"Apartment Story" by The National

This song doesn't need me to say anything for it.

the 'Visit Canada' commericials on American TV-

I love them. Very, 'The Blair Witch' ish cuts & takes.

GREAT Bowie interview about Scary Monsters

A lot of interviews I read, especially with musicians, are disappointing, they tend to reveal their shallowness and stupidity. Bowie casually augments his own work with brilliant explication.

"I Was Only Going Out" by Loney, Dear

Listen to this one, it deserves it. It's got everything that, to me, makes a great song. Environment: Some songs, you know the kind, invade your space. This is one of... those songs that makes a space for itself to exist in; Emotion: Emil Svanängen, who IS Loney, Dear, always writes such great English lyrics - for being Scandinavian, which if you listen to Nikola Sarcovic, you know can be difficult sometimes - especially if you don't play metal. And I am such a fan of Emil's composition - in this song especially; Individualism: it's a song that doesn't sound like anything else I've heard lately. The feel of it is very plateau, I guess, but this one is wound different. True, the music video isn't too-too original, but the music itself is, I think. And, last but certainly not least - I can listen to it 10 times in a row and still want to hear it again. I admit I've had it on repeat all week.

"Already Dead" by Denis Johnson

Well, it is beautiful, in a way that has me begging for something other than descriptions of a fleeing man tumbling through pacific coast creeks and forests - and then obliges me with an immersive portrait of a Halloween party and its intermingling of castes - in which I'm still lost. Like I'm not nearly worthy of this novel. Sure, I admit that. But I read the whole thing anyway, and I'm glad I did.

Navarro supposed he should stand aside, on the alert, but he let himself be drawn into sassy conversations and drank two beers quickly beside the kegs. Waved to Mo, a dancing girl. She lifted her hand and passed along the edges of his own irrelevance like a figure on a carousel.

What is it about this book, that literary types rave about, and that I can appreciate on a baser level? It's the style, or the eye, and the ear, and how they work together to synaesthetically sense an angular momentum in life, roiling currents, the latent energies of something more elemental, yet ethereal. I'm straining to try and have a meaningful take on it, but the story resists that. It's a frustrating read, but also rewarding every few pages or so. And of course, more than the sum of its parts, but seeming less than. Seeming, WTF? What's the point?

I like the character Yvonne. The fact that I like a character, really only her, says something about the author, I guess. I also like that in an afterward, on page 436, the author cops to having "distorted the intent" of the text "A Course in Miracles", on which Yvonne's notions are based, also referring the reader to the original. So, she's not just a straw lady. Although maybe that, as well. All things to all people, maybe? Yeah, make yourself easy.

get myself arrested - gomez

Got a haircut, got a silver tooth. Gonna get myself arrested. Got some friends in my BMW, tryin'a get themselves arrested...

Burnt Ivories & Dino Drama

"Piano Fire"
Sparklehorse
from It's a Wonderful Life

It's a Wonderful Life was Mark Linkous' (Linkous's, Linkou's, Linkoususes...) first substance-free album after being pronounced medically dead for three minutes after a bad reaction. It's sprinkled throughout with collaborations and is a bit more bare-boned than his other albums, not tinged in the sprawling psychedelic colors of its predecessor Good Morning Spider (and I have to be honest, I prefer It's a Wonderful Life, but mostly for sentimental reasons,) it offers, I think, a series of more sharply focused images, or at least, more sharply focused than we're used to seeing from Mark. You don't see this set of songs through the almost impenetrable static and metaphor of his previous works, but like reflections in a mirror. The emotions are, I think, closer to the surface, but they still have to be deciphered.

I love Piano Fire. It's propulsive. With PJ Harvey pulling guest vocals, and Linkous's lyrics and his own vocals pushing her...

how do you feel? / how do you feel? / I can't seem to see through solid marble eyes // fiery pianos wash up on a foggy coast / squeaky old organs have given up the ghost / fire them up and kill the pianos / there's creaky old organs burning on the coast

I like the static, I like the snares, the hush flush rush of the music feels like surf, like walking through the sandy swirls of low waves, leaving you wanting to drag your feet a bit, the way the vocals drag almost in opposition of each other, but in the same step, not so much riffing, but adding tension.... You still hear all the crashing and sift through it for the salt, the whole song washed in waves. The lyrical refrence to the ocean fits the music SO well. I love this song.


