Archives : all posts by Dan

Blackout Beach - "Astoria, Menthol Lite, Hilltop, Wave of Evil 1982"

In wave one of the new regime, houses and buildings and services and plumbing and volunteers and young professionals and condos and roadways and front lawns will all swarm around individuals like a cloud of black flies, like the center of a slow and gentle hurricane, a movable and unstoppable city.

In wave two of the new regime, smoking will be a kind of poetry, a performance reserved only for the most daring, the truly courageous among us. There will be a new culture of smoking, filters sharpened in pencil sharpeners, saving exhales in separate jars, tumors bronzed and placed in places of high note.

In wave three of the new regime, grass will be best left unseen. An "Earth Shave" will occur, almost on its own, partly because of a kind of muscle memory enacted to replace the empty silos, long emptied of the wind ravaged grain, and partly for aesthetic reasons, a desire to change the look of the pictures that satellites take. This will be a highly advanced wave; many will die.

In wave four of the new regime, a year will be chosen when all the children born during that year will be cursed, and there will be charlatans, warmongers and peaceniks among them, but cursed charlatans, peaceniks and warmongers all. I believe, and this is just my personal belief, that they will choose early on to lie both on their driver's license and to themselves, in an attempt to escape their own curse. But they need only to find their fellow cursed, like a diseased tree trying to spot another diseased tree, I believe they could be happy together.

[pre-order this incredible work]

(drawing by Nick Howard)

Parlovr - "Pen to the Paper"

"It's unfair to say that I'm unaffected by love songs. I think love songs are great, I just don't actually care about love anymore. Romantic love, I'm talking about, of course. (cough) I think it's all fine (gesturing with hands) to have the kind of love that keeps families together and all that, that I'm still on board with. I'm talking about the classic (drinking allongé) boy-meets-girl heteronormative kind of thing; romance, dating, commitment, marriage, the whole bit. (a bite of a biscuit) I mean, I always say the same thing whenever anybody asks me about this: you want to know why I don't care about love anymore? Think about watching time-lapse photography of a bud sprouting. It's incredible, right? Now think about trying to find a seed at the nursery that did that. But you can only try one seed at a time, or maybe three or four seeds at the very maximum. That's a lot of trips to the nursery. Oh, and you have to plant the seeds in your skin. (cough) (looks away)"
a. a. circa 1990
--[Buy Parlovr's LP via the MySpace]-- *and go to their show on Jan 17th at Casa Del Popolo in Montreal with Sister Suvi and Mixylodian.*

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Zu - "Ostia"

"There is no easy time to strike out against tyranny. There isn't a time when oppression will have an off-moment or will let its guard down or relax its defenses, it simply doesn't work that way. The systems of tyranny are designed to prevent any kind of slack from occurring. But in essence, the systems are designed, which means they have been created from a perspective, which means the designer at some point looked at their system from a singular, or possibly multiple, hypothetical perspectives. Take bank robberies for instance. In earlier times, entering a bank and asking for money would work, as would breaking into the vault. So the banks created more and more elaborate systems of defense: bigger locks, more impenetrable vaults. But walking into a bank and asking for money still works, getting someone to open the vault still works. There is always a perspective which you can take on a system that will allow for a complete upheaval, or at least shake-up, of that system. Change your perspective, take what the system of tyranny values; most often money, slaves, resources, or potential resources (technological developments, can be reduced generally to "better bomb" theory), and exploit its desire for those things. For example, you could poison the money well. You could crash the stock market."
a. a. September 2008, a month before the crash.
--[Buy old tracks off MySpace] *and their album drops Feb. 10th on Ipecac.*

[image source]

Iran - "Buddy"

A trail of jellybeans, a licorice rope tow, a bubble tape conveyor belt, a melty fudge path. Past shady lanes, perfect row houses, machine-made ponds and parks. A bright sunny day, but a nice dry heat. One appointment and it's not til later after supper. Passenger riding the path, the belt, the trail, to a particular quiet pink house on corner Birch and lane Hearth. Round the streetlight and set the sun down like a puppy, so it can run off and be free, and slide slowly up the driveway into the garage. The door closes, and it's dark, strike a match, only to read that you're surrounded by fireworks. [buy single for 3$]

Cotton Jones - "I Am The Changer"

This year, I'll make a resolution to have more conversations with living people than with dead ones. I'll start bottling fresh air when I find it. I'll only have dreams about things less exciting than what I'm actually doing. I'll grow a secret beard. I'll hit up strangers for favours I wouldn't ask of my own family. "Hey, could you call this number and tell the person that answers that it's not going to work out? I'd appreciate it." I'll help make one situation a day better and one situation worse. I'll grow a secret foot taller. I'll redefine "New Age". I'll gradually begin to float. I'll master taxonomy so I can tell people exactly what they are to me. I'll behave disarmingly, in doing my part for world peace. I'll get sick thinking about getting sick. I'll learn to braise all my food, like, all of it. I'll do it all to the toe-tap of "I Am The Changer". I'm running out of time. [pre-order]

