DJ Food – “The Riff”
Kaleidoscope
This fun album comes via Ninja Tune, a label I listened to almost exclusively for a few months. DJ Food is a talented sound collage artist, and while this track isn’t really the most representative, it is one of the more original-sounding. Very fun, very frenetic. (Ninja Tune)
The Tower Menagerie
Shall I say thou art a man, that hast all the symptoms of a beast? How shall i know thee to be a man? By thy shape? That affrights me more, when I see a beast in likeness of a man.
And yet with crimes to us unknown,
Our sons shall mark the coming age their own.
Rachel’s – “The Mysterious Disappearance Of Louis Leprince”
Selenography
Another track from the only Rachel’s record I’ve really ever listened to. This is the other standout from this album, the one that was playing when I decided I must have this record. I wasn’t familiar with post-rock, modern chamber music, or really anything at all when I heard it, so it struck me as completely original then, and while it’s lost some of its mystery to more mysterious artists, it’s notable in my life as one of the songs that got me listening to lots and lots of other things.
Victor Hugo, Le Phare de Casquets
He was a madman that said it, and thou peradventure are as mad to read it.
Arnold Böcklin, Roman Landscape
Arnold Böcklin, Castle in ruins
Growing – “In The Shadow Of The Mountain”
His Return
Growing’s monolithic soundscapes aren’t for everyone, but for those who can handle them, they’re transportive. There’s little that can be said by way of description. Their songs are less like songs, and more like little worlds you inhabit for ten or fifteen minutes at a time.
vatinian: extremely strong or bitter, esp. hatred (from the name of a very unpopular roman)
pettifog: to bicker about trifles; also, practicing law with dishonesty or pettiness
otacousticon: an instrument to aid hearing – ear-horns and such
wittol: a man who knows of and accepts his wife’s unfaithfulness
comminute: to break or divide into many small parts
moil: to work or toil hard; also, to churn or twist
desiderate: to wish for or feel the lack of
dorp: a small village (from the Dutch)
welkin: the sky or heavens
irrefragable: indisputable
“In the first scene of Padayappa (1999), he’s asked, ‘Hey man, who are you?’ and his answer is a four-minute musical number in which he plays the harmonica, flips through the air, oversees a massive martial-arts demonstration, and then morphs into a baby. At the end, the village chief says, ‘Padayappa, that song was excellent,’ at which point the music revs up again, Rajinikanth climbs a 30-foot-tall human tower and smashes open a clay pot, fireworks explode, and the director’s credit flies out of it.”
For princes are the glass, the school, the book
Where subjects’ eyes do learn, do read, do look.
…at first, while the Sun was bright, he went merrily on, and without any Difficulty reached the Heart of the Labyrinth and got the Jewel, and so set out on his way back rejoycing: but as the Night fell, wherein all the Beasts of the Forest do move, he begun to be sensible of some Creature keeping Pace with him and, as he thought, peering and looking upon him from the next Alley to that he was in; and that when he should stop, this Companion should stop also, which put him in some Disorder of Spirits. And, indeed, as the Darkness increas’d, it seemed to him that there was more than one, and, it might be, even a whole Band of such Followers: at least so he judg’d by the Rustling and Cracking that they kept among the Thickets; besides that there would be at a Time a Sound of Whispering, which seem’d to import a Conference among them. But in regard of who they were or what Form they were of, he would not be persuaded to say what he thought.
Mogwai – “Kids Will Be Skeletons”
Happy Songs For Happy People
This album, the second of the “new Mogwai” so disappointing to some, is understated rather than uncompromising, and although it ends up underwhelming at times, it demonstrates their strength in arrangement rather than raw power. The delicate and deliberately paced “Kids Will Be Skeletons” and the sibilant and triumphant closer, “Stop Coming To My House,” are just plain beautiful, something missing from a lot of loud music these days. (insound)
As a Dutch host, if you come to an inn in Germany and dislike your fare, diet, lodging, etc., replies in a surly tone, Aliud tibi quaeras diversorium [If you like not this, get you to another inn]: I resolve, if you like not my writing, go read something else. I do not much esteem thy censure.
Wow, these are insanely good.
Thieves – “Silent Servant”
You Hold The World Like A Gun
This totally unexpected record defies categorization, its closest relatives being Secret Frequency Crew, Herbaliser, and Four Tet — yet Thieves maintains a sound all their own, darker, noisier, more repetitive. Each song sounds more like the soundtrack to a scene than a standalone piece of music. Original and arresting.
I hear new news every day, and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, &c., daily musters and preparations, and such like; which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea-fights; peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarums. A vast confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears. New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, &c. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilees, embassies, tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, plays ; then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villainies in all kinds, funerals, burials, deaths of princes, new discoveries, expeditions, now comical, then tragical matters. Today we hear of new lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred; one is let loose, another imprisoned; one purchaseth, another breaketh; he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, &c. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and public news, amidst the gallantry and misery of the world—
