international dark skies

Testing out blogger's post-by-mail feature courtesy of the ongoing blackout and my blackberry from work. Excuse spelling (assuminganyone's reading this blog--there's my ego, stroke it,yes).

Work itself has been hectic but fulfilling. The good thing about the lack of electricity is you see more starts and you feel people more --a lot of politeness at intersections w/o lights, a lot of "hey you need water man?" And personal interaction.

In some ways reminds me of being 19 and hitting the net in my dad's house, alone and learning to be comfortable in my own skin. Weather has been cool, mid to low 60s (hit 54 last monday!). People running generators to watch TV, which I just don't get man. Like, fucking do
something man....watching TV sucks your brains out. Fucking call your friends and play cards, or go fuck, or watch the night skies. As FPL gets their shit together, the light pollution is growing and it's kind of annoying me. I like finding orion.

FEMA gave us ice and snacks. Tax dollars at work, folks. You pay taxes so I can have cold pudding a week after a hurricane. Good thing we have family, canned goods and a gas stove, those fuckers took a week to get here. I can totally sympathize with folks looting food in NOLA. TVs and shoes, not so much.

The 'cane didn't bring much rain, just lots of wind. Busted some of my windows, but I'm still celebrating haloween (pictures of the horns and halo later, mayhap.)

At least we didn't lose phone lines like during katrina (but the cell coverage has been shit).

short and sweet

pending the hurricane's fucked-up-ness to go away, no real updates for the next week or so. But I leave you with pictures of the damage (see photos link in the sidebar) and a link to pandora a nifty music referal thing

WORDS: John Dies At The End

John Dies At The End is a great story. Just FYI.

MP3: Music to fuck to, part two.

I hated Aphex Twin. I heard a bunch of oh-my-god-he's-the-best-ever verbal blowjobbery about his music, and when I heard it, decided it wasn't anything special. At the time I'd just recently gotten into electronic music (it was probably 1997, I'm thinking, and I'd just started to get into Kraftwerk, Skinny Puppy and Orbital). My friend Eden wouldn't shut the fuck up about him though and eventually lent me "Selected Ambient Works, Volume II" when I asked him to recommend something nice, mellow and ambient.


Links from OpenDir
Aphex Twin: "Selected Ambient Works Volume II"
Disc 1
Disc 2

Something about the mostly-beatless waves of sound made it perfect when I snuck the girl into my dad's house; I worked nights then -- 11pm to 7am -- and so it wasn't unusual for me to come home at 730am, play some music and hit the sack. I always kept my hurricane shutters closed for the absolute darkness that they provided (windows faced East then,) and the only the LEDs from my gigantor stereo (oh, how I miss thee,) lit up the room. Something about the way it just subtly implies that it's playing, that the distant light is coming to you from somewhere different, special, somewhere between foreign and familiar is just....it's cold and comforting, clinical and a mess, organic and manufactured. Also, great for sex and/or love.

There's nothing I can tell you about the album that wikipedia won't. But if you do like the album, it's worth pointing you to this particular site that has an overly in-depth explanation of the song titles and album art.

Music to fuck to, part one.

I had probably heard about them through brainwashed. So I hopped on whatever p2p app I was using at the time and downloaded some Acid Mothers Temple. I was blown away by "La Novia" -- a solid fucking hour of the greatest psychedelic acid washed guitar I'd heard that wasn't made in the fucking sixties. Two weeks later, I was married and I was getting it on to a dozen hairy Japanese psychonauts blurring guitars with psychedelics and droning "la novia" over and over before the acid guitar starts building and explodes into everythingness. Not a bad soundtrack. Really.


Yeah, we're just regular old Japanese hippies that like to melt your brain with psychedelic rock and hang out with skulls. Alas poor Yorrick and all that. 

