It is worth noting, perhaps, that Microsoft Word’s spellcheck assesses the following beautiful passage of Italo Calvino as being written 60% in the passive voice:
As we reentered the hotel and headed for the large lobby (the former chapel of the convent), which we had to cross to reach the wing where our room was, we were struck by a sound like a cascade of water flowing and splashing and gurgling in a thousand rivulets and eddies and jets. The closer we got, the more this homogeneous noise was broken down into a complex of chirps, trills, caws, clucks, as of a flock of birds flapping their wings in an aviary. From the doorway (the room was a few steps lower than the corridor) we saw an expanse of little spring hats on the heads of ladies seated around tea tables. Throughout the country a campaign was in progress for the election of a new president of the republic, and the wife of the favored candidate was giving a tea party of impressive proportions for the wives of the prominent men of Oaxaca. Under the broad, empty vaulted ceiling, three hundred Mexican ladies were conversing all at once; the spectacular acoustical event that had immediately subdued us was produced by their voices mingled with the tinkling of cups and spoons and of knives cutting slices of cake.
o Been perusing the Lost in Tyme crate-digging blog at Sea of Sound‘s recommendo. Compared to Mutant Sounds, it’s positively mainstream, but still yielding some nice scores.
o The Acid Archives of Underground Sounds is a ridiculously large document of the obscurest of the obscure. They certainly don’t get everybody — a quick scan through recent Mutant Sounds posts from the genre/era reveals that — but the sheer amount of “lost” psych records is nearly unfathomable. If only they had recommended playlists.
Only in print: Paste #34 (White Stripes cover): book review of William Gibson; album reviews of Young Galaxy, Xavier Rudd, Great Northern, the Grateful Dead; film review of Rocket Science
August Relix (String Cheese Incident cover): album reviews of Architecture in Helsinki, Mushroom, Love is the Song We Sing box set, Sonic Youth; book review of 33 1/3: Daydream Nation; DVD review of the Flaming Lips.
June/July Hear/Say (festivals cover): reviews of Hallelujah the Hills and the Thieves of Kailua
1. “Ouch!” – The Rutles (from The Rutles)
2. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
3. “Office Boy” – Bonde Do Role (from Office Boy EP)
4. “Atlas” – Battles (from Mirrored)
5. “I Saw The Bright Shinies” – Octopus Project (from forthcoming album TBD)
6. “Oben Beg mk3” – Baikonour (from For the Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos)
7. “Flux = Rad” – Pavement (from Wowee Zowee)
8. “Sweet Talking” – The Heptones (from Sweet Talking)
9. “A Goddamn Thing” – Mr. Smolin (from The Crumbling Empire of White People)
10. “(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea” – Elvis Costello (from This Year’s Model)
11. “Baby” – Caetano Veloso with Os Mutantes (from Live EP)
12. “Lå de Longe” – Tribalistas (from Tribalistas)
13. “Birth Of A Nation/Rain Of Terror/Tempus Fugit/Opus 71/Twenty-First Century Express” – The Mesmerizing Eye (from Psychedelia: A Musical Light Show)
14. “Angel Band” – Old & in the Way (from That High Lonesome Sound)
As you may’ve noticed, the site’s been a bit a spotty lately. I’ve been getting everything migrated to a new server, a process far more oi-inducing than I could’ve predicted. Anyway, I’m gonna take a break until everything is all squared. Could be tomorrow, could be next week, I dunno. When we come back: field recordings of distant marching bands, more animation, new micro-fiction, and all kindsa mp3s.
Americana: Home Recordings – Jim Croce (Shout! Factory)
A roommate of mine once told me of an opulent summer week he spent sailing around a vast lake on a private yacht. Every day, he said, they would drink white wine on the deck, dive off the sides, and float in tubes on the cool water. At night, they would go ashore via a tricked-out speedboat for parties on sprawling waterfront estates, returning to the ship to stare dizzily at the milky stars and enjoy the warmth of their drunkenness. The soundtrack for their unassuming debauchery – and the only thing preventing it from entering F. Scott Fitzgerald’s world of idle rich – was a collection of lite-folkie Jim Croce’s Greatest Hits. “It was,” my friend frequently insisted, “perfect,” as if that circumstance alone is what made his vacation transcend to the sublime.
The belly-filling warmth my roommate felt is present in spades on Americana: Home Recordings, a collection of kitchen table folk and country covers recorded before Croce’s career took off. They are songs of hard-luck hoboes and fallen working class heroes — the same stuff of Willie Nelson’s compatible (and heartbreaking) Crazy Sessions. But, where Nelson’s voice is pure ache, there is a lingering optimism in Croce’s, even in jailhouse laments like “The Wall.” That difference is what makes Nelson’s music appropriate for lonely barroom nights and Croce’s appropriate for giddy boating excursions.
In a way, it is the purest realization of depressing folk music as entertainment. Croce is an easy-going pop singer born in an age of acoustic troubadours, his vocals retaining a deftly mechanical sense of momentum while remaining impossibly laid back. It’s the kind of voice that makes one feel like a man of action despite lazing idly on a yacht, projecting movement upon silent canvases of stillness, vapidness turning to golden magnificence.
o Technobrega is a new Brazilian genre whose creation and distribution is entirely based on bootlegging/free distribution/live gigs. Haven’t listened to the clips yet, but its context is rad. (Thanks, RG.)
o ZoomQuilt II is extraordinarily detailed eye candy, an infinitely looped acceleration into fantastic recursive worlds. (Word, Dad.)
o Haruki Murakami on jazz.
o A nice, meaty interview with William Gibson on his forthcoming Spook Country and other topics.
o A detailed chronology of 120 years of electronic musical instruments.
