Last Days Safety of the North. When you speak to most people, well some people, they consider Boards of Canada's Music Has the Right to Children to be some sort of high water mark for electronic music, certainly of some uncertain genre that could only be explained to you by whomever categorizes the genres at places like Boomkat. Perhaps, it is. I am not sophisticated enough to discern such things. Myself, I think Murcof is some sort of god and yet he's relegated to minor status these days, seemingly, though I am not certain, who knows why. I bet if I looked up Murcof on the Boomkat website it would be filled with superlatives, 'killer' being the most ubiquitous. But, this, is, Last Days. They are Scottish, just the same as Boards of Canada. Bored of Canada? The bus bound cannibal found not responsible for his actions. Madness. But this is different but this is the same. First track has an automated Boards of Canada feel but then allegedly the entire record has some sort of ll encompassing theme and all of these pieces have been well thought out, diagrammed and outlined and are where they are for sake of science. The rain falling now is symbolic, 'the rain on my car, a baptism'. No? She's chanting some things about 'the safety of the north' now, and the weather is still all there is to discern about the end of this track. There clearly are not enough concept records in this world. This is especially true in electronic musics. One of my favorite electronic records is Marumari The Wolves Hollow partly due to its having a marvelous concept of an interstellar battle between the wolves from outer space versus the wolves from earth. Oh and it has a marvelous cover painting done by Marumari's mom. Marumari's mom is great. I was out semi-recently and I saw three coyotes on the prowl. I saw them silhouetted in the full moon's light and my reaction was fear, so basal ganglia, and so instinctively, as bred by a million generations of my ancestors, I sucked in my gut and tried to look emaciated and unappetizing in the piercing eyes of these immoral killers. These may have been Marumari rejects. I must have succeeded because they headed on south to the wealthier climes of the Preserve where but a few nights post some woman was savagely attacked by three coyotes and barely survived struggling a few minutes later as she gave her breathtaking firsthand account to the local news stooge in her drieway with hair coiffured and indifference in tow. There were protests at Acme. These could have been my coyotes. I am not sure. Apparently they are endemic. They look like friendly puppies, really. Second song is playing, a folk song, guitar and electronics and a pretty female voice, not very Boards of Canada at all, perhaps a hint of Hood or Epic45. Very nice, pastoral and gentle. Beautiful. I am reading various websites. At these websites reside people who clearly have been regularly fed free records. And yet all they can offer in return for this generosity is some generic paragraph of praise and a sepia tinged bit of twee mush. I ignore all efforts by friendlies who would conspire to send me free records in return for a jumble of the meaningless piffle that I am so famous for. Famous for four minutes one day somewhere among some bodies. But honestly if someone has sent you a free record shouldn't you spend some of your "wit" in an honest appraisal. I don't know. I refuse to accept anything for free, much to the disappointment of many people around me. I can't even take a glass of water. Who knows why this is. Do you? But then it is the nice who are on mailing lists for nice bands. I am bitter and sorry and old. Next track. Guitar figures and a looping tape loop, woo, this is part of the concept. Making a concept record raises your music to the level of high art. Right? I mean Pete Townshend is the most important artist of the late 20th century. No? Why do people like the Who? They're really one of the most dreadful things ever. There are so many dreadful things that receive adulation and praise from all corners. The Animals, The Doors, Velvet Underground, The Go-Betweens, Felt. It's all rather mediocre and dismal really. Be honest with yourself. Next song. More guitar, churchy organ, a bit more expansive, repetitive. It does seem as if it should have been released on Make Mine Muisc. That is one of my go to comparisons these days, anything lovely and socialist should, by rights, have had right of first refusal given to Make Mine Music. I rather enjoy this record, I must say, it would be evermore splendid in the rain but rain is a mythologizing force in Denver. When My Bloody Valentine play here soon there will be rain. I predict it. It was very expensive, this nostalgia. I decided it was too expensive. I saw My Bloody Valentine twice. Once with Dinosaur Jr, oh dear, and once with Shudder to Think, oh dear. One of Shudder to Think is married to a Cardigan. It was alright. I do remember breathlessly racing to my keyboard to report the length of the "death chord" to my esteemed colleagues on the Prodigy Shoegazing board. That was the highlight. It is a portrait painted sad and disappointing in retrospect. Back then I would listen to Loveless while falling asleep, the second side, in particular, absolutely seamless and consuming. I love the My Bloody Valentine. Poverty A bit of a crescendo has just been talked over by me. A magnificent rush was ignored in a bit of falsely pertinent reminiscing. My Bloody Valentine will be portly. I don't want to see fat My Bloody Valentine. Next song, Thoughts of Alice, the vocodered voice is what makes me think of Boards of Canada. Some make claim that the voices on Geogaddi are their