p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi, jay! Bach, wow, I can imagine. Naturally I wish you would record your playing and share it, but I figure that’s too big and maybe inappropriate to ask. Play on! As someone who never gets scared by horror movies and almost think those who get scared are faking it or emotionally masturbating or something, I’m with you. I liked ‘Obsession’ too. I fear that young director is going to sell out as he gets money thrown at him going forward, but miracles happen, I guess. Anyway, hi. I hope the little heatwave starting here today isn’t creeping into your neck. ** Adem Berbic, sal showed up so I presume you were speaking directly to him. Retired the singing portion, right, I think I remember that now. Glad his thing did its thing for you. I basically do readings so I can actually talk with people who read me as opposed to wishing and hoping and assuming. It’s worth that. If I ever get to London again, I will bring a carton. ** Dominik, Hi!!! If Zac and I lived in Vienna, we would make your haunted house our next major project. Yeah, the projectile suitcase was the single instance in my life that I’ve never been able to explain with my usual practicality. I kind of guessed you’d wonder about Ritchie. Until one of his bones washes up on shore, that remains mystery central. Ha. Someone should make a horror movie where there’s an actual, physical child version of someone housed inside his/her/their body. It could be pretty scary? Love liquefying and pouring himself into a vase holding beautiful flowers, G. ** _Black_Acrylic, Yes, I thought of Langley too. And Portsmouth Sinfonia. ** Don., So far we have managed to conquer the email-controlling demon. Alcohol does have its virtues. It’s easy to forget that. Contented, nice. I think that’s supposed to be emotion’s ultimate goal? ** Steve, Friends of a certain bent claim that the flying suitcase was an act telepathy on my part, but I don’t believe in that anymore than I believe my friend’s ghost was saying hi to me in the only way it could. I’ll find out about the cigarette scentedness today. Supposedly it’s left exactly as it was when he died, so … maybe. Thanks about the gig. I’ve got yours cued for later today. ** Malik, Clay in ‘Dutchman’ would be amazing. That could be an Obie or Tony or something winner, pal. I imagine that directing that might be even more interesting, but I’m very shy. That conversation does sound beautiful. I love those moments too. I’ll tell Zac you wished him happy birthday, and he’ll undoubtedly tell me to thank you for the wish, and if by some miracle I remember to, I will pass his thanks along. ** laura w, Haha. I hope a song or two or more makes your upcoming playlist. There is an audiobook of ‘Closer’. I don’t know if it’s out yet. They played me a sample of it, and I was completely horrified by it. It’s so, so wrong. I would avoid it like the veritable plague. Thanks for braving the new cover. Wow, ‘Safe’, that is extremely old. I’m guessing the Tillman book must be ‘Haunted Houses’? My bank account is bruised too. Commiserations. Kind of a deep bruise in my case, eek. ** ⋆˚꩜｡darbbzz⋆˚꩜｡, d-ster! Hey. We need a thunderstorm over here so badly. Everything’s burning. Geese rule. They’re one of the most underrated creatures. Not as underrated a pigeons, but still. That stretch of observational writing was very beautiful, my friend. Bob Dylan! He’ll probably be very rumbly and grouchy? I read something about the ‘Hellraiser Revival’ game, but not much yet. I’m not religious, but I am interested in the concept of God, and it makes for a good metaphor. Also ‘Oh, my God’ is a good way to indicate you’re surprised. Make that noise beat please. ** HaRpEr //, Liturgy seems to be playing everywhere in the world except Paris for some reason. You think, about Vaping? I worry it’s an interim thing and writing about it will date the writing, but I don’t know. Plus in some way Vaping mostly conveys cowardice to me, which is undoubtedly not fair. I’ll go look at your substack then. Great! ** Bill, Happy some tracks snuck through and into you. Thanks for the links to the Porter ensemble. I’ll check it. All good where you are? ** sal, Hi. No big, there aren’t really lags around here unless I slough off. ‘Harsh wall noise’ edition! What a capital and inspired thing. Everyone needs one of