‘The manner in which music can bring forth beautiful forms without any particular affective content can be illustrated in a general way by a branch of ornamentation in the visual arts: the arabesque. We take in sweeping lines; at times they dip gently, at times they strive boldly upward; they discover and leave one another; they correspond in their curves large and small, seemingly incommensurable yet always well proportioned. Everywhere there is a welcoming counterpart or pendant, a gathering of small details and yet a whole. Let us contemplate this arabesque not as if it were something dead and static, but rather as something constantly in the process of creating itself before our eyes. How the broad and fine lines surprise the eye at every moment, pursuing one another, raising themselves from small curves to a magnificent height, then sinking again, then expanding, coming together and in ingenious alternation of rest and tension! The image as a whole thus becomes higher and more noble. If we think of this living arabesque as the active emanation of an artistic spirit who ceaselessly pours into the arteries of this motion his fantasy—does not this impression approximate quite closely that of music?

‘It is extraordinarily difficult to describe this self-sufficiently beautiful in music, this specifically musical beauty. Because music has no prototype in nature and expresses no conceptual content, it can be discussed only either in dry technical terms or through poetic fictions. Its kingdom is truly “not of this world.” All the fantastic descriptions, characterizations, and paraphrases of a musical work are figurative or wrong. What in accounts of every other art is merely descriptive is already metaphorical in music. Music demands to be perceived simply as music; it can be understood and enjoyed only in terms of its own self.

‘The concept of “form” is realized in music in an entirely distinctive manner. The forms created out of tones are not empty but full; they are not merely the outlines of a vacuum, but rather a spirit that creates itself from within. In contrast to the arabesque, music is nevertheless in fact an image, albeit one whose object we cannot express through words and comprehend through concepts. In music we find sense and order, but these are musical; music is a language that we speak and understand yet are incapable of translating. That one speaks of “thoughts” in musical works represents a profound insight, and as in speech, a trained judgement easily distinguishes genuine thoughts from empty phrases. In just this way, we recognize the rationally self-contained quality of a group of notes in that we call this grouping a “sentence.” We feel precisely where its sense is completed, just as in a logical sentence, even though the truths of the two propositions are entirely incommensurable.’ — Eduard Hanslick

_________________
Demdike Stare Transmission
‘Demdike Stare is the occult project of Miles Whittaker and Sean Canty. Miles is also known as Modern Love’s DJ MLZ or as one half of Pendle Coven. Sean Canty is the dedicated digger behind the Haxan events and a member of the respected Finders Keepers crew of vinyl vultures. The duo’s collaborative project tracks the sonic ley lines of cult soundtracks, Arabesque dubs and psychotomimetic ephemera with a proper Lancastrian twist. Their releases, notable for their beautiful cover design by Andy Votel, have included Symbiosis, Liberation Through Hearing, Voices of Dust and Forest of Evil.’ — collaged

_________________
Oneohtrix Point Never Problem Areas
‘If you didn’t know anything about Daniel Lopatin — the synth maestro behind Oneohtrix Point Never — and you just had to guess what he might be like based on the music he releases, it easy to see how his recorded output could easily conjure visions of some kind of very relaxed intergalactic wizard methodically crafting sonic soundscapes on a variety of machines created sometime in the 1980s that were presumably found drifting in space. In the world of minimalist electronic music, Lopatin has carved out his very own zone — a sonic landscape characterized by otherworldly synth sounds, occasional bits of drone, and wide swaths of silence. In reality, Lopatin is just a very industrious guy living and making music in Brooklyn.’ — Stereogum

_____________
Castevet Cavernous
‘Castevet will tease you, but don’t take it the wrong way: On their stubborn and excellent second album, Obsian, the New York math-metal-madman trio hint at climaxes they refuse to deliver and misdirect their redirections as a rule. When they race into instrumental codas at the exits of their blackened labyrinths, as they do on opener “The Tower”, they don’t do so in order to ease away from the intensity and float toward an end. They instead only get more complex, drawing outside of plain rhythmic lines. When they add an acoustic guitar, as they do on centerpiece “As Fathomed by Beggars and Victims”, they don’t do so to soften their sound or mitigate their density. They do it to make their spider-webbed arrangements that much more intricate, disrupting the generally clean spaces between their six-string bass, electric guitar, and ultra-articulate drums with a feathery texture.’ — Pitchfork

