My favourite nuts beginning with the letter "P"

1. Pecans
2. Peanuts
3. Pistachios

Pecans are the obvious choice, naturally, but the rest of the list was a bit difficult. The pistachio is a fantastic nut, don't get me wrong, but eating the thing is a whole other story. The shells are sometimes entirely closed, not split open, making extracting the actual nut a chore. You can put in your mouth and bite it, sure, but then you have to spit out the shell, which is both a pain and rude, depending on the context in which you enjoy your nuts. All the salt also tends to stick to the shell, meaning you have to put the shell in your mouth anyway. Delicious, but is the payoff enough to warrant all that?

Even a perfectly prepared pistachio, however, will still lose out to the peanut, if only for the latter's versatility. It's sort of the "classic nut", the ubiquitous nut; you can't really hate on the peanut, unless you're allergic, but I get the impression that peanut allergy is sort of a fake idea. Peanut butter also does wonders to the peanut's score. It really stomps all over the other butter spin-offs. Almond butter is a fairly disgusting rendition.

In other, music related news: I've been a bit uninspired lately, and rather than rhyme off some schlock and post a link, I'd rather give you, the reader, something to read, though I reckon 9 times out of ten you're just looking for that bold, blue link. Hmpf.

In any case, things will be coming. Let me tell you about them: some cool new stuff from Silber and a proper presentation of Planning for Burial.

I would also like to take this time to remind you that I am 100% open to artist submissions. I even encourage it. Send me your stuff. I will listen. I will talk about. A couple dozen people might read it. Cool, huh?

Also, did you know that The North Sea wrote a song for me? It's true! And it's a doozy.

The North Sea - Calvin

Reading

Do you enjoy reading? In particular, words I have written? Then this might just tickle your fancy.

If it doesn't, I'll update this soon, pinky swear.

Oh wait, here I am

Yeah, ok, the quasi-habitual bimonthly "here I am back to blog etc" obligatory whatsit. No really. I think I mean it this time. (Maybe.) There's been hell of circumstances, plus being all busy with my quote/unquote day job and my quote/unquote day life.

Speaking of tangents, I also thought, maybe, since music is all so totally my entire life (refers to generic treble clef tattooed on wrist and/or ankle, hearts and stars all surrounding it) that using it as an aid in brooding and mulling and other more foreboding ways of thinking that maybe just maybe that is something I shouldn't, y'know, do. Maybe it ain't good for me to have men who want to be suiciding or already have to be whispering sweet nothings in my ear[phones]. Maybe I need to be put in a more positive mind frame. Maybe less Joy Division, Giles Corey, Jandek, Scott Walker, Swans, Zola Jesus, Death in June, Former Ghosts, Hrsta, etc, etc, etc.

Run-on sentences and general blubbering aside, what do we do about this?



oh hell yes

Husker Du is what we do about this. New Day Rising is what we do about this. Sure, there are definitely some downers on here ("If I Told You"), but in terms of sound it's an incredibly life-affirming album. It's also perfectly acceptable to leave the title track on repeat for 15 times and call it a day, because goddamn, "New Day Rising" is as fierce and ambiguously hopeful/hopeless in its simplicity as anything on the album; really, the perfect title track/opening number.

New music, new attitude?

Maybe.

Whatever, Husker Du rules.

DOWNLOAD "NEW DAY RISING".

In case you haven't heard:

GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR REUNION


Get yourself some live bootlegs to tide you over until you find out if you live in or near one of the "9 American towns" they'll be playing come winter.

I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day

"Excuse" is an ugly word; it has connotations of lie, like a reason that is a lie, at least partially. But "I've been busy" isn't a lie, per se, it's just such a bad reason that it feels excuse-esque. So there's my reason (however poor) for not keeping up with this, though I'm sure it must feel like an excuse to one Devin Hildebrand who emailed me a few weeks back about his sound-collage project Dth. Excuse me.

A lot of this new EP seems to stem from forlorn distress, from the slightly heartbreaking title I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day to the individual songs ("I Always Feel Like Crying (For Mom) is a knee-jerk " :'( "), but musically it isn't quite so hyper-depressive, nor is it as explicitly annoying/boring as sound collage can be. After the clusterfuck and appropriately titled opener "[!]" the album unscrambles and is surprisingly delicate and deeply personal, culling samples not just from random found-sounds but "From our VHS labelled "X-mas '95 / Jodi". It's all set to understated ambient instrumentation, some synth drones and acoustic guitar mostly, it seems, but nothing to overpower the star(s) of the show here (though that being said, cut-up sample set to a live drum beat at the end of the title track is a definite highlight). The whole album is beautifully balanced, between collage and composition, between the vaguely hopeful and the utter despair, between cacophony and ambiance but, somehow, it always ends up an entirely compelling and a quietly disturbing experience.

The highlight here is probably the closer, "Humans are like Ripples", which is probably the simplest in terms of structure and use of samples, but is strangely hypnotic as a whole crowd of people is asked "how was your day?". It sort of epitomizes the forces at work on the album, as the answers range from humorous to somewhat worrisome (sometimes simultaneously) and the music fluctuates accordingly, apparently with some science behind it:
Notes on a set scale (0-20, including halves of numbers) droned accordingly to numbers spoken in spontaneous dialogue prompted by "how are you feeling today, 1-10?"

Basically, I Hope I Can Feel Something Like That One Day is a wildly curious set of songs, which is meant entirely as a compliment. It's the sort of quiet headphone listening for one of those days. When you're not quite sure you want a pick-me-up or if you'd rather throw on Unknown Pleasures as a hold-me-down, then go ahead and try Dth. It'll kind of do both to you, and you'll like it, promise.



Click here to download/stream the whole thing.

I'm still alive.

Just sayin'.

Pillows & Prayers Vol. 1

I'd like to call this one a "hidden gem", but in contains in itself so many more hidden gems that we'd get into a very messy intergemuality or somesuch thing. A much better way of describing this, in immediate retrospect, would be a treasure trove of hidden gems. Ahem.

Pillows & Prayers was released in 1982 with the strict order of "pay no more than 99p" printed on the cover. The dirt-cheap LP is a sampler from Cherry Red Records, featuring a bunch of sorely underrated new wave/post-punk as well as a few heavy-hitters, including Everything But the Girl, Felt and Quentin Crisp. And when those are the "popular" bands on the compilation, it certainly says something about how underappreciated it is.

It's a solid listen all the way through, but if I had to pick-and-choose favourites, The Monochrome Set's angular post-punk "Eine Symphonie Des Grauens", Thomas Leer's synth-heavy "All About You" and Ben Watt's acoustic faux-jazzy "Some Things Don't Matter" would be top picks, alongside The Nightingales and Eyeless in Gaza (holy shit, that is a rad name for a band.) Throw in a spoken word track and a poetry piece by Atilla the Stockbroker and you've got a well-rounded mix. It was worth your 99p 28 years ago, and it's definitely worth the 10 minute download now.



DOWNLOAD: Pillows & Prayers Volume 1

And yes, there is indeed a Volume 2. If anyone's interested, let me know!