A particularly pleasant mix this evening and tonight:

Dave Douglas' "Charms of the Night Sky" group, A Thousand Evenings. The New Year, Newness Ends. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, Ease On Down the Road. Dave Holland Quintet, Prime Directive. Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out.

I finally finished a tape for my friend Damon, who is serving in the Peace Corps in Guinea.

Side A is just all of the Dismemberment Plan's last album, Change. Originally I was planning on filling the tape with my favorite songs from 2001, but laziness overwhelmed me and I figured that I'd like him to hear Change anyway since it was my favorite album of 2001. There is one thing, though: since the album is slightly longer than 45 minutes, I cut "Pay the Piano" from the middle. I know I have more than 45 minutes, but I'm not sure how much more, and I didn't want "Ellen and Ben" to be cut off at the end.

Also to accomplish this cut I just programmed my boom box and then left it recording. Unfortunately I was not aware that my boom box is retarded and re-scans between each track on a program, so the natural flow from track-to-track, on the tracks where I didn't introduce a gap by cutting a song, was sort of fucked. Oh well.

Side B is just songs. Labradford - "Up to Pizmo". Mogwai - "Dial: Revenge". Superpitcher - "Tomorrow". Basement Jaxx - "Romeo". Jay-Z - "Heart of the City (Ain't No Love)". Wu-Tang Clan - "Uzi (Pinky Ring)". Mystikal - "Bouncin' Back' (Bumpin' Me Against the Wall)". Beta Band - "Eclipse". Low - "Laser Beam".

I went with my usual method of trying (in some abstract way) to get good flow from song to song, but also it's obviously got sort of a triangular structure (er maybe square-wave triangular heh).

I must have some variant on, as my roommate puts it, "narcosleepy", because all I could do yesterday when I got home was lay on the couch and drift in and out. After dinner I screwed around and then went to sleep again, and slept for more or less twelve hours.

So my music for the night, and afternoon, is fitting - Bedhead's 4 Song EP. Given how, on other releases, Matt Kadane seems to have more control over how his lyrics scan (though there's always a bit of awkwardness around), the odd little extensions of phrasing here (holding a note to make the phrase match the music even though the words have sounded semi-conversational up to that point), or the vocal wavering, sound more intentional. I'm not sure how much to take them as that, though. (I'm remembering something Andrew Kenny of the American Analog Set wrote to me - "that's just how we sound when we play our instruments".) Also I have in mind what I wrote last June - along the same lines, the music just sounds so intimate that I want to take these vocal things as contributing to the sense that these songs are very personal communications, or at least meant to seem like them (obviously the fact that there's a band ruins that a bit, plus the widely distributed recordings, etc). The sense of looking on on Kadane singing something to someone else.

This EP was recorded live in one take at a church. The guitars sound more up-front than the drums, which have more room ambience, presumably because there was only one mike so the drums are farther away from it. I don't get as much of a "guitars sounding like viola" feel here as from, say, the preceding album, WhatFunLifeWas. At times, even though it's in 4 it feels like it's in waltz time. And sometimes I get the sense that I'm hearing more well-defined melodies (more vertical melodies, maybe) that have been stretched out and smeared together - part of the way in is getting to know the individual guitar parts apart, which is posible since they're all clean and clear. But the way they play, and the close proximity of all the parts to each other, lends to hearing them as more unified.

I have a lot I want to write about, but I've been busy this week and don't anticipate having the time I need until later. But here's what I listened to today.

In the morning, Bobby Hutcherson's first album as a leader released on Blue Note, Dialogue. Sam Rivers' sax stands out on the first track - aside from the Dolphy record that Hutcherson plays on, which is kind of laidback for an a-g record anyway, I think this is the most startling thing I've ever heard on Blue Note. Things get very free jazz (groove falls apart, replaced by more tentative pulse, lots of people playing at once what sound like solo parts) later.

69 Love Songs, Vol. 2 on the way in. Like with a number of other records lately it sounded a lot more spacious than the last time I listened to it. Again I had an urge (which I eyed warily) to do another song-by-song thing on here. I supressed it.

Talk Talk in my office, with the sun coming through the windows and for once it being warmly comfortable rather than witheringly hot or bitterly cold.

Smog on the way home. The more I listen to the record the harder it is to finish the article I'm writing about it.

Some of Zorn's Circle Maker (the string trio disc) at home now. Does it seem odd that someone like Zorn, with a penchant for ruining eardrums and getting in people's faces, signed off on this very refined-sounding recording? When the strings get screechy, they're still kind of distanced. The Shostakovich string quartets by the Borodin on Melodia sound a lot more raw.

I watched Antonioni's Blow Up tonight. I thought the sound with the trees rustling in the wind was astonishing.

I didn't get the film study fellowship, I found out today. I had my hopes up because I hadn't gotten a rejection letter yet like my friends, but I guess my letter was just lost in the mail or something.

I was reminded earlier tonight that Thursday is Valentine's Day. I hadn't really been thinking about it, but now when it comes to mind my mood is slightly darkened. Jazz tomorrow then.

Today at my desk I listened to some Monk, from disc twelve I think of the Riverside box. For a while the disc is from some solo session, as far as I can tell, though by "San Fransisco Holiday" there's a band with him. The solo stuff felt ideal because it was so casually contemplative, even more so than usual for Monk: it was unhurried, and that pace seemed to be meant to give more time for the notes to hang in the air, to be considered. Rolled around on the tongue, savored.

I swear the part where the drums come in on Gastr's "Bauchredner" sounds like the Who's "Squeezebox". Really.

And Ken Vandermark and Rob Mazurek play on Camofleur!

This mix Jess made recently reminded me that I hadn't listened to Gastr Del Sol's Camofleur in a very long time. I had never especially liked it, either. As far as I can tell I've never written what I thought about it here before now, so unfortunately I can't remember much of what I thought besides "this sucks." What I can remember is that the first track annoyed me, that the vocals were slightly off-putting, and that as a whole it kind of bored me. I may have also found the parts with horns and melodies and stuff later on the album a little too saccharine.

Somewhere along the line I must've just come to be able to appreciate the right things about the album, through liking other music. Aside from maybe the saccharine thing (which I'm not sure is what I thought anyway, whether it's actually what I thought or just what I'm not mislabeling as sugary mistrust), I'm not sure why that would have been necessary, since I think I had all the right pieces in place (love of droney things, love of art-damaged things, love of indie-tinged things of various stripes). But it feels more like that, than the sort of thing where I just never heard an album right or gave it a fair shake.

And now I still don't especially like the first track, but the rest of it is beautiful. At the moment all I would like to say, though, is that the record is vital (in the "full of life" sense, not the "you should get this" sense, though that might be a good idea). Including in its quiet moments, and its repetitive moments.

Here is a nice interview with David Grubbs.

1. I am listening to Call the Doctor.

2. I am going to St. Louis this weekend.

3. That is all.

This morning once I was awake enough I fumbled around with the remote and put on "Lord, Can You Hear Me?" I started crying a little bit so when it finished I started it over again and turned it up really loud.

It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had. I'm still left almost speechless by it. Tears started streaming down my face. The contrasts. Even with Mimi Parker behind him, an enormous gospel choir, an orchestra, J. Spaceman sounds as alone as he can be. How? All the racket, and he sounds like he really doesn't think God can hear him. But he still sounds hopeful.

And not because of that, but just maybe because I was overwhelmed by everything, I started laughing. Laughing and then sobbing and then laughing again. I mean, fuck. Overwhelmed, but it was totally different from that time. I don't know what to make of it right now.

After that second time through I turned it back to "The Straight and Narrow" - I couldn't do it again.