_______
Helm live
‘Helm is Luke Younger – a sound artist and experimental musician based in London, working with a vast array of revolving instrumentation and abstract sound sources. Younger’s compositions build a dense aural landscape which touches on aspects of musique concrete, uncomfortable sound poetry, industrial, and hallucinatory drones. Younger creates a world where his instruments morph into spectral rust, a shimmering klang swims alongside passive noise and the relationship between acoustic and electronic derived sounds forms a solid foundation.’ — surefire.agency

_________________
Forest Swords Anneka’s Battle
‘Barnes incorporates field recordings and refers to his locale in song titles; he also mixed the entire album on his laptop while sitting outside. Opening his process up a bit to include his environment perhaps explains how music this skeletal can sound like it has so much blood coursing through it. It also explains how the one-man world of Forest Swords can feel so universal. Unrestricted by words or verse-chorus structures, Barnes’ songs reflect the way life can feel like an endless loop, growing and building without ever losing its cyclical nature. Maybe that’s why, even though Forest Swords’ sound skirts an array of genres, it doesn’t belong to any single one. Barnes’ work is less concerned with trends or scenes than experiences and memories that everyone has had, regardless of what music they’ve listened to before.’ — collaged

___________________
Moonface Love the House You’re In
‘Spencer Krug’s Moonface records—like the early Sunset Rubdown EPs, which also centered around a single instrument—are less dizzying than some of Sunset Rubdown’s more circuitous work, but they’ve occasionally seemed more conceptually clever than genuinely captivating. There’s an urgency at work throughout his new album that keeps convolution at bay, a sense that these songs had to come out this way, commanding and unadorned. On paper, the piano-centric album may appear to be another of Krug’s experiments, stripping back as a means to stave off boredom. But Krug, in foregrounding his voice and minimizing the instrumentation, is clearly trying to limit the distance between himself and these songs, resulting in his most immediately gripping work in ages.’ — Pitchfork

_______________
Laurel Halo Ainnome
‘Time, post-internet, works in two ways online. There’s the slide/slice: the object, the moment, the discrete unit of time that acts as a node in the flat internet universe. Then there’s the scroll/stream: this is stuff like Facebook or Twitter feeds; it appears to flow linearly, but it’s essentially a skeuomorphic calendar filter applied to an aggregation of the flow of slides, because once new things are added, and then become part of the flat agglomeration of data, they are never lost. Lived time is another beast entirely: it seems to be linear, but memory isn’t; bodies droop and look progressively worse in selfies; the second law of thermodynamics kicks in. There’s a lot of post-net art that addresses the possibilities and trauma caused by the first two conditions while completely ignoring the third. Chance Of Rain is one of the first albums I’ve heard that fully acknowledges, let alone addresses, these contradictions and compositionally works across all three modes of perception.’ — The Quietus

______________
Shit and Shine live
‘Imagine you’re in a glider with Merzbow and Earth — heading straight towards a pylon — and, if you’re still conscious, the barely lucid aura rapidly engulfing you will be somewhere close to the jarring and unhinged noise-scapes of Shit and Shine. The brain child of Todd impresario Craig Clouse, Shit And Shine have been churning out hulking sonic spasms of unrelenting, loosely structured noise since 2004’s limited edition LP You’re Lucky To Have Friend Like Us, steadily building momentum through a series of seemingly non-coherent releases, and semi-comprehensible live performances — frequently featuring no more than guitars, oh, and about ten drummers.’ — The Quietus

_____________
Puce Mary live
‘Sometimes you want to make love and sometimes you want to get fucked. Noise can fill a hole similar to the way hair-pulling, slapping, screaming, I-don’t-care-if-the-neighbors-complain coitus does. Like the hickey you have to hide the next day and the bruised shoulder that aches each time you move, the piercing tones, rib-cracking thuds and raw-throated vocals of Noise are a perverse pleasure; it says “you’re alive, you’re human, and you’re dirty.” Enter Puce Mary, whose sound has late 70s Industrial’s sexual preoccupation with a vein of dark purple malaise running straight to the tip.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

