David Shire - "Theme from The Conversation" "You hated me most in the mornings." Edmund and Alison, the second marriage. Edmund would often write little three-or-four-line scenes never-had between him and his partners. Today as he walked by old churches and women's shelters, barely able to look above people's knees, let alone in their eyes, he was ravenously replaying memories that never took place. "I'm trying to play team ball and you're just interested in impressing the scouts," he said, in his mind, to Carolyn, the first. And sometimes they would be things never-said to [...]
DakhaBrakha - "Baby" . I am still working out which sort of "baby" DakhaBrakha (from Kiev, Ukraine) are referring to. Is this a song about infants growing up, getting down? Or about swooning sweethearts? The plot thickens near the third minute, when witches come out, disrupt the funk - overlapping voices like le Mystère des Voix Bulgares. Despite its beginning, this song does not feel childish. It is not goo goo or ga ga . If the infants do grow up, if the sweethearts do swoon, then there is still the risk of fights, splits, widowings. There [...]
Willis Earl Beal - "White Noise" Evelyn has trouble sleeping. She's been on the phone until one or two in the morning, every night, with her ex. He will cry and beg for her to come back to him, for things to be "like they were". And she doesn't know what to do except let this stuff wash over her. She's 17. She cries with him, and says "I know," the way her mother says "I know" when Evelyn cries in front of her. And eventually he gives up, having gained an inch or lost [...]
Miguel - "Adorn" . He was a flinty lover, parts of him dusted in stone. Elbows, knees, soles of feet. They walked side by side, brushing shoulders, and his skimmed sides set off sparks. Little shiny sparks. It made her laugh. "There you go again." He never wanted to talk about the sparks, the flint: he was embarrassed, she thought at first, but then she realized he wasn't embarrassed at all. He just didn't want to talk about it. He looked at her with a look all full of tremors. [ Miguel 's all exquisite rosy [...]
Theo Wangemann - "Otto von Bismarck (October 7, 1889)" The past didn't speak to Edmund, it barked at him. His great grandfather, Georg, was a lunatic, which isn't a nice word, but a nicer word would be an apology. Georg had three kids and then, according to his great grandmother's letters, "left forever in a flurry of violence." , in the late 1800's, he moved to New York City and lived on the streets, getting arrested for drinking and fighting and public blasphemy. Edmund's grandfather, Martin, had set himself on a journey to find his [...]
BJ the Chicago Kid - "His Pain (ft Kendrick Lamar)" . A treasure and devotional. Soundwave reinvents a sample from Black El's "The Ride" , and Lamar finds the bassline, the feeling at its heart. He elevates his three minutes, earns them, telling his story in the blue-goldish glow of stained glass. Questions of God and fortune are not easy: anyone who skips and gallops with this stuff is not thinking hard. Note the care of Lamar's revelation, the melancholy shiver of his doubt. [ Pineapple Now & Laters is out on Feb 14] [...]
Xiu Xiu - "Born to Suffer" Edmund alone. Reads an article about a teenager, looks like Evelyn, hospitalized for eating only chicken nuggets for 17 years. She had chronic fatigue and shortness of breath. Possible that eating healthy doesn't get you much farther. Checks the weather, with no plans of going outside. Checks facebook pages in this order: Jen (3rd wife) accused him of being mentally unstable, he replied "I've never even burnt toast in my life". Someone (Jean Guipta, unfortunate, hateable name) has posted a picture [...]
Hooray for Earth - "True Loves" . The notion with the laser-guns is that you'd get this device, point it at someone, and make that someone disappear. They'd be detonated, demolished, turned into spray. The first laser-guns were gigantic, big as rooms, but the scientists were certain that they'd improve. The laser-guns would get smaller, small as guns, and space-cowboys'd be able to carry them in holsters, swaggery. Unfortunately the laser-guns never got smaller. The technology just didn't scale down. So we haul our laser-guns, big as rooms. in wagons the size of dance-floors. They are heavy and cumbersome. They [...]
Digital Leather - "Sweet Cheeks" Edmund has written three suicide notes in his life. No one has seen them but him, and he never got so close that he even attempted any of their promise, but still he wrote them, actually on paper. And he thinks about them sometimes. Carolyn, I'm sorry for all the trouble. I don't like putting up with me either. Hopefully Evelyn only has my eyes. - Edmund He thought of leaving it under [...]
Actual Water - "La Violence sur les Champs-Élysées" . At first it seemed like a regular charge, an army with pikes and muskets marching down the boulevard. But as they passed through the tulip gardens, the soldiers began to change. Musketmen blurred into pikemen. Generals became their uniforms. Greens, blacks and pinks seemed to smear together. There was still violence in the crowd, still gunsmoke and pride. But this wasn't a gang of gathered patriots. This was a hideous, splendid, multi-limbed thing , galloping through broken petals. [Actual Water are from Toronto. They make lo-fi [...]
