connexion: the selector

Back in the early nineties, I used to go see shows featuring a band called Where I Wake Warm�who were from Brooklyn, I think�from time to time.

What the heck happened to them? I have often wondered. They made pretty shoegaze pop, that would not have been out of place on C’est la Morte, or 4AD, or one of those Hyperium Heavenly Voices compilations. As it turns out, they ended up on Bedazzled, one of those bygone labels whose stock and trade was faux-4AD.

The musical landscape seems so different now, so I always play this track around the autumn, and it never seems to get old. It’s a comforting thing.

Here’s the second in my Minor Arcana themed series of mixes: the Knight Of Cups, who is fanciful, temperamental, introspective � an INFP if I’ve ever seen one.

00:00 Eluvium ~ “New Animals from the Air”
05:52 Lars Blek ~ “Tristess”
08:12 The London Apartments ~ “Streetlights are Soldiers”
11:47 Below The Sea ~ “Preface”
16:57 Bloc Party ~ “So Here We Are”
20:44 Stella Luna ~ “A Bridge to Nowhere”
27:10 Kitchens Of Distinction ~ “The 3rd Time We Opened the Capsule”
30:13 Weevil ~ “Too Long Sleeping”
35:19 Eltro ~ “How Did it Happen so Slowly?”
39:23 Reed Rothchild ~ “The Great Century”
44:59 Philip Glass ~ “Osamu’s Theme: Kyoko’s House”
47:57 Fonoda ~ “Neu mit Haus und die Menschen Dort”
54:53 Alarm Will Sound ~ “Blue Calx”
60:54 Tlon ~ “Torch Number”
67:28 Under Byen ~ “Om Vinteren”

I just thought I’d share a little Boards of Canada rarity I had from somewhere. It’s from their Peel Session, but, for some reason, it did not make it onto that disc. They should have put it on, so maybe the Peel Session CD wasn’t as much of a rip for people who already had Music Has the Right to Children.

I bet all the MP3 traders have it already, so pardon me if I am a johnny-come-lately. It kind of sounds like Autechre or Aphex, so it must be an older track, you know?

Hey, did you know they were brothers? I read that and felt a bizarre thrill that must be akin to what many people feel when they watch Access Hollywood in the evening, after a long day of work.

After trying to process what turned into a fantastically rotten day,

and while battling a headache that makes me want to cut off my own head,

I find that listening to this song is helping me smooth out a little bit.

God bless you, Mr. Dylan, wherever you are.

Download: Bob Dylan - Visions of Johanna
Buy the Album: Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series, Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live, 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall Concert” [LIVE]

I went looking through the albums the other day. This is, I fear, the oldest known picture I have of my wife and myself. As you can see, it was a surprise photograph on New Year’s Eve, 1996. I had to crop some other people out. In nine years, a lot of people end up being strangers, like you never met them at all.

You know how people just drift in and out of life�it was like they were never there and you wonder why you knew them at all.

I figured I’d upload some tracks we were into at the time. It’s funny. In that picture you can only see me, squinting, looking almost unrecognizable, or as though I knew I would be looking at myself one day from the camera’s perspective, in equal disbelief. I can’t even believed I looked like that once. I often look in the mirror and see others. Then, it was like I didn’t even know what I was doing, I was a falling star, plummeting, falling to earth.

Now I’m all afill of intentions, and memories, and roots, and so strong.

Hey, but this isn’t about me, or at least it is only half about me. I like this picture, because it’s about the mystery woman I managed to ensnare that night, in the made-heat of a chilled New Year’s evening, in somebody’s apartment, long lost. I hardly remember names anymore. Is this where it will all go?

You know all of this only means anything to me. But “Wind on Water” is about autumn drives (with a stolen cassette), I can tell you that. And “Two Places at Once” seems more and more appropriate, and you can get the whole CD for 50�, which seems fair and unfair at once. And “Morningrise” is just a nice, sexy, slow song, and I won’t belabor the point with you, my dears.

