Mp3 Killed the Vinyl DJ 15: The Spooks

The Spooks: 2 tracks from
Death from Beyond the Grave [.zip]

Ah, Hallowe'en… Cool for kids, but for adults, Hallowe'en merely caters to conformists who think they're being «crazy» by not conforming to standard measures of propriety by—that's right—conforming to the expectation that they get dressed up for Hallowe'en.

«Toilet Guppies,» I hear you think, «you think too much.» And you'd be right. (Especially if I think I'm hearing your thoughts.)

The best remedy for thoughts, of course, is the moronic noise dredged up by Black Lips. In this case, the three original members of Black Lips in conjunction with members of Deerhunter and the Kiwis, for the silly Hallowe'en act the Spooks:

It's not Mozart. Or Black Lips, even. But the inept vinyl transfer you'll find above—of incompetently composed and performed songs from the Spooks' one and only album, 2009's Death from Beyond the Grave—is the closest Toilet Guppies will ever come to celebrating an obnoxious Anglospherical holiday. (Yes, Valentine's Day, you're next.)

Do me a favour and at least dress up in something wrong.

Net Nuggets 34: Deerhunter & a Ghost of the Russian Sex Industry

Deerhunter: «Helicopter» (Diplo & Lunice mix) [mp3]

We here at Toilet Guppies don't much care for advertising, especially in cases where it pretends to be art, as with «music videos». Yet the new single by Deerhunter is so sublime you should hear it (without actually illegally downloading it), so here's the relatively inoffensive video, for your listening pleasure:



Diplo and Lunice's remix, however, is freely up for grabs. It's a good listen, too.

The song is based on a true story, as told by author Dennis Cooper:

Dima (real name Dimitry Marakov) was born in 1986 in the town of Nalchik, Russia. From a young age, he dreamed of working in the fashion industry as a designer. Lacking the moral or financial support of his parents, he actively sought out contacts within the industry through the internet. At the age of 14, he became acquainted with a successful fashion photographer in St. Petersburg who invited the boy to come live with him and work as his assistant. Dima accepted the offer and moved in with the photographer. According to friends of Dima, he became the older man's lover for approximately the next year. He eventually grew dissatisfied with the lack of benefits he had been promised would result from the arrangement. He left the photographer to become live-in lovers with a wealthy man who provided the financial backing for a conglomerate of pornographic gay websites. It was at this point that Dimitry adopted the stage name Dima and, with the help of false documents that corrected his age to the legal 18, began a successful career modeling naked and starring in hardcore sex videos on the gay websites financed by his lover.

Between the age of 15 and 18, Dima was a highly sought after pornographic model and performer. He saved the money he made from modeling to pay for the tuition at a leading college of fashion that he hoped to attend when he reached 18. At a certain point, Dima began supplementing his income by renting himself out as an escort within his lover's circle of associates and acquaintances. According to friends of Dima, they included several leading figures in the entertainment industry as well as one of the most powerful men in Russia's world of organized crime. Dima began to express concern to his friends that the organized crime figure had become obsessed with him, but he refused to accept their advice to stop seeing the man because of the large amount of money these dates were earning him. Sometime in 2005, Dima abruptly left his lover, gave up his modeling career, cut off all communication with his friends, and moved in with the organized crime figure. The last public Dima sighting was late that year when his friend Ignat Lebedev, who was also working as a male escort at the time, accompanied a client to a private sex club where he claims to have witnessed a very thin and confused looking Dima being forcibly sodomized by a group of perhaps ten to fifteen men. Lebedev claims his client identified one of the men as the organized crime figure and dissuaded him from speaking to Dima for his own protection.

Lebedev claims he described what he'd seen to Dima's former lover and was told Dima had been killed the previous week and that he shouldn't speak of this again. Lebedev reported both incidents to the police, but after interviewing the lover and being told Lebedev had made the story up, they declined to investigate the matter. In 2006, Lebedev persuaded a prominent Russian gay journalist to write an article on Dima's disappearance, but during the course of investigating the story, the writer was abducted by unknown assailants, beaten, and told he would be murdered if he wrote the story. Dima has not been seen or reliably heard from in three years, although in early 2007 another organized crime figure, Evgeny Ershova, who was awaiting trial on an unrelated murder charge, claimed that in late 2005 he witnessed a young male prostitute matching Dima's description be pushed out of a helicopter over a remote forest in the north of Russia. Before Dima's ex-lover died of lung cancer in late 2007, he reportedly confessed to friends that Dima was sold as a sex slave to a man in the Ukraine in late 2005 and had lived until late 2006 when he'd committed suicide.

Net Nuggets 28: Radio Free Indie, or: How I Learned to Stop Dancing and Love Indie

This toilet guppy has been going through a period of unprecedented, almost insolent optimism and enthusiasm lately. Those of you who
received the annual winter compilation CD will have heard a two-and-a-half-year staring contest with the abyss condensed into one utterly bleak, unlistenable CD (for which I do apologise), vomited out, leaving yours truly purified at last! (I win, Abyss!)

