motel de moka

Photo: Catrincatrin

Every morning the maple leaves.
Every morning another chapter where the hero shifts
from one foot to the other. Every morning the same big
and little words all spelling out desire, all spelling out
You will be alone always and then you will die.
So maybe I wanted to give you something more than a catalog
of non-definitive acts,
something other than the desperation.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I couldn’t come to your party.
Dear So-and-So, I’m sorry I came to your party
and seduced you
and left you bruised and ruined, you poor sad thing.
You want a better story. Who wouldn’t?

A forest, then. Beautiful trees. And a lady singing.
Love on the water, love underwater, love, love and so on.
What a sweet lady. Sing lady, sing! Of course, she wakes the dragon.
Love always wakes the dragon and suddenly
flames everywhere.
I can tell already you think I’m the dragon,
that would be so like me, but I’m not. I’m not the dragon.
I’m not the princess either.
Who am I? I’m just a writer. I write things down.
I walk through your dreams and invent the future. Sure,
I sink the boat of love, but that comes later. And yes, I swallow
glass, but that comes later.
And the part where I push you
flush against the wall and every part of your body rubs against the bricks,
shut up
I’m getting to it.

For a while I thought I was the dragon.
I guess I can tell you that now. And, for a while, I thought I was
the princess,
cotton candy pink, sitting there in my room, in the tower of the castle,
young and beautiful and in love and waiting for you with
confidence
but the princess looks into her mirror and only sees the princess,
while I’m out here, slogging through the mud, breathing fire,
and getting stabbed to death.
Okay, so I’m the dragon. Big deal.
You still get to be the hero.
You get the magic gloves! A fish that talks! You get eyes like flashlights!
What more do you want?
I make you pancakes, I take you hunting, I talk to you as if you’re
really there.
Are you there, sweetheart? Do you know me? Is this microphone live?

Let me do it right for once,
for the record, let me make a thing of cream and stars that becomes,
you know the story, simply heaven.
Inside your head you hear a phone ringing
and when you open your eyes
only a clearing with deer in it. Hello deer.
Inside your head the sound of glass,
a car crash sound as the trucks roll over and explode in slow motion.
Hello darling, sorry about that.
Sorry about the bony elbows, sorry we
lived here, sorry about the scene at the bottom of the stairwell
and how I ruined everything by saying it out loud.
Especially that, but I should have known.

You see, I take the parts that I remember and stitch them back together
to make a creature that will do what I say
or love me back.
I’m not really sure why I do it, but in this version you are not
feeding yourself to a bad man
against a black sky prickled with small lights.
I take it back.
The wooden halls likes caskets. These terms from the lower depths.
I take them back.
Here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.
Crossed out.
Clumsy hands in a dark room. Crossed out. There is something
underneath the floorboards.
Crossed out. And here is the tabernacle
reconstructed.
Here is the part where everyone was happy all the time and we were all
forgiven,
even though we didn’t deserve it.

Inside your head you hear
a phone ringing, and when you open your eyes you’re washing up
in a stranger’s bathroom,
standing by the window in a yellow towel, only twenty minutes away
from the dirtiest thing you know.
All the rooms of the castle except this one, says someone, and suddenly
darkness,
suddenly only darkness.
In the living room, in the broken yard,
in the back of the car as the lights go by. In the airport
bathroom’s gurgle and flush, bathed in a pharmacy of
unnatural light,
my hands looking weird, my face weird, my feet too far away.
And the the airplane, the window seat over the wing with a view
of the wing and a little foil bag of peanuts.
I arrived in the city and you met me at the station,
smiling in a way
that made me frightened. Down the alley, around the arcade,
up the stairs of the building
to the little room with the broken faucets, your drawings, all your things,
I looked out the window and said
This doesn’t look that much different from home,
because it didn’t,
but then I noticed the black sky and all those lights.

We walked through the house to the elevated train.
All these buildings, all that glass and the shiny beautiful
mechanical wind.
We were inside the train car when I started to cry. You were crying too,
smiling and crying in a way that made me
even more hysterical. You said I could have anything I wanted, but I
just couldn’t say it out loud.
Actually, you said Love, for you,
is larger than the usual romantic love. It’s like a religion. It’s
terrifying. No one
will ever want to sleep with you.
Okay, if you’re so great, you do it—
here’s the pencil, make it work . . .
If the window is on your right, you are in your own bed. If the window
is over your heart, and it is painted shut, then we are breathing
river water.