__________________
Tim Hecker Stab Variation
‘What you immediately notice about Virgins with respect to Hecker’s consistently reputable oeuvre is a certain shift in focus. Associated above all with ambient soundscapes and artists such as Stars Of the Lid, I have always regarded Hecker’s musical production as activity that arises out of passivity. Even on 2011’s acclaimed Ravedeath, 1972, which contained a considerable amount of sonic movement, it was on the whole a certain circular withdrawal into itself — tracks fade in and out with repose, and remain as untouchable as the enigmatic aftertaste of rave itself. This is ambient music without abstraction: a lowered gaze of incisive vision.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

_________________
Four Tet Parallel Jalebi
‘Kieran Hebden (born 1978), best known by the stage name Four Tet, is a post-rock and electronic musician. Hebden first came to prominence as a member of the band Fridge before establishing himself as a solo artist. Hebden’s music originally eschewed the traditional pop song format in favour of a more abstract approach—his sound and melodies incorporate elements of hip hop, electronica, techno, jazz, grime and folk music with live instrumentation. His newer works are inspired heavily by house music.’ — collaged

_____________
Damien Dubrovnik The Boys Would Lie Flat On Their Stomachs
‘Loke Rahbek and Christian Stadsgaard are two young Danish musicians you might recognise from their other bands. Rahbek is in in Vår and Sexdrome, as well as contributing every now and then to the Sacred Bones-signed Lust For Youth. Stadsgaard plays under the name Sarah’s Charity, and has also appeared in bands like Angry Ayrans, Opec and Severe Photography, who also featured Rahbek. Together they are key to the vibrant, tight-knit and unnervingly young noise and punk underground in Copenhagen. With their label Posh Isolation, they have lent some coherence to a scene built on tiny runs of cassettes and impossible-to-find 7″s. Everyone seems to have played in everyone else’s band at one stage or another. Everything seems linked, from Iceage all the way down to projects with one run of 25 improvised, blackened noise cassettes under their belt.’ — The Quietus

_______________
Julia Holter World
‘In the last seconds of the string-laden, heavy-burdened “World,” the opening track from Loud City Song, everything drops out except for a voice that sings with hopeless deflation, “How can I escape you?” Julia Holter has always had a flair for not only drama, but also the dramatic. She’s loosely based albums on Greek tragedies and the classic New Wave French film Last Year at Marienbad. And on Loud City Song, due out August 20, Holter looks to the 1958 musical film Gigi for her third album in as many years.’ — collaged

__________________
Brigitte Fontaine Les Crocs
‘Brigitte Fontaine, born in 1939 in Morlaix, France is a singer of avant-garde music. Her narrative music is experimental. She is also a writer, comedienne, playwright, and poet. During the course of her career she employed numerous unusual musical styles, melting rock and roll, folk, free jazz, spoken word poetry and world rhythms. She collaborated with such celebrated musicians as Jean-Claude Vannier, Areski, Jacques Higelin, Sonic Youth, Stereolab, Noir Désir, Grace Jones, Gotan Project, Archie Shepp, Arno, Georges Moustaki and Art Ensemble Of Chicago.’ — last.fm

_________________
Gnaw Horrible Chamber
‘While the similarities to Khanate are absolutely impossible to ignore here, Gnaw firmly hold their own and have a real aptitude for creating genuinely disturbing atmospheres. Gone are the twenty minute 10BPM monoliths and oppressively endless walls of drone, but in their place lies a more direct assault with fiery buzz-saw guitars and a more regulated approach to song structure. There’s still tons of hissing, shrieking feedback, ghost-in-the-machine voices, and pummeling waves of noise, but it all feels more calculated and plotted out than the spontaneity shown on the bulk of Khanate’s records.’ — collaged

