Saturday, July 31, 2010

spiritualized- radio city music hall 7.30.10

watched the stream of the 'ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space' show in new york last night. i couldn't swing $400 to get myself there, into a hotel and back. on thursday a very nice woman who comes in to where i work informed me that the show was going to be streamed through spin.com. never would've thought to check if she hadn't said anything as i had pretty much put it out of my mind that this show was even happening. i watched it and recorded the audio from it last night and it has made a perfect bootleg in my mind. in my opinion this live stream blows the 'live at the albert hall' official live record clear out of the water and into dust. talk about intense. i've never cried while watching a streaming concert on my computer, but i did last night. at least five times. sublime and amazing. i'd rate it as the best show i'd ever seen if i'd actually been there in person. it almost felt like i was there watching it online- a very intimately filmed video of what was a huge event. beautiful. so, anyway, i'll shut up and post the link to the mp3s of it. flacs will follow if they're requested. this is the full show, btw and it sounds great.



1. ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space
2. come together
3. i think i'm in love
4. all of my thoughts
5. stay with me
6. electricity
7. home of the brave/the individual
8. broken heart
9. no god only religion
10. cool waves
11. cop shoot cop...
12. encore break
13. out of sight
14. oh happy day

the stream is being rebroadcast on friday at the following link- http://www.spin.com/spin25live
and, of course, for you-
192 kpbs mp3s
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ke48j1

flacs, pt. 1-
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7wheo8
pt. 2-
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zkahf6
pt. 3-
http://www.sendspace.com/file/c9w74a

Friday, July 23, 2010

dead sound

wow, what a rollercoaster i've been on for the last few months- since june specifically. fortunately things have died down considerably and i've gotten a sense of normalcy back into my mental life. that seasonal affective disorder is no joke, folks- please be a bit nicer to those scant few of us who are unfortunate enough to have to suffer through it during the summer when we must be silent. i've actually met a few fellow summer depression sufferers who actually take on the guise of people who enjoy the summer- they've been relieved to find a fellow summer depression sufferer. why am i telling you this? you don't care.
i'm sitting here at the wormhole cafe in wicker park on this, the balmiest day of the summer so far. the dog days are here, folks. this is when i try to imagine that it is already september. don't tell anyone- shhh. i like this coffee shop quite a bit- it's basically laid out like a giant living room and full of 80s posters and toys and whatnot. 80s nostalgia normally really pisses me off, but i feel like i'm in the womb here- who ever put all of this stuff up on display obviously lived through the 80s so all of it takes on the air of comfort rather than irony. there's a 'calvin & hobbes' collection and a mad magazine on the table in front of my leather couch to give you an idea.
what am i going to talk about today?
'field of flowers' is done now. i mixed down the last of the current incarnations of the lagging songs and instantly felt a twinge of post-partum sadness and depression as soon as i started to listen to these mixes. i'm bummed because the songs are all done- there's nothing left to record. while this record does have a bit of a thrown-together feeling (what with being a collection of four 7" singles and whatnot) i was just beginning to enjoy working on it. brandon appears on a few songs. stefanie wasn't able to recreate several of the drum parts that i did on the recordings, which is kind of a drag- she only plays drums on two of the seven songs. so much of it was done before i even knew they would be released. i'd been going through a very creative time- recording a lot, writing some new songs- and now it seems to have petered out. i was trying to record a soulful/gospelly sounding song and it just didn't come out that well. i'm very disappointed with it. i tried to overdub myself into a gospel choir and it just doesn't sound very gospelly- it just sounds like what it is- a 'tyler choir.' i was going to show it to stefanie and maybe i still will. it's probably something i'm going to have to take another crack at.
listening to the dying strains of 'disintegration' right now. there's such a 'long walk home' feeling to 'untitled' that i absolutely love. 'homesick' has the quality of having been up all night drinking and watching the sun coming up and feeling hungover already. 'untitled' has a sense of hope and resignation despite the sad subject matter. i suppose the musical death by drowning metaphor could have something to do with it, but even that seems like a calm, peaceful death on the record.
i've been buying a ton of records again and i've been playing a fair amount of nintendo these days even though it's not doing much to keep me from writing new songs. i wrote a beautiful song called 'summer is too long' that stefanie ended up playing on. not sure what to do with it- maybe put it on 'chinese blue.' there are other finished tracks that are probably going to be on 'chinese blue'- should that eventuality ever actually come to pass. at the moment i'm feeling very cavalier about it- it's going to be an obscenely long time off if it does come out... like 2013 or so. one of the reasons i wanted to do stefanie's idea of a 7" collection is because it would buy me a lot of time and cost about the same as a full-on lp project, but be more compact and song-based. also a vehicle to get some excellent tracks out that have just been laying on a shelf collecting dust.
listening to florence and the machine right now. katelyn, our violinist, recommended it to me at the show that was on my birthday and i finally got around to getting my slimy little mitts on it. i like it a lot for the most part- i think it's a brilliantly inspired approach to pop music. some of it is perhaps a touch too poppy for me, but the production is really beautifully handled and the music is very unique and stands on its own. it reminds me a lot of kate bush in that sense- some kate bush is a bit too poppy for me as well (nothing on 'hounds of love' applies to this statement). 'blinding' is probably my favourite track on the album.
after this i'm off to beans and bagels to meet up with kayla to go to the grafton for some drinks. that'll be a lot of fun. it's nice to be able to go out and get drinks again- i've been trying to pull myself out of the financial funk i've been in since i got back from mike's wedding back in june. it became clear pretty quickly that the month of july would be a bit of a wash-out financially. i'm trying to plan ahead so that the same doesn't happen when i go home for lauren's wedding. still entertaining the idea of doing a show when we go down for that. i'm going to have to get everyone together to determine that one. don't think we're going to be able to bring brandon with us, which might put a damper on whether or not the strings players will come with us. i definitely only want to do it if we can fit a shalloboi show into the visit- i think it would be pretty cool to play a show with them at the record bar for all of our friends back home. i'm also trying to think in terms of the possibility that it won't work out and stefanie and i will just have to go back by ourselves. still might be worthwhile to schedule a shalloboi show. stefanie and i were talking about how there are times when we both miss playing shows as just a two-piece. that last show at ronny's went really well and it was super fun to just crank it up and play really loud and not have to worry about drowning anyone out. plus we never play 'sloba' with the string players- something that i'm thinking of rectifying. i think it could work with them- although they will be spectacularly bored with the parts i've got imagined for them. anyway, that's about it. i think i'm out of stuff to talk about.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

