Said the Gramophone

Brothers in Throat Trouble

Dan — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:18:01 -0500

PDF Format - "Wonderful Day" Tonight, it's cold, I'm very sick, and there's nothing better than new PDF Format to warm me up. I was at the Pop Montreal show and had to leave early, but this was the show opener, and its honest beauty remains intact from that night. In a recent no-sided conversation I had with him, he's looking for money to record his rock opera (his incredible and sweeping and I've-no-doubt absolutely canonical rock opera) "properly". So if you run a studio and you've got like 3 weeks of unbooked time, let him know. [all mp3s on 8-bit collective] (image made in MS Paint by Diamonster)

SUGAR WATER

Sean — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 08:00:00 -0500

Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit - "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" (Vampire Weekend cover). Esau Mwamwaya & Radioclit (with Ben Brewer) - "Dinosaur On The Ark". For a long time I have had an eBay Alert set up for Esau Mwamwaya. So that when he finally releases something, I can buy it. He hasn't released anything, though. And I haven't posted about him. But I love this stuff. It's like the indie rock version of Juluka - joyous, rousing, easy. It's chewing on sugarcane and floating on your back. He sings with such unselfconscious glee, as only a furniture salesman can. But Radioclit's beats (or, Vampire Weekend's, or MIA's, as the case may be) are also responsible for the songs' sky-blue sweetness. Sunbeams bottled, rainclouds fizzed - clean and undistorted glitter, a hundred shades of shine. "Dinosaur on the Ark"'s Ben Brewer - who was once best known as one of Canada's wealthiest heirs, and is now best known as MIA's fiancé, - sings with an earnesty that is sterling silver, okay maybe stainless steel. Like Phil Collins or Adam Levine it's uncoloured & true, a perfect partner for Mwamwaya's utopian cheer. "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" has Mwamwaya taking on Vampire Weekend's melody and riff, saluting them at every opportunity, but whereas VW find their feeling in ambivalences, verses, nostalgia, Mwamwaya's version is straight gleeful - in love with life, with dancing, with the squeak yr sneakers make on the floor. [MySpace/download the entire album] (Thanks to the reliably keen ears & eyes at Gorilla vs Bear for catching the mixtape release!) (photo is of Olle Hemmendorff's 'Nike Air Max 90 Burger')

Two On Work

Dan — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:11:35 -0500

Fewn - "Ten Times the Fun" My first job was at a gas station. Full serve Sunoco. There were some pretty heavy fumes, and legally they had to post signs on the pumps saying "prolonged exposure to gas fumes has been known to cause cancer in rats". I mostly just asked for rewards cards and tried to sell carwashes as an add-on to whatever people were already buying. Oh, a chocolate bar, would you like a carwash with that? And cleaning things that were already clean. I have to clean these fridge doors with windex? Yes. But they're already clean. You have to. I think this would have been my favourite song while working there if I'd known it then. I would have ripped out the direct feed to Majic 100 and plugged this song in for all the gas-pumpers and mild shoplifters to listen to. Is this Ween? Fuck you. [Buy] -- Sergei Rachmaninoff - "Isle of the Dead" Nothing ever scared me until I followed my father to work. I never thought the dark rings under his eyes were anything but natural, that the softening in his look when he would come home in the morning was anything but a tired happiness. I never thought it was relief. I followed him one night because I was supposed to do a project just like all the other kids called "take your kid to work day". I asked my father nicely, at dinner, and he barked something about this being his breakfast and told me to "read comics instead". I said I had to write about it, like homework, and my mother looked like she was going to scream, so I shut up. But then, that night, when I heard them saying goodbye in the foyer, I could hear my mom stifling tears because my mom always cried when my dad left for work, I left a pile of pillows in my bed and went down the fire escape which was out my baby sister's window. I followed about half a block behind, trying not to lose him, but also trying not to get noticed. He got on the 33rd train to G-line and Avenue Beta, so I did too. I almost lost him trying to find change, but I managed to catch the doors just as they were closing. We got out at a station that looked like it hadn't been cleaned since it opened probably a hundred years ago. Outside, the neighbourhood was even worse. It was like the buildings were crying these black tar tears, and everything was wet and dirty and looked sneezed on. My dad walked quickly with his hands deep in the pockets of his leather jacket, and he just stared at the ground when he walked, he wasn't acting at all like he did at home. He walked past a bunch of dry cleaning places, though I can't imagine anyone ever getting anything cleaned around there, and turned abruptly down a flight of stairs. On the walls of the stairwell someone had spraypainted "Satan's Pussy", and the door at the bottom of the stairs was heavy and the handle was greasy. It was dark inside, and I hurried to find a corner, a place against the wall so I wouldn't be seen. From there I watched it all happen. My father would make long speeches before a crowd of lowlifes who would cheer and boo him, and after he was done, the other disgusting lowlife he was talking about would either walk away and out the door, to much cheering, or through the back hall much to the crowd's dismay. My dad seemed to be some kind of defense lawyer for some underground court where the cases were too awful to be handled by regular courts. I couldn't understand the words a lot of the time, it was like they were speaking some other language, even though most of the words were English. But my dad seemed to be in charge of most of it, second only to the judge, who wore a long dark wig that hung over his eyes and face and only his pointy nose stuck out. There were times when my dad looked like he hated it, like he thought he might die if he said another word, but there were other times in the night when he looked like he loved it, like he never wanted to do anything else. The next day, tired and smelling like hand-rolled cigarettes, I told the class that my dad was a technical writer. I brought the instruction manual for my 8-speed and told them that he had written that. It didn't seem like anyone noticed. [via Octember.net (thanks, Evan!)] [inspired by the song and from the painting below, from Sean's Monday post] [Buy]