Worry not; like anything else it probably won't last, but the days of this being a downer death trip blog may just be a thing of the past. And as the best music is usually somehow negative (sorrowful, aggressive, perverted, or trying desperately to clamber to the top that is transcendence), that means the future of this blog hangs by a thin thread indeed. There's still music to post before I call it quits, however, and since today is Sunday—that grey day of nothing I used to find so heavy as a child—I'm grabbing the opportunity to share some of the self-indulgent, misery-guts music that's left in the ol' iTunes library…

Indie's a mixed bag. The flashes of brilliance—and they are brilliant—are almost swept away by an insufferable tide of collegiate, sensitive artiste blandness or knowing trendiness. It's enough to make you hate the guitar. And singer-songwriters. And the middle class. And suburbia. And institutions of education. And hipsters (if one didn't already hate them so). And hairdos. It makes you want to do extreme sports, or commit a heinous crime that would make even your own mother spit you in the face.

But it's not all navel gazing mediocrity or overly cerebral, sexless wankery with all the passion of a bong-hugging slacker—although you might be forgiven for thinking so from perusing websites such as Pitchfork (Rolling Stone for the noughties' discerning, computer literate hipster) or Internet radio station Daytrotter. But for every dozen or so Sufjan Stevenses, there's a Devendra Banhart; for every ten Pavements there's a Blonde Redhead, so don't lose heart!

Over at Daytrotter, there are so many sessions by so many artists to download, all for free, that navigating it is an autist's dream come true. Naturally, Toilet Guppies has only listened to a fraction of the sessions, but that doesn't stop me from compiling a best-of primer.

The problem with indie becomes apparent at times during this sampler, but that's due to indie overload more than the quality of the songs, which all bear the Toilet Guppies stamp of approval. And worry not, I've sorted away the trite campfire songs (so that you wouldn't have to—you're welcome). So, rock out to Black Lips, grieve to Spoon, dance to High Places, dream to Elvis Perkins, whistle to Grizzly Bear, and (try not to) weep to Will Oldham. Terrific stuff.

WARNING: You may still want to go listen to something like this afterwards, just to regain your equilibrium, libido, sense of humour and overall lust for life… In the meantime, fold your brittle, little self into a foetal position and indulge:

V/A: Contemporary Indie for Dummies—Daytrotter Sessions [.zip]:

1. Jana Hunter: «Pinnacle»
2. Marissa Nadler: «Salutations in the Dark»
3. Grizzly Bear: «Shift»
4. Department Of Eagles: «1997»
5. Deerhunter: «Heatherwood»
6. Spoon: «The Ghost of You Lingers»
7. The Dodos: «Horny Hippies»
8. The Walkmen: «Yellow Kid»
9. High Places: «From Stardust to Sentience»
10. Elvis Perkins: «Good Friday»
11. The Cave Singers: «Seeds of Night»
12. Bonnie «Prince» Billy: «The Sun Highlights the Lack in Each»
13. Rodriguez: «Sugar Man»
14. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: «There Will Be Mud»
15. Akron/Family: «The Land»
16. The Entrance Band: «Lookout!»
17. Black Lips: «Take My Heart»

All tracks are in 128 kbps (Daytrotter download standard). Hundreds, if not thousands more mp3s are freely available over at the gracious Daytrotter site.

Net Nuggets 27: Found Atlas Sound

A while back, I put together a compilation of tracks by Bradford Cox, culled from the extensive collection of free mp3s over at his generous Deerhunter/Atlas Sound blog. Here's a second installment, of more recent material—home recordings that blur the distinctions between electronica, ambient and indie rock. For the most part, this collection is conspicuously (delightfully!) free of the angst that—unfortunately for Cox, one assumes—permeated much of the material he wrote and performed when younger. But this little mini-collection proves that lightness needn't be insipid or boring, or a cop-out. Apart perhaps from «Time Warp», this is the buoyant sound of nothing weighing you, no one holding you down. (Maybe even someone raising you up, Josh Groban stylee.) Truly, enjoy:

A VIRTUAL GUIDE TO BRADFORD COX [.zip]

1. Springtime Instrumental
   (B-side of virtual 7" no. 8: «Time Warp»)
2. Solo, or «The Square»
   (A-side of virtual 7" no. 7: «Solo, or «The Square»»)
3. Maybe Logic
   (A-side of virtual 7" no. 6: «Maybe Logic»)
4. Balcony
   (B-side of virtual 7" no. 4: «Amsterdam MIDI»)
5. Galaxy Cruisers (for Animal Collective)
6. Guitar 1 (Bitchfest 08)
7. Time Warp
   (A-side of virtual 7" no. 8: «Time Warp»)
8. Christmas Synths
9. Memorial Corridor
   (B-side of virtual 7" no. 7: «Solo, or «The Square»»)
10. Doctor
    (A-side of virtual 7" no. 9: «Doctor»)

All songs credited to Atlas Sound.

That Cox has chosen to make these tracks available for free warrants gratitude and humility. The man possesses rare integrity. His latest album, Logos (under the moniker Atlas Sound) is out now on 4AD in Europe and Kranky in North America. Do the man—and yourself—a favour.

