motel de moka

There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.

You were the wind and I the sea—
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.

But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.

- Sara Teasdale, After Love

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” Three Lists for The Lover. No.3 ”

01. Kammerflimmer Kollektief - Sie tranken Regen (Version)
Cicadidae (Temporary Residence, 2003)
02. Glenn Branca - So That Each Person Is in Charge of Himself
Indeterminate Activity of Resultant Masses (Atavistic Records, 2007)
03. My first Holly Golightly Album - My Love is
My first Holly Golightly Album (Damaged Goods, 2005)
04. Aidan Baker - Untitled
Green & Cold (Gears of Sand Recordings, 2006)
05. Mercury Program - You Give Me Problems About My Business
Confines of Heat (Hello Sir, 2003)
06. Sun Ra - Lover Come Back To Me
Sound Sun Pleasure (Evidence, 1953)
07. Múm - Guilty Rocks
Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy (Fat Cat, 2007)
08. Hauschka - Old Man Playing Boules
Room To Expand (Fat Cat, 2007)

note: This list ends up with mildly meditative quality, tho’ originally is more about large and less dense texture. It’s centered around two tracks. One by Glenn Branca which is a recording of conversation between John Cage in conversation with Wim Mertons about music, intention and what is and second by Holly Golightly, a minimalistic jazz-blues song. It is very voice driven, which bring to early design of this list. Things can be muted and going relatively slow, because then all details becomes more pronounce, specially voice. Everything becomes very intimate and personal. So this list is nothing more than songs with one or two beautiful details, like uncrowded memory of love. Serene bliss without the brutal minimalism. “For all its peace” So that’s for the last one. Hope it works.

see also: No.2 in Gm, La Maja De Goya

image: oberazzi (Tim O’Brien)

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A weekend list. This is a well-meshed smattering of individual favorites. Not too much to say on the list, I was in an anticipatory mood wishing for Spring to have sprung and this is the compilation that got me through yesterday’s rut. So if you’re in a rut, want some funk/jazz/downtempo/psychedelic sounds, or are bored and curious: enjoi.

Geraldo d’Arbilly - Dionisio Martinez Jazz Mix
(Geraldo d’Arbilly Productions geraldodarbilly.com/ 2003)

Curtis Mayfield - Think
(Superfly/ 1972)

Miles Davis - Miles Runs the Voodoo Down
(Bitches Brew/ 1969)

Jimi Hendrix - House of the Rising Sun
(The Gold Collection, 40 Classic Performances/ 1997)

Sound Tribe Sector 9 - otherwise formless
(offered schematics suggesting peace/ 2000)

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Bossa Nova U.S.A.
(The Essential Dave Brubeck/ 1994)

photo credit: amber_b.

American Breed - Bend me, shape me
(Bend me, shape me 7″ / 1967)
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich - Hold Tight
(Hold tight 7″ / 1966)
John Fred & his Playboy Band - Judy in Disguise
(Judy in disguise with glasses / 1967)
The Association - Never my love
(Insight Out / 1967)
Small Faces - Itchycoo Park
(There are but four small faces / 1968)
The Poppy Family - A good thing lost
(A good thing lost: 1968-1973 / 1996)
The Lemon Pipers - Green Tambourine
(Green Tambourine / 1967)

Psych-light and funk driven pop gems from the 60’s to start your weekend with a big naked grin.

Images: 60’s printed artwork collection by Pink Ponk.

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Latin + Bento Lunch Express ”

01. Anita O`Day - Little Girl Blue
Anita O’Day and Billy May Swing Rodgers and Hart (1964)
02. Walter Wanderley - Batacuda
Batucada (Umvd Import, 1967)
03. Horace Silver - Qué Pasa
Song for My Father (1964)
04. Nina Simone - Cosi Ti Amo ‘To Love Somebody’
Tell It Like It Is (2008)
05. Lee Dorsey - Give It Up
Grits & Grooves! (Instant, 1992)
06. Sir Joe Quartermain & Free Soul - Trouble
Sir Joe Quarterman & Free Soul (Charly (UK), 1995)

note: Lunch. I wish today is Friday already, so here is something with early weekend flavor. Head nodding speed jazz-funk with a blend latin rhythm. …chant: friday…friday…I want a nice bento box…

see also: previous Lunch post
image: Route79

The connection between the notion of social cooperation and the conception of the person which I shall introduce can be explained as follows. The notion of social cooperation is not simply that of coordinated social activity efficiently organized and guided by publicly recognized rules to achieve some overall end. Social cooperation is always for mutual benefit and this implies that it involves two elements: the first is a shared notion of fair terms of cooperation, which each participant may reasonably be expected to accept, provided that everyone else likewise accepts them. Fair terms of cooperation articulate an idea of reciprocity and mutuality: all who cooperate must benefit, or share in common burdens, in some appropriate fashion judged by a suitable bench- mark of comparison. This element in social cooperation I call the Reasonable. The other element corresponds to the Rational: it refers to each participant’s rational advantage; what, as individuals, the participants are trying to advance. Whereas the notion of fair terms of cooperation is shared, participants’ conceptions of their own rational advantage in general differ. The unity of social cooperation rests on persons agreeing to its notion
of fair terms. -J. Rawls - The Tanner Lectures on Human Values, 1982, The Basic Liberties and Their Priority (pp.14)