If you could just slip into my body briefly, we would not need these songs at all, it is true.

Dear Jenny,

It’s only a couple days into the season, but autumn has hit me full force.

Everything around me is in this golden glow, everything has gone soft. I wish you were here to take pics of the red and brass colored leaves, I wish you were here to drink spiced hot apple cider and slide around in stocking feet on my hardwood floors.

Here is a mix for you to listen to, leave your windows open and lay on your bed, put on headphones.

So many exes and ohs to you, sekrit twin.

xoj

Autumn Lets You Down Gently
paperbirds, 25 september 2005

00:00 “Hush” Swallow
04:23 “Bluebird of Happiness” Mojave 3
13:25 “Green Horizon” Adelaide
19:32 “Cracked Face Diamond” Only
27:09 “Portable Living Room” Alpha
30:55 “Preciso Dizer Que Te Amo” Cazuza & Bebel Gilberto
35:12 “Ngo/Bitmix” Ryuichi Sakamoto
40:18 “Mera Kuchh Saaman (Some of My Things)” Asha Bhosle & the Kronos Quartet
47:06 “Spiralling” Antony & the Johnsons
51:21 “Haunted” Arab Strap
56:56 “Fracture” Faye Wong
00:51 “Your Baby (Lets You Down Gently)” Britta Phillips & Dean Wareham
04:41 “Curtains” Peter Gabriel
07:52 “Our Nearest Neighbors” Red Stars Theory
16:18 “Moon River” Audrey Hepburn

[107MB, 1:18:21]

Download: Autumn Lets You Down Gently, The Cover

Ever since I heard Monolake’s Hongkong, I’ve been pretty much obsessed with Basic Channel and the Chain Reaction label family. No matter how repetetive and minimal, these otherworldly sounds somehow manage to retain an inner warmth I’ve yet to find elsewhere.

Maybe I will post a big dub techno tribute some day. Until then, here is René Löwe of Vainqueur and Scion together with Paul St Hilaire, Rhythm & Sound vocalist extraordinaire. Let your life glow.

Dear Xxxxxx,

A friend let me try out this new program that lets you mix songs together so they are all one big track. This is my first try.

It took me a long time to make this mix, longer than usual. It’s the first mix that I am showing you, even though I have made others. I don’t know what’s wrong with me that I can’t get it together enough to send you anything in the post. I mean to, I mean to, I mean to.

This mix all came together today. It was the first day of autumn, and it was beautiful. I thought about what it must be like where you are. I imagined it cleaner, and quieter, and I stretched out across my bed and listened to this mix while I wrapped and unwrapped myself in my new softest blanket.

I wanted to take pictures for you of all the shadows sliding up my walls, golden and warm. I wanted to somehow record for you how it felt to listen to this, the music all over my skin while I listened to the whole world move outside.

I wanted to send you a message, something immediate.

I couldn’t, and you were sleeping, we are always sleeping at right angles of each other.

But I have this for you, and as soon as it was finished I wanted to start another, and another and another,

to send to you.

xoj

PS: I know that there are some songs here that I’ve posted on the selector before, but I don’t care.

PPS: You know that song I sent you last night before I went to sleep? I fell asleep listening to it on repeat and it played 277 times while I was sleeping. 277 times!

You are Something that the Whole World is Doing
paperbirds, 22 september 2005

01 00:00 “ladybug” 1/2
02 04:40 “introduccion” savath & savalas
03 05:37 “lines low to the frozen ground” hood
04 10:04 “firefly (receiver mix)” alpha
05 16:05 “into the sun” diplo ft martina topley-bird
06 21:51 “clutching at straws” andrea parker
07 26:50 “arabesuku” lily chou-chou
08 32:31 “we have a map of the piano” m�m
09 37:34 “be good to them always” the books
10 42:08 “blue skied an’ clear” slowdive
11 48:38 “the weight of my words (four tet remix)” kings of convenience
12 53:20 “the beach at redpoint” boards of canada
13 57:23 “the prevailing wind” yasume
14 01:26 “minimal tunisia” agf
15 04:48 “nightfall at the riverside” cinq
16 11:01 “ending theme” tenniscoats

[101MB, 1:14:01]

Download: You are Something that the Whole World is Doing, The Cover

A song for pretending I’m in a movie, because acting as a good natured marxist European is more enjoyable than pretending I’m a college student in Kansas Shitty, Missouri. I’m daring you! to use your imagination and travel to a space where the string samples fashion your personal melody into friendliness and rearrange the surrealism of the changing seasons to a backdrop you stand in front of, as a star.