And Now for Something Completely Different: Love (Pt. 1)

… a new series in which Toilet Guppies takes a look at the finest in popular music love balladry. First off is Lou Reed's classic Velvet Underground & Nico tune «I'll Be Your Mirror»:

I'll be your mirror
Reflect what you are, in case you don't know
I'll be the wind, the rain and the sunset
The light on your door to show that you're home

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
'Cause I see you

I find it hard to believe you don't know
The beauty that you are
But if you don't, let me be your eyes
A hand in your darkness, so you won't be afraid

When you think the night has seen your mind
That inside you're twisted and unkind
Let me stand to show that you are blind
Please put down your hands
'Cause I see you

I'll be your mirror
(Reflect what you are)

If we could read minds and see completely into the inner sanctum of other people's nekkid selves, piercing their very being without averting our gaze, chances are we'd be scared. Scared or bored. (Or ashamed, should they happen to be better than us—or worse than us, yet not quite frightening.)

I don't know if it was fearlessness, a perpetual sense of excitement or stupid pride that enabled him to do it, but Lou Reed managed to imagine such a scenario and still salvage a belief in love—and convince us, too, which is the real feat. Perhaps sensing some of the hopelessly broken parts inside the heart & mind of his main squeeze at the time, Nico, he sought to assure her he would not avert his eyes in fright, boredom or shame should she drop her guard and reveal her true nature to him. It wasn't long after this, however, that the German chanteuse abruptly ended their liaison by casually announcing, to the Velvet Underground during band rehearsal, something to the effect that she had gone off Jewish cock. (Or so the gossip mill goes.)

This ultimate come-back aside, «I'll Be Your Mirror» is an enduring song of love and support that rings just as true between real friends as it does between sincere lovers. (Tolerance and acceptance are not yet romantic love, so it may even work better that way.) It also stands out by being, despite the clunky rhymes of its poetry and its lack of eloquence, an intelligent love song, which would be a dying breed if it weren't already just a curious anomaly occurring at intervals so few and far between they're all but statistically insignificant. Fools rush in and write songs about love for other fools to rush in to. But this song doesn't promise anything wild and crazy like everlasting love, or resort to pompous imagery and metaphors. «I'll Be Your Mirror» is pure, simple—too straightforward and sincere for poetry.

When a love song falls flat on its face, by failing to achieve for the writer what he intended it to do, it loses credibility, threatening to take Love itself with it. But despite the failure of Reed and Nico's affair, you'd have to be deeply cynical—damaged, in fact (or simply not very tolerant)—to scoff at the message of «I'll Be Your Mirror».

Besides, Nico and Reed would sing this song again, together, many times. As evidenced by the rehearsal and live versions on this sampler:

V/A: «I'll Be Your Mirror» versions [.zip]

1. The Velvet Underground & Nico—Factory rehearsal
2. The Velvet Underground & Nico—alternate mix, from the Norman Dolph acetate
3. Lou Reed & Nico—hotel room tour rehearsal
4. Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico—live in concert
5. Atlas Sound—cover
6. Beck's Record Club—cover

In Norway, the most requested pop song by far at funerals is «Eg ser» («I See»). Bjørn Eidsvåg—the drunken, fornicating ex-priest who wrote the song—explained its popularity by reference to the fact that, in strife, what people want (or need) the most is simply to be seen. Recognition. In general, you could say it's the most basic psychological need for a mind.

Now, like you're not really crazy if you know you're crazy, you wouldn't be truly «twisted and unkind» if you were aware of it in your mind, and so the «mirror» Reed writes of will either show you that you're «twisted and unkind»—in which case you're not—or that you're not twisted and unkind. And so the mirror is the reason why love could be key, and could actually better a person. But that's not all.

Apparently inspired by Nico once telling Reed, «Let me be your mirror,» Reed set about writing this love song with its emphasis on non-judgment. That the song was intended for Nico—or that she had coined the phrase that inspired it in the first place—seems most fitting, seeing as Nico's music (The Marble Index in particular) does mirror any listener who has the fibre to not only hear but to properly listen to it. Acting as a mirror, her music gets as close as humanly possible to saying what cannot be said—to distilling and conveying what isolates each and every one of us from each and every other person, paradoxically almost transcending loneliness in the process, as if Nico's expression of the isolated nature of consciousness has carried us across the unbridgeable divide that separates us, by saying so completely and definitively, «I Am Alone»—the second most basic truth, unifying us all, following hot on the heels of that most fundamental human statement, the cogito ergo sum—until we realise that's like saying, «I Alone Am,» and we find ourselves back on our own distant shore again, staring over at someone equally alone, yet still isolated, only able to see them as a projected mirror image of our own hopelessly lonely selves.

Nico's mirror almost succeeds in transcending loneliness. «Almost,» because the mirror image doesn't bring the comfort to deliver us from our isolation. The comfort imagined by Reed. Reed, lacking the completely unflinching gaze of Nico, does not want to mirror the other person—unless his mirror is a fun house one, distorting the features (albeit favourably). Reed wishes to project the rose-tinted image of love he sees onto the other person, until even she sees that. Fair enough, and nice try, but Nico was no innocent school girl, starry-eyed and blind to the absolute difference dividing us.

