Song of the day “I hold the line, the line of strength that pulls me through the fear”

Peter Gabriel “San Jacinto”

more fol­lows »

now lis­ten­ing: Peter Gabriel “San Jacinto”

The power of a word

As soon as I said “interim”, the pieces fell into place. I swear, I nearly heard the clicking.

I’ve said it before, and it never felt more true: noth­ing about me is ever true until I actu­ally say it.

Fripp/​Sylvian, Dougans/​Cobain, Ball/​Norris

Very rarely do I drop a music shar­ing post where I upload some­thing by one artist. When I do, it’s pretty worthwhile.

This is the 1993 sin­gle for David Sylvian and Robert Fripp’s “Darshan”, a track off The First Day, their album from the same year. As you can see, it’s an attrac­tive cover, thanks to the tal­ents of Vaughn Oliver at V23 (who you may know from doing nearly every­thing 4AD ever put out). It has three tracks: the song in ques­tion plus two remixes. One remix is by The Grid, the other remix is by The Future Sound of London. It opens with the remix by The Grid. It’s one of the high­lights of their career, an uplift­ing, lightly funky piece that sus­tains a groove and doesn’t bore the lis­tener even though it’s 16 min­utes long. The Future Sound of London remix diverges a bit more, enough so to get reti­tled “Darshana” and for Dougans and Cobain to get a writ­ing credit. If The Grid remix is one of the high­lights of their career, the FSOL remix would be a high­light of anyone’s career. It’s per­haps styl­is­ti­cally sim­i­lar to some of the remixes Global Communication were doing around the same time, and has a sense of beauty and light­ness that GC often achieved in their remixes, but has a slightly off under­cur­rent and a psy­che­delic qual­ity that FSOL were known for. In other words, it’s a keeper, and I could lis­ten to it for a loooooooong time.

Take a lis­ten. I guar­an­tee that in the right frame of mind, any of these three songs could be one of the best things you’ve ever heard.

now lis­ten­ing: Fripp/​Sylvian

Coming to (new mix)

I hadn’t done a mix in a long while, and after that awful Red Wings loss Saturday, I needed to turn up some loud music and feel a lit­tle bet­ter. I ended up throw­ing a mix together that’s a lit­tle springly. Saturday was a warm, sunny spring day; Sunday was a cooler, rainy spring day. It’s a lit­tle sloppy at the begin­ning, but there are some inspired moments throughout.

Young America Primitive “These Waves“
God Within “Raincry” Submerged
The Future Sound of London “Papua New Guinea” Journey to Pyramid
Chicane “Offshore“
Lush “Stray” Groove Mix
Dance 2 Trance “Hello San Francisco“
Utah Saints “Trance Atlantic Flight“
Spooky “Little Bullet (part one)“
Jam & Spoon “Stella” The Lost Bet Mix
Orbital “Lush 3 – 4 Warrior Drift“
Feedback “I’m for Real (1)“
The Shamen “Rausch”

Yeah, it’s pro­gres­sive house and trance. Disturbing from me, isn’t it? I mean, holy crap, it’s fuck­ing “Offshore”. Well, y’know, it’s a decent tune and mixes so well into that Lush remix…yeah, a Lush remix by the Drum Club. Stick around for the end: the Feedback track is LFO in dis­guise, and the Shamen track is from their out-​​there album, Hempton Manor, and is pretty ban­gin’. So, yeah, fuck­ing trance music was good back in the early ‘90s.

Download these beats

Getting older isn’t as confusing as getting older

[dis­jointed entry alert: sort of writ­ing this one on assign­ment, as it may be]

People have accused me of liv­ing in the past. This is sim­ply not true — I just don’t appre­ci­ate the present until it’s become the past. I think it started when I was around 15. I have (had?) very few mem­o­ries of child­hood, so it makes sense that I can’t really miss the past until there’s enough of it at a dis­tance to miss, and I’m old enough (self-​​aware) to actu­ally notice it. Also, I’m not miss­ing the past specif­i­cally: I have always missed the first time I felt any par­tic­u­lar way. Well, maybe “miss” is the wrong word. I long for that moment when I recog­nise I am feel­ing a new (to me) emo­tion or notic­ing the way sen­sory inputs have aligned in a par­tic­u­larly sub­lime way.