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” Unity No.3 ”

01. Victor Lams - (Life is) Salty (via Undomondo)
Robot Love (The Orchard, 2001)
02. Miles Davis featuring Nas - Freedom Jazz Dance (Evolution Of The Groove)
Evolution Of The Groove: The Remix EP (2007)
03. DJ Zebra - Break through love (homepage)
Bootleegs (DJ Zebra, 2002-2005)
04. The Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps (Acoustic)
(The White Album, 1968?)
05. Jimi Hendrix - Power to Love
Band of Gypsys (1970)
06. James Brown - Sayin And Doin’ It
Hell (1974)

note: The last of my hip-hop series. An obvious list and fairly mainstream, but with mash up and funk twist. Isn’t that what hip-hop is about?

see also: No.1, No.2

image: majamom

Photo credit: Jelle Baars

Over the last couple of years I seem to have grown a much stronger affection for public transportation. I’m not a daily commuter - I can go to work and university by bicycle - but regularly travelling back and forth by train between my hometown and Amsterdam for concerts has convinced me that the social elements of it by far outweigh the advantages of travelling by car. Sure it might be more comfortable and easy to sit behind the wheel yourself and be the captain of your own ship, but isn’t it much nicer for instance to have a casual chat with a stranger than to sit isolated inside your four-wheeled cocoon? Public transportation is the black sheep of our increasingly individualized society.

This playlist is an ode to the train. The rhythmic cadence of the rails as the train rattles over it, shaking and clattering, constantly building momentum and pushing itself forward.

I like to see it lap the miles,
And lick the valleys up,
And stop to feed itself at tanks;
And then, prodigious, step

Around a pile of mountains,
And, supercilious, peer
In shanties by the sides of roads;
And then a quarry pare

To fit its sides, and crawl between,
Complaining all the while
In horrid, hooting stanza;
Then chase itself down hill

And neigh like Boanerges;
Then, punctual as a star,
Stop — docile and omnipotent –
At its own stable door.

~ Emily Dickinson / The Railway Train ~

1. Railroad Sounds, Steam and Diesel - Side A: Steam Locomotives and Some Diesel Locomotives (excerpt)
   Railroad Sounds, Steam and Diesel (Audio Fidelity, 1958)
2. Steve Reich - Different Trains (America - Before the War)
   Different Trains/Electric Counterpoint (Elektra/Nonesuch, 1989)
3. Saddleback - Train South
   Everything’s a Love Letter (Preservation, 2004)
4. The Notwist - Pilot
   Neon Golden (Domino, 2002)
5. Hood - The Lost You
   Outside Closer (Domino, 2005)
6. Hangedup - Klang Klang
   Clatter For Control (Constellation, 2005)
7. Tarentel - Hello! We Move Through Weather!
   We Move Through Weather (Temporary Residence, 2004)
8. Elliott Brood - Cadillac Dust
   Tin Type (Weewerk, 2003)
9. Calexico - Hot Rail
   Hot Rail (Quarterstick, 2000)

Stream playlist

1. The American Analog Set - Don’t Wake Me
(From Our Living Room to Yours, 1997)
2. Union of Knives - Opposite Direction
(Violence and Birdsong, 2006)
3. Belle & Sebastian - Expectations
(Juno OST, 2007)
4. Say Hi - Spiders
(The Wishes and the Glitch, 2007)
5. Art In Manila - Our Addictions
(Set the Woods on Fire, 2007)
6. Klaxons - It’s Not Over Yet
(Myths of the Near Future, 2007)
7. Death From Above 1979 - Turn it Out
(You’re a Woman, I’m a Machine, 2004)
8. Les Savy Fav - Rage In The Plague Age
(Lets Stay Friends, 2007)
9. Justice - Genesis
(Cross, 2007)

I have to say that I relate maybe a bit too much to Moka’s last post. Lately I avoid going out with my friends because I swiftly get bored, and so my time has been spent in reading, looking for new music and basically inmersing myself in all the school work I have to get done for one due date or another, they never seem to end and are always back to back. I’ve also been absorbed with new “pet projects”, new experiments with myself; experiments with photos, new goals in my jogging routine (I can now go 10.5K in an hour), looking for architecture contests online (did I tell you that I’m getting one of my projects published?), doing this, not doing that, bla bla bla… But generally I just find myself in a kind of limbo I just can’t seem to kick myself out of. The good thing about limbo is that there’s alot of moving space, the bad thing is, you have no idea where to. I sometimes think I need to quit this city, and then I think I just need to find new habits and addictions, it’s a constant pull and tug. So I guess I was trying to put that into this playlist, it start’s out calm and moves on to more rabid, violent mood and ends in a catchy exploding dance song.
To those of you in Limbo, welcome to MdM.

Image: LOW