August 31, 2009
INVISIBLE BORDERS
Young Galaxy - "Queen Drum". Forest fires, earthquakes, electrical storms, tidal waves, meteor strikes, airplane crashes, solar flares, rising seas, iceberg smashes, building collapses, the day she picked up the phone and called.
Young Galaxy - "Light Years". And it's so late at night, so early at morning & you hold your lover in your arms, feel him sleeping. He has weight, he has breath. You are awake. You breathe together in the sheets. And what you think is this: At our edges, there is a line. There is a black line that separates me from you. We are not one. // There are faint sounds in the street, wind and alley-cats. The city lays on & on. /// You lie on your side with your lover in your arms. You think: There is an unencroachable distance between you and I. // One morning, you will brush his face; he will kiss your forehead; but still you are separate. You are trapped in your bodies, unable to remember each-other's yeses. You are unable to see into each-others' dreams. In the space between you, whole seasons pass by.
Young Galaxy's second album is a record of vastnesses and details, first glances and dying stars. It is astronomical. It is craning, adamant pop music. There are no jams: this is precise. Songs that can fill rooms utterly, shake them with big melody; but also these small & perfect gestures - the strings that appear at 4:20 in "Light Years", opening like a night garden. Produced by Tony Doogan (Mogwai), independently released. Buy it here.
[info/mp3/MySpace -- Young Galaxy play Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal on Sept 9, 10 and 11.]
August 28, 2009
A Consumptive Affect
The Hidden Cameras - "Ratify the New"
The Flaming Lips - "The Captain"
These songs have fictional physics. The kind of dream science that anything can happen if you just start small. These songs move slowly like the sun. They move like mountains tapped on the shoulder, turning around to see who it is. They rip up the roots, in slow motion, their regular motion is slow motion. They move like whales organizing to change the tides. They fold up forests and lay creases at the valleys. They use sky in their speech and whole planets in their eyes. They magnify the enormous, louden the deafening, repeat the obvious.
Hidden Cameras links:
[The Hidden Cameras' Origin:Orphan relased Sept. 22 on Arts & Crafts] [free EP with pre-purchased show tickets]
Flaming Lips links:
[Soft Bulletin re-issue with non-album tracks]
--
TITUS ANDRONICUS CONTEST
Still 4 hours left! There's still at LEAST one left!
(winner announced next week!)
August 27, 2009
TWO CARCASSES
The Antlers - "Two". Somewhere in the world, there is a sea full of salt. Somewhere in the world, there is a building full of gold bars. Somewhere, there is a clock that runs for ten thousand years. Somewhere, a berry that makes sour things sweet. There is a flower that looks like a crown, a crown that looks like a flower. Somewhere out there, a bee that was born before the first world war. There is wood that went into an ark. There is a saxophone played by John Coltrane and a guitar played by Neil Young. Somewhere, there is you. [buy]
jj - "ecstasy". James had always been strange. It took someone strange to do it. We were dancing at the Neon, like we always do. James was there, as he always is, standing in the shadows by the bar. He was drinking from a bottle. In all that bass we shook, we shaked. James went to the middle of the club, the place it was shiniest. He kneeled on the hard glitering enamel of the floor. He took his fist. He rapped on the dancefloor, like it was an egg. Like it was an egg, the dancefloor cracked. It cracked right open, the deep violet floor, jagged and yawning. Gold light pushed out like the death of a star. [buy]
August 26, 2009
GL'AMOUR
(still from The Rape of the Sabine Women)
Ernest + Tom - "Non Stop Orbit"
Virgin, common, liar, too rich, too smiley, gay, hot but boring, angry, short, way too short, old, selfish, wears makeup, cries, smoker, doesn't have a car, cheesy, stupid, bald, show-off, gross teeth, stuck in the past, no male friends, muscle-head, desperate, too healthy, takes phone calls at dinner, always apologizing, ruined by other girls, dresses nicer than me, hair too long, fucking awful shoes, blase, cheap, rebounding, too jealous, bad fuck, "Game" advocate, little twee bitch, fat, ugly, sweaty, testy, tests me, pencil-thin anything, finishes my sentences, gets too drunk, fake laugh, coward, kisses too quick, remembers too much from phone conversations, doesn't tip cabbies, embarrassing pants, couldn't find the bathroom in a bar, grabby, dense, pink blazer, talks about youtube.