I was momentarily distracted by the greatness of Scott Walker. Well, not momentarily, because I continue to listen to him almost exclusively, now almost seven days later. I’m not sure how fun I have been to live with.

So back to tributes to my bride. She’s probably never heard half the songs that make me think about her. This is one of them, by a strange little duo called Mandible Chatter. They’re one of my favorites.

This one is off their very nice album, Grace, which mixes tracks that are like Popol Vuh, and tracks that are like Zoviet France.

Lest you think my wife post-industrial, I should say that this is one of the Popol Vuh ones.

Songs for School

I’m a day or two early, but autumn is upon us doods!

When the weather turns like this and I can count out the first changed leaves on one hand, I always think of school, and more specifically, college and most specifically, all the music that I discovered and loved when I was at school.

Yes, that was when I found indie rock and I fell in love with music again. It was a time of at least a show a week, and writing letters to bands and getting letters back; of spending every dollar on cds and leaving the shop with bags full each time. Between trips to Aron’s, No Life and CD Trader and working for Tower my music collection doubled from about 500 to 1000+.

It was a time of zines and before the internet for me, of buying damn near every compilation I could get my hands on to discover new bands, and hundreds of mix tapes with carefully crafted hand-made covers, and buying 7″s for god’s sake.

These are some of my all time favorite indie rock bands:

New Radiant Storm King were fucking amazing, I have no idea why they weren’t bigger than they were. They deserved to be one of the big ones. “The Opposing Engineer (Sleeps Alone)” may in fact be the very first indie rock song I remember loving, found on a $5 compilation I dug out of the bin at Tower.

Small Factory, too, is a great band, but it makes sense to me why they were what they were. They are adorable, and a bit twee, but with more guitar and less cardigan. I remember laying on my bed and sticking my feet in the air while I listened to “Versus Tape” on headphones, reading the tape cover my friend made out for me.

Versus is a fantastic band and one of my favorite live acts. I saw them at No Life records in West Hollywood (Aww, guys, remember them?? Best record shop ever. It was just dumb location to be around the corner from Aron’s,) and they were just incredible. They even played “Mirror Mirror” at my friend’s request. That song, in probably my top three Versus songs (and yes, they are good enough to order up), with definitely one of my favorite lyrics, “I will not fuck you, I will just carry your books.” Aw guys, indie rock boys!

So I have been immersed in many memory feelings and many memory songs and the leaves are thisclose to falling.

I am so so so happy right now.

Text message sent:

today i blended into the sky twice and the tallest man at the bus stop
wore white pants and had an enigmatic smile. he was the sphynx of public transport.

pass it on.

Download: New Radiant Storm King - Viral Mind, The Opposing Engineer (Sleeps Alone), Phonecall / Small Factory - Everyone’s Happy for the First Time in Weeks (New Radiant Storm King Cover), The Bright Side, Versus Tape / Versus - Mirror Mirror, Tin Foil Star, Flax
Buy the Album: New Radiant Storm King - Rival Time / Small Factory - For If You Cannot Fly / Versus - The Stars Are Insane, Dead Leaves

Songs for Pretending Geology Homework is! Fun, Part II

I feel like I need to date my life B.S.W. and A.S.W., Before Scott Walker, After Scott Walker, these days.

I just don’t know how this kind of brilliance escaped my notice for so many years of listening to the soft sounds of space-age batchelor-pad music, exotica, and crooning. I mean, it almost seems similar to living my life without ever hearing Rod McKuen.

