motel de moka

Animal Collective - people
(People ep, 2006)

Judging by their People ep that was being sold during their australian tour, Animal Collective seem to be quite comfortable still exploring the gorgeous highs of songs like “Banshee Beat” or “Loch Raven” from their 2005 lp Feels. The twinkling mesh of shouts and hums on the song “people” swell warmly up through the song’s locomotive refractions of drums and guitars. Pure morning bliss.

The Durutti Colum - sketch for summer
(The return of the durutti column, 1980)
Disco Inferno - love stepping out
(Summer’s Last Sound 12”, 1992)

My hometown and my musical aptitudes are not enough for the musical ambitions I have in my mind (a continuos chapter of my mental masturbations) but if I ever had the chance of leading a rock band I’d have it ripping (well, not ripping, homaging) the echoing guitar stylings of bands like the Durutti Column or Disco Inferno, specially the delayed and tape-manipulated riffs of the later. Disco inferno we’re unjustly ignored more than a decade ago by all but the most observant critics - It may be sad but they are still the first band I think of when I think of music that sounds ahead of its time. That’s how fucking mind-blowing I find all of their output. I’ve been ruining parties this weekend by playing a cd I burned with all of their eps’ songs and by boring people with extensive odes to the band, in guilt I have promised myself not to do the same with this post, so I’ll just leave a song and let you judge.

The Verve - gravity grave (edit)
(The verve ep, 1992)

As you may have noticed, I grew listening to too much space rock and shoegaze for my own good and I’ve always been a sucker for drifting soundscapes. There’s three things that will always make me fall for a song: patterns of static or glitch, vocoded vocals and the use of guitar to full effect, with insane amounts of delay and reverb in tow.

That said, I recently had the luck of finally running into The Verve’s magnificent debut ep from 1992 on a record store near my house at only 5 dollars and I couldn’t resist getting my hands on it. I’ve never been much fan of the band but I admit finding some of their songs on “storm in heaven” fairly interesting and I’d already downloaded 4 out of 5 songs of this ep so it seemed like a natural purchase to payback for those fleeting minutes of joy I got back then when I downloaded after having no luck on the record stores. The whole ep is an obliged listen to me at this time of the season, the opener “gravity grave” is one of the best spacerock jams I’ve heard in my life, the guitarwork is great - it has layers and layers of delay :] - and even though I don’t care much about Ashcroft’s lyrics most of the time, this song does have a heavenly line that goes “To me you’re like a setting sun, you rise then you’re gone.” Beautiful, ain’t it?

Image: Mike Egan.

I suppose there is always bumpy ride during transition, but this is our new little corner. In the coming weeks, everybody at MdM will try to learn wordpress input window differences. So all little quirkiness, misalignment, wrong links should be expected. There are plenty of broken pictures in archive that will be fixed. And if the site is slow uploading, it means a clever goblin is tweaking the template or plugins. Give it time, before things go right back to full speed again. Comment has also been made open as wide as possible. (In the past several days it was set up incorrectly) In the meantime, there is always new post and music.

Argus

When wise Ulysses, from his native coast
Long kept by wars, and long by tempests toss’d,
Arrived at last, poor, old, disguised, alone,
To all his friends, and ev’n his Queen unknown,
Changed as he was, with age, and toils, and cares,
Furrow’d his rev’rend face, and white his hairs,
In his own palace forc’d to ask his bread,
Scorn’d by those slaves his former bounty fed,
Forgot of all his own domestic crew,
The faithful Dog alone his rightful master knew!

Unfed, unhous’d, neglected, on the clay
Like an old servant now cashier’d, he lay;
Touch’d with resentment of ungrateful man,
And longing to behold his ancient lord again.
Him when he saw he rose, and crawl’d to meet,
(’Twas all he could) and fawn’d and kiss’d his feet,
Seiz’d with dumb joy; then falling by his side,
Own’d his returning lord, look’d up, and died!

-Alexander Pope

“The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place”

01. North Atlantic Explorers -When My Ship Comes In
02. Explosions in the Sky -the only moment we were alone
03. Mi And L’au -Older
04. Halifax Pier -Lightly Noise
05. 1 Mile North -East Coast Harbor
06. North Atlantic Explorers -I will not leave you alone

image credit: mel-pin, valayres, aboutdesouffle, unaciertamirada, shoegazer

Daniel Lanois - Oaxaca

(Belladona, 2005)

[Buy it]

This is a test post.

still moving a couple of things but the new motel is fully functional now. Need to transfer the staff and keep on modyfing diverse design and template stuff. If you use worpress and know of any interesting plug.ins for the motel please leave a comment with an address to the plug.in in question.

Also the look of the blog will be changing, make yourself comfortable and tell us how you like it so far. The new header will be commisioned by a good friend who has some wonderful artwork under his sleeve but I still can’t tell his name in public because I don’t want to compromise him. Expect usual posts by tomorrow.

Remember to update your links and bookmarks

We’re successfully inside dreamhost plan now so that means that this may be one of the last posts inside this motel’s address. Over the weekend I shall remain home for the most part hopefully aided by ex-contributor issa and local friend annie working on the new site. According to issa new site could very well be complete before Tuesday… I have finished mailing all of our kind donators today so if you check your mailbox and there’s still nothing from me please check your spam or mail me at motelmoka(at)gmail.com.

here’s 4four songs for the weekend, enjoy:

Der Schmeisser - kleines bongo maedchen
(Hueftgold ep, 2004)
The octopus project + Black Moth super rainbow - lollipopsichord
(the house of apples & eyeballs, 2006)
Klaxons - gravity’s rainbow (van she remix)
(gravity’s rainbow single, 2005)
Loveninjas - I wanna be like Johnny C
(I wanna be like johnny c, 2006)

Note: Links from last days hosted by enfiltro will all be erased by tomorrow. Get them while it lasts :]
Image: Matei Apostolescu

I am speechless. 

Thank you so, so much. I was honestly expecting to have a pair of weeks before we reached our goal and I’m having trouble getting over the response to our brief fundraising drive. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Your generosity is overwhelming. You have funded the motel for a whole year in just a week! yay!

This week I’ve been very busy with exams and final projects but as i catch up with things in here I will be writing back to all those who contributed to please everyone of their requests. We will also start changing home over the weekend so stay with us and pardon the upcoming mess while we do so. there’s some really good things coming up.

And here’s a little song for you:

The aliens - the happy song

Image: “truth wanders alone” by Andy Kehoe.