Off on travels for a bit, so: an assortment of old and even older goodies. Unashamedly navel-gazing, this is more stuff I love beyond all reason. Oh, picture is Caspar David Friedrich's wonderful Cross In The Mountains. Friedrich's an artist I have a distinct fondness for- he's probably best known for that rather (in?)famous represntation of the romantic movement Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog, but it's his religious works that are of greater interest to me. Strange really, but there we go. A post on his work will most likely appear at some point in the future. Anyway. Onwards to the music!
First: The Stokes- Someday. I really don't care what people say about this band- Is This It? remains for me a benchmark of early-teen cool; no one is as insouciant as they were to me then. It just has that perfect swagger to it- and (as p4k rightly say) they'll never, ever better that record. This has to be my favourite track- a weird kind of old-before-their-time youthful nostalgia later strip-mined by bands like Japandroids (their latest single Younger Us being a prime example...) but done absolutely perfectly.
First: The Stokes- Someday. I really don't care what people say about this band- Is This It? remains for me a benchmark of early-teen cool; no one is as insouciant as they were to me then. It just has that perfect swagger to it- and (as p4k rightly say) they'll never, ever better that record. This has to be my favourite track- a weird kind of old-before-their-time youthful nostalgia later strip-mined by bands like Japandroids (their latest single Younger Us being a prime example...) but done absolutely perfectly.
Next: Parenthetical Girls- Evelyn McHale. An absolutely sumptuously shot video accompanies probably my favourite single of the past year- and the tale behind the track was/is the rather beguiling picture that also heads this blog, of a certain... Ms. Evelyn McHale. Look her up- the story makes for a fascinating read, and the full picture (known, somewhat tellingly, as "The Most Beautiful Suicide", and the inspiration for an Andy Warhol print) is oddly hypnotic.
The opening track from the irresistably charming Johnny Flynn's first album, A Larum. The song's called The Box, and this video was made for an excellent series of which you may or may not be aware: the takeaway shows by La Blogotheque. Originally (I believe they've branched out...) all shot in and around Paris, placing musicians in odd and unusual performance spaces, I could happily post a whole series of them (and have, on facebook... much to my later embarrasment re: the effusive praise I gave) but this is a favourite. Equally worth your while are: Architecture In Helsinki, Yeasayer, Grizzly Bear, Beirut and The Tallest Man On Earth's sessions... It's an endless succesion of brilliance, and any list just scrapes the surface. More than worth wasting an afternoon on.
The opening track from the irresistably charming Johnny Flynn's first album, A Larum. The song's called The Box, and this video was made for an excellent series of which you may or may not be aware: the takeaway shows by La Blogotheque. Originally (I believe they've branched out...) all shot in and around Paris, placing musicians in odd and unusual performance spaces, I could happily post a whole series of them (and have, on facebook... much to my later embarrasment re: the effusive praise I gave) but this is a favourite. Equally worth your while are: Architecture In Helsinki, Yeasayer, Grizzly Bear, Beirut and The Tallest Man On Earth's sessions... It's an endless succesion of brilliance, and any list just scrapes the surface. More than worth wasting an afternoon on.
Finally, we have an excerpt from William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. It'd be difficult to give a quick and easy precis of the loops' genesis here, but if you're interested, the wikipedia page (or, indeed, the notes accompanying this video on youtube) explains. Stunningly beautiful stuff, and sososo much more than the 'ambient music' tag it seems to get hit with. This is what forward-thinking music ought to be: evocative, interesting and ultimately deeply moving.
Finally, if you're interested, my holiday reading currently stands at:
-Two books on the philosophy of law;
-Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness Of Being;
-Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair;
-Ginsberg's Howl, Kaddish and other poems;
-Joyce's Dubliners;
-A book on the Nuremberg war crimes trials;
-The Odyssey;
-A collection of Will Self's essays, Feeding Frenzy;
-A book about young British artists and the Great War, entitled A Crisis of Brilliance;
-and although not strictly reading, I have a a shitload of letters I've promised to write to friends...
Piece o' piss. Take care, o irregular reader, and I'll be returning in two weeks, or thereabouts- unless I decide to go native and never return to civilisation or the wuh wuh wuh. Which isn't massively likely.
Finally, if you're interested, my holiday reading currently stands at:
-Two books on the philosophy of law;
-Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness Of Being;
-Neruda's Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair;
-Ginsberg's Howl, Kaddish and other poems;
-Joyce's Dubliners;
-A book on the Nuremberg war crimes trials;
-The Odyssey;
-A collection of Will Self's essays, Feeding Frenzy;
-A book about young British artists and the Great War, entitled A Crisis of Brilliance;
-and although not strictly reading, I have a a shitload of letters I've promised to write to friends...
Piece o' piss. Take care, o irregular reader, and I'll be returning in two weeks, or thereabouts- unless I decide to go native and never return to civilisation or the wuh wuh wuh. Which isn't massively likely.
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