Welcome to the new year.

Any comments?
Anything new about the new year?
Seems like the same old.

I guess it isn't things aren't developing, but slowly and imperceptibly.

So, after a long overdue hiatus, I'm back with a pen to paper (then transcribed keys to blog). I woke up this morning at 12h30. Not quite morning, but the last two weeks have been a binge. I can't open the door to my apartment because wine bottles litter the entrance (in one night we added 9 bottles to the pile). My dream last night was strange. Lots of things happened, but it had a serene ending that is totally new to my dreaming schema.
It was the morning after the chaos and my room had a bunch of people in it sleeping all bundled up in crisp white duvets. The layout of the apartment was unlike any apartment I knew, but it was simple and extraordinary. It was entirely white and the light that flooded in through the windows made for beautiful shadows along the bare white walls and on the folds in the white duvets that covered the bed and floors. I climbed over everyone into the white kitchen and pulled out white ceramic mugs and a white electric kettle to boil some water to make coffee.
The sound of the kettel boiling woke a couple people and they peeped their faces out from underneath the covers and smiled. The smile was half a knowing smile that remembered the day before, and half a smile glad that I was the first one awake and making coffee for everyone. I return the same smile back and at that moment I wake up, eyes closed and lying on my side with my face buried in a pillow. I keep my eyes closed for a minute and vividly remember the apartment from the morning after.
I've never woken up with my eyes closed. Or ever kept them closed and thought about a dream. At least that I can remember.

Anyways, thats it for today.

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I took these photo a while ago, almost 4 years ago methinks? I don't even know time anymore... They were taken in Ramedios, a small town in south east cuba, on christmas eve.






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I just reformatted my computer and don't have access to my server right now, so no unique mp3s from me, but I can forward some good toons.

Chromatics - House of Models (demo)
Chromatics - Running Up That Hill
Ellen Allien & Apparat - Jet

New Years.

Yah, one of those.

Champagne, pies, hash, fireworks, hmm...

Thats the plan.

Anyone making any resolutions?

I'll think them up tonight and post them tomorrow for everyone, I'm also going to start posting more in general, i've been a bit on hiatus.

So... smug? I'd say smug, but its something else.

I've been in a rut, but today I finally wrote something that I feel captures a tone that I want. Its stupid to say this, but there's always this exact tone and feel to a piece that I can never quite capture. Well, i got it for a page today.

Chocolate stains lined the corners of her lips. She licked her thumb and index finger before clearing the residue. "I never had any pets" she said while cleaning the desert from her lips. Her expression never changed and her eyes didn't meet mine as she broke the silence. "Never, not a cat, not a dog, so i don't know how it feels to lose one," she continued still with an air of calm, not like she felt anything in her words, merely stating the facts. "Other kids learn the lesson of in this way I guess. Flushing a goldfish down a toilet, having to bury their cat that they spent their adolescence with, understand what it means to age as their dogs got pains in their joints, that their pet walked with a limp or stopped waling all together. I don't think that others take these expressions for granted. I just don't know how it would feel to experience them" She stopped talking when the waiter came to take away her plate and empty the ash trays. "Two espressos please," she said looking at the waiter, then sliding her eyes from him to me she smiled a small and unreadable smile before continuing, "And how should I feel? I feel like I'm missing something, something everyone else has, a relationship to aging, death, evanescent companionship, compressed into adolescence, when we are most susceptible to those experiences. Sure, I've had friends who have died, friends who are old, but I feel like their deaths or their age are unaccessible to me, I feel an emptiness when I think of their passing. Not an emptiness left by their absence, but an emptiness where there should be mourning or empathy." She pauses when the coffees arrive, she lights a Dunhill and lets the smoke roll off her tongue as she exhales the first drag. When I realized she was finished, I light up my own cigarette, Lucky Strike, and feeling it was my turn to say something found myself saying "And?" with little to no conviction. "And. And thats it. You got the bill?"

Well its done.
I don't know where to take it from there, but i wish I could write a whole story in that tone, that feeling, even then its not finished. I had a couple friends read it, and they get it, they also get that the writer (me) is an asshole. Its not the intention to be an asshole, I tried to find the right adjective for so long to replace the work conviction. But thats it, its not about who is an asshole (call me that if you'd like), its about some things being irreconcilable, especially after desert over a coffee. So you ask when else might we say it? After a drink? and what drunks listen to another drunk with too many proverbs. In bed after sex? Talk about no second date. Call me a cynic, whatever, most lives aren't idyllic, and if they were, are you always truthful? Anyways, I'm not going to keep defending myself, I hear its one of my bigger faults, always explaining myself before I give a punch. No, back on target, really, why not say it after desert? We're alone, our little things we've pieced together for ourselves are solitary, break dead air with something sincere, even if they don't listen and believe in it, will you in a year? Whether you do or don't thats the world we live in, little pieces, we feel, we regret, we recognize, and for what? We share it with a crowd of sympathetics, is there anything more patronizing than a pat on the back? How do you want them to respond? If they get it, do you expect a "oh do, please tell me more," or "oh thats so sad," what? If I write more here its preachy so I quit it and hope that you get it after extensive subtext (this being the sub). I don't think I'm defending myself. It may sound like a defense, but really, its because I don't know how to say all of that in a story by only saying "And?"