[MySpace]
--
TITUS ANDRONICUS CONTEST
I've written about Titus Andronicus a couple of times (1, 2). Now, Titus Andronicus are going on tour this week (They will be here in Montreal on Sept 4th at Il Motore, but don't worry, I'll remind you next week). In promotion, they are giving away a 12" vinyl Live in London. We have one to give away. So a small contest will take place:
Put your best anagram of "Titus Andronicus" in the comments. I've got one in mind that I'm really hoping to see. Contest ends Friday August 28th at 11:59pm EST. have fun!
August 24, 2009
LATE AUGUST
Dori Hoffman- "Never Will Marry". The leaves are changing colour. I'm not a naturalist, or a botanist, so I can't tell you why. I am not a poet either, but for some reason I have no qualms dealing in metaphor. As my husband you used to say, "Flowers are the flowers that grow right here." We are what we are. And so I always get sad when the leaves are changing colour, as if it's all our losses made material. The greenery can't last. I never thought I would marry. I thought I would die alone. And then I met Sam under a cypress tree, and he was holding a bicycle innertube and I was holding a dead rabbit. How many times have I told this story? And then one day he died. The leaves are changing colour. [thanks, Jeremy - download whole EP here]
Marlaw - "Pipi". My sister tells me this is Tanzania's summer jam of 2009. This is the song buzzing from rickshaws, shanties, houses, transistor radios. It's the song you hear as you wolf down goat in Stone Town, as you surf the web in Arusha's internet cafe. I can't help but generalize, vaguely stereotype; I have never been to Tanzania, never crossed the Gibraltar (except crisscrossing, in Istanbul). I imagine Zanzibar in kodachrome and pixels, in the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg. And, now, I imagine people doing as I do - pointing into the air and mouthing "pi, pi" every time the chorus comes around. [can't find a shop]
---
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August 21, 2009
Simulacrum n' Coke
I will never delete this voicemail. It's a performance just for me, a completely unscripted masterwork. It has all the curves of a voice that's electric with teenage anticipation, it's a smiling sound, a kiss from a machine. It's wet from when we weren't even together, it's cracked in all the most beautiful places, it's made of marble, and marbles, and theories, and gold. [MySpace]
That was The Shitters with their spit-drenched A-side "Here Comes The Coming" from their 7" called Butt's Up? released on Head of the Dead Records. That's a small DIY cassette label out of Newmarket, which has recently moved into the realm of vinyl, so I guess they're making a buck or two over there at Head of the Dead. Good scene out there in Newmarket, actually. Growing. I went to the "NewCarcass" festival out there in early June of this year, and there was a lot of good bands, some really visceral shows, with big names from around the country. I saw Tillborn, The Drugs, Heath Mighty (from Benton Massachusetts), but I think the stand-out show of the whole festival was Skunk Munch from Texas. Skunk Munch features Gareth Paré formerly of Night Danger and Please the Press, finally in a role where he can really show his stuff. And sometimes he literally shows his stuff, so be warned. But a great show, completely messy loud screamy stuff that kind of lifts itself on top of itself and keeps going, like there's almost like two shows going on at once, that's how dissonant some of the live versions can sound. Anyway, that's enough about that, it's almost time for a ticket giveaway, so if you want tickets to David and Go Riot this Friday at The Gum, give me a call and I'll hook you up. As I was saying, David and Go Riot are local kids, they're all under 16, but they're a lot of fun and they show a lot of potential, so if you're interested in that kind of thing, supporting new talent, give me a call 306 3066. Also going on this weekend there is an event called "Bikes for Murder" which is a fund-raiser for Bi-Psychos, the anarchist bike shop up in Magsden Heights, you can check that out, it's from 2-8pm on Saturday, in Pilon Park, and there will be a bike ride scavenger hunt planned, which, I've been told, may or may not involve the theft of people's property. That's 2-8pm Saturday in Pilon Park, I will be there, hope to see you too. Coming up on 2:30 here on Postmodernism and Cocktails, CVUB, and this is Fontana with "Gotta Split"... [MySpace]
