connexion: the selector

“The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson

I went and looked up an old musical flame from high school. That can sometimes be a dangerous or embarrassing exercise, but in this case I think the music lives up to my memories; and even though I hadn’t heard it in many, many years, after a few listens I remembered every twist and turn of the solos.

This is historical evidence that “jazz fusion” didn’t originally mean lite pop instrumentals with tinny soprano sax. Ponty started out a fairly straight violinist, but then played in Frank Zappa’s band and the Mahavishnu Orchestra and came out with some pretty wild ideas. Yes, it’s a hair’s-breadth away from Prog-Rock, and sometimes a little too full of itself, but that’s outweighed by the killer electric violin and especially the yummy analog synth sounds.

Download: Jean-Luc Ponty - “Don’t Let The World Pass You By”
Buy: Cosmic Messenger [1978]

I have been cataloguing things in the middle of the night.

I have been trying to make connections.

I have been cracking my sternum open and pulling my ribs apart so that I could show another person what I have inside.

These are the sounds of 2am letter writing and reaching out,

trying to push through until morning so I can sleep, to prepare myself for the darkness that comes, when I can lay myself bare.

Tracklisting:

00:00 hi
00:03 “Down by the River,” Low
04:31 my sleepy two am voice
08:56 i’m here, i’m just not sure what i should say
09:31 “The Whisper,” Beequeen
13:23 “Ambhas”, Alio Die & Amelia Cuni
13:33 i like listening to myself in headphones
18:29 “Post-Deflagration Tinnitus,” Sostrah Tinnitus
21:44 i missed you today
22:35 “Sleep Talking #2,” Ma Rainey
25:50 “Without Warning His Heart Stopped Beating,” John Parish
27:24 sometimes in the middle of the night my apt feels like a satellite orbiting the planet
28:52 “Radio Announcement,” In the Mood for Love Soundtrack
32:01 “Manana,” Gustavo Lamas
32:22 i woke up feeling empty today
36:11 “Love Theme from Until the End of the World,” Graeme Revell
35:52 “4 or 5 Trees,” Rachel’s
42:51 “Obsessions (Edit),” Joe Frank
43:10 “I am not Dead, I am Here,” Navicon Torture Technologies
43:22 there’s something about talking into the microphone in the middle of the night (part one)
45:55 “Birthday Party,” Milieu
46:31 “Lost Voices,” Andrew Chalk
48:36 there’s something about talking into the microphone in the middle of the night (part two)
53:19 “Broken Harbors : Part 2,” Stars of the Lid
57:51 i don’t think this is chemical unhappiness
59:51 “M+K,” Andrew Thomas
02:53 i don’t believe in soul mates, i don’t believe in a soul (part one)
04:32 “Job,” Alan Lomax Field Recordings, Bahamas 1935
07:56 “Hands as Words,” Tsukimono
12:52 i don’t believe in soul mates, i don’t believe in a soul (part two)

Download: Reaching Out, Letter Writing, 2am, The Cover

I’ve created a companion piece for Transistor Radio Love Letter. The motivation and intentions of this mix are somewhat different than the first. Whereas the first was made with connection and touching as its intention, this mix is darker, isolated, probably a product of the winter coming down hard on us here in the Pac NW the last couple weeks, everything awash in grey.

What I pictured while I was putting the mix together is this:

The person who had originally washed up on the Canary Islands has been able to stow away on a boat and reach farther north into Europe, and is now traveling on foot with their imaginary strongest transistor radio in the world. Though they been alone for so long that have forgotten how to make a connection with someone outside of themselves, they are haunted by memories of what connection had once been like and how it had gone wrong. They are struggling to continue to move northern-ward and to propel themselves forward they are pulling from everything that they have known, books they have read, lectures they’ve attended, people they have known—remembering their life, wrestling with demons and reaching towards angels.

This mix is far more introspective than the first, somnolent, opaque, somewhat uncomfortable at times,

but to me, beautiful.

Tracklisting:

00:00 radio transmission
00:01 Navicon Torture Technologies - Personal Apocalypse [g.o.r.e.]
03:53 Alio Die & Mathias Grassow - Expansion Mood 1
04:33 radio transmission
06:37 Conflict part 1
07:46 Tsukimono - Gloomy Sunday
15:35 Beequeen - Fly Like an Eagle
15:52 Conflict 2
18:32 Domenico Lanza - Canto di Carretiere
20:00 radio transmission
20:42 Blind Willie Johnson - Dark was the Night (Cold was the Ground)
22:28 Conflict 3
23:55 Alan Watts - Readings (Edit 1)
29:58 22 & Group - Early in the Mornin’
31:39 radio transmission
33:08 Akira Yamaoka - Over/Devil’s Lyric/Rising Sun
33:15 Conflict 4
37:21 radio transmission
37:44 Alan Watts - Readings (Edit 2)
39:53 Alessandro Moreschi - Ave Vernum, Corpus
42:22 Andrew Chalk - Track 03
43:37 Conflict 5
46:51 radio transmission
47:08 Bai Hong - Qie Ting Wo Shuo (Listen Up)
49:51 Cleveland Benoit & Darby - Malheureuse Negre
51:04 Colleen - I was Deep in a Dream and I Did Not Know
52:44 Alan Watts - Aliens
53:48 David Sylvian - The Only Daughter (Remixed by Jan Bang & Erik Honore ft Nils Petter Molvaer)
59:04 Navicon Torture Technologies - Everything Dies
00:43 Final Conflict
10:37 end radio transmission

EDIT: Somehow, because I am cool, I managed to mess up the volume levels on the track, so I had to redo it. Now, I doubt anyone but me and Kozy (who was kind enough to listen to it right away for me) have the effed version, but to be sure, if the file name did not have a “2″ at the end of it, you’re going to want to redownload. Unless, of course, you don’t mind effed volume levels. Ok, thanks!

