Don't Fence Me In

Daniel Johnson "Don't Fence Me In (feat. Brie Stoner)"

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Wild Beasts

This guy's voice is many things. Thunder. Fairy dust. Stuff in between.

Wild Beasts - "Two Dancers 1"



Wild Beasts "Hooting and Howling"

Beach House - "Take Care"

I really didn't get this band last record out. I really get them now.

Beach House - "Take Care"

Nneka - "Heartbeat"

This song drives me wild. It's like Lauryn Hill backed by Tony Allen. The video is worse.

Nneka - "Heartbeat"

Nneka - Heartbeat from BooGieMan on Vimeo.

Jamie Lidell - "Compass"

This is so glorious. This is the music I've always dreamed Jamie Lidell would eventually make.

Jamie Lidell "Compass"

Yeasayer Represent

White people are making the best music again. That's been the theme of the past half-year for me. Not like it's a competition, but there were some dark, dark days there for the white man.

Yeasayer - "Madder Red"



Yeasayer - "Grizelda"

Owen Pallett + Patrick Watson

This new album Heartland by Owen Pallett is really beautiful. It's a mix of small ensemble orchestral instruments and a bit of Nintendo soft synths. Usually stuff this gentle is a bit more twee than I can take but the material and the vision is really strong.

Owen Pallett - "What Do You Think Will Happen Now?"




Owen Pallett - "Red Sun No. 5"





Pallett reminds me of Patrick Watson, whose album Wooden Arms was one of the great unsung masterpieces of last year. I've been meaning to post some of these cuts for a while and the new Pallett reminded me to. Watson has such an original approach to writing and arranging. He's got the kind of pretty voice that could get him Keane-sized fans, but he's got more of a Buckley-esque ambition to alienate the easily distracted. For this I thank him.

Patrick Watson - "Where the Wild Things Are"




Patrick Watson - "Fireweed"

Best Shows I Watched in 2009

I would have difficulty coming up with a top ten list of best albums for this year and I've been posting the individual tracks that I got excited about throughout 2009, so instead I'm just going to post a list of 10 television shows that I loved.

It's kind of shocking how much TV I've consumed this year. My job as a composer requires a lot of waiting - for files to bounce down - as well as breaks to decompress, when I've been at the studio for longer than 12 hours basically concentrating the entire time. So I like to come to work armed with TV series that I can watch and stop, watch and stop on my laptop, without needing to be commit hours of my full attention the way I would with a movie. The comedies work best for this, like Curb Your Enthusiasm and Eastbound and Down. But so does the pulpier stuff like Dexter and Nurse Jackie.

I also think that TV is better art than ever. With the quality takeover of cable over network programming, as well as the built-in space of serialized television to tell a story slowly over the course of six months, there is more freedom available for cable shows to get it right. The Wire showed everybody how a detailed story produced in a way that took the viewer's intelligence for granted could have the same depth-of-experience payoffs as reading a good novel. And now shows like Damages and In Treatment are following suit with long story lines that build in cumulative power, as well as less serious stuff like Entourage and Hung that manage to be poignant through humor as well as maintaining long story arcs.

So here's my list with minimal commentary.

Mad Men - Nothing else can touch this show. It's like an immaculately scripted dream.

Damages - I predict that in the next year or so everybody is going to catch up to the brilliance that is Damages. Insanely addicting. This show is beyond good and evil, in the way The Wire was. Morality is beside the point. Glen Close plays a bitchy high-profile attorney who bullies and breaks the law to get what she wants. The non-linear format of this show is a huge part of why it works.

Hung - This show has a really unique tone to its funny. Ann Heche is hilarious as a psycho ex-wife trying to bond with her kids, and though the premise might seem far-fetched if spelled out in a one-sentence synopsis (high school gym coach becomes gigolo), the true genius of this show is how it makes it all seem so believable.

Glee - This show is insane (it's also the only one on this list on network TV). I personally hate musicals. And yet... It's kind of Election meets High School Musical (you almost know that's how it was pitched) and so it has both wholesome and subversive elements. There are also lots of allusions to other classic high-school-gone-wrong movies like Bring it On.

In Treatment - Gabriel Byrne's psychiatrist Paul Weston is probably the fictional character I feel the most empathy for (next to Bolano and Lima from The Savage Detectives). This show is definitely a slow-building storm and season 1 ended by blowing up Weston's life. Season 2 takes a bit of a calmer tack as he tries to put it back together, but I enjoyed the new patients and the new setting.

