Person Pitch - Panda Bear (2007)

the album starts with the sound of a goddamn rollercoaster.

a rollercoaster! the machine which gave you the greatest highs you could ever imagine when you were 10, 15, 30 years old! you ascend into the clouds where a pulsing chant embraces you, and a singer steps out of the chorus to tell you to "always have a good time." and you listen! you tap along, stomp along, sing along, whistle along, walk along, and dance along until jet after jet after jet zooms by until suddenly the darkness engulfs you, and you wonder.

i don't want to write about this album.

there are just some things that can't be converted into words. when you try, your mind turns to sludge, your typing goes all wrong, and the words on the screen reflect that. you start typing things like "it sounds like running through a meadow towards a scarecrow except the meadow is made of brain tissue and the scarecrow is a rainbow unicorn" or "it sounds like if birds had teeth and lizards had wings" or "it sounds like if all the strongest people in the world started living in trees, only coming out to eat squirrels" or "it sounds like purple dipped in cream dipped in fur dipped in girl dipped in music dipped in mind."

the alternative?

i don't know, get stoned? buy a good pair of headphones? when you wake up in the morning, listen to your alarm? hear the rain? listen to the difference between a plate and a bowl? listen to the people talking to you? (just don't listen too closely, or you might not understand what they're saying.)

"hey man what's your problem don't you know that i don't belong to you"

no, you don't. you don't belong to anybody. you're a 12-and-a-half minute composition that escapes on the wings of an owl, you've got the turnpike on your side, trucks zoom past but you laugh because you don't need a ride, you're crying because you're leaving but you know it's the right decision.

what does it mean to not be able to hear a common phrase, such as "i'm not," without singing?

"ready?"

"what?"

"nevermind."

i once read a review that said this song sounded like an Amazonian tribe perform their chants while under the influence of LSD. how stupid. it's just Noah Lennox clicking buttons on a computer. the fucking magic! in his own words, he gave the computer a soul! us humans are all about soul but i don't know what we'll do once computers have them. in other words, i'm not ready.

all of a sudden i'm supposed to enjoy a fast tempo? well, okay. chant me into submission. submit me into chanting. you're getting water everywhere. i may be marine but i might not be me, and it turns out that "/" means i'm not.

"it's not a ticket for you to pick at other people who don't know what's up like you're so sure you do"

ouch.

eventually the ice cream will come around; you can heal your wound and eat neapolitan simultaneously. what's the difference?

tigers, gorillas, seals, koalas, panda bears, and little kids. the artist knows the music.



when my soul starts growing
when my soul starts growing
when my soul starts growing

a
aa
and

i wish
i wish
i know

stop
stop
stop

and here you were, expecting something epic.

it's funny reading reviews of this album because each one of them rings so true while at the same time only capturing one facet of the whole:

"Starting an album with a clattering of industrial rhythms sliding into a huge clap-and-stompalong with angelic vocals and what sounds like the Brotherhood of Man on a vocal loop tip not far removed from Suicide or Laurie Anderson is one way to make a mark." -- allmusic

"Sometimes ominous, sometimes celebratory, always compelling, Person Pitch is as clattering and tactile as a beaded curtain." -- The Onion

"Person Pitch as a whole-- and "Bros" in particular-- evokes the sunshine of Lennox's adopted Lisbon, Portugal home. But it's the kind of light best experienced with eyes closed-- with the rays filtered through eyelids, turning the world into various shades of red and orange." -- Pitchfork

"For an album constructed from so many constituent parts, Person Pitch is amazingly warm and inviting at times, wrapping around the ears, nestling the head, and squeezing like a nice familial bear hug after years of no contact." -- Tiny Mix Tapes

"Person Pitch sounds like everything. To some, the upstroked guitars and vocal stacking in “Take Pills” make it a consummate summer record. To others, the city clacks and tracks, the sampled noise and confusion make it a winter record, the kind of thing you curl up with in front of a frosty window in order to be reminded that something exists beneath the snow." -- Aquarium Drunkard

"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."
"Person Pitch sounds like everything."

download or buy.

