Archives : all posts by Sean

The Mouthbreathers - "Birthdays". At parties sometimes you drink some punch, and the punch is spiked, and you do not know it is spiked until you have drunk it down. And sometimes you do something, and you do not realize you are growing up until you have finished the something, and you have lost that friend or felt that feeling. And when you form a band you don't know what the band is until you've formed it. You have drunk a drink, you have grown up a little, you have formed a band. These things happen when they happen. Like a birthday, like the end of a song. And Mouthbreathers played one of my favourite sets of SappyFest: this young band that rehearses in a shed at the edge of town. Someone crowdsurfed. Someone sneezed. Lots of us laughed a lot. [Bandcamp]

The Luyas - "Fifty Fifty". The sky is grey. Take away the gases and eddies and atoms and particles and the sky up there would be grey as silt, even on sunny days, grey for forever, lightyears of grey. But the sky is blue. The sky is blue, for now. The sky is blue because it is filled with ghosts, and the ghosts make it blue, like light in lanterns at the sides of the bay. / When we die we are like parachutists, leaping right back up. [The Luyas' third album, Animator, will be released October 16 and I cannot wait]

Breatherholes - "From in the Grass". I am outside your house and I am knocking on your door. I am inside your parlour and I am knocking on your door. I am with you and I am knocking on your door. We are swimming in the lake, we are riding down the highway, we are playing in the tent, we are lying in the sheets, we are throwing all the plates, we are writing letters in separate lands, and I am knocking on your door. Knock knock / Who's there? [out on cassette in september / website]

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THIS WEEKEND IS SAPPYFEST HURRAY!

Danialou Sagbohan - "Viva, Femme Africaine". Jelly rolls home from work, to his picnic houseboat which bobs and bobs, full of potted plants and banquet. His wife is gorgeous and very smart, whipcrack smart, stupid smart, and she is icing a cake. "Jelly!" she says. "You home!" Although she is brilliant her English is only so-so. Jelly met her in Benin, when his houseboat bobbed on down. He spied her from the deck, through a telescope. "Holy moly," he said, "wouldja look at that specimen." It was lust that first drew him to her. But their minds met later, on their second date, at a dusty library in Porto-Novo. She knew the names of every colour, ten thousand ways to shimmy. Jelly worked in the paint industry; although he was not a shimmier he came from a long line of shimmiers, had been named for his grandfather, one of the greatest shimmiers of all; he fell hard. They were married under white blossoms, beside a lowing cow, and then Jelly's wife returned with him to the picnic houseboat and they bobbed away into ever-after. Now the boat is moored beside a small English village, where there is only one skyscraper - a skyscraper dedicated to paint. Jelly works all day and then rolls home at night. "Jelly!" his wife yells. "You home!" And then she teaches him a thing or two, and he tries to make her laugh, and he inwardly thanks the river currents and ocean currents and lucky winds that brought two people together, lusciously. [from 1978 / out of print]

Micachu and the Shapes - "You Know". They're probably the most interesting band in Britain. Miasmatic music, noisy and rude, playful, vivisected, stubborn as a stubbed toe. I've been listening to this racket non-stop, giving friends headaches, giving them headaches like I'm giving them gifts: Here, a headache. You'll thank me later. It is not often you find a song like a ropey weed, pushing through your house. It is not often you hear a song that is simultaneously an aquarium and a work-site, a lobotomy and a labradoodle. Mica Levi paints all the colours of sullen, and some of the colours of joy, with a band that plays off-notes, drones, jumble. They are like the Fall and they are like Pavement and they are like falling on the pavement, splat, with bubblegum in your mouth. One minute and thirty-two seconds; pop. [buy]

Django Django - "Life's a Beach". You can fall on anything: a step, a piece of timber, a banana peel. You can trip over a relationship, a regret, a long-lost friend. One kiss can send you flying. Be careful when you are on the beach, when you are relaxing on a rooftop garden. Pay attention to the sky underfoot, to distractions, to your clumsy habits. Sometimes your mind is like the jingle of tambourine and the clack of coconut-halves, voices rhyming in your ears, and you can slip straight out of your comfy pit. [buy]