COOS AND FLICKS

Sean — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 08:00:00 -0500

François Virot - "Say Fiesta". François Virot - "Cascade Kisses". Can't get enough of Virot's Yes Or No. Whereas Animal Collective are at times too diffuse to soothe your heart, and the Dodos' steady lustre grows into something hard & grating, Virot's songs are both simple and crooked - like gnarled hooks you can hang your coat on. The way he sings radio on "Say Fiesta" - well it's silly, endearing and French but it lets the song's emotional oomph come out of nowhere, like an alleycat sprouting roses. Virot's looped-up strums, snaps, thumps and coos remind me of a paper model city - precisely folded, brightly scribbled, not meant to last. [buy/MySpace]

TRUBBLE

Sean — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 05:35:04 -0500

[edit:] we're back! ~~Our mp3s are offline at the moment. Working on bringing them back.~~

END TIMES

Sean — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:00:00 -0500

Pretend You're Happy - "The Other Side of the Earth". Pretend You're Happy usher in the Messianic age with rattling drums, whining violins, trumpet, cello, a whack of distorted guitar. It's the sort of Ever After where people carry bouquets like torches, burn their houses down, and everyone's perished pets come blinking back from the dead. Marvelous. [buy] Dirty Beaches - "In Dreams". Fifteen thousand years from now & every human being is dead. Waves play on an empty sand. Lizards lie on rocks, blinking. Dragonflies weave round raspberry brambles. A cocker spaniel stands knee-deep in saltwater and feels like she's forgotten something important. [buy Horror - $7 - the best dream instrumentals since William Basinski's Disintegration Loops and Vincent Gallo's When] (painting is Arnold Böcklin's Die Toteninsel)

Knee Deep In Grant Park

Dan — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 12:14:00 -0500

Tony Randall - "Byrd" A change has come to America. Election night was like some kind of real-world masterwork. I cried like a little baby during that speech, not ashamed to admit. [via the WFMU blog] Beck - "Gamma Ray [Jay Reatard Version]" [Buy]

