Your childhood is over.

Written by

Swans – Lunacy (ft. Alan Sparhawk & Mimi Parker)

There was a car crash on one of our nation’s highways two nights ago. A drunk police officer was responsible. Three people died: a mother and her two young daughters. Three others, injured. Media outlets printed a picture of the older daughter, prone on the road, wearing a mask of blood. The next day, there was a protest. There were clashes with the police. A racist journalist said the police should gun the (mostly black) protesters down and “plant cabbages” where they stood. Today, a famous musician got off ridiculously lightly for beating the shit out of a citizen a few years ago. In the global/national/whatever scheme of things, this isn’t really big news. But it isn’t not-news either. It’s just what happens here.

I wish this was fiction.

[The Seer.]

My unfounded theory

Written by

My Bloody Valentine – Wonder 2 (mp3 removed)

Eating, shitting and sleeping. That’s what life essentially consists of, according to my dad sometimes. There’s a level of truth to this, reductive as it is, if you exclude things like doing drugs, talking about and wildly exaggerating drug stories with friends, travel, getting into relationships, sex, playing video games, The Internet, and enduring the manifold awkwardness that modernity confronts us with on a regular basis. Still, the three things mentioned at the top of the paragraph are different, because they retain meaning despite the fact that we do them all the time. P.S. This is 63% of why Louis C.K. is a transcendentally funny man.

Ever have a 5-second epiphany, while watching some professional sporting event – football in my case – about how utterly, completely absurd it is? Like, a bunch of humans running at insane speeds, physically jousting with each other, often violently, stretching themselves to the limits of their own strength . . . in order to kick a round piece of leather into a mesh netting. What? I mean, I love it, but I have no idea why. It is not an unhappy experience, though, simply a weird one – a gentle reminder from your own mind of how strange your existence is. There is something to be said for being disoriented (or disorientated, if you’re British).

The new My Bloody Valentine record is quite brilliant and you should buy it if it’s your kind of thing, but you didn’t really need me to tell you that, really, because almost all of the Very Serious Music Critics can tell you and have already told you that. I do, however, have a theory about this record, one for which there is no real evidence.

My theory is that each song on m b v represents – well, not “represents” but has some sort of strange relationship with – different types of sexual encounters. These include: sensual, lovely, romantic sex; contrived, camera-voyeurism sex; graduation sex; sweaty, tight, period sex; a type of sexual encounter which has not yet been experienced on this planet, but which, if it were to take place, would happen in the back of an airplane charged with unloading apocalyptic explosives upon humanity (“Wonder 2″).

According to this theory: The album took 22 years to be released because, well, Kevin Shields took his time accumulating the necessary experiences. Then he turned these things into sound.

[m b v.]

Make my sad songs sincere

Written by

puppy dog eyes

The Magnetic Fields – No One Will Ever Love You

I’m second choice with the dog even. Third, really. Rawles prefers either roommate over me.

If we’re alone in the apartment, he’s affectionate. He’ll burrow into my chest as I’m watching soccer, or prance around in excitement as I put on my shoes, or sleep in my bed, his chin resting on my stomach. But when someone else is around, the pecking order is clear.

Sometimes, when the humans are sitting on the couch watching Modern Family or something, I’ll call Rawles and pat my thighs. He’ll jump up, walk over my lap and snuggle with the roommate next to me.

For Valentine’s Day I bought myself 69 Love Songs.

The Magnetic Fields – (Crazy For You But) Not That Crazy

Because we live in the Western world and read from left to right, the steak knives on the left endure much heavier use. In the row of six along the bottom of the knife block in the kitchen, the far right one seldom leaves its slot. The two middle ones probably haven’t breathed fresh oxygen since we moved in three-quarters of a year ago.

The mug in the far right corner of the cupboard would probably leave a dust ring. The bottom small fork might have never tasted a human tongue.

Lately I’ve taken to remedying the imbalance. I shuffle the steak knives. I rotate the cups. I extract my silverware from the bottom. Everything deserves to be held on occasion.

I can’t tell if I’m OCD or just lonely.

[69 Love Songs.]

sensitive torso

Written by

Daniel Horowitz

Brian Eno – Becalmed

I need tea tree oil right now and tea tree oil is the only thing I need. No rest till tea tree oil. I gave away an almost-empty bottle to the people camping in my backyard to keep the mosquitoes away. We didn’t use to have mosquitoes. There’s a crater-sized ditch in our yard where we tried to dig a pool and never finished. Now the bottom’s choked with murky water and mosquitoes breed with fevered purpose. Did you know people who eat a lot of bananas attract more mosquitoes? I know that because for about a month I ate, like, a lot of bananas and mosquitoes went nuts for me, and then I stopped and so did the attention. Also, I read it somewhere.

Sometimes when I lie down I imagine the nerves in my fingers going out like burnt-out light bulbs one by one, and then my hands, and my arms and legs and feet too, gradually all my extraneous senses dropping out like a bad connection. Actually, truthfully I’ve only done that once or twice. I could probably sell it as a new form of meditation, but like, kind of unsettling meditation. That’s very 2013, I’d say. I don’t know where you’d stop, though, with the nerves dropping out. Like are you just a really sensitive torso, or do even your tastebuds fall away? If you get good at it you could stay like that for ages; unfeeling. You wouldn’t even notice the mosquitoes. Or maybe you would and you’d just let them bleed you dry.

