Mar 01 0 comments
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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
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Jan 19 2 comments
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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.

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Jan 02 0 comments
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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
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Nov 30 3 comments
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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.

Nov 10 0 comments
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song of the day “life’s an optical illusion, like other optical illusions”

damn. i miss doing the pod­cast. i also miss writ­ing here reg­u­larly. that hasn’t really hap­pened since i left NYC. i don’t doubt for one minute that the energy of the city made me more alive and more ener­getic. go ahead, go back to 2004, 2005 entries. the qual­ity and quan­tity of emblo­gena­tion there is far greater than this (though i won’t lis­ten to any bitch­ing or dis­gust or mock­ery as to the what i wrote about back then). have i achieved min­i­mal­ism? doubt­ful: realised last night that while i love min­i­mal­ism and con­sider myself a min­i­mal­ist, at this point, it’s just a goal.

damn. here’s a great chameleons song, with some great lines and ideas, in a sorta-​​endearingly low-​​budget video and mimed performance.

the chameleons “monkeyland”

more fol­lows »

Oct 12 0 comments
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podcast…podcast?

well, maybe you’ve been won­der­ing what has hap­pened to my pod­cast. i talked a lot about hav­ing some excit­ing stuff planned for my 100th episode (and around then), but that was in july. months have passed, and noth­ing. well, all of the excit­ing stuff i wanted to do, i couldn’t get any­thing more than luke­warm responses from the folks i wanted to have as guests, so i guess i’ve scrapped it. the whole thing.

i don’t want to come across as all emo, but i’ve only recently heard from three peo­ple that they lis­ten reg­u­larly, and i guess i just don’t feel moti­vated to do it if it’s the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent of a tree falling in a for­est. my increasingly-​​irregular sched­ule must have clued you in (if you actu­ally paid atten­tion, that is to say), so i sup­pose one can tell i’m just not feel­ing it.

in a way, a shame, as i’ve cer­tainly found a lot of music i enjoy lis­ten­ing to lately, and i wish i had peo­ple around to talk to about it, to share it. that’s the point, there: i wish i had peo­ple around. doing the pod­cast must have given me the idea that i would be cre­at­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with my friends (and maybe make some new ones) about music i enjoy and they might enjoy as well. that didn’t really hap­pen. no rea­son why it couldn’t, but i’ll look else­where for that. try a new method, maybe, some­thing dif­fer­ent. i still want the con­nec­tion, but it’s not hap­pen­ing like this. i’ll have to come up with some­thing else.

any­ways, i fin­ished with 99 episodes, so some would say it is incom­plete. i can see that. maybe it ends now, incom­plete, as a reminder of _​_​_​_​_​_​_​. maybe i fin­ish it later, some­how, appro­pri­ately. we’ll see.

now lis­ten­ing: shack­le­ton “trem­bling leaf”
Sep 14 1 comments
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why i like the suburbs

maybe this is how i am unde­ni­ably american.

i see the sub­urbs as a very evoca­tive place. maybe it’s because i grew up there, and had all my most influ­enc­ing (?) expe­ri­ences in sub­ur­ban icons, but they’re really quite mys­te­ri­ous. david lynch would agree, no doubt. brian eno, too, probably.

the sub­urbs at night are amaz­ing. after mid­night, on a week­night? they’re so dark and lonely. there are these lit­tle pock­ets of light and warmth — a street­light here, a porch light there. houses sit, full of rest­ful peo­ple, shar­ing a lit­tle cozi­ness from the dark and cool night.

the real beau­ti­ful areas are the edges of the sub­urbs, where they start to go rural. there you have fewer street­lights and homes, and more open space. those open spaces often fill with a lit­tle mist at night. at night, the land gets to be what it misses being. deer, owls, and other crea­tures of the night move around. this also includes the lone police­man, sit­ting in his car at a stop­light, guard­ing against the scourge of the sub­ur­ban night, teenagers.

the shop­ping plazas are quiet and bathed in the glow of their mer­cury bulbs. all that they can do is wait peace­fully. they get to sleep, too. the empty park­ing lots radi­ate warmth left over from day, like giant sleep­ing beasts.

of course there are sub­ur­ban hells: light pol­lu­tion has ruined the night skies for four gen­er­a­tions of amer­i­cans and count­ing, the days are full of mis­er­able traf­fic and wastes of water, and they are far too insu­lar & self-​​absorbed. at night, though, the sub­urbs are a sur­real else­where, where mys­tery is height­ened and things seem just askance of reality.

now lis­ten­ing: solar quest “fly­ing spirals”
Sep 10 0 comments
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back to irregularly scheduled deprogramming

hey Blog.

so i’ve got a wack­load of pic­tures from my august trav­els. (for me, a wack­load is a lot…like about 2 dozen.) first i gotta sort ‘em and tweak ‘em, so i’ll just leave you with a teaser.

this is the view i had for a few weeks at my grand­par­ents’ on lake michigan:

ahhh

can’t argue with that, can ya?

so, to tide you over until those pics come…Song of the Past Two Weeks:
more fol­lows »

now lis­ten­ing: depeche mode “bet­ter days” bas­teroid dance is gone vocal mix
Aug 17 0 comments
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home’s front door

Mackinac Bridge

Mackinac Bridge from Fort Mackinac (a/​k/​a look­ing north to the UP): do you like how I stuck the flag in there, like it’s a chee(r/s)y postcard?

Aug 11 0 comments
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see you in september

…though i hope the auto-​​post-​​photos plu­gin dealie works, so you’l get some micah-​​content.


View august 09 in a larger map