Said the Gramophone - image by Matthew Feyld

Archives : all posts by Dan

by Dan

Isalnds - "Kids Don't Know Shit"

IF THE SEVENTIES ARE ONLY IN THEIR THIRTIES, THEN YOUR MIDDLE AGES WILL HAVE NO PROBLEM WITH THE ENLIGHTENMENT AFTER THIS.

YOUR INNER KID BECOMES INWARDLY IGNORANT, AND YOUR FUTURE OFFSPRING WILL COME OUT AND PLAY IN THE HEAVEN TO WHICH THEY'VE BEEN CONDEMNED. IT'LL BE FUN!

Islands have made a hot album. Hot like it's been heated to a high temperature, its particles are vibrating very quickly. Hot like sometimes when I touch it I recoil, sometimes I nuzzle right up to it. Hot like it could melt stuff, hot like it is "of summer".

Nick Diamonds (Thorburn?) is trying as hard as Stephen Malkmus should be trying.

[site]

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Pony Pants - "Haircutz"

I got this two Julys ago and I never told you about it. I was listening to it the other day, as I have every few weeks since then, and I realized I may have forgotten to share it. Pony Pants, and their album Til Death Do Us Party, are that kind of fake lazy sexy that makes me like CSS, Yelle, and to a lesser extent Cory Kennedy. It's like this kind of business bohemian that can just deal drugs and do drugs and go out every night and laugh at every thing and have sex with every thing and just go like that for 25 years. When it's probably managers and 9:30 meetings and album art arguments. Only the strong survive.

[Buy]

by Dan

Tammar - "Weddle On"

From a hundred feet in the air, from twenty-five years way up in the air, comes gliding down Tammar, in a softly sloping spiral. Dressed in a peculiar kind of military uniform, eyes closed, wind unforgiving against such a young angry face. When it gets close enough, every detail begins to take shape, and it's now clear that this music is only about perspective and not about time. Only because it's close to you can you hear it, it never started, it doesn't end.

[Buy from Secretly Canadian]

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double post today. read Jordan's below, too!

by Dan

PDF Format - "God Only Knows 64"

PDF Format is Toronto artist David Dineen-Porter in one of his many disguises, manifestations, approximations. Though this one may be his most honest to date. As PDF Format, he is the conductor of a vast symphony of thousands of little glitchy bits: a hundred-and-fifty laser bursts, eight-hundred jumps, bomb bursts, one-ups, door opens, gun loads, enacting reflector shields, passing levels, losing hearts, and landing dying on spikes. If there were ever an instance of a band created to play one song, this could be a perfect instance for that (the most self-loathing-beautiful love song made from the most time-wasting-beautiful bits). If he didn't make a bunch of other great songs too.

PDF Format - "We Shall Eat Krill"

For the first EP, Fecal Alcohol Syndrome, and for the other few songs released after that, they were entirely video game-y, this is the first song where PDF Format has stepped beyond that, taken a chance on just playing this song how it should sound, and it's marvelous. It's like combining three songs; the verse song, the chorus song, and the bridge song. One with flashing eyes and dark strings attached, one with stompy pop boots and gold and honey sun, and one with eerie reggae and careless energy. This song is the sign of great things to come.

[the Facebook group (with songs)]
[MySpace]

by Dan

MW_kids_mask.jpg
(photo from the incomparable mirrorworld)

"WE'RE ALL THE WHISKERS AND BODY PARTS AND ALL OF US AND VICE VERSA" - thom stylinski

The Whiskers - "Cogs"

"If all is not lost," he said, limply, to his cat, who had bad organs, that were shaped like church bells, ones ringing on the wedding day, of two sailors, one dressed as a woman, something everyone knew at the party, which was far too long, and too much filled with bad dancing, that was learned on the fly, and that paid no tribute to the long-haired band, who had already broken up, and was playing their last show, the first of which was in their high school, which was now abandoned, but secretly had a family living inside, that had immigrated from the south, where it was too hot to live, where people died in the thousands from the heat, which was creeping slowly up the continent, drying everything in its path, which looked like the way sun moves up a hardwood floor, in fuzzy patches of yellow warmth, which was just warm enough for an old cat to sit in, "then you and I will be okay."

