Category: Music

canto I // we are gods! we are wolves!

The Throne of the Third Heaven’s Millennium Assembly, largely ignored by the music world at large, was for me, a revelation.  The album works as a whole — rare as that is — sliding deftly from picking strings over a description of depressive despair, to Abraham and Isaac doing devotion on the mountaintop, to the end of the world outside a car.  They sing in rounds, there’s a banjo, and one of the band members is listed as playing “computer.” Are you not intrigued?  Like no other band, I give you, once again, Le Loup.

“There were people around, but, like…

…there was no way to get to them.“

“You could never swing that dagger…”

A-Side: Le Loup – Le Loup (Fear Not)

0

pass this on

Ah, The Knife.  No matter where I am or what I’m doing, they make me want to drop it all and do a weird dance.  Like an I’m-still-alive-in-all-my-fucked-up-glory dance.  Like a dance so weird it becomes a celebration.  This video, with its Hedwig and the Angry Inch vibe, is a beautiful example of what The Knife were all about.  In a way they were themselves a sort of strange dance.  I like it very, very much.

0

Ffunny Ffriends

“Fuck people.”

This has long been a litmus test of mine. I generally enjoy people in the individual, really enjoy them. We’re so earnest and complicated and interesting. In the aggregate, though, we exhibit the traits of a cancer, or a terminal virus. Like a creeping blight we advance across this verdant planet, grinding it up to feed the machine, until one day we’ll reach the end and look back on a lifeless nightmare of our own making, where our last descendants will die deaths of quiet resignation, and our final tottering edifices will gasp and fall to dust and be forgotten. So once I get into a conversation, really get into it, and start wondering who this person actually is that I’ve been sitting here talking to, I’ll drop that:

“Fuck people.”

A fair few react with alarm and a kind of horror that one could even think such a thing. That shock is usually followed pretty closely by pity. Then there is a second, smaller but still significant group, who cock their head and look me in the eye. Yeah, I think. There it is. There is also a third group, with a single lone member: the cab driver in Portland, who when I yelled it at him all wasted and obnoxious from the back of his cab, took a long moment to consider, then gravely asked a follow-up question: “You mean, like, the verb?”

Man, that guy. What a champion.

0

light 3 // eclipse / blue

I came across Nosaj Thing a number of years ago via the illustrious Ruby Chang, when he was the author of an excellent little EP, Views/Octopus.  It was so excellent in fact, that two of the songs remained in playlist rotation forever after.  Last week I discovered that despite my inattentiveness he’s actually been a prolific and successful artist all these intervening years, with three full albums to his name and guest spots by famous rappers and singers.  I dove in excited, floodlights seeking on high, expecting a treasure trove of new yoga beats.  To my surprise it was instead a very pretty melancholia.

1

black sands

Something about this song reminds me of Yann Tierson and the music from Amelie, which then makes me nostalgic and sad for something I had once and lost.  Then eventually I warm to the fullness of that feeling, and I’m glad.  I’m glad to have had and to have lost and to have fallen and to be here to savor it all, glad just to be moved.  You and I are the sensitive fingertips of a blind universe exploring its own face, this is why we exist: to taste and touch and sense and smell, to fear and fuck and love and loathe, to sigh and long and laugh and feel.  Smell whatever is on the air, lick your lovely fingers, listen to life around you, touch the texture of your desk, your dog, yourself.  Feel happy or sad or tired or bad, whatever.  You’re here and alive and it’s happening, this wild ride, this human thing, and you’re doing it just right.  “Keep up the good work,” the universe is saying to itself.

“Keep feeling,” it says.

Feel everything.

0

paul

Girl Band are a noise band.  Their music is often grating and discordant, their moments of coherent lucidity few, far between, and difficult to discern.

As the soundtrack to this pocket movie they are perfect.

0

outro

You thought three songs in one post was enough Vulfpeck?  No.  No, no, lord no.  They play like a live jazz band, setting a theme and then letting Mr. Dart and his magical funky bass wizard wand walk on it for a while, until eventually they all come back for a joyous musical reunion.  Then sometimes they add a special extra piece, like vocals, or a… well, you’ll see.  Goodness me.  They really are something.  I’ll close here with the immortal words of my new favorite Youtube commenter:

“Bass guitarist has the moves
of a rooster with plenty of food
at his feet, but he aint hungry,
just leaving it for his hen’s.
so tight.”

-Patrick Geaney, Youtube, March 2015

Yessir.

1

the book of ingenious devices

Every once in a while I find an artist in the basement of the internet who hooks me with their titles. I’ve got a fetish for excellent titles, in whatever context they’re found, and– though it’s not a fool-proof method– the makers of such things tend to also be excellent artists, regardless of medium.  Dr. Toast is one such fellow.  I came for a handful of words, but stayed for the music.  Enjoy the Book of Ingenious Devices.