*

p.s. Hey. ** Steevee, Hi. Oh, okay, about the Fandor list. Yes, let us know when it has launched please, thanks. Mm, I might have come across those Cinemascope reviews when I was making the post, I can’t remember. Of course the critical reaction to his films interests me a lot. How critics deal with representations of violence, rape, etc., is inherently interesting, given my interest in how to represent such things appropriately in my stuff. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you kindly, sir. Oh, so I’m guessing that, if not a month, it should not be a huge amount of more time? Things have to be gotten right. That tunnel’s light gives me bated breath. ** Rewritedept, Hi. The Illuminati conspiracy stuff is bottomless and kind of fun to play like a game. It’s like numerology meets Shakespeare meets Agatha Christie or some such thing. I was in the States when Body/Head played Paris. And I think I was in Berlin when Lee Ranaldo played. (I’ve met and interviewed Lee, and I don’t remember him being particularly short at all.) And I know I was in the States when Thurston was here reading with Eileen Myles a few weeks ago. The Sonic Youthers and I seem to be in different dimensions. No, you didn’t say you stayed at the Cecil Hotel, but that’s creepy. My week is/should be pretty excellent, I think. Has been so far. Like I said, I completely forget that Thanksgiving exists nowadays, and it was always my least favorite holiday, so I will think nothing about it on whatever day it occurs. Thursday? Jeez, that’s a big, interesting list. I’ll have to pore over it. Looks eclectic, interesting. ‘Abbey Road’?! Huh. I should make a new favorite albums list or something. Yeah, might be fun. I know about the ‘White Album’ thing. Is it possible to hear it somewhere? Probably, right? I’ll go look. I don’t think I know Cicada 3301. Hm, curious. I’ll investigate, thank you! ** Etc etc etc, Hey, man. Oh, four years, and you went to UCLA? That’s very interesting. Herzog’s reasons are funny. It’s such a weird place. There always seems to be this divide between the way that people who grew up there, like, say, me, and people who ended up there think about it. The falsity thing about LA is so much less present and significant to me. It’s there, but it’s a part of a world within LA that has no real relationship to the world I’ve known and lived in there. Maybe it’s like the difference how Disneyland seems to visitors vs. people who work there or who built it or something. I don’t know. I totally get how it could be the most American city. Except it isn’t a city really. It’s a stretch of places. City is just the place’s job or profession. Calling it a city is like calling something that’s confusing surreal. People love to consolidate it. I guess that’s why people think detective novels set there are the best portraits. People want to visit a zoo based on LA. I don’t know. It’s interesting. The lit scene there is very odd and dispersed. Good for doing the actual writing, not as good for community and proximate recognition. Yeah, Penny-Ante, they’re cool. Fingers crossed. I got your email. Thanks a lot, man! ** Torn porter, Hi. Thanks. Traveling and shit. Cool, I hear you. Happy birthday belatedly but very sincerely! Big Sur, sweet, have fun or, well, I guess I hope you had fun, assuming you’re there or on your way. Not the tiniest molecule-like trace of Thanksgiving makes it over here to France, thank fucking goodness. ** Keaton, An Eli Roth Thanksgiving sounds like a nice take. Yeah, Thanksgiving is just about being force-fed your family’s presence, which I was never happy about. I guess if I’d had sexy cousins, it could have been different. I think I’ve met my cousins once or possibly twice in my life. I don’t know their names or where they live. Weird. Uh, good question about the pre-death reaction. I’m sure I’m immortal, but I would definitely freak way the fuck out if that ever happened to me. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Thanks for explaining that. I thought maybe it had a physical effect like a drug or something, but it sounds more like a particular kind of meeting ground. I know Patrick Cowley, of course, but I didn’t know about his porn soundtracks, weird, interesting. I’m almost sure I saw ‘School Daze’ back in the day, though. I’ll google it and find a way to hear his score too. Cool, thanks! ** Misanthrope, Hi. Well, and you’d have to become a legal resident of France too, which I guess would be expensive. I mean, you’d have to semi-live here. That’s expensive. I don’t personally get the benefit of French health care, for instance, since I’m just a tourist who won’t go away. I wonder how hard it is to start a Pharm Company. Really hard, I guess. Yeah, really, really hard, I guess. ** Bill Porter, Hey, Bill. Your wife wants to be a chiropractor or is one? That’s cool. Chiropractors are magicians. Real magic. Fingers definitely crossed on your MFA applications. Really, really hard to think that you won’t get swept up, but bureaucracy is so unpredictable. Where did you apply? ‘LA is so stuffed with symbols’: Nice, very nice. ** les mots dans le nom, Hi! Nice to see you! Yes, his image making is very cool and sometimes exciting. I think that’s what I’m most drawn to in his films. ‘Pieta’ is my least favorite of the films of his that I’ve seen probably for very similar reasons to yours. Anyway, thank you. It’s nice to hear from someone who knows his work and is into it to some degree. I hope you’re doing great! ** Sypha, Hi, James. Thanks for the email. The photo of P&R; is awesome, and of course I’m thrilled that Best referenced me in his dissertation. That’s really, really cool. Yeah, thank you so much! That fencing thing just sounds like the retaining of some wonderful freedom of movement-meets-imagination thing from childhood, i.e. not weird but rather a gift or something. ** End. Uh, … oh, I made a gig out of some of the stuff I’ve been into lately as a sharing type of situation, I guess you could say. See if anything in my soundtrack seems qualified to make it into yours, I suppose. See you tomorrow in any case.

