cameras.

A few years ago I blogged about this Australian band Cameras. A song of theirs came on the other evening whilst mudding sheetrock, and I thought it'd been a while since I'd listened to anything of theirs.

Fast-forward to a regular old Tuesday at the office. Putting on headphones, logging into Grooveshark and looking them up. Not much there, and the quality sort of sucked, so over to Youtube it was. Which is where I found this...

I've always loved Placebo's version of this song. Until I heard Cameras' just now. Sweet F.A.

nightcall.

Cannot. Stop. Listening. To. This. Song.

electric.

The boys have a new album. This is one of the songs.

discover.

I am made by my times… I am a creation of now shaken with the cracks and crevices… I'm not giving up easy… I will not fold… I don't have much but what I have is gold... 

(Sorry… I am sorry… )

I want me… I want it all… I want sensational… Irresistible… This is my time and I am thrilled to be alive… Living… Blessed… I understand… Collapse into now…

in this self half-illuminated.

W H I T E N O I S E .

A walk to the library one evening to pick out CDs at random. A dozen this time. One by one. Listened to them. One by one. They did not interest me.

Until the last one.

Her voice ...

... it blew me away ...

 

sometimes lately I just want to scream. [and run far far away into oblivion].

before my time.

.

'There are no absolutes.'

~ Galen Rowell, Mountain Light

oh my love.

It's sort of a juxtaposition the way this song is used in the film Drive (which is in fact a really cool movie) but it also just works really really spectacularly. And anyway it is just a really really crazy-in-an-odd-but-really-cool-sort-of-way-kind-of-song ...

Oh my love look and see

The sun rising from the river

Nature's miracle once more will light the world 

But this light is not for those men

Still lost in an old black shadow

Won't you help me to believe

That they will see a day a brighter day when all the shadows will fade away

That day I'll cry that I believe

That I believe 

Oh my love high above us

The sun now embraces nature and from nature we should learn

That all can start again

 As the stars must fade away to give a bright new day

still. life.

This song came on shuffle tonight (have not heard it in some time).




I was - umm - vacuuming the rug in the living room in front of the speakers.




I - umm - turned off the vacuum.






Started the song over. Turned off the light. Cranked the volume knob on the hi-fi to earth-shaking (apologies neighbor Kim ... ). Lied down on the floor. Memories in a flood washing over me. And the realization just then how Suede had forged my idea of symphonic rock at least a decade before Muse still-impressive-but-so-less-impressive-than-the-Dog-Man-Star-era-Suede. Still Life. The Asphalt World. The 2 Of Us. This song this one song the epitome of symphonic rock absolute. Brett Anderson's voice and his range and dynamics unbearable. This song this one song ...






... epic.

winner.

From the just-released album 'Elysium' ... And as only the Pet Shop Boys can do so brilliantly - this can be taken quite sadly or quite optimistically.

I choose optimistically.

the violent bear it away.

Maybe the best song in to which to go running.

Or standing alone in the middle of crazy wild spectacular beauty.

Or driving through granite vistas eternal.

Endless.

Or just lying under a birch tree looking up at lazy clouds hanging in pale blue skies.

fake empire.

A new song on repeat ...

The National

Fake Empire

Close eyes.

Fade away.

for a minute i was wondering if you'd come around.

The new song on repeat

repeat

repeat

a strange kind of love.

And there it was.

Randomly I just put on some strange mix tonight house quiet so dialed up the volume on the stereo and came across a song by Peter Murphy (of Bauhaus fame) and stopped in my tracks.


That was it.


Or really really close. The idea in my head of how the voice sounds for my music. I love his range - how low he goes (how he hits that E2). He never gives the presence of the dynamic range I hear in my head for my own stuff, but leaves a sense it is possible and just instead chooses to sing restrained and holds back. It is a fitting soundtrack for the night ... turned up quite loud to let the reverb of his voice fill the room from all directions ...

the sun hanging low.