The song goes, «I find it hard to believe you don't know the beauty you are.» Of course Lou Reed—being so familiar with loathing (self- or otherwise)—didn't find it hard to believe at all. But give him a break. Even he could be in love, and that's when your words go mad, delirious with loneliness like so many parched men in deserts spotting magnificent oases on the horizon.

«I'll Be Your Mirror» is a spark within this dark, and I'd never ridicule the sincere dream to which it (and most every one of us) aspires, but suffice it to say:

Mirror? Love is blind.

Net Nuggets 15: Bradford Cox Rocks!

In addition to writing and recording standard CD releases for band Deerhunter and solo project Atlas Sound, Bradford Cox records mp3s at home or on tour to share on his blog, for free. 131 of them to date, to be exact. Now that's generosity for you.

The remarkable thing—in addition to the generosity—is the high quality of this large quantity. A multi-instrumentalist master of the bedroom overdub, Cox has grasped that studio high fidelity is merely a convention that has outlived its Realist origins, and so makes demos like already perfect pearls, casting them out there and leaving it up to you to be a swine or not.

This primer I've compiled collects recordings made from 2006 until sometime in 2008. Cox still posts an occasional demo on his blog, but his technical proficiency has improved by now to the point where they sound like studio recordings. So, this first instalment features earlier, rougher recordings, their scruffy sound conserving the raw energy of new ideas, before they're over-thought.

The comp below is just a dip in the ocean; 117 more mp3s of time-consuming downloading await you at http://www.deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/. (Those with lives should just head on over to 4AD or Kranky Records and fork out handfuls of cash for some good old compact discs.)

INTRODUCTION TO BRADFORD COX [.zip]

1. You're so Fine
   (from «Altitude Sickness»)
2. Remembered By (remastered)
3. How Do I Look?
   (from «The Brian Foote EP»)
4. Fluorescent Grey
   (from Fluorescent Grey Demos & Out-takes)
5. Dr. Glass
   (from Fluorescent Grey Demos & Out-takes)
6. Activation
   (from «Orange Ohms Glow»)
7. Headphones
   (from Stereogum Presents… Enjoyed: A Tribute to Björk's Post)
8. Only Love Can Break Your Heart (original mix)
9. Children's Hospital (Screaming in the Face of Death #2)
   (from «Healing Music (for Madeline)»)
10. Tired Congregation
11. April 13 (MySpace edit)
12. Calvary Scars...
13. Oliver
14. Monochromatic
15. Dog Years
    (from «Ghetto Cross» 7")
16. Acrylics
    (from How I Escaped the Prison of Fractals)

1-3, 6-11, 13-14 & 16 credited to Atlas Sound.
4-5 & 12 credited to Deerhunter.
15 credited to Ghetto Cross (Bradford Cox & Cole Alexander).

Rare or Unreleased 23: Hermann Nitsch

Hermann Nitsch: «Stierschlachtung/Ausweldung» [mp3]

For many of us, the ever-looming, impending inevitability of our existence—which is the end of it—is scrupulously hidden from us. Covered in newspaper, as it were, since even the morbid images in the world news section transform violence and death into an abstraction. Intimation of death is avoided in the everyday through such mechanisms as anonymously presented, bloodless supermarket meat products, resembling a plastic that leaves no trace of the life lost in a brutality that's perfectly mundane and ordinary, however distant and alien it seems to the modern mind. The more we increase our consumption of blood, the more we hide our thirst for it. To complete our denial we lobby for animal rights and try to extend the political correctness that gives us our false sense of security to the natural world. We try to defeat death, not through the vicarious, cathartic and brutally honest rituals of old, but through sheer willful unawareness.

Other predators kill their prey without thought, whereas for us who are aware of our own mortality, murder—at least initially (before we're inured to it)—leads to thoughts of our own death. And the more we hypocritically get others to do the dirty work for us, the more we're shocked—equally hypocritically—when we're confronted with the acts we're paying specialists (butchers, soldiers, executioners) to perform, so that we may indulge in our silly and insipid romanticisms.

The fruits of the Enlightenment—of secularity, rationality, science—is sterilising humanity by erasing all rites and ceremonies that connect with unreasonable desires and unconscious grapplings with reality, such as the way we deal—often irrationally—with the capacity we've been cruelly equipped with to reflect on our own demise. Man's laws abolish those things that confront our morality but cannot be clearly and easily rationalised by the pragmatic mind. (Thus war, which serves a series of obvious purposes, is legal, whereas certain violent religious rituals, often confusing, are being forbidden, one by one, until all that remains are habitual church ceremonies full of crackers and a sip of wine, the real significance of which is lost on us.)

This is all connected with our futile attempts at denying the existence of the chaos that we're made from, and which inevitably defeats every one of us. Reason can only deal with it by psychologically denying and lawfully forbidding it, whereas certain cosmologies and religions—knowing we're at its mercy—interact with it. And so Hermann Nitsch—the infamous Actionist painter and performance artist, formerly transgressive and a criminal, but by now the toast of the Austrian cultural elite—tries to inject with his art some way of dealing with the chaos that reason cannot order.