As my child­hood was, er, abnor­mal, it’s no real sur­prise I didn’t really start to learn about and rec­og­nize emo­tions until I was in my pre-​​teens. I think the first time one of these moments occurred was when I was around 11, and I remem­ber miss­ing it within a few years. Since then, it’s been at least one thing every year that gives me a sort of bit­ter­sweet, exis­ten­tial feel­ing.* I’ve cat­a­logued all of these sen­sa­tions of height­ened self-​​awareness and I wish I could turn back the clock to feel them again…but not at the age I was when it hap­pened, because I didn’t actu­ally appre­ci­ate the expe­ri­ence until a cou­ple years later. I want to be myself at my cur­rent age as an omni­scient observer of my inter­nal dia­logue at the time when I was break­ing into new emo­tional ter­ri­tory. Oh, man, that sounds ridicu­lous, doesn’t it? I should think about that for a minute.

Ok, I’ll stand by that, but maybe I need to real­ize that the way I live now, yearn­ing for the expe­ri­ence of the new, has great value to me. This actu­ally brings me to the main rea­son why I’ve embarked on writ­ing this utterly self-​​serving blog entry. Only in the past year or so have I learned that I am not doomed to a life of long­ing for the past via its traces in the present.** I real­ized, like the genius that I am, that every year a cou­ple new things hap­pen. Taking it to another level, things have never stopped hap­pen­ing. Oh snap, that means they prob­a­bly won’t either. Now why might it be worth more for me not to notice how I’ve learned (impor­tant word) after a few years? This allows me to take the expe­ri­ence that has hap­pened to intro­duce me to a new emo­tion and see how I have uncon­sciously learned from it (or not), see­ing if I did well or if I need to make changes.*** If I was in tune with it at the time, I’d undoubt­edly fuck it up and learn from it incor­rectly. Another aspect of get­ting older is that I know that my first impres­sions of an expe­ri­ence are usu­ally poor, so a rel­a­tively ingrained behav­ior of ignor­ing my first impres­sions is pretty advan­ta­geous to my per­sonal growth. This is a com­pli­cated thing per­haps ready for another blog post in a few months, if I even feel like dis­cussing pub­licly is some­thing that mer­its doing. Although it is why I started this post…

Yeah, I’ll fin­ish the thought. This may sound sorta like bull­shit, but I’m try­ing to recon­nect. See: child­hood, awk­ward­ness therein; fur­ther see: syn­drome, Asperger’s, my. Ahh, been a while since I dragged that old chest­nut onto al-​​bloggariya, hasn’t it?**** Well, it’s been on my mind WAY more than usual lately. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to sug­gest that the time has come for me to finally tran­scend that and join the reg­u­lar folk. Ha, no, as if. Lately, though, I have been notic­ing that my nat­ural incli­na­tions have been pre­vent­ing me from being the per­son I want to be, so I wish to add new traits and per­haps refine some that I already have, all while keep­ing my iden­tity intact (that means you, Hans’ handiwork).

Changing? Keeping your iden­tity intact? Sounds hard, some might say. Pish posh, I say. Change is for those who’ve made mis­takes and don’t like them­selves, some say. Well, shit, they don’t say that to me, because I don’t know any­one who’s a closed-​​minded fool who believes that it’s a good idea to stand in the way of change (= progress, look it up, dammit).

[see, I told you this would be pretty self-​​serving]

* So, in a way, an exis­ten­tially bit­ter­sweet feel­ing is one of the first emo­tions I became famil­iar with. No sur­prise I was a pre­ten­tious shit in high school, eh?

** Who grokked hauntol­ogy from the moment he heard of it? This guy, that’s who.

*** E.g.: 2003 was when I learned about jeal­ousy. Yeah, I’d never felt it until then. Those were fun times; I’m sorta still try­ing to atone for them.

