We're sick of winter. There, we said it. Join us this Thursday at Grace Hotel for a party designed to give the cold weather the finger as well as unwind after fashion week. Enjoy a sweet indoor pool, steam room and sauna with night plane DJs. William plays current cosmic, Harry plays classic acid, like dis:
a special bonus glacial gem for you to inaugurate our online refuge - the eminently pauseable "magic cavern", what jonny bocce describes sounding like "balearic Fela." Traipse through dense forests of exotic flora, sunlight passing through the canopy, the clatter of painted insects, until you reach the shadowy and glowing mouth of the cavern.
Now go visit some lakes, hit some tunes, explore new unforeseen dimensions of sound, chill hard.
JJ summons Prince for a bouncy, sexy minimal-house anthem that's been on deep rinse in dj-land since it got waxed. A feel-good guarantee, perfect for anyone who's been in NY this past week, slogging through the ceaseless, Dickensian grey.
Can mastermind Holger's first solo album, 1980, regularly name-checked by contemporary grand electronic wizards like Lindstrom. There's some brilliantly weird/goofy pop numbers here, like the well-known "Cool in the Pool" which sounds like bizarro Sesame Street, and "Persian Love" which finds Holg sampling an Iranian singer, much like Eno-Byrne were doing in NYC at the same time on the best album ever, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. But the Lindstrom-y epic smoothness comes in on two long-form jams, "Hollywood Symphony" and "Oh Lord Give Us More Money," both undulating, shapeshifting compositions blending electronic and organic instruments and doing all kinds of unpredictable shifts and trippy psych-prog sideswipes.
the new best movie theatre in Manhattan is the Regal Cinema at Battery Park. I saw Watchmen opening night there and it was great. No one goes there because it's weirdly isolated, but it's huge and has great stadium seating, etc, all the comforts of high-tech American spectacularity. I have plans to accompany a small group of male friends to see I Love You, Man, which will probably be as adorable and affirmative of an outing as the image might suggest. It was not my idea, I thought about it but didn't have the cajones to round up some intimate brethren for such a collective bro-expression - that honor goes to Mr. Zade, who in other ways has already proven the functionality of his cajones, thus this is a somewhat redundant yet not unwelcome attesticulation.
you are aware, of course, that the word 'testimony' (and thus 'testify' and 'attestation') is derived from the word for 'testicles' in Greek? Oh, you weren't? There you go. That's not unrelated, as Freud says in a footnote somewhere, to the pecularity of the paternity test: unlike the mother, which is easy to identify, the owner of the testicles responsible must be testified to.
10. new order - blue monday (jam & spoon andrea mix)
11. andy summer & robert fripp - bewitched
12. seefeel - gatha
13. edward artemyev - station
14. richard pinhas - iceland (part two)
15. wind harp - beginnings
16. this mortal coil - waves become wings
17. arp - the rising sun
18. deuter - life is love
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text by william rauscher
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Bretly and t'aja were young newlyweds, and in those days they often went to puerto rico where t'aja's parents had built their vacation home, several hours' drive from san juan, on the southwestern corner, where there was only sand and crystal water and puerto ricans. they loved each other very much and were lucky to have found each other so early in life, as you could count on one hand the number of people who could put up with the sort of foul-mouthed, slang-drenched absurdities that served them as love's own secret language.
In those days they often went to puerto rico, to escape the grey pit of pressurized despair that the city had become. Some neighborhoods in the south bronx had ceased using money altogether, relying instead on an ad-hoc barter system, its currency regulated by the demand for ketamine and bootleg reggaeton. With funding for social services and scientific research gone dry, the bedbug infestation had worsened, in part as the species itself had mutated. Left untreated, the venom in bites from this evolved bedbug could reach the brain, causing paralysis, hallucinations, aggressive dementia. by mayoral decree, staten island had become a borough-sized quarantine-zone for those citizens plagued by the bug.
