When a friend of mine said, “the newsletter is so short now,” I realized I had to clarify. The action comes after the paywall and everything before the fold is chatter. Don’t be like Michael! He is not on the line. Sadly? He thinks he is on the line!
Mashups can feel condescending to the newer bit, as if the kids couldn’t catch air without the virile lift of Classic Material. This Radiohead, Ice Spice & PinkPantheress sandwich works, though, possibly because the softness of “Weird Fishes” is consistent with the original beat. This blend also does me the favor of conjoining two Ice Spice songs, which means I get to hear her flow for more than ninety seconds. The comments are fun, too, talking about “protecting” Thom and Ice Spice, who I suspect may be having lunch together right now.
These two fellows dancing to “Rock Lobster” look like NYC high-schoolers jamming out in the bathroom during a free but that is only speculation. I danced to that exact song at that approximate age and I felt as free as they look.
I like music that waffles on a bit and kills time in the echo. I enjoy breaking off half an hour to see how someone moves. I like clearing away the noise and the beats to find the line and follow the thinking. These are some of the reasons I’m a fan of PJ Dorsey, a musician and DJ and writer and facilitator from Baltimore. He releases records as tarotplane, does a monthly radio show on Dublab, and maintains a newsletter called Zik Zak. His recent post on Italian kosmische and prog links to a three-hour, pay-what-you-want mix. Like most of what Dorsey makes and studies, it is long and generous and slow-ish. There are different names for the varietals he stocks. Krautrock? Kosmische? Ambient? No idea.
In the time it took me to put together this post, he released another three-hour mix, this time of “light” and “dark” kosmische flavors. I love it all. I would say kosmische is my true kink but that implies a subordinate standard state, and maybe I am just main feed, front office, company account, full-bleed kosmische and my kink is, idk, Dylan? (More on that soon.) If you want to keep spacing the hell out, Zimoun has posted a new mix with Foxy Digitalis that is strong purple isolation tube drones. (Zimoun has nothing to do with PJ Dorsey—it just fit.)
The combination of original productions and mixtapes on the tarotplane Bandcamp makes for a long, heated waterslide. I recommend buying and listening to all of it as one chonk. Dorsey will be putting out a tape with the Woodford Halse label in May and is releasing “a very special tape that’s all about echo guitar” this August.
Some guy bought the Flatiron Building and didn’t pay for it. I did not know that the building was essentially empty?
I did part of a new 8-Ball Radio cassette being sold at the Pratt Zine Fair (see below). Side A is a mix by Madeleine Jennings and side B is the first 45 minutes of this Busytown mix, modified for the cassette format. Click those links if you want the music and show up this weekend to buy the thing if you want to support 8-Ball.
This New Left Review piece on Nord Stream pipeline theories by historian Grey Anderson made me think two things. First: he does a good job of discussing conspiracy theories without using that phrase. Why, in fact, should we use that wording when we are talking about things that in twenty or thirty years will simply become the purview of historians like Anderson? A Verso book about “the Ukrainian era” will reveal that Biden OK’d a swarm of divers to blow the pipeline, or whatever. Until then, it’s official denials and Sy Hersh on patrol. Second: Anderson uses some extremely fragrant words. Here is a sentence: “Today, ataxia disorganizes a scene cleft by duelling fractions of state apparatuses.” That’s a nice journey. Five words that I had to look up (even though two are not that uncommon) while reading this piece: attentats, bruits, volvelle, littoral, edulcorant. My guy is low-key French out here. This is the Nurse With Wound track that Anderson’s article made think of.
I was using this corny but useful seven-hour dub techno mix as work music (it could have been made by Uber Eats, I have no idea) and then I found this “FANMADE” collection of Aphex Twin “early morning” tracks, which I prefer. In the same way that I hear Thin Lizzy now as infinitely better than I thought they were in 1985 (and I loved them then), I understand Aphex Twin now as the currency of a small nation-sized community, a bit like the Dead’s music for Deadheads. You can find seven hours of “Rhubarb” looped, and various attempts to blend all the tracks Richard James posted to SoundCloud a few years ago. Someone please embed with the Aphexers!
I wrote about Still House Plants for Artforum, a piece that isn’t very long but has been a source of agitation for almost three years now, not because of the band or the publication but because I spoke to them so many times and felt badly that I wasn’t doing something concrete with all the reporting. I finally got to see them play at FourOneOne last week and it was just stupendous. Three people playing in their own, fully outfitted worlds, together. Jessica Hickie-Kallenbach is also one of the most compelling and unafraid singers out there today. Run and walk and then run again to see them.
Brad Shoup has made a 2,000 song playlist of recordings released in 1972. I love 1972, too early for primary memories but a big green flag for my collecting and obsessing and loving activities. So I recognize some of these songs, sure, but mostly not. Doing this with one year and one year only gives an intense picture of what was of importance in the moment: the commonalities stack high and fast. The number of non-American recordings also makes this educational for a Yank like me, who simply did not know Claude François was going that hard in 1972. As it is 139 hours, I am not done with it yet.
I wrote about the Gordon Matta-Clark and Pope.L show at 52 Walker. It’s only up for another day or two.
If you want to know how deep the brain rot is here in America, this piece about guns stolen from parked cars reveals that the NRA is flogging the idea that mandating lockboxes for guns in cars is “onerous” and will unfairly criminalize sweet innocent guns and their blissfully agency-free owners. Soon enough there will an NRA cryface video about why I simply had to shoot my grandma RIGHT AWAY just like George Washington and Jesus did.
If you do not know Christoph de Babalon’s If You’re Into It I’m Out Of It, it has been remastered by Rashad Becker for a new pressing. The Boomkat description calls this “neo-noir ambient jungle,” which is accurate. There is nothing quite like this record; for instance, no single beat pattern is maintained throughout, which might frustrate a fundamental junglist. This album is as much liquid valium as it is rhythm and it should have been the score for The Ghost in The Shell (original no Scarlett).
Los Enchiladas!, Mitch Hedberg’s 1999 feature film, has been on YouTube since 2012. It’s about a Mexican restaurant in Minnesota and a “menu writer,” a situation that allows Hedberg to riff through his characters for ninety minutes. Oddly relaxing.
Cosmically appropriate that Lauren Michele Jackson found the perfect tone for writing about Lana Del Rey here: open to discussion but not buying Friday’s fish on Monday.