A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
After an extended hiatus, Mt. Wolf, from London, England via Guernsey, Dorset, and Brighton, have decided to be a band again, and come back with Red, which is something of a haunted lullaby. It is but a taste of what will come in the new year.
And now, some synth-pop confection for Saturday night: Chemicals by Sirena, who claims both Stockholm and Barcelona as her home towns.
Because sometimes people are what they look like under the light of the disco ball, and sometimes that light (and other substances) plays tricks upon our eyes and hearts.
It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.
In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.
Crisp, solid, mellow, at times a little jazzy: these are the beats of Benjamin Durazzo. His signature move is playing two MPCs at once. Here he is with Waterbed:
A couple of months ago he was out on tour with AF the Naysayer and so I got to quiz him about his favorite book, record and drink in person. Here is what he had to say:
A Good Read
My favorite book Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut. It’s just perfectly in tune with my sense of humor. I like the satire of our country that Kurt Vonnegut writes so eloquently about.
A Good Listen
Favorite record is Fragile by Yes. Because I love prog rog and that’s like the quintessential prog rock record.
Favorite Drink
Water – San Pellegrino, light carbonation, let’s go, baby.
Ocean, by Buffalo Sunn (formerly Sweet Jane): because y’all may have noticed this blog can be kind of . . . water themed, sometimes. I like the sea. Beach towns in winter are some of my favorite places; I love Coney Island all year ’round. By and large, if you need me and I am not where I usually am, you will find me by the seaside. Salt water and sea air: it’s good for whatever ails you.
And this song expresses that feeling perfectly. The video is . . . kind of puzzling and claustrophobic – poking their YouTube channel implies we may we walking in mid-story – so the ocean, when it finally appears, is something of a relief.
Dad would have been 73 today; Sarah Brightman was one of his favorite singers, and Phantom of the Opera one of his favorite works by Andrew Lloyd Webber. This one is for him. Happy Birthday, Daddy, I miss you.
http://youtu.be/8b2po-ytpNM
One of the many joys of Soundcloud is that you can press play on one song and then, left unchecked, it will play affiliated tunes. Sometimes that’s more work by the same artists, other times it’s other artists on the same label, other times it seems kind of random.
My Vinnie Ferra Voyage of Discovery was the first kind of situation: I listened to his current single, called God Forbid, and then it gave me his previous work.
This is God Forbid, which . . . I am going to be blunt, I’m not super excited about. It showcases his range, and objectively speaking it’s pretty, but it didn’t grab me and make me want to listen to it again.
On the other hand, Destroying Me, which popped up next: yeah this I’m into, because I’m always here for songs on the theme of “I love you and it is going to drive me around the twist” especially when I can sing along:
The third song I listened to was Bad For Business, from Man vs. Machine (2010), and at that point, I was in. This is good stuff.
Normally I use this feature for one song at a time, but I’m making an exception today, because Militia Vox has made a whole EP of covers, entitled Bait, and all of them are great.
I’m particularly fond of her take on Ozzy Osbourne’s No More Tears:
And her interpretation of Waiting for the Night by Depeche Mode is awesome:
A home for things that might be fleeting, might be soothing, might be weird, might be soothing and weird. The blogging equivalent of sitting in the garage twiddling radio knobs just to see what might be out there.
Because sometimes, twiddling knobs in the virtual garage, you get some static followed by atmospheric creaking followed by a roar straight from the dungeon. Or: “symphonic black metal” may initially sound like a contradiction in terms, but I promise it isn’t.
Unfathomed of the Abyss (Kevin Price) spent 14 years (!) working on Arisen Upon Oblivion and the result is a complex collection of sounds, some delicate, others more like a sledgehammer. That said, while it’s heavy, it isn’t suffocating.
For example, there’s To Unequal the Balance of the Cosmos, the first song on the record, which is fourteen minutes long, but not one single minute drags:
And then there’s The Figment Unadulated, the second song, which grinds on the bottom but soars at the top, and is what I would use to score a scene with a scrappy crew exploring a mysteriously abandoned spaceship:
And the rest of the record is much the same: loud, majestic, and cinematic in scope. For those of you busy NaNoWriMo-ing right now, it’s also good writing music.
