Slow This Bird Down

Sometimes a day’s experience can prepare your mind for a moment, the way a cook prepares a dish to taste its best. In my case, I spent Saturday loafing around downtown Ann Arbor with a friend. It was unseasonably perfect – light jacket weather in mid November and we were there to look for photo locations, considering every building and tree for its loveliness and color scheme - our eyes becoming acclimated to searching for accidental beauty.

I drove home during an inky dusk, my mind swept clean from so much fresh air, listening to the new Boards of Canada. As I steered my vehicle East, from 275 to onto 696, I passed one of those giant oscillating search lights, spinning giant beams of white up at the clouds. The track Slow this Bird Down was playing and at that moment I had the distinct sense of my own transience – that the earth was a place among places, rather than the totality of locations for existence, as it often seems. I felt temporary, that I could dissolve into the oily horizon for a ride to the next station. The marquee spotlights spun powerfully.

Boards of Canada make triggers for the sonic subconscious. Each release is a mixed bag, half of it magic. Here are three of the finer tracks from their most recent release, The Campfire Headphase.



Boards of Canada – Slow This Bird Down
Boards of Canada – A Moment of Clarity
Boards of Canada – Tears From the Compound Eye

Quickie

Not much time to write. Doing this at work. Could be caught any minute... Here are some great tracks I've been listening to lately.


1. The Strokes - Juicebox. Bad sign: my friend Rod says over the phone, "Have you heard the new Strokes? I heard it on the radio. It started with this green day riff (makes a buzzy guitar riff sound like the Peter Gunn theme). I turned it off before he even started singing." He was wrong. It starts off with more of an Offspring (90s radio band who are currently being tried in the Hague for musical atrocities) riff. But then... oh, but then.

The song is a visceral, hungry jackal of angular rock. If you ask yourself, as I do from time to time, "Is there any place in my life for rock? Does 'being rocked' have any meaning anymore for me?" this may resolve the issue for you, as it did for me, speeding down I-696 last night. For starters, we get to hear singer Julian Casablancas with less of that damn filtered effect he's been using as a crutch; it's like taking the airbrush off a truly beautiful person who didn't need it in the first place. This song has several sections, as if the band had too many good ideas to chose from (always a good sign) each of which is better than the last. I hated the second Strokes album. I didn't want more of the same. I wanted them to do this, which is to change and broaden their sound, if only moderately. I think this is a major step forward. I hear new things every time I listen to this track. [As much as I love it, though, nothing can redeem the opening riff, or the Offspring for that matter.]

The Strokes - Juicebox


2. Devendra Banhart - Now That I Know. There's something about Banhart that is greater than the sum of his parts. His voice is trembly to the point of silliness, his lyrics are whimsical and absurd in good and bad ways and... he's a hippy. I made war on anything hippy many years ago. That is, I made war, not love. But it's like the initial experience I had with Rufus Wainwright. I was repelled and drawn in at the same time. That's a rare thing for me and I guess I kind of like it. Because eventually you're just drawn in. I grew to love Rufus and I'm growing to love Banhart. My war with the hippies may be coming to an end at last. The first two Banhart records (Rejoicing in the Hands and Nino Rojo) were recorded in the same sessions and were lo-fi, but in a perfect way. He experienced a lot of quick success from those and the resulting touring has strengthened his performance skills and filled out his voice. His new record, Cripple Crow, is a full production based around solo Banhart performances, with great sounds and great choices of overdubs. Now That I Know opens the record and is sad in that long, wide way that train tracks, dusk and migrating birds are.

Devendra Banhart - Now That I Know


3. The Elanors - The Song About the Sea (demo). The Elanors are a Champaign, Ill. duo I've been producing and recording. Their names are Noah and Adriel. They might be famous one day, but to me they're already world-class. We were about a week into tracking, at my home, and had stopped for a dinner break and so that I could show them how I've taken the playing of Tetris to an art form. As King Saul commanded to David in the Bible, I said to Noah, "Play me a song. Let it be a new song, one that I've never heard." Noah turned the electric piano on and sang me a quiet song about the sea – by the time he finished, he had chased all of the demons out of the room and we sat in stillness. During this performance, I know my hands were making unprecedented, impossibly deft moves on the joystick, but my mind had left the room and a romanticized version of my adolescence flashed before my eyes - Hemingway, Baltimore harbor, my first crush, a picnic for two who were still kids, and all that dumb brilliance.
I tried to convince Noah to put the song on the record. He said, no, it was part of a new world of songs he was stepping into, and he didn't want to mix it up with the past, so the best I could do was set a mic up and get him to sing it in my living room. We used a cheap mic for a rich voice. You can hear the crickets. It was so hot that week.

