Submerged Series, Part Three
You’re in my heart,
I’m in your head.
Download: Mary-Margaret O’Hara - To Cry About / Bjork & The Brodsky Quartet - Anchor Song
Buy the Album: Mary-Margaret O’Hara - Miss America / I don’t know if this Union Chapel show is printed anywhere officially, I couldn’t find it, but here is where you can find the original version of “Anchor Song”.
Submerged Series, Part Two
We don’t need to hide, anymore.
Download: Chop Suey - Humans Like You / Amara Portuondo - Que Emocion / Langley School Project - God Only Knows
Buy the Album: OST - Mi Vida Sin Mi
Submerged Series, Part One
I have been dreaming about what it must be like under the sea.
Download: Loscil - Kursk
Buy the Album: Loscil - Submers
Songs for Star-Boxes
I have a new friend, we stay up all night and share music, and pictures of stars and jelly fish and abandoned buildings. She sent me a map of the Tokyo subway, and showed me pictures of a restaurant there that serves meals just like school lunch!
She sent me this song the first night we talked, she makes little drawings, she wants to build a mushroom house to live in.
She sends me music for headphones.
<3kozy<3
Download: Lullatone - Wake Up Wake Up
Buy the Album: Lullatone - Little Songs About Raindrops
What is new is that after eight or ten months of convalescence from illnesses (mine), deaths and near-deaths(other peoples’) and the resulting emotional troubles (also mine), I’m back up and about to move out of the house again, and I’ve started school again in a new program that doesn’t make me want to tear fistfuls of hair out, including the hair on my face. In fact, if anyone catches me bitching about this program, they are welcome–no, invited–to smack me. Also I decided I am going to spend as much time out of the house as possible, and try to meet new people which I should do, granted I’ve just signed on for three more years here. I’ve actually started making some tentative attempts at the latter with some good results even though I have discovered that I am for one incurably awkward and for another I eat sushi like a hooved mammal (shut up, I have big hands). So, the songs. The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud was the band that Albin Julius had before Der Blutharsch. Not sure what I think of the whole album, which is really pretty different from what I know of Der Blutharsch, but nevertheless there are a couple of great songs on this, and I love the vaguely cabaret-y atmosphere on this one. And as for Slapp Happy, it’s a fun song. It will be the soundtrack to something one of these days, like walking down Main Street with a duck or a cat, but for now it’s just good to listen to.
Download: Slapp Happy-Me and Paravati,
Download: The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud-Track 4
Buy the Album: Slapp Happy-Acnalbasac Noom.The name of the album by The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath A Cloud is Amara Tanta Tyri, but it’s apparently totally unavailable, at least I can’t find it for sale anywhere, so instead look at this Kokoschka painting, er kam doch auch aus Österrech.
“A hallucinatory voyage through imaginary tribal lands.”
Tracklist:
1. “Light By Initiation” by Alio Die from Under An Holy Ritual (Hic Sunt Leones)
2. “A Sun To Lift Sleep From The Weary” by Mandible Chatter from Of Foreign Lands and People (Release/Relapse)
3. “East Taunts West” by :Zoviet*France: from Loh Land (Staalplaat)
4. “San” by J. Greinke & R. Angus from Crossing Ngoli (Ear Rational)
5. “Dream Theory” by Jon Hassell from Dream Theory In Malaya (EG)
6. “Dusk, Dead Heart” by O Yuki Conjugate from Peyote (Multimood/Projekt)
7. “Curandera” by Suspended Memories from Earth Island (Fathom/Hearts of Space)
8. “Drifting” by Voice Of Eye from Vespers (Cyclotron Industries)
9. “The Velvet Horizon” by Paul Schutze from New Maps Of Hell (Extreme/Big Cat)
10. “Qom” by Muslimgauze from Iran (Staalplaat)
11. “Jacobs Drum” by Rapoon from The Kirghiz Light (Staalplaat)
12. “Future Tribe” by Steve Roach & Byron Metcalf from The Serpent’s Lair (Projekt)
Download: Mister Eden’s Lysergic Africa: “Sticky Tribal Nightmare”
Songs to Spin Around Until You’re Dizzy to
When I woke up this afternoon, I found out something amazing had happened while I was sleeping: the sun came out!!! !!!!!1eleven
I was so excited I jumped up and down and changed out of my jammies as quickly as possible and GOT THE HELL OUTSIDE. I was so happy when I felt the sun on my face that I spun around in my parking lot until I felt dizzy and then laid back on the hood of my car while the world righted itself again, my cheeks starting to ache from smiling so hard.