"Dinosaur Act"
by Low
from Things We Lost In The Fire

I wanted to find another song that gives the same sense of it being covered in a wash of something, or drowned in it... And it's got some good contrasting vocals in it as well, Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker are actually married. The bass beats are great, they feel like dinosaur stomps to me, big loomy echoes stomping all over it - which is why I like the title of the song. I love this album by Low, it's one I go back to over and over... someday I will do a decent review of it, but for now - there's the song.

You and your daughter / and your father / flew airplanes // You and your sister / can tell by the back of her hands // It was a dinosaur act / dinosaur act // After expenses / and pulling up fences / no more airplanes // And putting your foot down / a nail shot up like a bright red snowflake // Just like a dinosaur act / dinosaur act

Laibach

samples.

Haha Sound - Pendulum

Stereolab, dipped in lacquer, with the gain knob cranked - cool album, thanks chels.

woah

Thirty Rock really took a nosedive in quality, halfway through season 4, like they replaced their whole writing room with hacks who then resorted to crude formulas for emulating character behavior and plot lines. I think it hit its nadir with the dentist-anaesthesia episode. Wait, that wasn't even just one episode - it was an arc. An arc! I almost gave up. But I just watched the Floyd episode and it seems like it's starting to get back into form. Whew.

review of a movie with a pretty good title

the girl with a dragon tattoo

Incestuous Nazi  serial killer rapist father son tag team. Plus: Swedish and English have many common words, e.g. daughter. Also, Swedish women don't stay Hot t t as they age either.

I have been watching these all day.

Arj and Poopy: Poetreet from Arj and Poopy on Vimeo.

For Emma, Forever Ago

For Emma, Forever Ago
Bon Iver
2007 self-release / 2008 release by Jagjaguwar

I discovered this album in early 2008 when I was nannying in Stamford, Connecticut. It's not really a stretch to say it got me through that entire year.

Bon Iver - a play on the French "bon hiver" for "good winter" - is actually just Justin Vernon, formerly of DeYarmond Edison. When the band moved to North Carolina and broke up, Justin moved back to Wisconsin and holed himself up in a family cabin for four months, with recording the last of his intentions. He did what I think every artistic temperament would like to do after an exhausting creative "failure"... turn into a hermit and disappear. Recuperate in the snow, put the world on freeze until you're ready to resume.

Turns out when you're alone in a cabin and it's too cold to go outside, and you have rudimentary recording equipment just lying around, you can make a pretty incredible album, regardless of your original intentions.

One of the things I love about this, is that he recorded the music first, and then went back, listening to the melodies and inserting lyrics where he felt they fit best. To me, the words are just another instrument. There are parts where you can't really tell what he's saying, but you don't need to, the mood carries across regardless. It's got some brilliant lyrics, poetic, powerful images. Well, powerful in their loneliness, if that is power. They stick with you, especially once you figure out what he's saying...

"Sold my cold knot / A heavy stone / Sold my red horse for a venture home /To vanish on the bow -- / Settling slow // Fit it all, fit it in the doldrums / (Or so the story goes)"



It's all Vernon, all the instruments, everything. It wasn't re-recorded in studio when he reintegrated into society, (even though at times it does sound a bit too "produced" but that's just me nitpicking a folk element that's not acoustic, nor do I want it to be.) He had his brother haul up an old drum set for him, already equipped at the cabin with a Shure SM57 and an old Silvertone guitar. He says he made his own "instruments" out of stuff around the cabin for whatever else he needed. Here I picture the obligatory saw, washboard, sheet metal, moonshine jug, etc. But that's just me being romantic.

"I crouch like a crow / Contrasting the snow / For the agony, I'd rather know / 'Cause blinded I am blindsided // Peek in... into the peer in / I'm not really like this... I'm probably plightless // I cup the window / I'm crippled and slow / For the agony / I'd rather know / 'Cause blinded I am blindsided // Would you really rush out for me now? // Taught line... down to the shoreline / The end of a blood line... the moon is a cold light // There's a pull to the flow / My feet melt the snow / For the irony, i'd rather know / 'Cause blinded I was blindsided"



It's mood music, really. But it's good mood music. It's stuff I wish I'd written. I think it's gorgeous, but then, this kind of music is my thang. And I can be sucker for the soft stuff.

