Scenes from My Actual Life, As Lived by Me

Suddenly: summer! Here’s a lovely morning raga from New Jersey: the Feelies, “Forces at Work”

Ciccone Youth, “Children of Satan/Third Fig”. I needed to post something musical; now that I have, I’ve posted, what, almost a quarter of CY’s recorded output. I love this instrumental - the stasis is so beautiful that I don’t even care that they don’t know how to end the song. I sometimes use this to clear my head before I write.

Ciccone Youth, “Me and Jill”. I reference the last line a lot. I’d thought about getting a tattoo of it, but I guess just saying it pretty often is enough.

Stereolab, “Analogue Rock”. O sweet summer day! O perfect analogue sound! From Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Announcements, their best, I think. Play loud, on headphones or good speakers, if you got ‘em. 

Of Montreal, “The Past is a Grotesque Animal” (live) - for those moments when EVERYTHING isn’t quite enough…

Grabbing my iPod before heading out this evening, I discovered that somehow I’d managed to leave it on all day, playing this song over and over (here’s the studio version). I liked the idea tremendously - this utterly pretentious, maximalist bombast churning on all day long without making any sound.

Don’t get me wrong, I love this song wholly and devotedly; I could listen to those R- and L-channel guitar lines chase each other all day long, and I actually like the utterly pretentious lyrics, including the utterly beautiful couplet “We want our film to be beautiful/Not realistic” (if that is the actual line - and don’t tell me if it’s not). I just loved the notion of all that sound and fury affecting nothing.

Want to see something awesome? Iggy Pop, “Sixteen”, from maybe 1978? 

Donna Summer,”I Feel Love”. The definitive Donna Summer song, and her best; Moroder and Bellote did the heavy lifting, but Summer more than carries it. I think the rhythm programming borrows heavily from Jean-Michel Jarre’s OXYGENE, released several months earlier, although maybe that was just part of the musical zeitgeist of the era. The album was roughly contemporary with Kraftwerk’s TRANS-EUROP EXPRESS - always the Germans. Not that I don’t love “Love to Love You Baby”, but it was a novelty hit, and followed in the footsteps of Gainsbourg & Birkin’s “Je T’Aime (Moi Non Plus)”, released almost 10 years earlier. Musically it wasn’t nearly as strong as the Gainsbourg record, although the 17 minute album version was undeniably epic.

My favourite of her records: this one, “McArthur Park” (it’s all about the Syndrums - and Summer’s voice at 56 in this video is pretty incredible) and “State of Independence” (yes, I know). The second video is particularly entertaining; beneath the horror of the choreography and art direction, there lurks something truly transcendent. The song lurches about like a Benneton ad aimed at a Target demographic until Summer’s vocal line comes in at about the 2 1/2 minute mark. Now, I am a non-believer, but I’m reliably moved by Jubilee-style gospel choruses; even when they look like something dreamed up by Michael Jackson and dressed as a Simpsons tribute, that sound of people’s voices coming together and belting it out really get me. I recognize it as bilious schmaltz, and still love it.

No Age, “Sorts”. I love this song - it feels like it’s falling down a flight of stairs, bumping a bit along the landing, then going on to fall down the next flight.

Richard Dawkins Reads His Hatemail. via Tamburina

The Winters family has remade the Beastie Boys’ “Sabotage” video, and it’s pretty great.

No Age, “Fever Dreaming”. Spent the night shooting with Mikey McMichaels and his band of models. I’d been feeling burned out all day, between the crick in my neck and the lack of sleep and the overall mildewing damp of the last few days, but the evening was really fun. I learned a lot really quickly, starting off with how little I know. In fact, pretty much my only strength as a photographer right now is that I know what I like, and I usually know why I like it. Anyway, I’m buzzing and all kinds of wired; “Fever Dreaming” is perfect.

Burial, “Ashtray Wasp”, from the Kindred EP. I don’t know how I missed the release of this EP in February, but it is great and… unexpected. I have no doubt that “Ashtray Wasp” elicited howls of disgust from dubstep purists - much of it is an elaborated 4/4, with sequences that wouldn’t be out of place in an Oakenfold show! It’s not far from Salt Tank’s “Eugina”, for Christ’s sake! This is pop Burial!

Bah. All Burial record are special, and this is definitely a Burial record. The rhythm programming may not have the lapidary clarity of much of his work, but, buried inside that 4/4, it’s all still there. As are the other Burial-defining elements - those unmoored, alienated vocals, those strings filtered into mist, that completely distinctive sonic space that always feels like the crumbling infrastructure of an aging city, all rusting ironwork and flaking paint. That’s one of the things I like about Burial, actually - the tension between music that is emphatically modern and its internal sense of suffocation and oppressive decay. I think it works (usually) through the clarity of the percussion programming, those dissected breakbeats, and how they’re set against the spatial murk. It’s like someone answering a Thematic Aperception Test with a scalpel. 

Anyway! Burial! Yay!