Friday 19 April 2013
Wednesday 3 November 2010
Sunday 25 July 2010
Wednesday 21 July 2010
thin hymns - inland
It’s been a long time, long time
I shouldn’t have left you, left you
Without a dope beat to step to
Step to, step to, step to
Step to, step to
Thin Hymns are a gaggle of dudes (and sometimes a dudette!) from Chicago. They kindly sent me 'Inland'; a jilted, yielding song of landscapes, indecisiveness and walking. I love its washes of compression, rural flow and channeling of that timeless, writless AnCo/others sound - as if the instruments weren't played but rather found in meeting.
Thin Hymns - Inland
Tuesday 13 July 2010
Little Power
Alice was weird when we were young. She picked her nose and ate it and used to walk around school mumbling Titanic dialogue to herself.
Now I can see my love for her I know it must have been as blatant as a building behind me, but since she was so inhuman I doubt she even got why I was there. She had so much on her mind it was ridiculous.
We were at her home town and it was sunny. I was eating Malteasers on the grass; she was eating a mint ice-cream. I remember thinking, mint? Yuck! And yet some part of me was ridiculously drawn to the choice of it. I remember a mint green dab of it falling on her.
Planes were going overhead all the time because she lived near the airport. She kept looking up at them.
She looked down and said, ‘Pauly, you’re such a liar.’
She was smiling across at me in the sun. Then she licked the mint green ice-cream with her coral tongue.
I wanted to wave across the sky at her like a birdy.
I looked down at my lap, smiling, saying nothing.
She looked away, at a brick wall at the edge of the field.
We were sitting in the middle.
She looked back. ‘Are you and Fiona married yet?’ she asked.
‘No?’ I said.
‘Do you fancy her?’ she asked.
‘No?’ I said.
We waited and were thinking about things. She was sitting with her knees up, the grass chaff beneath her pink knickers.
I piped up. ‘How did you get that bruise on your leg?’ I asked.
I must’ve sounded like a baby.
‘Darren punched me when we were doing handstands.’ she said.
Darren, I remember thinking. I want to squeeze his head and really hurt him.
‘I like it.’ she said. ‘I like bruises.’ She was looking up at the planes again. ‘I love to have some of them.’
I looked at the bruise. It was yellowed and purplish.
*
Alice was throwing a tennis ball at me, later. Her game was throwing the ball, then handstand, then back on your feet to catch again.
She spasmed slightly after catching my throw. She had a nervous twitch.
‘Hey.’ she said. ‘Let’s go in there.’
She was pointing to the little power station with ‘danger of death’ written on the side.
The idea of it reminded me of the pylons at the Pelham Nature Reserve in Essex, the absolute death of them. I knew I was going to die.
‘Do you want to?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’ I said.
I knew I had crossed a line in life and could already feel my body freezing from the current and dying and being on the news.
We walked across the field slowly.
As I walked alongside Alice I felt I might take her in for the last time – her hair and her arms; her eyes and her face. I won’t tell you the colour of these things because they are mine.
She put her trainer up against the mesh fence around the little power station and threaded her fingers into the holes. I saw her fingernails from afar, bitten away.
‘We have to go up together or I’m not doing it.’ she said.
I saw my window.
‘Okay.’ I said, putting my trainer up against the mesh fence.
We climbed slowly up to the top, both staring down at the grey generators, buzzing waspishly.
At the top we put our legs over inside and glanced at each other. Alice looked ridiculously excited.
As we climbed down I got a slight headache. I worried that it might be from the current, hanging in the air, filling us up.
We stood with our backs to the fence and moved around the edge on the gravel. Alice began to laugh. I thought about kissing her.
‘Oi!’ a voice shouted, ‘Oi! What the hell do you think you’re doing?’
I looked up, seeing Alice twitch out of the corner of my eye.
‘Get out of there! Jesus Christ!’
It was a man in a brown Barbour jacket.
‘My life!’
At this point we had begun to climb back up the fence. I looked over at Alice’s bottom. I really didn’t want it to catch on the generator and be electrocuted. I was almost in tears.
We didn’t look at each other as we put our legs over outside.
Andrew Goldspink
Thursday 24 June 2010
new salem - king night
If Salem are the Trinity does that mean John is the Father, Jack the Son and Heather the Holy Spirit?
†
...Here lies the sublimely brittle intro to Salem's forthcoming King Night. Save your pennies.
Salem - King Night
Sunday 20 June 2010
universal swimsuit - she's the one (overnight mix)
London's Universal Swimsuit is a remix project like none other. Think less bouncy 4 on the 4loor chillywave and more spike-bombs jabbing downwards in time with eachother like brothers. Give it time though! You may well find the sound of this music to be similar to Panda Bear lying on a bed of spikes.
'She's the One' fits this bill. Beginning like a scratchy glasspaper rendition of the opener to the new Crystal Castles, it ends up a tousling, liquid conditioner of a massage - like practicing wrestling and then chilling out on the leather sofas of your mind.
[CHUK CHIK, BANG]
(kills self)
Universal Swimsuit - She's the One (Overnight Remix)
P.S. Noam at Don't Die Wondering took a look at Universal Swimsuit's comforting and fun remix of Whigfield's Saturday Night.
Thursday 17 June 2010
Saturday 12 June 2010
crypt thing
...meanwhile, somewhere in the UK, Crypt Thing is making instrumental magic that harkens back to Hounds of Hate, amongst others, mixing melancholy wit with genuine rhythmic and harmonic innovation.
One of the nicest things about the short, pithy sketches in the Crypt Thing melange is their titles. They are brilliant. 'Ladies Mountain Bike', for example, paints a brave picture of the aliens-eye-view world the songs sadly ponder. Just vulnerable, vibrant and curt enough, the titles scratch a rough arc in graphite across the instumentals' green graph paper, allowing for play between a single phrase and a musical gesture. In other words, 'Ugly Men' is ugly - a pockmarked, embarassed track; and 'Michael' oddly tender and awkward - it's for someone, as strange and shy as its message might be.
Crypt Thing - Acid Blob
Crypt Thing - Michael
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