Spoon – “I Summon You (Cool)”
Get Nice!
This alternate version of the Gimme Fiction track has a fun one-off feel, as if it were a remix by the Notwist or something. I think the little electronic warbling is a nice counter to Britt Daniel’s rough vocals. It’s only a minute and a half long, rather short of the four minutes of the album version, but I like it that way.
So – “Track 2”
So
The So project, a collaboration between Japanese songstress Eri and the enigmatic noise/electronic pioneer Markus Popp (Oval), is a strange, beautiful, and unpredictable affair. Eri’s warblings are layered and distorted so as to be nearly unrecognizable, but Popp still crafts them into coherent songs… when he feels like it. Track 2 is the strongest, I think, but 1 and 4 are also nice, and although the overall texture remains steady, there is a lot of variety on the record and it’s well worth exploring for any fan of electronic music. (insound)
What happiness (I thought) if we were married, and were going away anywhere to live among the trees and in the fields, never growing older, never growing wiser, children over, rambling hand in hand through sunshine and among flowery meadows, laying down our heads on moss at night, in a sweet sleep of purity and peace, and buried by the birds when we were dead!
Poor Traddles! In a tight sky-blue suit that made his arms and legs like German sausages, or roly-poly puddings, he was the merriest and most miserable of all the boys. He was always being caned—I think he was caned every day that half-year, except one holiday Monday when he was only ruler’d on both hands—and was always going to write to his uncle about it, and never did. After laying his head on the desk for a little while, he would cheer up, somehow, begin to laugh again, and draw skeletons all over his slate, before his eyes were dry. I used at first to wonder what comfort Traddles found in drawing skeletons; and for some time looked upon him as a sort of hermit, who reminded himself by those symbols of mortality that caning couldn’t last for ever. But I believe he only did it because they were easy, and didn’t want any features.
Charalambides – “Tea”
Our Bed Is Green
Charalambides is one of the more mysterious artists out there, and Our Bed Is Green is only one of several mystically dumbfounding albums. The irregularity and variety on display give no indication of their later, more minimal Internal Eternal or the monolithic, droning INCREASE. More than perhaps any other artist I know of, it is infernally difficult to represent them with a single track. So I’ve just picked a good one.