Besides, a lonely guy in a cabin? If you have to do it, you might as well do a Thoreau job of it.



"I was teased by your blouse / Spit out by your mouth / I was lulled by your low / Seminary song // Tear on tear on / Take all on the wind on / Soft bloody nose / Send another form // So many territories / Ready to reform / Don't let it form us / Don't let it form us / A creature fear"

hold tight - journey

sticky

Ween

 The best band you never gave a shit about till you heard more than three of their songs. This song makes me think of Malik.

who needs justin timberlake

though,
sexy back,
is
.good.






5:48
Add to queueAdded to
queue Milli Vanilli - Girl You Know It's True

the killers

yeah, ,... work it out.

we love u dire straight
cover

poetic justifications for inaction

The only place I've found poetry this millennium is in a title - and how. To easy answers, driver. Follow that bloody discharge. It's running a corporation like a running sore, consider it a run scored, I'm running to the mama matrix most mysterious, that's where I'll be safe.

So I felt lost because I forgot what holding a cigarette felt like. Because I'd forgotten what jonesying felt like. Except in the philosophical sense. Which seems to penetrate the deepest. And poetry takes a cut.

The only thing I can think to do is to take purpose in Pink Floyd. Learn a bunch of new live music tricks, get a second board like the college prof moonlight musician suggested. Maybe not worry about steel-toed boots just yet. See what shape this landscape is in, see what contours I form as a fluid, fluid is fine, I think, I'm fine with it, the path of least resistance. When resisting does not seem futile, I will... Uh. Huh. When woodsprites are sonic soul. Well. Spring? A new way to say hoooray? Let's not do concepts. But can we meander? I don't know if we can.

I don't see any particular appealing apocalypse. I don't see no career path. I don't know where these curves lead. To steel-toed boots? To job training programs? To George Street? I don't know. I'm lost. The bronze standard of tired, so I guess I'll sleep, via the vallie so low.

Super Mario Galaxy

is a well-designed game. They even incorporated "speed runs" into the gameplay, as a bonus level option. There, I said it. Now what?

heya.. i am back..

on my aol dial-up, ya fuck u , molly hatchet rules this a.m.
why? cuz i am in cousin hickey's garage! just a bit east of dekalb.

Holy Cats!

so i take the google trip to old stomping grounds once in awhile.. yes, that would be .de. germany. Gießen, Germany, home of The Busters Baseball Club, one great bratwurst stand, Turkish cuisine (if you have the right connections).. & a whole new lang:
http://www.gummi-insel.de/10.html
so DeNnIsDaNiEl @ youtube\ 3.4 Bier Normal
you have lame dance moves, & though
yer video
incorporates - a longing for humane @ economic correctness, you best step it up a notch.

cheers,
Tasha

it takes effort to write reviews - to write crafty reviews - to exercise craftsmanship - i have to really want to - and lately i don't, want, to, do, much, of, anything, really,, commas, are, slowing, my, metabolism,, lulling, me, to, sleep, or, supine, inert, inaction. Everything broken up in winces, or pinches of flab, sniffing of finger tips, I should go back to smoking cigarettes, shouldn't I, wouldn't it solve everything, don't you think? It's okay, nobody reads or posts here anyway, that's the way the cookie crumbles. When I'm a critic again, the venue will still be standing around, like a Chinese neo-city, ready for expected life.

For now there ain't no crafts going on in this workshop, there's the assembly line, and there's assigned tasks, there's a system, if you got any questions, RTFM. I give this mood a D minus.

Shpongle - Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland

I'll never forget the first and last time I saw Shpongle. It was Shambhala, 2007. The world-class trance mage was coming all the way from the UK, right to our backyard, to party with us! Were we that cool? We guessed so. After the tequila, robitussin, bubble-hash, and amphetamines, I somehow correctly figured the day as Sunday, a Shambles miracle. That meant Shpongle on the beach stage. That was the plan, right? Sunday morning, the orgasm of the whole thing! Thing was, I had no happy juice left in me. I was popping E every hour just to stave off the downer. The bliss had degenerated to a sketched-out jitter, but it was energy, better than nothing. Sleep was nowhere on the horizon.

