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.

Listening to "Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space" today, I tried to sing the "Elvis" parts really loud in my head to make it sound more perfect, but it was hard to make it match the sound in my headphones.

(I/can't/help/falling in love/with/you)

Today I listened again to the five Disco Inferno singles Ned (check the byline on some of the reviews there) was fabulous enough to send me. A few scattered thoughts:

Besides just being derived from their stylistic British post-punk ancestors, the whole lockstep, super-precise chimey guitar thing was probably almost essential to doing what they did: with guitars wired to samplers, I would suspect that restraint would be in order, lest an unimaginable din result (and, ha, some would say that it did a number of songs into the disc).

Lots of the samples are 'nature' type samples. This makes me feel a little embarassed, like if I were caught listening to a Pink Floyd record and pretending that all the found sound sort of stuff was really revolutionary. Clearly this is partly just me being a snob, and partly me overlooking the whole rock-sampler link being so crucially tight. But nevertheless it seems to me as if using nature noises is pedestrian somehow. Maybe it's just an overkill thing.

On a related note, even when not nature noises the samples tend to be along those lines - glass breaking, noisy clunky stuff, chattering, footsteps. Earlier today this made me think "it's a shame they never really followed this to its ultimate conclusion," which now pains me because I read something this afternoon that said something like that about some other band and it made me grit my teeth and call the writer a stupid fucker (so, er, I think this "following through to the ultimate conclusion" crap is crap, even if it could be meant well and clearly - maybe I will save that for another time). But, wouldn't it have been really great to hear this whole D.I. thing, only with other music as the triggered samples? Other instruments? (I'm sure some of the things triggered are their instruments, but that just makes it like, uh, weird postpunk.)

I'm sure I'll have to amend some of this later after actually following the music a little better. I suspect I've said this before anyway.

Plus there's always this question in the back of my mind when I listen to Let It Come Down, "how much better does this sound to a burnout fuckup smackhead like J. Spaceman?" I don't anticipate being able to figure that out from direct experience. So is there some way I could get at it conceptually, to at least hear the album and understand in theory, and marvel at how totally appropriate to the experiences of the persona he's created this big overblown thing is, even if I can't always be knocked on my ass by actually identifying with it?