diary 7.7.10- 'summer is too long'

played this at work today- it is highly effective in getting others into my mindset and how i have been feeling over the course of the last month or two. bummed that all of my other playlists are gone, except for a select few that i managed to publish here. perhaps i can recreate them soon.



1. super-sonic- the brian jonestown massacre- give it back!
2. set it on fire- moon duo- catch as catch can 7"
3. velocity girl- primal scream- random b-side
4. trouble- hope sandoval & the warm inventions- through the devil softly
5. at her open door- dead meadow- feathers
6. let it die- the dutchess & the duke- sunset/sunrise
7. this familiar way- nina nastasia- outlaster
8. blues- mazzy star- live bootleg- loppen, denmark
9. i wanted everything- kurt vile- square shells
10. luna sea- vetiver- vetiver
11. cheree- suicide- suicide
12. you baby (can't stand the rain)- dean & britta- l'avventura
13. a brief history of love- the big pink- a brief history of love
14. when the sun hits- slowdive- souvlaki
15. real love- beach house- teen dream
16. roads- portishead- roseland new york
17. devil got my woman- skip james- complete recordings (1931)

Thursday, July 15, 2010

sometimes you can feel it all slipping away...

...and are completely powerless to stop it- just watch it fall through your fingers. maybe we are doomed to relive the same life over and over and make all of the same mistakes without being able to change it or better it. i feel like i see this all the time...
i dunno, i'm just not feeling so good right now. grappling with some weird stuff that isn't necessarily new, but also not any easier to deal with despite having experienced it before and knowing that it's not the end of the world. this time is with a new and delightful twist.
i'm mainly worried about the well-being of my band as the drama factor seems to be on a rocket hurtling towards the sun. it's all very cute and fun at the moment, but i'm beginning to become aware of things that are happening (and not happening) that are kind of revealing themselves to me as being like chess pieces placed on a board one by one into a formation that i'm not entirely comfortable with. i also find myself being dragged into the impending drama- which i'm none too happy about. furthermore i have no one i can talk to about any of it. i was wondering why i was feeling so depressed at the few shows we've played with brandon (two total, actually) and i'm beginning to think that it was a premonition of something bad happening. he's kind of come in and become this gigantic force pulling everything in. first it made us all a lot tighter as friends very quickly, but now i can't help but feel that it's going to destroy the balance that we had before he showed up. we had such a good thing going. in a way now we have a better thing going, but it's just... it's so difficult to talk about in a public forum like this even though i know no one reads this thing.
it's also forced me to look at myself in a different light- despite everything i do in this band i am not in control of it at all. not a particularly revelatory discovery, granted, but a pretty startling reminder nevertheless. also not the kind of thing that i need rubbed in my face at the moment- i feel powerless enough in my daily life to keep my ego in check. my job is testing the outermost, unexplored limits of my patience right now (that's really saying something, too). i find myself leaving there every day mired in hopeless thoughts of complete futility and never-ending dread. some of those feelings are creeping into my band as well- not that there wasn't some sense of that already there, but it's being shoved to foreground once again.
i also know that i'm probably getting worked up over absolutely nothing. i just feel like it's coming so soon and i'm not ready for it at all... and i'm having so much trouble talking about it because it makes me feel so incredibly and deeply sad...