Sitting half-upright, bretly could comfortably rest his iphone in his lap to see live webcam footage from the staten riots, where those forceably relocated had begun to stagger out in the streets, accompanied by members of the ACLU, who, protesting "Gitmo-era tactics," had been illegally airlifted onto the island. They could be spotted by their full-body orange ACLU jumpsuits designed to protect from infection. Bretly swallowed a muscle relaxant and a swig of rum and watched his wife swim in the saltwater pool.
Restless after several days of blissful inactivity, bretly and t'aja decided to take a scenic jaunt to the radar telescope in Arecibo. To their surprise, they learned that the observatory had, deliberately with very little fanfare, been sold by NASA to a private buyer in the past six months. With government funds running scarce, the observatory had gotten the axe. The telescope itself was a ruined marvel, the edge of its basin now overgrown with foliage, its suspended antenna now rickety, with a snapped cable or two, its once-white surface gone piss yellow from the tropical climate. When t'aja stepped to the viewing ledge, she believed she could still hear, somehow, those since-ceased signals, interstellar echoes, white noise-rumblings of cosmic dust. Shards of electric sound, whirlwinds of voices running backwards, lonely pulses of green light that blink across unfathomable blackness.
The telescope had been sold to a professor doctor wolfgang spiegelman, a shady, spittle-mouthed east German with a glass eye, who told them he had renamed the observatory the Transworld Communications Institute, and that in the next few weeks his small team of devoted followers would begin arriving, in time for the onset of the institute's spring semester. Spiegelman came across as half-guru, half-huckster, as if perpetually on the verge of believing his own bullshit once and for all. Bretly couldn't decide which was worse, the possibility that spiegelman was a remorseless cynic, or a deluded evangelist with an overactive imagination. Bretly had a sinking feeling about the whole set-up, and wanted to get in the car and go back home right away, but he knew better than to leave a lunatic German alone in charge of some piece of gargantuan, semi-abandoned technology in the middle of the Puerto Rican jungle.
[Handwritten Caption:] "There is so much evil coming off this page I had to send it away. Please don't try anything funny."
Norvorg is the name for the legendary Swedish evil spirit that preys on unsuspecting vacationers near bodies of water. This is nothing exceptional: pagan Swedish mythology is rife with malevolent forces that embody aquatic anxiety. In Norvorg's case, however, the method developed to hold the spirit at bay was unique: over generations, rural Swedes passed down brief, inanely cheerful songs, called abbania, intended to subdue the demonic entity with their breezy effervescence. Such is the direct origin of Swedish pop music as a genre, as well as Abba, the name of its most successful export.
Thus in Sweden, smooth music, at least in the bubblegum variety, was created as a mythological means of reckoning with nature, being functionally a mixture of art, technology, and religious ritual. It wasn't merely a means of accentuating a chilled-out maritime soiree, but of securing the chill-out by staying in tune with a potentially hostile universe.
Should you in the coming days find yourself in a leisurely state by the waterside, let us recommend these six sonic talismans:
- Lenny Kravitz - I Belong to You
Yep. Listen to this track and tell me it's not sick. Back when Lenny also produced "Justify My Love" for Madonna. Could you put this on while you made out with somebody, or would you laugh?
- Gabor Szabo - Azure Blue
From the Hungarian jazz guitarist's album High Contrast, which also contains the original version of Breezin', the instrumental later made famous by George Benson. Like Christopher Cross' "Sailing," "Breezin" is so programmatically smooth, it's a blueprint for the revolution. "Azure Blue" is included in the playlist instead, however, because this is the midterm: Breezin', Sailing and other such master classics are pre-reqs for the course.
George Benson - Breezin' (Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test)
- American Analog Set: The Magnificent Seventies
In high school my friends and I wore out this track and the accompanying album, From our Living Room to Yours. Wistful and lightly propulsive, like staring out of your suburban bedroom window while listening to Ege Bamyasi, the track is a jewel of airy melancholia and poppy-tinged daydreams, and is great company when navigating late at night those endless asphalt tracks that comprise the Texas highway system, and which arch in the dark like the backs of prehistoric beasts feeding on the dead.