favorite bits, but they lie, it's like the people who claim their favorite REM song is Country Feedback knowing full well that that is the track most often cited by the band. It is like th people who pant and drip their pheromones all over the keyboard when writing about The Watchmen Here is a tip-- it is one of the worst movies of all time. I've never read the comic book. There are many Doors fans that allege that it is the greatest work of fiction in the entire canon of human literature but somehow I've managed to avoid it. Are there actually two versions of the movie? I am sure I saw one where Kelly Leak spends his days sawing off arms, cleavering heads and wearing a burlap sack. I am unsophisticated, I know, but the bits on Mars, it was torturous and sidesplitting at the same time, I missed the deeper emotional retinue trailing in the red planet's mystery. The young lady can't act. Her boyfriend with the glasses can't act. The blue man had a glowing phallus and the ultimate villain was a bit effeminate and nancy. I didn't feel any sort of impulse towards reading the comic book because there were apparently quotes lifted directly from the text in the movie. "This awful city, it screams like an abattoir full of retarded children.” One for Joebama. With thanks to the New Yorker. Kelly Leak wrote a journal. Unlikely. Next track, a post rock exercise in minimalism and crescendoed synths, lovely, this is a sparkling record. Does he have a beard? I would be so disappointed to find out that he did. The end. Next track, Life Support. There are long pauses between the tracks, I might have gone for the smooth uninterrupted segue instead, to better convey the overarching theme in a series of melodramatic shifts of tone and emotion. Now to cold radio static, a call out to the loneliness of the ether that risks crashing down upon us. Is this a story of a journey to the north as a last hope of refuge? Global Warming? Let us pray it is nothing so trite. Perhaps a knowing acknlowedgement of Frankenstein, the journey north in search of the fiend. There is the scottish angle that could be explored as well, the death of Clerval, the demented drudgery of the "work" in debt to the fiend's ominous threats. It could be a marvelous thing. But perhaps they are escaping something even more fantastical, a dream battle between ice cubes and 10 pound sterling, a battle between Snow Patrol and tears in X-Ray Eyes on quiz bowl, a battle between Funes and Obama. I don't know. This is a bunch of repeating motifs on a keyboard, loveliness all around. I make claim that I can't accept gifts, but then I purloin such things as this record from the clouds of counterfeit goods that enable scofflaws and cheats such as myself to diminish the entire concept of the 'value of labor' theory of work. Ah well. Marxism is silly. Marxists may carry nearly 20% of the next pariamentary vote in France. I am currently reading a book on the history of Paris. It's a violent place and it has been for nearly all of its existence. Is this the charm? I went to Paris in 1998. I found it ugly, dirty, graffiti bound and in the midst of an unhappy marriage between anitiquity and modernity. But I am awful, I had those thoughts, all the same. I've just reached the bits with the sun king but there was much also written about the Univrsal Spider and Les Mignons and the St Bartholomew's Massacre and I've been intrigued endlessly. What a godless place to have experienced so much unholiness. Next track, Your Silence is the Loudest, these vague tracks serve as bookmarks or perhaps travelogues, or dream cinema soundtracks while the action has been relegated to the unconscious. I don't know. I am unable to grasp the greater concept as most of this album is instrumental. Perhaps the notes should reveal thir intentions plainly to all who can witness them but I am unable. My apologies. I was not offered a program, gratis or otherwise. Someone may write to me in a few months with a full scale dissection of the plot but until then I will think the purpose is merely to beguile. Next track, This is Not an Ending, a whisper. Much of this set of musics could be thought of as some sort of cinema soundtrack merely unaccompanied by the bits of cinema that are superfluous to those engaged in theater of the mind. Pretentious. The titles give away small hints to the overall schema but only vaguely. Here a slow building of sounds tugging and compressing the air in between each other as they battle on from channel to chaenel, overlapping and building on each other with no obvious plan for surrender or an exit. It reminds of the Auburn Lull record in this tendency, there is less songwriting here than sound design, there are waves of dissonance dampened for melancholy and they rise forth in arpeggiated glow. Marvelous. It is so Auburn Lull. I should hope that one day Auburn Lull would play Denver. It has been some time since I Have seen Auburn Lull. I am certain that they would not be able to charge confiscatory prices for admission to one of their public scenes of musical conceptualism. Major eruption at the moment fading gently away to emptiness. Charmed.
