Welt am Draht
The Long Blondes - Christmas Is Cancelled
On a holiday break from now until the beginning of next month. 2011 list in January, just like last year. Why not check out Fluxblog's wonderful 2011 Survey in the meantime? Or Sean and Dan (maybe Jordan?) over at Said the Gramophone, who I'm sure will release another fantastic year-end list soon. Enjoy the holidays!
[Buy Singles (even though Christmas is Cancelled is not on there)]
Hold it right there with your fake enthusiasms
Voices from The Lake - Drop 3
A lyrical sketch of thermohaline circulation, and all the darkness, heat and cold inherent. The lefthanded geometry of the ocean floor. Phosphorescence. Pompeii worms. Chemosysnthesis. Viperfish. Marine snow falling faintly, made of both the living and the dead.
Wonderton
Kelley Polar - I'm Not What You Want
Jeremy Greenspan and Kelley Polar, I don't know if it gets much better. This is at least Greenspan's second appearance on an Environ Records release, the first being Morgan Geist's underrated "Double Night Time," and he fits so well on this song, which sounds close enough to a Junior Boys track that you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference on a first-time hearing, if it weren't for those strings, which are all Kelley Polar. Here's hoping there's a whole album of this coming soon.
Vixened
Ursula Bogner - Der Chor der Oktaven
RAF member, or so she said, and music-maker. She breathed cigarette smoke more than she breathed clean air. Had a way with machines, Helene. A fiend for greenhouses. She liked cider more than beer, loved to drink a glass with a newspaper in front of her, so she could have something to punctuate her dissatisfied exclamations of 'huh' and 'wow.' Loved to wrap herself in towels for what seemed like insane lengths of time, and would wear them outside into the garden, to retrieve the mail. Her music consisted of long tape pieces, the components of which were her voice, sped up, slowed down, disintegrated. 10 tapes in 10 years. One of the pieces ended up as the bumper music to a radio show in Austria.
Wooden Wire
Michael Gordon - Timber Part III
Classic story of a guy who owns a handheld machine that simulates all of reality. He uses it to win sports bets. Makes a fortune. Loses the machine. One of his servants picks it up and discovers that it's useful for figuring out the maximally efficient lie in any given situation, which new skill he then uses to cheat on his wife as often as he likes. This guy loses it when he leaves it in a girl's jacket at a bar. The girl finds the machine and wraps her head around it pretty quickly. She understands it to such an extent that she makes another machine, to simulate what would happen if everyone had their own handheld simulator. She wants to make the right choice for herself, and the right choice for everyone else. She also makes a simulator for the simulator, a smaller one that hooks up to the original one, to see what the simulator would spin off into whirling, subjunctive realities. What she sees makes her stop any further investigation.
All Day Permanent Red
Mr. Dream - Cool Down Apollo
After Apollo answered Cryzez' prayer
Taking a corner of the sky
Between his finger and his thumb,
Out of its blue, as boys do towels, he cracked
Then zephyr-ferried in among the hulls
A generation of infected mice.Such fleas...
Such lumps...
Watch Greece begin to die:
From Christopher Logue's "War Music"
Choose the downbeat button
Olive - I'm Not In Love
Olive's cover of 10CC's wonderful "I'm Not In Love" existed as sedative music for me before I even knew that this was a cover of a 10CC song (In fact, I think the first time I heard the original, I thought, oh, weird, someone slowed down and softened up that Olive song). This song is very much of its time, 2000, when the computer apocalypse had been narrowly avoided, and we, as a species, had put our hopes in electronica, and all that that persistently vague noun suggested. I remember around this time that a few of my friends listened religiously to compilations with names like 'Buddha Bar 12' or 'Loungeteria.' Anxiety was in the air, I guess, and the only way to combat it was by insulating oneself with shiny, soothing vibes. Olive's "I'm Not In Love" doesn't ask for your allegiance, it's just a quick fix. Distraction after a disappointment. Small smile. Hair tousle.