Unmentionable Love
February 16, 2009 at 11:18 pm
For some we loved, the loveliest and the best
That from his Vintage rolling Time hath pressed,
Have drunk their Cup a Round or two before,
And one by one crept silently to rest.
- The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
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” Iconographic study No.1 ”
01. Amy Winehouse - Love Is A Losing Game (Original Demo)
Back To Black (2006)
02. Amy Winehouse - Some Unholy War
Back To Black (2006)
03. Nina Simone - Lilac Wine
Wild Is The Wind (1964)
04. Isaac Hayes - By The Time I get To Phoenix
Hot Buttered Soul (1969)
05. Billie Holiday - I Didn’t Know What Time It Was
Songs for Distingue Lovers (1957)
note: One of magician biggest trick at the end of the night is to tell how the trick is done. The best one never loses a thing afterward, instead it makes the audience wants even more and wonder what comes next. Maybe toying with tricks at home themselves. I often time think a lot of my post for MdM is a collection of little tricks and illusions trying to conjure untold story from the ether. So I thought I post a series of standard MdM methods, revealing how the tricks are done. Somewhat an instruction to pass on so more people can create better magics.
The most mysterious one is to not mention the center. Out of necessity perhaps, MdM cannot post a lot of popular songs that forms standard repertoire. Trying to convey the unmentionable centers in turns necessitate the introduction and understanding of musical forms to recreate the center without mentioning it. The mysterious centers exist but never told. This list is the unmentionable center if it is told directly. Pop soul with a touch of gospel, the very source of most modern top songs. At near ballad tempo, at spoken pace, story, narrative, lyrics forms the strongest. Like smoke in thick warm night, it lingers. The best masterpieces are done in slower pace simply because it is the hardest to pull. Voice character emerges. Recording tricks are near impossible because our hearing is so in tune for conversation, so voicest are at the truest in relation to lyrics. The best artist can tell the grandest story without screaming and with the simplest instrumentation and ornament. One feels it. Next to their peers, songs form stories, like chatter in a pleasant meet. The lingering pleasant feeling of knowing a story as told by artists is the big idea. It’s the soul of our trick.
see also: Cupid’s Chokehold
image: harold.lloyd (insert witty here)
wow. wow. this is such a complete post.
i’d like to hope i had some hand in this piece …
but the question begs to be asked, can people be “instructed to create magics” or is it more instinctual/intuitive than that?
btw — you’re ruining my christmas by clearing all these smoke and mirrors … i rather like the mysterious illusion haha
well, they are just tools, not actual finished post. And we need to list all the tools we have invented so far, less we gonna forget. On top of that, nobody reads email anymore. lol. so i posted here.
basically, this series should be a little handbook for everybody who just joined mdm. List of basic tricks and starting points.
plus it would be an interesting situation to create mystery after all the secrets are revealed.
That discussion made me think of Elgar’s “Enigma Variations”….a serious of compositions around a central theme, which was then removed from the final works, leaving that center a mystery.
Well… Maybe you like yourself too much. Remember what you were posting before: crap teen music. See that’s the problem with bad illusionists: it’s easy to make illusions to the people you have practiced with, or brougt to your show.
Houdini came to the United States for this reason.
And most of all, don’t forget that your lil’ introducing speech is the key, and yours (sorry I don’t mean to be rude but I got pissed by what you think of yourself) is as discrete as an elephant in a corridor.
Pleeeease, don’t fall into the blog trap.
Keep posting what you like, and don’t let your ego take over.
Work, work and you might be appreciated for it.
Not for your wannabee introducing poems.
hey, I like my crap teen music… :D
you can’t live with xenakis and schoenberg alone you know. plus what’s wrong with illusionist? Is not like any of us know the true meaning of reality anyway.
Nothing wrong with illusionism.
Illusionism is wrong when it’s badly done.
I’m sorry I really didn’t mean to be rude.
It’s just that (I might be a lil’ disturbed) I can’t bear fakers, when ego is the bet.
“Is not like any of us know the true meaning of reality anyway.”
…
Wait Narcisse was that comment — the first one — directed towards sq., myself, or the staff in general?
I’m also not sure what you’re actual qualm is either. Do you not like the proposed motivation behind the post(s), the music selection in general, the shift in music selection, or the fact that egos are getting in the way of posting what we like?
Well.
And it will be my last comment I promise I understand it’s not funny for you and not very courageous to talk behind a virtual mask.
So no at the contrary the music shift is a good thing (subjective of course), but I’m not sorry I just don’t like that you use the spy function from hypemachine, paste poetry, and take us for some kind of fools by comparing us to the public of an off broadway magic show.