**** I’ll thank you for kindly refrain­ing from inform­ing me that it’s been a while since I really dragged much of any­thing onto here.

now lis­ten­ing: The Smiths “This Night has Opened My Eyes”

The Sorrows of Young Whatever

Everything ever said about the rel­a­tiv­ity of time — be it seri­ous or jokey or wrong — is right. Short expanses of time can be unen­durably long, long stretches of time can pass by with­out notice, and now lasts for­ever while the past and the future never existed and never could or will. I whiled away last Saturday by sleep­ing until two in the after­noon, tak­ing two hours to con­sider myself fully awake, and then pretty much plop­ping myself under a blan­ket in front of the TV for 10 hours, at which point I went back to bed. I think my psy­che required such a day, as I had essen­tially been on the go (Yale, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, San Francisco, San Diego) for the bet­ter part of a month. At one point, I had only slept in my bed 8 days of the pre­vi­ous 28. Considering my needs of the world and its needs of me, it is occa­sion­ally required that I achieve a fully veg­e­ta­tive state. more fol­lows »

now lis­ten­ing: Burial “Raver”

best of 2009 music

March first is a good day to post this, right? I mean, the rush to get these out is gone, so now mine will appear more impor­tant for lack of competition.

So, remem­ber how I did it last year? The tier­ing sys­tem, as opposed to rank­ings? Yeah, that’s how I’ve been rat­ing every­thing since then. Hard and fast rank­ings are for the inflex­i­ble and narrow-​​minded.

The movers

The xx The xx
Telefon Tel Aviv Immolate Yourself
DJ Sprinkles Midtown 120 Blues
The Lullaby League Dormio Animus
Monolake Silence
Intrusion The Seduction of Silence

Yep, these are the best. Not only are they really good, but they’re really mov­ing. That may come as a sur­prise in the case of Monolake. It’s a good Monolake album, on par with Interstate, for sure, but mov­ing? Perhaps an odd claim, but I find this album really affect­ing. The same goes for the Intrusion album. Not only am I com­pletely com­fort­able call­ing that one of the best (dub or oth­er­wise) techno albums of all time, it’s so evocative.

DJ Sprinkles is Terre Thaemlitz’s moniker for house-​​influenced mate­r­ial, as opposed to his usual glitched ambi­ence. Amazing how one guy (er) could do two such diverse gen­res so well. Midtown 120 Blues is one of the three best house albums I’ve ever heard. Granted I’m not a house head, so my tastes are a bit off, but this is a clas­sic. It’s really warm and organic, uplift­ing yet moody, and just sloppy enough. Oh, you can dance to it, of course. Now that you know about Terre, I bet the Lullaby League is the obscurest thing here. I don’t know much about them either. I stum­bled across this album, and it trans­fixed me. It’s also warm, organic, and kinda sloppy, but it’s a slightly glitchy ambi­ent album with some great spo­ken word on top. It does won­der­ful things: when you’re try­ing to fall asleep and lis­ten­ing to it, it keeps you in the space between asleep and awake. Really cool.

Many know the story of the Telefon Tel Aviv album at this point: two guys, one of them kills him­self the week before this album is released. I don’t bite on those kinds of sto­ries; the music stands alone to me. In the end, I am self­ishly moved by his death, because this is the first Telefon Tel Aviv album that blew me away…and now I don’t get another. Shitty. So go buy this one. It’s shoegazey-​​IDM-​​synthpop. Odd combo, I know, but I love it.

