There are many blossoms of great beauty – many indeed. But they cannot compare with the beauty of the blossoms of blossom town, for these bossoms also have human feelings. – Sharebon. Books of Wits and Fashion. (Early Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900)

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“Saturn Strobe. Recent Minimalist Extract. Moka’s Birthday.”

01. Goldmund - Gifts
The Malady Of Elegance (Type, 2008)
02. Brian Eno – Panic of Looking
Panic of Looking (Warp Records, 2011)
03. Hauschka - Mount Hood
Foreign Landscapes (Fat Cat, 2010)
04. Pantha du Prince – Saturn Strobe
This Bliss (Dial, 2007)
05. Helios - Convivium
Unleft (Unseen Music/Forced Exposure, 2010)
06. So Percussion – Aluminum
Treasure State (Cantaloupe, 2010)
07. Boxcutter - Panama
The Dissolve (Planet Mu, 2011)

Note: Everybody says Happy Birthday to Moka. (I am late again. But I think she will just grin this time.) I don’t have many albums in my head this year, so this one is not the usual edgy pop. Instead it’s a minimalism pushed all the way near pop sensibility. An old project, how to make less common music more accessible. Basically, it’s a pop music for 2 am. in the middle of cold winter. A little cold, somewhat alone, with a tinge of warm love. Imagine having a penthouse in Finland somewhere. 30th floor with a view of city and endless field of snow on the background. Late night. Put on a good headphone and watch the night float away… I’ve been watching a lot of japanese movie, this is my impression of minimalist mood and narrative links between songs. I think at least it’s functional and doesn’t wake up the neighbor.

Image: harold.lloyd

“The word arse is as much god as the word face.  It must be so, otherwise you cut off your god at the waist.”

List of songs about or related to body parts. More textural than literal, onomatopoeia, gesture and touch. Blues, jazz and some Lord Quas for the heads.

+ Townes Van Zandt – Lungs
(Townes Van Zandt, 1969)

+ Dorothy Ashby – The Moving Finger
(The Rubaiyat Of Dorothy Ashby, 1970)

+ Horace Silver - I’ve had a little talk
(Total Response, 1971)

+ Colosseum II – All Skin & Bone
(Electric Savage, 1977)

+ John Sangster – Hair
(Ahead of Hair, 1969)

+ Roger Waters and Ron Geesin – Mrs. Throat goes Walking
(Music from the body, 1970)

+ Quasimoto – Come on Feet
(The Unseen, 2000)

If you can think of any other good songs about body parts, please comment below. I’m building a collection…

art: Horace Silver – Total Response (detail of left panel of inner gatefold)
quote: DH Lawrence

a.

She had liked the young man’s looks, and his short-sighted eyes, and his odd way of speaking, that was abrupt yet soft, just as his hands were sun-burnt and sinewy, yet with smooth nails like a woman’s. His hair was sunburnt-looking too, or rather the colour of bracken after frost; his eyes grey, with the appealing look of the shortsighted, his smile shy yet confident, as if he knew lots of things she had never dreamed of, and yet wouldn’t for the world have had her feel his superiority. But she did feel it, and liked the feeling; for it was new to her. Poor and ignorant as she was, and knew herself to be—humblest of the humble even in North Dormer, where to come from the Mountain was the worst disgrace—yet in her narrow world she had always ruled. It was partly, of course, owing to the fact that lawyer Royall was “the biggest man in North Dormer”; so much too big for it, in fact, that outsiders, who didn’t know, always wondered how it held him. In spite of everything—and in spite even of Miss Hatchard—lawyer Royall ruled in North Dormer; and Charity ruled in lawyer Royall’s house. She had never put it to herself in those terms; but she knew her power, knew what it was made of, and hated it. Confusedly, the young man in the library had made her feel for the first time what might be the sweetness of dependence. – Summer by Edith Wharton

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” 2011 Summer List No.1 ”

01. Caetano Veloso – Um Canto de Afoxé Para O Cloco de Ilę (Ilę Ayę)
Brazil Classics, Vol. 1: Beleza Tropical (Luaka Bop, 1989)
02. Kasai Allstars – Tshita Fula Mbuloba
In the 7th Moon, The Chief Turned Into a Swimming Fish and Ate the Head of His Enemy By Magic (Crammed Disc Us, 2008)
03. Baden Powell – The Shadow Of Your Smile
Solitude On Guitar (1973)
04. Pizzicato Five – This Year’s Girl #2
Made in USA (1994)
05. Sun Ra – Love in Outer Space
The Night of the Purple Moon (atavistic, 1970)
06. Mouse On Mars – Catching Butterflies With Hands
Idiology (Thrill Jockey, 2001)
07. Dubmatix – Hashashin Dub
Dubmatix (self release. 2004)
08. Mouse On Mars – Schnick-schnack
Cache Coeur Naif (Thrill Jockey, 1997)
09. Gotan Project – La Gloria
Tango 3.0 (not released yet)