The Elanors - The Song About the Sea (demo)




4. Supergrass - Roxy. The reason I know I'm a nerd is because there's a test for this. The essence of nerdishness is the desire to make lists. One of the few lists I've made in my head is greatest working songwriters. I don't really include some of the old guys who can still bring it like Elvis Costello and Tom Waits. It's more the songwriters of my generation, still killing it. That list is short. Ellliott Smith was on it, at the top. The others are Gillian Welch, Rufus Wainwright, Thom Yorke (though he's more of a composer of exquisite music with infantile lyrics), and Gaz Coombes. Coombes is my dark horse because, while some of my peers are familiar with Supergrass, even fewer know their lead singer by name. Supergrass broke during the mid-90s Britpop movement. There were a lot of tight bands then and a returned emphasis on songwriting. Oasis, Pulp, Blur, etc. Out of the groups I was listening to then, Supergrass is the only one I still follow. Here's the thing about Gaz Coombes. The guy simply CAN'T write a bad tune. Even if you're not feeling the aesthetic of one of their songs, you can't argue with the tune. And I don't mean simply that they're catchy, or "well-crafted". What I'm talking about is beyond memorability or technique. He's the real thing. Coombes has a weird, pretty voice that has a bit of a helium sparkle to it on top of the throaty power. To me, as a singer he's on par with Yorke or Chris Martin.
There. I needed to finally talk about Supergrass. They do alright, especially overseas, but to me they will always be underrated because I hold them in such high esteem. After talking them up like that, maybe the new record Road to Rouen, isn't the place to start because people are saying it's the "mature" record. But what the hell.

Supergrass - Roxy

Windex

The emotional scope of the song "And Then So Clear" by Brian Eno was like spiritual calibration for me. I listened to it on loop one morning at work and almost quit my job – that’s how much it made me crave change and filled me with confidence in life. It was given to me by the most eccentric person I know; It played this summer while I made a new friend and was still playing when I lost that friend; It’s about change, and fear of change, and razor mountains, and rain smearing across the sky like a massive windshield like you’ve got a god’s eye perspective and the earth is your SUV.

This was year I got an mp3 player and rediscovered my forgotten love of public solitude – the intimacy of daydreaming with headphones on and watching the world go by. I had forgotten how important all those little details are that get blurred by road-sounds when you listen to music on car speakers. This was also the same time I was first discovering Eno, having much of his back catalog donated to me by a friend. It was a perfect way to get into Eno’s music. Quietly, privately, attentively. I came to see him as the true father of modernity in music.

I immediately preferred the ambient stuff, particularly with Robert Fripp, to his glammy song-based material. So I was surprised this spring at how much I loved his new, song-based release Another Day On Earth (it cracks me up how all his album titles manage to sound the same. It’s kind of like Zombie films: Day of the Dead, Night of the Dead, Day of the Night of the Dead of the Living Dead, and on and on) from which this song is taken. I’m not sure why, after all these years, he decided to start writing songs again, but I’m glad he did.

Windex your windshield:

And Then So Clear

A Little Bit Mo'

Introduction:

My name is Daniel and I’ll be tag-teaming on Max’s blog as the Rainbo Wasp from time to time. But who are we kidding? Max only finds out about crisp new music from me anyway, so you could say I’ll be here full-time in spirit.
I kid…
I guess there’s no other way to do this than to just start posting the music that has been fishhooking my ears this year.

Jamie Lidell
A little backstory. I went through a big Warp Records phase about five years ago where I was buying anything they’d put out. I bought the first Jamie Lidell album, Muddlin Gear blindly during this time.


It’s unlistenable in the best way. It is the single-most twisted piece of modern music I own, which makes it a jewel of my collection. It’s a slice of pervert pie. Robotic, cut to shreds, disembodied glitch funk that, though completely electronic based, refuses to even quench the ear's thirst with the occasional full-fledged beat. It's like free jazz by R2-D2 freebasing cleaning products... Then, suddenly, there's the 9th track, “Daddy’s Car”, which is brilliant, oily r'n'b, like Motown if Motown had happened in the 2060s. I just assumed they’d brought in a black soul singer for the song, since there was no way it was a white Englishman I was hearing. I was wrong, it was Lidell. I was confused. If you could sing like this, if you could make pop tracks this shit hot and state of the art, why would you only put one of them on your solo debut, and bury the thing at the end of the record?
I have these moments occasionally where I realize I’m hearing a piece of music that is both uncompromisingly grounbreaking and completely accessible enough to be a huge hit single if someone would just market it – and I lament the squandered power of the radio today. This was one of those moments.
Years later I would go through a painful stretch in my life where the doors of great, useless knowledge and spiritual adversity were opened to me for a short while – the only thing approaching a religious experience I’ve ever had. During this time I suddenly perceived the taint of artifice in all but a few of the CDs and books I owned. The only music that I could bring myself to listen to at this time were a handful of classical pieces, Miles Davis’ “Bitches Brew”, and Jamie Lidell’s collaborative project Super_Collider.

Daddy's Car (Follow Link)

This spring, Lidell's second solo album Multiply, again for Warp, was released.


