"Post-Music" Music Primer II
My brain feels ready to cleave in two. I think this means I need to leave this town, but it may mean that I need to stop pogoing between Richard Rorty's antiessentialism and the vast libraries of everything else. Blunted.
Anyway, Post-Main exploration, I felt like I'd short-changed those of you who might otherwise be inclined toward picking up a new record. Though Main's Motion Pool is certainly a good one to start with, it's not the record that grabbed my attention right off the bat. The record that really opened the door to me as far as "music my brother calls 'post-music'" is concerned exploded onto ContortYrself all the way backin December.
I immediately associate this record in my head (then as now) with New Orleans fog. Mirages is a viscerally heavy record, almost oppressive in its density. There's a grit there, too, like vines and mud on limestone walls. It's not a swamp record, not the fog of Dr. John's Gris-Gris, which summons evil women to crawl out of Bayou St. John and conjures demons on horseback past Congo Park. This fog is sifted thru skyscrapers. It's just as menacing on Poydras Street as Jackson Square or Tchopitoulas. Or the Lower 9 for that matter. It speaks thru the mouths of news anchors as much as mystics. That buzz might be a transistor radio or a satellite in orbit. That fuzz might be music underwater or it might be cabin pressurization. Those guitars might as well be sighs.
"Incurably Optimistic!" is just that: terminal. If there's any hope at the end of things, then that hope is the same kind of oscillating slow-shifting organ note. Whether the end creeps up or pounces, it will envelop. I can't say whether this is warm or cold, viscous or vaporous. It just is. And on nights like tonight, when my brain is worrying itself to no end and thinking in two directions - like past and future, like that yeah - sometimes the end needs to come in an wrap it up. Like cabin pressurization. Like the end.
They'll get it for you at Aquarius. Search for "Hecker".
Anyway, Post-Main exploration, I felt like I'd short-changed those of you who might otherwise be inclined toward picking up a new record. Though Main's Motion Pool is certainly a good one to start with, it's not the record that grabbed my attention right off the bat. The record that really opened the door to me as far as "music my brother calls 'post-music'" is concerned exploded onto ContortYrself all the way backin December.
I immediately associate this record in my head (then as now) with New Orleans fog. Mirages is a viscerally heavy record, almost oppressive in its density. There's a grit there, too, like vines and mud on limestone walls. It's not a swamp record, not the fog of Dr. John's Gris-Gris, which summons evil women to crawl out of Bayou St. John and conjures demons on horseback past Congo Park. This fog is sifted thru skyscrapers. It's just as menacing on Poydras Street as Jackson Square or Tchopitoulas. Or the Lower 9 for that matter. It speaks thru the mouths of news anchors as much as mystics. That buzz might be a transistor radio or a satellite in orbit. That fuzz might be music underwater or it might be cabin pressurization. Those guitars might as well be sighs.
"Incurably Optimistic!" is just that: terminal. If there's any hope at the end of things, then that hope is the same kind of oscillating slow-shifting organ note. Whether the end creeps up or pounces, it will envelop. I can't say whether this is warm or cold, viscous or vaporous. It just is. And on nights like tonight, when my brain is worrying itself to no end and thinking in two directions - like past and future, like that yeah - sometimes the end needs to come in an wrap it up. Like cabin pressurization. Like the end.
They'll get it for you at Aquarius. Search for "Hecker".
posted by P at 4:21 AM
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