Blog: An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Zola Jesus

Sep 29, 2010, 6:02am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Oh, so that's where Danielle Dax has been. Knew she couldn't just be fucking around with UnicaZurn album covers. Scrubs up well, our Danielle. Welcome too, to our new-old post label: Gert Big Goths, inspired partly by Speakers Push Air Zola Jesus? I'm still undecided - the dubbier it gets the better. I think I might really like it, but I'm not willing to commit, just yet. Actually, I think Zola Jesus hasn't quite decided either - the music lurches from album to album, refuses to settle; I [...]

• Zola Jesus - Sea Talk.

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Artist:	Zola Jesus
Title:	Sea Talk.
Link Text:	Zola Jesus - Sea-Talk
File Name:	zola-jesus-sea-talk.mp3
Bitrate:	320 kbps

Burial Hex Runs The Voodoo Down

Sep 29, 2010, 3:46am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Burial Hex vs. Maya Deyens. Well, not exactly vs . Apposite, if anything. Saw some of her films in NY over the Summer... haunting, like watching Hungarian footballers in the 1950s. Burial Hex in quite a restrained mood here. Dainty, even.

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High Wolf & The Lycans

Sep 28, 2010, 9:56am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Because I was listening to High Wolf on the bus late last night and a werewolf got on. It freaked quite a few people out; one guy moved away so quickly he almost fell over. The werewolf smelled of weed, oddly enough and only lasted two stops before heading off into the night, perhaps to rub Virgin fat onto his alopecia-ing chesthair.... I know what you're thinking but it was a werewolf, a lycan, they used to be all around here, you used to be able to spot them out of the corner of your eyes, just before [...]

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Trainings 2

Sep 19, 2010, 4:31pm An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Sir Richard Bishop plays in the same ebbs and flows of the guy in the seat in front of me's sleep breaths, when the drums kick in I think they might wake him; The Residents version of Paint It Black sounds miles better if you imagine it hummed in the head of the woman reading the Jodi Picoult novel, especially if you imagine that, at the last beat, she's gonna go Purple-Assed Mandril Amok; Harvey Milk's comedy angst works well as you pass Newbury and realise you're not near half way; Mount Vernon Arts Lab's The Fog Detonator is exactly [...]

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Trainings

Sep 18, 2010, 8:24am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

A few musical observations on a train journey: Xhol Caravan makes Reading Station glow; Coil's Die Wolfe Kommen Zuruck played loud sucks the train sounds into it and then spews them out sometime in the 30s, making everyone with a hat or facial hair look like a Poirot baddy - maybe not the Time Travel intended; LCD Soundsystem have always been Music For First Rail Adverts, they haven't *become* Music For First Rail Adverts; Dinosaur Feathers work as a beautifully adept/scornful soundtrack to children squabbling over polystyrene WW2 (Hurricanes, I think) fighter planes; Summer Dregs gave the effect [...]

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Ekoplekz and Hacker Farm live on Resonance FM

Sep 13, 2010, 8:39am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Bottom row, extreme left - Farmer Glitch, second from left - Ekolad, extreme right - Loki, second from right - 2ndFade; middle row, second from right - Kek-W, extreme left - Bob; top row, extreme left - Time Attendant, second from left - John Eden, third from right - Mugwump, extreme right - Cybore. We don't know who the other guys were, or why they turned up in near-identical outfits. Embarrassing. ... ...great live show, Ekoplekz almost early-Aphex Hard, Hacker Farm more ambient than I've seen [...]

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Gira Does Britney

Sep 2, 2010, 4:16am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Michael Gira sings 'Me' like Britney Spears sings 'Me'. Just a little pitchshift, even imagined, and you're there. It's not just the way they sing 'Me' either, the 'Me' itself is the same, or has the same intention, the same semi-autobiographical distance. Not true, but not false either. You can't rely on that 'Me' but you know that there's more to it than words. This song would suit Britney. In fact, a lot of late period (haven't heard latter period yet) Swans would suit her. She ought to get on it. [...]