Jersey Shore - Guidos.

Nurse Jackie - Edie Falco's first show since The Sopranos, on which she was probably the best thing. A crabby nurse who goes through work high on pain killers, trying to do some good but really just trying to make it through the day. Funny and drab and very original.

Entourage - I never get tired of defending this show about shallow-ish dude-bros living in Hollywood. It works on different levels and I like them all.

Eastbound and Down - I couldn't get this show out of my head for weeks after watching it. The first season is a six-episoder which is basically one long movie cut into parts. Some of the blackest, most unrepentant humor available on the market. Like a bad dream re-imagining of Talledega Nights. Danny McBride is one of the best things in the new Comedy Mafia of Will Farrell and Judd Apatow's troupes. Super pathological character work on the level of Ricky Gervais in the original The Office.

Curb Your Enthusiasm - I have much in common with Larry David.

The Goode Family - Mike Judge (King of the Hill, Office Space, Idiocracy) has a new cartoon about well-meaning NPR-grade liberals who frustrate themselves to no end with their anxiety about living a PC lifestyle. To the people who will get the jokes, this is brutal but affectionate satire.

Midlake 4 Life

Something about these new Midlake tracks seems appropriate for the season. It's the cold end of the year, the ground is hard, the leaves have dropped dead and we too can let the past drop from our memories - and then we can start again.

There's a "Greensleeves" quality to Acts of Man with its fireplace warmth, gentle acoustic guitars, flutes and soiled mix that seems out of time, haunted and wrapped in ivy. I can't tell if he's singing about the wicked in power or just dethroning himself. Either way, I'm down.

Let's live in full this year. Happy holidays.
Daniel

Midlake - In the Ground [From Acts of Man]


Midlake - Rulers Ruling All Things [From Acts of Man]

Co-sign: Rihanna

I can't help but hear the tracks on Rihanna's new record in the context of her publicly getting the shit beat out of her, and then taking another beating in the press and on the blogs (oddly, in most of the black blogs I read I see more support for Chris Brown and a weirdly emotional hatred for Rihanna). Her response is to release a record cover where she's covering her eye up (so you don't see it's swelled shut) and a record - Rated R - that is so smart and aggressive it says: you've got the size but I've got the dignity. So I really dig the giant attitude she's bringing here. No victim. Some of my favorite cuts are "Hard," "G4L (Gangster for Life)" and "Rude Boy," in which she drops reverse misogynistic lyrics and sounds 50 feet tall, in bondage gear wielding a tech 9 and a designer strap-on. Lines like How'd I feel down there on your knees?

"Hard" is just producer/writer The Dream being The Dream. Listen to that track 50 times to know how smart it is. "G4L" sounds like a Bjork track from Vespertine, just way tougher, the chorus erupts into an anti-hook, pure emotion and 15 Rihannas moaning. And "Rude Boy" is sensationally wide and so, so filthy. It's a great move bringing the Caribean term "Rude Boy" into American pop culture.

I like my pop this raunchy and I love Rihanna's swinging dick.

Rihanna "Rude Boy"


Rihanna "G4L"

Daniel - Damn (I Wish I Was Your Lover)

Daniel "Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover"


Get it at iTunes.

R Les for Pres

There is nobody else doing what Ryan Leslie is doing right now. He's found some sweet middle ground between Dilla-ugly concepts of what a beat can be, futuristic synth pop production, moody D'Angelo-isms and black top 40 r'n'b writing. The complaint about Leslie is that he never goes far enough out down either road - experimental or pop accessibility - but I like the balance and minimalism. So much of the best black music today is ruined with obnoxious lyrics, fatuous track lengths, invisible session players and a reliance on tacky cameos. I like that R Les plays his own instruments, keeps his songs short and his productions lean, and that he doesn't manage to spout out anything so fucking morally prehistoric that it's a deal breaker for even my already crass sensibilities.

Transition is his second record in '09. To which I say, WTF. Possibly he rushed this thing out, but I think it benefits from not being fussed over. It seems impossible, but I think it's even more stripped down than his previous release, Ryan Leslie. Some of the production on that album had a little bit more futurism and rough edges, which is missed, but song-for-song, this might be my favorite.

