connexion: the selector

[Vinyl reissue series, #3]

I don’t know a lot about the Pain Teens, so I can’t go all Greil Marcus on you about their cultural significance. I know they were from Texas, and their album “Born In Blood” was getting a fair bit of airplay in 1991 on the college radio stations I listened to; and I liked several of the songs, so I bought it.

And here it is 15 years later, and I dust off the record, and I still like several of the songs, in particular the rather wicked “Lady Of Flame”. Turn up the volume, light the black candles, and let it be the soundtrack to your next late-night unspeakable magick ritual.

Listen: Pain Teens - “Lady Of Flame”
Buy: Pain Teens - Born In Blood

[Vinyl reissue series, #2]

Drowning Pool* were an L.A. band who released several incredible records in the late ’80s, but never quite attained even cult status, and subsequently vanished. I’ve just dusted off and imported their debut album from 1987, and it’s even better than I remembered it. I’ll go as far as to say that it’s equal to the best that 4AD or Rough Trade released that year, and was ahead of its time in ways that make it fit eerily well with the directions that Scandinavian bands like Sigur Rós and Under Byen are traveling in today.

Nowadays we’re spoiled for choice when we want music with that vintage 4AD swirly-spooky-dramatic sound; it’s become a style that bands draw on, like rockabilly or psychedelia. But the results suffer somewhat from being consciously retro. Drowning Pool, on the other hand, were being visited by the same muses at the same time as the Cocteau Twins, Dif Juz, Dead Can Dance and Cindytalk, and making their own music that stands as its equal. I’m sure they were buying the same import LPs at the same record stores that I was (Poo Bah, Aron’s), and listening to them as obsessively; but they put the sounds together in their own ways and were evolving forward in parallel with their UK peers, and with the small number of local experimental bands like Savage Republic, Fourwaycross and Opal. But not enough people noticed.

I think Drowning Pool’s fate was a sad accident of time and place. If they’d formed four years earlier in the U.K. they’d have been signed to 4AD in a flash; but by 1987, though Ivo Watts-Russell had discovered the USA, he was more interested in quirky indie-rock bands like the Throwing Muses and the Pixies. Or if they’d been in London in 1990, they might have fallen in with the shoegazer scene. Later in the ’90s they’d have been a great find for Kranky or Thrill Jockey, and nowadays they’d fit in well in NYC or Reykjavik.

But in L.A. in 1987 it was hard to know what to make of them. The record store where I bought their debut record put a hand-written sticker on it saying “Local band that sounds like the Cocteau Twins!” Not really, although they did open for the Cocteaux when they played the Palladium in 1986, which is how I discovered them…

Update! Thanks to comments on this post [see below] I’ve discovered that there is an official website, with CD reissues of the albums, as well as a MySpace fan page. Cool!

Listen: Drowning Pool, Romans and New Trembling Fingers
Download: The album Drowning Pool [47MB ZIP]
Buy: CD reissue from Scarface Charley Records

* no relation to the present-day metal band of the same name.

Songs for Bright Days, Part One

You can’t tell, probably, but there’s totally a heart in the window. I feel much better!, thank you for asking!

Hi guys!

Oh man did I sleep late today, almost 2 o’clock! I guess I’ve been really tired.

I got all sad times before bed last night but I feel better now. Maybe I was just really tired.

So! Guess what you guys?! I got a new iPod yesterday, I totally did! I ended up getting the black video one, 80GB. It’s cool and all but I never would have bothered if my old one didn’t take a total dump a couple months after my giving my brother my lil pink iPod Mini as a going away present. I mean, what do I give a shit about video capability? I don’t have a video camera (holy shiz, could you imagine if I did? You would all be in big biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiig trouble. Truth), and I looked through the iTunes Movie store last night–total crap, seriously. TOTAL CRAP.

Anyway, I have been iPodless for the last few months and it has seriously sucked balls.

You know what else sucks balls? Apple’s shipping policies. Sure I understand why they are the way that they are (and it’s a long story, which I won’t bother you with, because honestly, who gives a shit other than me? No one, that’s who), but they are wicked non-customer friendly. I was angry! With curses and everything! I mean, not to the CSR, because it’s not like she did anything, but when we hung up, I let a whole beautiful barrage of “cuntrags” and “motherfucks” and “tittiefuckers” and so on fly forth. I don’t consider myself to have a short or particularly bad temper, but holy shiz, did I FLIP OUT.