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Alt-J - "Tessellate". A man who is known as a triangle, ∆, must change his name to a description of that triangle. For a week he tries Threeside, introducing himself at parties. He applies for a credit card as Sum-180. But finally the man who is known as a triangle decides to call himself Alt-J, which is computer-talk for ∆, and tries to be happy with this name. He knows it makes him sound like an Australian radio station, or like a fancy way of rolling a marijuana cigarette. But he thinks the music will speak for itself: surely no one will meditate on Alt-J's name while they listen to his coo, his blunt electronic pop. And yet I do. I do. This song is a little like Eagle-Eye Cherry and a little like DJ Shadow circa Endtroducing (mostly the former). Somehow, it is very good. But I do not find myself meditating on its witchy beats & chimes, its hieroglyphic lyrics. Mostly, despite everything else, I think of the man who is a triangle and who thinks that Alt-J is an acceptable cipher. [buy]

D I A N A - "Born Again". A song that is less like the stuff of dance music and more like the stuff that rises up from dance music, like steam or smoke or glinted light. Forget the music that makes you move your feet, the bass-line and synth; think of the colours in your eyes as you exit into the night, the air you exhale into the open. Remember the dreams you have, after hours at the discotheque, where your closed black lids become a spinning silver ball, aurora, celestial spheres. [Soundcloud]

EU - "Spotycach". The whirr and furl of plants growing, ffwd in a David Attenborough doc, firing pollen and seed, unspooling. Green whiplash, brown clod, flower and flower. Subtly kiss that honeysuckle mouth. [from st petersburg / 2000 / download]

TNGHT - "Higher Ground". It was a new fortress: dark pitch, polished steel spires, shining midnight marble. Less than ten years old and never yet defended. But now they knew the Ministerium's armies were five days away. Tanks seemed to gleam on the hilltops; ships seemed to glint against the horizon. So the fortress lit its fires and sounded the sirens, summoned all of their defenders. Ten thousand soldiers, trained and strong, filling the lanes, courtyards, bulwarks. They kept the fires going. They sounded all the sirens. They wheeled out the kettle drums and fanfares - they thundered and hailed. And what they found was that their new fortress shook. It reflected and amplified every sound. Standing in their places, the soldiers felt the music quiver in the air. It roared in their heads. It made them dance. The greatest fortress in the realm, impregnable, hot as a night-box, boîte de nuit, club. [TNGHT is Scotland's Hudson Mohawke and Montreal's Lunice]

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Montrealers:

• M60 launches tonight, ahead of September's screenings. Come and sign up to make a one-minute film.
• Following the demise of Mirror and Hour, a handful of writers have very mightily made a thing called Cult.
• Saturday marks Yelp Helps!, a terrific celebration of good works, games, and free food. Learn about local charities, nosh, play yr heart out.

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The Deadly Snakes - "Gore Veil". Instead of singing about rose-coloured lenses, the late, great Snakes imagine the opposite, a gore veil; it turns a ripe apple to blood & fire engines. Through this filter, the world looks more fragile, "calmly simple", but it also provokes an existential crisis. What am I for, what am I for if not to paint the walls with blood? ... What am I for, what am I for if not to wander through the rye? All this with wheezy organ and rattle-tat, exclamations of brass. "Gore Veil" feels like a formal questioning, an arbitrary exercise, the most arch kind of tale. A Wes Anderson movie, a fictional advice-letter, one stage in the Tour de France. The enjoyment of a feeling that is half-felt, half-imagined, in vivid (scarlet) colour. [buy Porcella]

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M60, the Montreal 60 Second Film Festival, launches its 2012 season on Thursday. While the screenings aren't til September, this is your chance to sign up to make a movie for the fifth anniversary festival. Anyone in Montreal can sign up - you then have one month to shoot a 60-second film. No fees, no jury, no judges, no prizes; every single finished flick will be shown on the big screen in September. Thursday's bash also sees us offering beautiful letterpress doorprizes, old-timey music, and bilingual storytelling from Cat Kidd and Confabulation. More info at our website and on Facebook. Hope to see you there!