Sometimes a song isn’t enough. Nor an album. Not to change a mood, budge the blues, shift your mindset. A good mixtape on the other hand can do all of those things. The one I keep returning to over and over is Darkstar’s end-of-year one for xxjfg (scroll down and listen to it here). I can be tired, fed up, frustrated, stressed, whatever, but it always, without fail, cuts through all the crap. The anticipation is blissful; the familiar fall strangely comforting. Every single track plays its perfect part. The slo-mo drop into Instra:Mental ‘Watching You’, Charles Dodge’s childlike computerised interludes, Mux Mool’s screwed edits of dancefloor classics and the teasing build to the sheer, sheer joy of ‘Aidy’s Girl Is A Computer’. Everything falls away. They could have left it there but I love it that they didn’t. Lee Fields howls out his heartbreak, a French child sings a peculiar lullaby, and then silence. Calm. The days are ahead.
On the go
There’s a shop on Brixton Hill that sells old furniture. Cupboards with peeling paint, nested tables, office chairs, the odd washing machine. Every day two men carry everything out on the street, line it up, lay it out. Every night they take it back in, stack it high, and roll down the shutters. We all do things like this. Maybe not exactly like this. But repeated actions. Day in and day out. The same, again. The things we do to make a life. There’s joy to be found in repetition. In refining, in perfecting, in pattern, in the rhythm. Of course, the flip is livelier, disruption burns brighter, out-of-the-ordinary more seductive than the everyday. In music the two come together: the sounds, the melody, the beat, the voice. One the foil for the other, harmonies so much sweeter the less sweet they are. Fractured textures framing translucent melodies packing sucker punches.
What I’m listening to on the bus at the moment:
LoneLady ‘Marble’
Pantha Du Prince ‘Lay In A Shimmer’
Tanlines ‘Saw’
Primary 1 ‘Sometime Wannabe’
Peggy Sue ‘Yo Mama’
Yuck ‘Get Away’
Perfume Genius ‘Mr Petersen’
Lonely Galaxy ‘So Low (Instrumental)’
Remember Remember ‘The Dancing’
Masks ‘Forever Dancing’
Pictureplane ‘Goth Star’
Egyptian Hip Hop ‘Round Pot’
Kyle Hall ‘Fuse N Me’
Kingdom ‘You’
Moments
So much of modern life is about goals. Plans. Aims. Ambitions. What do you want to do? Who do you want to be? Where are you going? A daily existence focused on arrivals, end results, climbing up. But the real pleasure, the true joy of life is transient. All those clichés about the little things, smelling the roses, living for the moment. They’re all true. And that’s the power of music. Each song, each perfect composition, each finite arrangement of beats, chords, sounds, pauses, and words (or no words) allow you to simply be in that moment. Whatever it makes you feel, however it makes you see things, listening in that moment slams the breaks on time for the duration of the song. And actually, forever – because what you’re left with is a memory. An imprint on your mind, an ache in your heart, and a stir in your soul. And all those memories dot-to-dot, infusing the next moment with greater resonance. Of course, it’s not just music that makes moments but it’s through music that those moments are elevated, venerated, and remembered, gifting us with the opportunity to return and re-return to relive them.
Some songs I like
I admit I am quite excitable but 2010 is already sounding very exciting. So much new music from new artists. So many new albums from bands I already love. And then there are all the rediscoveries. I recently got into Ghostape, an amazing Swiss producer who makes these really simple but thoroughly exciting a cappella ‘n’ beats jams. They just kind of sneak up and get you. Really good.
Back to the rediscovery. I was being lazy, doing a search for ‘ghost’ on my iTunes so I could listen to Ghostape. And what it threw up was one of my favourite songs of all time, one I’d somehow managed to neglect over the last few months: Japan ‘Ghosts’. Oh man. What a song. All that space. All that pain. All that beauty.
Anyway, it made me want to put together a little playlist. Some of the artists have new music out this year. Can’t wait. Click the green link to open the playlist in your Spotify player: Twenty Ten
Gimme one moment in time
Time is a funny old thing. If you ever get the chance, I thoroughly recommend Pip Pip: A Sideways Look At Time by Jay Griffiths. Very good book. Anyway, I mention this because before I get ready for NYE fun I feel compelled to jot down the things that made this decade the one in which I truly fell head over heels for music. I mean, really, tomorrow is just another day. But then on the other hand, today is the end of the era annoyingly dubbed the ‘noughties’. Which is as good as reason as any to get in a reflective kind of mood. And yeah, I just wanted to drop on the list bandwagon too.