- Lee Ritenour: Morning Glory
In crate-digging, the actual pilfering through milk crates, or Google reader or whatever it is you use, is only the first step. The second is scouring a whole album looking for that one song, the one that strikes a nerve. Smooth noodley jazz is certainly rough waters for the impassioned digger, because there is a very low diamond to shit ratio. But as Lee knows, such excursions are all part of the captain's journey. "Morning Glory" is well Steely, with a bit of CSN and some elevator thrown in for good measure.
Alan H. sent this in, and I've probably listened to it every day since then, Azymuth's '74/'75 Brazilian jazz debut. Alan quite correctly anticipated that I would be well down with this, as it matches nimble tropical rhythms with tinny martian synthesizers like something from the second half of either Bowie's "Low" or Closer by Joy Division. It's a fantastic record, one that rewards repeated listening. It might be a case of creeper beats: they might not hit you in the face at once, they may wait until you think you're safe and sound to deploy their weapons of sunbaked smooth....highly recommended. Alan and I had an extended follow-up conversation in which he made the observation that alot of American yacht rock ends up following a curious class trajectory, being the product of ennui-ridden rich California rockers living in the lap of luxury, sulking amidst their cuervo gold, white lady and nineteen-year olds, and making its way via muzak-systems to the quotidian world of the midwest supermarket.
- Quiet Village: Singing Sand
Another track from QV's new "Silent Movie" LP, a distant smooth cousin to DJ Shadow's Entroducing. Or as one bulletin boarder put it, beardo disco = the new trip-hop.
After three or four days in a row of epic band practices interspersed with late night brooklyn loft parties I was totally worn down and brain-dead, so while, framed by my old white window, the evening light settled softly behind the williamsburg bridge, I lay with headphones on and passed out to this new record. It is an afternoon springtime nap masterpiece. It is also shit-smooth gentle tide disco made by two bald DJs. I want to share it with you, Like a lot of very good music, it is highly practical to listen to, being a kind of sonic frozen margarita, or light Mexican beer. This track makes me think of coconut-infused suntan lotion and the gentle movements of brown skin in the dark. It's what doin' it on the beach sounds like.
BUT FIRST before the main event, a perverse appetizer, one long overdue for classical acknowledgment.
Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam (The Man Who Saves the World) is a 1982 Turkish film, part of a wave of low-budget productions from the region which slavishly and at times bizarrely imitated American Hollywood blockbusters, occasionally resorting to flat-out stealing clips from the originals when necessary. The Man Who Saves the World is thus referred to as "Turkish Star Wars", there are likewise Turkish Superman, Star Trek, etc - also Turkish E.T., in which the title character appears not as a lovable, charming plush-toy creature, but a lop-sided, flatulent space potato whose visage makes you cringe when the children hug it.
What is awesome about this clip from Turkish Star Wars shouldn't require much more explanation on my part. I will note that globally speaking, Americans are in the unique position of seeing their own culture bootlegged, imitated, xeroxed into oblivion, more than any other nationality. Like when you go to the market in Marrakesh and they're selling Beebok shoes and it's really funny. I am secretly grateful as an American that there is not some other larger, more cultural impactful country than my own that causes me constant anxiety of influence, whose pop culture I dearly love like delicious junk food but despise and need to distance myself from at the same time.
Thus part of America's cultural fate is the uncanny encounter with stuff like Turkish Star Wars, where we get our own bullshit thrown back at ourselves in mutant form.
By the way, these Turkish films often snip hodge-podge from American soundtracks, throwing them altogether for fun, you can recognize for example "Battlestar Galactica" in the following clip:
NOW, AC STEREO, MAY EDITION: EPIC SOUNDTRACKS
These are psychedelically epic, in contrast to either heroically or romantically. I wanted to put some Phillip Glass here but I couldn't download any from itunes and don't own any, inexplicably. The following line-up contains a lot of usual suspects, most of whom are prolific enough to justify combing through some odder folds in the back catalog. Comments appear below, followed by a massive dose of carefully curated clips.
