Songs for Swati, Part II
ever look at a flower and hate it? songs for a bad mood.
“Get off my back about the language; I’m trying to tell a story. Dig the theme. We can’t all go on the expressway. Sometimes some of us got to take the low road.” -A.W.
Songs for Sean, Volume 2
Actually, these songs are for James Australia-now-America too.
I can’t help but think of him when I hear Grace Chang.
Download: Grace Chang - I Want Your Love, Jiao Wo Ru He Bu Xiang Ta, Gesungheit
Buy the Album: I looked everywhere I could think of for Grace Chang releases, I even tried Gemm and Ebay and I came up with nothing. So, uh,sorry? You can hear her music if you watch The Hole. That’s all I got.
Songs for Margot
Where have I been? I’ve been in a tree and in a lake, I’ve been on a bicycle and in the kitchen (not in an R. Kelly sense), I’ve been happy and sad and climbing, climbing. This record made me really really happy when I was 21 and the last Seattle summer of my life was just about over. I sent a tape of my band at the time to them and they wrote back and said that they “thoroughly enjoyed it.” I also sent one to Danzig but he didn’t write back. These songs are tinny and goofy and catchy, I can’t remember if this is the one that has the line “The last ten shows I’ve seen have sucked / but that’s the crux, this town is stuck with me,” but if it isn’t, that song’s good too. I’m at work and looking out the window is tearing my Goddamned heart out.
demons or genii:
interpreters of the wills of the gods to men, and ministering to their wants; carrying the prayers and supplications of mortals to heaven and bringing down from thence in return, oracles, and all other blessings of life.
someone put a silk hand on my lamp
No riddles in the music of Bryn Jones/Muslimgauze. And good luck to the neophyte exploring the truly daunting discography of Muslimgauze. The Messenger, the official Muslimgauze website, lists, as of today, over 180 releases under the moniker (to be fair, this does include reissues).
After skirting around his work for a number of years, I decided to take the plunge and explore what I could find last year�purchasing perhaps seven or eight distinct works from different periods of the discography. What I found was a percussive genius with a seeming inability to self-edit his material, leading to dozens upon dozens of releases, all with good and bad tracks. As it stands, of the eight or so discs I checked out, two remain in my collection.
My own experiences aside, don’t be put off by Bryn Jones’s politics, his wallet-crushing discography, the Muslimgauze mystique, or the slavishness of his fan base (even after the artist’s death)�when Jones hit the anvil with Muslimgauze, he created music unlike any other.
This track comes from his early album on Staalplaat, Iran, and shows his sense of drama, his percussive talents, and his penchant for creating a desert-tribal miasma.
Resplendent Songs
Only and Daps:
June 27 olympia Le Voyeur 404 4th Ave East w Daps, Hornet Leg (dub narcotic sound sytem), & Ethan Rose(Adelaide)
June 28 portland laptop lounge 2100 SE Clinton St w/ Daps, Gasp, & Unrecognizable Now
more dates pending…
Download: Only - Op, Gripped, Gris, Zum Ende
Buy the Album: Only
Do me, girlyman.
Songs of Memory
I used to be that kind of girl.
Download: The Dambuilders - Idaho, Colin’s Heroes / Small Factory - Pretending It’s Sunny / New Radiant Storm King - Maui
Buy the Album: The Dambuilders - Encendedor / Small Factory - I Do Not Love You / New Radiant Storm King - Hurricane Necklace
Songs of Loneliness, Part Two
I’m still forming the connections necessary to synthesize the data.
Download: Hood - They Removed All Trace That Anything Had Ever Happened Here, Lines Low to the Frozen Ground
Buy the Album: Hood - Cold House
Songs for Jenny (I’m Not Even Closed to Finished)
I reject girls who refuse to cuss, and cannot appreciate the natural world.
Our palace full of sand.
OK, I admit it, I’m totally in love with Richie Rich, New York club socialite and one half of the fashion design team Heatherette.
It might be because he so closely resembles my dearest Macaulay, who I adore and dream about touching inappropriately.
Or it might be because he’s just sexy. Mmmm.
Maybe it’s because I solo-living-room-danced this morning, maybe it’s because I watched Party Monster again recently, or maybe it’s because I’m currently watching drag queens, but these white hot disco tracks are making me stoked on life and reminding me of lewd thoughts involving my favorite blonde jailbait. So these songs are dedicated to Macaulay and Richie Rich, the fake-out Macaulay.
Songs of Loneliness
Sometimes I forget which are inside stories and which are outside stories.
These songs are for me.
Download: Kate Bush - The Fog / Elizabeth Anka Vajagic - Where You Wonder (Live, 13 April 2005)
Buy the Album: Kate Bush - The Sensual World / I don’t remember where I found the Elizabeth Anka Vajagic track live, but here’s the album the original comes from.
