pause the orchestra 8/29
happy almost-september
september is probably my least favorite month of the year. i feel like it has the least personality…do you know what i mean? anyways, here are some things i’ve been really enjoying over the past week. i wanted to include a couple things that aren’t music, but most of it is music. alas, enjoy! i hope you find something you love or something you hate – let me know if you do, then we can either share a mutual affection or fight with each other a little bit, both of which i’m very open to.
playlist of everything mentioned this week here.
obligatory shout out to the em dash.
i remember the first time i heard soför bey some time ago, because immediately after i listened to it i listened to it again and again until i had listened to it 5 times back to back. that little ding and drop at 0:29 just make me so happy….anyways, i didn’t get around to listening to the album in full until recently, and it turns out that every track is just as awesome and altin gün rocks. they’re a turkish band – tracks like anlatmam derdimi and derdimi dökersem feel like a modern twist on özdemir erdoğan, who was elected as a turkish state artist in 1998 – but a bulk of gece reminds me of 70s/80s arabic funk music – think al massrieen, issam hajali, rogér fakhr. apart from soför bey, i think kolbastı is a must-listen – it’s a little psychedelic, a little funk, very sexy.
i’ve been following tonstartssbandht for a while now – their 2009 album an when was revelatory in its weirdness, bridging a gap between noise and psych that just ends up sounding like you’re in an opium den…..in a positive way? tracks like 5ft7 and black country just feel like sofia coppola needle drops in the making – yes, i have a playlist based on that sound because i’m sick in the head – but there was still enough sonorous-yet-discordant oddity to keep me listening. so petunia comes as a bit of a surprise – it’s polished, its instruments distinguished, rather than the wall of sound that an when seemed so predicated on. tracks like smilehenge and hey bad are cleaner than anything i’ve heard in their previous work – some of them almost a little hymnal? – but still super addictive, i mean, that hook in hey bad is just so good.
TIME SKIFFS [ALBUM] – ANIMAL COLLECTIVE
i guess animal collective has been claimed by the alexg-carseatheadrest-duster stratus of mucore male manipulators (none of these words are in the bible) but, like, all of that music is pretty good, and animal collective is pretty good. and time skiffs is really good. it was released in 2021; i’m a little late to the front-to-back listen, but i loved it – it’s like a slightly more mature version of fall be kind, with those folky influences and orchestral layers, just with an added depth. i love strung with everything, we go back, and dragon slayer, but i honestly think royal and desire has to be my favorite song off the album; it makes me feel like i’m melting into a pool of jelly. the best way i can describe it is that royal and desire is to time skiffs as me and your mama is to “awaken, my love!”
my close friends know that i am not a crier, and that i pretty much have 1-3 allotted yearly cries, and so when it’s a book that makes me cry……yeah. it feels wrong to even recommend this (trigger warning for pretty much everything trigger warnings are usually distributed for), but it feels more wrong to not include it in The List of Things That Changed Me This Week, and it really was one of those books that left me in a state of mental paralysis after closing it. it seems impossible to create something so devastating and almost intentionally without-catharsis to the point that the devastation is that catharsis, that you’re cleansed by the descent into darkness rather than the ascent from it. anyways, i hated reading it but loved it in of itself, and on a much lesser note it’s probably one of my favorite book titles ever. i think for books i’ll include my favorite quote, and while there were many in this one, these are the three that immediately come to mind, two are quite long but i honestly can’t stand to truncate them:
“why wasn’t friendship as good as a relationship? why wasn’t it even better? it was two people who remained together, day after day, bound not by sex or physical attraction or money or children or property, but only by the shared agreement to keep going, the mutual dedication to a union that could never be codified. friendship was witnessing another’s slow drip of miseries, and long bouts of boredom, and occasional triumphs. it was feeling honored by the privilege of getting to be present for another person’s most dismal moments, and knowing that you could be dismal around him in return.”
“and he cries and cries, cries for everything he has been, for everything he might have been, for every old hurt, for every old happiness, cries for the shame and joy of finally getting to be a child, with all of a child’s whims and wants and insecurities, for the privilege of behaving badly and being forgiven, for the luxury of tendernesses, of fondnesses, of being served a meal and being made to eat it, for the ability, at last, at last, of believing a parent’s reassurances, of believing that to someone he is special despite all his mistakes and hatefulness, because of all his mistakes and hatefulness.”
“where else would they get to use their semaphores, that language that had only two speakers in the whole world?” [of the way two best friends can nonverbally communicate across a room full of people]
i love this and can’t stop rereading it. i’ll just let it speak for itself.
i’m going to throw in a few singles i’m enjoying; i’ll just add the genres rather than descriptions since this is already getting pretty long, and i’ll add them all to the weekly playlist/hyperlink them:
thanatos – kinoko teikoku [japanese dream pop/shoegaze]
7 rooms of gloom – four tops [soul] //this might be my favorite four tops song?!?!
omolu – eloah [brazilian soul/funk]
ineffable mindfuck – brian jonestown massacre [psych rock i guess?] //my fave song of the new album
fell into the ocean – dan deacon [indietronica….lol]
why am i so short? – soft machine [english prog rock]
light your windows – quicksilver messenger service [acid rock]
think that’s it for this week. if you made it this far: love you so much and hope you read next week and hope you have a fantastic week until then and sending you lots of kisses and love.
okayyeahthanksbye.
today’s daily last.fm topster:
{{yeah goblin is in there i’ve had a she revival in my life recently what about it}}
Pester john is an amazing song but respectfully the rest of that album does not need to exist