(It’s also a banging song to do yoga to, if, you know, you’re into that kind of thing).

0

my neighbor totoro

Somehow, some years back, I became the guy who people came to and said, “Hey, I found this amazing art.  It’s super, super dark.  You’ll love it.”  And I do, and I did.  But it’s got me thinking, what is it about that beautiful chaotic darkness that fascinates me so much?  In some ways I like to think it has to do with a veneration of truth, of a scientific approach to life where the outcome of experiments, the ways in which you test your hypotheses are not dependent on what you want.  People so often see what they want to see, and yet the reality of existence, the real glory of humanity, is in our duality.

We are ourselves heaven and hell, entwined and incarnate, Beethoven’s symphonies and Hitler’s gas chambers.  We embody both ends of the bell curve, whether we like it or not.  And without that darkness, without the stretching of that darkness to the point of last light, we could never have the moments of shattering beauty that make life worth living.  I’d like to think that’s why it fascinates me.  When all is utterly lost, when my chest feels like it’s going to burst in rage or shame or frustration or despair–there–in that darkness, lives the flicker of something divine.

Thus Totoro, remixed and lovely.  When Miyazaki made “Grave of the Fireflies,” his bleakest, starkest work, his distributors thought it was too dark to move by itself.  So they bundled it with Totoro, where death is a lovable, invisible, childhood friend.  I thought I’d do the same here for you.  Enjoy him, death, and his beautiful song.  He’s not the enemy.  Not really.

0

near light

There’s a constant buzz in the back of my brain, combing through countless instrumentals, compiling playlists, hearing everything with fresh ears as a backing for yoga.  So many themes, paces, poses; the possibilities, the permutations are endless.  There is an art form here, to be approached as an artist.  After the music, I’ll start adding the writing.  It all fits.  Something is coming.

This time I will be ready.

0

not for sale

After years of listless factotum jobs, starting over each time at the bottom rung of work and wage, being alternately bored, under-utilized, and shit on for money, I taught a group of middle-aged women yoga this morning.  And it was good.  It’s not the end of anything, I will still and probably always struggle to scrape my pennies together, but it’s a starting point, a destination.  For so long I’ve sat here with rocket parts and no reason to assemble them.  Now, in health and sobriety, regardless of whether it explodes on the launching pad, or sputters out in space, or veers off into the sun, I will put this thing together.  I have the parts; I always had the parts– what I lacked was clear skies and a destination.  It’s time to find out what this thing can really do.

1

flying

This is for my hippie kids, the ones who were so nice that at first it was suspicious.  This is for the ones who found the lost and lonely child in my woods and brought him home, the kids who somehow sloughed off their brushes with darkness and cynicism, who stopped, then simply stepped around that doomed fist-fight we fought with life, who shrugged off gender roles and expectations, who live truly, without apology, in empathy and compassion and hope.

This is for you, my hippie kids, if you ever find yourselves here and reading this, may you know who you are.  Thank you for bringing me back, for being a reminder of the light.  If you’d come any later, I might have missed it entirely.

1

solitary refinement

I went to Kripalu to find refinement in solitude: To train to teach yoga, and to deepen my personal practice.  Instead I spent the entire time blissed out in one long love-hug after another, sober as sin for 26 days, smiling like an idiot child.  So much love, so much acceptance, so much kindness.  Being home, in the vacuum of all that love, is very disorienting.  As the hand heads for wine, as the thoughts stray to dark, real refinement begins.

In solitude, in absence, in the haunts of old habits,

with a stick of gum, and a cup of tea,

it begins.

–August 21, 2015

Still sober.

Still stumbling along.

1

fake empire

The National might be a bit big for this little bindle, but if you don’t mind, I don’t either.  Boxer and Alligator were both excellent albums– They got big for a reason.  Here: have

something easy, and gentle, and wonderful.

“No thinking for a little while…”

0

willow tree

Every time Chad Vangaalen comes on while I’m driving I think I must put him on the bindle immediately.  He’s really weird, and weirdly dark, and darkly beautiful.  But then there’s other songs by other artists, then there’s getting home, then there’s dropping everything where it goes and changing clothes, then there’s opening an exciting new beer, then finally there’s sitting down to write, and by then, inevitably, it’s gone.

Well not this time, Chad.

I got you, you fucker.