But then I thought to myself: oh yeah, self, you’re totally getting your panties in a knot over a fucking iPod and shitty customer service. CALM DOWN, GIRL.

And so I did.

And decided to head to the closest Apple store and grab a dood and go:

“I WANT TO BUY SOME STUFF, HELP ME SPEND MONEY. ”

Which I think gave the sales dood, Brian, a halfie.

Once that was all sorted, I was going to go to Sephora but then I remembered that I have everything I could ever need ever, and my skin and hair look fuckng flawless lately, and I smell so good that even the dood who delivered my dinner Friday night said so (which could have totally turned into a classic bow-chicka-bow-bow situation except he was straight up fugly), so I decided not to go just to spend money on shiz I don’t need right now.

So then I headed to Whole Foods for my weekly grocery shopping and let me just say something here:

WOMEN OF SEATTLE, YOU NEED TO FUCKING STOP ACTING LIKE CUNTS, OK? IT’S TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT, THE ONLY PERSON YOU ARE AGGRAVATING IS YOURSELF! GET LAID, GET A FACIAL, GET A FRIEND TO HELP YOU REMOVE THAT RED HOT POKER FROM YOUR ASSHOLE, DO WHAT YOU NEED TO DO!

Just calm down, ok girls? Mother fucking christ!

There were sooooooooooooooooooooo many bitches at Whole Foods yesterday. Like, all the doods I came into contact with were all, “Hey there little lady, how about I help you get that thing up on that shelf up there. Now here you go, darlin’, you have a good day, pretty thing (insert winky face here, and a tip of the ten gallon hat)”

Whereas all the ladies were like,

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING STANDING IN FRONT OF THE CANS OF ORGANIC CAT FOOD (insert cunty smelling onions face)?!?!?!??? IT WAS CLEAR BY THE WAY I WALKED DOWN THE AISLE THAT *I* WANTED TO LOOK AT THOSE, I DON’T CARE IF YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING AT THEM FOR 30 SECONDS LONGER THAN I EVEN THOUGHT ABOUT PICKING SOME UP FOR FLUFFY, PRINCESS, JEETER AND MITTENS, I WANT TO LOOK AT THE ORGANIC CAT FOOD, GET OUT OF MY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY“

and

“(scowling through clenched jaw) I know I am going the opposite direction of the line for the hot food bar, and that there are 4 people behind you, but if you don’t let me get to those fucking vegetable pakoras RIGHT NOW (red flames flare up in pupils)

I will bite your fucking titties off.”

to which I just smiled and spent some time thinking about whether I wanted 5 or 6 pakoras, and did i want a little mint chutney this time or stick with mango chutney?

That lady’s head almost exploded, but I made it out of there with my titties intact.

And then!!!!!

The hottttttttttttt blonde girl at Jamba Juice (y’all) was friendly to me and I can’t tell how old she is but I might, you know, try to work up the nerve to, I don’t know, chat her up and I don’t know exactly what people do after that, but I want to bite her titties, in a totally different way (insert winky face and tip of the ten gallon hat).

OK and then I came home and I did some shit that I can’t remember what it was, I know i talked a lot with BirdBallet, whose new food blog, WHAT I EAT is totally worth checking out. In fact, RSS Feed that shiz so you never miss a post.

Oh! And then I watched the rest of season 3 of the L word, in which the story lines get straight up insultingly stupid and you start to hate lesbians. Except for Katherine Moennig, I’d hit that twice, with pleasure.

Oh but!! I also had a fantastic ahi sashimi dinner prepared by yours truly, though to be fair “prepared” simply means I “sliced it up” (giving the tendony/bloodline bits to Amelia Earhart to eat with her CAN OF ORGANIC CAT FOOD, happy kitty!!), “put some honey ginger on a plate” and “mixed up some shoyu and wasabi to taste”.

Speaking of food, let’s play

WHAT I’VE EATEN SO FAR TODAY!!

