Sade Sundays: Whispers From the Diary of Innocence, Chapter 17
May 2, 2010
But enough about that. This go ‘round will be kept breezy and fun. And the last time I recall things being as such was in the 3rd grade. Around that time I went from feeling 9 years old to 68 in a matter of months; it has been nothing but misunderstandings and Grandpa naps since then. However, there is something inherently magical in music that can assist us all in transcending our current age, however overt the alchemy may be. In this case, the palpable enchantment arrives in the form of The Langley Schools Music Project and Yamasuki’s Le Monde Fabuleux Des Yamasuki.
04.mp3
Langley Schools Music Project – David Bowie – “Space Oddityâ€
The Langley Schools Music Project was a sprightly idea culled from the mind of Hans Fenger, a man with a vision not to create a piece of art or collect piles of cash, but to find a way to captivate the young minds in his classroom. Recorded in 1978, on a sunny afternoon in a school gymnasium in British Columbia, Canada, the sounds of acoustic guitars, drums, bells and 110 children’s voices float hopefully from the speakers, taking the listener further back in time to a place where optimism reigned and little attention was paid to the stresses of adult life. Fenger instilled a sense of virtue and discipline in these children’s voices and hands, providing them with a lasting interest and confidence in a previously unexplored musical realm. A truly pleasurable listening experience throughout, it must be said – there is something sanguine and spooky in the unprecedented juxtaposition of hearing a large group of kids sing David Bowie’s interstellar breakdown, Space Oddity.
Tapping into our own latent, youthful capacities, Mike and I decided to retake Jack London Square. And it almost worked. We stumbled upon Home of Chicken and Waffles and admitted neither of us had ever indulged in such a combination. While we waited for our beers and chicken waffles, we talked about how maybe we’re getting too old for this shit. We didn’t specify what “this shit†stood for exactly, but we did take a moment to recognize time as a sensitivity; desire sans patience, repose within the finite. And beer. Where the hell was our goddamn beer?
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Sade Sundays: Auditory Diaries from Venus – Volume 18
February 21, 2010
What conceited person hasn’t thought of the inherent interest in his or hers personal “audio diary”? I know I have. As I clacked my skee balls together for luck only to roll another 10 at the Buckshot Bar in the Inner Richmond, I felt quite satisfied and enamored with my company from Josh’s giggling confirmation. Audio diary this Bay Bridged!
In my quiet moments before bed I know that these are not truths and that my life is a shallow and narrow existence that holds little interest for friends and almost zero for an at-large listening public. Ah, but as Duncan Cameron (aka Dolphins into the Future aka Lieven Martens of Belgium) teaches us, all you really need is a good title. Martens calls his audio diary A Horseback Ride to the Temple of Montu, which clearly shows that he gets this.
A C20 (a twenty minute cassette for the uninitiated) out on tanzprocesz, A Horseback Ride… is a very literal bird-chirping, hoof clip-clopping listen. Augmented by synthesized glyphs and phantoms, it’s quite effecting for someone who is into books on tape with sound effects. So my search for a good title to impress all with an unimpressive life is at hand.
“True history seeks, it does not answer,” writes Nick Tosches in his enigmatic study of the black-faced minstrel man Emmett Miller, Where Dead Voices Gather. “For the deeper we seek, the deeper we descend from knowledge to mystery, which is the only place where wisdom abides.”
I’m New Here, the first album by Gil Scott-Heron in 16 years, is a combination of pre-hipster spoken word and post-hipster auto tune rap samples. It screams authenticity and has a stench of dubious wisdom through experience similar to Johnny Cash’s American recordings. In all ways, it is a good record, enjoyable, informative and short, but perhaps I’m getting a better sense of American history from Miller and Tosches.
pqysnvv6f8.mp3
Gil Scott-Heron – “New York is Killing Me”
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Sade Sundays: Auditory Diaries from Neptune – Volume 53
February 21, 2010
I’ve considered uninstalling our doorbell after Mike exploited it upon his arrival. When the upstairs neighbor was kind enough to let him in (I imagine he rang both apts. A & B simultaneously), he sprinted past her up the stairwell and then past me into my apartment where I followed closely. Straight to the refrigerator for a beer, to the cutting board for a lime. As he tilted the bottle ceilingward, its contents roaring down his parched gullet, I carefully wrapped the knife he used to cut the lime in cardboard; inexplicably, he had somehow managed to break it while carving the soft fruit. After a holiday hiatus, Sade Sundays 2010 was officially underway.