It was so fantastic! It felt like I had never felt the sun before. My heart was pounding in my chest and I felt alive all over.
Oh guys, it was the best day. I went to the market and bought piles of fresh fruit and vegetables. I glided through the aisles with big headphones on and sang out loud along with the music. I smiled at everyone with whom I made eye contact, I cooed at babies in strollers, I made up little songs about all the dogs on leashes I saw.
I am getting so excited for Spring already! I am going to have a birthday, and I am going to see my brother (and maybe my mom and sister too!) and I am going to go to the Tulip Festival again, even if I have to go by myself. OH! Maybe my brother can come up for my birthday and we can go to the Tulip Festival together! The Tulip Festival is one of the best things I have ever seen. Standing in a field covered in color with the biggest widest sky above you, mountains lining the horizon. If there is a heaven, I imagine that’s what it’s like. Except there would be feather soft cots lining the rows of tulips so you could just lay down and take a nap in the middle of the field, and also personal masseuses for everyone so that everyone could get a foot massage in the tulip field, and maybe also a pedicure, and hanging out with your very favorite people while drinking bellinis. And also eating never-ending amounts of creme brulee and fresh strawberries without ever feeling sick. And also blowjobs for everyone. I don’t think it could be heaven without blowjobs, that just doesn’t seem right.
Heaven: laying on a feather bed in a field of tulips, while getting a foot massage and a pedicure with your best friends while drinking bellinis, eating creme brulee and strawberries and getting a blowjob.
Oh man, you guys! Heaven=Happy endings for everyone!
God, best day. Seriously, so best day.
Download: Innocence Mission - Martha Avenue Love Song
Buy the Album: Innocence Mission - Befriended
Songs for Seasonal Affective Disorder, Part Two
I’ve been Dreaming About Deserts.
We’re breaking all sorts of records up here in Seattle with this never-ending rain, and there is no end in sight.
I am starting to seriously consider moving back to California.
I am even longing for Los Angeles.
Things have got to be terribly wrong if I am longing for Los Angeles.
(I’d have to be another person entirely to be able to fit in there.)
I want to feel the dry heat of driving through central California in the summertime on my way up to San Francisco, I want to squint into the sun while desperately needing the shade. I want to feel that hot pin prick on the back of my neck when I know it’s way too hot, the blown-out white and yellow all over everything of my childhood, the softness of skin polished by a day in the ocean and asphalt burning my bare feet.
I want to feel a Southern California night again.
Even the sound of rain on my window is starting to make me insane.
The darkness is simply too much, I am starting to lose it completely.
I am aching for the sun, God. Please give me back the sun.
Download: Dinosaur Jr - Thumb
Buy the Album: Dinosaur Jr - Green Mind
My latest end-of-the-year mix…
(My son drew the cover cartoon, based on his occasional comic strip Cloudy And Her Friends.)
Borgar Þor Magnason — “South”
from the soundtrack of Gabriela Friðriksdóttir’s installation Versations/Tetralogia
The Heartless Bastards — “New Resolution”
from Stairs And Elevators
Deerhoof — “Running Thoughts”
from The Runners Four
Aeriel — “Airtight Angels”
from Winks & Kisses
The Lionheart Brothers — “Love Ludicrous”
from the compilation Rock Around The Block
Bloc Party — “Like Eating Glass”
from Silent Alarm
Tree Wave — “Sleep”
from Cabana EP+
Namco — “You Are Smart”
from the video game Katamari Damacy
Radio Magenta — “Like A Radio Magenta”
from the compilation So Far, So Good … So What?
Aarktica — “Glacia”
from No Solace In Sleep
Eluvium — “Under The Water It Glowed”
from Lambent Material
Mono — “The Kidnapper Bell”
from Under The Pipal Tree
A Northern Chorus — “Prisoners Of Circumstance”
from Bitter Hands Resign
Under Byen — “Plantage”
from Det Er Mig Der Holdern Træern Sammen
Marsen Jules — “Aile d’Aigle”
from Herbstlaub
Meat Beat Manifesto — “Bohemian Grove”
from At The Center
Stockfinster — “All Becomes Music”
from the compilation Red, Green, Blue & Other Summer Feelings
Sufjan Stevens — “Out Of Egypt, Into The Great Laugh Of Mankind, And I Shake The Dirt From My Sandals As I Run”
from Illinois
Deerhoof — “Chatterboxes”
from The Runners Four
Namco — “Angel Flavor’s Present”
from the video game Katamari Damacy
Download: Cloud Sculpture
There is a wrenchingly sad string-quartet theme — fading in on a high chord that blossoms into dissonance — that’s been going through my mind lately, and I can’t quite remember what it is. It isn’t Somei Satoh’s “Toward The Night” (though that’s about as heartbreaking as they come). I thought it might be something from this Kronos Quartet album, and it isn’t either, but I’m still glad I played it again. Half the tracks I just don’t get, but the rest are gorgeous.
