on my suitcase

The Innocence Mission - Brotherhood of Man

This song always starts playing in my head whenever I'm in an airport. I think this is because airports make my head all funny. My mind moves onto some other level, and starts thinking thoughts that usually seem too heavy for it. It's the waiting, and being surrounded by people you're not talking too, inventing their pasts and futures, wondering who is leaving a loved one, and who is returning to someone else's arms. I sit back and think about how things have changed since I last wandered from country to country. I wonder what all the old incarnations of myself would be thinking, and I wonder what will be happening the next time I sit on the floor at the gate, watching people queue for a fixed-seating flight. And despite all this introspection, which usually does no favours for my mental state, I always enjoy the experience. The gap hours between flights, in a total limbo, as far out of your real life you can possibly get without fucking it up. It feels like pressing pause and saving, sometimes.

{Buy + Previously}

for a liberated Spectrum!

As mentioned previously, on August 8th, Final Fantasy performed with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, and it was good. From that performance comes this video of what is probably my favourite song of the year so far, 'Lewis Takes Action' sounding beautiful as it unfolds among the many instruments involved.

Final Fantasy - Lewis Takes Action (live with the RSO)

make it easy

As fan videos go, Gabe Askew's video for 'Two Weeks' is probably the best I've ever seen. Ed approves.

you can dream of me

The Luyas - Spherical Mattress

If you've had one of those dreams, you'll know the feeling. A night when unexpected emotional intensity gets into your head, from God Knows Where. Walking around, with everything tinted and changed, same skin but a different life, holding hands, or carrying the weight. It could be some new love or just the memory of it, but it's enough to leave you disjointed and half-grieving when you awake. You walk around trying to figure out how something you didn't even mean to imagine could have left this gaping hole in your chest, and this tight hold on your heart, and all you can do is wait for it to fade away as the day goes on, like a bruise healing, or the way the creases in your pillow-case have vanished by night time.


The Luyas - Tiny Head

This, on the other hand, is one of those fantastic dreams where you have wondrous superpowers, but can't figure out why the sky is that funny purple colour.

These songs are taken from The Luyas' new tour 7", but also from their as-yet untitled new album. 'Spherical Mattress' is the closer, incidentally, which makes me just that little bit more excited to hear the whole thing. And considering that I adored their first record, and a certain Owen Pallett did some arrangements for it (listen to the gorgeousness of 'Canary' on their MySpace), it's worth getting pretty damn excited about.
Here's the tracklist:

Bell Song
Cold Canada
Canary
Tiny Head
Moodslayer
What Mercy Is
I Need Mirrors
Seeing Things
Pietro Is Late
Spherical Mattress

The band are setting off on a European tour soon, with a lot of it in support of their musical siblings Bell Orchestre, so don't miss that lineup. Dates are here.

greenwood church

Nils Frahm - Ambre

This song was recorded in the Grunewaldkirche in Berlin. It is nothing but piano and empty space. It is dark and quiet, and going into a dark and quiet church is something neither my family or I have done for some time, but we are doing it again now, both fearful and sceptical. It's always too quiet for me, too full of statues of people who are only half-there. But I like the sound of this. It's like sitting up high, by a blue stained-glass window somewhere, and staying very still. Like staying still and quiet enough, so that I am only half-there too.

{Buy + MySpace other free songs}

Heartland

Final Fantasy - Flare Gun (live)

Now that Heartland's release has officially been announced, and a date set in the first weeks of 2010, we can all start getting properly excited. With that aim in mind, I direct your attention to here, where you can stream a beautiful broadcast with the Radio-Symphonieorchester of Vienna, and here, where you can download it. It's the closest thing I've seen to witnessing one of his amazing live performances.

bottom of the sea

{via}


Thom Yorke - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi (live at Latitude)

Thom Yorke - Follow Me Around (live at Latitude)

This solo version of 'Arpeggi' starts out fairly unremarkable, but when the audience starts singing along, that's when it gets unexpectedly and surprisingly beautiful. It's sweet, and not in a way that song ever really promised to be, a little like they'd always kind of planned it that way.
'Follow Me Around', a song that dates from the OK Computer days, has taken on something of a new guise, as though it's going to head in the same lovely (and slightly groovy) direction as 'House of Cards'. Both songs are worth playing repeatedly.

{Buy In Rainbows}

shall we dance?

Why? - This Blackest Purse

This song is good for those days when it feels like everything was better when you were too young to understand it. When you get nostalgic and remember the joy of getting up early on Saturday mornings. Sugar on your cereal. Waterfights and remote controls. And best of all, warm summers. This song is all about getting rain when you'd planned for sunshine. It's also ridiculously good.
Ian has a nice post about the rest of the album.

{MySpace}