‘Given that music preference may be indicative of emotional vulnerability, could this notion be extended to suggest that music preference can be a diagnostic indicator of emotional disturbance? It has already been noted that a high incidence of adolescents with preference for heavy metal music are hospitalized for psychiatric problems. Furthermore, adolescents diagnosed with mood disorder tended to like rap, classic rock, hard rock, heavy metal and alternative music, while those with oppositional defiant disorders tended to prefer rap and some techno. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry already recommends psychiatric assessment for adolescents who show a preoccupation with music containing destructive themes such as suicide.

‘Exploring music preferences as a reflection of at-risk status is feasible and relevant to those working with adolescents, particularly as many adolescents (e.g. those at risk of suicide) are unlikely to seek out assistance when needed. Understanding the link between music preference and mental illness also has implications for treatment. Therapy may include discussions on the themes of adolescents’ preferred music and may be an indicator of progress or deterioration in mental state.

‘A research agenda is needed in order to clarify a number of key associations before any causal explanations can be established between the experience of music and positive or negative mental health. To date, no such study has attempted to link music preferences with mental illness diagnosis. Such questions include: whether vulnerable youth prefer music selections in particular genres; whether there is a dose response relationship; do vulnerable adolescents understand the lyrics and messages that these songs are representing or are they more focused on the music itself; does the music they listen to change how they feel and act, and are these changes positive or negative; do adolescents with mental health problems listen to substantially more music than the average adolescent, and in what contexts do they listen to their music? All the above questions need to compare young people with mental health problems with the normal population. If many of the above associations do exist in contemporary culture and are related to adverse outcomes, then ways to reduce the exposure to particular music genres need to be advanced.’ — Felicity Baker and William Bor, Can music preference indicate mental health status in young people?

_____________
Lou Reed The Bed
‘Sometimes called the most depressing album ever made, “Berlin” is the story of Caroline and Jim, a lowlife couple in the title city — she is promiscuous, he beats her, and they both do lots of drugs — and the tragic dissolution of their relationship. The demimonde of drugs and sadomasochism glamorized in songs by the Velvet Underground, Reed’s visionary 1960s avant-rock band, is shown with miserable consequences, as in “The Bed,” when Caroline commits suicide and Jim remains bitterly numb: This is the place where she lay her head/ When she went to bed at night/ And this is the place where she cut her wrists/ That odd and fateful night/ And I said oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, what a feeling’. — NYT

_______________
King Krule Cementality
‘”See, the cement has never meant so much/ My hot head cools to the stone cold touch/ I look to settle my seat with the dust/ Brain, leave me be/ Can’t you see that these eyes are shut?” This song finds Krule considering the pros and cons of throwing himself out of a window. “It’s about killing myself,” he told The Guardian. “Becoming one with the cement.”‘ — collaged

___________________
Lydia Lunch Gloomy Sunday
‘Dubbed the ‘Hungarian Suicide Song’, Gloomy Sunday appears to live up to its name. Written in 1933, the piece was written by Hungarian composer Rezso Seress. Seress committed suicide in 1968, first by jumping from his apartment window, surviving and later strangling himself with a wire in his hospital room. Over the years, supposedly, hundreds of love-lorn men and women have listened to Gloomy Sunday and decided to end their lives, often leaving suicide notes containing references and quoted lyrics from the song. Hardly surprising then that, during what could certainly be described as ‘our darkest hour’, the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) banned the song from the airwaves during WWII.’ — humanities360.com