note: I am still alive, sort of. About this list. Well, since my brain is so detached from anything music right now, this is the most basic, as straight forward downtempo list as it can be. Standard MdM fare. Strictly swaying tempo and controlled phrasing. Completely imaginary, bordering synthetic atmosphere. You’ll miss the total impossibility of it all when you blink. Well, maybe in summer evening flavor. It is a list for humid evening, natural opening and crisp voice. Something about love, useale for dating probably, and partly an exploration for my next idea about pop music. (Which I assure you is so big, I will never actually post anything.) Btw, there is a big volume jump in Sun Ra’s track, but the list won’t fly without it, and I am too lazy to find another transition track. … if you are that annoyed, fill your own track or post something the comment about what track you imagine it should be.

image: toel-uru

Image: Creator’s Inn.

“Emotions, in my experience, aren’t covered by single words. I don’t believe in “sadness,” “joy,” or “regret.” Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I’d like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, “the happiness that attends disaster.” Or: “the disappointment of sleeping with one’s fantasy.” I’d like to show how “intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members” connects with “the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age.” I’d like to have a word for “the sadness inspired by failing restaurants” as well as for “the excitement of getting a room with a minibar.” I’ve never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I’ve entered my story, I need them more than ever. “
- Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex.

• Dillard & Clark – Don’t Let Me Down
  Through The Morning, Through The Night (1969)
  
• Tony Joe White - Thing About You Baby
  Train I’m On (1972)
• Alexander – Truth
  Alexander (Rough Trade, 2011)
• Syd Matters – My Lover’s On The Pier
  Ghost Days (Because, 2008)
• Conner Youngblood – A Summer Song
  TBA (2011)
• Bedouin Soundclash – Brutal Hearts
  Light the Horizon (Pirate’s Blend, 2011)

Look at me, all grown up and still pretty naïve. I already know much of the things that I like and those I don’t. I feel both happy and sad most of the time and I don’t really know what that means or what to do with it. There was a time where I devoted most of my energy trying to decode it. Now happiness and sadness reveal themselves as emotions that can’t really be narrowed down into simple words. For all I know they might be the same thing.
This playlist is an exploration of sorts of the colliding hues of happines and sadness. Debased by a feeling that these might just be the last days of summer. Hazy, laidback and breezy but wistful and yearning at the same time. They don’t realize that when the end of the night comes and you say goodbye you’ll truly mean it, but we’re all having fun so why ruin it with drunken ruminations. Take your picture and keep on dancing. The sun will keep on rising with or without you.

The European Revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples or the Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe. Described by some historians as a revolutionary wave, the period of unrest began in France, with the French Revolution of 1848, and soon spread to the rest of Europe.

Although most of the revolutions were quickly put down, there was a significant amount of violence in many areas, with tens of thousands of people tortured and/or killed. While the immediate political effects of the revolutions were largely reversed, the long-term reverberations of the events were far-reaching. - wiki

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” Groove for Double Dip and Arab Spring Revolution ”

01. Brian Auger & the Trinity/Julie Driscoll – Flesh Failures (Let the Sunshine In)
A Kind of Love in 1967-1971 (Raven, 2004)
02. Constantines – Life or Death
Kensington Heights (Arts & Crafts, 2008)
03. Mogwai - San Pedro
Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will (Sub Pop, 2011)
04. Sonic Youth – Schizophrenia
Sister (DGC, 1994)
05. Bellini - Numbers
The Precious Prize of Gravity (Temporary Residence, 2009)
06. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band – Sure ‘Nuff ‘N Yes I Do
Safe As Milk (1967)
07. Lionel Richie – running with the night
Can’t Slow Down (1990)

note: I don’t know where everybody is. Probably too busy having a live or having sex. I need those too. hah. OK, here is a proper list finally. Something restless, inspired by everybody who is struggling to have their voice heard in the middle east. Little warning, this is a mode play, opening with soul slowly turning mathrock, full of fuzz and dissonance. Very dark, but I like it. It’s a proper list, I put some thought in arranging it in term of mode transition. The seemingly random move actually are mish mash of same titles inside the album or lyrics. Mogwai’s last album has the word Lionel Richie in it.

I hope you enjoy it. And everybody in the arab world, we are behind you.

image: Barricade on the rue Soufflot, an 1848 painting by Horace Vernet.