Terry Riley’s “Half-Wolf Dances Mad In Moonlight” delivers exactly what the title promises. It has the wild energy and jarring changes in course of some kind of experimental techno, but is still every inch a string quartet. Quite a ride, but I hang on tight and it never throws me off into the weeds (not like that John Zorn track later on, one of the ones I don’t get.)
Arvo Pärt’s “Fratres”, which is the next track on the album, is the polar opposite. It has one slow theme, and it revisits it over and over, with a few beats in between. Every time, the timbre and arrangement change, effecting a gradual rise and fall. Apparently the piece is meant to evoke monks chanting — if so, they are approaching closer, then at the loudest point the monks, who have been cloaked figures until then, lower their hoods and you see their worn and tired faces.
Maybe a little too much wine and we are revisiting the future of yesterday.
Allow me to submit to schmaltze for a brief moment, but I have to admit solemnly that I thought things would be a little different by now. I’m still wearing glasses on purpose, Thomas.
I return from a long hiatus with some of my favorite European pieces, a hodgepodge of genres. It took me so long to formulate this post, to decide what to put up. I’ve been fairly Nordicentric lately, and as such, picked Jean Sibelius’ Finlandia, Opus 26, composed for Finland’s army. Sibelius is Finland’s one great composer, and he composed these huge, lush, organic soundscapes, lots of drama. I can’t say enough about him, really, and I’m surprised that he doesn’t get as much listen as his Viennese contemporaries, like Mahler.
I’ve posted Beequeen before, an ambient group from the Netherlands. Their music is just gorgeous, period, and this track is no exception. It’s ‘melt into the floor’ good. This one is a rare-ish track taken from a compilation put out by the record label Marginal Talent. It’s airy and floaty
Auktyon is probably the most popular act in Russia today, but they don’t make normal “pop” music, or what we’d normally think of as pop music. They pull influences from all over the map, and this track sounds like it’s drawn from Eastern European traditional folk music. My friend Stas has been feeding me their music lately, and I’m just in love with them.
Songs for Things Whispered through the Screen of a Confessional, 4am
i’ve been locked up and quiet for so long, it’s like a tight knot inside my chest that i am starting to understand how to unravel, that i need to figure out how to undo.
for most of my life i haven’t known what my own voice sounds like.
i experienced the words i spoke like a recording or somebody else whispering in my ear, coaching me what to say,
invisible, and small and terrified. people would have no idea by looking at me what is happening sub rosa, what i have been hiding from them, what i haven’t been saying to them, what i am thinking when i smile and gently respond.
but in the last few years things have started to change, i can feel the words come up and out of me, tumbling and jumping off my own lips, flying up and out like birds being released into the sun.
and i can feel it all over my skin, i can feel myself pushing against the outside of me, not matching up at the lines that make up my silhouette,
smashing against the space that separates me from the world, internal bruises, tiny violent paper-cut lacerations lining the inside of my throat,
and under the soft skin on the back of my neck, sometimes i can almost see welts swelling through the backs of my hands, the inside of my wrists and elbows,
tender on the insides of my thighs and behind my knees. like i am trying to shed my skin or
claw my way through this outside me that doesn’t reflect at all what’s happening inside.
it’s suffocating and choking and
also exhilarating, frightening to think that
sometime i am going to finally break open at a thousand different little ill-fitting seams, and i’ll be bare and real
and visible,
completely unprotected
but also shining, wet and new. maybe even present in the world.
sometimes i wish it were a gentle unfolding, but it hurts, it’s painful and most of the time, i don’t even know where i am.
i am alone and i don’t know what it will take break into the space where people live and connect and know how to be together,
genuinely be together.