I don't remember much about that day after that. Listening to the song now, I can go "wow, those drums near the end are just pure fucking bombs!" and I can certainly appreciate the beautiful acoustic guitar interlude near the end, but how the music makes me feel is something I can't really put into words. I guess that's why they made music instead of writing a stupid blog entry. In any case, here's Acid Mothers Temple and The Melting Paraiso U.F.O., from

archive.org's Acid Mothers Temple live recordings (warning: far too much stuff to listen to, especially if you're easily addicted to psychedelic guitar)

When I get my hands on some money I'll ask it's dirty face "Where the hell have you been?"

The Swans were an interesting band; they started out as art-noise, just pure fucking chaos for the sake of pure fucking chaos and then turned into this giant miasma of overwhelming sensation that was -- if not more subtle or delicate, at least less hostile. The only other band whose change from what they started out as to what they became is more dramatic is probably Wire (punk to arty electronic-pop, kinda? And always with that skewed way of seeing things that made them brilliant).


"I don't know...do you think 'cop' or 'raping a slave' really work acoustically?" 

The first few Swans albums are just pure fucking punishment (cf. COP/YOUNG GOD/GREED/HOLY MONEY or FILTH/JOB TO JOB, BODY TO BODY, two compilations of their earlier recorded works,) but mid-period Swans went into a weird folk/pop/goth headspace, like Current 93 convinced Joy Division's Ian Curtis to try his hand at some fucking love songs for once, and it came out this weird goth-pop-folk bastard child, not really romantic but not really anything else. Latter-day Swans is reminiscent of Godspeed You Black Emperor! (which is a neat trick, since they predate GYBE!) in the majestic crescendos and pure fucking fill-every-available-space-in-the-air-with-glorious-sound (cf. the entirely magnificent THE GREAT ANNIHILATOR or their final (wait for it....) swansong, SOUNDTRACKS FOR THE BLIND).

The Swans were one of those revolving doors bands that have one or two central figures and then everyone else changes so often that you don't remember their names (unless you're obsessively devoted, in which case you'll know that the roster includes Sonic Youth's Thurston and Ranaldo, Godflesh's last (and Jesu's current) drummer Ted Parsons, Roli Mossiman (who stole the name "Young Gods" for his band,) among lots of others. The first few Swans records were strictly Michael Gira with whoever was in the band at the moment, but somewhere around the GREED/HOLY MONEY era, Jarboe joins and her vocals add both more aggression and a soaring beauty to the quieter moments that puts Gira's violent raging moments into starker contrast.

So. The songs:
"Failure" and the Joy Division cover "Love Will Tear Us Apart (Jarboe Version)" are from their middle period -- there's a version of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" with Gira singing, which is equally good, but I wanted to listen to Jarboe's gorgeous voice. Gira's deep voice makes "Failure" as great as it is, with that cynical, sardonic and mordant tone throughout. "When I get my hands on some money, I'll ask it's dirty face: "Where the hell have you been?'". Fucking great. These were originally on the excellent but not really representative-of-the-swans-in-general albums "Love of Live" and "White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity", both of which Michael Gira disliked very much. So if you want to get them, or more stuff in this vein, you have to go for the stuff he wanted to keep from this era, which is on the "Various Failures:1988-1992" double-CD set.

"I Am The Sun" and "MIND/BODY/LIGHT/SOUND" are both from latter-era Swans, from "The Great Annihilator". An excellent introduction point if you haven't heard them before, since it's brutal and punishing but still melodic and not overwhelming (unless you do what you ought to and crank the record 'til your speakers burst).

Maybe some other stuff like Children of God or really early (FILTH) or late (SWANS ARE DEAD) stuff later. All links are yousendit.com links and will expire in a week. Get it while the gettin's good (and check out their more recent stuff -- Gira's Angels of Light band is GREAT as is Jarboe's work with Neurosis (haven't heard her solo stuff).

Tired of Red Lights?

I-Hacked.com Taking Advantage Of Technology - DIrtY MIRT (Do It Yourself Mobile Infra Red Transmitter)