i hold the sound.

relation to music is a strange thing, how it changes for no apparent reason - how, for maybe an entire year, i trawled through all of the prominent mp3blogs, and quite a lot of the littler ones, trying to get something. trying to get something new and, as i think i learned more in retrospect, something of a quick fix. it was almost about riffs and hooks, although not in the conventional sense...it was kind of about gimmicks, i suppose, even when it was very aware of this shallow need for gimmicry, hooks, whatever, it still had its own special way of letting them in. out of all those bands that released mp3s day after day, each hour, to this little clique, i think i actually discovered maybe one or two that i still listen to. bound stems is one, for sure. right now, i can't really think of another. actually, the national as well. and those bands, you know, i love. i listen to the national a load, and while 'baby we'll be fine' was the one that reeled me in, where i listened to it constantly and obsessively for a solid couple of weeks, the other tracks are real growers. like, real growers - to the point where they seem annoying at first before they reveal a load of hidden layers...'secret meeting' fucked me right off when i first heard it, but then later 'looking for astronauts' soundtracked a beautiful sunrise, that i believe i've detailed before, and 'city middle', 'geese of beverley road' and 'mr november' still get the occassional obsession. but, this post isn't really meant to be about the national, that was just an example of...what was that an example of? i think i'm saying that it became like the pop charts or something. gimmicks, popularity and hooks, often without much substance.

but now, i've begun to notice something that's been going pretty much throughout my music listening life - cycles. there was a big noise cycle, where that's what really excited me, and that was pretty short and intense, just because of the sheer sonic nature of noise. also, i couldn't really share that with anyone. that kind of cycle, i think, is different for everyone. it's likely that noise will never appear on any best of year lists, because its just a complete shot of something that you don't always need. having said that, brian chippendale's black pus project, and specifically 'black pus II' was beautiful and amazing and actually made me sweat sitting down with excitement (which must've been kind of rank for everyone else), and it has managed to get into an almost permanent place in my bag of CDs. so, i think that'll be on my best of year list, if i ever get round to compiling one.

notice how i keep digressing onto certain bands. sorry, i'll try harder.

cycles. there was a big one with kind of...i don't know what to call it, but blood brothers and part chimp and some others, where i had to listen to very, very loud stuff. and before that, i was intensely into the kind of folk thing, but i just couldn't really listen to it when i was in the loud cycle, because i just wanted things that were very, very loud. it's hard to explain, and completely irrational. now, i think i'm in a drone cycle, which was really opened up by belong's 'october language', and incorporates things like growing, tim hecker, some of those daniel higgs tracks from 'ancestral songs' and the buddha machine...and kind of developed within a larger cycle of repetition, like sunburned hand of the man and such. and at the moment that seems to be an even larger cycle, that is all about repetition and the accumulation of all these cycles, where drones and ambience are the top of this chain, and everything else is contained within them. with the drone cycle, i've been released from the cyclic pattern that has grown more intense and...cylindrical every time, and now i am listening to everything at once. i am in one of those explosive stages where you just find a shit-ton of really great music, and where you want to listen to all of your records at once. i am back listening to six organs of admittance, and obsessively to joanna newsom and califone. and then there's psychic TV, and also, i'm coming back to the Thermals, who are perfect in their brilliantly simple construction of songs, and heavy lyrical themes. there's a whole post's worth of stuff to talk about with the thermals...i mean, come on. a power chord album based on the concept of a distopian christian facist state...more importantly, a power chord album based ont he concept of a distopia chrsitian facist state that not only works, but turns out to be really great...come on! that deserves some discussion.

noah's ark? no problem - 'god said "here's your future: it's gonna rain."'

what a sarky cunt! reminds me of that Evelyn Waugh letter...hold on...