Anyway, this music is magical, just magical. If I can copy my own words from elsewhere:

It seems so typical to say that I have never heard anything quite like it, even in all my explorations of fifties exotica and easy listening, as a child or adult. It is really like the soundtrack to some bizarre sixties movie�the kind of film you half-remember from childhood viewing, but turns out not to exist as you recall it.

This is the music of dreams, for me, it honestly is.

During the last couple of months I’ve been thinking more than usual about life and society. My grandfather passed away at the end of July, of course adding to it, but it started already before that.

The world is filled with so much negativity, suffering and carelessness, and although the sheer weight of it often feels overpowering, it is all old news. And that’s what saddens me. We acknowledge it as fact, but have become so exhausted and cynical that we often do nothing but keep our own heads above the water. One of the things I admire about my grandfather was that he always cared and offered to help people.

A couple of weeks ago I started to re-read Craig Werner’s A Change Is Gonna Come. It’s the kind of book where you can open a random page and not be able to drop it until you’ve read the entire chapter. A Change Is Gonna Come does not contain any obscurities, a lot of it I’ve heard already, but the story is told in such a fresh and compelling manner that old things become new.

Much like A Change Is Gonna Come reminds me of the glory that is Marvin Gaye, I believe that we also need to be reminded of what we consider to be our values in life. If we actually do live the lives we believe to live. There are many things most people agree on as good and true, but for the vast majority of us life is a constant struggle to fulfil such intentions.

Keep on lovin’, because without each other we are nothing.

Addendum: Although this post was in no way intended as a comment on the Katrina disaster, it is of course hard to ignore the connection. I am truly sorry and horrified by what has happened, and sincerely wish that all of you who have been affected will be given the strength to make it through.

Songs for Sean, Volume Two, Part One

Last night, you were in the sky.

It had clouds painted all over it.

Also, you are like coconut gelato.

Download: Lush - Thoughtforms v.1 / Ride - Like a Daydream / Medicine - Time Baby 3
Buy the Album: Lush - Gala / Ride - Nowhere / The Crow OST

I have some new audio software that lets me make mixes more easily and intuitively, so I want to play with music and release things without having to ponder for weeks over the crossfades or perfect cover art.

I’ve decided to make a series of quickie mixes inspired by the Minor Arcana. The idea is that I’ll draw a Tarot card and put together music inspired by its symbolism. There are 56 minor arcana cards, enough to keep me going on this theme for a while.

In fact, the first one’s done already � it came together very quickly yesterday & today. I kind of cheated by choosing the card afterwards based on the feel of the mix; but that’s because the Tarot theme didn’t occur to me until I was halfway done.

So please welcome & download the Seven Of Wands, which symbolizes aggression, defiance, conviction. Musically, to me, this means guitar noise, and lots of it, but the moods range across bravado, anger, ecstasy, loss, alienation, and finally revelation.

00:00 Underground Lovers � �Eastside Stories�
04:37 Sonic Youth � �Expressway To Yr Skull�
09:38 Flying Saucer Attack � �Popol Vuh 1�
15:10 Macha � �Between Stranded Sonars�
22:06 Surface Of Eceon � �The Open Sea�
28:08 Ride � �Seagull�
34:08 Loop � �Vapour�
38:03 Dustdevils � �Slope�
42:50 Medicine � �Zelzah�
47:09 Mono � �Com(?)�
53:34 Kittie � �Spit�
55:53 Dustdevils � �Head Of Kurtz�
57:12 Pink Floyd � �Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun� [live]
63:20 Amp � �Onehopesinuncertainty�
68:03 Yume Bitsu � �Truth�

Why I’ve never dedicated any songs to my bride after all this Selector time, I don’t know. I’d better get started, before my second wedding anniversary hits in a couple of weeks.

This picture was from our trip to Quebec City last September in some restaurant where they served rabbit in a wide, terrifying number of ways. I was bombed.