Ok! So hi you guys, this is totally what I’ve eaten so far today:

You guys! Today I had the awesomest, easiest breakie ever! I threw a little olive oil and unsalted butter in a pan (turns out, the olive oil makes it so the butter doesn’t burn, it just gets nice and brown and nutty tasting–who knew??), cut up some of the most gorgeous fancy Canadian bacon I have ever seen and let it brown up slightly, then I tossed a scrambled egg in and mixed that up, threw it on a plate, sprinkled a little grated cheddar and monterey jack over it and then in lieu of sour cream I put a dollop of beeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuuuutttttttttttiiiiiiiiiiiiffffffffffuuuuuuuuuulllllllllll plain Greek yogurt on top.

I cut up and darkly toasted (this is my new thing) a french roll, put a thin thin sliver of butter on each half and then slathered it in strawberry jam (another my new thing) and I’ve been washing it down with a nice mix of Limonata, Pellegrino, cran juice and peach Oolong tea. Who says just because you’re not having alcohol you can’t still have a delightful mixed drink??

DELICIOUS!!

So, like.

What have you guys had to eat so far today?

Oh wait, ha, oh yeah! Music! Here’s a couple tracks off of the insanely, ridiculously good Badmeaninggood Vol. 4 by the Scratch Perverts out of London. Perfectly great music for a sunny cold Sunday afternoon where you’re dreaming of the temperature reaching a balmy 50F and the beginning of Spring.

Download: Minnie Ripperton - Les Fleurs / Sister Nancy - Bam Bam
Buy the Album: Scratch Perverts - Badmeaninggood Vol. 4

Andy Summers of the Police and Robert Fripp of King Crimson made this instrumental album in 1981-82. The results are mostly Fripp-like, with his pointillist style usually in the lead, while Summers contributes his chiming rhythm guitar and washes of background texture.

I bought the record when it came out in late ‘82; I was a total Police fanboy and had just discovered King Crimson’s “Discipline”. At the time, it didn’t really sound like anything else … electric guitar, but not rock or jazz, and emphasizing texture and rhythm over melody. Today we call that “post-rock”.

Sadly, it’s been out of print for years, and a used copy on CD costs quite a bit. But thanks to the new USB turntable my wife gave me for Xmas, I’ve recorded and cleaned up my battered 24-year-old LP, and converted it to CD and MP3.

This is the title track. It’s my favorite, and the most rock-like, with excellent and instantly-recognizable solos from each player.

Listen: “I Advance Masked”
Info: on Andy Summers’ website
Buy: (at outrageous prices) from Amazon.com or via GEMM

Songs of Escape, Part One

It was the strangest experience tonight, to feel all the goodness drain out of me, top down, like an aquarium with a crack in it. It was so disorienting to be so desperately, consciously aware of sliding down into the well.

I have been down here all night,

it’s so cold,

like winter all over from the inside out.

As consolation, I have been planning escape in my head. I have been daydreaming of fleeing to Northern Africa, or the Mediterranean, somewhere where it’s devastatingly hot and dry,

where everything is too bright like over-exposed film, the air is so hot I could feel my seams coming apart,

where I could disappear into busy street markets, where I wouldn’t understand the language, where I could take a crowded, stifling bus out into the desert and just walk until I fall down.

Where I could sit in the dark corner of a cafe for hours, writing postcards I’d never send, drinking pupil-black turkish coffee down to the mud,

where I could fill notebooks by oil lamp light to leave in train station lockers,

just find myself somewhere farther away than I could ever hope to imagine

where I could become utterly,

mercifully

lost.

Download: Savina Yannatou - Ypne Pou Pairneis Ta Paidia
Buy the Album: Savina Yannatou - Lullabies

I take a strange sort of glee in posting this track. It is definitely where my head was at between, say 1995 and 1997. It’s music that I can’t believe anybody got away with playing, or making, or hearing. And yet, playing it here today, it seems still seductive, a primal sexuality. There is something undeniable here, for me. It is facile and yet it works, the strange samples and the glossolalia.

Splinter Test was one of Genesis P-Orridge’s side-projects, and it is a “winner,” as you might expect from the Benny Hill of industrial music. I looked at his profile at the Discogs website, and I see he now has a pair of breasts. Oh Gen. Your weirdness is like a heroism to me, and I thank whatever you believe in today that people like you can exist.

This just reminds me of a certain time that we will never have again, that I probably never had in the first place, but there is still a little black spot of this in me.