In the hope of keeping him quiet for a few hours Freddy [Lord Birkenhead] & I have bet Randolph [Chirchill, Winston's Son] 20 pounds sterling that he cannot read the whole Bible in a fortnight. It would have been worth it at the price. Unhappily it has not had the result we hoped. He has never read any of it before and is hideously excited; keeps reading quotations aloud `I say I bet you didn't know this came in the Bible "bring down my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave'" or merely slapping his side & chortling `God, isn't God a shit!'

another digression. how out of character.

what was supposed to arrise from that little bit is that there's something that seems to react inside you, the way a lot of people discover things at the same time, taking their tastes to the logical extreme conclusions, and opening up everything else that brought them along that path. kind of like the constant reproduction of meaning with every new person who experiences a text...only within yourself. everything you have ever listened to over a period of time (a period of time that, often, is too large to see till it's over - i didn't see myself coming back to the thermals, really, even though there is nothing wrong with them and now, clearly, i have a lot to say about them) becomes new and different and exciting in new ways, often just through time, and often through a new set of situations, and a lot of the time through a new learning curve or musical experience. and even when you're aware of yourself going through these little explorations and cycles, you can't stop it. you crave the farsifa riff from 'laser life', or you walk through the city listening to 'primitive associations/great mass above', or you drive along turning up 'pillar of salt', or constantly placing the needle back on 'black metal valentine', or ripping lettuce leaves to 'in the pines'; trying to find a perfect place on a mixtape for 'radio spiricon', obsessively tracking the history of 'the orchids', reading short stories to 'are you of the body?'.


it's endless, and it's inevitable, and it's fantastic.


the blood brothers - laser life
growing - primitive associations/great mass above
thermals - pillar of salt
califone - black metal valentine
smog - in the pines
tim hecker - radio spiricon
psychic tv - the orchids
daniel higgs - are you of the body?

cracking stones

so i had this dream.

the bit i wanted to get down was the second part, and i woke up after it and wrote it down. but as i was lying there i remembered the things before it, and they might be important...or worth putting down so you can see what kind of thing was going on.

so in these first bits, a couple of friends of mine were killed by a car that ploughed straight through the chairs they were sitting on. the next part of the dream was quite long, a kind of very psychological montage of me and someone else who witnessed it trying to get through what had happened. there were a lot of extreme reactions, and sometimes there was just a lot of silence and staring at things, and going blind or falling over. in terms of what i've experienced of people close to me dying, it was brutally realistic. and then luke was injured in a war, which was quite hard considering he's just started some training for the army or navy or airforce or something. i read through a conversation he had with tom (which had been copied down by another friend, but that's a seperate anxiety that i don't really want to talk about), and it was one of those conversations where it starts off with normal stuff, and then both parties start to bridge onto what they really want to talk about. it ended up with luke detailing the things he had to do because of his injury each day, how difficult it had all become. i was crying quite a lot and had to stop reading.

that's the first part.

then there was the second part, which was a lot shorter. it happened around some strange dream logic, where i was sometimes having the conversation, sometimes just hearing it and in others i was just reading it, as i had done in the first part. also the images i could see where sometimes right in my field of view, and sometimes they were only described or evoked by my minds eye...so, i could experience them but not actually see them. i don't know how important that is. i could also hear certain noises, but they wern't really noises in themselves so much as an atmosphere.

i was having a conversation with someone, and i was aware they they were having problems mentally, as in an illness, like schizophrenia or something similar. but i was having this conversation, and i remember them saying something about thought as a liquid, and seeing all this imagery of a bowl on a table and stirring it, stiring this stuff that had the colour and texture of melted toffee, and this person was describing and making these images. they were describing all these everyday things in the most beautifully descriptive, evocative ways, describing all these perfect events and perfect imaginations of walking in empty parks and under trees. and i can see all this stuff they're describing, but i can also somehow see that spoon stiring the bowl, and its got some smoke or steam coming off it and drifting up, and its a bit thicker or more solid than smoke. and that, the person tells me, are ideas and thoughts, and the way they drift up and around the room, and transfer within a conversation and between people, and how you can blow them to and fro.

