Their silence was of no ordinary kind.

said of the Pythagoreans

Bear In Heaven – “Werewolf”
Red Bloom of the Boom

If nobody had told me it was them, I wouldn’t have been able to connect this vastly varied and ambitious album to Bear In Heaven’s interesting but ultimately unfulfilling follow-ups. Red Bloom of the Boom is a dream of melody in battle with a nightmare of noise: multilayered headphone music that demands your attention and deserves it. This track is pretty subdued, though. (insound)

Sebastian Evans – The Ancients of the World (c.1870)

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CFCF – “Camera”
Music for Objects

A brief and diverse collection of (what else?) object-themed music, Music for Objects is less about hitting a catchy groove and more about creating unique sounds. “Camera” makes the biggest impact, but the keyboard-dominated “Ring” and “Glass” (bookending the album) are an airy side of CFCF I don’t hear often. (insound)

Oh, who can tell? Not thou, luxurious slave!
Whose soul would sicken o’er the heaving wave;
Not thou, vain lord of wantonness and ease!
Whom slumber soothes not — pleasure cannot please —
Oh, who can tell, save he whose heart hath tried,
And danced in triumph o’er the waters wide;
The exulting sense — the pulse’s maddening play,
That thrills the wanderer of that trackless way?

Lord Byron,The Corsair

If this hell’s-dance of spending and saving were to stop for a moment, what would happen? If all the advertising in the world were to shut down tomorrow, would people still go on buying more soap, eating more apples, giving their children more vitamins, roughage, milk, olive oil, scooters and laxatives, learning more languages by gramophone, hearing more virtuosos by radio, re-decorating their houses, refreshing themselves with more non-alcoholic thirst-quenchers, cooking more new, appetizing dishes, affording themselves that little extra touch which means so much? Or would the whole desperate whirligig slow down, and the exhausted public relapse upon plain grub and elbow-grease?

Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise

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Savages – “Shut Up”
Silence Yourself

I’m not entirely sold on the vocals in this band (or their all-caps “messages,” though I don’t object), but the wailing guitars, clear growling bass, and mega-tight percussion are impossible to not stomp along to — they deserve the hype. You can skip the first 45 seconds or so, which is just album intro stuff. Note: Savages are the kind of band that would punch you for doing that. (insound)

A citizen of London, being in the country, and hearing a horse neigh, exclaimed, Lord! how that horse laughs! A by-stander telling him that noise was called neighing, the next morning, when the cock crowed, the citizen to shew he had not forgot what was told him, cried out, Do you hear how the cock neighs? [fiat “Cockney”]

Captain Grose, Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue

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Balmorhea – “Constellations”
Constellations

In the predawn gloom you can just make out the pianist slouching in the parlor, reeking of laudanum and rose water, deliriously tapping out a sparse gothic paean to hollow euphoria, then listing, toppling, and waking in the morning having forgotten all of it — the ecstasy, the agony, and the ivory. (/pitchfork) (insound)

Nobody these days holds the written word in such high esteem as police states do,“ Arkadian Porphyrich says. "What statistic allows one to identify the nations where literature enjoys true consideration better than the sums appropriated for controlling it and suppressing it? Where it is the object of such attentions, literature gains an extraordinary authority, inconceivable in countries where it is allowed to vegetate as an innocuous pastime, without risks.

Italo Calvino, If on a winter’s night a traveler

Clifford Beese – The Valley of Romance

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Crocodiles – “She Splits Me Up”
Crimes of Passion

It’s really hard to find anything at all wrong with this song. The bass line is strong and gives tone to the beat, the vocals are pleasantly and fuzzily multitracked, the glittery guitar has the deft precision of a harpsichord. Even the initially atonal opening riff falls exactly into place. True, it doesn’t change much, but neither does it overstay its welcome. A summer jam I’ll be inserting into many a playlist. (insound)

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Gauntlet Hair – “Human Nature”
Stills

Dark electro with a No Age-esque edge. Deserves to be played at high volume, so you get the power of both the dubby backbeat and the noise-rock counterpoint. (insound)

Arnold Böcklin – Spring in a Narrow Gorge