Songs for Swati
Dear Swati,
Clean the blood out of your fingernails and go back to Germany.
Songs for Sean, Final Part
I’m tired, friend.
Download: Kristin Hersh - Run Letter, William’s Cut
Buy the Album: Run Letter was originally recorded by Throwing Muses and can be found on House Tornado, but not this version. This was recorded live at Maxwell’s in Hoboken, NJ. / Kristin Hersh - Sunny Border Blue
Songs for Patrick
Songs for Sean, Part Six
There are things we cannot say, and we’re not sure why.
Chalk it up to the individual quality of consciousness, and the secret spaces that we hide in.
Download: Q and Not U - Fever Sleeves, Y Plus White Girl, Kiss Distinctly American
Buy the Album: Q and Not U - No Kill No Beep Beep
Sometimes on our Brownian motion through the Web we hit some pinball target, and chimes sound and lights blink, and a flipper accelerates us to a blur, and after much bouncing about the next thing we know we’re at the checkout counter with a Shiny New Thing in our, uh, hand.
[This would have sounded better in French, where instead of “we” I could have used “on“, i.e. “one”, without sounding like a dork.]
So it was last night when I described the following trajectory:
� Click bookmark of Pitchfork to see what new & unknown indie music they have written [too] clever [by half] things about today;
� Home page is pre-empted by an announcement of their new streaming radio station;
� Paste that URL (<http://pitchforkmedia.com:8000>, but it seems to be down right now) into iTunes and start listening, since the toy project I’m working on is going to spend five minutes crunching numbers anyway;
� Masterful shimmery pop music comes from the tinny speakers, allegedly “Come On Feel The Illinoise” by Sufjan Stevens, drawing admiring attention from my knitting wife;
� Chimes & lights & bouncing about, thanks to Google;
� Stereogum, an MP3 blog, has a review of the album and a full track-listing, including many very long & wonderful song titles such as “11. To The Workers Of The Rockford River Valley Region, I Have An Idea Concerning Your Predicament, And It Involves Shoe String, A Lavender Garland, And Twelve Strong Women” and “14. A Conjunction Of Drones Simulating The Way In Which Sufjan Stevens Has An Existential Crisis In The Great Godfrey Maze”;
� ��Then!! TeachingTheIndieKidsToDanceAgain, another blog, has a post about the album, with an honest-to-god MP3 of the song I just heard, which I download, even though the battery poops out 4/5 of the way through and I have to go to the living room to plug in and resume;
� While playing the song at higher fidelity on the stereo I bounce about the Web some more and come to rest in a shopping cart at Asthmatic Kitty records clutching a spectral virtual copy of the CD (which will not become real until the 5th of next month);
� As a fitting coda, buying the CD involves bouncing to first a separate payment-processing site, then to PayPal, and then back.
So now I’m out $12 but I have one great song to listen to now (which is apparently about both the 1893 World’s Fair and Illinois poet Carl Sandburg) and 21 more to look forward to in the mailbox in a few weeks.
And you should listen to the song too. I’m not very good at describing pop music: I do better when I can focus my purple prose on pure texture. I will say that there are layers and layers of instruments here: piano, violins, bells; and Sufjan’s innocent-sounding voice and many backing singers; all forming a wall of sound with no electric guitars needed. It’s ‘lush’ and ’sunny’ and ‘orchestral’ without being a Beach Boys pastiche or in any other way ‘retro’. In fact, I’m hard-put to say what else it reminds me of. Fortunately for you, it doesn’t matter, you can just click below and hear for yourself.
In my life, the stark-white fetish always belongs to other people. There is no minimalist furniture in my home. None of my kitchen appliances have anthropomorphic qualities. I like things made from wood and stone, fabrics, plants and animal skins. Earthy perfumes.
Similarly, my minimalism must have natural qualities imbued. Not simply music imitating nature electronically (though this can be exciting and stimulating), but music and nature intertwining as a coexistant helix. This conjoining of atmosphere and artifice, to me, is the appeal of minimalist electronic and ambient music. For whatever reason, machines and software making music that does not belong to the physical world (as, say, a trumpet might) seem to fit into the natural world in a more natural fashion for me.
Thus, on to Taylor Deupree, who has been involved in the ambient and electronic scene as long or longer than I have been listening: as member of Prototype 909, Human Mesh Dance, S.E.T.I.; curator of the Instinct Ambient series; and now as the owner of the prestigious “microsound” label 12K (as well as sub-labels Line and Happy). His album on the Japanese label Spekk is a lovely, overarchingly repetitive, but endlessly shifting, tapestry of textures. It dresses up a room, you know.