Did you come
from outer space?

Download: Asha Bhosle with The Kronos Quartet - Chura Liya Hai Tum Ne (You’ve Stolen My Heart)
Buy the Album: Asha Bhosle with The Kronos Quartet - You’ve Stolen My Heart

Song for Bird Ballet, Part Eight

Good morning, Sunshine.

Download: Asha Bhosle with The Kronos Quartet - Mera Kuchh Saaman (Some of My Things)
Buy the Album: Asha Bhosle with The Kronos Quartet - You’ve Stolen My Heart

monika jm lin

Today, I was driving across the bridge and “To Here Knows When” came on and my heart exploded.

And tonight “City Girl” came on and I just melted back into the drip drop of the rain against my window. This song, it was meant for me.

Oh, dear, these songs make me feel like I am spinning and falling and spinning and falling and spinning and falling.

Download: My Bloody Valentine - To Here Knows When / Kevin Shields - City Girl
Buy the Album: My Bloody Valentine - Loveless / Lost in Translation OST

All of these recent R.E.M. tracks were so nice and I was reminded of one of my favorite bands of that bygone era: The Rain Parade. This was David Roback’s old thing, during the days of the Paisley Underground, and it was also the best band of that scene. And though she was in another band in the Underground, I still have a thing for Kendra Smith, you already know, so I will just leave that unsaid. Kendra, I will tend your vegetable garden, and read you passages from An Alien Heat, and meld with your sex into a single hermaphroditic being, you know, so I’m not cheating on you or anything.

But when I got kicked out of college the first time, I did some kicking around myself, and had a variety of lousy jobs and took night classes and listened to WFMU and learned a lot about music, because, well, I didn’t really have much else. And on one of the WFMU shows, they played “Broken Horse” which is still my favorite song by the band, and which I killed myself to find on CD because, back then, in the old days of 1995, the internet was not in every house, and certainly not in mine.

And it’s safe to say that Explosions in the Glass Palace was the soundtrack to the autumn of 1996 and I can still taste the leaves and smell the local air as though it were yesterday. They’ve got that melancholy joy and I can see a lot of myself, as I play these tracks, as I was, as I am. Part of me would not be unhappy to go back to those times, for a while.

Oh, Michael Stipe. Oh, dear.

Franny Glass reminded me that I love R.E.M. so fucking god damned much.

I spent so much of my life listening to them, and loving them, and they are kind of in that place where I hold Grant Lee Buffalo/Grant Lee Phillips, Innocence Mission, Throwing Muses, etc–that place that makes me think of dusty roads and creaking porches and when I consider becoming an expat, which I have been more and more seriously in the last few months, I wonder if I’ll feel like that anywhere but here. And part of that comes from the sweet Americana that R.E.M. and the above bands represent to me. I just can’t imagine feeling the same anywhere but here, in a way that I’m obviously quite unable to articulate. It’s just this sweetness and sadness and somehow, me-ness.

Oh, R.E.M., I don’t care that I can’t get with most of the stuff you’ve done since you put out Monster (yech). I just, oh. Well maybe some songs off New Adventures, but still.

I love you, R.E.M., so so much.

I’ve broken with format a bit to bring you some of my very favorite R.E.M. songs, in as close to chronological order as I bothered to load them:

-”Stumble” & “Gardening at Night (Live)” off Chronic Town
-”Pilgrimage” & “Talk About the Passion” off Murmur (my favorite album by the boys, I think. I think.)
-”So. Central Rain” (which might be my favorite R.E.M. song ever) & “camerA” off Reckoning
-”Maps and Legends (Live)” off Fables of the Reconstruction
-”Begin the Begin“, “Cuyahoga” & “Swan Swan H.” off Life’s Rich Pageant (ok, maybe THIS is my favorite R.E.M. album. I can’t be sure. I certainly spent more time with it than any other of their albums, if memory serves.)
-”Country Feedback” & “Me in Honey” off Out of Time
-”Sweetness Follows” & “Nightswimming” (oh man, if any of you have the Gene cover of this song I’ll love you long time–I have it on CD somewhere still packed away and I have been dying to hear it lately.) off Automatic for the People

Phew! I know it’s a lot, but I’m in a mood tonight.