I studied Mike’s movements closely as we listened to Die Antwoord’s debut album $0$. They are, as far as I’m concerned, three aliens gallivanting as a Rap-Rave crew from Cape Town, South Africa. I say aliens because only intergalactic beings are capable of making music like this. While Mike finds creatures from outer space and conspiracy theories intriguing, he usually avoids music faster than 43bpms. Behold! An exception to his Duncan Cameronian leanings. It was the way he pursed his lips and nodded his head to the beat that led me to believe we were experiencing something truly special; like a UFO landing at the foot of your bed. Greetings, Earthling.
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Sade Sundays: Best of 2009 (Part 2)
December 27, 2009
Well it’s over, and because it’s over I can’t let go. 2009, I am reflecting on a year that has yet to end, my first complete year in the Bay Area. In truth, 2009 probably won’t start to be cataloged by me until about 2017, which is such a futuristic thought I can hardly stand it. We’re here to talk music however, so let’s start and end with a standard top ten rundown:
1. Fever Ray – Fever Ray (Rabid)
2. Dolphins into the Future – …On Seafaring Island (Not Not Fun)
3. Oneohtrix Point Never – Rifts Trilogy – Betrayed in the Octagon, Zones Without People, Russian Mind (No Fun)
4. Tiny Vipers – Life on Earth (Sub Pop)
5. Scott Tuma & Mike Weis – Taradiddle (Digitalis)
6. Super Minerals – Clusters (Stunned)
7. Zelienople – Hollywood (Under the Spire)
8. Bob Dylan – Christmas in the Heart (Columbia)
9. Altar Eagle – Judo Songs (Digitalis)
To me the Fever Ray record exists like a big budget picture that nobody can deny. It is fun for kids from one to ninety-two. With its laser-guided vocals by the Swedish alien, Karin Elisabeth Dreijer Andersson, I found it to be more enjoyably bizarre than her work with The Knife.
Fever_Ray_-_When_I_Grow_Up.mp3
Fever Ray – “When I Grow Up”
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Sade Sundays: Best of 2009 (Part 1)
December 27, 2009
While looking at each other through binoculars in my bedroom, I told Mike that Year-End Lists are sort of fun until you’ve read a few. After that, the nostalgia becomes overwhelming, like finding the old trunk that contains all of your old comic books and junior high love letters. It makes me wonder if bloggers call each other on the phone the night before they post their lists; like 6th grade girls, they coordinate Top-Albums instead of outfits.
This is kind of like how Mike accidentally left my copy of Under the Banner of Heaven at some seedy motel in Cleveland after attending his cousin’s wedding. Skipping an apology or offer to replace the book, he told me that it really ruined his flight home because he still had 10 pages left to read. The man will never suffer an indignity, not unlike many Year-End Lists, this one included.
Top Album of 2009:
Tune-Yards – Bird Brains (Marriage Records/4AD). Brokenhearted-bold, reminiscent lyrics. Androgynous, upfront vocals layered over sampled found-sounds and field recordings like tiny, shiny bells dropped into rusty tin cans. Electrified ukulele and broken hip-hop beats I can get behind. The album on a whole seems aimed directly at some one/place she believes in.
Tune-Yard - Sunlight
Tune-Yard – “Sunlight”
Top Songs of 2009:
While a great album is as hard to find as a human without pretense, I found these individual songs to be wholeheartedly satisfying, like the moments when people don’t feel the need to bullshit their way around town.