_________________
Xasthur Suicide in Dark Serenity
‘If there’s any metal genre that’s written the book on songs about suicide, it’s depressive black metal. Xasthur, impossibly hailing from sunny Southern California, opens a particularly bleak vein with this track, which sounds literally like someone circling a drain. Xasthur re-recorded the track for the 2003 Suicide in Dark Serenity EP, but it sounds swaddled and anesthetized by comparison.’ — Invisible Oranges

___________________
Guided by Voices My Impression Now
‘You told me you’d give your soul to the crowd/ You run to the edge of the warzone/ You’re finding out that it’s way too late/ To be happy around your friends/ You changed your head/ And made your bed/ Through time, circumstances and medicines/ You lied a lot/ Created a plot/ To escort you safely away/ My impression now/ My impression now/ Stand on the edge of the ledge/ Jump off cause nobody cares.’ — Robert Pollard

____________________
Leonard Cohen Dress Rehearsal Rag
‘Songs of Love and Hate is Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s third album. It was mainly recorded in Columbia Studio A in Nashville from September 22–26, 1970. “Sing Another Song, Boys” was recorded at the Isle of Wight Festival on August 30, 1970. The album title is descriptive, outlining its main themes. The songs contain emotive language and are frankly personal; “Famous Blue Raincoat” ends with the line “Sincerely, L. Cohen”. With the exception of “Last Year’s Man”, Cohen has performed every song live. Because of its depressing content, he has played “Dress Rehearsal Rag” in concert on only two occasions, two years before Songs of Love and Hate.’ — collaged

_____________
White Faces Nots
‘Milk ‘n’ Cookies actually sounded like the New York Dolls at times, but this group didn’t exactly want a fix with their kiss. (What did they want instead? Milk ‘n’ cookies!) Still, singer Justin Strauss is not without his elements of danger, and he’s got no time for homework. He’s devoted to his girlfriend, but maybe a bit too much: “I want love/I don’t want nothing else/If I can’t/I’m gonna kill myself” (after which the band dramatically cuts out and the guitarist lays down a savage gauntlet riff). New post-glam band White Faces pay tribute with a roughed up cover of M ‘n’ C’s brightest, bleakest song ‘Nots’.’ — collaged

__________________
The Mountain Goats Shadow Song
‘if you get there before me, will you save me a seat?/ if you get there before me, would you save me a seat?/ but if i never get there at all,/ would you leave the seat empty?// if you get there before me, will you light us a fire?/ if you get there before me, will you light us a fire?/ but if i never show,/ will you watch the embers glow?/ would you keep the fire burning?// this is a song for you, in case i never make it through to where you are.// this is a song for you, in case i never make it through to where you are’. — John Darnielle

_____________________
Hatsune Miku Crime and Punishment
‘The song is about Miku who has a crush on someone who self harms. He wont notice her unless she self harms with him so she does. The guy finally asks her to die with him but she doesn’t because her love for him already died. I think the doll is playing the part of her crush.’ — Yabai Bunny

_________________
The Replacements The Ledge
‘This is yet another song Paul Westerberg wrote about suicide. The band received a lot of flak because the song’s release was around the same time a group of new Jersey teens took part in a suicide pact. Westerberg angrily defended the song, stating that it wasn’t some cynical attempt to cash in on a tragedy, but more of an expression of empathy for the type of person that would consider such a desperate act. Suicide is one of his most frequent subjects and he has been treated for chronic depression in the past. The fading scream heard at the end of the song is one of the most chilling rock moments ever, as the listener realizes the subject of the song carried out his intentions.’ — Songfacts.com

___________________
Elliott Smith Needle in the Hay
‘Not only is this song about suicide, it was used to soundtrack a suicide attempt. The song is probably most well-known for its appearance in Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, during Luke Wilson’s suicide attempt scene. The song is made even sadder by Smith’s apparent suicide a few years later.’ — mademan.com

