vociferator

Blood Ceremony - Blood Ceremony (listen) About a year ago on his blog, John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats gave this record perhaps the highest praise a vociferator-about-music can give: dumbstruck silence (here). I just looked up vociferator to make sure it was what I meant - vociferate means "to utter or shout loudly or vehemently; bawl; clamor" but vociferator carries with it the idea of protest. Do we only get excited in protest, when things have gone too far for us to quietly bear? If that's true, that's a shame. Our voices should be made hoarse by bawling and clamoring for that which we love. Like, say, the Black Sabbath-meets-jazz flute-while-somehow-not-being Jethro Tull vibe of Blood Ceremony is something about which we can all vociferate.

I'm Coming With You - Blood Ce...

Tortoise - Beacons of Ancestorship - I have friends that have expressed puzzlement over my vociferation in support of Tortoise, perhaps implying that said vociferation indicates a weakness on previous vociferations. To those friends, I will warn you of a further frittering of my credibility, as I dig the new album.

sell YouTube to the Greeks

I do not understand Greek and thus, have no idea what Urfurshlag is talking about here, but am nonetheless riveted by the delivery. NSFW, more for weirdness than anything else, but there is some saucy language in English at the end.

what I want from Yoko Ono

I like this new Plastic Ono Band single. I don't love it, as I don't really care for most of her pop records, but I love her, so I make allowances. Like most of her dancefloor-oriented material, I would love it more if it was more her and less her collaborators.



Not that I think Yoko Ono is really in the business of giving me or anyone what they want, but what I want is for her to drop the dancefloor bit and embrace the giant-in-the-small again.



or hearken back to when she had a Patti Smith thing going on (a few years before even Patti Smith did, mind you)

smell the horse

The Avett Brothers - Country Was (listen) I am to interview the Avett Brothers soon, and trying to suss out what I really want to ask them. They are one of those bands that I believe to be doing something important, but those important things are relatively transparent, requiring nothing by the way of explanation, and thus, a thorny interview subject.

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Year of the Horse (listen) It's all pretty stellar on this album, but I'm partial to this ragged take on "Pocahontas"

Pocahontas (Live) - Neil Young

and the massive atmospheric dynamics of "Slip Away." The whole of post-rock can be extracted from that first minute.

Slip Away (Live) - Neil Young

and "smell the horse on this one."

Sedan Delivery (Live) - Neil Y...

100 words on Saturdays at the pool

Saturdays since joining the pool, an indulgence as modest as the riches it requires, consist of a mad dash of duties to be able get here at ten, and with that hour, a good table with a working umbrella, floating on my back, not-reading, throwing kids in the air and getting just burnt, like a proper grilled cheese sandwich and leaving at the limit of the season's brutality, only to return an hour before closing, a condensed repeat under Maxfield Parrish clouds until they whistle us out, if only to witness the pool glowing from us having been there.

the trick is layers

Kronos Quartet/John Oswald - "Spectre" from Short Stories (listen) In checking out some John Oswald info for the Michael Jackson piece, I came across this collaboration with Kronos Quartet, where he spent 10 hours recording them doing a number of very basic things and then recombining it into a beautifully dense piece that is, as it proceeds, increasingly beyond what the quartet itself is capable. By the end of it, he supposedly has 4000 layers of instruments going, turning a plaintive cello tone into a swarm of locusts.

John Oswald: Spectre (l990) - ...

Carl Stone - Mom's (listen) Carl Stone employs a much simpler variant of stacking samples; he simply slows them down and gently loops and overlays them into gorgeous hypnotic songs that unfold as the speed of blossoming flowers.

I got this album about 15 years ago under most fortuitous circumstances; I walked into a records store to talk to one of my friends that worked there who, perhaps pissed at his boss, told me to go grab the first thing that caught my eye and walk out with it. I don't know what I was looking for in the "St" section, but I didn't find it, and not wanting to dally over choosing a record to steal, let the cover photo catch my eye without knowing anything about the artist.

I was deep into Brian Eno's similar ambient music then, so it was a pleasant surprise when I got around to putting it on. The wonderful thing about Stone's methods that instead of creating a placid soundscape, he starts slow and gradually whips them up into a parade. It is still one of my all-time favorite records.

Mom's 1990 - Carl Stone

Brian Eno - Discreet Music (listen) Most people will point to the simple elegance of Music for Airports as Eno's finest ambient hour, but I have a warm fuzzy for Discreet Music, his first non-rock release, particularly the reconstitutions of Pachelbel's Canon, elongating the string parts by various mathematical strategies so that the classical music staple is coerced into slowly releasing its potential energy.

French Catalogues (Variation O...

Werner Herzog's La Soufrière

La Soufrière, Part one

Continuing my Herzog jag, I watched Werner Herzog's La Soufrière, his 1976 documentary about the evacuation of Guadeloupe before predicted volcano eruption and the one guy who refused to leave. I have much to say about this film, but it would spoil the metaphysically profound ending, so suffice to say, this thing is is beautiful, contemplative and like all of Herzog's work, compels you to both draw parallels that don't exist while planting you squarely in the facts.