those maybe? A million dollar idea maybe? ** Nicholas., And there you are! Hey, bud. Mm, I think the simple and, yes, obvious answer is that I managed my darkness by writing about it. That organised it, and it became my material rather than a threat to me. Your declaration was digested by me with considerable sagely nodding. It was/is a helluva thing, in fact! ** Uday, I’ll convey your birthday wish to the guy himself. I do have a soft spot for anarchic, self-organising things, it’s certainly true. If penile length was constantly correlated with age, I would worry for the escorts mostly. ** Thom, Thanks about the smoking shebang. I think the only good thing about smoking is how it crystallises your thoughts. That’s it. And there are other ways. The launch sounds really nice. Big crowds are overrated. Oh, wow, the zine is gettable in non-physical form. I’ll sneak in while I ‘pray’ that the bizarre French mail system does its job. Everyone, Thom has just launched the first issue of a zine he co-edits. It’s called Holobiosis, and you can get it in pdf form for free, I think, by just pushing down with your fingertip on these words. Guaranteed windfall, guys. Go, go! Thanks, pal, that’s very exciting! If I understand what you mean about mechanic, I am exactly the same way. Speaking from my personal experience, most people will miss the mechanics, and you just have to get used to that and hope they’re getting it via the power of suggestion subconsciously or something. Week’s okay here, although we have new if gratefully brief heatwave starting today. You? ** Okay. One of my minor obsessions is fake food, and I’m forcing you to indulge me and, if we’re all very lucky, yourselves to some degree vis-a-vis that particular turf today. See you tomorrow.
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Zoh Amba Eyes Full ‘This is a real guitar record tracked live in Asheville with Kevin Hyland and Jim White. Its loose acoustic blues is threaded with squally feedback and traces of Appalachian folk. The songs circle the working-class small-town lives Amba grew up alongside, like the kid numbed by medication on ‘OCD’, or the old stoner playing hide-and-seek with God on ‘Weed Eating’. They know exactly how thin the line was between themselves and the people in these songs. The live recording captures a quality of presence, of people listening hard to each other in a room, something that overdubs would have erased. It sounds unrehearsed in the best possible way, which is to say it sounds true. The pain in their words is real, but so is the movement, something Eyes Full is not short of, reflecting the mental and physical cost of going from one place to another and never really leaving.’— God is in the TV
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Michael Cloud Duguay Pond 1 ‘Kingdom Come, Kingdom Go is a collection of quietly elegiac pieces that doubles as a sort of audio documentary about Newfoundland’s organs and the congregations to which they belong. The music is collaged from recordings that Duguay made on that trip in July 2024, of the organs (which the team documented and will be available as Midi instruments later this summer) but also of church leaders and ordinary congregants talking about their lives, as well as saxophones, flutes and whatever other sounds happened to go by while the tape was rolling. Listening in headphones on a spring day can be mildly hallucinatory: are the bird calls, the rustling wind and the chattering people part of the music or the world outside?’— Andy Cush
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Glissandro 70 Lucky Cloud ‘Glissandro 70 was the exploratory dance-music duo of Craig Dunsmuir and Sandro Perri, both central figures in Toronto’s adventurous underground. The project began in 2003 as an invitation from Chicago’s Muted Tones weblog to collaborate on music that sat between analogue dub, trance, afro-beat and pop abstraction. Their only record includes a 2005 recording of Arthur Russell’s “Lucky Cloud”.’— RetroFuturista
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haru matsui idgaf ‘Артист и продюсер haru matsui, входящий в состав творческого объединения DOOM RUSHAZ, выпустил новый альбом. Пластинка с ярким названием «uranium graveyards» включила в себя 10 треков, в частности — совместные работы с KUDOKUSHI, RX Soulja и другими. Я попал в аварию, стальные яйца, детка, я в дерьмо, ты, зай, не пугайся. У меня есть кэш, но, блять, на мне проклятье, молодой hm, у меня молодой батя.’ –– fastfoodmusic