Dayvan Cowboy - Boards of Canada (2005)

Tranquility in things larger than ourselves.

Dayvan Cowboy (video, Warp Records)

for reference:
Wikipedia: Dayvan Cowboy
Wikipedia: Project Excelsior
Wikipedia: Le Grand Saut

Blue Monday - New Order (1983)

Xanthe and i were shocked today when we found out that our friend Donni didn't know what a subwoofer was. i tried punching her (on beat) to explain. when that didn't work, i played this song.



the biggest selling 12" single of all time, "Blue Monday" is the best New Order song and it's one of my favorite dance songs ever.

when i listen to it on headphones, as i am right now, it's a comfortable living room experience. i'm just sitting here, turning up the volume an increment or two every half minute, bobbing my head with that standard house beat (with the occasional machine gun twitter), letting the guitar sidewind down my face, hearing monks proclaim their love for divinity and listening to divinity (in the form of synthesized strings) puke its love for monks.

then the vocals come on. then its 5 more minutes of dance rock power pop new waves. wonderful.

then there are the times the song is blasting out of speakers. maybe i'll just play extremely loudly in my own room, like i did for Xanthe and Donni this morning, or a dj will throw it on at a club. this happened pretty much every night i went out in Athens, and pretty much every time it happened, i let go of everything to get up and dance. and if i was already "dancing," i dropped the act and actually started dancing (because you're only dancing when you ignore yourself and submit yourself to the air swirling air around you.)

everything is perfect in this song.
the bass drum is perfect.
the synths are perfect.
the bass is perfect.
the hi-hat is perfect.
the snare is perfect.
the guitar is perfect.
the synthesized string section is perfect.
the singing is perfect
the synthesized horn section is perfect.
EVERYTHING IS PERFECT.

listen.

Album Art (One Dominant Color)

Yesterday and Today - The Field (2009)

already halfway through 2009, i figured i would begin this blog with a post about my favorite album of the year (so far).



as the album art maybe reveals, this album's all about minimalism. with his ear moving closer to Steve Reich (famous for the essential minimalist work Music for 18 Musicians), Axel Willner has completed his second ambient house masterpiece under the Field moniker. moving away from the shorter, more immediately satisfying tracks he created on his 2007 debut, From Here We Go Sublime, The Field moves closer to Reich's territory by staying in the moment of a sound longer, looping seemingly infinitely on a closed circuit track of electronic bliss.

the shortest track here is barely under seven minutes, and it's the first Field track (that i know of) to feature vocals as actual singing, instead of just the instrumental blips The Field is known for. the rest of the tracks here dabble in or around the ten-minute mark. the key track for me is number 3, "Leave It," a long piece that spins and spins and spins, morphing slowly and steadily over the loop that repeats for twelve minutes.

but i continue to have trouble describing what makes this album click for me. i think to understand it, it takes a couple loud listens on headphones. when you listen to this normally, in your room or in the car, you hear a mediocre loop repeating for far too long. in your head though, forced to listen between a pair of good headphones, you hear the nuances that help the track evolve, like a virus changing its shape over geological time. little sparkly clangs that usher in transitions, bass lines that crawl out of the water like a fish growing legs, samples of female breath that exhale perfectly on time with crisp snares.



i had the very pleasant opportunity to see The Field perform at the Mezzanine in San Francisco just a couple weeks ago, and i am so happy i attended. as the photo shows, Willner is joined on stage by a couple other musicians for this tour, who took some load off Willner's job by covering some of the bases. awesomely, one of the other bandmembers actually played bass in a couple of the songs, bringing a wonderful organic vibration to the electronic thump.

if you are wondering what the title of the first track means, you are not alone. i asked Willner after the show what it meant and all he did was chuckle, saying, "it's a joke between me and my girlfriend." don't forget that humans make electronic music and human music rarely comes up with new topics.

1. I Have the Moon, You Have the Internet (8:02)
2. Everybody's Got to Learn Sometime (6:51)
3. Leave It (11:37)
4. Yesterday and Today (10:08)
5. The More That I Do (8:36)
6. Sequenced (15:42)

download or buy