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)