erhebung

Yorke’s Ghost

I used to listen to Radi­o­head fre­quently, have listened to them since I was a teenager, but haven’t listened to them much over the last couple of months. I’m not sure why I stopped, but this evening I was browsing Pitch­fork and heard a couple of Thom Yorke’s won­derful new songs (see and hear them here), and now I think I’m going to go back and listen again to some Radi­o­head, and to Thom Yorke’s solo work. Here is ‘Give Up the Ghost’:

Music of the Ox

Over the last few weeks I’ve fre­quently found myself drifting to sleep to the sound of Amiina, an Icelandic musical quartet with a dreamy, min­im­alist sound. I’ve also been listening to múm, who I may have men­tioned on erhebung earlier, Library Tapes, a group whose backlist I have only just started to explore, and Jóhann Jóhannsson, an artist with a very pleasing sound (I’m listening to ‘Bangkok Norðursins’ from Dís right now).

The Year of the Ox just ended, the Year of the Tiger just began; fire­works are still exploding (Explo­sions in the Sky, Friday Night Lights — good stuff), and will continue to explode for a few more days. Last year I listened to a lot of music, and I’ve been going through my Last.fm account, con­sol­id­ating my memories. There was a lot of Regina Spektor (I can’t remember when I first heard her, but it was love on first listen), quite a bit of Laura Veirs (a fas­cin­a­tion with Viers’ voice has been creeping up on me slowly), not enough Basia Bulat (I heard Bulat while walking to work in Mianyang one day, and pro­ceeded to listen to the same track all morning), lately a con­sid­er­able amount of Emily Haines (as with Spektor, love at first listen, and as with Spektor, I’m not sure when I first heard her voice, although it might have been while I was in South Korea, after Chris recom­mended Metric), a smidgin of Char­lotte Gains­bourg (daughter of Serge Gains­bourg), and a dose, here and there, of Seu Jorge (thanks to Hugo for that one).

Here is what I wrote about Jorge a week or so ago:

I won’t ever tire of listening to Seu Jorge’s Por­tugese rendi­tions of songs ori­gin­ally sung by David Bowie. What grabs me is in part the genius of the ori­ginals, in part of the beauty of the trans­lated words, words I under­stand only tent­at­ively, each clause or sentence calling on memories of the English, but remaining, always, a little mysterious.

These are some of the Por­tuguese lyrics to ‘Starman’:

Adeus amor
Não sabia que horas eram as luzes eram baixas oh como
Debrucei-​me para trás em meu rádio oh oh
Alguns gato foi deitada abaixo um pouco de rock n roll lotta soul, disse ele
Então o som alto pareceu desvanece-​se uma ade
Voltou como uma voz lenta em uma onda de Hase ha fase
Jive que DJ não werent que foi nebulosa cósmica

Há um Starman waiting in the sky
Hed gostaria de vir conhecer-​nos
Mas ele acha que ele ia explodir nossas mentes
[…]

It’s a beau­tiful version, full of seductive sounds creating very vivid imagery. I like, in a way, that in these versions, for me, the meaning of the lyrics is at a remove from the music.

Also, recently, a lot of Beirut. Aston­ish­ingly beau­tiful music. The Flying Club Cup has been played almost every day for the last couple of weeks, either at work or at home. Beirut can be con­nected to Arcade Fire via Owen Pallett (formerly Final Fantasy), and then from Arcade Fire it is only a short leap to David Bowie (the version of ‘Life on Mars’ recorded at Fashion Rocks is spine-​tinglingly good). I imagine this concert was memorable.

Broad­cast & The Focus Group Invest­igate Witch Cults of the Radio Age was an unusual col­lab­or­a­tion between one group I knew of, one I didn’t. I listened to it a lot, for a time, and need to revisit it. When I first got it, it was, like Amiina, some­thing I listened to before sleeping; but I should listen to it while walking, to see what thoughts it inspires when released into the wild. (Walking, music, pho­to­graphy — I am happy to think about the first of these things, right now; the third is off-​limits, thoughts of cameras and images cur­rently creating a numbness.)

In my mind, that album is clustered together with albums by Elegi, Natural Snow Build­ings, and Max Richter. Richter’s music is dense with meaning, but light on the ears; pos­sessing density, but touching gently. I always feel that the com­pos­i­tions are like self-​contained poems. I hope to be listening to Richter a lot more this year. Natural Snow Build­ings have a darker hand, perhaps, but are no less beau­tiful for it. Their album Ghost Folks can be down­loaded in its entirety from Last.fm.

Related to those three, to dif­fering degrees, is Philip Glass. I listened to Koy­aan­isqatsi very fre­quently last year. The music is so effort­lessly, tire­lessly good, and the world does feel, “out of balance”, so the tracks became, at moments, con­cil­itary: like old friends who nod in silent agree­ment at some mutually acknow­ledged problem. Other music by Glass that stood out this year: his score for Tod Browning’s 1931 Dracula, and also his score (from 2002) for The Hours (I had failed to make the con­nec­tion with The Reader — has Stephen Daldry really only made two films in ten years?), a film about Virginia Woolf (I have been listening to a dram­at­isa­tion of The Waves, and have also been won­dering if I should read, again, To the Light­house).