Build me a city and call it Jerusalem. Build me another and call it
Jerusalem.
We have come back from Jerusalem where we found not
what we sought, so do it over, give me another version,
a different room, another hallway, the kitchen painted over
and over,
another bowl of soup.
The entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell.
Unfortunately, we don’t have that kind of time.
Forget the dragon,
leave the gun on the table, this has nothing to do with happiness.
Let’s jump ahead to the moment of epiphany,
in gold light, as the camera pans to where
the action is,
lakeside and backlit, and it all falls into frame, close enough to see
the blue rings of my eyes as I say
something ugly.
I never liked that ending either. More love streaming out the wrong way,
and I don’t want to be the kind that says the wrong way.
But it doesn’t work, these erasures, this constant refolding of the pleats.
There were some nice parts, sure,
all lemondrop and mellonball, laughing in silk pajamas
and the grains of sugar
on the toast, love love or whatever, take a number. I’m sorry
it’s such a lousy story.

Dear Forgiveness, you know that recently
we have had our difficulties and there are many things
I want to ask you.
I tried that one time, high school, second lunch, and then again,
years later, in the chlorinated pool.
I am still talking to you about help. I still do not have
these luxuries.
I have told you where I’m coming from, so put it together.
We clutch our bellies and roll on the floor . . .
When I say this, it should mean laughter,
not poison.
I want more applesauce. I want more seats reserved for heroes.
Dear Forgiveness, I saved a plate for you.
Quit milling around the yard and come inside.

- Richard Siken.

Hi!

It’s bill time for us over here at the motel and we need the help of everybody out there to reach our $136 goal for this year. To reach our goal we will be doing, once again, our campaign through Dropcash, so everyone of our readers can watch the progress bar go up with every donation and track how much money has been donated through Paypal.

To donate head on over to the Motel de Moka 2008 Funding Drive page and watch the progress bar go up as we get closer to our goal!

Whatever you can give is fully appreciated and don’t worry if you can’t afford to donate, we completely understand. Every kind of support you’d like to give helps, either via email, links or comments. One of the things we value most of all in the motel is the feedback we receive from our readers, so wheter you decide to donate or not please write some words now and then, they’re always very appreciated.

Thank you all in advance for all of your help!

1. The Necks – Townsville (Milk of Fish / ReR)
MP3: Townsville (Excerpt)

Last October – in what normally would have been nothing but a typical autumn week with darkness setting in early and people wrapped in warm clothes, hiding from the cold wind – I experienced what was most definitely the musical highlight of the year for me. Maybe even the musical highlight of many, many years. That entire week the city was besieged by music and film dedicated to “minimalist” composer and legend Philip Glass. Every night we went to see several orchestras and ensembles play both of his old and new compositions and Glass himself performed two nights in a row. The second evening we sat front row, barely ten feet away from Philip Glass playing Mad Rush and parts from Metamorphosis, Einstein on the Beach, Glassworks, etc. solo on piano. Needless to say this was quite an overwhelming experience of which I was sure it would take me many years to see a concert again of equal superiority. So just when I thought it couldn’t get any better, the very next day already that assumption was blown away by a dazzling performance of a certain – at that time still mostly unknown to me – Australian band.

That band was The Necks, consisting of Chris Abrahams on piano, Tony Buck on drums and Lloyd Swanton on bass. They were part of the Minimal Connection Series of that festival, which meant that they have basically nothing to do with Philip Glass’ music in itself, but – according to the curator – have some indirect parallels to their approach to rhythm and repetition. Whether that connection is actually there or that the curator just made it up in order to book his favourite band is up for debate. However The Necks did seem to be influenced by the festival. Whether it was a deliberate decision or just a subconscious effect of witnessing Philip Glass’ Music with Changing Parts which was performed by the Icebreaker ensemble right before their own set, there were certainly traces to be found in their playing.