• Swans - Love Will Save You

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Artist:	Swans
Title:	Love Will Save You
Link Text:	Swans - Love Will Save You
File Name:	06 - Love Will Save You.mp3
Bitrate:	174 kbps
Year:	1991

Washed Out

Sep 1, 2010, 9:05am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Been enjoying Washed Out recently, one of a long string of bands genred into chillwave etc that all sound like the Hipstamatic app takes pictures. Vaseline-smeared as Pitchfork put it (for once apt). Perfect dozing music; instantly evocative of nothing in particular. I just like the name, really; think that it'll go places where the mass choirs of other similar artistsi will founder. Names seem more important than ever. Posters. Sleeves. The album artists are coming back, I think. Album artists . We'll see. Washed Out - Hold Out [...]

• Washed Out - Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi Remix)
• Washed Out - Hold Out
• Washed Out - New Theory

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Artist:	Washed Out
Title:	Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi Remix)
Link Text:	Washed Out - Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi remix)
File Name:	Washed Out - Feel It All Around (Toro Y Moi Remix).mp3
Bitrate:	160 kbps

Artist:	Washed Out
Title:	Hold Out
Link Text:	Washed Out - Hold Out
File Name:	Washed Out - Hold Out.mp3
Bitrate:	320 kbps

Artist:	Washed Out
Title:	New Theory
Link Text:	Washed Out - New Theory
File Name:	Washed Out-02 New Theory.mp3
Year:	2009

The Voice Of The Devil

Aug 27, 2010, 10:16am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Ulver - The Voice Of The Devil (Plate 4) Bits from here . Blake seems very musical, I think. Seems like music. He'd have been into Witch House, I reckon. Or spotted you for some Bauhaus covers. Or smoked some bracken with you, out on the heath, and got drizzled to some Death metal. He'd have heard that Raime 12" by now. We should pull Blake into the mix a little more, he seems to have been forgotten. Not sure that Ulver should be the testament in music; we need an [...]

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Existence (_) Precedes Essence

Aug 20, 2010, 2:54am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

One day, I'm going to make these . They are like the essence of humanity, the things that separate us from animals. Found via spime . Regina Spektor - Us Cults - Most Wanted Akron Family - Woody Guthrie's America Dedicated to all the bloggers out there, living feral, in six quid tents.*

• Akron/Family - Woody Guthrie's America
• Cults - Most Wanted
• Regina Spektor - Us

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Artist:	Akron/Family
Title:	Woody Guthrie's America
Link Text:	Akron Family - Woody Guthrie's America
File Name:	akron family - woody guthries america.mp3
Bitrate:	128 kbps
Year:	2010

Artist:	Cults
Title:	Most Wanted
Link Text:	Cults - Most Wanted
File Name:	Cults - Most Wanted.mp3
Bitrate:	320 kbps
Year:	2012

Artist:	Regina Spektor
Title:	Us
Link Text:	Regina Spektor - Us
File Name:	01 Regina Spektor - Us.mp3
Year:	2009

Sonic Seasonings: NY booty

Aug 17, 2010, 6:39am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Found this on vinyl for 99cents. Even has the poster with it... Haven't heard it yet since the record player is yet to come out of storage - moving house in about 30 mins! - but, really, who cares what it sounds like. Beautiful artefact. BTW big thanks to all those twitterers who gave me advice on NY record shops - found most of them and lots of bargains.

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People Who Live In Solar Houses (and what they say about them)

Aug 17, 2010, 6:36am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Found this in a Goodwill Store in Boston. The subtitle is key here. Giving Solar dwellers an alien status, lost in time. What might these kind of people think? Are they like us? 1979 seems two worlds of 'what if?' away.