1. Tangerine Dream - Beach Scene (from Thief)
80s synth-soundtrack warlords whose resume in this field is too epic for consideration. Alex B gave me this track, from Michael Mann's Thief, which plays right after James Caan, the titular thief of banks, has just pulled off the sickest heist ever, and he gets to go celebrate on the beach with his woman and James Belushi.
2. Christian Bruhn - Aravanadi - der Baron
Bruhn is a 70s-80s German soundtrack composer, this is for a German kid's TV series called Timm Thaler, an update of the Faust narrative in which the title character sells his laughter to the Baron LeFuet (anagram of "Teufel", German for "Devil").
3. Bo Hansson - Black Riders & Flight to the Ford
Not really for an actual soundtrack, and we've covered it before, but dammit, it's a 70s swedish-prog imaginary soundtrack to Lord of the Rings, and it rules.
4. Ennio Morricone - Fuggire Lontano
A deep boogie TV cue. I don't know much about it. I do know that you should probably get the two-disc "Crime and Dissonance" set that came out a few years ago, because it is well-bugged.
5. Freedom Orchestra - Lucifer Rising, Part I
Part of Kenneth Anger's classic 60s psychedelic Satan movie. The soundtrack was going to be by Jimmy Page originally, but it finally fell to Bobby Beausoleil, who I think recorded part of it in prison or something. Nicely evil. Like not too much evil, like when you eat too much Oatmeal Cookie Chunk ice cream and you lie there like a sickly, friendless whale and think you might barf.
Psst: here's the whole soundtrack. It's a bit mud-fi, but pretty much as triumphantly psych-evil as you're going to get.
From Herzog's film Aguire: The Wrath of God, accompanies the insanely beautiful opening shot. Both Popol Vuh and Herzog have a similar artistic strength, that of engaging with romantic/exoticist/hippie types of tropes and traversing them until they become something beautifully otherworldly. PS: the next time someone in casual conversation disparages the Mellotron, play them this haunting, distant choir that spreads its alien angelic beauty all through the heavens.
7. Goblin - Patrick
Pretty much the best epic soundtrack group ever. I mean, "Suspira"? Those crazy bells and shit? "Patrick" is from the movie of the same name. Guess what? Quiet Village ripped it off for their track "Pillow Talk". They took the scary warbliness out of it and made it a super-chill yacht jam.
8. Terry Riley - In the Summer
From some ponderous 70s eurotrash movie called "Lifespan" starring Klaus Kinski. One of the minimalist master's only film compositions, it's also I think the only track by him that has vocals on it.
9. Giorgio Moroder - Paul's Theme (Jogging Chase) From "Cat People"
Ok do I have to explain who he is? He's like Goethe, he pretty much invented everything. Plus, he produced not only "Take My Breath Away" from Top Gun, but "Call Me" by Blondie from American Gigolo. Damn.
10. Tully - Follow Me from "Sea of Joy"
Some hippie-dip soundtrack to an old Australian surfing movie. I bought this for some reason at Other Music, weirdly mesmerized by the accompanying description, despite the fact that 1. I don't care about hippie-dip folkie folk and 2., it's about surfing in Australia. In any case, most of the soundtrack is a wash, except for this track, because it is suitable moody and dark, and thus epic.
11. Marc Wilkinson - Fiend Discovered and Titles from "Blood on Satan's Claw"
We close with some actual orchestral soundtrack stuff, from a 70s British horror film not dissimilar from "The Wicker Man". Also the soundtrack has nice track titles like "Claw in the Classroom."
Now please enjoy some audio/visual excursions. Where possible, the clips reflect the aforementioned tracks, sometimes they don't because this was not possible, or because I don't care.
One of this site's guiding principles is to avoid posting entire albums. The reasoning behind this is evident in its exceptions. An entire album may be posted without derision or scorn here only when it is out of print or otherwise difficult to obtain. Or, lastly, when it is really important to do so. Because music, the most incorporeal of the arts, not only sooths beasts, on humans it can as well compel and possess.
