dreaming wide awake

Signs of Spring

No overall theme. Today I'd just like to post some tracks that I've been in love with lately with quick notes.

The past year my new joy has been discovering old Jamaican R'n'B and reggae. The sounds are foreign and soulful at the same time which is a way of saying: all I want out of music. Now I've have the double fortune of stumbling onto the Ethiopiques reissue series of Egyptian jazz from the '70s, which moves me in the same way. This track sounds like motown sold at the third-world duty free shop and stapled onto Van Morrison's astral weeks. It's pastoral yet dusty. It sounds impoverished and humid. I can't get enough of it. When I really listen close, it's worse. I imagine if you lived through Haile Selassie, as Ahmed has, you've earned the sadness you might sing with.

Mahmoud Ahmed – Tezeta

Speaking of Jamaica, I was actually very slow to come around to Bob Marley. Half of my aversion to accepting reggae was the college hippie stigma, and nothing epitomizes trustafarians more than a Bob Marley t-shirt. But, it turns out the early Wailers stuff is as good as anything I've found on this journey into the soul of Jamaica. But thank Jah for miraculous bad judgement, like this live Bob Marley and the Wailers album (Live at the Apollo) I just found. It's completely inappropriate to release something that sounds this bad/wonderful. Half the mix is bass, which is distorting the entire recording. It sounds like a concert in a bunker at the end of the world. When the end comes, may it come to the sound of dub bass. This is really the pinacle of what a person can and should do with a bass.

Bob Marley and the Wailers – Concrete Jungle

Swervedriver will always make me think of spring. Their singer, Adam Franklin, now records as Toshack Highway and there's no difference in that regard. Spring feelings. Here are three tracks. The first is a b-side, acoustic version of the single of his forthcoming record. I actually don't like the single, which is a rock arrangement, at all. Thank god they released the b-side, which is relaxed and regrettful folk. The other two songs are the best one-two punch moment in album sequencing I've ever heard. And the reason is that the second of the two is based on the first track backwards. Amazing. Valentine is Adam Franklin getting in touch with the shoegazer sound that his band was labeled with but never really lived up to. Board the Bullet train is the sound of the universe accidentally snapping back into place and working.

Toshack Highway – Birdsong (Moonshiner version)
Toshack Highway – Valentine Number One
Toshack Highway – Board the Bullet Train

I just discovered this Milosh guy. He's a sad dude from Toronto that makes some of that emasulated indie laptop pop like Postal Service. Difference is, he's actually got soul. This stuff works on a few levels, it's easy on the ears at first but after a few listens started to matter to me. I dig the fact that he's just saying "My life," in this song. The music is emotional enough to make the understatement tolerable instead of a posture.

Milosh – My Life

All the reviews of Fennesz that I've read use the word noise alot and that put me off from checking it out. I'm not interested in obnoxious sounds. What they should have said was that he uses the sound of electricity – purring, crackling, hissing and humming electricity. I'm not into squeals and feedback and harsh textures. But I do like the sound of current. Especially wedded to minimal composition of the most subliminal variety. Endless Summer is supposed to be the shit. But I say the new one, Venice, is the shit.

Fennesz – Rivers of Sand

posted by Daniel @ 5:47 PM