’s my “long form” playlist (Spotify link) to go along with it.

There are a few albums from the original list that are not on Spotify:

• Rhyton - Pharaonic Crosstalk
• Rose City Band - Earth Trip
• Sarah Louise - Earth Bow
• Alvin Curran - Fiori Chiari, Fiori Oscuri
• Little Feat - Electrif Lycanthrope
• Drew Gardner - S/T
• Enno Velthuys - A Glimpse Of Light
• Castlemusic - Live At The Music Gallery
• His Name Is Alive: A Silver Thread (Home Recordings 1979-1990)
• al riggs - I Got a Big Electric Fan To Keep Me Cool While I Sleep
• Powers Rolin Duo - Strange Fortune
• Ash Ra Tempel - Schwingungen

Every year Aquarium Drunkard’s year-end list is the biggest source of music for me. The list is always a careful mix of heavy hitting indie, obscure textures, and exciting deep cuts and reissues. This year’s list appears to be no exception. As usual, I assembled a “long form” Spotify playlist, containing every track from every album in the list, to go along with the “official” abbreviated playlist:

Also, as usual, there’s a small set of albums that aren’t included because they are not available on Spotify:

• Ned Lagin – Seastones
• Neil Young – Archives Vol. 2
• Richard & Linda Thompson – Hard Luck Stories
• Brother Theotis Taylor – Brother Theotis Taylor
• Microphones in 2020
• Sunn Trio – Electric Esoterica
• Joe McPhee – Black Is The Color: Live in Poughkeepsie and New Windsor, 1969-70
• Matthew ‘Doc’ Dunn – Rain, Rain, Rain
• Robbie Basho – Songs of the Great Mystery
• Rich Ruth – Where There’s Life Vol. 1-6
• Sarah Louise – Earth and Its Contents
• Tuluum Shimmering – Sister Ray Meets China Cat Sunflower Uptown
• The Harry Smith B-Sides
• Daniel Hecht – Guitar
• Boris – NO

Storing your Hugo site in a Github repository makes it easy to automate re-generating and uploading your site every time you create a new commit. I'll assume you have a Hugo site in a Github repository already & walk through the steps to configure Github Actions to generate the site & upload it using rsync over SSH, with key-based authentication:

1. Create a Workflow

   In the root directory of your Hugo site, create a .github directory. Within that directory create a workflows directory. Finally, within the workflows directory create an empty file named main.yaml.

   At the top of the file, add a name, I used the name of the site:

     name: goterkyourself.com

   The next section – on: – describes when to invoke the Action. I've set mine to build/deploy on every push to the Git repository (with the push: section) and to offer manual deploys (workflow_dispatch:):

     on:
       workflow_dispatch:
       push:
         branches:
           - main

   The meat of the file is the jobs: configuration, which installs the necessary pre-requisites to check out the repository, generate the Hugo site, and use rsync to deploy it:

     jobs:
       deploy:
         runs-on: ubuntu-18.04
         steps:
           - uses: actions/checkout@v2
             with:
               submodules: false  # Fetch Hugo themes (use true OR recursive to fetch)
               fetch-depth: 0    # Fetch all history for .GitInfo and .Lastmod
   
           - name: Setup Hugo
             uses: peaceiris/actions-hugo@v2
             with:
               hugo-version: '0.74.2'
               # extended: true
   
           - name: Build
             run: hugo --minify
   
           - name: Deploy
             id: deploy
             uses: Pendect/action-rsyncer@v1.1.0
             env:
               DEPLOY_KEY: ${{secrets.DEPLOY_KEY}}
             with:
               flags: '-vzcrlp --delete --chmod=Dgo+rx,Fgo+r'
               options: ''
               ssh_options: ''
               src: 'public/'
               dest: 'SSH_USERNAME@SSH_HOST:HOST_PATH'
   
           - name: Display status from deploy
             run: echo "${{ steps.deploy.outputs.status }}"

   Take particular note of the dest: line - this needs to contain the correct parameters the deployment target. The HOST_PATH must include a trailing /, as well. An example dest value is:

               dest: 'bob@ssh.hostingco.com:/home/bob/htdocs/'

2. Generate Keys

   With the Workflow in place the Action to build the site will work, but when it attempts to rsync it will fail, because the Action doesn't have SSH access. To fix this, generate an SSH key just for the Action. Hit <ENTER> when prompted for a passphrase:

     $ ssh-keygen -f github-action
     Generating public/private rsa key pair.
     Enter passphrase (empty for no passphrase):
     Enter same passphrase again:
     Your identification has been saved in github-action.
     Your public key has been saved in github-action.pub.
     The key fingerprint is:
     SHA256:umfz5GHZ0ke3xcGtXkJZ8fKztu6hSLe+6KEHHOuQMWY
     The key's randomart image is:
     +---[RSA 2048]----+
     |               .o|
     |              .oo|
     |              +oo|
     |       E .   . =.|
     |      o S o   +.*|
     |       + + + o +=|
     |      . o Boo.o= |
     |       .+=o+=.+ o|
     |      .o +=+.=++ |
     +----[SHA256]-----+
   

   This generates a private key in the github-actions file, and a public key in github-actions.pub. Copy the contents of github-actions.pub and add it to the .authorized_keys file on the server to which the site will be deployed.

3. Give Github the Private Key The contents of github-actions (the private key) need to be added to Github. Go to the 'Settings' page for the site's Github repository and select 'Secrets':

   

   Select 'New Secret'. Enter the 'Name' DEPLOY_KEY and paste the contents of the github-actions private key vile in the 'Value' box:

   

   After clicking 'Add secret' the key will appear in the list of secrets:

   

4. Test the Deploy Navigate to the 'Actions' tab of the Github repository and select the workflow with the name configured in main.yaml. The 'Run workflow' button will present a menu to select the branch to use.

   

   If everything goes well the deploy will churn for a little bit and then display a check-box to indicate success.

Another year, another fantastic list from Aquarium Drunkard of notable music newly or re-released this year. As usual, here’s an overwhelming playlist of everything that’s available on Spotify.

Notes:

The “sampler” version of Bob Dylan – More Blood, More Tracks -The Bootleg Series Vol. 14 is included; the full compilation is not (yet) available on Spotify.

The albums that comprise Bruce Springsteen – Album Collection Vol 2 are not included.

Environments – App is not included … because it’s a mobile app.

The following albums are not included because they are not available on Spotify:

• Alice Coltrane – Spiritual Eternal
• Haruomi Hosono – Cochin Moon, Hosono House, Paraiso, omni Sight Seeing, Philharmony
• Scientist and Prince Jammy – Scientist and Jammy Strike Back!
• Long Hots – Monday Night Raw
• Michael Hurley – Living Ljubljana
• Bitchin Bajas – Rebajas
• Pearls Before Swine – Balaklava
• Parades Against Parades – Driving Me Stoned
• Ken Boothe – Freedom Street
• Gloria Barnes – Uptown
• Carl Weingarten – Living in the Distant Present
• Wet Tuna – Livin’ The Die
• Matthew “Doc” Dunn – Lightbourn
• Give Me My Flowers (Nashboro Gospel Comp)
• Grant Green – Slick! Live at Oil Can Henry’s
• Wes Montgomery – In Paris: The Definitive ORTF Recordings
• Orchestre Abass – De Bassari Togo
• Maxine Funke – Silk

A small bright spot in this shit show of a year: some good new music. Here’s the only year end music list you need, Aquarium Drunkard’s Year in Review, all in one big Spotify playlist.

Here’s the only year-end music list you need, all in one big Spotify playlist.

I spent the first two or three months of this year listening to everything from Aquarium Drunkard’s 2013 Year In Review, and then the rest of the year listening to everything from that list that I really liked (Courtney Barnett, Steve Gunn, Mo Kolours, Hiss Golden Messenger, Darkside, Wooden Wand, Kurt Vile, Foxygen, Torres). Needless to say I’ve been anticipating this year’s list since the “end-of-year” lists started rolling out this month and it went up today. Everything that Spotify has available is in this playlist, which will surely be on repeat through March:

In January This American Life included a story about a man who became obsessed with a particular piece of on-hold music, which turned out to be a song called Opus No. 1:

For some reason this story — and the music — stuck in my mind strongly enough that I recognized the music months later when I was on hold and heard that music. Today I recognized it again as part of a song off of the new album from How To Dress Well – I wonder if Tom Krell listens to This American Life.

I love Wye Oak and I’m really digging their upcoming album, Shriek. You can preview it in its entirety at NPR Music.

The United States and its key intelligence allies are quietly working behind the scenes to kneecap a mounting movement in the United Nations to promote a universal human right to online privacy, according to diplomatic sources and an internal American government document obtained by The Cable.

More at Foreign Policy (via. Bruce Schneier)