The Whiskers - "Grownups"

His cat dead, his degree still 15 credits away 30 years later, his lunch sitting like a brick in his gut, his walls mostly empty white and stained, his kitchen filthy, cracked, wretched, his whole damn tired life a tidy dusty mess, he rips apart his room to find, unsurprised, a little piece of pure sunlight, a piece you can touch. Something no one else has.
[Video (great)]

[Buy for 10$] ...The Whiskers have made an album of grey gorgeous leaves and giant wood panels, slowly spinning and fanning. Of pulses and dreams and night swims, and horrible terrible tangible imagery. You can dance yourself to death, you can duck the giant swinging boom, or you can fall asleep to the sounds of someone crooning their heart inside out. It's a beautiful thing...

by Dan
lee-moses.jpg

Lee Moses - "Bad Girl pt. 1"

That grey-eyed gypsy bitch, I know she's two-timing him, I know she is. When I told her I found her slipper in the driveway she just laughed and said, "Oh, I guess I was missing that." She doesn't have right in her eyes, you know? She doesn't love him. I mean she loves him, I'm sure she tells him that, whispers it to him in his big soft ears, but she doesn't love him. Not like I love him. Not like he's supposed to be loved. I swear. The minute I find something that even looks like proof, I will kick her ass inside-out and around the block, I'm not kidding. I'm sorry I keep talking about this.

Lee Moses - "Bad Girl pt. 2"

Remember how I used to talk about her? Remember how I used to threaten to kick her ass around? Ha ha, that was funny. Lord, I came close a few times, I remember that. Like when she came back from that camping trip, and she pulled up in that stanky old car with that strange man and no kids, I just about lost my mind. I thought it was all over for Lee, I just saw all of it leaving in an instant, I started thinking about what to say to him, about how she'd come and gone just like I said and how I was always right about her and how she was no good, just no good at all. But then I was wrong. I admit it, I admit it, I was wrong. She's never hurt him more than he didn't deserve, I'll give her that much. But Lord have mercy, I'll die happy if I never see her dance the way she danced at her wedding for the rest of my goddamned life.

[In Dangerous Rhythm posts: 1, 2]
[Buy Time and Place]

(thanks Sarah and Kai)

by Dan

Fewn - "Lobbying Congress for the Right to Punch You in the Face"

I think of Curtains, Winks, and Red Pony Clock, and smile wiiiiiide. Then I think of curtains, winks, red, ponies, but not a clock in sight. No timepiece of any sort (that includes metronomes) are allowed in Fewn's world. They're banging out clouds with that one flat drum, and then moaning and rhyming and moaning and rhyming, and so on. Until BLAM!-- they're not kidding around. Well, that's all they're doing, but they do it so earnestly, you start by laughing, and you end by joining right in.

Fewn - "The Plains"

Join right in and get carried right along. Whether it's true or not, it has the spirit of passing fancy, as if it were a whim to be a musician. "Let's just give it a shot." 2 hours later, they sound really really great.

[download the whole new album, FORT]

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Andrew Earles and Jeffery Jensen are having a hell of a time.

by Dan

Sybris - "Hurt Hawk"

Day 99:

I will not have this burning into my conscience anymore. I don't care who reads this, warden be damned, I have to write it down, to remember it as it was, and without clouding. We were past the guards, we were out of their jurisdiction, then they ran after the car, I said to Bevi, "He's running after us." He said, "Don't stop." I said, "We have to." He said, "Don't stop." I stopped. The guard was one we hadn't seen before. He wanted to see the papers again, but wouldn't say why. I looked at Bevi, and I nodded, that's all I did, and I admit that much, I nodded at him. At this point, from where I can see, a nod can mean many things, I can name a thousand right now, but in that moment, it only meant two things, but those things were vastly different. That guard was shot for asking for the papers again, and I am in jail for nodding. [Pre-Order] [stream the album this week only]

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tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - "Drying clothes made entirely of zippers (partial cycle)"

This is literally what it claims to be, and if you have nothing to get to, if you're into sitting with it for the whole 17:47 some interesting things start to happen. First, you hear what it is, you picture it, you think, "big deal". You think, "yeah, I think I saw this in a gallery once, I get it, but who cares." And you're kind of right. Then you start thinking about how it's music, about how the idea must have come to the artist, about what mood they were in, about what mood they were trying to create. And then, like the way you stare into space on the subway, or in class, you're suddenly in the mood of a laundromat. One of complete and sublime patience. If you can do something else while you wait, you can, you're totally free to, but now is a time when you can just sit, and listen to the dryer, and just let that be all there is. And after a few minutes of that, you might start to realise how great this song is. It's not really re-listenable, you don't put it on at a party, you might not even want to keep it around, because it could be annoying if it came on again at any point, but for right now, nothing is happening except that. You're not offending anyone, you're not winning anything, you're not trying, or loving, or lying, you're just waiting, wonderfully, pale and yellow.

[From a post about The Cassette Mythos on the FMU blog]

There's lots more in the archives:
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