The fields remember my father. The river trebles the effect of mercy. The tone of your forgiveness. Empty sentiments, one is the title of the next song. More sketches on guitar accompanied by someone learning the piano. A bit Ogurusu Norihide. Is that obscure? i don't believe that Carpark has much cache with the "in crowd". I only have a few Carpark records. Although, yes, Beach House are on Carpark. I rather liked them live. I listed it as one of the beautiful things from 2008. I have obtained both of their albums and haven't listened to either one. Who knows why this is? I don't. There are moments of loveliness in the background, much more interesting than the noodling in the fore-. Drones for loons. Homes for heads. Teds for reds. It's easy to be pointless. Indulge. Now the noodling has subsided and just the formless loveliness remains, like a void inside the heart of a lion. Ok ok, I will cease. Next song, Missing Photos. I was way off when I compared this to Boards of Canada. Sorry. I hadn't even the Scottish connection in mind when I came up with it, I honestly thought it sounded a bit like Boards of Canada but, actually no. I was wrong. Shocking. This song is one cascade of pretty synthesized sounds building on itself until nearly extinguished by the instability caused by all of the tragic tenderness and it fades back slowly to trembling loneliness and the vacuum of space. Marvelous. I am still drinking too much milk. Will I have deformed ribs from drinking so much anti-biotic infused milk? I drink the store brand for it is but 98 cents per half gallon, who could pass up such a bargain, it could be this brand that is most deformity inducing. I have a friend who has mysterious ribs inside of her that are attempting to break free from the rest of her body. She's a fragile little flower. Much prettier than she is aware. Her ribs should be content in so kindly a home. More self-replicating washes of amniotic oscillations, the low end an anchor but the trebly bits of dissonance are at less obscure settings, it's difficult to reach out and wrap your arms around the concept. I have been informed that it is very specific. Perhaps the last song will have lyrics that neatly tie the loose ends of the story up in a tidy little bow. Today I drove loads of big trucks. In my job I sometimes am required to drive large vehicles. Driving large vehicles is one of the escapes available to me. I roll down busy city streets with an elevated platform and 38,000 lbs of steel beneath me and I feel a contentment in my superiority, however mechanically sanctioned it may be. Normally I feel small and invisible even around those I might despise for slovenliness but when I have the controls of the large hydrualic loader I feel powerful and able to change the world, at least in this tiny bubble that I exist in while forgetting the meaningless traumas that occur in my job most days. A company went out of business, they owe my company a great deal of money, there are windows framing scenes of emptiness, the dust not yet settled on late night escapes into the blackness, bungalows boarded up. It's all very suspicious. Next track, You are Stars, profound title, pretty song, sarcasm tag omitted meant in the former. I once attached a theme to Greg Davis' Arbor this unfocused idea of the evolution from unstructured coincidence to structured disasters. How the record moved from ambient prettiness to rather detailed and elaborate prettiness. I could have used the evolution from the primordial state of the universe to the state we observe today, though yes entropy is increasing all along the timeline, or I could have used the metaphor of childbirth from conception to birth. It would not have mattered, I could have deadened each concept into something turgid and uninspiring. I've done some research, apparently Sam Rosenthal owns Projekt records. Oh. Sorry. A lot of the music is silly, but the consolation is that I am not to be taken seriously. Obviously. Here I am spending the initial stages of a Friday evening writing random sentences about an obscure record from the fields that remember my father. Now the pastel sounds are placed deep into the distance, a sense of perspective is readily apparent on the record and a splash of everyday life arrives. Is that a lawn mower? A bicycle with a Carl Yastrzemski card in the spokes? I don't know. It's all important to the concept, the all important concept, it's Scottish. It's escapism. Perhaps the concept just guided the formation of the record, a leading light in the undiscovered treasure of a shared ethos of the cosmos. Perhaps. It's all very pretty, I don't understand the deeper ramifications as bells toll now and even now we move into deeper solemnity. Why aren't they advertising the new quarters any more? It always seemed an odd thing to feel compelled to advertise money as if there might be any other option. Is this to coerce people into going to convenience stores and converting their paper money into coin? I don't understand. I understand very little these days. It could be a brilliant concept for a record though, the conspiracy to eliminate all paper money. it's brilliant because it is very real and dark and dangerous and filled with intrigue. Dan Brown may already be on the case. It's happening all over the world, in many places you need to carry a pocketful of shrapnel about in oder to conduct commerce. In Ireland there is plastic money, or well...there was in 1996. I remember having a Sunday Roast in Dunedin with a man from Ireland who pulled out his plastic embedded money, rather proudly. This man was prodigious, he was able to ftp his email even then. I had two reasons to be jealous. Is this the last song? Ah yes, more pretty things cobbled together tenderly. A bit of the marching band drums, a drum procession, a march into the bosom of unforgiving bleakness. Scotland seems a bleak place, loads of desperate freeloaders living casually off English good will. Gordon Brown is Scottish. He's bleak. This isn't bleak. It's dark, but darkly uplifting and elegant and rather wonderful. A brief glimpse of strings in the buildup to something empty and lovely. Handclaps, humanity, perspective, tunnels, endings.