Townsville is a recording from their performance at Riverway Arts Centre in Thuringowa, Australia on February 15, 2007 and is roughly similar to the one that I saw, although slightly more restrained. A fully improvised set of jazz-inspired minimalism, close to one hour, consisting of just one piece that gradually builds in an ebb and flow like manner. Traces of Charlemagne Palestine are clearly to be found in Chris Abrahams’ free-flowing piano playing, however he has developed a unique style of his own that is constantly challenged by Lloyd Swanton’s brooding patterns on bass and Tony Buck’s delicate tapping on cymbals. The entire piece is just one organic movement, but inside there are infinite structures and patterns freely flowing into each other. As if Mark Rothko’s Black on Maroon is slowly submerged by Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa. Its water drops continuously crashing down on the canvas, washing away the abstract patterns underneath. The dark colours gradually flowing into each other, adding new structures along the way. It’s the kind of album that makes your imagination take over.

The astonishing thing about this piece is that never in its 54 minute duration does it come to a climax. The piece is constantly bursting with energy and the intensity heightens throughout the piece but they never truly let the full potential of that energy out. Instead they use that energy to continuously change the tempo of the music so that the listener is constantly challenged and roused. It is an almost tantric experience for the ears and mind.

I would love for everyone to hear this remarkable album in its entirety, the way it should be, but obviously that wouldn’t be fair to the artists and their label. Instead I’ve decided to share with you an excerpt consisting of the first fifteen minutes. Hopefully sufficient to stimulate your senses enough to go out and buy the album to hear this wonderful piece in its full glory.

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2. Frode Haltli - Passing Images (ECM)
MP3: Psalm

Like The Necks, Frode Haltli seems to have a perfect understanding of how to use a relatively simplistic approach to making music in order to evoke the deepest human emotions. They both however end up with entirely different results. Norwegian composer and accordionist Frode Haltli takes his inspiration from traditional Norwegian folk music, but adapts it to his own unique style in a particularly untraditional way. A collection of folk songs, dances and psalms are reinterpreted on this album and offers the listener a universe full of pondering beauty and eccentric sounds.

On Passing Images Haltli has surrounded himself with a select group of fine musicians: Arve Henriksen on trumpet, Garth Knox on viola and Maja Solveig Kjelstrup Ratkje adds her unique vocal improvisations. Throughout the length of the album they let their instruments play with the silence, seemingly letting the music breathe in between their sedate yet highly passionate playing. Even for ECM standards Passing Images has an exceptional romantic sound. It’s mostly dark and quiet, but filled with hidden melodies and longing sighs. Therefore it’s not an album for impatient listeners who want satisfaction on demand. But if you take your time and let the calm of this album take you over then I’m certain you do not wish to escape from its peaceful tone ever again.

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3. Sam Baker - Pretty World (Self released)
MP3: Odessa

Here’s a man who can’t really sing, but mostly just speaks. Who’s deaf on one side, partially deaf on the other. And who can’t use all his fingers while playing guitar anymore. I think we can safely say that this wouldn’t be the most ideal situation for a singer/songwriter. And yet Sam Baker manages to make what has got to be one of the finest Americana albums in recent years. A devastatingly beautiful album that proves that real musicianship is just about unbreakable. The ear and hand injuries mentioned above were inflicted by a terrorist bomb on a train in Peru back in 1986. It almost cost his life. Eight others weren’t that lucky. Despite all of this his lyrics are often surprisingly optimistic; he sees beauty in the little things. On the title track he sings about the beauty in our world just before the day gets going. And on Sweetly Undone he artfully writes about a man adoringly watching his lover.

I watch you at the pool
Slowly undress
Spread your towel on St. Augustine
Lay down and rest
Lay down and rest
Lay down in the sun
Lay down with your top
Sweetly undone

~ Sam Baker / Sweetly Undone ~

Earlier this month I catched his performance in Amsterdam with just him on guitar. The songs worked wonderfully in their stripped bare versions and he also proved to be quite an engaging character between songs, freely speaking about the meaning of his songs and his unlikely life story. One of the highlights on the album has to be the chilling – and not so quite optimistic – Odessa which features the angelic voice of Sam Baker’s sister Chris. She opens the song with the traditional Hard Times Come Again No More before Sam Baker starts off and begins to tell his tale of a rich man’s son who’s self indulged lifestyle takes the life of the girl he loved. With Pretty World Sam Baker has proven to be one of the finest songwriters around today and I can only hope there are many more albums from him to come.