These are the music-related moments/events that made my decade:
Back to Basics, Technique & Bugged Out, various nights: 1998-2004
Jockey Slut
Leeds Student Radio: Summer 2002
Earth Wind & Fire at Hammersmith Apollo: March 2004
Joe Zawinul at Ronnie Scott’s: May 2004
Depeche Mode at Manchester MEN Arena: March 2006
All Tomorrow’s Parties: 2006 & 2009
The end of The End: a sad day in January 2009
Dummy: relaunched February 2009…4eva
From where I’m standing
Why do we listen to the music that we do? Does that sound like a silly question? Maybe, but it kept running through my head today. The emotional connections we build to songs, albums, bands, and artists are often helped along by the real life relationships that frame them. The records our parents danced around the living room to, the bands our mates dragged us to see, the album you used to listen to together. Personal moments and memories imbue sounds with deeper meaning.
That’s not to say those emotions weren’t already present in the music, it’s just that the personal introduction meant you were standing close enough to hear them.
And then other music comes out of nowhere and smacks you in the guts. Something so new, so fresh, so alien that it makes you see things differently.
Sometimes I want to remember and sometimes I want to wake up. Different sounds help me find different perspectives, change my world.
If you haven’t already, you should check out our Love Letter series on Dummy Mag. Read Veronica Murtagh on trip-hop, Stephen Kerr on Chicago juke music, and Mark Fisher on collective listening.
Don’t read the label
Words are clues we leave ourselves. Signposts to shared understandings. Yesterday I watched a woman on the underground trying to give directions to another woman who didn’t speak English. She kindly ended up walking up to and touching the appropriate sign on wall. This is what you should look for, follow this.
Sometimes signposts can hinder, not help, though. I have always had a problem putting music in a box. A label is cold, evoking nothing of the intangible emotion contained within. I’m with Paul Morley in his excellent end of year anti-list when he says it says such means of classification get “in the way of the life and mystery of music before it has a chance to live and mystify”. Or even worse, they can act as a barrier.
As a teenager growing up in Leicestershire and then at university in Leeds, house music was love. There was nothing that couldn’t be solved by a night of healing dancing at Back to Basics. Equally massive on the late ’90s Leeds music scene was drum and bass. Aggressive and insular, I found it impossible to dance to – or relate to. It seemed to be for quiet and moody boys dressed in baggy jeans and hooded padded jackets done up to their chins, even in hot and sweaty clubs. I wanted to smile at people on dance floors, not scowl. I had to have house music, all night long.
That was 10 years ago. I still love house music and a whole heap of other stuff too. Maybe you noticed. But my initial experiences of drum and bass have never left me. So when I saw a Myspace friend request from a drum and bass guy called Mindstorm earlier today, I very nearly pressed delete on autopilot. What a dick, eh? I didn’t though. I had a listen and guess what, it’s really bloody good. ‘Midnight Rush’ has a beautifully simple, cascading melody coiled round that ever-familiar rolling drum beat. He’s probably really famous in drum and bass circles or at least I hope he is because today he reminded me not to be so ruddy narrow-minded.
Just there
I say ‘just’ a lot. I just can’t wait, I just think this, I just want that, I just don’t know. Just just just. There is nothing just about the way I feel though. I fall hard and fast. No half measures, all or nothing…all of those clichés. Everything LOUD, BRIGHT, FULL ON. I wear myself out. My heart can’t take it. The xx always make things better though. Listening is like two hands on my shoulders, forcing me to sit and pause. To breathe. Album of the year, hands down.
Music in my head 2
This week I have been heavily into Denver’s Pictureplane. I saw him play before HEALTH at The Garage a couple of weeks ago and he blew me away. I downloaded the Denver mixtape he made for FADER magazine and have been pretty much lost in that ever since. I like getting lost in music. There’s a lot of good stuff around at the minute. This is what is currently filling up the happy bits in my brain.
Pictureplane ‘Day Glowwed’
MASKS ‘Forever Dancing’
Hounds of Hate ‘I Like Triangles’
HOLLAGRAMZ ‘Tromperz Cycle’
PHASEONE ‘DLY RTN’
Azari & III ‘Hungry For The Power’
ColouringIN ‘Letters’
Milton Melvin Croissant III ‘Books On Tape’
Thoughts for the day
It’s 6pm on a Saturday and I am still in my pajamas. I am not hungover. I didn’t get to bed (that) late. I am just revelling in doing a lot of nothing. I’ve made a kind of den on my bed. I have tea at close hand, half-read books by my feet, and a big old baked potato in the oven. Plus lots and lots of music but especially Azari & III and PHASEONE.
These two bits of thinking particularly resonated today:
“Who are we, who is each one of us, if not a combination of experiences, information, books we have read, things imagined? Each life is an encyclopedia, a library, an inventory of objects, a series of styles, and everything can be constantly shuffled and reordered in every way conceivable.” Italo Calvino
“It’s not a career, it’s a way of life. It’s not product, it’s art. Capturing the moment is more important that having one eye on posterity. The focus group is the root of all evil. The bit players can tell you more than the big stars. Freedom of expression is all important. DO IT YOURSELF.” Jon Savage
Ruth Saxelby 