On a com­pletely dif­ferent note, there was also a lot of Tegan and Sara and Belle & Sebastian, this year, according to Last.fm. I can remember the Tegan and Sara (it was some­thing about Shanghai, and cleaning, and needing to feel upbeat — “I feel you in my heart…”); the Belle & Sebastian, however, is explic­able (I have listened to them since before uni­ver­sity — 1997, or there­abouts; and I always listen to them, peri­od­ic­ally), but a bit strange (I don’t remember listening to them much over the last six months; I don’t remember my nos­talgia, or cravings, pointing me in that dir­ec­tion). Also con­nected to this is a fairly recent burst of Pulp (‘Mile End’ still sounds so vividly alive). (From ‘Mile End’ my mind goes straight to my time in London, nat­ur­ally, and to a com­pletely dif­ferent set of memories, but not memories that seem to have a dis­tinctive musical signature.)

And so ends, a little abruptly, a little glance at the music of the last year. There is more, I am certain, but that is what comes to mind, right now. May the Year of the Tiger be equally intriguing.

Old Friends, Old Photographs

Last night was a night of Metric, everyone wanting to fall in love, everyone wanting to play the lead; and yes­terday, daytime, was a day of talking with old and dear and too-​long absent friends. And during one con­ver­sa­tion, someone asked how I achieved the look in the pho­to­graph below, and I explained that the figure was moving, and the camera was also moving, the camera fol­lowing the figure, and so everything else became blur, a wash of light; and that that the light of night had a greater intensity on film than the light of day. I think my friend described the pho­to­graph as hyper-​real. The music of Metric also has a greater intensity at night (as does much music). So: night and day; moving and tracking; clarity and blur; old friends, old photographs.

Xi’an, 2006.

Do Anything

The most con­sist­ently inter­esting thing I read last year was Warren Ellis’ Do Anything, a series of columns pub­lished on the Bleeding Cool website. Here are links to each of the indi­vidual install­ments: 001, 002, 003, 004, 005, 006, 007, 008, 009, 010, 011, 012, 013, 014, 015, 016, 017, 018, 019, 020, 021, 022, 023, 024, 025, 026. I highly recom­mend taking a look.

Twenty-​Ten

So, 2010 is here. We’re not quite at manned missions to Jupiter, yet, but NASA does have a few inter­esting missions planned. On a related note, I like io9’s 15 Reasons To Live For The Next 10 Years.

In other news, I’ve finally updated scribeoflight.org, which feels like a good start to the year.

The song of the day has been ‘Changes’:

I watch the ripples change their size,
but never leave the stream
of warm imper­man­ence and
so the days float through my eyes,
but still the days seem the same.
And these children that you spit on
as they try to change their worlds
are immune to your con­sulta­tions:
they’re quite aware of what they’re going through.

I have a feeling it’s going to be an inter­esting year.

Basia Bulat

While I was walking to work yes­terday morning my iPod shuffled up Basia Bulat’s ‘I Was a Daughter’, a track I listened to then, and then listened to again after I’d sat down at my desk. I then listened to Oh, My Darling in its entirety, Bulat’s voice an unex­pected rev­el­a­tion. Bulat doesn’t feel trapped in one place, vocally, switching as the songs require: just under a minute into ‘I Was a Daughter’, I hear some­thing of the mel­an­choly and fluidity of Dido, yet the opening moments of ‘Little Waltz call to mind — to my mind, at least — the husky, edgy tones of Amy Wine­house; and ‘Why Can’t It Be Mine’, the end of it in par­tic­ular, got me thinking about Bebel Gilberto. I want to hear more of Bulat.

MCMP Redux #2

Yinchuan is the captial city of Ningxia, an autonomous region created for the Hui people (China has five autonomous regions, the other four being Guangxi, Inner Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang). I lived and worked in Yinchuan for about three weeks in 2007, exper­i­en­cing a little of the local culture and pho­to­graphing some of its people and places. This pho­to­graph captures some­thing of how I remember it feeling to be there: white light and open space. If it had a soundtrack, it would be the Stanton Warriors remix of ‘Feel Good Inc.’, a track by Gorillaz that I first heard while wan­dering through city one bright winter’s afternoon.

Some back­ground on MCMP Redux can be found in the first install­ment of the series.

Yinchuan, 2007.

Sounds from Other Worlds

Until a week or so ago I hadn’t heard, or even heard of, múm, an “exper­i­mental Icelandic musical group” who make music I find enorm­ously fas­cin­ating. I’ve just started invest­ig­ating their fairly vast dis­co­graphy (they’ve been active since 1997) and am cur­rently being trans­fixed by the EP Dusk Log. Recently I’ve also been listening a lot to Elegi, Natural Snow Build­ings, and Dopo (their album Blue Lands is avail­able for free from test tube, a “netlabel”), all of whom are well worth invest­ig­ating if you like unusual, evoc­ative, other-​worldly sounds.

My Foobar

I’m not entirely sure why, but I feel a need, a strong need, to put my own per­son­al­ised foobar2000 on display. Continue reading…

Neocha Has Next

Neocha, a great website con­necting “China’s Creative Com­munities”, has released Next 2.0, a new way to stream music from its music library, the largest library of Chinese indie music you’re likely to find anywhere. Here is what the embed­dable player looks like:

There is an Adobe AIR applic­a­tion, too, and I’ll probably try that soon, if I can remember where I put the Adobe AIR installer (I haven’t yet installed it onto this netbook).

Unknown Pelican

That altern­ative sleeve for Joy Division’s Unknown Pleas­ures comes from This is a fant­astic Flickr set by Littlepixel™. [Edited, for the moment, as the image I uploaded didn’t seem to actually upload…]

(via Warren Ellis)

Almost Sunny

Another inter­esting mix from Warren Ellis: