I really couldn't tell you which albums I've heard this year and which I heard last year, and it's very unlikely that the albums I listened to this year were released this year anyway. So I suppose this is my equivalent of a year-end list, but in a kind of Billy Pilgrim fashion. Also - there's aren't really albums that I've necessarily heard recently, and it's definitely not a definitive list. This list is the written commentary for a DVD's worth of music I made for Oli, cut off as he is in London...cut off, at least, from [...]
just a test for now. This is the new mixtape. Tape Club - Black Toast. Savora. Cayenne. Salt. Gorgonzola. Hope it works.
I'm going to talk about two songs, two songs that are not as they seem. When alone, especially in headphones, I often think about the reasons why I listen to noise, or noise music. The reasons are both new and not-new (but not old); the first time I heard anything that could be really considered noise was in sixth form, and I was on my own at a computer. I often attribute many characteristics of my personality (insomnia, walking, writing, vocal inertia, (attraction to) the sea, (love of) solitary time, (connection to) loneliness, etc.,) to the fact that [...]
I have just realised, tonight, that I often play a game. The game is - I play the Blackout Beach version of Claxxon's Lament, and then I play Wolf Parade's version (cover) of the same song, and then I repeat this cycle, constantly trying to discern which is better. I start by just playing them back to back - maybe I will play one, and then think, do I prefer this one? and consequentley play the other - almost in the background, not really listening. I think it will be an easy decision to make. Like covers of [...]
For those of you looking for the most recent tape club mix, it's in the post below this one. While uploading all the tape club tapes to sendspace instead of megaupload (people seem to find sendspace easier), I found a load of my old mixtapes. I am an incessant maker of clubs - clubs, as the title suggests, that don't necessarily have any members, or members who are conscious or willing of their membership. Does this come from being an only child? Possibly, maybe probably. So the first major example of this was the mixtapes I [...]
It takes me a couple of minutes to start these emails. It's like: sorry, I owe you a tape. Or: sorry it's been so long. But - and let's be honest now - who is actually waiting for these apart from me? The answer is approximately no one. But don't feel bad - I have no problem with this, at all. It is not a thankless task. Occassionally I get emails saying, hey, I liked that. Every now and then, people tell me that they've listened to them on the way to work, or [...]
I've been making the next mixtape for a really long time, which, if i'm honest, is too long. too long for all of you, too long for all of me. we all thought this was just a massive piece of procrastination. part of me is with you, but part of me is saying: fuck you, of course i would carry on! hey, lets just....let's just hug, and pretend this never happened. so the problem with this mixtape was the first half. after the last hemingway one, i realised that a constant overlapping of tracks was the right format [...]
Hey, again. Too soon? First of all, I apologise for the way I 'get into' writing this email. I have been thinking/writing my dissertation all day (in between buying two records and changing money into other money), and I just can't seem to wind out of that theoretical thought-space. Two things will happen - I will either slip into the jug of wine groove, or I will remain in the fake theory groove. The wine groove will be good for you, because it will take away pretension and crippling self-consciousness and replace it with wild nudity (so to [...]
so, wow. did anyone feel that? here, it was a shaking and a low noise. i was lying at the wrong end of the bed, and had just drifted off, watching records spin. but i can't imagine not waking up - the whole house was actually shaking, noticeably creaking and vibrating, and the noise was like a low pulsing - like the engine of a bus. afterwards, we were awake, so we watched an old audrey hepburn film - in which she attempts to commit suicide with five cars turned on in a locked garage, and humphrey bogart shoots at [...]
wow, i mean, how does anyone actually keep in contact? letters are great, but...i'm not even sure if half these addresses work anymore. anyway, so, i was planning to start a (bi)monthly mixtape club, where i just send an (electronic) tape out every couple of weeks/months. i guess it came from being awake at night with a load of albums, and also from the lack of contact i have with people just in general. seriously, i have no idea how most of you are. i don't even know where most of you are! i mean, i've got newport, [...]
before christmas, all my speakers seemed to be following my own path of slow exhaustion. many words were written, thankfully a portion of them were creatively motivated - but then the writing of creative work, knowing that it will be judged on a 1-100 scale and contribute towards one's degree, end up having the effect of the production of many more words than are actually handed in. add to that the ability, in an appendix, to explain one's creativity (which at first becomes a task, and then a liberty, and finally a monolith), and we have what can only be [...]
