Murcof – “Spring In The Artificial Gardens”
The Versailles Sessions

The occult quasi-baroque meanderings of The Versailles Sessions seem a strange sequel to Murcof’s dubby, Loscil-esque Martes and Remembranza. But a lot can change in a few years, and the artist’s experimental leanings were already evident. Still, it’s a fairly baffling 50 minutes. The focus is on space and ambience, not (as the compelling but ultimately frustrating “Louis XIV’s Demons” shows early on), and this track embodies that without being terminally weird.

My friends, Providence is put to his trumps. A revolution, what does that prove? That God is hard up. He makes a coup d’état because there is a solution of continuity between the present and the future, and because he, God, is unable to join the two ends.

And to see so much discomfort above and below, so much rascality and odiousness and stinginess and distress in the heavens and on earth… to see winter, which is nothing but a rent in the zenith through which the wind blows, to see so many tatters even in the brand new purple of the morning on the tops of the hills, to see the dew drops, those false pearls, to see the frost, that paste, to see humanity torn, and events patched, and so many spots on the sun, and so many holes in the moon, to see such misery everywhere — I suspect that God is not rich.

He keeps up appearances, it is true, but I feel the pinch. We must not judge the gods from appearances. Beneath the gilding of the sky I catch a glimpse of a poor universe, Creation is bankrupt. That is why I am malcontent.

Les Miserables

Abstract painting in grey, brown, and black – Feng Zhongrui (1966)

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Marielle V Jakobsons – “Crystal Orchard”
Glass Canyon

An ethereal but sonically fascinating album. Jakobsons creates wonderful atmospheres, and the journeys through those soundspaces occasionally resemble songs. The first three tracks (this is the second) are especially intriguing. (experimedia)

Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices.

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil — in its worst state an intolerable one — for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamities are heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense

The silence of pines on remote peaks, Li Huayi (1999)

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Sin Fang – “Strange House”
Half Dreams

An excellent EP packed with some just plain great songs. This one in particular has a wonderfully varied structure, swinging from jangle to piano-and-surf to Elephant 6 psych. Calming but still upbeat and musically interesting. (insound)

You tell me of degrees of perfection to which human nature is capable of arriving, and I believe it, but at the same time lament that our admiration should arise from the scarcity of the instances.

Abigail Adams

I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

W. H. Auden, September 1, 1939

Maskwell: Cynthia, let thy Beauty gild my Crimes; and whatsoever I commit of Treachery or Deceit, shall be imputed to me as a Merit — Treachery, what Treachery? Love cancels all the Bonds of Friendship, and sets Men right upon their first Foundations.

William Congreve, The Double-Dealer

Efterklang – “Sedna”
Piramida

I’ve discarded two whole albums from Efterklang due to a lack of focus, which the earlier Tripper, by contrast, had in excess. “Sedna” is the first new song by them that has not only arrested my attention but truly sounds Efterklang-y to me, yet evolved and different. Imagine Talk Talk mixed with DNTEL — understated and beautiful. Also look for the almost Graceland-esque “Dreams Today.” Great cover art, too. (insound)


Three variations of the cover art for Efterklang’s album Piramida

Because fear and conspiracy play no part in your daily relations with each other, you imagine that the same thing is true of your allies, and you fail to see that when you allow them to persuade you to make a mistaken decision and when you give way to your own feelings of compassion, you are being guilty of a kind of weakness that is dangerous to you and that will not make them love you any more. What you do not realize is that your empire is a tyranny exercised over subjects who do not like it and who are always plotting against you; you will not make them obey you by injuring your own interests in order to do them a favor; your leadership depends on superior strength and not on any goodwill of theirs.

Cleon, in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War

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Johann Sebastian Bach – “Prelude #1 In C major”
The Well-Tempered Clavier

The opening track from Bach’s historic collection of keyboard pieces is a simple and delicate piece, but with lots of room for expression. Glenn Gould plays it crisply on the piano, but with a precious air, and at any rate I prefer the richer overlapping tones of the harpsichord. This is a nice recording, but it was Luc Beausejour’s that originally caught my ear.

When standing in a hotel ballroom or when seated in a television studio, it is the duty of the tribunes of the people to insist that the drug traffic be stopped, the budget balanced, the schools improved, paradise regained. Off camera, they bootleg the distribution of the nation’s wealth to the gentry at whose feet they dance for coins.

Lewis Lapham, Feast of Fools

Brisk: I confess I write but seldom, but when I do — keen iambicks I’gad.

William Congreve, The Double-Dealer