Nice Face - Mnemonic Device
Nice Face – “Mnemonic Device” (Sacred Bones).
Immersed in a little-known sub-genre called “shitgaze”, it reminds me of one night this past August going to a loft show in Chicago. A band called Lasers and Fast and Shit played and we sweated hard in the humidity while drinking ice cold Miller Lites.
Levek - Geographic John
Levek – “Geographic John” (self-release)
It’s as if Grizzly Bear pulled a Dick Van Dyke and their antics actually appealed to me. David Levesque lives in Orlando and uses this moniker to create music akin to muggy jungles where snow falls in the summer. The reverb-laden hand claps sound like the sun when you’re sitting in the shade. This is one of the best songs I’ve heard all year.
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Sade Sundays: Variations on a Phantasmagoric Experience
November 15, 2009
Part 1
By: Joshua Rampage
There are a candid few who can welcome an inconvenient and uncomfortable interruption into their lives so readily, but I was getting a little bored with feeling healthy every day anyway. So I did some smooching and before anyone could start snorting, I was sick. Self-diagnosing led me to believe I was suffering from the early stages of Pig Flu. I began to obsessively check my nose for an upward-tilt and my butt for a burgeoning corkscrew tail, but found evidence of neither. Instead, I was forced to accept an annoyance specifically reserved for those who are already irritated in the first place; the kind of flu where you aren’t completely incapacitated, but you aren’t exactly doing handstands either. The Result? I found myself muttering “fuck this†a bit more often than usual.
That said, the best thing about coming off a cold is realizing that you can resume doing whatever it is you do, unabated. If this includes playing croquet, smoking cigarettes and having a couple cold ones, even better. Deluding myself into believing I was completely recovered, I attempted to contend with the Current State of Music with the intent of finding something worth a damn to share with Michael and the rest of the world-wide-webs; not an easy task by any means, not in this economy.
I get depressed. When Julian Casablancas is making solo albums and I’m feeling a bit snotted up, I get THIS CLOSE to sticking my head in the microwave. It’s true. While perpetually cringing, I listened to the first 4 tracks on his latest offering, Phrazes for the Young, and set the micro to defrost. If it is in fact Julian’s world, and I’m just a squirrel trying to get a nut, then consider my cheeks fucking full and I’m ready to start stashing the goods and preparing myself for a long, cold, dark and rainy winter.
Julian Casablancas - Out of the Blue
Julian Casablancas – “Out of the Blue”
LAKE on the other hand reminds me of Weekend At Bernie’s, and all of a sudden I feel like I’m on vacation in the Hamptons on Labor Day and I’ve just discovered my boss, poisoned-dead in his big-shot mansion, but am conflicted on doing anything about it because I’m sort of in love with the summer intern and my friend thinks we can milk it for a couple days longer. Mike reminds me of Andrew McCarthy in this way.
LAKE - Madagascar
LAKE – “Madagascar”
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Sade Sundays: Variations on a Religious Experience
October 18, 2009
Part 1
By: Michael Tapscott
Sade Sunday’s sat cold with a lingering spirit, an unnamed and undefined amorphous blob that cried out, “you have a commitment here fellows!†So, I met with Josh, on a Wednesday, in his bedroom. As we rotated seats between his couch and his bed to play tracks of our own choosing that the other person could care less about, I thought to myself, “this shall not do.â€
Josh and I met in Indiana University, our musical sophistication lies in those backwaters where we weaned each other on and off the new indie torrents and enjoyed the wellspring of musical activity in our own backyard: Secretly Canadian, Jagjaguwar, the Impossible Shapes, Justin Vollmar, John Wilkes Booze, Elephant Micah, Drekka and Songs: Ohia. Seeing this sort of damn-the-torpedoes-art happening around us as young men was a revelation. But like Sade Sunday’s wandering ghost, Bloomington’s first wave became its last wave. SC/Jag hit the big time, some bands broke up, artists turned to increasingly more personal works to become less “public†artists, some folks left, and of course, most significantly for Josh and I, we left.
