Deer in the Forest, Ivan Generalic (1956)
Spiritualized - “200 Bars”
Lazer Guided Melodies
Before the noisy majesty of Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space and the overwrought gospel of Let It Come Down, Spiritualized was straight-up psychedelic rock, lapsing into shoegaze (as you do) and generally maintaining a gauzy, spacey feeling for the length of entire albums. Lazer Guided Melodies is a great example of this, and “200 Bars” is impeccable, with its deliberate pacing and soft layers of jangly psych harmony. She does, in fact, count all the way to 100 before the song “starts.” I love it.
Astronomical, a 12-volume scale model of the solar system
Arbor Cognationis Spiritualis (14th c.)
If a man have neither wife nor other to rule his household, know you how it is with the house? I know, and will tell you. If he be rich, and have plenty of grain, the sparrows and the moles eat their fill thereof. It is not set in order, but all so scattered abroad that the whole house is the fouler for it. If he have oil, it is all neglected and spilt; when the jars break and the oil is spilled, he casts a little earth on the spot, and all is done! In his bed, know you how he sleeps? He lies in a pit, with the sheets as they chance to have tumbled upon the bed; and they are never changed until they are torn. Even so in his dining-hall; here on the ground are melon-rinds, bones, and salad leaves, everything left lying on the ground without pretense of sweeping. He wipes the trenchers off; the dog licks them; so they are washed. His pipkins are all foul with grease: go and see how they stand! Know you how such a man lives? —even as a brute beast.
Things to worry about:
Worry about courage
Worry about cleanliness
Worry about efficiency
Worry about horsemanship
Things not to worry about:
Don’t worry about popular opinion
Don’t worry about dolls
He who does not turn up the earth with the plough ought to write the parchment with his fingers.
The Beatles - “I Feel Fine (Instrumental/Warmup)”
Studio Sessions 1964 (Bootleg)
This is takes 6 and 7 of the 9-take recording of “I Feel Fine”; take 6 is without vocals and is just pure jangly rhythm. Of course, in a way, it’s just “I Feel Fine” without the voice track. But it’s more than that, and it’s a hell of a lot of fun. Beatles ephemera tracks are always fun.
The Two Trees (Hercules Seghers, c.1620)
He made no pretentions to botany, and knew nothing of groups or classification; he did not care in the least to decide between Tournefort and the natural method; he took no part, either for the utricles or against the cotyledons, or for Jussieu against Linnaeus. He did not study plants, he loved flowers. He had much respect for the learned, but still more for the ignorant; and, while he fulfilled his duty in both these respects, he watered his beds every summer evening with a tin watering-pot painted green.
The most off-putting aspect of the book is its varying tone. It’s like a Hollywood blockbuster that tries to be both tragic and comic. This doesn’t always work out. At least with The Food of the Gods the tone changes more or less continually from jaunty and light to serious and subversive. And in the end you get the feeling that the story had become something it was never meant to be - but which Wells probably found unavoidable given its trajectory.
For conduct which to clearer minds seems merely sane, was in those days to be performed only by rare vision and self-mastery.
Clams Casino - “What You Doin”
Instrumental
Walking the line between electronic ephemera and lushly produced hip-hop, this record is a great example of hybrid vigor. The deep beats are decidedly bass-heavy and urban, but the ghostly samples and full-spectrum atmospherics are more like Cut Copy crossed with Tim Hecker. The drums are a melange: the last track, “13,” combines a metronomic high hat from the 80s with a thunderous bass from the mid-2000s, with an old school clap that makes you think it’s going to drop into a house spiral at any moment. And then you’ve got this track, like a drugged, gauzy trip to a slow-motion dance floor. Where did this come from? (insound)
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