Boards of Canada - Gyroscope Goodyear Hypotheticals The whole Rose family goes out for a drive to the park for a picnic. The sun is bright; the weather clement. Mr. Rose drives, as expected, with hands at ten and two, his eyes on the road, scanning the asphalt for oil slicks, debris, and errant fauna. Mrs. Rose cuddles the wicker basket, Rachael Rose blows her little girl breeze-breath into the fan of her pinwheel, and Ryan Rose, seven years old, sits with his hands in his lap and abides the chafing of [...]
Boards of Canada - Gyroscope Goodyear Hypotheticals The whole Rose family goes out for a drive to the park for a picnic. The sun is bright; the weather clement. Mr. Rose drives, as expected, with hands at ten and two, his eyes on the road, scanning the asphalt for oil slicks, debris, and errant fauna. Mrs. Rose cuddles the wicker basket, Rachael Rose blows her little girl breeze-breath into the fan of her pinwheel, and Ryan Rose, seven years old, sits with his hands in his lap and abides the chafing of [...]
Farben - As Long As There's Love Around I asked my brothers to listen to and describe this song. Here's what they said, presented roughly in order. Sad air-conditioners. Robot sex. Clicky dance stuff. Could you even dance to this? How would you? This is the song you'd dance to after accidentally slaying your cyborg wife. [demonstrates]. (N.B. It was gross) At least it has good bass. And organ zing. Is that an organ? Electric piano, maybe. [...]
Farben - As Long As There's Love Around I asked my brothers to listen to and describe this song. Here's what they said, presented roughly in order. Sad air-conditioners. Robot sex. Clicky dance stuff. Could you even dance to this? How would you? This is the song you'd dance to after accidentally slaying your cyborg wife. [demonstrates]. (N.B. It was gross) At least it has good bass. And organ zing. Is that an organ? Electric piano, maybe. [...]
A Sunny Day in Glasgow - C'mon If I were a DJ, I would do the worst things: play "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em" in its entirety; mix the Smiths' "This Charming Man" into Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." I'd say, "I'm on the ones and twos" even when in the bathroom, standing at the urinal. I would take zero requests. I would frown at anyone who tried to do a named dance besides the Charleston. I would never refer to vinyl as anything but "wax." Stack of wax. [...]
A Sunny Day in Glasgow - C'mon If I were a DJ, I would do the worst things: play "Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'Em" in its entirety; mix the Smiths' "This Charming Man" into Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man is Hard to Find." I'd say, "I'm on the ones and twos" even when in the bathroom, standing at the urinal. I would take zero requests. I would frown at anyone who tried to do a named dance besides the Charleston. I would never refer to vinyl as anything but "wax." Stack of wax. [...]
Arab Strap - You Shook Me All Night Long Diane Price exercised her allure in a whole host of ways, chief amongst which was her ability to mimic and exaggerate the affectations of certain 1960s fashion models, specifically the ones that exuded the possibility of something like sedated sex: bedroom eyes, maybe, was the expression an earlier generation would have used, but Tim just thought her face, her whole demeanor, was always asking a rhetorical question about whether or not he would enjoy a slow fuck. And now there she was, walking the curb like [...]
Arab Strap - You Shook Me All Night Long Diane Price exercised her allure in a whole host of ways, chief amongst which was her ability to mimic and exaggerate the affectations of certain 1960s fashion models, specifically the ones that exuded the possibility of something like sedated sex: bedroom eyes, maybe, was the expression an earlier generation would have used, but Tim just thought her face, her whole demeanor, was always asking a rhetorical question about whether or not he would enjoy a slow fuck. And now there she was, walking the curb like [...]
MIMEO & John Tilbury - The Hands of Caravaggio pt. 3 "When Lazarus rose from the grave, after three days and nights in the mysterious thraldom of death, and returned alive to his home, it was a long time before any one noticed the evil peculiarities in him that were later to make his very name terrible. His friends and relatives were jubilant that he had come back to life. They surrounded him with tenderness, they were lavish of their eager attentions, spending the greatest care upon his food and drink and the new garments [...]
I'm going to use this space from time to time to re-run some of my favorite mp3blog writing from the past--what--six or seven years I guess. There are, of course, about as many mp3blogs now as there are people with internet connections (exaggeration), but back in the crazy fucking days of the early 2000s, there were only, say, 400,000,000 mp3blogs that were essential reading, and of those, there were only about a dozen whose authors wrote with style, energy, and coherence. [Here's pt. 1 , in case you missed it] This one's from [...]