August 20, 2009
RUDOLPH PETRICHOR
The Luyas - "Spherical Mattress". I considered apologising. She had gone into the other room already, had put on a record she knows I don't like. I stood in the hallway hearing it, piano-notes like a dripping tap. No, I thought, I won't. I started putting on my sneakers but then stopped, untied them. I slipped into my rainboots. The door slammed behind me. Outside, the sky was heavy. Cars snarled past me. I could feel the rubber soles of the boots and the lines in the asphalt. My heart was pounding. I wondered if she was still listening to that record, or whether she had turned it off now that I had gone. I imagined her alone at the table, eating an apple, baring her canines. I imagined me sitting at the other end of the room, leaning on the fridge, eating an ice-cream cone. Eating an ice-cream cone and grinning, maple ripple rolling down my arm. (MySpace/from the Luyas' forthcoming new album, and a 7" to be released on You've Changed)
Ast0r - "So What" (Miles Davis). The moon floated like a bored Podoboo. It was hot. Too hot. I know something was up in Mushroom Kingdom and I wasn't going to wait for that peachy minx to tell me. I patrolled the tubes, visited the usual Shy Guy haunts. No sign of the Hammer brothers or even the Phanto from the other night at the castle. Sweat dripped off my moustache like the trailing fizz of an invincibility star. I stopped in at the Toad House and got the usual runaround from Lemmy Koopa. I told him to go flip on his back. I knew Bowser had been there, even if Lemmy wouldn't say so. I was on my way out when who should I see but Yoshi, lurking behind a pillar like a goomba on a bad day. His day had just got worse. I scurried over there like a Bob-omb that was about to go, swallowed my fire-flower and then jumped on his head a couple times. I wasn't going to let this be a repeat of World 3-4. Listen you salamander, I said; tell me what happened to the raccoon-tail. I was bigger than he remembered. I dared him to stick out his tongue. [buy the chiptune take on Kind of Blue, Kind of Bloop]
August 18, 2009
A Place of Hope and Justice
In ancient Norse history, certain clans were persecuted by the gods more than others. Most of the families in these clans would crumble under the superior intellect and supernatural powers of the gods, but some would rise above it. These became warlike clans, their entire existence based upon self-defense and self-preservation. Weapons could be formed ingeniously from any material or object. Eggshell Claws, Splinter Swords, Ash Gas, all these famous weapons came from these incidental inventors. But the most valuable and powerful weapons were the ones that rose above the material realm. The most successful, of course, is the duet. The act of sharing a single song, while a simple idea, was a critical turning point in the war against gods. As the story goes: Tåemir, the "jinx" god, was putting sprigs of burnt saltflower in all the potato sacs and feeding fire to every second-born child in the small clan of Øraptïn. He giggled through his rock-pointed teeth as he perched on the spire of the small church at the gates of town. Two lovers were coming home late from making love in the tundra, and the young man was singing his lady a song. A traditional song from the time, called "The Nantha" which spoke of creating children from the clouds in the sky. Tåemir swung down from his perch and tackled the young man, gleefully and without pause. The young man was just starting the chorus: "when you see a cloud try not to breathe it in...". And as Tåemir ate his stomach out of his body, his lover, stunned and gawking, could think of nothing else to do but finish the chorus, "...unless what you desire is a child within". She sang it, her voice shaking, but clear. The words rent Tåemir asunder, and his foul deeds bled into the softly thawing earth beneath. And as her lover died there at the gates, they finished singing the other eighteen verses of The Nantha together and she married his corpse at dawn the next day. Six days of revelry followed and after that she started the Choir of Chaos, an army of shared singers, waging war for nine straight months on the gods who terrorized Øraptïn.