[LIFE magazine via the astounding nevver blog]

Abe Vigoda - "Wild Heart" (removed by request)

A stack of chips as tall as my chest. A wheelbarrow of chips, a hearty wagon, a shopping cart. I sold everything to get this many chips, sold my bike, my computer, even my winter boots. I take a free drink and head to the high rollers hallway, my pant cuffs wet with melting snow. My shirt sweaty and my heart beating fast. I sit next to a frowning man and another fatter man. I introduce myself to everyone, which I shouldn't do, I shouldn't do that. I check my wallet one last time, yep, this is it. I say, "room enough for a wheelbarrow?" which I shouldn't say either, the dealer looked like he chewed a peppercorn when I said that. "Chips on the table, please," says the dealer, do they call it a dealer when he just spins a wheel? It takes about ten minutes but I get all the chips on the table, and a crowd has gathered by this point. "He's awesome," I heard one lady say, which I try not to think about. I push my chips to the center of the table, somewhere among the numbers, and I suddenly wonder how long it would take to have a portrait of myself painted, how could I sit still for that long? The dealer waves his hand over the chips like he's casting some kind of spell, and with a wink, "no more bets."

[Buy old Abe Vigoda]
[previously (song)]
[previously (band)]

Durrty Goodz - "The Youngers"

A dense piece, this. Swinging on vines through the halls of a haunted house, a young gang of kids are the protectors and destroyers of a certain code of conduct. A complicated hierarchy of seniority, catalogued first by age then success then bad-ass-ness then assets then physical strength then proficiency with weapons and vehicles then just plain looks. Snogging and shagging on kitchen floors and bathroom walls, every painting with moving eyes being a secret passage to one of their bedrooms, tallscreen tvs and videoblades aplenty, weird shoes that you can wear like gloves or like helmets if you need them. Plans of attack and sabotage are cockily put into freestyles that are performed nightly at the Salad Bowl Stage, thirty stories under the basement floor. Parents have long given up the idea of trying to get their kids back from this place, despite the weaker members in their weaker moments wishing beyond hope that they would. [Buy in the UK]

O.W.L. - "Be Alive"

O.W.L. are making something like what I can only think to describe as "elvin emo". Most of the tracks on the eponymously unabbreviated album Of Wondrous Legends are about things like Crimson Knights and the angel Gabriel and The Midnight Carnival, so this is the only one talking to the listener. And since the setting of the album is already heavily wooded and sun-dappled and cinched in leather with leather laces, this normally missable Yes b-side soundalike becomes for me a lovely strolling meander through the imaginary land of fantasy psychology. What does the advice "be alive" mean to a troll, to a guardbird, to a centaur prince? [Buy]

[photo source]

Paul & Linda McCartney - "Ram On"

The year is rushing and draining quickly out of the bath. The water is dragging as much of the leftover filth as it can pull along with it, and I'm suddenly miniscule and standing fast at the edge of the drain, letting it rush all through my hair and around my tiny fingers or cilia or whatever. A thunderous torrent of other people's memories that greys the sky with their dirt. No, their stuff. This song plays for the final minutes. It's not of this year, but for some reason it stands for it. Or at least for the end of it. The way all colours make white or time passing makes light, it just feels like going up to Heaven, or at least to the next level. As in Level 3, World 4, Stage 1, Chapter 2009: Humility, Hope, and The Tippy-Toes of Justice. [Buy]

of Montreal - "Jimmy"

My quiet gaunt face, swaying eyes closed in the middle of a community dance, the room near empty save a few wallflowers, the shameless persistent disco ball and embarrassing light show. An old man with his older wife are trying to slow dance off to the side. My perfect hair and outstanding suit. My calm smooth motions belie the laboured organ, played a hair too slow by some crummy slickster in plaid. But that doesn't even register for me. Look at me. I'm fucking hot. [free]

Parvati Khan - "Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Aaja"

My face is red isn't it I can feel it. I can't help it when I get excited I get like all beet red. It's cause I didn't think she'd agree to this and now she's supposed to be here any second and I haven't thought about at all what I'm gonna say or how I'm gonna act. I'm smiling too much, I know that for sure. She's like all over the place, you know, completely everywhere and we said we love each other the other day and I think I'll order pancakes for her while I'm waiting. God, I think if she looks as pretty as I think she will I'll just cry just bawl right here at the table. If we finish in time we can see the sun set! I think I'm crying now. damn that. [emusic]