FROM WHEN I WAS HERE

Sean — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 10:03:15 -0500

Herman Dune - "Try to Think About Me (Don't You Worry A Bit)". Herman Dune are a band diminished by the departure of brother & co-songwriter André H-D from the group, diminished by the clean $ studio sound of their last two LPs, diminished by the disappearance of the umlaut from their name. But for all this they remain a great band - particularly so, now, live, - the beautiful lost link between Ivor Cutler, Bob Dylan and Motown. Whereas David-Ivar used to share songwriting (and singing, and lead guitar) duties 50/50, he's now totally in the lead - making Next Year in Zion consistently, disarmingly sentimental, for better or for worse. This is a better record than 2006's Giant (which isn't saying much), but lacks anything like the mixtape classic "I Wish That I Could See You Soon". It's also a far cry from the joyous, raging, fuzzed confusion of Not On Top - one of the greatest albums of all time. But while the above paragraph is weighed down by backhanded compliments, let me say it again - they remain a great band. They deploy a perfect quilt of sincerity and wryness, of sing-song and verse. Frenchmen singing in English, their songs have all the clumsy-perfect scansion of The Streets, a pronunciation that's hilarious and desperately endearing. Listen to the way Yaya says "croo-ked cop", here. And they try so hard to write good songs, lyrics with rhyme & joke & that are true, with moments that glimmer. "Try To Think About Me (Don't You Worry A Bit)" is one of the softest songs here, and is not particularly clever. But what it lacks in punchlines it makes up for with a perfect chorus - the sort of thing you can murmur on skateboard, airplane, bird-back, bed. Tender as a stamp set onto a postcard. [buy]

Faze

Jordan — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:36:58 -0500

Laura Barrett - "Chidiya" Neatly divided into two equal halves, "Chidiya" begins like an operetta -- the music bent and stretched to the singer's words -- and ends like a particular nonexistent kind of film. To wit, I'm thinking of movies that end with - or, more accurately, do not continue beyond -- an infinite pan across a rich, miniature landscape. After two minutes of melodic restlessness, a brief, bewitching tune emerges and is endlessly repeated with only subtle variation. This might be boring, I know, but it's not: Everything is contained in that sad little riff and, for its duration, there is nothing outside of it. [Buy]

What a Sure Prize

Dan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:43:13 -0500

Gigi - "The Hundredth Time" Gigi - "One Woman Show" I'm looking over 3 years of doodles and drawings from a pad I keep near the phone. There's a dragon looking meanly at a fire hydrant with dog feet. There's about a hundred broken hearts, there's a bunch of testing-the-pen scribbles, a half-face that looks like a mix of Lenny Kravitz and Hunter Thompson. There's a coffee stain that's been outlined and turned into zero-gravity liquid that's flowing from some outer-space faucet. There's sign posts for made up destinations, phone numbers with no name, addresses for real but forgotten places. Some words that I think I was trying to write them out to test how the spelling looked. Like 'occurrence' and 'negligible' and 'hundredth'. Listening to this song, I'm suddenly walking in this weird world, looking up and around as the thoughts fall like half-formed flakes of snow, to be shoveled later into blue cracks, or just to melt away. [MySpace] (thanks, Michelle)

FARQUHAR SEZ

Sean — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 11:27:09 -0500

Buraka Som Sistema - "General". Each of us have busy days, today. I have to wake up, clouds greying through the window, and get out of bed, and write this post, and work, and have a coffee, and call my grandparents, and research lodging & eating in Porto and Lisbon, and go to a workshop, and go to J's goodbye dinner, and then walk home swinging someone's hand. A car's got to wake up, growl to life, get driven across town and home. A nightclub's got to lay swathed in dark, then flickflickflick each lightswitch turned on, and swept, and cleaned, and then songs will play. A calendar's got to get flipped, if everyone forgot to. Get Out Of Jail Free cards need to get written. &c. [MySpace] --- Elsewhere: Congratulations to the winner of our Insound Poster Contest, Emily Quinn. They shoudl be in touch with you. As Dan advised, the Lifted Brow 4 is taking orders. The price ($25) is ridiculous, due to the Australian dollar and a pre-order discount. Also, the content is ridiculous: 2 CDs and a 300-page book, including original music and writing by Sheila Heti, Carey Mercer & Sydney Vermont, Wolf Parade's Spencer Krug, Tao Lin, Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg, Rick Moody, the Wrens, No Kids, the Lucksmiths, Neil Gaiman, Dan Deacon, Sleeping States, Frightened Rabbit, Goblin Cock, the Wrens and about a hundred more. Oh yes - as well as writing by our Jordan Himelfarb (with Joel Taylor), a song by his band The Cay, and a short story I wrote that is about the girl who caught the Moon. It's maybe the greatest collectible known to man. Buy it.

