Archives : all posts by Dan

Born Ruffians - "Red Yellow and Blue (White Williams Mix)"

This is the soundtrack to the secret hidden Cloud Level you can get to on Red, Yellow and Blue, that steady and stalwart shortlist contender for album of the year. If you listen to the album all the way through once but don't quite let it finish, then press back on the cd player and listen to the first second of every track right back up until the opener, and keep hovering there, in that first second of the first track, until you hear that clack-click-clack percussion start up, then you'll know you've reached the Cloud Level. Once you're up there it's just coins and stars and vines and you just have to jump jump jump to make the most of it. The sky looks black, but don't worry you can see everything just fine. Enjoy it, have fun up there, but you can never listen to the Cloud Level more than once, so take it all in the most you can. [Buy the fantastic Little Garçon EP]

The Theater Fire - "Coyote"

Life used to be simple. Things used to cost less, people used to share more, things used to be a lot easier to do. Pictures used to take a long time to take, maps were more imaginative, farming was fun! But the differences are not just cultural, people used to be physically different in old times. People used to be shorter, like 6-inches tall, not everybody knows that. Boy, that was the way to live. Think of it, you could get everything you do now done if you were 6-inches tall. You could still use the internet, there'd be more food for everyone, I bet gas would be cheaper if we were still 6. Still 6 is what I call it 'cause I want to go back there so bad. In fact, it's a free country, I say we start living that way anyway. Just get back to the old ways, you know? Just find myself a coyote and just ride. [Buy (go to "store")]

[photo source]

Matthew and the Arrogant Sea - "Within the Universe"

Light legless swimmers, graven telephone bugs, tambourinic candle flames, everything moves at least a little bit to the beat. Because I don't know who this song is meant for (I hear no pride in "all my friends are aliens, baby") I can only assume it's meant for me. The way forgetting to lock your front door, forgetting to turn off the shower or the oven, and coming home to those first little signs that everything inside is different, little "I didn't leave it like that" signs, were meant for you. [released Oct. 28th from Nova Posta Vinyl]

Antony & the Johnsons - "Another World"

I did that survey recently and asked people what kind of topics they like to hear songs about. I gave a bunch of categories, like "songs about money" and "songs about faith" and "songs about travel". The two highest ranked were "songs about love from a skewed perspective" and "forgetting who you are" ("staying true to who you are" was second-last) and by far the lowest ranked was "songs about the current state of the world". I suppose this probably intimated songs like "Eve of Destruction" and "Heal the World", but I would put "Another World" in that category too, and I absolutely love it. Antony's microphone is so full of tears you can hear it overflowing in the last minute. [pre-order]

No post today. Busy week and all that. There will be a Saturday post instead, if you're free. Until then, Sean has a great POP guide for you to look at. see you soon.

[source]

The Pica Beats - "Shallow Dive"

A human being takes advantage of the simple machines. An inclined plane, a screw, a pulley, a wheel and axle, a lever, a wedge. Friction (love) percussion (abuse) and velocity (progress) are all possible, and made even easier and easier. Soon the mountains will slide around like so much office chairs, the volcanos opened and sealed like the aperture of a camera, relationships forged and felled with the flip of a magnet, the pull of a stopper. I hear a whooing wind in the sky, it's guiltless, illiterate, frank, heralding beauty and banal change. We'll have to grow some gills.

[Buy]

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Elsewhere: Danny Zabbal is currently illustrating an 8-page web comic that I wrote. Every Sunday he draws a page, and he's currently at page 4. Go get caught up, and I'll post again about it when it's all done. He = amazing.

Relief Maps - "Hair Play"

This sentence took an hour to write. It took me three days to eat yesterday's breakfast, 8 months to read a too-thumbed copy of "Shampoo Planet", 2 years to break it off with my old flame from Ottawa. It takes me a long time to do a lot of things. It took me 3 weeks to watch Midnight Cowboy, 9 tries before I could listen past track 4 on Lonesome Crowded West, it took me honestly forever to get through 8th grade. I takes me a long time to do a lot things. But I can grow my hair like a motherfucker. I don't even have to try at it sometimes, but when I do, it's even faster. Some days I'll go with a thick pony tail, the next day a military crew cut, and the next I'll go with waist-length straight locks. Some days it's full beard, then clean shaven, then powerful goatee, and that's in a day. On cold days I can increase my natural warmth, and on hot days, I can be completely smooth and breezy. I can do designs, text, and even photos if you let me look at it long enough. It's the thing I'm best at, so it's certainly a pleasure to watch me work. Just like it is an utter pleasure to listen to Relief Maps do what they're best at: steady, crashing, warbly rock that is at once humble and brashly talented. [Buy from the MySpace]

Ima Fucking Gymnist - "We're Professionals"

I picture 14-year-old girls in dark overcoats that are too big for them, and old value village fedoras and fake moustaches and umbrellas and briefcases just walking around the stage in this exaggerated "oh, excuse me sir, no excuse ME sir, I have very important tasks to do" kind of way. It sounds like the soundtrack to a clown act, one that ends with burning all the money that the audience paid to get in. Whatever it actually is I hope they're as cool as I think they are. [Buy from olFactory]

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Also: do not miss Sean's Rye Rye post from yesterday. Oh my, yes.

Nico - "I'm Not Saying"

Nico had a cold in 1965 and sang warmly, even for her regularly cold voice, on this cold cold summer song. Her character is all caveats and reservations and maybes and not-yets, it's the most loveless love song I've ever heard. Lyrically, this has a very niche market, namely those who are still in love with, and have not yet been hurt by, someone treating them this way, and those who treat people this way. Colossal cannonball lovers, that's about it. But musically, this song is almost universal, as in, it could mean the whole universe, you could almost fit the whole universe inside with room enough to shake it around.

Chris Farlowe - "Out of Time"

[buy both in this silly box set]

Railcars - "Concrete Buildings"

Running slipping slick down all-night subway steps. Solar-powered scientific calculator bear attack. Squinting, plugging other ear, trying to hear unintelligible voicemail while swarmed by guitar-hornets. Licking a back-hand stamp to pass it, press it, to a friend.
[buy from the MySpace]

The Unbearables - "Loose Connection"

Beach blanket magic carpet clarinet-i-tron. Evergreen radar wheel christmas carol. Electric ripping Madonna helicopter shot. Lonely forest hippie garden circle. Reproachful firm but fair organ leads to massive guitar climb and inevitable fall.
[EP release at Emo's Lounge in Austin on Thurs]