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4. Meg Baird - Dear Companion (Drag City)
MP3: Do What You Gotta Do

With Dear Companion Meg Baird has recorded a wonderful, unassuming folk album of its most simple and traditional kind. Apart from her angelic voice there’s only acoustic guitar, dulcimer and mandolin to be found. Featured on this album are two traditional songs, seven covers and two originals. Among the covers is my favourite track of this album, Jimmy Webb’s Do What You Gotta Do. The moment I first heard this song playing in my local record store it floored me. Whenever I listen to this album I can’t help but to fall in love with it all over again and ever since dropping the needle in the groove for the first time it has helped me through many nights.

Greg Weeks (with whom Meg Baird is a member of Philadelphian psych folk group Espers) has helped her record this album. He did a superb job of keeping the sound as pure and simple as possible. This also makes the album bring to mind the wonderful music of Anne Briggs, but Meg Baird clearly has her own unique style. Most notable on the two originals and of which especially Maiden in the Moor Lay is a very convincing and well-crafted song. Stripped bare of all possible pretentions, Dear Companion is fully devoted to the songs. A pure and honest approach that brings a very welcome variation to the modern custom for artists to bring as much experimentation as possible to folk music.

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5. Oren Ambarchi - In the Pendulum’s Embrace (Touch)
MP3: Inamorata

Australian guitarist and drummer Oren Ambarchi continuous to fine-tune his trademark sound on his fourth release for the Touch label. As always his sound is dark and plodding with just enough happening to never let your attention drift away during its 40 minutes. An album of hypnotizing beauty that slows down time to a near halt and heightens your senses to their maximum.

The album consists of three pieces that are similar in their approach and evolvement, but – after repeated listens – open up and show distinct diversity. He uses electric and acoustic guitars, piano, bells, glass harmonica, voice and drums, but they are played so scarcely and temporized that they are barely identifiable as actual instruments. On the opening track Feaver, A Warm Poison Ambarchi’s drumming background becomes most notable with the track being mostly percussion driven. Although it is so well hidden that it’s hardly recognizable as such. If you take rock music and slow it down and strip it bare almost completely you’ll end up with Om. Slow it down and strip it bare even more and you’ll basically end up with Feaver, A Warm Poison. The second track and highlight of the album Inamorata adds strings by Veren Grigorov that distinguishes In the Pendulum’s Embrace from previous Oren Ambarchi albums. On the third track Trailing Moss in Mystic Glow Ambarchi continuous to develop his sound by adding soft and wordless vocals that blend into the dark sound quite perfectly.

In the Pendulum’s Embrace is in many ways like an infinite ocean. Watch it from a distance and you’ll see nothing but a vast blue surface that hardly changes. But if you let yourself be submerged by it and look underneath its surface then you’ll see the hidden dynamics of the ocean with secret currents continuously working together and changing its composition. In the Pendulum’s Embrace is well worth the plunge.

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6. Loren Connors - The Hymn of the North Star (Family Vineyard)
MP3: Part Two

Barely more than a whisper or curling cigarette smoke softly floating in the air in slow-motion like in a Kar-Wai Wong movie. Ultimately a blues guitarist, Loren Connors possesses a truly unique style that shines in subtlety. And on The Hymn of the North Star, an LP-only edition of 499, he is more subtle than ever. On this album we find Loren Connors, now 57, in his most minimalistic approach, barely touching the strings of his electric guitar. And yet filling the room with infinite atmosphere. He plays with silence and delicately places the fragile sounds of his electric guitar in between. The tape-hiss becomes part of the sound.

Earlier on I compared elements of The Necks with Mark Rothko’s art. Similarly in a terrific write-up in the Chicago Reader The Hymn of the North Star is – along with the music of Keith Rowe – compared with Mark Rothko. This comparison seems to work really well as Connors is just as relentless as Rothko was to reveal truth by using simple expression. The Hymn of the North Star is a downright masterpiece that challenges silence like only Loren Connors can.

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7. Paul Duncan - Above the Trees (Hometapes)
MP3: Red Eagle

Paul Duncan has delivered by far the best singer/songwriter album in the pop/rock genre of 2007. At the heart of the songs on Above the Trees is Paul Duncan’s soft and hushed voice, vaguely resembling Will Oldham or Thomas Dybdahl. His dreamy, mostly sedate songs are fleshed out by a group of remarkably skilled musicians, giving the album a very full sound and an almost romantic feel to it. Musicians who previously worked with Smog, Grizzly Bear, Tortoise, Jim O’Rourke, Cursive, Rhys Chatham and many more.

Every year has its albums that have a certain depth and sophistication to them and still prove to be accessible for a relatively large audience at the same time. Last year we had Joanna Newsom and Beirut for instance. This year we have Paul Duncan who does this even better and just about made the perfect record in its genre that shows true craftsmanship. The production on this album is rich and warm. Whereas for instance the latest of major label artist Rufus Wainwright sounds like it was recorded in a (very expensive) tin can, Above the Trees sounds like a dream with Paul Duncan’s soft voice being carried by a wide-ranging palette of instruments.

Above the Trees is a remarkable, heartfelt album that feels honest and sincere in its intentions. It’s the kind of album that immediately grabs you at the first listen and never lets you go.

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8. Winter Family - Winter Family (Sub Rosa)
MP3: Salted Slug

Winter Family consists of Israeli artist Ruth Rosenthal and French musician Xavier Klaine. Together they make a strange, yet highly enticing combination of spoken word and piano compositions. Ruth Rosenthal reads her texts in English and Hebrew. Underneath her words, Xavier Klaine lays down a wonderful carpet of sounds coming from piano, harmoniums and pipe organ. The remarkable thing about this album is the diversity in sound in which they explore their collaboration. Some songs consist of nothing but fragile piano compositions with Rosenthal quietly reading her words on top of them. Other songs – like Nous Les Vivants – have loud church organs creating massive, echoing soundscapes with Rosenthal dramatically shouting at the listeners. And then there’s a lot in between.

Xavier Klaine’s compositions in themselves are easily strong enough to make for a beautiful album. Comparisons could sometimes be made with this year’s also rather excellent album by Rafael Anton Irisarri called Daydreaming. But the combination with spoken word is what really makes this album such a hugely compelling listen.

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9. A Broken Consort - Box of Birch (Sustain Release)
MP3: The Elder Lie

This album was a downright surprise to me. A Broken Consort (aka Richard Skelton) delivers a beautiful multi-layered work of accordion drones, strings, piano, percussion and many other instruments that makes your living room come alive. Close your eyes and you’ll feel as if your living room walls have turned into big trees, thickly packed with leaves, gently rustling in the wind. The sound is extraordinarily organic and continuously develops in an ebb and flow like manner. Its four tracks show lots of variation and each has a distinctive feel to it, but together they truly feel as one.

I cannot recommend this release highly enough if you’re into ambient and drones. This album envelops you in a highly emotional way. Nice detail is the fact that if you buy this album your name will be typed down on the sleeve and insert which makes the (already gorgeously packaged) album even more personal. The first edition of only 28 even came in a wonderful jewellers’ box. Despite its lack of vocals this is the most human album I’ve heard this year for the comfort and solace that it brings in a way that music is rarely capable of.

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10. Supersilent - 8 (Rune Grammofon)
MP3: 8.5

Norwegian avant-garde/jazz super group Supersilent is back with a new studio album and again they don’t fail to impress. Over the years they have explored and expanded the boundaries of jazz and created an entirely unique sound for themselves. Consisting of Ståle Storløkken (keyboards), Jarle Vespestad (drums), Helge Sten aka Deathprod (electronics) and Arve Henriksen (trumpet), Supersilent again shows not to be afraid to explore new grounds. However their trademark sound is easily recognizable on this album, with Ståle Storløkken’s unique keyboard sounds, scaring the living daylight out of every first listener.

Each track again is entirely improvised and is full of gloomy, unworldly atmosphere. My favourite of its eight tracks is the fifth. One of the most spectacular songs I’ve heard this year that starts off with a bizarre, mechanical voice shouting. After about four minutes the song finally kicks in and for the rest of its twelve minute duration it takes us along for a ride like on Supersilent can, constantly brooding and adapting. This is an album that – like all previous Supersilent albums – probably takes some time to settle in, but at the same time is so rich of ideas that you can listen to it innumerable times without ever growing tired of it.