You Could Beat Him With A Brick, Saul

Dan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 17:33:39 -0500

Neil Gaiman - "Bloody Sunrise" If the Magnetic Fields had been asked by Said the Gramophone to write a Hallowe'en song for us to post today, they would have written Neil Gaiman's "Bloody Sunrise". But Neil Gaiman would have already written it, and submitted it, pretending to be Magnetic Fields, but in that way that you have to start by looking up before you climb. In any case, it's here now, and it's for all of you who are just putting on a zombie movie and having a fire and handing out candy to lonely little happy kids in the evening. [off the new and wonderful Lifted Brow compilation (more below)] Jumbling Towers - "Cowards" I think it's always Hallowe'en in the Jumbling Towers mansion. It's such an endless supply of fantastic creeping and crawling and slinking and sliding music. With flashing-eye flourishes full of teeth and face paint. I wonder what the singer is going to be dressed as tonight. I would guess an animal, like a wolf or a pig, whose first conscious thought (before self-awareness) is performance art. Or some obscure real-life pirate who, if you knew the story, you'd look at him and say "yeah, that's exactly the right costume, and that's terrifying." [free incredible EP] -- The Lifted Brow is a biannual magazine based in Melbourne. With their most recent issue comes a 2 CD set with some really great stuff on it, including the first CD kicked off by a gorgeous and haunting song by our own Jordan's band The Cay. Go see.

GLASS CONDOR

Sean — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 11:31:24 -0500

Gossamer Albatross - "The Ground Will Take Us Down". Maybe this song is about dying, maybe it's about gettin' down. It's probably both. And while "the flesh from your thighs" sound like words Jeff Mangum would sing, Gossamer Albatross hide more jubilance in their rattle & strum. Neutral Milk Hotel have Death's hand on their shoulder, Death's lips at their ear; Lewis Gordon's just got his lover's hand, his lover's lips, the perfume of flowers everywhere. I love even more the way they've deployed their cello & two violins: not to make things pretty, placid, but to provide a hungry drone, the scrape of skin on skin, dirt in fingernails. [MySpace 1 2 / buy] --- Elsewhere: I'm awed by the nerve of Chryde at the Blogotheque, charming a magical evening moment out of Bloc Party. Vincent Moon is missed behind the camera but there's something inarguable about a song sung under stars, everyone with toes crossed, wanting to be transported. And a fellow called Cody has put together a terrific free compilation of many of Montreal's greatest emerging bands. Can't-miss for anyone who wants their finger to this city's pulse. And with great artwork from Tyler Rauman. (image source)

The Morphy of Music

Jordan — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:32:03 -0500

Amédé Ardoin - "Tostape de Jennings" Accordion is not the most popular musical instrument, nor waltz the best-loved musical form. People do like rhythmic rigour, but tend not to like temporal sloppiness. It's safe to say, therefore, that the introduction to this song, which sounds like a broken eighteenth-century Viennese musical box, will probably not please the majority of you, and may in fact deeply displease tout le monde. Stay with it, though, and you'll hear a voice that transcends time (historical and musical) and proves the Hapsburgs had no hand in it. In an obscure Creole, M. Ardoin wails blue notes that never quite coalesce into a coherent melody. What results is an implied blues more vivid than Muddy. I've read that this is music for parties, a theory I reject. Any party that ends with attendees stumbling away, emotional wrecks after a thorough gut-wrenching, is most assuredly a perverse failure. [Buy]

In Uniform Skies

Dan — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 15:16:03 -0500

Micah P. Hinson - "The Fire Came Up To My Knees" I woke up covered in dust, inside but cold like I was outside. Micah Hinson was singing hymns, belting them and ripping them slowly, in the hallway just outside the door. And only the smallest accompaniment for his large animal voice, a little spinning wind of dust. One of those little tornadoes that spins up a couple of leaves and some dirt. But again, inside, windows shut. [Buy] Red Army Choir - "The Sacred War" For some people, it's hard to buy groceries. For some people, going into space is something they have already done. Some people live under leaky roofs, some people eat the same food every day. Some people don't think about recycling. There are some people who never feel like they're not working. Some people drink wine all the time. Some people give to charity every extra penny. Some people have large families to keep them company. Some people are alone but not lonely. Some people take trips just to see what's out there. For those of you who don't speak Russian, these are the lyrics, I'm sure of it. [MySpace!]