Monday, October 5 2020
I want there to be a thousand movies like Lovers Rock, a thousand people recording the world with their eight-year-old eyes, asking their aunts and uncles what happened, what kind of gear did you use where did you buy your shirts who did you think was cute what kind of music did you like was it hard were people nice? You only have a day left to see it—click. The centerpiece scene featuring “Silly Games” is unlike any other depiction of dancing I’ve seen.
Steve McQueen’s Small Axe series is reaching us, bit by bit. Soon enough, the whole thing will be here.
Freedom To Spend just released New Neighborhoods, a plangent and wiggly album I cannot stop playing. The sixteen new tracks were inspired by Ernest Hood, “the musician and field recordist from Portland, Oregon responsible for the 1975 ‘joy in reminiscence,’ Neighborhoods.” The tracks are neither strictly field recordings nor ambient music, but rather “an environmental tapestry of both.” All proceeds go to benefit the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD)’s Center for Community Leadership (CCL) program.
Deerhoof’s Love-Lore is alive and joyful and makes me think of how badly we handle issues of quoting and weaving musical traditions. Copyright is such a miserable lens.
I didn’t know the work of photographer Keith Macgregor, but these four photos of Hong Kong neon in the Seventies turned my week around. I want to sleep in the middle of this street.
Captain Beefheart apparently had ten rules for guitarists, or at least he came up with that many when asked. They are definitely worth reading, though not necessarily worth believing.
I am glad that we have online access to Aura Satz’s tremendous new piece, Tone Transmissions, but I expect that if she had installed it in a physical space that it would resonate through and around us. It’s built around conversation, and recorded during lockdown. Hearing Éliane Radigue discuss her own work while Julia Eckhart and Rhodri Davies do the same is a treat. Their talk — layered over an ensemble playing Radigue’s flickering music — is itself a form of telephony that illuminates the way Radigue’s steady tones work.
This film was assembled by the very mysterious Balancia Media, who joined YouTube in May of 2020 and posted this a few weeks ago. Whoever they are, I am glad they stitched together all these photos and radio interviews. Best single introduction to this work that I’ve encountered. Thank you, weirdos!
Matthew Schnipper’s Deep Voices playlists have been a total balm recently. If you don’t know them, try Deep Voices #15 or just subscribe to the newsletter that accompanies the playlists. I’ve made a running playlist of my favorite Deep bits.
I’d never heard of Yoshinori Hayashi until last week, which made last week a little better. We are from different countries and time zones but his taste in dance and dub and bonked out mirrors my own. I hope he makes eleventy billion albums.
I don’t want Anne Boyer to be my President because I don’t want there to be any Presidents, but I do wish she would write her newsletter more often.
Did you know Shia El Boeuf and John Legends and Bradley Pitt did a table read of the Fast Times at Ridgemont High screenplay a few weeks ago?
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