[Buy]
August 17, 2009
SKIMMERS
Ne-Yo - "I Don't Care". In the future, it'll flood. Our streets will fill with seas and the tides will rise and soon we will be living on our roofs. We will have parasols plugged into chimneys, stereo-systems balanced on the tile. We will ride gondolas to our neighbours' cupolas, bring them iced tea and water-lilies. We will sail yachts to visit our parents, to high-school reunions; moor at the side of the family home, at the old high-school's flat roof. Kids will ride sea-dos. But lovers... Lovers! No, for lovers - the most remarkable thing. After the tides all rise, lovers will run on water. They will skim the surface grinning, like Jesus, like Usain Bolt. They will feel the kisses on their soles as they arrive exactly where they wish to be.
Freelove Fenner - "New Direction". Complicated and simple and beautiful, like a Matisse. Or like a chocolate bar, wrapped in silver foil. Or a sun, just a red circle, above the horizon. Or like the ticktock yes yes of wanting you. [MySpace/buy for a delicious & perfect $7 CDN]
August 14, 2009
Love Fake Love Fake
Jeff The Brotherhood - "Mind Ride"
Buddy, you're getting pretty drunk. You look like you're at sea, a bit. Like, the sea on valium. You're eyes are like clotheslines, you could hang a sweater from that stare. You talk like you're already throwing up, like you're afraid the words might slip back down your throat. You're checking your pockets for your consonants. You're holding a speaker up to one ear like a pillow or an important call. You're dismissing everyone for offenses they haven't committed, you're flitting your wrist in such a way I can't tell if you think we're snobs or whether you're being a snob. I think even your clothes want to get away from you, and by the looks of things, you're starting to think you'll help them. You're poking the fire, you're whacking a tree with a stick, you're yelling like you just invented yelling. You're talking about swimming and everyone is just trying to be quiet to see if you can still be affected by your surroundings. You're on the diving board, and you're looking at the water, and now you're hovering above the water. The lights of the pool are blue, they're lighting your face from below, as you're hovering there in mid-air, and..oh. You're a demon. Okay, you're a demon. My bad. It's all good. Good times. [Heavy Days drops mid-Oct but Buy buy buy Jeff's old releases, powerful stuff]
While standing in a walk-in closet, I started to lose all perspective. When I came out I was as tall as mountains and as small as penny candy. Everything seemed in reach, as close as anything else, sometimes so close that it felt like it was pushed up against the glass window of my eyes, and would just pour into my head. It felt as if with each inhalation I was breathing in all the air in the world and then giving it back with every exhalation. Clouds rubbed against my eyebrows and I would check for fluff, puddles felt like they would run like tears down my cheeks, fences and ladders became the same thing, ceilings and floors could only be told apart by which was cleaner. The refrigerator can often seem like another world, a desolate ice prison, each item in its own tupperware cell. The bookshelf like a multicoloured forest, the carpet like a giant field of red grass, the couch like a piece of doll's furniture. It's horrible, pictures and people are very hard to tell apart. Sometimes when we sit in silence too long, I forget. [Buy]
(photo by riø)
August 13, 2009
HURRIE
Charles Spearin - "Mrs Morris (Reprise)". Maybe it doesn't do as much if you haven't heard the first one, the -prise this is re-ing. But maybe it does more. Maybe this is a more perfect dream. Sometimes you want a perfect song, a perfect solo - something you can slip into a pocket and take with you, and never be scared that it will crack. There are no flaws in this - it is beautiful, shiny, you could set it on a ring. [buy the Happiness Project]
Luxury Pond - "I Don't Believe You". A submerged song, a song without the Owen Pallett-arranged strings that mark most of Luxury Pond, but a song that sinks into the afternoon like salt into water. These are glimpses of loss, doubt, deception and eerie peace. A song for when you are sitting alone in a room, and you get up, and you close a window. [buy]
August 11, 2009
ASCII HERO
Yoni Wolf - "Shoot the Singer (1 Sick Verse)"