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New York Sandings: Governor's Island

Aug 16, 2010, 1:33pm An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

These are from a free gig we managed to get tickets to, on the recently opened 'military' Governor's Island, just off the South-Eastern tip of Manhattan. A fantastic, slightly spooky, beautiful location. It was held on an artifical beach, with sand and psychelled palm trees and little tents selling beer and hot dogs. Love finding these little things in cities, these little creeps. Didn't see the headliners, Neon Indian , because we had to get back - did see some actual neon indians though; little indie [...]

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Camp Bestivalling 2010

Aug 4, 2010, 4:21am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

EARLIES...I've never seen so many munkins... children everywhere ... the place looks like a multi-coloured Slaine battleground...we took 3 little Lokis, one unborn and, yeah, Camp Bestival is the ideal family Festival... adults are incidental, are baggage handlers, workhorses... some of them are dressed like children but... this place is like a tidy Glasonbury, one without the flayed and the straggled, a Festival almost without litter, which is an odd site as evening approaches (think Green Man without the beards and with fairy costumes)... PHILOSOPHY...Bad Science has made a definite impression on this place. there's [...]

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Camp Bestivalling

Jul 26, 2010, 3:06pm An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

...that scene in Alex Garland's The Beach, when they're all half-dead from squid poisoning, the beach sliding into new sewage and it all gets a little Hearts of Darkness? That's my last memory of Lulworth Castle... Fecal fluttering, bad tidings, hallucinatory stumblings... the castle looming like it's made of bones, the ground swallowing when I couldn't, some kind of Medieval Banquet taking itself a little too literally; finding historical accuracy in Campylobacter jejuni, in Shigella, in hordes of prettily dyed exotoxins... But that was then. I'm going back to Lulworth Castle, this time for [...]

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Inception: Dreams as Memory Consolidation

Jul 24, 2010, 5:15am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Spoilers, if you look hard enough. I liked what jonnymugwump said on twitter: "inception may be flawed but I feel that's a little like criticising Dali for having the wrong time on his melting watches" an apposite image and critique, there's surrealism shot-through this movie, surrealism before marketing, when it was just a few guys in suits fucking around with each others' dreams. Inception is flawed perhaps, but not vitally. As an experience , an immersion (and a suspension), it sets itself apart; Nolan has taken a huge gamble with a bad old dream [...]

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Crawling To Lhasa

Jul 23, 2010, 3:29pm An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Found this album via the cosmic/kosmichings at the brilliant Tonton Mahood - here , in fact - and it's been on a light rotation ever since. Pretty, occasionally threatening, odd combinations of firethrottled acoustic guitar and pan-pipes. Comus is perhaps as good a reference point as any; the deity and the band. I hear that bar/club from Fire Walk With Me during Tante Olga and the whispering nasties from Current 93 in Nearby Shiras... there's morsels all over this album, tasty bits of meat, plucked from teeth... Ritualistic and Golden. Thrown from shadows. Gongs and bongs. [...]

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Gentleforce-s

Jul 16, 2010, 3:33am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Listening to Gentleforce - Learning To Forgive There's something understated and creepy about this. Music on top, of course, but also between the lines. Not paid that much attention to this before but on headphones there's little slivers of melody and, well, insinuation. It's kind of anti-minimalism, maybe minimalism+ Must check out more of this; it's getting to be that there's too much music out there that is happy to be just surface. Hope this track isn't a happy accident. (NOTE: just noticed that Kek has [...]

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The Numbers Of The Kindly Ones

Jul 15, 2010, 11:09am An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

Just started reading this, just a few pages in and already something has struck me: the scale of it is sending obsessional shivers through me, causing me to focus on the very things the book begins with; numbers. There's almost 1000 pages. 1000 pages. 1000 pages. I've been away from books since the World Cup, more or less. Read a few bits and bobs: short books. Books that didn't require this attention to... I'm not sure what. The narrator ploughs through the numbers of the dead; mistaking, realigning, conjoining and the [...]

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Just What Is It With Castle Cary And Ray Bans?

Jul 4, 2010, 3:30pm An Idiot's Guide to Dreaming

From The Wytch Machine...

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