WISH IT WAS A LEAP-YEAR
by Sean
Please note: MP3s are only kept online for a short time, and if this entry is from more than a couple of weeks ago, the music probably won't be available to download any more.


 

Antony - "The Lake [live]". I wrote about this track in the summer of 2004. In the months since then, Antony's released a studio version of the song and of course with his Johnsons he's become famous, in a small way. But back in August 2004, nobody but me seemed much concerned with "The Lake". The comments on that entry are just a muddled dispute on James Joyce, with only Gretchen weighing in to say something about Antony. Now, a long time later, I still listen to this tune. Not to the studio recording - to this live one, a little blurrier 'round the edges, and better for it. And so I want to offer it again, for anyone who wants to take it.

My purple prose from last August needs to be dismissed, though. Forget "that darkbright still-lapping lake". Instead: a piano; an audience; and a singer with a voice that's light, light, light. When I saw Antony perform, what I was most struck with was this - that despite his melismas, despite his vibrato, nothing was weighed down. That there was nothing overbearing or heavy in what was sung. Just flight, flight, flight.

A song that flutters through the vents and out into the night - winding with the steam, the smoke, the city's sodium glow.

[buy Antony's The Lake EP (which features the studio recording, not this one)]

I also stumbled across this flash animation that is soundtracked by Antony's "The Lake". It is the story of a fox who is a knight and who falls in love with a goddess fox after being swallowed by a thornbush, but when he goes back to the real world he's old and he dies. There aren't any lakes in it but like i said there are two foxes who can wear clothes and ride horses and fall in love.

---

Alexander Tucker - "The Patron Saint of Troubled Men". Alexander Tucker's Old Fog, released on All Tomorrows' Parties newish label, is a prickly, spooky record - bluegrass, drone, old-fashioned brit- and psych-folk. He sounds like someone who crawled out of a green hill: moss in his beard, mandolin in his rucksack, mic and fourtrack in his hands. "The Patron Saint..." has the multilayered flora of bands like Akron/Family but in places the vocals are a thinned-out version of something almost heavy metal. And of course throughought it all the pluck and spark and spur of those back-porch guitar-strings.

What I like best is that there's nothing elfin about this music. No gnomes or pixies or goblins. Just a man with mud on his shoes, scrapes on his knuckles, drops of something strong and red at the bottom of his belly. And his fingers are playing at some wooden instrument's steel strings.

[buy uk/US]

---

"Mr. Himelfarb has served his country well during a period of considerable uncertainty."

This seems a truism of all Himelfarbs.

---

You Ain't No Picasso has a new song from Bishop Allen's upcoming February EP.

McSweeneys is taking submissions for "the best sentences written in 2005. This means the best sentences, period, from any source—book, blog, newspaper, journal, magazine. Anything published in 2005 in a verifiable medium." (Thanks Kevin.)

Archive.org has the entirety of Mika Björklund's found-sound album Gunkanjima for you to download. Drones, creaks, field recordings and a bit of electronics, all a soundtrack to Japan's freaking incredible Battleship Island. (via MeFi)

Posted by Sean at February 27, 2006 3:00 AM
Comments

never heard 'the lake' before. beatiful song.. thanks.

Posted by quese at February 27, 2006 9:55 AM

If i could choose a paragraph, this would be it, courtesy of your site.

"If I knew anything of context, if I even read the papers, I'd tell you about it. But I'm just standing at the bottom of an empty bowl of cereal, tossin' up the hits. Catch this one with your bare hands, it's soft like melty ice cream. And throw your lower jaw forward when you sing along."

Love it.

Posted by Logan at February 27, 2006 4:11 PM

I first heard this version of the lake on the compilation that Devendrah Banhart put together - Golden Apples of the Sun... I streamed it over and over again from the arthur magazine website because it just haunted me. That was also the first time I really became aware of Antony at all. I went and downloaded the song off the EP from emusic and was dissapointed--there's just something lost in the tranlastion from this live recording to the studio. Regardless, a great song.

Posted by belgaridub at February 28, 2006 1:35 AM

Gunkanjima (the island) is definitely incredible. I posted some links to pictures of it a while ago. Just today I posted my jackpot find of more incredible Japanese ruins than you could probably even click through in a solid day. It made me very very happy to find that.

Posted by Red Ruin at March 1, 2006 1:45 AM

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about the authors
Sean Michaels is the founder of Said the Gramophone. He is a writer, critic and author of the theremin novel Us Conductors. Follow him on Twitter or reach him by email here. Click here to browse his posts.

Emma Healey writes poems and essays in Toronto. She joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. This is her website and email her here.

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Mitz Takahashi is originally from Osaka, Japan who now lives and works as a furniture designer/maker in Montreal. English is not his first language so please forgive his glamour grammar mistakes. He is trying. He joined Said the Gramophone in 2015. Reach him by email here.

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Dan Beirne wrote regularly for Said the Gramophone from August 2004 to December 2014. He is an actor and writer living in Toronto. Any claim he makes about his life on here is probably untrue. Click here to browse his posts. Email him here.

Jordan Himelfarb wrote for Said the Gramophone from November 2004 to March 2012. He lives in Toronto. He is an opinion editor at the Toronto Star. Click here to browse his posts. Email him here.
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