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The rest of year-end list:
11. Mariee Sioux - Faces in the Rocks (Grass Roots)
12. Andrew Chalk - Time Of Hayfield (Faraway Press)
13. Agitated Radio Pilot - World Winding Down (Deadslackstring)
14. Christa Pfangen - Watch Me Getting Back the End (Die Schachtel)
15. Marc Ribot - Asmodeus: Book of Angels Volume 7 (Tzadik)
16. Suishou No Fune - The Shining Star (Important)
17. Hala Strana - Heave the Gambrel Roof (Music Fellowship)
18. Vic Chesnutt - North Star Deserter (Constellation)
19. Sir Richard Bishop - While My Guitar Violently Bleeds (Locust)
20. Magik Markers - Boss (Ecstatic Peace)
21. Giuseppe Ielasi - August (12K)
22. Astral Social Club - Star Guzzlers (Qbico)
23. Slow Six - Nor’easter (New Albion)
24. Paul Metzger - Deliverance (Locust)
25. Michael Fahres - The Tubes (Cold Blue Music)

See also:
Moka’s top 12 albums 2007
2007 so far
Largehearted boy’s 2007 year-end music lists
Moka’s top 12 albums 2006
Bubbachups top 10 albums 2006
Moka’s top 5 albums 2005

1. Panda Bear - Person pitch (Paw tracks)
MP3: Take pills

Despite its psychedelic density and abuse of looping techniques and reverb, Person pitch rarely sounds willfuly complex or menacing and is ultimately a frothy and gorgeous pop record that keeps on revealing the more you dive into it. Noah Lennox has achieved something magical with this album and it’s truly worthy of every accolade heaped upon it.

2. Radiohead - In rainbows (self released)
MP3: Reckoner

It would be unfair to place this album up here without a disclaimer: I’m an old school Radiohead fan and I’m clearly biased towards this recording. I really cant remember the last time I was this excited for an album release and I’m even ashamed to admit that once I finished hearing it for the first time, I started calling friends from around the world just to tell them that I had just heard the most gorgeous album of 2007. I could have even placed it on my top albums of the year just for allowing me those 10 perfect days of dewy-eyed fanboy anticipation, but fortunately In Rainbows contains some of the most sincere and cathartic songs Radiohead have ever crafted. All that and the whole issue of distribution as a reflection on the value of music in the digital age.

3. Tenniscoats - totemo aimasho / Tan-tan Therapy (Room40 / Hapna)
MP3: Aurora curtains
MP3: Umbarepa!

After releasing earlier this year the avant-pop masterpiece of Totemo Aimasho (wrapped up in which I’d consider my favorite sleeve of the year), Tokyo’s Tenniscoats teamed up with folktronica pioneers, Tape, to record Tan-tan therapy, picking up the drift where Totemo Aimasho leaves off, this time exchanging the intimate and subtle soundscapes of the former for fuller dynamics and a richer use of instrumentation. Tenniscoats are responsible for two of the most welcoming and enjoyable releases I came across this year.

4. The Field - From here we go sublime (Kompakt)
MP3: A paw in my face

Probably one of the most controversial records of the year, From here we go sublime is a collection of 10 deceptively simple, kinetic four-to-the-floor techno tracks. Axel Willner proves to be one of the most talented ears on the electronic scene by tossing in a masterful matter, layers of corrosively beautiful soundscapes on top of an ever-present heart-pounding beat and blending them all like an eiderdown comforter wafting down.

5. Dolorean - you can’t win (Yep Rock)
MP3: Heather remind me how this ends
MP3: Buffalo Gal

“You can’t win” is a convincing collection of wise, world-weary observations on the vulnerable aspects of human nature set to exquisite folk-rock arrangements. Simultaneously sad and uplifting yet never self-pitying nor artificially cheerful.

6. Burial - Untrue (Hyperdub)
MP3: Ghost Hardware

Untrue is an album which gives me mixed feelings. Burial proves that she can dazzle with the most minimal tools as long as she rides good samples and melodies, but the problem in here is that she rides the same sort of samples and musical palette throughout, giving the album a somewhat tiresome and homogenous emotional range after several listens, and yet, I find my ears contradicting my thought as there has yet to be a day since its release that I haven’t heard at least part of this record. Untrue is a landmark for electronic and british music of 2007, a record responsible for pushing the boundaries of an otherwise restrictive genre and for sowing the seeds for a new generation of musicians to draw inspiration from.

7. Fursaxa - Alone in the dark wood (Eclipse)
MP3: Birds inspire epic bairds
MP3: Clé Elum

Working on different levels of symbols and allegory, Fursaxa’s music is like being allowed to gaze into someone else’s narcotic dream, abstract and enchanted yet scornfully aggressive and haunting. I’ve never heard anything so otherworldly. A timeless and unsettling psych-folk masterpiece.