I don't really go on buses anymore, but today I got on the wrong bus. No, wait - I got on the wrong bus. I don't really go on buses anymore, but today I was on one, going the wrong way. At first I thought, shit. It's way too hot on this bus, and I was inappropriately dressed, wearing two jackets. But then, after we got out of the traffic jam, a breeze came in through the single open window and it wasn't so bad. We went passed the Village, where I used to [...]
we've moved house, and so we walk a different way to uni. initially this seems like a shitty prospect, because the avenues has a great name, and echoes a riptide down either end - if you're going into uni, you walk on the left. if you're going home, you walk on the right. and this is almost a constant flow. the flow is only disrupted by the early morning (when everyone cycles in line towards the entrance, no matter the side) and the late late night (when it doesn't matter the side, and the middle works too, with regular gaps [...]
something changes when you get to a hundred miles an hour. you're just driving along, and then you notice something different, without looking at the speedometer - the car isn't forcing against the wind anymore, or the drag, and the road is pushing you forward rather than sticking the tyres. it seems slower than eighty, too. there are smells on the road that are much more pronounced and consistent, if only because they are some of the familiar smells of the road, and are blasted through the dashboard along with the cold air. the smell, of course, is [...]
i picked up and old six by seven cd the other day, 'the things we make', for 49p. i thought it was one of their more dodgy ones, and i only really bought it for 'european me', the beautiful second song. but then i put it on in the car, driving back from my parents house, and it was just right, exactly what i needed to hear, right at that moment in time. driving too fast down a dangerously straight road into the end of sunset, with a black into blue into yellow into pink sky, and clouds amassed above [...]
i think this works better if you click it, and it gets bigger.
i haven't written on this thing in ages. it's not like i don't want to - i do, i do . i have this thing that i want to talk about, which is the frustrating state of music reviews. and it's like a block or a mountain that i have to climb over (break through, fly round) perfectly before i can set it down. i don't work like that, ideas are rarely even formed when they are actually down on the paper or in the mind, but later on their aquire some kind of truth. so i [...]
the start of the song reminds me of star wars, and this fact has somehow trancended it's geekiness in my mind, and made the song that much more tender. 'you have a father' is a noir-perspective on the 'i am your father' scene/line, and 'there is another' is an actual quote - when luke has just launched his x-wing from the dagaba system, the ghost of obi-wan speaks to yoda, something about 'that boy is our only hope', when yoda says 'no....there is another,' just as the red from the boosters blanches across his face. it's one of the most [...]
here's another. i don't like the way i wrote the beginning of this, but i like the (true) story. i also remember a couple of people telling me they liked this one in particular, so, here we go. and i like it near the end. repetition of failure! this was written 04/Oct/05 --- more of the same "i had a lot of things from birmingham that i wanted to write but completely forgot about, and was consequently frustrated. very frustrated. but i remembered one - i went into [...]
it's weird how, in summer, these tracks just fall into your hands. it's not even that they're being advertisied to you at this point - earlier, i just happened to get a few mp3s off insound's back catalogue, and they all stank of summer, of hot swamps and dragonflies on red brick. it's a bit more understandable when summery tracks appear on a mixtape made while staring out the window, at light across a roof, while i'm supposed to be writing an essay. i would probably describe telepathy constants as a winter tape, but then again [...]
i got my photos back; a lot of them are blurry.
Bison - Quill
Neutral Milk Hotel- Aeroplane Over the Sea
Mr Fogg - Eleven
Crocodiles - Endless Flowers