Download: Farther North, The Cover

Cognitive Dissonance Comes in Threes, Part Three

artist unknown

Every evening I tell myself I will go to sleep at a decent hour; every night I let myself down.

When it’s coming up on 5am everything slides together into great watercolors left out to dry on a vertical drafting table. The lines bleed into one another, they become people moving together to make a connection, they become birds flying in figure eights above my apartment building.

This is the time to gather together all my empty postcards so that I can fill them with my most secret lies. This is the time I open up the cedar box that my brother made in wood shop and spread the contents across my bed, a catalog of my life then.

This is the time I remember everything while sneaking cigarettes I’d promised myself I’d give up.

This is the time I indulge in all the things I’d promised myself I’d give up:

Memories of first one I let slip inside my cracked open chest, the first one who was the calming center to my kinetic mind.

Torturing myself just to feel the seams along my sternum come apart and the blood soak my shirt through.

Take secret photographs of the warmth there, in my red center, letting the worst parts get stuck under my fingernails as I push my fingers in between the sutures,

deeper,

shaking, dizzy.

The tv I leave on with the sound off just to keep me company while I listen to music throwing light and movement against the walls and bleeding like everything else in this watercolor world of 5am.

It’s at 5am that I let myself remember

and enjoy choking in the watercolor, not afraid to drown, overwhelmed, and

let myself soak right through,

because it reminds me that I am alive.

Sometimes I climb down into the well because even though I am alone, I am real.

Download: Mazzy Star - Roseblood / Telefon Tel Aviv - Map of What is Effortless / Grant Lee Phillips - So. Central Rain (REM Cover)
Buy the Album: Mazzy Star - Among My Swan / Telefon Tel Aviv - Map of What is Effortless / Grant Lee Phillips - Nineteeneighties

Cognitive Dissonance Comes in Threes Series, Part Two

Chipped paint falling off the half moons and hand-knit gifts tying up throats in the middle of the night are almost enough to forget I’m alone.

Download: The Cure - All Cats Are Grey / Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Rahway Wasdi Jhok Faridan Di / Seu Jorge - Quicksand
Buy the Album: The Cure - Faith / Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Nusrat Forever / Seu Jorge - Life Aquatic Exclusive Studio Sessions

Cognitive Dissonance Comes in Threes Series, Part One

330am delirium and cranberry juice powered.

Download: Happy Mondays - God’s Cop / The Temptations - I Can’t Get Next To You / Galaxie 500 - Ceremony
Buy the Album: Happy Mondays - Pills ‘n’ Thrills ‘n’ Bellyaches / The Temptations - Puzzle People / Galaxie 500 - On Fire

This is the other side of my Big Headphone Beats coin. A warm bath to relax in, a hammock to dream in, a dark shadowed corner to hide in.

These are the beats I love most, the bass lines that live in my skin, all attached to memory:

-flying down pch by myself at midnight, racing to beat the reflection of the moon on the ocean
-windy porches and cigarettes, writing letters, the train competing with the music in my headphones at 3am
-throwing paint and making books in the basement, finishing the night with 40s and bones
-hot hot summer afternoons sweating on sofas
-fogging up glasses while sipping jasmine tea on the way to class
-soft soft bedtime with candles and silk quilts, his letters slipped into my pillow

These are the beats that are in my heart, the ones that force my blood to travel round ‘n round and my breath flow in and out.

The Orb: Little Fluffy Clouds off The Orb’s Adventure Beyond the Ultraworld
Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy off Blue Lines, Better Things off Protection, Dissolved Girl off Mezzanine
Tricky: Feed Me off Maxinquaye, Children’s Story off Nearly God’s Heaven, Christiansands off Pre-Millenium Tension, Distorted Angel (Tricky Remix) off Elvis Costello’s Distorted Angel CD Single
Portishead: Pedestal off Dummy, All Mine off Portishead
Alpha: Slim & Somewhere, Not Here off ComeFromHeaven
Lamb: God Bless, Gold & Cotton Wool (Fila Brazillia Mix) off Lamb
DJ Shadow: Midnight in a Perfect World (Gift of Gab Remix) off Midnight in a Perfect World Maxi Single
Bjork: Play Dead off Debut, Headphones off Post, Scatterheart off SelmaSongs, Cocoon & An Echo, A Stain off Vespertine

I’m spent

Ten years ago all I wanted was to live in my headphones, listening to music that would make my eyes roll back.

Listening to music so loud that it would shake my spinal column and I could feel it working its way through my rib cage into my lungs like life-water, pushing through my heart so that it was fit to burst.

Ten years ago I was sober but this music made me lose my mind.

Ken Ishii: Extra & Cocoa Mousse off Jelly Tones
Chemical Bros: Life is Sweet off Exit Planet Dust & Private Psychedelic Reel off Dig Your Own Hole
Moby: Go off Moby
Roni Size: Heroes & Brown Paper Bag (Full Vocal Mix) off New Forms
Underworld: Dirty Epic off dubnobasswithmyheadman; Banstyle/Sappys Curry, Pearls Girl & Stagger off Second Toughest in the Infants

Submerged Series, Part Eight (Inside Me)

You know who you are.

Download: Tujiko Noriko - I Love You
Buy the Album: Tujiko Noriko - I Forgot the Title EP