Portugal. The Man – “Colors”
Censored Colors
My friend has been working on these guys’ music videos, so I thought I’d check them out. As it turns out, they’re very good! Excellent sense of harmony – the blasts of voices never clash with the instrumentation, although that lone violin is a bit overwrought. There’s a lot of variety on this record, but throughout, there’s a range of vocal experimentation that really catches your ear. “Colors” is a little more low-key than the rest of the album but I like it especially for some reason.
“The bear was fed with fruits, marmalade, honey and syrup, and was often rewarded with beer, which became his favourite drink. He also enjoyed eating cigarettes.” Wojtek, the soldier bear.
It crept on all fours, but when it reached the place where the king sat it rose upon its feet, and, throwing the furry covering off its face, revealed a most extraordinary and weird countenance. It was (apparently) that of a woman of great age, so shrunken that in size it was no larger than that of a year-old child, and was made up of a collection of deep, yellow wrinkles. Set in the wrinkles was a sunken slit that represented a mouth, beneath which the chin curved outward to a point. There was no nose to speak of; indeed, the whole countenance might have been taken for that of a sun-dried corpse had it not been for a pair of large black eyes, still full of fire and intelligence, which gleamed and played under the snow-white eyebrows and the projecting parchment-colored skull, like jewels in a charnel-house. As for the skull itself, it was perfectly bare, and yellow in hue, while its wrinkled scalp moved and contracted like the hood of a cobra.
King Solomon’s Mines
Listen! what is life? It is a feather; it is the seed of the grass, blown hither and thither, sometimes multiplying itself and dying in the act, sometimes carried away into the heavens. But if the seed be good and heavy it may perchance travel a little way on the road it will. It is well to try and journey one’s road and to fight with the air. Man must die. At the worst he can but die a little sooner.
Umbopa, King Solomon’s Mines
Peach Pit – “An Open House Where Horror Is Your Host”
Suspicious Cargo
This is from a much earlier (1999) album than their astonishing split EP with Majmoon. It’s much more subdued but you can still hear a lot of the same tendencies, especially in the menacing final third of this track. They had yet to really apply the math or layers, though. Definitely worth a listen.
Muybridge