I could tell you approximately how many mosquitoes it would take to drain a human body, one bite apiece. If that’s something you’d like to know. But first I think I’ll just lie here for a while. Think maybe I’ll start my own count.

[Another Green World.]

I’m not the girl you’re taking home

Written by

batman

Robyn – Dancing On My Own

Doing the Harlem Shake alone in your room on Valentine’s Day when the the drier buzzes.

[Body Talk.]

Round and round the block

Written by

yeyeye

Written by

mechanic hands

Daphni – Ye Ye

Squat in your sandals and shorts. Spit on the filthy concrete. Wet your finger in the spittle puddle and rub it on the tire valve. Screw the cap back on. Spin the recently replaced tire. Squeeze a tube of oil over the chain. Grease it down with your steady, blackened finger.

[Jiaolong.]

Woodpigeons

Written by

Let’s not be friends.

Written by

[free download: Stupid.]

interviewtheproletariat
The Eggs

Written by

eggs

The Eggs – Disintegrate

The Eggs are a Brooklyn-based quintet comprised of Mike Britt (bass), Alex Cohen (drums, percussion), Roshan Reddy (guitar), Emma Sky (violin, viola) and Cynthia Wennstrom (vocals). I will make two claims related to this lovely batch of musicians: (i) their songs are aural patchwork quilts knit fresh from warm, loving hands, and (ii) they have no problem poking fun at themselves or giving confusing answers to questions. If you’re the kind of person that requires evidence for even lighthearted claims – fuck you, pedant! – well, read on!

Have you ever been in a fight?
RR: With Rihanna . . . (disclaimer: I’m a horrible person).
AC: Just with myself.

What is your favorite swear?
The Eggs: In no particular order: motherdamnit, shit-tits, cuntfish, Mitt Romney, poopie, Godfuckit, fuckethead, assmunch, slunt, clut.

If possible, which musician or band would you open for?
MB: Well I’m not sure, but I definitely think Metallica should open for us.
RR: Have you ever heard of this duo called Buke and Gase? They’re my favorite new band and the first project I’ve been excited by in a long time. I guess you could call them a noise-pop duo, but that would hardly do them justice.
CW: I think the Dirty Projectors would be a lot of fun to open for!
AC: Napalm Death. Easy.

Other honorable mentions include: Deerhoof, Battles.

What would you say to your first girlfriend/boyfriend?
RR: Thanks for introducing me to your wife.
MB: Do you still have that thirty bucks you owe me?
AC: I’m only half sorry for every dead baby joke I told.
ES: I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.

What’s your most neurotic habit?
AC: Theft and arson.
ES: It’s probably the fact that if I don’t do yoga everyday I’ll explode.
RR: I . . . I see . . . dead people.
CW: Sometimes I stare off into the distance and imagine I’m riding Falcor from The NeverEnding Story and we solve mysteries together . . . then I snap back to reality and realize I left the oven on and smoke is now filling my apartment.

The Eggs – Patterns

What’s your worst experience from high school?
MB: I got suspended for self-defense once. Totally lame.
CW: I accidentally peed on myself during school. It was as horrible as everyone imagines it is, but in hindsight it’s pretty funny.
RR: This one only feels bad now that I’m a little bit older and have some perspective, but it was the few times where I watched or participated in making fun of someone who didn’t deserve it at all. I definitely feel like a chode for that.

Since starting in music, what has been your most frustrating moment?
MB: I find sympathy clapping and stiff audiences pretty frustrating.
AC: Heavy gear and being billed with other acts that don’t fit with the band I’m playing in that night definitely tend to be my main pet peeves.
RR: Watching artists succeed by producing trite and unoriginal garbage.

In the same vein, what has been the high point?
CW: Recording in a real studio for the first time when I was nineteen.
RR: Performing for over, or at least close to, a thousand people one time.
ES: I organized a benefit concert that raised a bunch of money for cancer research, which was an amazing experience for me.

Favorite emotion?
RR: What’s that?
CW: That weird feeling you get when you bump into someone on the street and you guys keep choosing the same direction to go and never get around each other . . . yeah, that’s the stuff.
ES: Does sweating count?
AC: Well, since I don’t have a soul I can’t really say . . .

What’s your earliest memory with or biggest impression of music from a young age?
MB: Knowing that music was a presence or a force, but that I couldn’t reach out and touch it [has] always baffled me. I guess that’s what hooked me as a kid and I’ve endeavored to figure out some way to perceive music visually ever since.
RR: Film music has always been a big source of inspiration for me and one of my earliest musical memories was me trying to squeak out the notes to the Jurassic Park theme song on my recorder. If it weren’t for the Star Wars or Jurassic Park soundtracks I don’t think I would be making music today. In other words: thank you, John Williams.

[Patterns EP.]