my speed

Mos Def - The Ecstatic (listen) Totally instantly into this, in that way you get immediately into something and let it slide off you right after, like an encounter with a momentary square dance partner. Especially this:

Quiet Dog - Mos Def

Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca (listen) I understand that I am supposed to like this much more than I do, and I do like it, but no evangelistic zeal is inspired in me by it. I feel about this record the same feelings as when I see one of the really cleverly designed T-shirt the kids these days are all about. I really like it, I applaud the craftsmanship and the willingness to push a t-shirt into a new direction. I recognize the importance of good design, that it is the unspoken thing that illuminates the things I think I like about the things I like. And I'm frankly a little jealous, because they don't fit my old and fat frame, because there are markedly not designed for me, perhaps even designed against me. To which I say, about time. The kids should be pushing my buttons. But a second later, I look at the t-shirt that has off-centered owls perched on a spindly freedrawn branch, or a sketched turntable or whatever and I think, yeah, OK, but it's just a t-shirt. A lousy t-shirt looks engaging on an engaging person and a great t-shirt on an attractive but non-engaging person is just a great t-shirt. And I'm starting to think the music of Dirty Projectors is attractive, achingly lovely even, and sincere as all fuck, but not all that engaging once you get past the surface. Methinks the lady doth protest too much. I changed my mind already while writing this. I really like this record. Maybe kinda love it.

Of the thousands of albums available by the Fall on my myriad music providing systems, why is not Levitate included among them? Not only does it fit the design thread running through the covers, and is one of my favorites ever, but I feel its presence here would support many points I'd like to make about unraveling popular music and re-weaving it as A Different Sort of Art.

Faust/Nurse With Wound - Disconnected - But then this is more my speed anyway, so maybe I shouldn't comment on popular music. Discussed in full at the newly discovered blog The Cargo Culte, who at first glance are also my speed. (pointed out by the also-my-speed Pretty Goes with Pretty)