Here is my new end-of-year mix:

William Basinski & Richard Chartier … Expo ’70 … Krill.Minima … DJ Olive … Biosphere … Loscil … Yagya … Lähtö … Hammock … Eluvium … Frost … Max Richter

Webpage: DJ sneJ — I Will Not Forget That I Have Forgotten

The Things That Make My Heart Beat Faster, vTwo, Part Two

Some nights dissolve softly, slowly

like honey poured into a bowl of tea.

Download: Paavoharju - Kuu Lohduttaa Huolestuneita / Lähtö - Descent / SubtractiveLAD & Bitcrush - Denouement / Marsen Jules - Couer Saignant
Buy the Album: Paavoharju - Yhä Hämärää / Lähtö - Departure (Free Download off the mirror site hosted by sneJ), Lähtö’s MySpace Page / Intelligent Toys 3 & Red, Green, Blue & Other Summer Feelings on the Sutemos Label (Free Download, menu to the left)

The Things That Make My Heart Beat Faster, Volume Two, Part One

I have been in a constant dream state for ten days, sickness has been coursing through my veins and draining all my strength. I spent the balance of this time in a fever soaked sleep, all manner of words, symbols and even mysterious music falling all over me as I twisted and turned in coughing, sneezing, aching pain.

Today was the last day, I pulled myself up out of my ocean-filled sickbed, I made myself go into work, that filthy petri dish, where I am surrounded by people hacking and wheezing with wet, TB cough, where people wipe their oozing noses on the backs of their hands and then handle door knobs and communal pens, coffee makers and toilet seats.

I am not a germ-phobe nor a compulsive hand washer, but when I was at my doctor’s office Wednesday morning I thought ahead and grabbed a handful of safety masks to protect myself.

People looked at me, and then again, and some even twisted their face up when they saw me in that mask, but I don’t care, this Plague that descended upon me sucks so badly that I might even gather up the courage to get that damned flu shot the next time I am offered.

Though my strength has ever so slowly creeped back throughout the day, my appetite made no such appearance, so I spent the majority of my lunch break driving around the cold, rain-slicked streets of the suburb in which I work, light-headed and blissful, listening to the mix that my beautiful Sekrit Twin, Bird Ballet, was so kind to send me this week.

Honestly, I credit this gorgeous mix with bringing me back to life.

Thank you, my dearest sweet, for saving me.

Because I care about all of you and want you to be well throughout this dreadful, long, cold winter, dear friends, I am sharing a few of my favorite tracks.

They will make you dip your head back, eyes rolling up into warmth and darkness, and say, so softly, “Ahhhhhh….”

xoj

Download: Alva Noto (featuring Ryuichi Sakamoto) - Iano / Icebreaker Int’l & Manual - Now Forever / A Lily - Arms Around Sleep
Buy the Album: Alva Noto - Insen / Icebreaker Int’l & Manual - Into Forever / A Lily - Wake:Sleep

Songs to be Still to, Part Three

I know I often write about the same themes, and often the musicians I share are the same ones time and time again.

I know that it often appears that I am walking in circles around the same fire.

But I promise you that it’s not because I am bound up, or that I don’t know what I am doing.

I am figuring things out, though I may be slower than most; often I must write over and over again, just to see the words I have inside me out in the world.

I’ll write anywhere, I have pads and pads with phrases and even sometimes just a mix of words and numbers that probably is inscrutable to everyone outside of this head, napkins and water color notebooks, receipts and work papers, even the inside of my arm when I can’t find a scrap to exorcise these thoughts.

Things are coming into focus now, and I am learning to be still.

Download: Tom Waits - Tell it to Me, Poor Little Lamb
Buy the Album: Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers and Bastards. Amazing.

Perri Series, Final Part

photo courtesy of perri

The sky was dark by 430 today.

Every year, once the winter is over my mind hides its memory away, like the memory of a terrible pain, so that I can go on.

Every year, when the sun starts to push its way through the darkness, and the tulips line the sidewalks, bent with rain water and

the world explodes into a canopy of cherry blossoms, so many that they even overflow in our gutters,

I am able to forget that for these long, long months, everything is so dark that it’s almost more than my heart can bear.

I am doing my best to hang on, but I don’t know how many more of these winters I can take. It would break my heart to leave Seattle, but then again, it might break my mind to stay.