I must admit the quarrel is childish and I will stop and apologize, I don’t have to talk about egos, that’s what blogs are made for.
I’m just dissapointed to see (it’s the impression I have) that the music you post is good, I mean I like it, at least the last tracks (2008, 2009) but sadly enough this feeling is disturbed by the idea of your “wannabee genius” (sorry I don’t find other words for it) egos puting forward your “great illusionist” skills.
We’re not fool, we just like your blog and therefore don’t react:
First it’s not your music, and above all most of the time it just comes from hype machine tracks you like.
Now I dissapear, sorry for disturbing.
Narcisse strikes back as an example said, February 18, 2009 @ 5:47 pm · Edit
It’s just that (I might be a lil’ disturbed) I can’t bear fakers, when ego is the bet.”
——
You go to magic show to see magic. You know it’s an illusion. You goto drama or cinema to see a performance. You know they are theater done by artist to convey something… they are fakes, make up, drama techniques, machines, techniques, but the human story and what the art is trying to say are what the whole enterprise is about.
what I was trying to say my list consist of techniques to achieve certain goal, I call the process illusion. you can call it list, arrangement or whatever.
yes, there is mechanics to it. You certainly can adopt the mechanics and experiments with them yourself. but the overall drive, wanting to share great music, or simply say something is as real as it can get.
Of course you can say what I do is cheesy, or a bit cliche or what not. Hey, I didn’t say I was creating something to cure humanity, just an entertaining blog post.
but if you know better. do stick around and say something …
So no at the contrary the music shift is a good thing (subjective of course), but I’m not sorry I just don’t like that you use the spy function from hypemachine, paste poetry, and take us for some kind of fools by comparing us to the public of an off broadway magic show.
———
well the are not exactly random “pasting” but that is arguable I suppose.
..anyway, i don’t understand what you are trying to say. That you hate it, that there is a mechanism to produce a post and select songs? everything has mechanism, even the greatest songwriters have to follow certain “composition mechanics”.
but just because you know there is mechanism, doesn’t mean a creation is not “magical”. In fact a good art and art appreciation lies in knowing these process and mechanism.
honestly, i was just confused from the jump. i think there was alot of miscommunication.
from what i gather i agree with sq — not to knock narcisse — i just know that i don’t really get my inspiration from hypem. MdM doesn’t follow the mainstream trend like more hypem-focused blogs — that’s just my opinion.
my posts are more thematic in retrospect than motive. so i do post what i like and hope that the visitors like it as well. there’s no deliberate ego boost in mind, its sending a message and enjoying any echoes
i’m not quarreling so much as inquiring. personally i think you’re giving me too much credit as an ‘illusionist’ or ‘wannabe genius’
for the record though, im not speaking for sq. — though i support him bc i like his posts and regardless of the motive or intent, i like his end product. so whether or not it is a ‘planned illusion’ or a mid-day lunch mix a good list is a good list and should be appreciated as such.
for myself: i’m not sure if you were talking about my work but i don’t take a deliberate illusory approach to building lists, i let it happen and it turns out as it does
not sure that answers anything or touches on relevance but it’s two cents
I discovered the site today…and I absolutly love it!!
thanks for such a great music!…what a discovery!!
best regards from Chile
Narcisse: First of all I want to honestly thank you for your words, I’m aware theyre not ill intended and I was raised to see criticism be it negative or positive as the best type of commentary anyone can make. I’m aware you already waved goodbye on your last comment but I hope you get to read my response.
Unlike many of the mp3 blogs I’ve seen out there that are arranged in playlist format, we dont just post the first 5 or 10 songs that we pick up out of nowhere. If it really was as easy as picking 10 random tunes out of songs we find on hypem and pasting a random piece of text, I could assure you this place would be updated on a daily basis. At this moment I could even dare to bet you that at least 40% of the songs youre seeing at this moment on the front page you wont find them in any other blog on hypem. Musically speaking we do make a lot of research before publishing, which is one of the main reasons we dont post as often as we’d like to.
Every post over here has been carefully crafted and we like to pay a great deal of attention to the mood we create with each playlist. Images and words are not placed randomly but are used to enhace this very mood we seek to express with each playlist. Very frequently I find myself delaying a finished playlist for days because I just cant find the perfect image to join the music. Naturally some of the times not everybody will be happy with the results, but do understand we do take our time and love with each playlist and its not just something random and mechanical that we do.
totally stunning, beautiful, AMAZING voices in these tracks, squashed! nice work and thanks for sharing (: i love mdm!!!
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