Tag: Arum Rae

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Arum Rae

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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.

Last we checked in with Arum Rae was in April, when she was about to release her first EP. Now she’s putting out another EP, called Waving Wild, and it different from the first one – less echo-ey, syrupy synths and drum machines, more stripped down guitars – but still awesome.

Let’s Shake is the first song, and as you can hear it’s a stomper:

Waving Wild also reflects a lighter sound, though there’s a ribbon of fuzz running through it:

And with that, I turn the floor over to her, to tell us about a favorite book, record and drink:

Photo by Dominic Neitz

Photo by Dominic Neitz


A Good Read

The Autobiography of Malcolm X is my favorite book ever. Malcolm was a rebel and seeker of the truth. He had conviction to make the world a more fair and loving place for all humans… But white America has soured his reputation and summed him up to look like a violent racist…. Which might have been true at one point but not at all where Malcolm ultimately evolved into being…. That’s why this book is inspiring and fascinating. The Autobiography of Malcolm X unveils the CIA, Nation of Islam and the true Malcolm X.

A Good Listen

If I were to put on music while reading it would be Piano Solos Volume 2 by Dustin O’Halloran.

Dustin O’Halloran – Opus 23 – directed by Marco Morandi from Dustin O'Halloran on Vimeo.

A Good Drink

My drink for this occasion would be lapsang souchong tea. Either hot with milk or ice in a margarita. It’s smoky and tastes like cow shit smells. I like that.

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Late Night Listening: Two Songs from Arum Rae

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Late Night Listening: 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.

Photo by Dominic Neitz

Photo by Dominic Neitz

Arum Rae (formerly White Dress) is from Brooklyn via Austin, TX. Warrented Queen, her first EP with producer Sanford Livingston, is due out in late April. Consider these two songs a taste of the whole:

2001: This one jammed its claws into me in a weird way. I was here, that September. Sitting on the train on the Williamsburg Bridge, watching the towers burn. Standing on Houston Street while tanks rolled downtown. Leaning on the bumper of a U-Haul on John Street, during a brief pause in helping my sister move while the fires still burned and everything was covered in ash and unnatural silence, reading the note someone had written on a nearby windshield: You can knock us down but you cannot knock us out.

A year later I moved away. Several years after that, I came back. When the anniversary comes around, I don’t watch the news.

Warrented Queen: If you need a palate cleanser after all of that, this tune is far sweeter. Love thrives, broken-in and well-loved, if perhaps a little ragged around the edges.