I don't know but for some reason when Summer comes even if it's not quite here yet but Summer meaning I can open windows in the evenings cos the day was warm enough I always put on music I listened to years ago. It's not even Summer yet here by date and certainly not by weather still tucked away under heavy cloudy skies if the mercury tips seventy it's a good day. But it's warm elsewhere and I'm pretty sure it's warm where I used to listen to this music. I used to drive out these deserted country roads I can't remember now their names without cracking open a map which would seem to ruin the nostalgia. Highway C I think. Or K. Some letter definitely an old two-lane letter highway through cornfields past barns and old farm houses. I once had this crap but perfect first apartment down near the river. The Missouri River. Brown and muddy and wide and slow-moving like a wise old man dirty from a day in the fields but all-knowing and charming in his own way not anything like the crystalline clear waters from blue glaciers here flowing to the ocean. But I still remember the golds. Of the fields. Of the sun hanging low as I'd pass corn stalks golden a haze hanging above them this visual cacophony of insects fluttering catching the light squinting to see them individually not just a blur. Windows down on my little red Toyota or better yet no windows the breeze warm in my face on an old just-about-broken-down Murray ten speed on which I'd racked up a couple thousand miles over the few years I owned it before leaving it behind as I left it all behind the corn fields the golden-orange warm Midwest sunsets and cicadas and roads for the mountains and glaciers of the Pacific Northwest.

But there was this barn I found once deserted and quite literally falling apart. A truck was parked underneath an overhang that looked as if it would be crushed at any moment. I'd stash my bike somewhere out of view or park my car off the highway in the corn fields so as not to bring any suspicion my old inherited Pentax S3 a single-lens relic my Dad had gotten in Korea and bestowed to me that I used to teach myself exposure and aperture and how to judge the light slung over my shoulder and would crawl into the barn to find a battered staircase leading up to a second story open from decrepitation the roof having long ago caved in. Before getting there on headphones or amped-up late teenage adrenalin-inducing car stereo I'd have Michael Stipe stuck in my head climbing up that staircase 'Let Me In' or 'Country Feedback' or anything from the Out of Time album or Midnight Oil's Earth and Sun and Moon or a bit later in the summer yeah anything from R.E.M.'s New Adventures In Hi-Fi record. 'E-Bow The Letter.' 'Electrolyte.' I don't know for some reason his voice just fit with Midwest summer dusks. Low key. Unstrained. Delicate but totally. This was before landing somewhere in the midst of dark Brit Pop the likes of Suede and Radiohead in LA and after settling in Seattle. I wasn't even twenty yet. So I'd crawl up to the hole in the roof in that barn and just sit there listening to the country quiet down. Every once in a while an old beatup pickup or some station wagon would drive by. Only once did anyone ever notice me up there and I wondered what the old farmer thought some kid sitting in the hole of a deserted barn roof up to no good probably but he paid no mind and I kept listening to the cicadas and watching the shadows grow longer before scrambling back down to hop back onto bike and haul it back or maybe just amble around some more til well past dark. It was the country afterall and these lettered highways were deserted.

So now in my little house half a world away over a few mountain ranges and a continental divide I sit on my porch after a run windows open listening to Stipe sing 'You' delayed guitars fed through a classic Leslie amp cycling around and around. It's cloudy. It's not the same. I should grab a down sweater as it dips below sixty though it's not yet dark. It's not muggy like it was all those years ago Missouri country summers. I've moved on from deserted letter highways cutting through cornfields to glaciers and craggy peaks and alpine heavens but still look back can't help it when the calendar winds up in these Summer months and the windows get opened in the evenings. And the music hasn't changed. Not one bit. So I can put some on the living room stereo and let it echo through the house through open windows floating out on the breeze. It's not a decrepit barn falling in hole in the roof but I can still picture it. I can still picture it.

lights.

Totally random. The other night just wondering whatever happened to Interpol. Turns out they've been putting together a self-titled fourth release due out next month. And have the song above out for free download and distribution (smart). Joy Division-ish and dark as hell Paul Banks' pleading baritone just like the Interpol we have come to know. It took a few listens but is now on repeat.




Is now on repeat.







Is now on repeat.

sun gangs.

For it has been awhile since I have posted a song. And this is a good one. This kid writes some incredible music. Simple. Second only to the tour de force of Brett Anderson and Bernard Butler though on a completely different level which of course was Suede for all of only two albums. And his voice second only to Brett Anderson still though on a completely different level. Painful. Strained. Good on repeat after it gets dark and quiets down.

Anyways ... so here it is. I quite like this simple version.

cheers

exogenesis.

Nevermind the lame video. This is quite something else. Incredible, in fact. The description that fits perfectly ~

'Symphonic Rock'

Although personally I like 'Classical Rock' as well but it sounds too much like 'classic rock' which is, um, quite different. This can be taken to a whole new level of course but what Matthew Bellamy has done here is most excellent. This is clearly inspired by a bit of Rachmaninov (or possibly Chopin) and - quite obviously - Gershwin. I think I already have what I need from other composers (Rachmaninov included of course), but thank you much Muse for the inspiration.

And for the time being - this is symphonic rock at its best.

speak in tongues.

Today's running song brought to me by Placebo ...

"We can build a new tomorrow today."