mediator mixtape #3 - telepathy constants

this little phrase appeared in my head, 'jacobean fantasy'. i absolutely have no idea where it came from, and then i changed it to 'jacobean telepathy', and decided this is what the next mixtape would be called. then, i had to look up the word 'jacobean', because i had no idea what it meant. i had a vague idea it was to do with royal jesters. that's not a pseudo-political remark, i actually did think that, i'm not saying james the first was a clown or anything.

anyway, it turned out to be nothing so interesting as jesters. but i saw a link to 'jacobean architecture', and it wasn't very exciting, but i formed the idea that this mix should accompany a hand moving slowly through a wall. and then, as the mix was forming, the idea of jacobean - either its real meaning or my jester meaning - didn't seem to have much to do with the mix, so i changed it to telepathy constants, the second word in honor of a papa m song i had to take off the mix. (that's kind of a semi-obscure reference, but papa m had a song called travels in constants on his b-sides collection...the song i took off wasn't travels in constants, it was krusty. wow, i am in some mood.)

take what you will from that - is the hand really sharp or strong? is the wall like treacle? does the hand have to force or does it just glide through, is the wall a semi-permiable membrane (thanks, gcse biology)? is the wall a metaphor, is it an infinite wall of old, dark blood? you tell me, for you are my poststructuralist heroes. readers of the world, unite!

too much sodium. this will sound strange, but this mix isn't meant to be a lot of fun. at least, that's the impression i'm getting compiling it. it might lower your blood pressure though, and make you vibrate. maybe that's what the hand and the wall does. it's my favourite mix in a while, and i had an extra amount of fun putting it together.

mediator mixtape #3 - telepathy constants

tracklist:
1. godspeed you black emperor! - divorce&fever... (edit)
2. belong - all equal now
3. hood - intro
4. bjork - an echo, a stain
5. múm - please sing my spring reverb (isan catena remix)
6. thom yorke - skip divided
7. slowdive - cello
8. six organs of admittance - regeneration
9. wilco - i am trying to break your heart
10. final - sorry
11. thee more shallows - perfect map (bbc session)
12. devendra banhart - dragonflys




yes, the belong track is meant to sound like that (and by no means the best song from an incredible album). yes, the múm track is meant to sound like that. yes, the final track is meant to sound like that.

no internet for a few days, moving into the new house. our own house. with it's own garden and postman.

so, so great.


also: holy moly, it turns out jacobean fantasy is a website about embriodery that i have never seen before.

also: i don't care about embriodery!

mute the horn

cont. re: a scanner darkly;

its animated, but a strange kind of animation where its kind of based on actual movements and characters, and then kind of animated after...its based on a philip k. dick novel, but a good philip k. dick novel rather than do androids dream of electric sheep or supertoys last all summer long, where the films kind of saved dodgy, boring sci-fi technology dystopia stories. that's a little harsh, but what i'm saying is that the story is a lot more original and key to this story, while still being based wholly in the conspiracy/future dystopia thing.

actually, i can't remember what i was saying. i wrote that quite a few days ago, and now i don't care so much about it all. also, there was this step up to pynchon-like paranoia when i also heard amon tobin's cat people on the advert for the chrlotte chrch show, and so i have no idea if it was actually in the film, or just on that advert and...fuck. anyway, here it is, just that song. i've spent too long trying to find out if it was in the film, so the mix might come later.

amon tobin - cat people

also! i saw broken social scene in oxford last night, who were plagued with sound problems, and i also went to watership down - the actual place, and the pub too!

also! sorry to all the michael zapruder fans who were linked here. i only posted one song, with not much of a review or anything, so i am not really sure why he linked from his news page. but: go, frolic, enjoy the other stuff. as a special treat for you, here is something else that is very, very good:

jesse sparhawk - light cycle/tetrahedra

as far as i know, jesse isn't related to alan (sparhawk), but this song has been pretty addictive. it's on the second installment of the imaginational anthem (series?) cd, and it's kind of a perfectly modern progression of john fahey. that's a pretty big claim for some people to digest (and to those people i say: don't worry about it, i don't know as much as you about j.f.), but he just seems to revel in the guitar-picking playfullness that fahey loved so much, without trying to just mimic something undescribable that most contenders try out. i can't remember if i've ordered the cd yet or not.

i blame dubrovnik and oxford for my lack of recent home taping. but i can feel mediator #3 coming along soon, my ears are burning with ideas. or tinitus.




it's probably tinitus.

dead cloud season.

back from the reflective floors of old-town dubrovnik, welcomed by a few days of on an off rain. the weather (oooh, weather talk) has been real strange - the first night we were in dubrovnik, there was a weird kind of electrical storm (note: probably not an electrical storm) that just seemed to be very, very frequent sheet lightning inside certain clouds, with no rain or thunder until about 45minutes later. but, i didn't really want to talk about the weather.

not really a great returning paragraph, that.