Download: Talk Talk - Wealth
Buy the Album: Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden
It would probably behoove me to decide faster; it takes me approximately million years to decide what to upload here, and then when the eons have finally passed and I’m ready, I end up asking myself a ton of questions about it. I feel like I’m doing a dissertation defense. But it’s really just that I want to put the right thing up. Anyway, I looked outside this morning and talked myself right out of my inital choice. Its not been snowing for a while here, and its not snowing now, but last night or very early this morning we had a dusting. The sky is overcast in that very wintry way, when you can’t see clouds, just a sigle, vast, whitish-grey space. Below it there is light snow on all the grass and trees, pocked with black places where rocks or particularly thick grass-clumps pop up. I’m going to be driving out into the country (as it were) in about half an hour, to one of my favorite places in this area, but I imagine that for all the snow and cold and the wind shaking the tall grasses and so forth, its going to seem really pretty desolate today. So when I went to post, my mind sort of jumped to this song, that I find I’ve bee listening to a lot lately. It’s good. And if you’re not crazy about it, it’s also short.
Songs for Crush-Dreaming
I have a lil’ crush.
I don’t know about you, but there’s something about a crush that makes me want to listen to R&B. Maybe it’s the visions of soft sheets, close slow dancing, champagne and cut berries, lots of kisses with wandering hands. Maybe it’s the slow dirty beat. Maybe it’s the dirty dirty videos.
Whatever it is, there’s been damn near nothing on my ipod lately but R&B. I know I was late to the game, but I have really been digging the Kanye West album lately, especially this track. There’s something about it that’s been matching the sunbreak scattered afternoons up here in Seattle, matching up in a way that whispers “make-out, girl, get a make-out partner in here quick because it’s too damned cold to be rolling around in bed by yourself!”
Teedra Moses is an artist I know nothing about, but found through my near obsessive watching of Logo. I can’t help it! I love the gays, and lord knows the gays the gays they love me, and I love the gay television. Anyone who knows me knows that my obsession with Bravo (hello, I have a fledgling community on LJ dedicated to the only thing that’s saved me from the end of America’s Next Top Model: Project Runway) is, well, obsessive and not just a little charming. It’s VERY charming. No, for serious, and Logo is like everything I love about Bravo magnified to the nth degree. Logo has a show called Noah’s Arc that has introduced me to quite a few up and coming r&b singers and so far I like Teedra’s album best and this song is definitely for crush-dreaming.
And lastly, well, this one is a little bit more classic R&B-Soul, and probably much more up this baby boy’s alley. I can definitely imagine dancing with him to this song, and really isn’t that what a crush is all about?
Oh man. Yeah.
PS: I’ve started a LastFM Group for The Selector, so if you have a lastfm profile and you’re interested, please do join! We need more members before they start calculating our stats, and if you feel like writing up a snappy little description for the group that’d be sweet because I totally didn’t feel like writing up anything. Because I’m rad like that.
Download: Kanye West - We Major (ft. Nas & Really Doe) / Teedra Moses - Be Your Girl / The Majestic Arrows - Doing It For Us
Buy the Album: Kanye West - Late Registration / Teedra Moses - Complex Simplicity / The Majestic Arrows - Doing It For Us 7″
i meant to upload these songs a few months ago when i first heard them. they’re from the latest by matt elliott, aka third eye foundation, who has also collaborated w/ his fellow bristolians flying saucer attack and AMP. i love his solo work best of all. there’s this eerie, cinematic and eastern european feel to all of it. it makes me wonder what his preoccupations are.
Last night was probably the nicest, gentlest ushering in of a new year that I’ve experienced yet. A quiet night, a good friend, some sparkling wine and cut berries.
Listening to the people of my neighborhood hoot and holler and the cracking of fireworks over the Seattle skyline.
Sleeping with Amelia curled up in my arms, waking to hot coffee served to me in bed with smiling eyes.
Walking around all day in pajamas and slipper feet while the whole city recovered outside.
It’s been a reflective day, and I have high hopes for this next year. I feel as if things are opening up for me, that I am ready for things to start happening for me for real now.
Here is a favorite in original form, favorite form, and interesting form (with admittedly disappointing fidelity, but I really love this version nonetheless. If you have a better copy, please let me know).
Many best wishes to all my Selectors and readers, do the best things this year.
A fresh slate is one of my very favorite things.
Download: Roy Harper - Another Day / This Mortal Coil - Another Day / Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel - Another Day
Buy the Album: This Mortal Coil - 1983-1991 / The origin of the Kate & Peter track is completely unknown to me, sorry.
“Without dreams we would be cows in a field, and I don’t want to live like that.” - w. herzog
Download: popul vuh - aguirre i
Download: legowelt - a crazy plan
Buy the Album: popul vuh - aguirre
Buy the Album: Legowelt - klaus kinski e.p.
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