This Fucking Spine Is Giving Me the Eye...
I've not been in a chatty mood of late, and I feel no particular obligation to post with regularity. (I enjoy your feedback, of course, being the sort who relishes engagement.) Still, it's been nearly two weeks since the previous unspooling, and guilt looms...
I receive a lot of promotional CDs; most sit unopened, stacked to the ceiling. (My larder, mammoth though it seems, is miniscule compared to that of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's, which extrudes from the third floor of their home and arcs over the Smith College campus in a 50-metre-wide swath which blots the sun and seeds toxic alkalines into Northampton's once-prized rose gardens.) In my stash, one album is really busting my balls: Mira Calix's 2001 Warp release, Prickle. It just looks so fucking soporific; I can't bring myself to play it, regardless of its content. It sits sandwiched between Simian's Chemistry Is What We Are and Kool G Rap's Roots of Evil, which themselves are anchored within a larger, aging promo gift brick from Astralwerks containing Neu! and Virgin/Front Line reissues and Femi Kuti discs.
Fuck, I'm totally grateful, really; every time I visit various label offices I'm always presented with a huge-ass bag of swag, and I never sell any of it. (Well, almost never.) Instead, I prefer them to sit in dusty obelisks, shrink wrapping intact, unheard, context dissolved. They serve as humbling reminders that my albums likely rest in such static configurations, mere curiosities too bleak to confront, too odd to discard.
Anyhow, I've no doubt that Ms. Calix is an outstanding citizen, a goddamned saint (she looks kinda cute in her discogs gallery), but... can't... reach... incinerator... beam!
I receive a lot of promotional CDs; most sit unopened, stacked to the ceiling. (My larder, mammoth though it seems, is miniscule compared to that of Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore's, which extrudes from the third floor of their home and arcs over the Smith College campus in a 50-metre-wide swath which blots the sun and seeds toxic alkalines into Northampton's once-prized rose gardens.) In my stash, one album is really busting my balls: Mira Calix's 2001 Warp release, Prickle. It just looks so fucking soporific; I can't bring myself to play it, regardless of its content. It sits sandwiched between Simian's Chemistry Is What We Are and Kool G Rap's Roots of Evil, which themselves are anchored within a larger, aging promo gift brick from Astralwerks containing Neu! and Virgin/Front Line reissues and Femi Kuti discs.
Fuck, I'm totally grateful, really; every time I visit various label offices I'm always presented with a huge-ass bag of swag, and I never sell any of it. (Well, almost never.) Instead, I prefer them to sit in dusty obelisks, shrink wrapping intact, unheard, context dissolved. They serve as humbling reminders that my albums likely rest in such static configurations, mere curiosities too bleak to confront, too odd to discard.
Anyhow, I've no doubt that Ms. Calix is an outstanding citizen, a goddamned saint (she looks kinda cute in her discogs gallery), but... can't... reach... incinerator... beam!
Comments
Re promos: I guess I'm just spoiled. I have so many albums, so much stuff in general, that I feel I can afford not to explore. I've watched none of the videos or DVDs I received from fans and friends on the last TLASILA tour, listened to none of the albums, tapes, or discs. I receive towering monoliths of freebies from labels in NYC; the most recent batch remain secure, still swaddled. It's likely a result of overstimulation, and probably the one of the more pernicious effects of acute boredom. So much of the stuff is "edgy," "avant-garde," "ground-breaking." To my ears, it all sounds like one long flute and triangle duet. I can hardly be bothered. This sense of near-complete alienation from the genres (yes, I know, I used the dreaded g-word) with which I and my fellow conspiritors are often identified at least serves to fuel my creativity, as addled or inspired as it might be... My rush toward the unknown, toward aesthetic summits (or depths!) previously unexamined, is a primary focus.
Re yr previous email: got it. Thanks!
Regards,
TS
PS to all: really digging the Fox Film Noir releases. Laura, Panic in the Streets, and Call Northside 777. All wonderful, with informative extras, etc. A flood of noir is on the way, of course, much of it already in stores. Films are the only media I don't download...
Pitbull has recently cut tracks in the burgeoning (and soon-to-be-passé) grime/dubstep style; I, on the other hand, recently recorded several sessions in the never-to-be-overtaken mode of Stephen Foster's "Camptown Ladies." The instrumentation: banjo, three vintage 1767 shortwave transmitters, and the right clavicle of Pope Callistus III... We are PURISTS, motherfuckers!
Uh, yeah. Sorry, blacked out for a moment. Too many lentils...
Dan!! Good to see you here, by the way. Thanks for posting!
Bizet,
TS
Kiddies, the link to buy is here:
http://www.zazzle.com/products/product/product.asp?general%5Fcategory%5Fid=103833459334813357&general%5Fproduct%5Ftype=235&caching=on&product%5Fid=235197156600439973&index=8
Give them your biz, and think of David Gates and Queequeg.
(BTW, RQ, I predict frayed old doilies like "n***e" and various other "transgr*****e" ruins will give way to mega-serious damage of the type you infer. Natch, I'm already there...)
Love to All,
TS
Gull Wing Doors,
TS