Download a live recording of Ryan Performing his fantastic single "Something That I Like" earlier this summer. Then listen to some streams from the record (including that same single, featuring Pusha T from Clipse) and aquire this music for yourself.

mp3 Ryan Leslie "Something That I Like (Live at the Penthouse)

Ryan Leslie "Something That I Like (Feat. Pusha T.)"



Ryan Leslie "All My Love"



Ryan Leslie "Zodiac"

Ennio Morricone - State of Grace Opening Titles

I can't answer why State of Grace (1990) is not held in higher, more revered esteem. It's an Irish gangster movie set in Hell's Kitchen featuring Sean Penn, Robin Wright Penn, Gary Oldman and Ed Harris. Beyond being a near flawless movie I'll always remember it for having the only love scene I can think of in cinema that actually approaches reality.

I also can't answer why Ennio Morricone's masterful score is not in print, or why no performed and recorded version of any of this score's titles was ever produced on one of Morricone's greatest hits compilations. (There is one version of State of Grace I saw on iTunes (on Ennio Morricone: Film Music Maestro), but it's a pretty shitty synthesized fake.

So here's a rip I made of the opening titles, using my laptop. It's such an amazing use of orchestral color. Morricone always did his own orchestrations and it's hard to think of any film composer working today who can get this kind of texture. They just don't make em like this anymore.

I love the way this piece falls effortlessly back and forth between major and minor keys, like someone drifting in and out of sleep. It sets the tone for a great story about fragile things in the thorns of violence.

You're welcome!

Ennio Morricone - State of Grace Opening Titles

We Were Once A Fairy Tale

Spike Jonze / We Were Once A Fairytale from background on Vimeo.

Spike Jonze is killing me these days. I find it an encouraging testament to the elasticity of human potential to watch a skater kid turn into one of the preeminent philosophers of our time. Where The Wild Things Are was part Camus, part Cassavettes and completely without filters. I felt something every second of that film. At the end Claire and I are both wiping our eyes and I realize that, because Jonze's story was told from such a deep, subconscious place, Claire and I, 6-year-old daughter and father, were able to experience a movie from an identical vantage point for the first time ever. To our reptilian, primal brains, we're all the same age.

Jonze has also just released a short film starring Kanye West called We Were Once a Fairy Tale and I suppose some people will think it's too abstract to accept, or even dig it for its abstraction as kind of unassailably out. For all its magical realism it seemed pretty straightforward to me, and again Jonze is defying filters by tweaking the public shortcomings of his film's lead actor - getting under the dirty fingernails of fame, a trapping Kanye West has been vocally struggling with. Gutsy all around. West, in a white tux, makes an ass of himself at a high-class club (his performance is so believable I have to wonder if he actually got drunk to to it), wanders into a bathroom, vomits a gush of rose petals, and then comes face to face with his own demon, literally.

Watch this with headphones on because the sound design is overwhelming. The whole time you'll feel like you're in a womb.

El Perro Del Mar

This album makes up for the lack of new Sade and Kate Bush albums in the world.

El Perro Del Mar - "Change of Heart"


El Perro Del Mar - "Heavenly Arms"

Repost: Fennesz's Full Blast

Followers of the Hebrew g-d believe that h-s name is so holy it can't be spoken, only referred to. Muslims believe it's a sin to make an image of their prophet, and aboriginal Australians won't let you take their photograph lest you capture their soul. I'm a shitty mystic, but there is something about the music of Christian Fennesz that makes me want to avert my descriptive gaze - to shuffle in backwards, eyes downcast, to the sacred temple of his sound when trying to write about it. It would seem crude to do anything like talk about process, or actual instrumentation, or, g-d forbid, his software. Because in the end it all ends up dumped in a sea. The black fathoms of hot crackling blast. The liquid void. The holy drone of his music.