In 2004, from 30 July to 2 August, Nitsch staged one of his Orgies-Mysteries Theatre plays at his castle in Prinzendorf, Austria. Although, being a painter, Nitsch directed his «play» to consist of a series of elaborately arranged and rather repetitive, symbolically laden tableaux (rather than a dramatic play, with plot and dialogue), the photos from the performance don't do the experience justice. The overwhelming smell of blood, as the Freudian anal expulsive, pagan retro quasi-rites were performed from dawn 'til dusk—below a merciless sun, intestines eviscerated in marinades of blood and sperm, over and over again—did something to the repressed and spoilt modern mind, so used to indulging in fantasies devoid of all the little things that awaken our baser nature, thought of as «ugly» or terrifying.

And then there's the music, performed by scores of choristers, symphonic string and brass players, organists and percussionists, hired for the occasion (and seemingly surprised at the spectacle, some bewildered and disbelieving, others slightly tickled). The music never stopped, nor were there usually any discernible melodies as such. It only varied in intensity, and its atonal nature—reminiscent of horror scores—provided the proceedings with the integral atmosphere of transgressing taboos, without which we'd have been quickly inured to the repetitive acts of violence (which, after all, is in our nature). Perhaps the perfect image of Nitsch's intention—not captured on camera—was the sight of the virgin white swans patrolling the courtyard, oblivious to what we experience as «shocking», drinking matter-of-factly from the pools of blood that had collected during the course of the day. The more horrific, the more beautiful; the more beautiful, the more doomed. As all the insides are taken out and mixed, crushed, jumbled, kneaded and finally eaten, life and death intermingle indistinguishably. It's that banal, but it doesn't get more basic than that—or more poignant, to mortal beings like ourselves.

So, to convey something more than mere images (so easily abstract), here's a rare piece of music, performed at Nitsch's 1984 staging of the Orgies-Mysteries Theatre during the climactic slaughtering of the bull. It's after this that the terror of death is replaced with a celebration of life, with everyone eating the sacrificed pigs and bulls and getting into the wine, the atonal classical music replaced by that of a local umpapa band. Rumour has it that after every staging of the play at Nitsch's castle the artist has to pay local farmers compensation for the damage done to their fields, as people high on the fumes of blood and drunk on the free-flowing wine finally take to the corn, to celebrate life in a way about as objectively ugly as the brutal meditation on death only a few hours before…

For those shocked or provoked by Nitsch's imagery, please take a look at Georges Franju's classic documentary, Le Sang des bêtes (1949), before you let your knee jerk:



Worse things are done, every day, on an industrial scale infinitely more cold and calculating than a feast that explores what is happening and what we're doing, as we're doing it. Only a cowardly hypocrite looks away or turns to vegetables—or cheese:

In our time… the slaughterhouse is cursed and quarantined like a plague-ridden ship. Now, the victims of this curse are neither butchers nor beasts, but those same good folk who countenance, by now, only their own unseemliness, an unseemliness commensurate with an unhealthy need of cleanliness, with irascible meanness, and boredom. The curse (terrifying only to those who utter it) leads them to vegetate as far as possible from the slaughterhouse, to exile themselves, out of propriety, to a flabby world in which nothing fearful remains and in which, subject to the ineradicable obsession of shame, they are reduced to eating cheese. (Georges Bataille, «Abbatoir», Documents 6, 1929)

Not to end on a down note, here's another piece of music that seems quite fitting—«Calvary Scars» (live) [mp3] by Deerhunter:

Crucified on a cross in front of all my closest friends
Crucified on a cross (in front)
Crucified by my hero who supplies the cross and nails
Crucified with backstage passes

Net Nuggets 14: One to Watch

Colin Caulfield: Rainwater File Sharing [.zip]

Colin Caulfield is some kind of YouTube wunderkind straight outta the suburbs. I'm assuming. His obvious influences are Deerhunter, Animal Collective and bears Panda and Grizzly. He seems to be a middle class US teen (early 20-something?) uploading covers of said artists onto YouTube, occasionally making it one of his original compositions instead.

As anyone who's ever witnessed a teen drama series or been subjected to the music of, say, Avril Lavigne or Jason Mraz or Marilyn Manson will know, when it comes to cultural product there are certain middle class suburb trappings. (I'm reminded of the story of how no-nonsense working class geezer Mark E. Smith simply instructed a new incarnation of the Fall to play «not like Radiohead.») Thankfully, privileged teens are—for the time being, at least—blessed with far more musically interesting hipster artists than back when I belonged to the same demographic (when, embarrassingly, we lapped up silliness like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, et al.). At least Caulfield's inspired by sonic adventurers like Animal Collective.

Although you could say Caulfield's originals are as derivative as his covers remain faithful, they don't come across derivative in a calculating sense. You know, that «let's-all-grow-beards-and-sport-flannel-and-begin-singing-whimsical-lyrics-in-harmony» oppor-tunism of someone like Fleet Foxes, who—along with the Monkees, Pearl Jam, Muse, Coldplay, etc.—only end up sounding like they've never had sex.