Zafari - "King Masaru" At the Science Museum with Frank. He likes the buttons. He and Edmund walk the halls of snow-tracked carpet, and it feels like there's an unsettling kind of presence in the air of things, a sort of spirit in the stuff. It's early on a Sunday, in the hours before Frank has to go back to his mom, and the museum is not well-attended. The dinosaurs with their heads up in the darkness and the ducts, seem to bob and weave like boxers, the palm leaves seem to sway in time. [...]
Reversing Falls - "Curse This Place" . You do not undo a thing by saying, F*ck this thing! You do not destroy a land by damning it. Reversing Falls grit their teeth, charge their guitars, but they know they cannot unmake the place they are cursing. It is bigger than they are, crueller, fiercer and louder and more motherfucking killer. That is what makes it worthy of cursing. As a band cowers in a basement rehearsal space, chugging, singing, spending one guitar-pick after another, the city stands permanent and beautiful around them. Its skyline is ambivalent, and its [...]
Tomboyfriend - "Lovesickness" Alison is currently smoking. And was smoking. And is also waiting to smoke. Her 9-year-old, Frank, is with Edmund, his father, for the weekend, and when he does that, Alison turns into a chimney. But tonight is particularly bad. Something about Frank leaving, it always feels like a tape is put on pause in her brain, like a Frank-sized hole opens up in the front hall, and it stands there. She kind of can't move, because any movement will be wrong. She opens her mouth like she's popping her ears, moves her [...]
Schoolboy Q - "There He Go" . Now this is how you swagger. This is how you do braggadocio in 2012. Striding, driving, charging right up to the thing that you want; and taking it. Q is high and elite, hot and packing heat. He's a fucking asshole, stealing girls, slinging metaphor. Pistols, pistachio, "whatever occur" . He's not wrong when he raps: "Magnificent / They be like, 'There he go!'" . [buy Schoolboy Q's outstanding LP, Habits & Contradictions , at iTunes] Bernice - [...]
Nap Eyes - "Every Game Is A Game Of Stalemate" Edmund wore 41 like a bicycle helmet on grey hair, like a backpack on a suit jacket, he wore it like sneakers at the bank. He had thick brown hair, in a coif atop his head, he wore the cheap version of men's magazine clothing. He looked like Bobby Fischer, but less haunted. More daunted, unwanted. He let himself in through the back door of his ex-father-in-law's house. From his second marriage; Alison, with son Frank who's now 9. No one is home, he's dropping [...]
Woodpigeon - "Are You There, God? It's Me, Mark" . A song of seeking love, like so many others. But Mark Hamilton beseeches the universe in a tone that is unexpected, rough. "Are You There, God?" is gorgeous and furious. It's unsettled. These are the browns and navy blues of a painted shipwreck, a frozen shipwreck, a shipwreck at that moment where it is not yet wrecked; and the sun may rise, and the waves may settle, and the world may be kind, not cruel. Even the coda's sweetness is laced with something bitter; perhaps it is poison, perhaps it [...]
The Doozies - "Independence Day" "Edmund, you're a witch." Tate was a bright 3, his child from Jen, by whom he was divorced the previous year. "A witch?! But witches are women!" He sat on the arm of the armchair, his long belted coat draped like a flag over his shoulders; he couldn't stay long. "I don't care," said Tate, he had a way of not looking at you when he talked to you, which implied an intelligence, a rudeness, and also nothing at at all. "What makes you think I'm a witch?" said Edmund. [...]
Hospitality - "Eighth Avenue" . A jumbling season, winter gone summered. Tyrone is standing at the top of a skyscraper and he can't remember if it's November or July, if the city is glinting with sunlight or with ice. He has also forgotten the condition of his heart. Standing on the escalator, descending from the viewpoint, he passes an acquaintance, his former florist. "Hey how are you," says the florist, who is ascending. Tyrone nods a greeting. But he asks himself: How am I? It shouldn't be so hard to work out. Is he brokenhearted or [...]
The Last Names - "One Black Feather" 43-year-old teenager. After a shower, May lay steaming on the bed. The bed with the long-empty passenger seat, covers heaped in a twisted pile. She tapped through pictures of friends' families, their time magnets, their love wells. She read insincerity on the smiles of some, honesty on the goofy mugs of others. A goofy face was an honest face, if a tragic kind of twisted honesty. Like when you catch your face in two mirrors and it looks all lopsided. She waited for Edmund and [...]
Neal Morgan - "Fathers Day" . Sometimes you hear a song and you go: oh shit i need to buy this . Other times, like this time, you hear a song and go: oh shit i need to buy this and also i need to buy a drumkit. I went to Neal Morgan's website , clicked BLUE AUDIOPHILE LIMITED LP w/ mp3 because I am a sucker for limited edition things by artists that make the top of my head fly off, skimming out across the room to hit the painting over the lamp. [...]
Said the Gramophone
Today I Feel I’ve Sprung A Leak
Young Jeezy featuring Jay-Z, Andre 3000 & Drake – I Do (Remix)
Bang Gang - Sacred Things (Gus Gus Remix)
The Drums - “Money” Bassment Jaxx (MP3 Stream)
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
