26/10/2016

27/16 - I Got This Rig That Runs On Memories

What a week for music! New Leonard Cohen album, new Joanna Newsom track, and new Run The Jewels track! But instead of any of that, I'm putting together an old folky top 5, cause I'm stubborn, me.



Jarvis Cocker - I Can't Forget

So I haven't yet listened to You Want It Darker, because I'm waiting until I have the CD in my hand, but from the couple of tracks I heard on Jarvis' Sunday Service it's going to be just as good or better than I expected. Meanwhile, what can sit better than said Jarvis covering one of Leonard's many best tracks?
Yeah the summer's gone
But a lot goes on forever


Bert Jansch - One To A Hundred

Sitting on my bed, watching the foxes nose around in the withering, wet backyard, I roll a childhood memory around in my head, comparing its intensity of feeling with this lethargic dullness. I can still sense the taste of excitement in some of the late raspberries and the intense yellow of certain leaves. Close your eyes... count to a hundred.


The Weather Station - Way It Is, Way It Could Be

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come. There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always like a sketch. No, "sketch" is not quite the word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch for nothing, an outline with no picture.” - Milan Kundera


Brian Protheroe - Pinball

I send out letters. I get automatic replies. I go to openings. I feel closed off. I watch too much television. I've lost my visions. I read. I don't write. I turn on the radio, and there is a guy I've never heard of before singing about exactly this feeling of pointlessness. And then he sings over himself, while saxophones flutter by, and maybe there is some kind of energy to extract from these random moments still. I've not quite at a standstill yet.


William Tyler - A Portrait of Sarah

I've rejected it from the last couple of weeks' lists, because it felt too long at the time. Now however, it has matured in me and its melody echoes long after the last intricate fingerpicking has rung out.




Okay, well I have to leave these here as well. I'm sure I'll have reason to come back to them, because well, there are few other music acts out there that can excite me as much as these.




20/10/2016

26/16 - I'm Still Waiting

Revisits and reappraisals as time is not moving forward at all this week.



Talking Heads - Crosseyed and Painless

Because Andrew made me watch this excellent bit of TV history:


Skip to 1:00:00 for a sweaty, rowdy live version of this banger, this week dedicated to Donald Trump:
Facts don't do what I want them to!


The Dead Weather - I Can't Hear You

Because it's been on my running soundtrack for a while. A tip top tip-toe-ing guitar riff.


Phosphorescent - Hej, Me I'm Light

Because Eli got me hooked on Song For Zula, and then I discovered I had some other Phosphorescent tracks on my iTunes, including this melancholic but blissed out mantra.


Bat For Lashes - Daniel

Because it's still such a stunning song.


Kathryn Williams - Spit On A Stranger

Just because. Sometimes a gentle Pavement-cover is exactly what you need.





11/10/2016

25/16 - I'm Travelling With No Destination

Songs for the October sun and for keeping busy with little jobs and little hopes.


Frank Ocean - Self Control

Ok, I'm late on the ball here, but yes, Frank Ocean's album is truly gorgeous once you give it your full attention. Fleeting, fragmentary, conversational, and then, suddenly, blooming like an indian summer. Around 3:18 the sun breaks through with full power.


Matias Aguayo - Ay Ay Ay

The slowest song of its eponymous album shuffles and chugs along in sighs, whizzes and tropical bird imitations. The perfect tempo for my current mood. Carefully starting up my engine again and keeping it going, and going, and losing myself...


Chance the Rapper ft. Ty Dolla Sign, Anderson .Paak, BJ the Chicago Kid, Raury - Blessings

A song of sincere and fantastic aspirations.
Call me Mr Mufasa, I had to master stampedes


The Beach Boys - Our Prayer

OK, the list took a bit of a religious turn here. Sometimes even agnostics must feel their spirits rise.


Beth Gibbons & Rustin Man - Funny Time of Year

The sun sinks at the end of the list. The temperature drops. The world slows to a standstill. It's a funny time of year. And then that wobbly bass solo summons the wind and the rain and the frost and the autumn storms and the night. The loud, rumbling night.




03/10/2016

24/16 - Some Do Magic and Some Do Harm

The cold is seeping through the window. I walk outside of it. Inside the dark kitchen ghostly voices rattle like dead leaves. It is the season for feeling and filling voids.


Viktor Vaughn ft. M. Sayyid - Never Dead

M. Sayyid from Anti Pop Consortium sharing a track with Doom? Two of my favourite flows ever converging in a flood. Yes please!


OutKast - Knowing

Every action has a positive and equal reaction
Therefore everything that goes around comes around in that fashion


Alton Ellis - Black Man's World

Those who've been to 'The Infinite Mix' exhibition in London know how infectious that chorus is. "Ooooo-uuuuh-ooooooh! I was born a loser!" is repeated over and over again in Cyprien Gallard's mesmerising video work, and afterwards you just have to find the source, and keep listening to that perfect ghostly falsetto lift forever-ever.


Kate Tempest - Europe Is Lost

BBC6 has ground down my resistance and finally sold me on Kate Tempest. This beat sounds like it could have been on Pusha T's latest release, and the lyrics sum up all of the zeitgeist you don't want to think about, but can't help picking, like a scab.


Fever Ray - I'm Not Done

October has arrived and it's time to take out the true autumn albums. Now that The Knife is over, can we hope for a new Fever Ray album at some future point? She says she's not done...
Do you laugh while screaming:'Is it cold outside?'