And then…the xx. Forced to choose, I think I have to go with this album as my favourite of last year (with very close com­pe­ti­tion from Intrusion). It’s pretty much per­fect. A lot has already been said about it, so I’ll try and not repeat any of it. It’s amaz­ing. Go buy it. (Crap, that’s already been said.) The most aston­ish­ing thing about this album is its restraint. To make an album so sub­tle and relaxed is not com­pletely aston­ish­ing, but it is for four 20-​​year-​​olds. That’s the age when rock­ing is impor­tant. Subtlety is for the old who can’t han­dle the noise. Let this be the first sign of a new era in barely-​​there music.

more fol­lows »

now lis­ten­ing: Chameleons

song of the day “bird, chrome”

under­world “beau­ti­ful burnout”

blood on the tis­sue on the floor of the train
sun goes down
tem­per­a­ture drops
beau­ti­ful burnout, beau­ti­ful burnout
bird
chrome

that’s it. sim­plic­ity always cre­ates a stronger image.

2009 was a pretty straightforward year

…accord­ing to last​.fm, any­way.

my top 20 artists for the year:

  1. depeche mode
  2. pet shop boys
  3. brian eno
  4. coil
  5. the cure
  6. new order
  7. peter gabriel
  8. ein­stürzende neubauten
  9. the orb
  10. b! machine
  11. mus­lim­gauze
  12. the church
  13. cur­rent 93
  14. and one
  15. front 242
  16. de/​vision
  17. the the
  18. project pitch­fork
  19. david syl­vian
  20. covenant

part of me is a lit­tle let down that it isn’t “weirder”, but that’s really a fool­ish thing to com­plain about. in ret­ro­spect, i guess i had a pretty crummy year, so no shock i went with “com­fort” music.

two relat­edlys:

  • yeah, there’ll be a best of 2009 list. prob­a­bly the end of next week.
  • i’m launch­ing a new web­site for music reviews. no, really, i am, around about the same time. still no idea what to do to replace the podcast.

if this seems like a blog post that some­body would put up if they were post­ing more often, i.e. you expect there to have been more seri­ous, real­is­tic con­tent before this, espe­cially in light of the year chang­ing and hol­i­days and all that crap, well, you’re right. there is a bunch of con­tent in the space between this and my last post. no, you can’t see it. it isn’t writ­ten, it prob­a­bly will never be writ­ten, and, really, there’s noth­ing melo­dra­matic about that. con­sider this my apolo­gia to myself for beat­ing myself up over not post­ing more often. just because i’m not “post­ing to my blog” doesn’t mean i’m not record­ing events and gen­er­at­ing con­tent. it just doesn’t tran­scribe to this format.

now lis­ten­ing: coil

i can’t escape from you

i miss the pod­cast. i miss shar­ing music i like with my friends. le sigh. so…

a lit­tle comp i pre­pared, in mem­ory of autumn. last day of novem­ber, last day that really is “autumn” as it’s emo­tion­ally defined. maybe you live some­place warm and sunny and you didn’t really get an autumn: this should help put a cloudy chill in the air.

Violina: the Last Embrace” Lisa Gerrard The Mirror Pool 1995
“Your Helping Isn’t Helping” The Boats Words Are Something Else 2009
“Atemlos” Zwischenfall Gestern und Heute 1983
“Warten” ExKurs Fakten sind Terror 1981
“Are You Alone?” Skanfrom Are You Alone? 2009
“How Difficult It Is” Zerkalo Stoi Storoni Zerkala 2009
“Where’s Your Child?” Bam Bam Where’s Your Child? 1988
“Untitled 08″ Television Set & Others in Conversation November Session 2009
“I Lived My Life to Stand in the Shadow of Your Heart” A Place to Bury Strangers Exploding Head 2009
“Pleasure and Pain” The Chameleons Radio 1 Evening Show Sessions 1983
“Severance” Ride Waves: Peel Sessions 1990 – 94 1991
“Witch Hunt” The Church Priest = Aura 1992
“Two Hands” Nudge As Good As Gone 2009
“The Dawn” DJ Krush Kakusei 1999
“Sometime Later” Alpha Come From Heaven 1997
“The Host of Seraphim” Dead Can Dance The Serpent’s Egg 1988

(zip file)

if you use iTunes, import the .xml playlist file. if you use some other player, there’s an .m3u file.

update: thanks to mor­gan of commenting-​​below-​​fame, here is an updated m3u file if the included one doesn’t work.

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