Hash was fuzzing out the crash, and I was so burned out I was beginning to get what raggae was about. I guessed I should go see Shpongle, it was about that time. I couldn't miss THIS, no matter how zombified I felt, no matter how meaningless everything was, especially music. Shpongle would somehow make everything alright. Shpongle live, an absurd prospect, what could I expect? Was this real? The woodsy paths to the beach were choked with fellow wastoids, converging toward Shpongelia, surging to get shpongled. When I got close to the beach stage, sure enough, I heard a track from the new album, bassified almost beyond recognition. Some crew had smoked DMT for this concresence, I found out later, synced just for Shpongle. I don't know how people can do that, crazy hippies, living what I wanted to be in theory. Shpongle, live, AND vaporized dimethyltryptamine, inhaled? That seems almost grotesquely gratuitous, and yet, oddly graceful. Or gravy, like we said, back in the day.

I squirmed through the throng, trying to get a glimpse, I figured I should do that, take a mental snapshot. So I got one. Some ordinary looking guy in a white baseball cap behind a mixing board, doing that record-spinny thing DJs do. Having a hazy picture of "Shpongle live", I decided I was done. I wasn't gelling with the music, or the scene, or life, really. I had some somas back at the camp, maybe they would knock me out and I could stop tweaking.

Sorry, I wish I had a better "seeing Shpongle live" anecdote than that. I've never claimed to be a journalist.

Now, about Shpongle's newest album. Well, "newest album" is a misnomer. "Ineffable Mysteries" sounds like a precursor, which is not good for a fourth release. Everything that sounded so gloriously transhuman in their last three records has been re-shuffled and splayed out in a formula. I wish I could say this is an "apotheosis", but it's more self-parody. It's an adroit demonstration of all the Shpongelian production techniques thus far perfected. Every one of them, no shit. It's the tubular bells midi concerto for orchestra, all 128 patches! Plenty of boy-yoing pitch-modulated drums. The robot vowelizer is back, and he won't go away. That exotic  boundary-dissolving Shpongle sound you adore, you loyal fan? It's uber-exotic this time around, because there's more middle eastern scales per capita than the last three discs put together. Track two is Arabian-scale guitar over raggae. It's the Oreo Pizza philosophy: throwing things together because it hasn't been done, probably.

Basically, there's no point to this album. They did this shit better, way way better, with Are You Shpongled, Tales of the Inexpressible, and Nothing Lasts. It's a step backward, and not in a nostalgic way. Even the album title is goddamn shoddy. Ineffable Mysteries? C'mon, man, listen to yourself! I'm not being fair, I know. I cut them slack on the first three, and then decide this one gets no mercy, so I can be a bitchy critic, like I wanted to be. It has its moments of lysergic virtuosity that kick ass in a way no one else can. They're just scattered so thin that they're not worth mentioning.

I caught an interview with Shpongle, the band, on tour, prior to a show in Russia. DJ Simon and his crew of beautiful glittering freaks still seem to be a groovy bunch of people, funny and sardonic as fuck, which reminds me that you can be stoned on acid 24/7 and still be cool. I thought their last album was going to be their Last Album. "Nothing lasts... But Nothing is Lost", what a title for a closer. That would have been such a high note to go out on.

It sounds very pretty, like always. It's pretty good musical wallpaper - so that's kinda like high praise, since that's the main function of music nowadays. It's very "functional", like for the chill-out room, and Soma FM. But Shpongle is no longer the mage. The magic is gone. It's been Penn and Tellerized, through excessive exposition. Also, the people tripping samples are getting ridiculous, though I appreciate the intent more than one should decently say. This album sounds like what I would have done in 2003 if I'd gone mad with power – and then got really tired, and farmed out the project to hack producers in the mixing stage.

I'm not going to delete it from my hard-drive. I'm sure I'll find a function for it. Or a brand of cough-syrup that brings out its subtleties.