________________
Cheap Trick Oh Candy
‘From Cheap Trick’s legendary debut album entitled simply Cheap Trick. This was their first official single. The song was written by Rick Nielsen as was most of their early material. “Oh Candy” was inspired by Marshall Mintz, who was a photographer friend of the band who committed suicide. His nickname was “Candy” because of his initials MM – like M&Ms; candy.’ — Songfacts.com

_______________
larva229 suicide song
‘hello again this is a song that has a hidden meaning witch i explain in the video’. — larva229

__________________
The Faint Agenda Suicide
‘”Agenda Suicide” is the first single released from the album, Danse Macabre by The Faint. It was released only in the UK, February 26, 2002 on City Slang. The song is about the overwork of people to get “pretty little homes”. The music video, by animation studio MK12, shows bosses bullying employees, while they continue to work. It includes one employee who takes pills with coffee in the beginning of the day. Throughout the video it shows people in business suits throwing themselves in front of subway trains. At the end of the video, the main character throws himself into the path of a train, while others look down into the track where he jumped.The music video was banned from MTV.’ — collaged

______________________
Loudon Wainwright III Suicide Song (Medley)
‘When you get the blues & you want shoot yourself in the head/ It’s alright, it’s alright…/ Go ahead!// Do the monkey, do the pony/ Do the slop, do the boogaloo twist/ Cut your throat, Cut your throat… Cut your wrist// When you tire of worldly toil/ Shuffle off this mortal coil/ Turn your body back to soil/ It’s OK, It’s OK// When you get hung up/ Hang yourself up by the neck/ What the hell, what the hell, what the heck’. — LWIII

____________
Bikini Kill R.I.P.
‘I can’t say everything about it/ In just one single song/ I can’t put how i feel in a package/ And sell it back to everyone/ But wait/ There’s another boy genius whose fucking gone/ I hope the food tastes better in heaven/ I know there’s lots of rad queer boys up there/ I hope everytime they talk to you/ They know that they’re lucky to be your friend’. — BK

__________________
Neil Young Sleeps with Angels
‘Nick Kent: Sleeps With Angels seems deeply haunted by the spectre of Kurt Cobain and his sad end… Neil Young: Sleeps With Angels has a lot of overtones to it, from different situations that were described in it. A lot of sad scenes (pause), I’ve never really spoken about why I made that song. I don’t want to start now. NK: Has it anything to do with the similarity of Kurt Cobain’s death to Crazy Horse Danny Whitten’s death in 1972? They both looked so much alike… NY: I just don’t want to talk about that. That’s my decision. I’ve made a choice not to talk about it and I’m sticking to it.’ — MOJO Magazine