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Shane Embury Taurus ‘Shane Embury has long cemented his legacy as the bassist of Napalm Death, having joined the band in July 1987. His musical journey began even earlier, starting on drums in 1984 before moving to bass and becoming a defining force in the grindcore scene for nearly four decades. Today, he stands as one of the longest serving members in the history of extreme metal. Yet beyond his hardcore punk and death metal foundations, Embury has always carried a deep affection for post punk and alternative rock. His influences range from Killing Joke and Cardiacs to Cocteau Twins, The Mission, The Melvins, and Sonic Youth, Daydream Nation in particular being a major part of his musical DNA. This eclectic palette shapes his debut solo album Bridge to Resolution, a bold leap into electronic soundscapes far removed from the brutality he’s known for.’— Zachary Nathanson
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Nirosta Steel Jovi Song ‘Nirosta Steel is the alias of Steven Hall, a Scottish-born musician who became a close friend and collaborator of experimental music auteur Arthur Russell after moving to New York. The pair worked together on Russell’s disco tracks, including the not-so-subtly dirty “Is It All Over My Face?” After Russell died, Hall began Arthur’s Landing, a tribute project dedicated to his late friend’s musical legacy. MY SKYSCRAPER feels like it comes straight from the source—velvety disco leaking out of Paradise Garage, improvisational ramblings over punk guitar—because much of it does. The album is a collection of forty years’ worth of recordings remixed and reconstructed over time. Though Hall continued to record and reshape the MY SKYSCRAPER material for decades, its songs still feel lived-in and well-worn.’— Andy Steiner
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Fire-Toolz Balam =^..^= Says IPv09082024 Strawberry Head ‘There’s a simple beauty to the opening organ chords on Lavender Networks, which whir and crackle in the mix like the equipment is breathing and singing by itself. But maybe there’s beauty in the cartoon sounds which follow: the screamo vocals, digitised grindcore and inversions of new age, prog, IDM and everything in between. All sounds which shouldn’t gel, but Fire-Toolz has been doing so with glee for over a decade, enough so that the specific textures and emotions drawn out are as comforting as they are novel or transportive now.’— Skye Butchard
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claire rousay peak chroma ‘claire rousay’s music cascades from a well of documented experience, reflections of the past that compose the present. A prolific multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer, rousay gracefully crafts boundaryless music. From her frequent and acclaimed collaborations to her film scoring, from her own compositions to her solo pop work, rousay’s music is delicate yet powerful, carefully constructed with casual intimacy. rousay collages a wealth of found sounds and field recordings with earthy strings, stately piano, and processed instrumentation.’— rotondes.lu
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Cinna Peyghamy Mutosy ‘On Music For Tombak & Synth, Paris-based Iranian musician Cinna Peyghamy transforms a technical experiment into something deeply personal. What began as research into contact microphones and live improvisation gradually evolved into a meditation on exile, double identity, and inherited memory. The dialogue between the Persian tombak and modular synthesis — “a piece of wood and skin” confronting a hyper-technological electronic system — becomes both sonic method and autobiographical metaphor.’— gianmarcodelre
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feeble little horse Shady ‘“laptop twee” is exactly what it sounds like: the analog ethos of twee filtered through hyper-online, internet-native production and sensibilities. Often characterized by rapid oscillation between ironic detachment and crushing earnestness (and an obscured boundary between the two), it’s music for genre-ADHD-ridden (or just ADHD-ridden) indoor kids using digital tools of the present and rose-tinted nostalgia to piece together some semblance of a musical future.’— Grace Robins-Somerville
