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Archive for May, 2019

Dinaw Mengestu–“Addis Ababa, 1977” (Harper’s, February 2007)

Posted in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dinaw Mengestu, Ethiopia, Excerpt, Harper's, Kelsey Lu, Politicians, Skrillex, Violence on May 3, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KELSEY LU-“Due West” (2019).

I hadn’t intended to listen to so much of the Kelsey Lu album, but the third track was the one produced by Skrillex and I was curious what it would sound like.

I was expecting something very dancey and poppy.  It is nowhere near as over the top as I would have imagined.  Rather, it has a wonderful subtle hook in the bridge just because she sings a few words faster than the other.  Nearly everything else she sings is soft and slow, this little uptick is really cool.

Of the three songs, this is certainly the peppiest. It has some catchy electronic drums and definitive dance quality.  It’s still remarkably understate.

But i can see that the whole album could have sounded very different had she picked different producers.

The song ends with a surprisingly long guitar passage.  It is gentle and sweet with what sounds like crickets playing in the background.

I really don;t know all that much about Skrillex, but I think he’s a wild dancey EDM kinda guy.  The little I know leaves me astonished that he could produce something so subtle and pretty.

[READ: May 1, 2019] “Addis Ababa, 1977”

This is an excerpt from the novel The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears.

It is a horrifying example of what it was like to grow up in Ethiopia in 1977.

The bedroom is a wreck and letters are scattered all over.  He will forever be able to see the room, the house, like this.

Soldiers have arrived. The house guards had already left (begging forgiveness as they fled).  There are three soldiers in the house and at least four waiting in the truck,

The lead solider pushes his father in to the room, considering him weak and vulnerable.  The soldiers can’t be more than a year or two older than the narrator. (more…)

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Miranda July–“The Swim Team” (Harper’s January 2007)

Posted in Funny (ha ha), Funny (strange), Harper's, Kelsey Lu, Miranda July, Romance, Short Story, Skrillex, Swimming on May 2, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KELSEY LU-“Pushin Against the Wind” (2019).

The Kelsey Lu album has a song produced by Skrillex, and I was really surpirsed at how gentle the first song on the album was.  I was listening on Spotify and the second song started.

I was astonished how much the song sounded like a 70’s (British) folk song.

“Pushin Against the Wind” opens with a quiet, simple guitar melody.  Kelsey sings softly over the top.  The thing that sets it apart happens about a minute in when the tone changes.  She sings slightly faster and this bridge is punctuated by chunky percussion accents.  But those modern sounds are sparingly used, and this song feels delightfully timeless.

The song never gets all that big, but the end pulls the sound back even further to a simple cello and xylophone melody as she sings over the top.

This song is quite enchanting.

[READ: May 1, 2019] “The Swim Team”

This is a very short story (two pages) about the narrator living in a small town called Belvedere when she was twenty-two. The town was so small it wasn’t even a town–just houses near a gas station.

The citizens of the town thought her name was Maria and she was overwhelmed by the task of correcting people.

She knew three people: Elizabeth, Kelda and Jack Jack. (“I am not completely sure about the name Kelda, but that’s what it sounded like and that’s the sound I made when I called her name”).  They were all in their eighties at least.

There are no bodies of water or pools in Belvedere, but “Maria” gave the three of them swimming lessons.  None of the three of them could swim, and when Maria said she used to swim on her high school team, they asked her to be their coach. (more…)

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The Murlocs (The Black Box at Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, May 1, 2019)

Posted in Australia, King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Philadelphia, PA, The Black Box, The Murlocs, Trey Anastasio, Underground Arts on May 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED: May 1, 2019] The Murlocs

I was aware of The Murlocs as being the spin-off band from King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard’s Ambrose Kenny-Smith.  I’d listened to them a few times but hadn’t really listened intently.

Then I saw that they were playing at Underground Arts (in the Black Box, one of my favorite venues no less).  I thought it would be a great opportunity to see 2/7 of KGATLW (Craig Cook plays in both bands) before seeing KGATLW again later this year (probably from much further away).