This time last year I was compiling a year-end best-of list of sorts and a sentence kept popping up in my mind that I never posted: the best album of 2007 was the one Fennesz never released. By that I didn't mean that I had gotten my hands on a leaked draft of a new work by the Austrian sound sorcerer; I meant that 2007 was both the year of my discovery of Fennesz and the period of my life most suited to resonate with the disembodied beauty of his work. It was a year of psychic house cleaning during which I destroyed more fixtures of false belief than ever before. I spent a lot of hours staring at candles, cross-legged on wood floors in dark rooms, fighting with silence. Hours of peeling away the layers of mental dust and paint that had caked onto the walls of my thought. It was subtractive work - taking my mind down to its most minimal, looking for the Still, Small Voice underneath it all. I don't know what, if anything, I found in all that subtraction, but what stayed with me was a better sense of my environment and a certainty that the great spiritual battle of our time is to make war with clutter - the full blast of stimulation and information gushing at us on a daily basis. (Sadly, I'm barely fighting it. I spend more time on my computer than ever. If this blog goes dark, feel free to hope that I left to care for my soul.)

The more I allowed myself to melt the more Fennesz I played. On thick summer nights I'd find the room with the best cross breeze, throw a mattress down and smoke out to Venice. As I listened with chemically widened ears, I knew that Fennesz was making the true music of our age. An ambient requiem for an entire generation of souls sizzling in a digital frying pan - cell phones, microwave ovens and power lines, piping us full of disease and bathing us in a black sea of anxiety. Fennesz, it seemed to me, was the only artist making any music of spiritual concern. It was wordless, wide stuff. Our own voices, bouncing back to us off canyon-like walls of city buildings in reflections of distortion and smeared melodies.

That summer I also took Salvia, the diviner's sage, a few times. I loved and respected it as a leafy portal to lucid dreaming as well as a dangerously powerful magnifier. With Salvia environment is key because it will take the slighest sights and sounds in the room with you and project them up on a massive wall like flickering puppet shadows cast ghoulishly by candles. Idiots cocktail the stuff like a party drug and get sucked screaming out windows and have their souls steam-rolled like doomed 'toons in a Warner Bros. cartoon. I only did it alone, in silence and in the dark. But this one night I was careless and took too big a hit. I came to on all fours, sweating the shapes of my forearms and shins onto my yoga mat, without memory. The fan of my macbook's hard drive eight feet away, a barely perceptible hum under normal circumstances, became a deafening helicopter blade chopping the air just above my head and descending upon my bedroom like the whirling, flaming sword of an archangel.

That Salvia trip taught me something about our true natures and how we weaken them. That we humans are engines of power and dream who muffle the godlike boom of our souls by smothering them in paper-mache nests that we build our whole lives, strip by flimsy strip, until they are as hard and containing as a bomb shield. A piece of information here, some empty stimulation there. NPR, cable, radio, magazines, blogs, records, movies. We're caked over in false security like the shivering homeless - passed out on winter benches, swaddled in makeshift newspaper blankets.

That is what Fennesz's music sounds like - the quiet beneath the debris. It's a vital hum that never competes, never tries to rise above our filters. We can only go diving for it, and once submerged we are given over to dream. Sitting down for the first time to listen to Fennesz's new recordings, Black Sea, immersed in headphones and staring out the window at a heavy snowfall, I saw things. I saw a lumbering dark giant carrying a black Santa sack over his shoulder in which he carried light. I saw him sidle up to the side of a house at night and peek down into its chimney. I saw the giant dump the contents of his bag down the chimney like an electric Pentecost which poured through the home, blanketing every sleeping person in it in currents of white-hot healing.

Fennesz - "Glide" [From Black Sea]



Fennesz - "Rivers of Sand" [From Venice]



Fennesz - "The Point of it All" [From Venice]

Thom Yorke Live

"Black Swan"


"And It Rained All Night"


This band is just killing it. I have to imagine that playing The Eraser live would be any drummer's dream and Joey Waronker has brought the deep hip hop kick drums and busy stick clatter to nasty life.

Choosing Flea was an inspired move. He has such a cartoonish persona that people forget what a sensitive and versatile musician he is. But this material is actually right in line with his signature sound - when most people think of Thom Yorke's solo material they think of glitch programming and moody piano, but there is also funk bass driving most of the tracks.

Melanie Fiona "It Kills Me"

"It Kills Me" leaked last year and I've been loving on it ever since. It's a rare thing when a single this catchy grabs my attention for a while... and then won't go away. There are, like, ten different hooks in this thing. Collect them all.

I guess the hugeness and theater of it give it a Supremes/Motown quality but for some reason I hear Ennio Morricone and the scores he did for the epic Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns.

Download: Daniel "Sugar Fish"

Daniel "Sugar Fish" [From Lazrus]