insomnius

Feb 06

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2011-02-05) -

I guess the last.fm to Tumblr weekly posts don’t work any more after all. As an exercise in actually writing something (anything!) once in a while, I’ll be throwing together a manual version with a few more words every week that I can manage it. Sorry!

1. Hüsker Dü (119)

This week I was strangely not in the mood to listen to most of my music. Fortunately, I have a handy text file for just such occasions: an extensive list of bands and albums that I do want to get around to listening to some day, somehow.

Thus, this was the week in which I finally discovered Zen Arcade.

A year or two ago when I read Our Band Could Be Your Life I went through a bit of a phase of listening to the bands it covered. Most of them weren’t really my thing; I’ll listen to Black Fag over Black Flag any day, my exploration of Sonic Youth has been fitful so far, I couldn’t reconcile the long and wonderfully revolting history of the Butthole Surfers with my memories of listening to “Pepper” all through high school¹, et cetera.

And when I listened to the Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime and didn’t get into it at all, I more or less gave up.

Whether it’s because enough time has passed for me to have a fresh perspective, or because Hüsker Dü are just better², Zen Arcade is great and I’ve been listening to it heaps.

2. R.E.M. (39)

This was me listening to Fables of the Reconstruction about three times and then deleting it. They can’t all be winners.

3. King Creosote and Jon Hopkins (35)

I only discovered Diamond Mine in the wee hours of Saturday morning (at what I suppose must have been a vulnerable moment). Had it not been for the timing, there’s no way I would have had only 35 plays racked up by the end of the week.

I’m completely charmed by this album. It taps into a need I only really developed last year: a need for music that moves slowly, is gentle (or at least subtle), has a prettiness to it, and is also “musically interesting” (for want of a better term) enough to keep me engaged when my mind’s caught up in what I’ve come to privately refer to as some kind of mixed-state hell, or I’m staring-eyed exhausted, or I just plain feel bad.

It’s that need that saw me devour Tim Hecker last year, and enjoy Bon Iver’s latest album a great deal, and spend hours crafting a playlist that might convince me to sleep.

None of that is really about Diamond Mine itself, but so far my listening hasn’t been either. It has piano and acoustic guitar and field recordings and quiet crackling and folk songs and Scottish accents and I like it.

4. The Mountain Goats (33)

About as low as the Mountain Goats ever get on my charts. And it only happens when I have a terrible thirst for new music upon me, and I always come back to them again. It was all Full Force Galesburg and Devil in the Shortwave this week. If I had to pick a really small number of Mountain Goats releases to retain access to and lose the rest forever, I doubt I’d ever leave these out. <3.

5. Tim Hecker (27)

This must have been near the beginning of the week, because I can’t remember listening to Hecker at all recently. I suppose my memory is not at its best. Still, he’s become my go-to artist for quiet times when I can’t stand music with words.

Also-rans

Other listening of note this past week: Jay-Z (Reasonable Doubt, inspired by One Week One Band), Current (Discography, inspired by Andrew), and Perfume Genius (“Hood”).

I really loved that chorus. ↩
Trololol. ↩

oneweekoneband:

Charlotte Gainsbourg – 5:55 (promotional video, 2006)

5:55 AM is the Janus hour. It offers a dual experience. The person who is “so much more productive in the mornings” eventually discovers that the earlier they rise, the more morning they have to be productive in; at 5:55 they’ve taken a shower and are drinking coffee and gearing up to answer emails, or to do some personal writing – take their dog for a run – pack for a fishing trip – make their bed with hospital corners – the list goes on. Then there is the person who has been awake all along, and is now facing a momentous decision: go to bed / stay in bed, or get up? At 5:55, if you’re not dealing with a long commute, you can still get 90-120 minutes of sleep in, which is a full REM rest cycle. Also, it is not 6AM, which is morning for everyone. Being awake at 6AM means you are officially an irresponsible person who Stayed Up All Night, perhaps for no very good reason at all. Have you even brushed your teeth? Perhaps you were blogging. If you go to sleep now, you can pretend you did so at night. It’s still mostly dark out, anyway. There’s that dead-fish grey glow on the horizon, but it’s easy to ignore.
That is, if you manage to fall asleep.

Looks like I saved this to reblog a while ago, and never got around to it.

You know that thing where you have the same dream 730 nights in a row? -

I’ve never gotten into Jens Lenkman at all before; had, in fact, written him off as one of those artists I just wouldn’t find a way into and so shouldn’t bother paying any attention to at all.

But I’m loving this song.

(Source: rawkblog)

Feb 05

“We love, says Plato, that in which we are defective; when we see our magical Self in the mirror of another, we pursue it with desperate cries — Stop! I must possess you! — but if it obligingly stops and turns, how on earth can one then possess it?” —

Joanna Russ, The Female Man

Horrifying transphobia and misogyny in this book, as it turns out, but this particular quote still speaks to me.