I had also seen just the day before the show that two other members of KGATLW (Stu Mackenzie and Eric Moore) were on the East Coast (a picture of them hanging out with Trey Anastasio(!) has surfaced), so I thought there was chance that they might come down and join Ambrose on stage (they didn’t).  Although I learned that Stu and Eric joined the band for the encore cover of Hot Chocolate’s “Every 1’s a Winner” the night before in NYC (always at the wrong show).

I assumed that this show wouldn’t be all that well attended.  The King Gizzard shows are always popular, but I figured it was a side project by the “second singer” so how crowded would it be?  (more…)

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Moonwalks (The Black Box at Underground Arts, Philadelphia, PA, May 1, 2019) [THE MURLOCS]

Posted in King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard, Moonwalks, Philadelphia, PA, The Black Box, The Murlocs, Underground Arts on May 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

[ATTENDED, May 1, 2019] Moonwalks

Moonwalks is a three-piece from Detroit comprised of Jake Dean on guitar and vocals, Kate Gutwald on bass and Kerrigan Pearce on drums.

They play deceptively simple garage rock songs.  Their songs are retro and fuzzy, but they have a number of guitar and vocal styles and sounds in their quiver.

And deceptively simple because each song has a twist or turn in it which prevents it from being a simple three-chord, two-minute rocker.

I enjoyed their entire set and have checked out and enjoyed their bandcamp site.

Although as far as I can tell, none of the songs they played are up there (That doesn’t seem right, though).

I also loved the look of the band.  Jake’s glittery lamé shirt, Kate’s moon and stars themed top and Kerrigans’s possibly velvet top (they must have been very hot up there).

I’m not sure why, but Jake reminded me of Thurston Moore–possibly for his look but something about his presence and vocal delivery

I don’t know any of the songs they played, but the first one which seemed to be about “never coming back” set the tone for their set and it was solid right from the start.

They were a perfect band to open for the garage rock Murlocs, but they would work for just about anyone. I hope they go places, because they were really good.

 

 

 

 

 

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Pamela Lu–“Ambient Parking Lot” (Harper’s, January 2007)

Posted in Excerpt, Harper's, Huh?, Kelsey Lu, Music, Pamela Lu, Skrillex, The Flaming Lips, Theater on May 1, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: KELSEY LU-“Rebel” (2019).

I saw that Kelsey Lu was playing NonCOMM this year.  I had never heard of her, but her record was getting some high praise.  Then as I was going through some older Harper’s things, I saw this story by Pamela Lu.  I quickly thought it might be the same person.  Then I double checked and of course they are different, they just have the same last name.

Kelsey Lu is a classically trained cellist and has become one of many classical performers who have migrated into the pop world.  She is certainly underplaying her chops on the record, going more for melody than virtuosity.

This piece opens with a pizzicato cello (looped I assume).  It is overlaid with a mournful melody before Kelsey sings in her quiet but affecting voice.

The song is just over three and a half minutes and it slowly builds with more and more organic sounds–strings and voices.  By the half way point, there’s echo and by the three minute mark, this quiet, almost chamber pop song has built into a full-sounding piece which just as quickly drops nearly all the music as two cellos fade the song to the end.

It’s an astonishingly pretty and subtle song to start an album that has production credits from Skrillex (on a different song).

[READ: April 24, 2019] “Ambient Parking Lot”

I started reading this excerpt and thought it might have had something to do withe The Flaming Lips’ Parking Lot Experiments:

During 1996 and 1997, The Flaming Lips ran a series of events known as “The Parking Lot Experiments”. The concept was inspired by an incident in Coyne’s youth, where he noticed that car radios in the parking lot at a concert were playing the same songs at the same time, Wayne Coyne created 40 cassette tapes to be played in synchronization. The band invited people to bring their cars to parking lots, where they would be given one of the tapes and then instructed when to start them. The music was “a strange, fluid 20 minute sound composition.”  [from Wikipedia]

I’ll assume there is some kernel of something, maybe, that inspired this, frankly, disappointing piece.

It begins by talking about the recording of “Ambient Parking #25.”

With just a little filtering, the empty landscape managed to express its industrially generated solipsism and came to overshadow even the engine gunning and trunk popping of SUVs.

The seven inch vinyl was released two weeks later on an indie label.

It was a huge success compared to attempts 1-24 and inspired them to make a full album. (more…)

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