Download: Tsukimono - Gloomy Sunday
Buy the Album: If you can believe it, even gemm didn’t have anything by Tsukimono available. The track lists the album as “Famous for 15MB”, and I can’t remember when or where I originally found it, but here is a list of some of his releases, most of which I have and all of which are fantastic. Also, if you think this song sounds familiar, perhaps you heard it in Farther North from back in November, when this horrible winter first brought down the darkness.

Perri Series, Part Six

photo courtesy of perri

Lovely Sekrit Twin,

You make my heart go Pow and

are the trusted keeper of the key to all my whispered hopes; you help me keep my balance when I can’t separate the horizon from the sea.

You’ve taken some of the darkness out of this dreadful, long winter

You are the brightest star in my night sky, and I love you.

Thank you for being there, dearest sweetest Twin.

With all my affection, forever and ever,
jessica

Download: Modest Mouse - You’re the Good Things / Sia - Butterflies
Buy the Album: Modest Mouse - Everywhere and His Nasty Parlor Tricks / Sia - Colour the Small One

The light’s edge crawled,
crinkled, on all fours,
the tail end of a lever
the other inside the sun.

I’m kind of stunned by lähtö — the contrast between the excellence of the music and the utter obscurity of its release into the world. It’s a Cornell box found in a thrift store.

The music is ambient drone. If you need melody and rhythm and clear tone in your music, look elsewhere; but if you like the huge, amorphous, swirling hypnotic clouds of glowing murk produced by masters like Stars Of The Lid, Aloof Proof and Eluvium, then please click those links below right now.

There’s a definite progression to these three albums. “Departure”, the first, is more an exercise in timbres than coherent music. Fortunately, on “Footnote” the sounds are hooked into compositions that ebb and flow. Some parts are extremely noisy, but in an exhilarating way; other parts are barely there but impart an interesting color to the silence. The brand-new “Leaving Behind The Sun” leaves behind the noise but is extremely dense and beautiful.

This music is Not Available In Any Store (online or off), isn’t on CD, isn’t on a netlabel, isn’t on BitTorrent, isn’t on a hosted website. It’s in anonymous zip files on megaupload.com, one of those seedy no-questions-asked file-download sites. I found it via a blurb on a LiveJournal MP3-trading community of questionable legality. The guy behind lähtö was kind enough to make his music “free to download and distribute”, so since I have lots of room on my site I decided to mirror it, and that’s what I’m linking to below.

Listen: lähtö - “Take My Hand And Come With Me” from Leaving Behind The Sun; “Aglow I” from Footnote
Buy Download The Albums: Unofficial lähtö mirror site hosted by yrs truly (music is free to download/distribute)

Perri Series, Part Five

photo courtesy of perri

I will take your fingers, put them to my lips; you will be able to count my pulse, inexorable,

steady.

All the stillness in the world hasn’t stopped my heart from pounding.

Download: Colleen - Petite Fleur, Your Heart is so Loud, I’ll Read You a Story
Buy the Album: Colleen - Mort Aux Vaches, Et Les Boites a Musique

Perri Series, Part Four

photo courtesy of perri

The days have been so dark, dear.

I haven’t been able to reach out and tell you how I feel.

Download: Jeff Buckley - If You Knew
Buy the Album: Jeff Buckley - Live at Sine (Deluxe Edition)

Perri Series, Part Three

photo courtesy of perri

Quiet.

Deep breaths.

Download: Colleen - Mining in the Rain, Nice and Simple
Buy the Album: Colleen - The Golden Morning Breaks, Everyone Alive Wants Answers

Perri Series, Part Two

photo courtesy of perri

I am feeling particularly closed mouth lately, and wary. Sometimes things, they just don’t work out the way you’d hoped they would.

That being said, even though it’s been a disappointing week/weekend, when I came back across this song tonight, I have to admit that my heart exploded into a flock birds, swirling figure eights.

The odd good memory from high school is so very welcome. I just wanted to share.

Download: The Cure - High
Buy the Album: The Cure - Wish

Perri Series, Part One

photo courtesy of perri

Happy New Year, friends and Selectors.

Here’s to a wonderful and exciting 2007!

Download: Sun Ra - Happy New Year to You
Buy the Album: Sun Ra - The Singles