Mike Andrews - "Before the Echo"

Mike Andrews makes me consider if music can have a purpose. Can it insulate your house? Can it feed the neighbourhood kitty? Can it keep a row of books from falling over? Absolutely not. Music is useless.

And yet I use this song. I wear it sewn to my coat, I take a hot tray out of the oven with it, I lick it and stick it. Such is the contradiction of Mike Andrews: simultaneously played and playing, at once influenced and influential. I like it a lot. [Buy]

Material (feat. William S. Burroughs) - "Seven Souls"

The Sopranos has started again and, via Jack Fear via The Face Knife, I've decided to discuss the song used in the opening sequence of the new season.

It's a simple list of the seven souls thought to exist by Ancient Egyptians, those which are set free into motion at the time of "bodily death". I have no idea how historically accurate it is, but I'm not too concerned with that.

What interests me is the pecking order. It's a six-minute descent to one word - remains. We start at the most transcendent of the souls, the director, and fall slowly to what I can only assume is some representation of the individual, one's mind. This would be the one thing in the whole steamy tangle that has any agency, any responsibility, yet it's under the pull and push of six other forces. But it's still the base, the core that all the souls hang on to to survive. Like a slave, essentially. Even in the land of the dead, a tool for the survival of others. That's fucked up.

see The Face Knife for the full text, and read his excellent movie reviews.