I'm going to use this space from time to time to re-run some of my favorite mp3blog writing from the past--what--six or seven years I guess. There are, of course, about as many mp3blogs now as there are people with internet connections (exaggeration), but back in the crazy fucking days of the early 2000s, there were only, say, 400,000,000 mp3blogs that were essential reading, and of those, there were only about a dozen whose authors wrote with style, energy, and coherence. [Here's pt. 1 , in case you missed it] This one's from [...]
The Laughing Light of Plenty - The Rose Some of my favorite song-songs are songs in only an academic sense, in that there is a voice and there are instruments, and those two components interact in a way; what I mean by that is that I like it when the two parts seem indifferent to each other, but are (surely in a technical way) still complementary. Two examples: that original live performance of Arpeggi that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood did with the Nazareth Orchestra, and The Double's Black Diamond (which [...]
The Laughing Light of Plenty - The Rose Some of my favorite song-songs are songs in only an academic sense, in that there is a voice and there are instruments, and those two components interact in a way; what I mean by that is that I like it when the two parts seem indifferent to each other, but are (surely in a technical way) still complementary. Two examples: that original live performance of Arpeggi that Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood did with the Nazareth Orchestra, and The Double's Black Diamond (which [...]
Black Dice - Creature As though you were a khaki'd figure striding along the sides of a Rousseau painting, backhanding palm fronds out of the way, and sidestepping the dramatic portions of the tableau: the tiger devouring the hunter, the man making love to a lion, the naked maiden groping flowers--you'll miss all that for the sight of how in the rainforest yellow boas red anacondas adorn the jungle trees like jewelry bracelets and necklaces and what about those dangling monkey earrings. [ BUY Creature Comforts ]
Pigeons - Missing You 'Missing You' feels initially like an accident of translation, or a song of noise-puns, full of sounds that are close to but not quite what you'd expect. The first minute is a tumble of clarinet and sax, classic couple those two, talking around something , but that's all dismissed by the concord of drums and fuzzy bass, and the entrance of Wednesday Knudsen's voice, which demands attention with this calm direct address: "missing you/is hard as hard can be." There's some quality of her voice--a quality she shares with Trish [...]
Gabe Hascall - Just Dust Maybe it's about fighting off despair by clinging to routine and mundanity, or by immersing oneself in the dailiness of every day and abjuring the subjunctive at all costs (If I had only--If I were there--If things were different). Or by zooming way out, taking in the prospect of the big geological/cosmological timeline, and keeping the errant parts of your mind focused on, say, dark energy, or the ergs on Mars, aiming towards the sort of stellar koan at the end of Gattaca (maybe?) or, a bit [...]
Gabe Hascall - Just Dust Maybe it's about fighting off despair by clinging to routine and mundanity, or by immersing oneself in the dailiness of every day and abjuring the subjunctive at all costs (If I had only--If I were there--If things were different). Or by zooming way out, taking in the prospect of the big geological/cosmological timeline, and keeping the errant parts of your mind focused on, say, dark energy, or the ergs on Mars, aiming towards the sort of stellar koan at the end of Gattaca (maybe?) or, a bit darker, the [...]
Ohbijou - Steep The first few days after we arrived at the shore were filled with nothing but bad weather, and so we all spent our time trying to distract ourselves, in different ways, from the disappointment--at first we were cooped up all together in the hotel room, watching movies on cable or playing card and board games, then our parents let us loose, and we went running through the hallways, to go riding up and down on the elevator, and then finally we went swimming, all of us, sometimes for two or three hours, [...]
Islands - Tender Torture About seven years ago I wrote started writing a terrible story inspired by the Unicorns song "Ready to Die" that involved: a desert island, a shipwrecked group of board game designers, and tropical freshwater fish that instantly killed and mummified (!) anything they touched. Shit got too weird for me to finish! It was like LOST if LOST had been written by a fourteen year-old chronic cartoon addict who also gathered all his literary and philosophical knowledge from Kierkegaard message boards. I was too young, out of control--high on [...]
Aislers Set - Fire Engines If someone were to prompt me, a la Nick Carraway, to say what Amy Linton's voice was full of, I'd say, "Her voice is full of mischief." Since such a prompting is unlikely under even the most empirically forgiving circumstances (say, at the cocktail hour of the annual C86/Lost Generation Symposium), I thought I'd share that tender thought here. Linton sings in a tone that tends to nonchalant coquettishness, like she's not even conscious of how her voice participates in an intense and flirtatious dynamic with the listener. All of [...]
Molars
[LISTEN] Gotye (Passion Pit Remix)
Big Boi & Theophilus London (feat. TRE LUCE) - 'She Said OK'