8. James Blackshaw - the cloud of unknowing (Tompkins Square)
MP3: Running to the ghost

James Blackshaw, a young 12-string guitarist from London, is a true talent capable of evoking a traditional sound while retaining an uncompromised exploration of his instrument and this album is perhaps his most inspired and radiant work yet. Coming from an artist that has not yet peaked, The cloud of unknowing is a stunningly mature piece of work and if this album is any indication, there are truly great things still waiting in his path.

9. Gui Boratto - Chromophobia (Kompakt)
MP3: Beautiful Life
MP3: Terminal

With Chromophobia, Gui Boratto presents us an unusual & colorful pop approach to the minimal techno meanderings for which the german Kompakt label is well-known which is as good an entry point into the genre as anyone could ask.

10. Group Inerane - Guitars from Agadez (Sublime Freq.)
MP3: Tenerte
MP3: Kamu Talyat

A very interesting document of the guitar style called “Touareg guitar” which is seemingly inspired by rebellious movements in Nigeria and Sunny King Ade’s meshed guitar riffs. Group Inerane’s songs all smoothly drive on infectious electric guitars, ecstatic voices and all kinds of percussions echoing one another’s tone and pulse so as to become indistinguishable. The wailing, reverberant mix of oddly tuned electric guitars and the under-produced and unashamed sound gives Guitars from Agadez an affecting charm, one that can be related to some hazy, distant dream of a family-like gathering, singing and dancing along.

11. Paper - as as (states rights records)
MP3: Love Attack

One of my favorite places to listen to music is bed. Sitting on the doorstep of sleep with a good album is one of the greatest luxuries for me, the sun always shines on that country. And this album continuously provided the ideal soundtrack for this late night astral projections. The honest reason I like “As as” so much is, simply put, because it happens to be heavily inspired by some of my favorite music genres: Krautrock, shoegaze, dreamy space pop and droning ambient. All there, represented in such cohesive and pleasant ways, you wont even notice when the whole thing is over.

12. Mirt - oh! you are so naive (Monotype)
MP3: Helo / robert!2

Despite the horrendous artwork and the fact that the record seems to have been under-promoted by the label, there is a certain beauty in every track from “oh! you are so naive”. Mirt coaxes incredibly warm and intricate drones from several instruments to creat pure sonambulant bliss. One of the most refreshing ambient albums I’ve heard in quite some time.

Further reading:

2007 so far
Largehearted boy’s 2007 year-end music lists
Moka’s top 12 albums 2006
Bubbachups top 10 albums 2006
Moka’s top 5 albums 2005

In the mid-nineties I used to work part-time at a record shop in the infamous area of Hillbrow. I worked for and left that paticular retailer so many times that they eventually wouldn’t hire me anymore. The mid-nineties era was the coolest, I used to live in Berea and after I got retrenched from Gallo records I didn’t have a company car no more. It was like living in the movie Candyman. At ten thirty at night I used to run through the most dangerous square kilometre, outside of a war zone, in the world at that time. I once walked down to the book shop on my lunch break and after I returned I saw a whole troop of emergency vechiles driving down the road. One of security gaurds went outside to find out what was going on. He came back and calmly mentioned that about five people were dead on the pavement outside the take-aways across the road from the book shop. Some sort of drug deal gone wrong or something. Yet another in a lifetime of close shaves. The building I used to live in was across the road from a really dodgy looking property. The one night in a THC haze I was awoken by the sound of automatic weapon fire. I crept up to sneak a look over the balcony wall and ended up seeing a few people lying on the pavement. I still remember thinking “Well somebody must have heard those shots” and going back to sleep.

During this period Hip Hop was huuuugggeeee in Hilbrow. Working at the shop was like a daily education in rap. I had been a fan of Hip Hop in my youth, stuff like Beat Street had made a huge impression on me. With time, during my teens, under the influence of indie, I had stopped listening to it. Stuff like De La Soul had got me back into things in the early nineties, but that mid-nineties Hillbrow period changed my life as far as black music is concerned. Ever met a white boy who practically cries whenever he hears Emotions by Destiny’s Child? Well, that’s me. Not that Emotions is from that period, it’s just that it made me appreciate Hip Hop and R n’ B ever since.
This mix is of more recent Hip Hop stuff, all from after 2000. I chose them for Lotus Over Water after we had a discussion about the current state of Hip Hop, so I’m hoping she likes them…

That’s the joint.