This is music that most accurately reflects a suspension bridge crossing a river, an office building lancing into the great blue, an airplane crossing the Atlantic, the Rover photographing a Martian sunset, the smell of barbeque wafting over grass, the crunch of snow underneath my rubber boots. It’s the microworld of man increased in size�or is it man decreased to the level of sub-atomic particles?
Play it softly, like a breeze.
Songs for Sean, Part Five
Because there is dignity in skinned knees and open hands.
Download: Nick Cave & Dirty Three - Time Jesum Transeuntum Et Non Rivertentum / Dirty Three - Sea Above, Sky Below
Buy the Album: Various Artists - Songs in the Key of X / Dirty Three - Ocean Songs
Merja Kokkonen, I wish I could speak your vast, complex (aggluti)native tongue, I would write you emails and tell you how much I liked these songs, and ask you to tour and make a stop in Ohio, and therewith scare you out of ever doing just that. I suppose it’s good that I don’t know a damned word of Finnish.
Songs for Sean, Part Four
Download: Zhou Xuan - Peach Blossoms in Long Hua / Bury Fallen Flowers / Smile Forever
Buy the Album: Zhou Xuan - Songs of Zhou Xuan Golden Hits (Vol.1) Is this the right Album? Don’t know! Good Luck with that!
Songs for Sean, Part Three
Because the lines of our scars match up right below the surface, my velveteen rabbit twin.
Download: Andrea Parker - Lost Luggage / Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Baby Let Me / John Parish - Shrunken Man / Bjork - Undo
Buy the Album: Andrea Parker - Kiss My Arp / Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions - Bavarian Fruit Bread / John Parish - How Animals Move / Bjork - Vespertine
Songs for Jessica
I had nightmares last night, too.
Songs for Jessica
Because you have tred lightly all over my brain.
Songs for Sean, Part Two
You are on the beach, and I love you.
Download: Hangedup - Sink / A Silver Mt. Zion - 13 Angels Standing Guard ‘Round the Side of Your Bed / Navicon Torture Technologies - White Oleander
Buy the Album: Hangedup - Kicker in Tow / A Silver Mt. Zion - He Has Left Us Alone, but Shafts of Light Sometimes Grace the Corners of Our Rooms / Navicon Torture Technologies - I Fucking Hate You All and I Hope You All Fucking Die
Songs for Sean, Part One
p.s.
star children in psychic pollution.
Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary: Your Face Is Scratched
my friend is trying to kill some personal demons.
i figure antagonism can’t necessarily hurt the cause.
1. Zbigniew Preisner / Silesia Philharmonic Choir, Reprise-Organ
2. Roky Erickson, Please Don’t Kill My Baby
3. Marc Bolan, You Scare Me To Death
4. Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, There’s Something Wrong With You
5. Elvis Presley, (You’re The) Devil In Disguise
You must hate me by now.
Some trivia: Jacques Brel recorded the original version of this song. I was kind of hoping to post a different Brel rip off, but I couldn’t track it down.
UnTigreDePapier: margot!!!
UnTigreDePapier: i wish you could come over and fucking play janitors with me.
tardbaby666: seann!!
UnTigreDePapier: i got this cart, stacked with all of the cleaning supplies in my apartment, a cheap tape player.
tardbaby666: hahaha
UnTigreDePapier: i’m wearing, an old white t-shirt that reads: aged to perfection.
UnTigreDePapier: a ratty bandana, headphones, and i’m listening to obscure, danceable, mediocre black musicians from the 1970-80s i found in my neighbor’s garbage.
UnTigreDePapier: i am talking, slow dances with the broomstick.
tardbaby666: hahaha! amazing!
UnTigreDePapier: it feels amazing, i’ve been practicing my ugly faces and throwing cigarettes in the toilet with my urine just so i have something to cuss about.
tardbaby666: oh sean, you’re the shrimp in my linguine
UnTigreDePapier: you’re the herb to my peaches.
tardbaby666: a good, basic phrase to yell in a wt voice is always “c’mon… cuh-MON”
UnTigreDePapier: i’ll used that when my overweight lethargic friend comes over to get high.
UnTigreDePapier: dood, she looks like a fucking russian hotel maid, it will be amazing.
tardbaby666: beautiful
UnTigreDePapier: now just to figure out, how much coffee do i drink before i start imagining the more successful people in my building passed out in the trash cans i empty.
tardbaby666: 2 pots.
tardbaby666: anyhow, i must go.
UnTigreDePapier: <3
tardbaby666: i have neighbor children to fondle and not much time.
UnTigreDePapier: i’m reporting you.
tardbaby666: do it, no one’s going to believe a janitor.
tardbaby666 signed off at 3:43:57 PM.