Amidst storms of backslashes, through mires of colons, and over huge highways of underscores, Ampersand headed headlong to an unknown anywhere, a desperate attempt to get off the grid. He wandered sullen and wide-eyed through clouds of accented characters, all similar to ones he knew but ultimately different. Like an n with a line through it or a t wearing a hat, a g with angry eyebrows or a b in a blanket. Things joined together in new and interesting ways, ways that would make him smile or giggle or look away. An a literally attached to an e, an s with a skunk stripe (or maybe a stripper pole?) an o that walks around looking at itself in the mirror every second of every day. His path, arduous and often boring and barren, lead him to the base of a great mountain, a small creek of equals at his feet, he thought whatever happens must happen over this. In a lonely pile of discarded hash marks, he found an upside-down question mark that still worked. He rode it up most of the mountain like a chairlift and found himself suddenly face to face with the Twelve Guardians of the Grid, of legend, he thought were a lie. They each have their own function, but the legend says that one will set you free. He told F1 about the people he's met along the way, F2 and 3 spoke in unison that the world is a strange and beautiful place, and the others nodded in agreement. F12 came over, moving strangely like a living statue, and whispered to our hero: "&#esc"
[Eskimo Snow by WHY? released on Sept. 22]
(sculpture by Alex Queral)
August 10, 2009
FLASHFLASHFLASHFLASH
Megapuss - "A Gun on his Hip and a Rose on his Chest". "Beautiful, Devendra, beautiful! You're a doll, a jaguar, a wild-man. Yes! More of that! Show me the beast in you, the animal. Show me the spirit of natur-- no please put down the microwave. No, that belongs to catering. Please put it down. It isn't part of the shoot, no. No you can't balance it on your head. Devendra, please! Come back to the bonfire. Please stop using the microwave as a hat. No-- Harvey, could you? Before he-- Devendra, we have champagne for you if you want - the Mike's Hard Lemonade is for the interns. Okay. Okay great. So into the camera - you're a freak! a beautiful folky freak! yes! ye-- I don't know what season of 30 Rock it is. You can watch it when the shoot is over. No, I won't-- Devendra, darling, please! Please take off the Chicago Blackhawks jersey." [buy]
Silent Years - "Vampires Bite The Hands Feed Them". "What a serene and peaceful place. What a fine place for a holiday. I will just sit here, rest my feet and gaze at that mountain. Oh, that mountain would be a fine one to climb. And so would the smaller one beside it, dusted in snow. And look at that range on the right - those look like fine adventures too. And the forest leading up to them - are they redwoods? firs? There's nothing better than ten days in the woods. That lake! The trout must be big as whales. Or maybe there are even whales, at the mouth of the bay! Fishing, swimming, surfing, harpooning. Let me put on my shoes! Look at that sky! I could ride those clouds! Don't tear the calendar until I've returned!" [MySpace/buy]
(photo by Miranda July)
August 7, 2009
Siannon
I was at the ballet tonight, I went alone despite trying desperately to bring Thomas along. He is completely consumed with work and is only melancholic and distant when taken away from it so I decided against pressing the matter. Even though it's the first snowfall tonight and the city is swirling with holiday gasps and bristles, and it's so beautiful that I can't imagine anything else I'd like to do than share that with him. But so it goes sometimes. I sat in the orchestra section, and in the row in front of me, a gentleman was speaking to his wife throughout the entire performance. Muttering under his breath while still watching the dancers, and it went on so long I was able to write some of it down: they're separating like a drop of oil on water, the outer ring is melting like warm snowflakes and the center is raising arms to the sky and dressed in red. The legs are all scissors--cut cut cut cutting everything, cutting the audience--the men are fiery, more fiery even than the one in red, and suddenly everything stops, you can hear they've stopped--the one in red is coming center stage and slowly opening her hand, and what is it, you can see it, it's the most beautiful and luscious thing, a gift of--oh my and the chaos is like windy snow, and it's gorgeous. As gorgeous as you, my love. Having seen that ballet countless times in my life, this was a unique experience among them. And it's with guilt that I admit I embellished their relationship ever so slightly. I added, "as gorgeous as you, my love." For I simply wish he had said that, but in fact he did not. Though in the re-telling, somehow, it must be added.