Another Night On Earth now has a badass banner which is looking tres spiffy. Mr. Keyz designed it, so if you’re looking for blog banners I’ll put a good word in for you ;). The Mtume track from today’s post pretty much sums up the mid-nineties Hillbrow vibe for me. “Beyond” is another Balearic Not Balearic classic and “25 or 6 to Four” is yet another reason why early Chicago (the band, good lord) deserves respect.

sorry for the inconvenience. :)

Sentiment is a really difficult thing. How do you express your feelings over something that has affected you deeply for all of your life without seeming dramatic. I had an idea to do a mix of tracks by k. d. lang about a week ago and the mix became something else entirely. I was listening to Dropout by Urge Overkill (again) thinking about how I’ve loved that song for so long without really understanding it’s true significance to my life. For years I thought of it as being about a young girl, all stylized as the perfect waif character, lost in the world. Truth is it very closely describes the life I led for many years. It also struck me how much it applies to so many of my crew, the boys I grew up with, the lost generation of whiteboys who “fucked-out” as we used to say back then. It’s difficult to describe what living under the apartheid government was like. When I think back the best way to describe it would be to say that there was never any air. You could breathe but nothing nourished you. When I was sixteen I refused to register for military service. My entire family was not aware of this and I kept it a secret. If I think about it now my motivation for everything was to get away from things and not towards them. By the age of seventeen I was blacklisted. This was not as significant as it sounds really, it never affected my life. I stayed in school and managed to get into university so I was safe. If I had continued to refuse national service without an official way of getting out of it I would have gone to jail for six years. This fact may be insignificant in retrospect but I honestly wonder now: how did a society that brought up it’s children in that way expect them to turn out if they treated them like that. It got me thinking about Karl. Karl was the older brother of one of my best friends in Primary School. During the BMX years he was our hero. He used to do off road racing and he was really good at it. He was even on a TV drama program for awhile. He was always my benchmark for how to survive within the circumstances we found ourselves. He went to university and studied journalism, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.

On Wednesday night I was speaking to my new friend Eran. He’s busy traveling at the moment, visiting the country of his birth, which is here due to the fact that his parents were working in Jo’burg when he was born. He’s from Israel and in a hardcore punk group. I was interested in what he had done as far as his military service was concerned. He told me that he had served two months in jail when he was younger. I thought that it was quite a strange time period to serve and he explained to me how it works. They put you in jail for two weeks. They don’t tell how long it’s going to be for, they don’t put you on trial. After two weeks they ask you again and so on. Depending on the political situation and other factors your time served is up to the whims of your captors. He was lucky I suppose but to hear him talk about it is pretty heavy. That is basically legalized torture.

The military issue was always an axe hanging over our heads. Two years before I would become eligible to serve in the military, South Africa experienced some of its worst township violence. One of Karl’s friends ended up going to the army around that time. He was an intelligent individual who would skillfully argue against apartheid, in the bravest fashion. Within about eight months of going into the military he came out on leave. He was dating one of my friends sisters at the time. He had become a raving racist. My friends sister was trying so hard to get him back on the ground, like where the fuck are you, what happened. He would tell us what happened, it did not sound good. In the townships they were basically at war. In the process he had learned to hate black people. The constant threat of dying had made him insane with hatred. His girlfriend ended up biting off one of his fingernails during a really violent fight that occurred later that evening. She was pregnant at the time and ended up having a boy called Christopher (named after me, yay!). They never married, she ended up with someone else, a family friend. They had been deeply in love.

The first time I ever smoked Mandrax I was walking with my two drug buddies back to Northcliff corner. They were both a year older than me and about to finish school. They were poor kids whose parents would not have been able to put them into university even if their school marks had been good enough. Alister started talking about going into the army, asking in our lingo if my other friend thought it was inevitable that he would have to go. He was scared. He OD’ed on Wellconal a year later. A few years ago so did Karl. This mix is for my friends, the one’s who did not make it through the wilderness, the ones who barely did and for the rest of us lucky ones. May we never go “there” again.
Both The Oppressed And The Accused

Image: The death of Ken Oosterbroek, 1994.