it's just the one song right now - but i'm planning a short mixtape for tomorrow, based on the feelings i got from seeing a scanner darkly earlier today. it's only going to be short, and i don't think it will be very digestible...it could take a few listens. the ideas i have for it so far came from one moment in the film, where i saw a june of 44 poster and immediately after heard a incredibly short snippet of a song, half a drone of a note, which i then concentrated on so hard that i nearly evaporated - it was from cat people by amon tobin. (which, too, is a great film.) before that moment, i had been thinking, do i like this? is that animation really annoying or not quite annoying? are they digitally improving keanu as an actor?, and generally paying half, armchair-politics-level attention. after that sinister whisper, i seemed to dedicate myself wholly to the film, loving every bit of it. i'm a sucker for well placed film music, and this one will be up there with the end of fight club and the final diary scene of cruel intentions. so, i think the mix will be kind of droney and bleak...like desert virginity bleak.

fall fast, fall free.

this song is from the howlin' rain album, and the distorted solo is always the thing that brings me back to it. when it kicks in, i don't so much imagine the guitarist stamping on a pedal, so much as him stamping on an actual beartrap, making it spin into the air, catching it, and ripping its clenched teeth up and down the guitar, splitting the wood and the metal into nothing but one hovering, vibrating string.



howlin' rain - calling lightning with a scythe

we are made, defined by, wholesome, massive hyperbole.

all eyeliner and nailpolish, and rainbow-coloured bracelets circling your skinny arms.

it's no secret that meanwhile back in communist russia...'s anatomies is one of my favourite songs. i used to absentmindedly write out all the lyrics to the song when sitting on benches or on bus journeys, and leave the little scraps of paper around yarmouth buses and on pavements, wedged into billboards. i've since forgotten the lyrics and moved onto leaving paper cranes around (which, actually, caused a funny reaction with one of yarmouth's less colourful individuals...when i fixed a crane made of a mcdonald's wrapper to the top of a bus stop sign in the centre of yarmouth, he insinuated that my childhood must've been troublesome...although, i must admit, he didn't say it quite in that vernacular. in fact, he didn't really say it to me at all, rather than launch it at me from somewhere in his throat. i said that, yes, my childhood had indeed been troublesome, with my parents both dying before i was born, and having since been raised by birds. he then made the face that means 'at this moment, i am confused and unable to react to or deal with this social situation,' in other words, the face that directly precedes hit fist hitting, or even going through a part of my body. so i ran away, jumping with my arms flapping, and squarking.), but that's another story.

this morning i found a brilliant version of the song, one that might not seem wholly different to the casual listener, but one that really excites me, the obsessive listener. so many little differences to a song that i've heard an uncountable amount. it's the version they recorded on their 2003 peel session, just before the release of 'my elixir; my poison'.

meanwhile, back in communist russia... - anatomies (peel session)

this leads me onto another point, the point of where i got this session. it's from the perfumed garden, probably the first mp3 blog i started looking at regularly, and pretty much the only one i still visit regularly while away from uni, using this media-repellent shell of a computer. i highly advise you get the rest of this session and the earlier one, on the same page.

the perfumed garden has been host to some of the most amazing sessions, introducing me to thee more shallows, a brilliant darren hayman session, among many others, and making me see that low are, actually, really fucking great - with my terribly biased and uneducated opinion, i would say the low peel session is easily one of the top 3 ever recorded. if you look through the archives you're sure to find some real gems (like a few jesus and mary chain sessions that brought me to the site), and it's even better now that kris waaah (i'm pretty sure this is his real name) has his own space to host the sessions, eliminating the need for rapidshare. if any older sessions are down, i'm sure if you send him a friendly email he'll be happy to put it back up. but, don't take my word as gospel, i'm just guessing really, i don't even know the guy.

i missed most of these peel sessions the first time round, and the perfumed garden helps to quench that firey dissapointment every single day.

you must have known, i'd do this someday.

i've only ever seen shooting stars on film.

i wrote that two days ago, and we're still talking about it.

i was reading some reviews on amazon today, of an album i already own (i often do this, to see if i'm agreed with...it keeps me thinking my opinion is valid rather than just a copy of the hype bridage), the album in question was the national's alligator. and suddenly i had a flashback.

last year in the flat at uni, i didn't sleep that much. hell, i don't sleep much ever, but for some reason i remember this night. it was in the middle of my exams, and i was kind of trying to reread a passage on 'the death of the author' (from splintered memory, i think it was by barthes), and it wasn't working out, so instead i made some coffee and cooked. for the sake of storytelling this is quite frustrating, since i threw the cooking away and have no idea what it was; i have no idea what was sizzling or boiling in that pan, frying or sauce.

but what i do remember is staring out over the courtyard of the other raised flats, watching the sunrise through clouds, the rays hitting every window but ours, i cleaning a pan that was dirty in vain, and a named cafetiere, and 'looking for astronauts' was playing. when 'you know you have, a permanent piece' escapes from the cheap, trebly cd/tape combo, i feel this thing - this really, really dissapointing wash...not like apathy, but the same wash when you wake up after a heavy night out. "that was a good night. wait,..., what have i done?"

it's that point between realising you've fucked your best friends relationship up by sneaking into a dark corner with his girlfriend, or when you realised you haven't done anything wrong, and you were the perfect gentleman to the girl you were courting. but, obviously, completely out of that context. it's a tightrope of the human condition.

the national - looking for astronauts

the national - daughters of the soho riots

the national - baby, we'll be fine

this was the triplet of songs that i've tied to the moment, the ones i remember playing just at that period of bleach white, sky and room and mind.