So here is a story I have to tell you about Stay by Shakespeare’s Sister: The first time I heard it I was in the Arizona desert with my youth group, about three-fourths of the way through a week-long mission trip. We were out driving around looking at rocks, or something, I don’t remember, but it had been a long week. Tempers were fraying. Teeth were being firmly clenched. Required daily notes of affirmation to each other (yes, really) were becoming more difficult to compose.
But we had the radio on, a) because it was 1992 and b) I think choosing one tape or CD to listen to might have been the last straw for all of us, and – this song came on:
http://youtu.be/Tosky-ZNbRw
It was like someone had kicked down the door to a sex dungeon and it was full of fresh air. I didn’t quite understand what all was going on in there, but it surely was better than a car full of my seething peers.
I bought their CD as soon as I got home (as well as a Patty Smyth CD; I was looking for Patti Smith and missed) and had that song on repeat for some time.
Strangers have just released a cover of it, which is less sex dungeon and more new wave dance party, but still very good:
It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.
In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.
David Strange spent many years as a session musician and playing guitar in Courtney Love’s band, while writing his own songs in secret. In January, he’s turning five of them loose upon the world, in the form of a self-titled EP. It is, truly, a dazzling cornucopia of sounds and concepts. It’s a little bit of heavy thudding drums and guitar wizardry, a little bit of electronic wubblebubble, a little bit of Elvis Costello-style grim-pop, a little weird, and a lot awesome. I got through all five songs and immediately wanted to know what else he was building in there.
Mean World is the first single, and the tip of the iceberg:
And now, I will turn the floor over to him, to tell us about a good read, a good listen, and a good drink:
Photo by Charlotte Kemp Muhl
A Good Read
Delta of Venus by Anais Nin. Broke and destitute sometime in the 1940’s Anais Nin and Henry Miller anonymously began writing erotica for an unnamed ‘collector’ in exchange for the sum of about a dollar per page. Good money for smut in those pre-internet free porn website days. They didn’t take it exactly seriously at the time so it’s a little unclear as to how involved Miller was compared to Nin nor did they intend for mass publication of the work which didn’t appear until the 1970’s when Nin finally permitted it.
The ‘collector’ insisted that they leave poetic and literary language aside as much as possible to focus solely on the graphic, sexual and descriptive nature of the vignettes. Despite these instructions and limitations the artistic juices of her . . . inkwell . . . manage to soak through the page. Best read in bed with a pal . . .
A Good Listen
Magma‘s debut, Magma* from 1970. Originally a double LP this album is the manifestation of band leader Christian Vander’s disturbed futuristic vision of humanity’s spiritual and ecological demise. It’s a concept album about a group of humans who flee the doomed earth to settle on a distant planet called Kobaïa. Apparently, this migration is copacetic until a second group of human refugees arrive causing trouble with the original Kobaïan settlers. The album indeed sounds like the soundtrack to this universal theme. At times it’s like a psychedelic version of Coltrane on Broadway if Broadway was a space station. Other times it sounds like the ritual chants of a North African Satanic sex cult having a funk orgy. There’s a sprinkle of Fantasia and flavors of interstellar battle hymns.
Close your eyes while you listen to this and holograms of an epic, interplanetary swordfight on the moon will appear in your mind. Oh, and Vander invented his own language called Kobaïan which is used for most of the vocals on the album. So, I guess it appeals on a lyrical level equally to listeners on earth as well as elsewhere.
*Magma was later reissued as Kobaïa and can be found on iTunes under this title.
A Good Drink
Scorpion Langkau. I found this in the Sarawak state of Borneo, East Malaysia. It’s a traditional drink of the Iban people who are known to be some of the last practicing headhunters of the 20th century. Langkau is distilled from a milky-white rice wine called Tuak and served in a large medicinal jar with a steel ladle and dead scorpion at the bottom. You can find it at Ruai Bar on the outskirts of Kuching. Your body goes numb when you drink this, starting with your teeth. Definitely have it first if you plan on getting any of the traditional bamboo and mallet tattoos that are prevalent among the Iban.