I don't know if Colin Caulfield has had sex, but his warm & fuzzy front lawn psychedelia is soothing, and really quite beautiful. It's reminiscent of whileing away days with a group of friends, indulging yourselves in the bourgeois luxury of «expanding your consciousness» on some lazy summer's day, while your folks are away and you have the house to yourself. Ah, th'innocence! The privilege! Spoilt Victorian children all…

I digress. These are all the mp3s I found of Caulfield's. (For more songs, check out his YouTube channel.) The majority of these tracks are covers, but although similar in style, they're not covers-by-numbers by any means. (His talents for arranging and producing are evident. Bradford Cox even preferred Caulfield's version of «Rainwater Cassette Exchange» to his own original.) But perhaps the most noteworthy track here is one of Caulfield's own.

«Do» sounds a lot like his influences (the kind of backwards phrased melody that Panda Bear specialises in). Yet what it lacks in originality the song makes up for in sincere simplicity—a light and tender sense of melody that you'd have to be one cold hearted, ghetto proletarian sumbitch to withstand. I wouldn't want to say anything rash, but this track almost makes me happy to be alive!

Once Caulfield has snatched the tricks of the trade from underneath the noses of his idols—and he's well on his way—and worked those influences out of his system somewhat (and once life's had its way with him a little), we'll probably be hearing stellar stuff from this kid.

For now, relive the protected innocence of your privileged youth. Rewind that blasé bitterness, please, as you pop these tracks into the mp3 player of your choice. Before summer's over!

1. Winter's Love (Animal Collective cover)
2. Bro's/Carrots (Panda Bear covers)
3. Do (original)
4. Rainwater Cassette Exchange (Deerhunter cover)
5. Knees (original)
6. Thoughts (original)
7. Doggy (Animal Collective cover)
8. I Remember Learning How to Dive (Animal Collective cover)

The Turner Music Prize 2007, vol. 3

I get a bit dizzy perusing the titles that came out in 2007. And this is only a tiny selection!

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2007, Vol. 3 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

1. Lockett Pundt: «Whiteout» (a.k.a. «Glass Snake»)
Make me feel safe.
From http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/
2. Atlas Sound: «Only Love Can Break Your Heart»
Every once in a while, the memory of a fling or affair will fill your thoughts with shame or regret—perhaps a sadness that the two of you are no longer on speaking terms. Indulging your nostalgia, you may fancy yourself blue (drama queen that you are), but it’s at self-pitying times like those that you need to keep a firm eye on Truth and tell yourself—in the words of Neil Young—that after all, «only love can break your heart.»
From http://deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/

3. The Cave Singers: «Seeds of Night»
I like this song.
From Invitation Songs

4. Kyle Tomzo: «Bicycle»
Sometimes you like something despite yourself. The gaye naïveté of this song is kind of
repulsive, but I just can’t help myself—that slide guitar sends me into some manner of micro-ecstasy.
From Uncut Magazine’s Devendra Banhart-curated compilation Love Above All

5. Akron/Family: «Lake Song/New Ceremonial Music for Moms»
Devendra Banhart once said he makes albums for the «yoga mom
demographic,» but it seems Akron/Family just upped the ante: Gypsy guitar, tribal drumming, New Age housewife chanting, the Family’s own harmonies, whoops’n’hollers, «la-la-la»s, an exquisite vibraphone melody … order and chaos… This song has it all. Listening to this you swirl up into the sky, only to fall back down again, miraculously all in one piece.
From Love Is Simple

6. Deerhunter: «Wash Off»
A song for speeding and—by the time of the vocal-free «chorus»—crashing your car. A triumph of rhythm track over song structure. Impossible to sit still while listening to this.
From «Fluorescent Grey» EP

7. Antibalas: «Hilo»
Flawless groove here that evokes sadistic computer games, right-on political activism, quality pot and vintage porn, all at the same time.
From Security

8. The Budos Band: «Origin of Man»
Music to stalk Hollywood celebrities to, whilst confusedly imagining you're a '40s private eye stuck in the '70s. But then, if you're stalking someone you're bound to be a little confused…
From The Budos Band II

9. Edwyn Collins: «You'll Never Know (My Love)»
All soul, this song. Listening to it, all you can do is wait for summer and anticipate the next time you fall in love. Sometimes innocence isn’t repulsively idiotic, but sublime, like some forgotten truth.
From Home Again

10. Mark Ronson feat. Amy Winehouse: «Valerie»
The Dap-Kings show us how it’s done with their accompaniment to this great, typically wry, Social Realist Brit lyric, originally by the Zutons. And of course, Amy Winehouse effortlessly puts miles and miles
between herself and all the insipid little would-be soulful schoolgirls that have crawled out from underneath the rocks she's already left far behind. Her voice is just a medium, and from where it comes and to where it goes all the well-meaning simpletons going on about «poor druggie/alcy Amy» will never understand (which is precisely why she can’t be imitated—or surpassed). Long after her tabloid popularity's a thing of the past, the seemingly effortless star quality of Winehouse's singing will remain an off-handed «fuck you» to mediocrity everywhere and through the ages… In the meantime, leave her the fuck alone.
From Version

11. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings: «100 Days, 100 Nights»
The Dap-Kings’ various retro soul endeavours often sound a bit anonymous and samey, but once in a while they come up with a bull’s eye. Despite the best efforts of bland British schoolgirls and soulless American R&B divas, soul is alive!
From 100 Days, 100 Nights

12. Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons: «Beggin'» (Pilooski
re-edit)
Speaking of soul being alive, Pilooski masterfully remixes a track that didn’t really need remixing, but once he did it, the DJ just added a smidge of tasteful psychedelia. And that can only ever be a good thing.
From «Beggin'» single

13. Blonde Redhead: «23»
Coming out from the Blonde Redhead gig, with everyone ecstatic and on their way to the next watering hole to wind down from the
satisfaction of seeing the band live, just hold on to that frail thing beautiful and brittle singer Kazu Makino's voice comes from (and to which it speaks)—that sultry sadness, all sexy rhythm and melancholy melody, that only Blonde Redhead seems to be able to tap into—by simply going home. Because what to do or say? A misplaced word will only disrupt and vanquish it. End the day, go to sleep.
From 23

14. Menomena: «The Pelican»
One of the interesting things about music—and especially experimental music, less geared as it is towards achieving a calculated response from some target audience—is the possibility to express several unrelated (and maybe even contradictory) feelings, all at once. I don't know quite what I feel whenever I hear this song, but feel good it does. (In a «hurts-so-good» kind of way.)
From Friend and Foe

15. Grizzly Bear: «Shift» (alternate version)
The home recorded version of «Shift»—slightly more violent than this stark rendition—was the high point of Grizzly Bear's debut album. Perhaps no surprise, then, that this is the high point of their EP of studio re-recordings. Doesn't come much more naked than this.
From «Friend» EP

The Turner Music Prize 2008, vol. 2

Two down, one to go. You might think a year-end-list of three CD-length volumes may be a bit much, but it illustrates just how much good stuff (out of the endless wellspring of shit that floods our everyday lives) is actually made. So here are more tunes for your merry enjoyment:

TURNER MUSIC PRIZE 2008, Vol. 2 [.zip file]
[Download disabled.]

1. The Gutter Twins: «Down the Line»
José González’s 2007 single is a self-explanatory song, really. But as your DJ I advise you to listen carefully for the deep'n'booming soft growl of Mark Lanegan grounding Greg Dulli's singing, low in the background…
From «Adorata» EP

2. Wolf Parade: «Call It a Ritual»
Someone should probably let Wolf Parade know that this is a cover of Spoon’s «My Mathe-
matical Mind». Luckily, «My Mathematical Mind» has a great groove.
From At Mount Zoomer

3. Ladytron: «Black Cat»
Turn up the bass for this one. The trashy drums and the twin synth basses set the scene: darkrooms, glory holes, catwalks and beauty salons, all in the same place. This song is all coke’n’AIDS—a fitting
soundtrack to when all you have to lose is the next gramme and the future's so uncertain you need to rush to get your kicks in before the night's over, morning bringing only the awareness that you're stuck between a wasted past and a precarious future… But we're already ahead of ourselves. It’s an almost cosmic joke: billions of people genuflect before idols that don’t possess what they themselves sell. It’s not so much a paradox, perhaps, as a lie sold as enthusiastically as it is bought.
(Shovelled and lapped up in the same movement.) Still it’s tempting to say, whenever you're faced with all the transparently contrived and pouting poses on billboards, magazine covers, and TV sets, that those with the public sex appeal lack a private sex drive, and vice versa. But here, as the shaking, vibrating undercurrent of the bass meets the unimpressed and jaded voice, it appears the boredom of an elite set of models and pop stars too narcissistic to lust for anything but their own image finally meets the frenzied fantasies of the voyeuristic masses, in an unlikely union of ennui and savagery. The kind of decadence where the unbridled hedonism of junkies and perverts meets the unnecessary and ruinous luxuries of The Beautiful People. So, feel your morals ooze out of your pores with every dance move as you respond helplessly to the trashy groove; catch the syllables, dripping from the singer's mouth, coming from a place of hostility too haughty and indifferent to blossom into rage. (Rage would be generous, after all, insofar as it extends energy toward someone else, and who are you, anyway?) A voice that’s been around and back, but for no particular reason and with no reward to show for it, other than a readiness to be unimpressed by whatever it is that you have to offer…
But I digress. In a perfect world, this track is what they would dance to at strip clubs—or in any club. But of course, anyone who’s anyone and their nan is a DJ these days, none of whom seems to realise you can actually shake your hips and shuffle yer feet to something that’s not utterly toothless—grooves that aren’t just insults added to the injury of blissful ignorance, forever tacky in its tactics to please and dominate crowds, all around, all year round, everywhere you go. Maybe the financial crisis will thin out the endless queues of pursuers of happiness lining up to dance with their tails between their legs?
From Velocifero