Pavement’s final album was produced by heavyweight Nigel Godrich, and is this glossy, seemingly subdued bunch of songs, an un-weird and coherent record. To most Pavement fans it was shocking and disappointing.
To me there is this latent intensity to this song whose evilness is only furthered by its seemingly neutering production. The song started out some years before as this unabashed blues-rock song, and on Terror Twilight surfaces as stifled and tense, Stephen Malkmus’ cadence and opaque lyrics pulling the song away from the standard rock jam.
Here’s to the wind sliding through the short hallways of your home, all the windows open to the heat and breeze.
And to the slow wave of grass beneath bare feet or soled shoes, or, if you like, the ocean.
The swollen head of humid days, the outside drowning out whatever music you’ve got on within.
P.S.
blue lotus love,
ushers in the removal of time, splits the sound barrier when color and song are one, replaces every iris with interplanetary illumination.
when lord shiva grew breasts and joined in unison with vishnu, their child became the river that feeds the indian nation.
Jobriath was loved by Morrissey, David Bowie and the Pet Shop Boys and apparently hated by almost everybody else. The maintainer of a site in his honor says: ” I’m struck by the sheer vehemence directed against Jobriath. Journalists kept writing about him for years after his death, torrents of disgust and venom.” His record company was said to have invested something like eighty thousand dollars into the recording of one of his albums (I think he made two), but both of them pretty much sunk. The performer himself died of AIDS not too many years after. This is pretty silly stuff, and I’m still not quite sure what to think of it, but I listen to it curiously now and then, and it’s as a curiosity that I put it up here.
Not sure why, but I used to fight the summers. Perhaps it was because I felt the winters and autumns to be so fine; there was no room in my heart for too-hot days, sweltering heat. Perhaps it was the feeling that I’d never have summers off again. Of course, I have always hated being hot, but, somehow, I have begun to get used to it.
Some songs have that summer theme to them, I don’t know why. I figure I’ve got a few months to display all the heated selections in my collections, but I’ll start off with two: one quirky and one sweet. Well, maybe they’re both quirky.
Kendra Smith is one of those women in rock you don’t generally hear to much about. She was most readily associated with the Paisley Underground “movement” in the 80s, being in both The Dream Syndicate and associated with Rain Parade member David Roback in Opal (before Mazzy Star came about). She’s a real original: mixing folk, psychedelia, Moorcockian SF tropes, and her own bizarre touchstones into one weird, uncomfortable rock album. If you can find it, her sole outing as The Guild of Temporal Adventurers has one of the best (only?) covers of “She Brings the Rain” by Can.
Her sole solo album came out on 4AD and disappeared without a trace in more than five ways. This is important to mention because it was around the same time 4AD stopped taking chances on artists and their bizarre albums, and, thus, ceased being an “important” indie label. I still can’t believe they released this one.
I always play it when it’s hot out.
Next is the totally weird Penguin Cafe Orchestra. I never got into them much, despite the Obscure Records connection. They’re just too cheesy for me, honestly.
But I love this pretty little song, something I’d play on a desert island if I could. Perfect, considering the subject matter.
my feces come out in the shape of every classmate i ever made fun of.
This is either on or distibuted by, or anyway somehow related to, Piana’s label, and it’s similar in some ways. It is almost 90 degrees where I am, and I have no air conditioning, and suffice it to say that even though “Dream Fish” (and the rest of the album) is maybe better suited to autumn, I’m happy to be listening to it regardless.
within the last week i have:
received three traffic tickets for speeding along the same strip of waste-road.
lost nearly all control of my inner spazz-tick nature.
performed a mock drive-by shooting with a toy cap gun along the terrace of a pizza restaurant in my bourgeois neighborhood.
i have never known the pleasure of making a yuppie dad flinch three successive times in unison with weak toy-gun snaps, until now.
karma, karma, karma.
In honor of the world tour, the pleasure of which I had last night.
But also for the dubious honor of the internet, a place for unusual, sometimes quite false, connections; inappropriate, nebulous feelings; week-long crushes, destined for collapse, if they are more than one-sided in the first place.
It is an unusual and attractive computer world that we live in. Or “isn’t it lovely to think so?”
I don’t have a lot of patience for video game music - most of it these days is MIDI-farting trying to approximate nu-metal or other such guff. But I do have a weak spot for the sound technology of the early days of game-computing, from the Commodore 64’s legendary SID chip to the lesser devices implanted in Nintendos and Ataris the world’s rec-room over. I am fascinated by limitations, and the challenge of making music within them. This “arrange version” (which I guess you could call a remix in today’s hip teen lingo) of the theme from the meditative, endless “Balloon Trip” mode from the 1985 NES cartridge “Balloon Fight” is limited, lovely and I (alliteratively) hope you like it.
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