--
I Come To Shanghai - "Your Lazy Eye"
I met my father-in-law-to-be for the first time tonight. I will say generally that I am glad he lives in a remote filling station off the Cape, because I would be completely content only seeing him every three or four years at the most. I hope you'll forgive my incontrovertible condemnation and not think I am entirely vindictive. I feel I can speak honestly here and it's simply something I've had welling up in my breath for what seems like countless hours, and just had to extricate it from the confines of my chest. With that unpleasantness behind us, I can describe him more objectively. He is a short man, with a deep complexion, his hair, I believe, he must have found on the driveway in front of the house, and his halitosis reminded me of rancid crackers. He has a rat's demeanor and a horse's awkwardness. I of course don't mean a horse unbridled and free, they are as graceful as clouds in the sky, but a horse in a stable at night, the way they shuffle and look behind them and are unable to turn around. He has an exclusionary way of talking that makes simply everyone who listens feel completely unimportant and prisoners of whatever happenstance he is recounting. He has one eye that looks around the room as normal, and one eye that slinks and crawls around the room, as if with one half of his face he is pretending to act as normal, and with the other half revealing his leering and peering true persona. His teeth can't be described as anything other than little bullets stuck dumbly into his browning gums, and his smile is like that of a split and rotting apple. His compliments stick like peanut butter to the floor, and lay embarrassingly for everyone to gawk at, and who can be blamed. To quote this incomparable cretin: "You, my dear, your flesh gleams like a cooked cornish hen, and you could put out a cigarette with those legs." I didn't dare tell Thomas why I was crying.
August 6, 2009
SAPPILY, SORRY
Hi! Sorry I missed posting on Monday - I am traveling in Nova Scotia and haven't been close to the internet. This past weekend I was at the tiny & wonderful New Brunswick festival called Sappyfest. I was writing a daily newspaper for them.
Though I have to run again now, if you would like a taste of Sappyfest - I've put online both issues of the Sappy Times. Some middle-week vicarious reading for you:
(pdfs)
See you soon!
August 4, 2009
A DEFINITION OF SELF
Beyond a creature who perceives and interprets signs and symbols, it seems virtually impossible to define a "self" without a relationship to other similar or dissimilar beings. A "relationship" meaning both a set of circumstances and a set of opinions, that are both given and received. Even for a person who is perhaps raised by wolves, or grows up in solitary confinement, these things would be integral to their definition of self. A true definition is perhaps "monadic" in the sense that you can see every other person reflected (whether distorted or not) in the mirrored surface of the self. Like an online photo catalogue, where the "photographer" has a set of photos where you can't see who is taking the pictures, and the "narcissist" has themselves tagged in every pic. This song is sunny and grassy and reflective, and so is this summer, and so is my mind, as I read with my hands (like a kind of braille) all the things and people about me, at once a tactile history and a definition of self. And I am realizing the very real possibility of falling anywhere in that spectrum of your own life. Like getting all tossed around in one of those Wayne Coyne bubbles.
[album out later this year]
[buy old stuff from Magic Marker]