4. Madonna: «Give It 2 Me»
The queen of make-believe hedonism and poster child for decadence is back. The lead-up to the chorus—«Don’t stop me now / No need to catch my breath / I can go on and on and on»—is irrepressible, and
that Eurotrash house synth which erupts once a prone & pouting Madonna starts begging you to «Give it to me!» does it for me every time. Feel your integrity shrink in the face of the urges, instincts and passions that accumulate within you as you're hooked by the shameless synth groove. This song evokes memories of pissed-up businessmen wearing generic blue shirts (no tie) and grey trousers (onto which mobile phone holsters are clipped, natch), as they stumble-dance among incognito transsexuals and prostitutes on nightclub catwalks. With this crowd-pleaser the club came alive, like a pathetic beast you'd rather see asleep. Yet who but Madonna personifies (and so inspires) decadence—that unapproachable 50-year-old, camel-toed star who says losing her virginity was a career move?
From Hard Candy

5. Verve: «Love Is Noise» (radio edit)
The group you hate to love, Verve are ready for some commercial success by the (stadium) sounds of it. (The drummer in particular sounds like he's got some mouths to feed.) They’re one of those bands that are too eager to please to ever achieve greatness. You can imagine them sitting in the studio, trying to come up with a hit, hungering for attention and validation from the same masses they’re trying so desperately to rise above. A song both shameful and shameless, there’s still no way you can not get hooked on the loop that underpins this whole thing. (Because it’s a bit of an ambiguous, if not exactly guilty pleasure, I’ve used the slightly shorter radio edit…) Anyway, this is what summer used to sound like back when I was a youngster.
From «Love Is Noise» single

6. Gnarls Barkley: «Run (I'm a Natural Disaster)»
Now that even electroclash has been betrayed and merged with the death of dance that we call «house music» (a genre that'd be retro by now, had it not been for the fact that house has hardly changed since 1991, rendering a retro venture meaningless), it’s a relief to hear someone still bringing the funk. And not the nice’n’kind funk of feelgood retro soul nights, or cheesy bling-bling nu-R&B (you know, soul without the soul). No, this funkster turns late ’60s psych-soul into psycho-soul, with a deranged Cee-Lo venting his creepiness to delightful effect. Run, children!
From The Odd Couple

7. The Brian Jonestown Massacre: «Golden-frost»
Muddy sounding, you can easily imagine Anton Newcombe playing everything here himself—except for the Icelandic rant—in some makeshift Icelandic «studio». When I saw the Brian Jonestown Massacre on their 2008 tour, they didn’t play a single song off the very
album they were promoting. The psychotic tape loop perfectly complements the underlying, repetitive ’60s riff, and although I have no idea what this Icelandic guy is yelling about, his obvious anger adds to the adrenaline the track pumps into your system. The messy, directionless track perfectly illustrates the confusion inherent in rage, and sometimes, when you're hanging on by the fingernails, all you need is energy—and what better energy source than a slice of anger? «All you need is love» my ass!
From My Bloody Underground

8. Plastic Crimewave Sound: «I Feel Evils»
I don't feel evils all around, but there's certainly enough weakness to go around…
From Painted Shadows

9. Beck: «Gamma Ray»
Trust Beck to devise some sort of psychedelic punk gem. What a riff, what ghostly backing vox, what a rhythm track to make you bounce
absurdly while seated on a sofa as you try and write about this song! And who else could write song lyrics where environmental catastrophe’s a metaphor for love? «The heat wave’s calling your name»!
From Modern Guilt

10. Eat Skull: «Shredders on Fry»
The band with one of the best names in the history of rock revel in noise like children in mud. And it’s infectious.
From Sick to Death

11. Ghetto Cross: «Dog Years»
Atlas Sound/Deerhunter member Bradford Cox and Old King Cole Younger of Black Lips team up for the perfect soundtrack to strolling around in Oslo in summer… Lone junkies scattered across the cityscape, laying about in various sunspots they, better than anyone, know how to appreciate after a brutal winter without sufficient shelter. It’s the sound of sweet collapse at the tail-end of euphoria, all fuzzy veins and buzzing bones, a feeling like you’re wearing some frail exoskeleton as your thoughts fall in all over each other into a come down headed for something only resembling sleep. «Now I want to stop!» cries Cole, but not in any kind of despair, just with that good feeling of exhaustion (like after a hard day’s manual labour), your conscience beaming because you lit a fire under your consciousness. (Sobriety, after all, is laziness.) Here’s to the jubilant burn-out.
From «Dog Years» 7"

12. Cloudland Canyon: «You & I»
Where did this track come from? This group? It's like AI soul music made by computers playing humans—like Hal 9000's got the blues…
From Lie in Light

13. Magic Lantern: «Feasting on Energy»
Mordi digge speisrock.
From High Beams

14. Atlas Sound: «April 13»
No one fashions a fuzzy sound-cocoon quite like Bradford Cox, and few meld melody (and especially song) with noise in such an utterly comforting manner.
This is twelve minutes of the type of break some people should probably have prescribed by their doctor once a day. The lyrics talk about that friend we’ve all had—unless you yourself are one of them (in which case I’ll love you forever)…
From http://www.deerhuntertheband.blogspot.com/

15. The War On Drugs: «A Needle in Your Eye #16»
A bit of a random choice, this. Wagonwheel Blues contains at least four superb songs, but this one's got the best title, by far. It's a feelgood Springsteen stomper, but don't let that put you off. It's got just a smidge of nostalgic longing to give it that extra emotional edge—something to conjure up images of the perfect group of adolescent friends that never was…
From Wagonwheel Blues