I was alittle ataken aback – to say the least. It’s retro! A little Otis Redding, a Little Stevie Wonder, but not really much of the sci-fi soul he's been dishing out. I mean, his solo act is like Tom Waits Japanimated: completely frentic and apocalyptic, wearing garbage bag suits, camera helmets and surrounded by a giant spider’s nest of wires, samplers, bots and outboard gear.
Look at this guy!:


There is almost no connection between the fruitcake Lidell of this picture and the sunny, pristine soul music he just released. Anyway, I don't know how I feel about Multiply yet. I love Lidell because he works in present and future tense. I’m not interested in what he has to say in past tense though. But I’ve been told by my friend Rod, who's mind is as perverted as they come, that you have to keep listening to appreciate this one. Even so, there's one track that grabbed me immediately. “A Little Bit More” is another one of those moments where I think, THIS would be a radio hit in an ideal world. In an interview, Lidell said this is the closest thing on the record to his live show. It's just him riffing in the studio over quickly sampled mouth beats. He said it took him like a half hour to record. It's genius.

A Little Bit More (Follow Link)

SYRIANA

I have mixed, but mostly good, feelings about this brutally powerful film by first-time director Stephen Gaghan. Like he did in Traffic (for which Gaghan won the Oscar for best screenplay) Syriana weaves what are initially unconnected narrative strands into a dense web of geopolitical polemic. Whereas Traffic was a pessimistic lecture on the futility of the drug war, Syriana's main character is oil itself, depicted near-mythically as a demonic, corrupting force seizing the will of the great powers of this earth. Picture the greedy, panicked eyes of the characters in The Lord of the Rings as they fall under the ring's spell. Syriana sees everyone as a potential Gollum, susceptible to a morally warping desire. There are other themes, such as the global ripple effect of even seemingly insignificant choices, and a more subtle insinuation that those who profit from oil, whether governments or businesses, actually prefer, and will in some cases even encourage, global instability – the conflict drives oil prices up.

I sensed that the creators were attempting to redresss an imbalance, rather than be taken as a measured picture of the way things are. Accordingly, I had the uncomfortable sense of being preached to that comes from anything mixing so much agenda in with its artistry. But it attacks the self-centered limits of the western worldview with gentle empathy, rather than bile, and I found the light touch affecting. What it does best is give someone like me, weaned in the comparatively prosperous west, only the slightest glimpse into the humiliation and frustration that an average person, suffering in one of the backwards places on the other side of the world, feels when a foreign power imposes itself in the name of commerce. The greatest achievement here, the thing that stayed with me long after, was its tender depiction of Pakistani teenage boys who are simply not like us. The differences were subtle – their jokes and pastimes had a sense of filtered westernization – but there was a humble otherness to it that rang true. Usually, when foreigners or minorities are portrayed for sympathetic reasons, it’s done in a way to make them seem more, not less, white. But these kids were believable in their simple, adolescent awkwardness. And that made their radicalization both convincing and heartbreaking to watch.

In fact, most of Syriana's major Arab and Middle Eastern characters – from Hezbollah leaders to Saudi royalty – are portrayed neutrally to positively. That is, above all, what makes the film unique, if overly romanticized. (Its other rhetorical storylines – a CIA agent sold out by his own, oil companies manipulating politicians, etc. – though engaging, lack newness.) It's also what makes it fishy as a thesis. Yes, it's bitterly cynical but to me it's not cynical enough. It's hard to accept this level of indignation at the covert sins of a country like the U.S. without a comparable or harsher reaction to the overt brutality, misogyny or chronic opression of the world's Iraqs and Saudi Arabias. In this sense, Syriana is a little too reactionary for me: events in a terrorist training camp are lit warmly, like an idyllic Eden; Hezbollah is portrayed as benevolent and gracious; while any western players, from lawyers, to financial advisors, to politicians, are varieties of thieving devils. It's as if the filmmakers had an over abundance of empathy; just not for anybody on this side of power divide.

Sadly, the confusing format of the movie –– not its politics –– is probably going to be the most divisive thing about Syriana, and will likely dampen the effect of its ideas. The film's unique construction –– watching it is like having your mind force fed a gushing stream of information faster than it could possibly swallow –– is both frustrating and admirable. Though told linearly, it's edited at a super-quick pace; scenes are usually truncated. The scope of this movie is humungous –– a perspective ranging from the highest seats of influence to the poorest and most powerless – yet the effect is of a statement needing a context. Yet it doesn’t come off as an arbitrary choice and it seems deliberate that it is impossible to completely comprehend on first viewing. The result is an overwhelming and, at times, maddening style that is awfully impressionistic for a work that is essentially NPR-turned-feature-film. And therein lies the conflict for me the viewer. On the one hand, it gives the sense of someone bluffing; alluding to more knowledge then they really have. On the other, it forced me to watch the film not as a series of expositions, but as a sequence of emotions. That's something fresh. The acting, direction and score are so exquisite that the tonal thrust of everything you see is always articulated. Just not in a cerebral way. I saw it as a parable about not getting so caught up in the enormous details of current events that we forget to see the human picture.

From the original score by Alexandre Desplat:

Driving in Geneva
Something Really Cool