The middle of the night can be so lonely.

I know I can be someone’s great reward.

Download: Gene - Speak to Me Someone (Live), Save Me, I’m Yours (Live), Olympian (Live)
Buy the Album: Gene - Speak to Me Someone EP (Live at Royal Albert Hall), Where Are They Now EP (Live at Royal Albert Hall)

These were nine long months.

picture courtesy of abandoned.com

Download: Dirty Three - Some Summers They Drop Like Flies, Some Things I Just Don’t Want To Know, Lullabye for Christie
Buy the Album: Dirty Three - Whatever You Love, You Are

A Song for Pretending Geology Homework is! Fun

“. . .your next drink of water may include water molecules that once were part of a hydrous (water-bearing) mineral inside Earth or that once were consumed by a thirsty dinosaur!”

Busch, Richard M. Laboratory Manuel In Physical Geology. 7th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005.

I know music people always talk like this, but, despite this, for me, discovering The Durutti Column (late, for me, for I was 22 at the time) was a revelation.

I played the ol’ 4AD stuff, and dream pop from labels like C’est la Morte and Bedazzled, and all the shoegaze. I always felt that it got close to what I was looking for; that dreamy sound, that pretty sound, the sweet joy. But it was only close, never all the way toward what I wanted, probably because all that music just wasn’t simple, or elegant, enough.

But I drove home from working at my comic book store one late afternoon, in autumn, and WFMU 91.1 played, on my car radio, “Belgian Friends” as I drove up the curving roads of Madison, NJ.

It was another piece in the puzzle of me, placed right where it belonged.

Download: Low - Shame / Low & Dirty Three - Down by the River
Buy the Album: Low - Long Division / Low & Dirty Three - In the Fishtank

this album came out four days after i turned nine and the tape was on constant rotation for about one year for me.

i’m very scared for this world
i’m very scared for me
eviscerate your memory
here’s a scene
you’re in the back seat laying down
the windows wrap around
to sound of the travel and the engine -

the album still resonates 17 years later, more in times like these.

There isn’t anything that can be said right now.

We are all broken tonight.

Download: Tom Waits - Time
Buy the Album: Tom Waits - Beautiful Maladies: The Island Years

A vague breeze, windows open. A night to warm and beautiful to sleep away. Everything is calm and at rest. It feels like you’re completely alone, the only one conscious. But wait, there’s a sound. Are those crickets real?

Mr. Eden’s Pub post reminded me of this Deadbeat track, and I offer it as a companion to Summer. I used to think Deadbeat sounded somewhat dull, but for some reason I returned to him during one of my long nights this summer. That’s when I got it. It’s the perfect music for late night listening.

Jessica’s been posting so many nice soul tracks (well, except maybe that creepy R. Kelly video), I thought I’d get into the act with some machine soul of my own.

Kirk Degiorgio is one of those behind-the-scenes kind of musicians who seems to be everywhere once you know to look for him. His As One moniker features his techno-soul abilities mixing hip-hop, techno, jazz, and funk. It’s his version of future-soul, as evidenced by the titles of his albums Celestial Soul (where “We No Longer Understand” is culled from) and 21st Century Soul. His record labels Applied Rhythmic Technology (A.R.T.) and Op-ART are seminal, featuring early techno recordings by Aphex Twin, Stasis, Carl Craig, Black Dog, and others.

It doesn’t exactly sound like soul to me, but I certainly find it soulful, in its way. A lot of the As One albums (including the awesome Celestial Soul) are out of print, so I took tracks from Degiorgio’s recent double-CD retrospective that represent his space-funk pretty well. I know I talk about getting chills a lot here on the Selector, but, seriously, those synth pads that come in during “Theme from Op-Art” make my whole body quiver.

Enjoy.