in my garden

{via}


A Classic Education - Spanish Harlem {Phil Spector}

When we found out my dad had cancer, my parents and brothers and I went to a small pub near here, overlooking the cliffs, and got drunk. I was pointed towards the piano, and let the tipsy locals sing their Let It Be, and their Raglan Road, until the end of the night. With the bar empty, and just us and the staff still avoiding the pounding rain, the Atlantic breeze, and the cold light of morning, my father stood up stout behind me and sang Spanish Harlem, the one song he has been singing, in bars and pubs, since he was my age, when kids and cancer were each as far and remote as the other. I stumbled along over the keys, and picked it up, and at the end, it hadn't sounded beautiful, but it kinda was.

{This Wonderful Band + more, more, more}

boom crash bang

Beat Radio - Sleepwalking

So one day, you're hid away in your room, playing guitar, trying to make sounds like thunder and rainfall and birdsong all at once, when boom! Your amplifier suddenly explodes, falls over, and keeps exploding. The temptation here would be to stop playing, and go look for an adult of some sort, but no! Instead you play on, using the explosions as rhythm, a kick drum beat that propels you on to make this whole mess into a gorgeous song, built on the one thing you're sure of - that this, this racket, this is just another way to have fun.

This is Beat Radio. They are quite wonderful, and have many more songs for you to sample. And this song does feature an explosion for a bass drum.

I chose Rapture

Garry Schyman - Welcome To Rapture

Now that I am no longer living in a vibrant urban environment, and have been called home to help my family with, you know, those terrible things that happen, I have time that I am not spending sampling the local Thai eateries or frequenting music venues, and with this spare time I have rediscovered video games.


Garry Schyman - Cohen's Masterpiece

Bioshock is one of the best games I have ever played, especially in terms of storyline, setting, aesthetics, and its soundtrack is as amazing as any I have ever heard. These songs are the kind of things that appear in your nightmare, and cling to you as you wake, bleary-eyed, searching your surroundings for any traces of the terror your mind can stage. They return to your thoughts, hinting at the fear that more bad dreams are ahead.

If you like the above songs, you can download the rest here, for free, courtesy of developers 2K, and buy Bioshock (PS3) if you want to see what all the fuss is about.

leaving out

DM Stith - Pigs (feat. Jefferson St. Band)

Mr Stith is set to release another fine spin-off EP from Heavy Ghost, this time based around 'Thanksgiving Moon' - the album's dark heart, and the first song of his I wrote up.
The first mp3 to surface is this version of Pigs, performed with a marching band, and correspondingly jaunty.

It's the sound of David coming back after a tour, brasher and laughing louder, taking a knife to his songs and making them new. Pigs always had a kind of sneering and cocky personality, and it's hidden no longer. The marching band comes in ready to make a mess, and they do, in the most joyful way possible. Beautiful.

Tracklisting:

1. Thanksgiving Moon (Demo)
2. Pigs (feat. Jefferson Street Band)
3. Thanksgiving Moon (Michna Remix)
4. A Soft Seduction (David Byrne Cover)
5. Thanksgiving Moon (Rafter Remix)
6. Untitled (Lacuna B)
7. Thanksgiving Moon (Cover by Dayna Kurtz)

More info here - and if you haven't done so already, be sure to get yourself a copy of Heavy Ghost now.

your idiot body

Sunset Rubdown - Idiot Heart

Dear long-suffering, oft-neglected reader! I present to you the most gorgeous descriptive writing I've read in days: the Schmidt Sting Pain Index.

1.0 Sweat bee: Light, ephemeral, almost fruity. A tiny spark has singed a single hair on your arm.
1.2 Fire ant: Sharp, sudden, mildly alarming. Like walking across a shag carpet & reaching for the light switch.
1.8 Bullhorn acacia ant: A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.
2.0 Bald-faced hornet: Rich, hearty, slightly crunchy. Similar to getting your hand mashed in a revolving door.
2.0 Yellowjacket: Hot and smoky, almost irreverent. Imagine W. C. Fields extinguishing a cigar on your tongue.
2.x Honey bee and European hornet: Like a matchhead that flips off and burns on your skin.
3.0 Red harvester ant: Bold and unrelenting. Somebody is using a drill to excavate your ingrown toenail.
3.0 Paper wasp: Caustic & burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.
4.0 Tarantula hawk: Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair drier has been dropped into your bubble bath.
4.0+ Bullet ant: Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like fire-walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch rusty nail in your heel.

From now on, at least half of anything I write will take the scale form.

{Buy + Interview}

in sheepskin

The Bruce Peninsula - Inside, Outside

That was the day someone had stolen my violin. I spat and raged, and paced and pounded, and cursed and spilt whiskey, and threw glasses and bottles. My voice cracked, my hands grew calloused, my face spread into a scowl like a wound splitting open. Outside, the wind roared, and the rain lashed, and they howled at one another, threatening our windows. Outside, someone applied my bow to my violin strings, and choked out a reedy note, frayed with resistance and the nerves of the first playing. I sat at a dozen other instruments and played none of them. Someone was singing with my voice, and clapping time with my hands, so I started singing something, the first thing that fell from my tongue, and clapping as loudly as I could, and I shouted somethin's goin' on in the backyard!! and after a while, I got over it.

The Bruce Peninsula are Canadians who have made a rather nice album. They also feature on this, which looks amazing. It features a new song by Final Fantasy that references Phantom of the Opera. Wow. There's also a song by Double Suicide, which is kind of a new Sandro Perri song. It's lovely. And it's for charity!

Buy A Mountain Is A Mouth here, and Friends in Bellwoods 2 here.

{Thanks Fiona!}