This in turn is our thanksgiving post to one of our kind donators, Greg Cruikshank, for helping give life to this little corner of ours. I hope you enjoy the playlist, Greg, it’s broken up basically into warm pastoral mood, some rockers, some upbeat jazz and funk songs and was compilled by squashed with a little bit of my help – may you all have a great holiday in company of your friends and family.

-Moka

Image : “Ours to fight for–Freedom From Want,” by Norman Rockwell.

The Connection Machine – Molly is autowarping
(Bitflower 12″, 1994)
Autechre – Rae
(Lp 5, 1998)
FSOL – slider
(ISDN, 1995)
Amon tobin – deo
(supermodified, 2000)
Mike Ink – polka trax 3 (Wechsel Garland mix)
(WARP10+3 Remixes CD2, 1999)
The parallax corporation – atomic nation
(atomic nation ep, 2000)
Boards of canada – aquarius
(Music has the right to children, 1998)

After finishing my junior high studies, I spent the following high school years strangely out of touch with music in general. I could hear a few things that I liked, but nothing that made me feel the way I’d loved to feel with the bands I listened back when I was 13-15 year old (sonic youth, my bloody valentine, pixies, slowdive, radiohead, massive attack pretty much bands popular under the “alternative” category in the 90′s and also loads of emblematic 60′s and 70′s rock records that an uncle gave to me which I still treasure and listen very often). I remember at the time Napster was at it’s peak and the internet had just about started for me. I had a shitty dial-up connection that took 5 to 10 minutes to load any pages and about 2 hours to download a 5 mb file, so I had to become very selective with my downloads. This was also my first opportunity at discovering records through actual choice rather than through friends’ or acquaintances’ recommendations (it’s a great way to discover records, but is of course limited by what your friends know or like).

This is when and I discovered “electronic music” as well as lots of other genres that had been hidden from me so far, I started out with about everything on the Warp Label (Autechre’s “LP5″, Boards of Canada’s “music has the right to children”, Kenny Larkin, Aphex Twin), as well as early Amon Tobin, Pole’s “1″ and “2″, and stuff like that. The effect electronic music had on my musical taste was pretty intense and, amazingly, those early steps in electronic music are still some I go back to most. The above tracks all come from an old mix cd I found today which is around 4 years old, hope you enjoy them as much as I did back then.

Here’s a little plus:

Acid Pauli with Johnny Cash- I see a dark(er)ness
(I see a darkerness, 2004)

This track by Acid Pauli (also former member of the Notwist, Console) takes Cash’s cover of “I see a darkness” for a ride into acid techno territory – I’m sure it sounds like a terrible idea but it really works well. You can almost imagine a queer resurrected version of Johnny Cash making the kids dance behind the 303 roland synthetizer and the strobe lights. Steer clear away if you’ve always had and itch about that detroit techno sound.

Image: 12 kisses graphical experiment by Kahlo :)

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]

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