Friday Pragmatism | Notes on Music, Life

No pun intended.

It’s going to sound like an ego-trip mostly because it is.
I’ve been reflecting on the music I’ve been listening to over the last few months and if I don’t say so myself, I’m rather impressed.

I have been listening to;
Anjunabeats vol 7 – progressive trance or house or whatever the hell you’re supposed to call it these days. All the music journalists can go to hell.
Various other progressive stuff from Beatport – Beatport is your friend. Only USD$1 extra wav loading. Fast downloads and a literal shitton of music.
Lisa Miskovsky – Country Rock or perhaps as one source puts it, Adult Oriented Rock which isn’t as bad a term as it sounds all told.
The Eagles – traditional Country Rock and straight out Country. I’m going back to my roots with this stuff, it’s been amazing. Until The Cardigans, I never really got into anything remotely sounding like Country at all. I realise that none of these artists are probably Traditional Country, especially given the nuances of modern production, but that is probably why I’ve gotten into it.
Susanna & Susanna & The Magical Orchestra. It’s usually listed as alternative, but I just tend to call it piano & voice or guitar & voice. Some of the material with The Magical Orchestra is a little more complicated, but it’s all extremely down-tempo music. Very mature, very intimate, highly evolved, exceptionally emotional.
Empire of the Sun – gets a mention because of the new material from their limited edition album. I didn’t retain it all, but the new version of Without You is stunning. I did have to edit the end and duplicate 15 seconds of the outro which was particularly tricky given the fade-out, but ultimately it all worked out fine and it sounds great. In the pop-vein, this track has absolutely stellar electric guitars.
Telefon Tel Aviv including Remixes Compiled – Telefon Tel Aviv are stunning. They leave me speechless. It’s electronic music to be sure, and somewhat 80’s inspired, but the grand production values extend beyond merely replicating electronic patterns and sounds from the 80’s. Remixes Compiled plays like a full album, and Rok and I joke about how it just should have been called Telefon Tel Aviv take other people’s music and make their own album out of it. The music is of head-exploding quality; often chaotic, always slick but never losing that sense of intimacy they created so well. It makes the death of Charles Cooper all the more saddening.
Zeep – The goddess Nina Miranda and her partner Chris Franck, reunited after working together last on Smoke City. What can I say – there is no other voice better than Nina’s. It’s smooth, rich tones can seduce the hardest rock-like heart, and if it can’t, you’re just not human. If ever there were two awesome hippies who decided to make music, these are they. Zeep’s material covers Alternative Acoustic Rock and the Bossa they both love so much. Pretty much as long as Nina’s voice is on it, I’m going to want it. Two short albums that end up fitting on one burn for the car – nice one.

I have made two compilations for burn and play in the car;
Glide – featuring Voom Voom’s Baby³ as the centrepiece and including such awesomeness as Madita’s Unspoken, the dZihan & Kamien remix of Nitin Sawhney’s Homelands, and If We’re In Love by Róisín Murphy.
Summer Nights – inspired by The Birds from Telefon Tel Aviv and Magnus Birgersson’s work on the Mirror’s Edge soundtrack. Also includes the Floor on the Intelligence remix of Star Line by Genki Rockets, Walking on a Dream by Empire of the Sun and Oceanlab’s Breaking Ties (original album version).

I’ve also planned to listen back through Fleetwood Mac’s discography.

I’m pretty impressed with the spread of genres, styles and emotions represented in that mix. That’s just some of my recent listening habits and doesn’t include the orchestral soundtracks I often listen to, nor some of the organic funk and rock, with a tiny sprinkling of harder stuff that I’d hesitate to call metal, and some of the quirkier stuff like opera (operettas mostly).

I have nothing against people who’s only source of music is the radio and who also can’t ever name their favourite artists or their back-catalogue. That’s cool. Music doesn’t have to be a dense experience for everyone, but I did remark to my father that my tastes are highly evolved. I did warn you that this was going to be a massive ego-trip. When he jokes about me finding a wife, I tell him that I’m too weird and complicated. I have a stupendously broad range of music and film that I get into quite deeply, I love video-games though on this front I have no addiction of any kind to them; even now I hardly have time to play and that doesn’t bother me. Nevertheless, without any context and additional information, combined with my love of Gundam, Lego and when one is good enough, Transformers, it may all seem too much. I think what has startled some of my partners in the past is that I can switch from playing some brain-dead video-game to talking about the textures and complexities of human behaviour, emotions and actions. It can get a little more confusing when I actually am more hesitant to watch a film like Transformers, and rather would prefer things like Babel, which many of my acquaintances have found challenging which again, is fair enough, but this is the shit I’m into.

I love being this detailed. I love having this massive personal history of art and culture. I love the experiences I’ve had in my life that have led me to meditations on complex subject-matter, and careful observation of my own behaviour and the behaviour of others. While we’re mentioning it, I love the difficulties of my illness – that may or may not require detailed explanation but today’s not the day. I marvel at the sheer number of things that can be travelling with me in my mind at any given moment, and I know that people do the same; there’s nothing particularly remarkable about me. I’m neither over intelligent nor gifted – I know what genius is and I’m gladly not one, thus every human has this kind of capacity and I’m sure experiences and exercises similar modes and behaviours.

That’s encouraging. I like that thought. I like growing out of the same old assumptions humans are given to make when they’re ignorant of details. I don’t have to get along with every one of them, but as long as we’re not hurting each-other, I’m happy to share an office or a meal or a coffee or a bed with you anyway. I have my very small selection of dear friends with whom I share some of these passions and thoughts, and I believe I can safely assume that others do the same. Often looking at broader cultural behaviour at large can be discouraging because the most obvious things that seem to be evident are all bad, but I’ve learnt that broader cultures aren’t everything. The most important thing about us and how we live are the personal cultures we cultivate and share between the few people we interact with intimately. On these principles we build our world and our life. The world the media displaysfor you is an illusion. I’m not trying to say that everything is rosey and right in the world, certainly there are some terrible things afoot, and often terrible behaviour among us and perpetuated by ourselves for which we are accountable, but I’m growing out of this the world sucks attitude that I developed in my youth, and that is also very easily leveraged if you go looking for the right data. Doing that though means discounting so many of the wonderful textures of our lives and it’s a disservice to one’s self and to one’s people to do so. We aren’t angelic, nor are we totally and absolutely flawed. We are good people with our flaws that we will continue to work-through to varying success, every day of our lives.

All on my own, without any encouragement from singular random events, I’ve talked myself out of being at odds with the world – probably leveraged the most through music. I might still crack the shits at some of the trashier lyrics, or more likely for my engineer’s ear, bad production, but I’ve gotten good at divorcing the product from the person. Music is what it is, even the trashy stuff has its place, and we will always be more complex than our tastes in music may indicate. A simple lesson perhaps, but of-course my discussions here aren’t solely about music.