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Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra the hounds are running ‘Todmorden’s experimental children’s orchestra returns with a warped concept album about a pack of hellhounds terrorising the uncanny valleys of West Yorkshire. Children make weird art. Aside from labyrinthine fantasy fiction experiments or Pollockian attempts at the visual medium, young people tend to produce odd music when given the means. From the spasmodic clanging of The Shoreditch Experimental Music School in the 60s, to the creepy pre-teen junglism of X-Cetra in 2000, there’s a keen history of freaky kids wigging out on wax. Led by former teacher and folklorist, Mark S. Williamson, the Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra weave eerie compositional webs from homemade string instruments, untuned pianos and tolling percussion to create bleak soundscapes that merge the doom of Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra with the oblique creepiness of Current 93.’— A.L. Noonan
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p.s. Hey. ** Fionn, Ah, I remember when cigarette smoke made me feel dizzy, sigh. €20? Wow. Then I should go visit Ireland where I’ve ridiculously never been. I don’t know La Grande-Motte, but I will look at it. Courtesy of that music video probably, Thanks! ** Xavier, Hi, Xavier. That video is terrific, thank you. I’ll go investigate his work in general. Everyone, A late addition to ‘Smokers’ from Xavier, i.e. a short film called ‘Burn’ by Reynolds/Jolley. You want to see this. Here. Yeah, thanks a bunch. ** Dominik, Hi!!! Of course you make your building sound like great haunted house attraction in the making. To choose one unsolved mystery, that’s hard, huh, hold on … I guess I’ll have to choose a personal one: Why, when I looked at the small suitcase of a friend who’d been living in my parents pool house and had committed suicide the day before, did the suitcase suddenly fly about a foot into the air for a second. Most inexplicable thing I ever saw. Now you have to choose one. Love wishing my pal Zac a very happy birthday, G. ** cj, Hi. Welcome. I don’t know those Jason Simon photos. I’ll see if I can find them. Is ‘Moyra’ Moyra Davey? Thanks!! ** DonW, I might love Pavement a wee bit more than I love The Fall, but they’re both way up there in my all-time favorite bands list. Okay, then stick to the Jardin. It’s fun enough. Got your email, emailed you back. ** Don., Hi, Don.! It’s really good to meet you. Thank you for negotiating whatever hurdles it takes to enter this place. Beautiful and true contemplation re: smoking. I just sat here for a moment trying to come up with some pleasure gained from slapping a nicotine patch on my arm or wearing it or peeling it off at the end of a long plane flight, and, yeah, there’s nothing there beyond the pain relief. I don’t think I saw your email. My email is weird, and I’m also pretty bad at keeping up with it. Thank you. And for what you said. How are you du jour? What are you up to? ** Sam F, The vocal minority, nice. Great that the reading landed in the satisfaction category. Congrats on the quitting. If I could snap my fingers and feel like a 100 bucks instantly, I would. Just cigarettes in my case. I quit smoking weed as a teen because I had an extreme LSD freak out and after that weed just triggered its semi-return. The coolest people carry around slim poetry books with them. Or at least said people always intrigue me unusually. Luck with the trailer! ** Bill, I’d like a smoke chair as long as it was actually fog. How interesting: your smoke work. I think or certainly assume that the tech or whatever is much refined and advanced on so on now, so presumably you could now make your masterpiece amongst that body of work maybe. ** _Black_Acrylic, I think it was just weed? But … what do I know. No loss on the no smoking, obviously. ** Uday, Do continue to avoid smoking. Take it from me. My last drugs are cigarettes and caffeine. Once in a rare while I’ll take a few sips of wine or beer at a stressful social gathering. Probably the best thing about smoking is that it gives you an excuse to stop away/outside when things and/or people inside get boring. I’ve