23/20 - Letting The Days Go By

So I'm ending this year in the most fitting way: in quarantine with mild symptoms, awaiting a Covid test result. Already a month ago I started basically shutting down my ambitions and expectations until brighter times arrive, and now I've reached some kind of apotheotis of lethargy. I'm unwell, bored, lonely, and somehow also taking a perverse pleasure in pushing through with stoic inactivity through the last hours of 2020. Anything that happens next will be a kind of revving up again. I doubt it will be a kickstart, but compared to this, even walking out the door seems a wonder of proactivity.

 

Aphex Twin - Fingerbib

The sound of being shut up with myself and playing whack-a-mole with negative thoughts.
 

 

Theon Cross - Radiation

Letting the hours and the virus march through me like.

 

 

Riot Jazz Brass Band - I've Got a Sousamaphone

I am catching up on multiple tv shows, among them the fourth season of Fargo. A bit messier than earlier seasons, but the Cannon gang has the best action music.

 

Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose - Too Late To Turn Back Now

Another thing I watched was BlacKkKlansman and it was awesome, and it had a fantastic music and dance number courtesy of this tune. Remember dancing?

 

 

Talking Heads - Once In A Lifetime (live)

After having listend to this great episode of Soul Music I realised the only way to end this year with dignity is with one of the best songs ever.

 

TIME ISN'T HOLDING US.

 

TIME ISN'T AFTER US.

 

 

HAPPY

 

NEW 

 

Year

 

22/20 - I Misread The Rules and Made My Own Like A Pagan

Went on christmas break today, therefore leaving the mopey music behind to enter a twisted but exciting world full of magic and fairytale creatures.

 

Holly Herndon - Frontier

This album was made in collaboration with AI, and by the sounds of it we're about ready to automate the music industry.
 

 

Nicki Minaj - Four Door Aventador

The Pinkprint was ahead of its time.

If you feeling like a ninja, I got a machete

 

 

Dis Fantasy - She Magical

An absolutely perfect piece of pop, with toy instruments filtered through retro sci-fi production.

 

Aesop Rock - The Four Winds

Forget Santa, Aesop is here with a bag full of neatly wrapped lyrical treats and some supernatural fables to tell round the fireplace. I'll be opening these gifts for months to come.

Pulled to the flames while pushed to the rope
I get the hooks in, I hold the helm down
I stand the hell up, I see myself out

 

 

Yugen Blakrok ft. Bravestarr - Monatomic Mushroom

The darker the days to come, the more radical the stories we'll need.

In basements where dungeon-dwellers cultivate patience
Initiated, illuminated, I sanctify spaces
With myrrh and frankincense and incandescent incantations
My spirit moves like ley-lines, connects the chosen nations
of the great wolf and the lion

 

 

21/20 - You Fight The Stillness, The Quiet

I'm not saying I'm lonely, but this is what I listen to.

 

Bill Callahan & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy ft. Matt Sweeney - OD'd in Denver

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy has been releasing singles with Bill Callahan and with Matt Sweeney. And this one with both of them, is probably my favourite of them all. Such a great combination of voices.
 

 

Bon Iver - Naeem

This sounds like an isolation crescendo.

What's there to pontificate on now?

 

King Midas Sound - The Lonely

Ok, I am saying I feel lonely. It has been an unusually lonely year, what with social distancing, having left my UK art community, moving to an island, et al. I've been pretty lucky as regards the pandemic over all, but this dark season I allow myself to wallow in a tiny tiny pool of self pity anyway. 

 

 

Purple Mountains - Maybe I'm The Only One For Me

Best way to deal with pathetic feelings is to take the piss out of oneself.

 

 

Belle & Sebastian - We Rule The School

To the untrained ear, this might appear as B&S at their most twee, but to the trained ear – which I have, as I have this track on my morning playlist and get to hear it a few times a week – it is a masterpiece. It is the mundanity combined with elevating small, creative gestures to heroic acts of resistance that does it. I crave that sentiment.