The artistic culmination of this time period for me rests in the various ambiguities of Indianapolis’ Marmoset, who continue to fade away despite Neil Young’s best advice. Marmoset is a travesty and train wreck of a band and one of Secretly Canadian’s earliest signees and the deliverer of Indiana’s one true masterpiece with Record in Red. That album came out in 2001 and the band stood poised to be great, able to storm the castle of Guided by Voices for the scepter of Midwest psychedelic pop. The band was fronted by Jorma Whittiker, a beautiful and unsightly man, a Syd Barrett for Indiana, the kind of a guy who will steal your last dollar and make you smile about it.
Marmoset was all potential and no payoff in the end though, as Jorma would write later a glorious millstone around his and all of Indiana’s neck. Tea Tornado, Marmoset’s second record since its comeback after a seven-year layoff, finds the band existing well beyond its born on date. Jorma’s writing can still light fires (witness “Gretchen†or “You, Blueberry Muffinâ€), but his presence here seems as a favor to the other band members and Tea Tornado’s very existence seems as a goodwill gift to the band’s former glory. Similar waters that Josh and I bathe in as we now veer perilously close to an existence as the Bay Bridged good-deed-for-the-month from our former pose of brilliant disappointment. I would much rather be the brilliant disappointment.
Marmoset_-_You_Blueberry_Muffin.mp3
Marmoset – “You, Blueberry Muffin”
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Sade Sundays: The Fiery Furnaces, The Dodos, Jóhann Jóhannsson
August 16, 2009
Mike always insists I meet him in the east bay. When I ask why he says, “because I’m here†in a way that is devoid of shame. He picks me up from BART in his grandfather’s silver Subaru and then we’re at his house eating tamales and popping Brother Thelonious Beer. “Marlene’s at Muir Woods, we can put our feet up”. But when I realized the socks I was wearing had holes in them, I kept mine planted on the ground. Warming up with talk about choices and bearclaws, I began to wonder about his deliciously-round, butterball cat – and whether or not it has problems making it up the stairs. But then I realized it’s an indoor cat who probably doesn’t have to face such harsh realities. Not like us, not with records like these.
SPLASH ONE: The Fiery Furnaces, I’m Going Away. Mike calls it “Doing a Don Quixoteâ€; chasing the windmill. He suggests that siblings Eleanor and Matthew Friedberger place themselves within an economic grid where their next album would provide them an opportunity to tie up any loose artistic ends in lieu of creating their inevitable masterpiece. On the contrary, I felt I’m Going Away finds the band at their most interestingly accessible, crafting a pop gem that would be at home on any dusky jukebox. Gone are the schizophrenic arrangements, and in their place, a return to form: drums, bass, guitar and piano with the slightest squiggle of synthesizer or hand-built effect pedal.
The Fiery Furnaces - The End Is Near
The Fiery Furnaces – “The End Is Near”
At the core, Eleanor provides pointed wit and vocals we can believe in, with lyrics that are filled with a reckoning that presupposes abstract heartache. My perspective finds these Fiery Furnaces embracing a streamlined direction, recalling a forgotten pop ideology that may have become buried in the avant garde impulses of their more recent works. Mike isn’t sure how they will formulate an escape from the clutches of windmills as imagined giants, but he claims he’ll know it when he hears it.
SPLASH TWO: The Dodos, Time to Die. With a sound that fits well with many current BFD bands (Grizzly Bear, Bon Iver), the Dodos have four fingers on the pulse of überculture; they’re on the cusp of contemporary greatness. However, to try and guess what will next tickle the fashionable fickle is to play a wayward game. Mike appreciated the clean, standard sound of their new producer, Phil Ek; I felt it forced them to abandon the booming bastion that helped keep their instruments personal on their previous record, Visiter. As Mike jawed on about the promotion of a meaningless collective of collaboration, referring to the reoccurring use of the pronoun “we†in the lyrics, I had trouble coming to terms with the slickness of the songs.
The Dodos - Fables
The Dodos – “Fables”