been reading about those protests, and there you are right in the middle of them. Wow. I read that they worked, right? Take care of that ankle. Ankles can be incorrigible. Wow. ** Ezra, Not just phenomenal but absolutely so. Congrats! It sounds both, yes, spectacular and like something I’m very glad I wasn’t at. My priority is protecting my brain these days. Anyway, wild, and I hope the lecture enlightened whoever. ** Adem Berbic, Me too: I write so little that’s appropriate to being read aloud. The less readings you do the more special and covetable you’ll seem theoretically. How was Justin Broadrick? Still gloomy and fog-enshrouded, I’m guessing. Isn’t he retiring or something? ** laura w, My friend Zac’s birthday is today, but he’s out of town, so I guess he just gets a festive text from me. Nice if Criterion has ‘4NoaD’. I’ve never owned a single Criterion Blu-ray/DVD. Strange. And there is no Criterion Channel in France. But they’re still the big dog. Spend all the money wisely. Although I’m not sure money can be spent wisely. Huh. My tabac doesn’t close for another week, so I’m okay for now, thank you. I hope you enjoyed whatever got bbq’ed and ended up in your mouth. ** Steve, Ha. Weekend: saw friends, saw art, spent a lot of time drinking coffee in a cafe, and bought tickets for a visiting friend and I to go to the Serge Gainsbourg House/Museum tomorrow, which I’ve alway been vaguely curious to do. Ah, a gig for a gig! Everyone, Whether today’s blog gig is your thing or not, you should try Steve’s concurrent gig aka the new episode of his ‘Radio Not Radio’ show/podcast with, and here I quote, ‘jazz, metal, queer Latin bluegrass and child improvisers. This one features Henry Threadgill, Miles Okazaki, Akusmi, Philip Golub, Ornette Coleman & Prime Time, Bobbi Humphrey, The Afrofuturistics, Kalia Vandever, Deafkids, Pylar, Psycroptic, Devourment, Bolt Thrower, Alkuharmonian Kantaja, Cain Culto, Ray Barretto, Celeste Mendoza, Kenny Vance, D Juno, Bonobo, Kelela, Syd, Primitive Percussion Youth Orchestra and Thomas Mapfumo & The Blacks Unlimited.’ It’s right here. ** Carsten, Cigarettes are good for the brain, I agree. Too bad they’re not good for the rest of the body. Favorite “celebrity” smoker? All I can think of is my least favorite celebrity smoker: the just mentioned Serge Gainsbourg. Even watching videos of him with a perpetual cigarette in his hand or mouth makes me feel nauseous. Cigarettes in Paris are currently 11.50 euros a pack. And, yeah, it’s a commitment. ** politekid, Oh, thank you! Yes, that’s my address. Thank you! Oh, then come. I think Zac and I will still be here in early October before we split to LA for our annual home haunt hunting phase. I described my okay weekend to someone just above. If you don’t scroll up, you’re not missing anything. That’s kind of cool about the Jean Rhys house. As always no dreams for me, or no post-sleep trace left. ** fish, Hi I do know those photos, and I’m flummoxed as to why I didn’t think to include them. Everyone, another ‘Smokers’ add from fish, and it’s a goody: Ed Templeton’s photos of teenagers smoking. Here. Thanks! I’m a big fan of confusion. My motto is ‘confusion is the truth’. But that doesn’t stop it from being painful at times. But, if I’m any indication, confusion does kind of fade out gradually with the aging process, which can really be problem if you want to stay alert and honest. ** HaRpEr //, I quit smoking twice for five years each time, and both times I was in hell for at least eight months. I let characters in my stuff smoke sometimes, but I don’t let them vape. I’m glad Trans Pride was fun. It so nice to see people happy, especially when they actually deserve that. ** Malik, Hey, M! I know Josh Kline’s work a little, but I don’t know that piece. It sounds terrific. I’ll see if it or an excerpt at least is online somewhere. Bugs Bunny and Zac have the same birthday! I’ll have to tell him. I’m so happy to hear that the theater work was a success and that people knew enough to appreciate your performance in it. Wonderful! Do you have future acting gig ideas or possibilities in mind? Happy week ahead, my friend! ** Right. So I made you another gig consisting of some things I’ve been hearing and interested by of late. Same old story. Try it out. See you tomorrow.
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