Songs to sleep next to

I've written about Devin Hildebrand (Dth) before, being quite found of his unique collage work, and was pleasantly surprised to hear that he had more new material so soon. Songs To Sleep Next To moves away from the focus on found sounds and, through that shift, really exemplifies some fantastic songwriting, something all too rare under the umbrella of "ambient".

Opener "Pruny Hands Felt Health" might be my favourite Dth track yet, absolutely lush, organic, intimate but sounding huge beyond its scope. It is a song to sleep next to, not a song to sleep on or with or under; it's music to take you to sleep, not put you there. The whole album is downright lucid, entirely dreamlike and weightless but it never lets go entirely, never succumbs to useless "ambiance" or droning wanderlust or forgettable meandering and is always aware, always in control. The smart collage work isn't entirely lost either, with half-imagined nature sounds uniting the first two tracks and vocal samples popping up later in the album's somewhat more abrasive middle section (featuring a collaboration with noise/drone maestro Chris Rehm, who, likewise, is doing tons of cool things in the genre on the more caustic side of things (Salivary Stones is an absolute must-hear.)

If you're feeling lazy and need some loose comparisons slapped together to condense my opinion into a sound bite, then boo on your lazy readership, but I will reluctantly tell you that if you like Atlas Sound at its absolute most somnambulant or the Sparklehorse/Fennesz collaboration, then you'll find tons to like here. And if that doesn't help you at all, then just listen to it anyway: it's short, it's free, and worth your bandwidth.


Stream/download the whole thing here.

When we finally fall asleep

Digital media is awful and that is a fact. You can get your "FLAC" or your ".WAV" or whatever bitrate or rip you want but it's so far removed from experiencing an album that it makes me cringe. Yeah, yeah, Ye Observant Reader, I do post MP3s (or M4As if I'm being a bitch), and they certainly have their advantages, namely their convenience. But it's a reproduction, at the end of the day, a snapshot of a sculpture; an introduction, a starting point, not an entire experience in and of itself. This might be coming off as horrendously pretentious, and maybe it is, but there simply some albums that are incomplete statements without a physical package.

We All Inherit the Moon understands this. Hell, lead member Adam - and honcho behind Future Recordings - seems to swear by this. Every single item he puts out - every CD, LP, tape, book - is so lovingly assembled and fairly priced that it's a shame he doesn't run music as a whole. We All Inherit The Moon releases get the slightest bit of extra love, too, and the new lathe cut 8" is fantastic in presentation and execution. Crystal-clear square vinyl (careful with those corners, though) and a succinct 4/5 minutes of music per side, with possibly my favourite WAITM material yet. Languid, almost shoegazey atmosphere with post-rock spirit that really breaks through in the absolutely gorgeous final stretch of the song when the strings come in full bore (well, as "full bore" as this sort of thing gets). Seriously beautiful music, occupying a lovely little niche between ambient and post-rock, being a million times more dynamic than the former without breaking out in full-on crescendo like the latter. Really, the band's only getting better and better as time goes on. Stellar stellar stellar, in every sense of the word.



We All Inherit the Moon - When We Finally Fall Asleep

Your favourite artist is going to die this year.

Sorry, it's true, but musicians are apparently on God's hit list this year (Jay Reatard, Mark Linkous, Dio, Peter Steele, Devon Clifford (You Say Party! We Say Die!), Malcolm McLaren, etc.). Tuli Kupferberg, leader of the beat-poetry nutters The Fugs apparently passed away today. He was 88, so at least it wasn't exactly untimely or completely left-field, but it's still a huge loss. I'll admit I didn't explore The Fugs all that much until recently, but even in such a short time it's easy to appreciate the man's talents.

The Fugs - Boobs a Lot

And apparently the man upstairs has moved on to comic book visionaries, too. Harvey Pekar also kicked the bucket at 70. If you haven't read any of his stuff, please, do yourself a favour, get down to your local library/book store/friend-with-good-taste's-house and check it out. Equal parts sad, funny, and always brutally honest. Imagine if Bukowski did sequential art instead of poetry and you've got an idea. If nothing else, American Splendor is a fantastic meta-biopic that's absolutely worth your time.

Pedestrian Pop Hits

So a lot of you folks have stumbled on this blog because you're looking for Ariel Pink's "Pedestrian Pop Hits", apparently. Now instead of being a constant disappointment, here it is. One huge sixteen minute barnburner, and yeah, needless to say it's pretty far removed from his compact acid-fried pop jingles. Massively layered/delayed vocal tracks spiralling skyward and crashing back down into a sadly understated murky ocean of bass work and nonstop guitar, alternating between silky smooth half-solos and jagged mildly-fuzzed out dissonance. Hey, is "understated ocean" simultaneously contradictory and a simply awful metaphor? Thought so. Oh, and John Maus on keyboards and lump of shimmery psychedelic nonsense. Boss.



Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Pedestrian Pop Hits

Lucky for you, you can still pick up a hard copy over at Southern (1000 copies, all numbered, plus a real swanky fold-out package. More origami-esque than your standard fold-out.) While you're there, also grab Mount Eerie's entry in their "Latitudes" series, it's fantastic. And while I was there I realized they also used both a water-themed metaphor as well as the word "shimmering", so there you go. Whatever.

I don't even

So, Kid Cudi did a song with Best Coast and Rostam Batmanglij (from Vampire Weekend, I'm told) to do a song for Converse. Er, okay then. Check it out. And Wavves did a song for Mountain Dew? What's going on? What's next? I'm don't mean to come off all like "derp, sellouts"; this just doesn't make sense to me. Though it does sort of offer up some fantastic possibilities: can we get the newly-reformed Swans to do a jingle for Doritos ("Blood, Honey and Spicy Cheese (Sha La La La)"? Also, have you ever seen so much bold in your life?

I'll assume you have that Converse ad playing right now and, if I know my readership, you're hopefully as baffled as I am. I wasn't sure how those three artists would collaborate smoothly at all, and it turns out they can't. It's like three entirely unremarkable b-sides stitched together because shoes said so, and the last time I took advice from shoes I had a whole lot of explaining to do. I guess we should be thankful that "All Summer" isn't explicitly about shoes, but rather, er... drinking water? And chilling the fuck out. Well then.

THIS WEEK IN CAPES: Sky Saxon wears a real gassy one in what I understand was a surprisingly popular single in its time. I hate to give credence those cro-magnon dullards who swear on their Led Zeppelin shirt collection that "music today sucks", but if a fuzzed-out barbaric assault like "Pushin' Too Hard" actually charted 44 years ago then maybe something is amiss in popular music.

Does this count as a real blog entry yet? Dagnabbit.

No words

Review: Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words - "No Words"

Seriously, the [sorta] new Dead Letters etc cassette is fantastic. For fans of: ambient music not created with this.