Did I mention he’s also an illustrator and animator, who won a Prism Prize for a Timber Timbre video?  Sort of a Ralph Steadman vibe:

This guy…

0

just didn’t need to know

St. Louis was going to save me.  I was going to plant the fragile seedling of my flowering mental health there and ride its rising growth up out of myself.  Instead the stalk was trampled in a wild ride of debauchery and loneliness and barbecue and insanity and music and despair.  I learned so much.  What I didn’t learn was how to save myself.  This song was playing.

“And I could blame it all on you my dear, but really who’s to blame?”

0

retrograde

Gorgeous voice, piano-based hip-hop beat, synths, and a little 808 clapper in the background.  I wish the rest of his work was less plain R&B, and more this.  As far as I can tell, it’s either about someone who’s been dumped and is now back in fashion, like a hipster beard, with a cynical sneer grown across the wound– Oh, now you want me again?  That kind of cynicism– Else it’s about the loneliness of a co-dependent relationship, where your friendships wither and die on the vine, and it’s just the two of you, alone, together.  Both readings work, and both make me smile, sadly.

“Suddenly I’m hip…”

0

oogum boogum

4AM, coming down, wasted in a dorm room, passing a glass jug of Carlo Rossi rosé.  Fuck it.

Oogum Boogum.

“Now go on with your bad self…”

0

zoloft

In the halcyon days of Napster and Limewire, a song labeled ‘Ween – Zoloft’ started getting passed around.  This in itself isn’t odd, but what is odd is that there was a song called ‘Zoloft’ on Ween’s album Quebec, and it was not this song.  For years and years that’s all we had to go on: Not Ween.  It was a mystery.

Recently a band called The Vintage Chimps in the UK started claiming the song, saying they labeled it Ween to grab publicity (the header above is the only shot I could find of them).  Unfortunately, it worked so well that Ween got all the publicity.  The real title is either ‘Western Skies’ or ‘Kim,’ depending on who you ask.  Frankly, I like ‘Zoloft.’

Regardless of its actual origin, it’s a great song, and its popularity is a testament to the fact that however much we may love a good story, the art is more important than the artist.  I listened to it looking down over the Pacific ocean, utterly alone, on my very first flight to Taiwan.  I was scared, and it soothed me.  In the end, that’s all that matters.  May it soothe you too.

“Kim… take us to your western skies…”

[ed: check the comments]

2

walking with jesus

Spacemen 3 did their damage in the 80s, carving out a sound I’ve best heard described as, “minimalist punk psychedelia.”  Big on drugs, singing here about heroin, their place in history will probably be as an unheralded part of a composite sound, an appropriation without credit in the music of others.  That’s some bullshit.  Here they are themselves: the much mimicked, never emulated,

Spacemen 3.

These guys were the tits.

0

gold

Deceptively simple, polished crystal vocals, and a deft touch on a very subtle drop.  It’s almost primitive how basic it is.  I’m sure I’ll get sick of it soon.  Not today though.

0

buckingham green

So I was meeting my friend Patrick at Revolver (formerly The Source, failed gay bar and best decrepit, empty, four-story watering hole in Taipei) for some drinks.  Things had changed, and when I got there he shouted over the din of popped-collared, rugby-bro yelling that there was some Queen cover band upstairs.  Meh, I thought.  We sat drinking for a while, until I caught a few strands of guitar through the floor.  “Man,” I yelled to him, “that’s balls trying to pull off Freddie Mercury.”

“No, not Queen,” he shouted back, “Ween.”

“WHAT?!”

I raced upstairs, just in time for Buckingham Green:

Man, the incongruity of a Ween cover band anywhere, much less Taipei, tickles me so much. They are a pair of weirdos, Gene and Dean Ween, sometimes silly, sometimes serious, sometimes both.  They drank, did drugs, and wrote and performed prolifically together for almost 30 years — their oeuvre is immense.  I recommend starting with The Mollusk.

B-Side: Birthday Boy

0

this is the day

Waking up to sickly sunlight in a hotel with hourly rates.  A phone call from the front desk in a foreign language.  The headache, the nausea, the raw throat, the check-out time.  She speaks the thought I always shushed.  The tapping of the little bag on the table.  A tremor in the hand that lights a cigarette.  A slug of cane liquor from the bottle.  Our skin is smooth, we are still young.  One of these days will be the day.

“You were watching the whites of your eyes turn red…”

1

i think i need a new heart / i don’t want to get over you

Most of The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs work simultaneously on two levels: Driving, laughing, with the windows down, and wallowing under covers in self-pity.  So I’ll make this one a double feature.  First, for the first:

Then a very young Stephen Merrit, performing live on Later… with Jools Holland.  In general he is a master of the incongruously snappy, love-lorn underworld.  Here he drops the snappy.

“Somebody not too bright, but sweet and kind…”

0

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Up ↑