and now i'm really excited and relaxed and in love with this conversation, and i say, keep going, tell me more. and they say, 'hello?', and i say, i'm still here, keep talking, and they get very worried and panicky, and say 'hello? hello?', and a lot of incoherent words and sentences that don't make sense. and it was completely heartbreaking. like, they only had the ability to express themselves in language for a moment, and i was there for it, but the rest of their existence is darkness and confusion, and fear, because they're different, and confined by their mind and the physical things around them. things that i have gotten used to and use, but that they find terrifying and unnecessary and violent.

and it was that moment, when i realised that, and reading the words 'hello? hello? sorry sorry' off this piece of paper that our conversation was turning in and out of, it was harrowing and bitterly sad, and i didn't really sleep after that. and i kept climbing out of bed and using my phone as a light to scrawl all this down on the side of a newspaper, so i wouldn't forget it. because i knew it was so important to remember it. but it turns out i remembered it anyway, because i was laying there for hours thinking about it, climbing in and out of bed writing it down.

i've been thinking about it a lot, and while it doesn't have to mean anything, i think it has something to do with my grandad around his death, when he was in a home. he loved it when i went to visit, and would tell me all these amazing stories about the war...ones he'd tried to tell before, but when nan was alive and everytime he started one, she would always snap 'charles, no one wants to hear about that.' i think mum is a little upset about that, that we didn't get to hear more, but i think my nan only said it because it must've been painful for her, to hear about that time of their life when they were apart for so long, and wondering every minute if he was alive or dead, and just remembering the whole experience of the war. my grandad wasn't a soldier explicitly, and was a carpenter and so did things like fix planes and build stuff. while he obviously saw the killing and things, he also remembered the really exciting times, and the brotherhood, and the adventure. and he would tell me these stories, laying in his bed, and it's really sad but i think its the first time i thought of him as a younger person, or even as a person rather than as just 'grandad'. he couldn't really see me well enough to notice, but i could see this excitement in his eyes when he was telling these fantastic stories and it made me nearly cry all the time. i constantly had to bite my jumper wrapped round my hand to stop it. but, all the time he was telling these stories, his wife had died and he was getting thinner and thinner, becoming half a man, and he had a kind of colostomy bag and the room constantly stunk of piss. and later, after he died, and they examined him for cause of death and stuff, we found out that he might've had a few small strokes in that bed, and even broken a bone in his leg, and had too many bed sores, because he wasn't looked after properly by the nurses. sometimes, he would be telling these stories, and he would stop and have to sleep, and other times when we went to see him he was utterly incoherent, and his eyes had nothing behind them, he looked through us. and i know that it all happened because nan died. he died as soon as she did, really. there's a beautiful picture of them both sitting on a wall, smoking, and laughing together. i remember it being a chore, going round there sometimes, to nan and grandad's house. but i also remember sitting on the couch, wearing my nan's hat inside out, and nan and granded sitting on the couch and i was the bus driver. i don't know why an inside out hat was a bus driver hat, but it completely was.

and i remember when nan asked me to pull her boot off, and i did and she fell over and broke her hip, and i called the ambulance and mum; and made a cup of tea, but i forgot to put the tea bag in it, and i was scared, and she was too, but as soon as that happened, as soon as i brought her this cup of hot water and realised, we both started laughing and it was all ok. mum got home and the ambulance came, and she was fine. and i remember her buying chipolatas from tubby's butchers at the bottom of her road, and they were really thin and amazing with gravy. and up until i was about 10 i thought caister was just her road, and never really thought about it. i guess what i'm saying is, i miss them a lot, and wish i had another chance to appreciate them. i wish i recorded some of those conversations with grandad, and i really hope mum has kept his diaries from the war, where he got really excited about having tea in africa or something.

they had this telephone with really big numbers, and had the tv on way too loud. and they would sometimes grow broad beans, and nan would cook incredible sprouts.


lindsey buckingham - shut us down