*

p.s. Hey. ** Keaton, Hi. Confusion is a really weird thing. The best things are confusing, and so are the scary things. At least for me. Or at least that’s the filter I seem to fall back on. It was my survival instinct when I was a kid, and now it’s … I don’t know. I feel like my writing is distilled confusion. Maybe I am too. I don’t know. I’m so strange, but I mean well when I do my strange things. I’m always so surprised when anyone likes me. It’s confusing, ha ha. Wow, really nice, honoring sentence/take on my dead friends reading. I’m practicing. Thanks, man. ** James, Hi. What made 2000 your favorite year? That’s interesting. I always forget what happened what year. Oh, I tricked you, weird. I guess it was inadvertent and due to that post being a revamp. It was still old inside its spruced up shape or something. France wasn’t very enraged about the Houellebecq Goncourt thing. When you don’t live in France, it’s easy to take one or two foreign reporter’s hype as representative or something. Uh, no, I don’t think people getting emotionally attached to things is a bad thing. Maybe I even kind of really like that people do that and do it myself, I’m not sure. I admire people who can live with a minimal amount stuff. I think I do sometimes, but mostly I imagine doing that, and it seems really peaceful. ** Etc etc etc, Hey! Oh, cool, thank you a lot for the link to your piece! Awesome! I’ll read it during a rehearsal lull today. Everyone, writer and d.l. Etc etc etc has linked us up to a recent piece he wrote called ‘The Devil’ published in some curious fashion magazine Rimbaudishly entitled ‘Riot of Perfume’, and he’s great, so you should totally go read it and, hence, get some extra pleasure in your today, okay? Thanks re: the theater thing. We’ll see. The stage is way too big for the piece, but we’ll hopefully make it work. Mm, I think the only ‘Them’ thing online is a trailer for it. Maybe there’s a vid of the whole thing somewhere that requires a password. Sometimes that happens ‘cos it’s needed to sell pieces to venues. I’ll ask the manager guy today. Take care. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. Oh, that film is good? I was wondering. Cool, I assume it’ll get over here. Thanks. ** Steevee, You played drums in high school? Wow, that’s cool. Any video or audio evidence of that anywhere? No, I didn’t know that Nick Drake’s mom made music, much less that it has been released. I will definitely find a way to hear that. Fascinating. Thank you! ** Bill, Hi. When I originally saw ‘Existenz’ in the theater, I thought it was an example of Cronenberg relying way too heavily on his standard tropes, and I thought it was kind of self-cannibalizing and weak, but then I saw it again a few years later, and I liked it a lot. I guess that happens a lot with stuff by artists who work from their obsessions. ** MyNeighbourJohnTurtorro, Hi, man. Yeah, Zac, no ‘h’. He’s kind of not into there not being too much on the internet about him, so I’ll only say he’s an amazing, brilliant artist who works with visuals, and it’s a huge, inspiring thrill to collaborate with him, and, yeah, I hope he and I will continue collaborating for a long, long time. We performed ‘Ktl’ at Tramway. My weekend was good. I hope yours was at the very least very good. ** _Black_Acrylic, Great, man, about AGK going down extremely well. Great evidential pix. Everyone, go look at this year’s Yuck n Yum sponsored AGK in picture form, won’t you? It’s a nice thing to do. As would be listening to the AGK Ambience DJ set overlaid onto the event by Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson aka _B_A himself. It’s here. Yeah, an alert when that video goes up on your site would be a boon. ** Marilyn Roxie, Hi, Marilyn! So awesome of you to come talk to the folks. It was such a great post. Thank you again so very much! ** Torn porter, Hi. I started reading Ratty’s thing and, yeah, it’s really super. I’m going to try to finish reading it today sometime when I get a rehearsal break. A bad way? Oh, sorry. I hope that freak-out burns itself out any second now. Interesting: ‘bodily cinema’. Hm, I think I get full-body effected by the most unlikely things, like Bresson films reduce me to a fully shaken form, but I don’t think that would happen to most people watching them. Intensely bleak, emotional films do it for me, but I think that effect is so particular to me that it wouldn’t make sense in a list or something. I don’t know. Let me think about the question. ** Bill Porter, Hi, Bill. I get you, yeah, about how Sting/The Police could have done that to you. I’m sure I have plenty of examples that I’m too embarrassed to remember. Erudite rock, yeah. I always think of this 80s band Lloyd Cole and the Commotions. Their songs were kind of like musical NPR book reviews or something. I’m excited about the workshop too! I didn’t end up reading on the train as hoped. Long story. But I will get to read the intended stuff while waiting around for the tech guys to do their stage dressing stuff today. Yeah, that was my voice in the ‘Them’ trailer. I perform in the piece, reading texts onstage throughout. I wish you could see ‘Them’ too, but I think these will be the last ever performances. You never know, but I think we’re done after this. ** Tender prey, Hey, Marc! Wow, it’s really, really, really good to see you! I’ve missed you! Aw, thanks a lot about the scrapbook pages. I see what you mean about ‘Period’. That’s interesting. It’s probably true, but it came through a different route, or through the influence of other mediums and works that might well have been more directly effected by the fairytale’s formal proposals. But, yeah, that makes sense. It’s interesting to try to work directly from the fairytale source. It feels really new, even if the result ends up relating to, say,’Period’, although I think it will read and feel very different, I don’t know. Gosh, really, it’s so good to see you! How are things with you? What have you been working on and doing? ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I don’t remember what would have driven me crazy anymore, but you’re surely right since you know me like the back of your hand, except that I don’t think people know the backs and their hands very well at all, do they? I don’t know shit about mine. I would never pick them out in a police line up or anything. Cool, cool, cool about the Little Show stuff. ** Okay. I’m going to catch the tail end of my hotel’s free breakfast thing and then go to the theater. I think I was in a low mood when I made this gig, but I’m fine now, I think. I turn it over to you. See you tomorrow.