Inundated as we are with dystopic images of future days, it was striking to watch the future-segment of "2046" and encounter a tomorrow that seemed beautiful, naive, decadent, suffused with the neon streaks of an opiate light. Not a political warning or cultural satire, or PKD-style engagement with the schizo-dissociative powers of technology, just a completely oneiric escapist fashion-magazine spread, one that produces a radiant digital narcosis.
So here now are three works that can be said to intersect with such a dose of bright tomorrows:
"I believe in the signal of the bass drum. It it the heartbeat of my life." - Wolfgang Voigt, aka Gas, Mono.Kultur #08
The real name of ambient-techno artist Gas is Wolfgang Voigt. Voigt is the co-founder and co-owner of Kompakt records, and is a highly influential and prolific electronic musician.
There's much that can be said about the maternal heart-pulse of the techno bass drum, and as well for the warm, pulsating, embryonic womb that the well sound-system'ed club attempts to emulate (Fabric Room One, for example). This sound is compelling enough that it can keep me in its sonic amniotic suspension for minutes at a time, until the spell is broken and I am reminded that I'm in a weird dingy club in the immediate vicinity of NYU, surrounded by total randos.
A new luxurious Gas boxed set will soon be released, meaning that technically Pop still remains out of print, and well within an acceptable domain of full-album posts.
As for a description of this record, we would be hard-pressed to beat Voigt's own, from the same interview:
"I had an image in my mind of a gaseous and nebulous sound, of an exhilarating streaming music which literally flows over, which has no beginning or end no hard edges, only softness. My association was this music drifting through the coppice of a misty wood in vast sound spheres, a very elegaic sound repeated over and over in the far distance, held together by an invisible bass drum that comes marching by somewhere hidden in the woods coming closer and fading away again."
It's an amazing sunday sunset record, preferably one of those hazy interminable twilights, one of those blue-gray and feathery evening come downs.
In a sense, The Field is a kind of punk reduction of Gas's near-classical sense of dynamics and ornament - The Field takes up this loop-based ambient techno approach and fidelities it way down, brutes it up, takes it from the Germanic sylvan idyll and kicks it back into the city streets.
So in the case of these records, geography is everything. Gas is the Germanic sylvan idyll, when you're out stamping in boots for boar among the brush.
e2-e4 is a beach record. Recorded in 1981 in Berlin on a two-track in one take by Gottsching, guitarist for supreme face-melters Ash Ra Tempel, it effectively helped invent techno music. It consists only of an unspooling of an infinite synth, and the soaring, tremulous clusters of an electric guitar windblown across the waters. Like Gas, it doesn't ever seem to be going anywhere, but unfurls blissfully in place. Again, the timelessness of the womb, the sublime "oceanic feeling" that Freud describes in Civilization and Its Discontents.
E2-e4 is often regarded as a founding track of Balearic, which is an extremely broad dance category, but generally associated with electronic beach beats. It covers everything from trippy yacht disco to the filth enjoyed by the worst baggy bepanted pill poppers the imagination can conjure. The Guardian ran this article on the Balearic resurgence a few months ago. The descriptions of the DJing style parallel those describing Baldelli's sets at Cosmic, which marked the birth of 'cosmic disco': slow (11obpm or so), eclectic, an emphasis on experimentalism and texture.
The original version of "Memories of Green", which would later appear in rerecorded form on the Blade Runner soundtrack, here taken from Vangelis' 1980 album, See You Later. The soundtrack's voluptous digital sheen is absent here, leaving behind the hairier, lower-fi predecessor.
The reader will be forgiven if it is thought that to say something is 'smoothly bearded' would mean getting lost in a contradiction in terms. However, if this something were in fact the new album Silent Movie by Quiet Village, then such an odd, yet intriguing adjective phrase might in fact gain new linguistic currency. The album is in fact bearded, in that it is drifty and psychedelic, yet it is smooth, in that makes one want to ride around in a sail boat and wear a hat.
Here is a montage video from the aforementioned album, consisting of what appears to largely be clips of 'Planet Earth' type nature documentaries. Visuals don't kick in until around 1:30. Enjoy.
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