I read this today when I was a bit more sober and that last paragraph makes no sense. I almost like how little sense it makes so I'm not editing it.

Soon, there will be more, I'm a bit unavailiable right now. The internet in my home doesn't work and I'm on holidays.

But soon, words will litter these walls.

and my birthday is on the 30th!

24?

Good morning christmas eve.

a video:

In Paris for the Holidays

Well, I'm not going to Latvia, I'm sure everyone already knows this, but I feel like I need to give an explanation to those that don't.

I'm an idiot.

No, really.

I booked my ticket for november 22nd to november 28th.

I'd kick myself if I bent that way.

I was really upset, but being in Paris is an ok consolation prize.

I'm consoled.

My Birthday is the 30th, and I'll be with some friends, so I'll be sure to go out and do whatever it is that gets done on birthdays. My birthday last year was saved by a close friend of mine, and ended up being a great cadence to an otherwise horrible way to celebrate my anniversary.

A Rough Start

Today is the worst. I'm not going to latvia and have no one to blame but myself and my idiocy.

Fucking so upset.

3 songs

---Sonnenblumen or Wilted Sunflowers (Autumn Sun II)
---Rediscovered masterpieced by Egon Shiele, presumed lost for over 60 years.

Here are three songs that are special dedications to three special readers.

More to come later.
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Arthur Russel - This Is How We Walk On The Moon
Tenniscoats - Rolling Train
Bloc Party - Where is Home (Burial Remix)

Tired, atomized

Well, I've spent the evening wandering from one café to another. Killing time over coffees and happy hour beers. Dug into either my book or my note pad.

A few things I paid special attention to:
One, a transformation. I don't know what it is yet, but I can feel it.

Two, there was a pinball machine in one bar called the Authre Bistro called Medieval Madness. This machine has a bit of sentimentality to it to me. I can't really explain it, its just a machine. But I Know this machine for some reason. Its a perfect pin table. I not the best at pins, but I know them. I can respect their craftsmanship and the cult that follows them. This specific machine plays like none other, it has all the traditional clichés and perks of a pin machine, great analog synths, a good point system, etc. etc. etc. something that most people don't really care about. Call it nerdy that I think so, but whatever, pins are out of fashion, doesn't mean that this specific machine isn't a well crafted relic from a golden age. I know this about the machine, each one is hand built, on top of that each electronic board is hand soldered, even on top of that, each table is hand painted. All of them with a their own kind of love and affection that people don't really pay attention to anymore. Its just a coin eater. Its just for killing time. No, this is something of a cabaret of mechanics, you can feel it when you play, even if you're the dregs on a pins table like me. If you're ever in a bar or an arcade and you see a Medieval Madness table, play it, its worth the 25 to 50 cents/centimes.

Three, I'm probably going to be back in Toronto in the fall, if not late summer. I'm going to come back and work hard and untie myself from whatever loans and bills I have lying around before I jump back out into the world. Even waiting can be like making moves. But if any of you see me stuck in a rut forgetting to play the game and hustle to accomplish my dreams, slap me.

Four, one week from now i'll be waiting in an airport terminal to go to the Baltics for a week. This will be the first time that I haven't been around my family for Christmas. All the subtle joys that I've always associated with Christmas shout out at me. Waking up early, making coffee for my Dad, tea for Mum. This is the only way to get them up and ready so that you can open presents. Then eating a fantastic breakfast and drinking Mimosas. Taking a day nap. I guess its been a while since I've done the present thing, but even so, the switch from getting presents to being able to be around family for the holidays seemed like a natural progression of feeling festive. Well this year I'm atomized for the first time. My mom and dad are married and have each other, and my brother is married and spending the holidays with her, and I'm going to the Baltics where I don't speak the language or know what I'm doing there.

Andrew out for now, I'm sleep deprived and this blog is probably the results of such catatonic maddened thought processes. picture me writing this on a friend's couch, flicking my pursed lips while I loll my head counter-clockwise.

yeah.

and people are on their way over for a dinner party and I have to be social.

1 hour later, 1 secret santa later. I've got a cooking cape (which people keep insisting is called an apron), a record, bugles, and some other neat stuff. But the cooking cape is totally the end all, its brand new, but embroidered, sharpied, and pre-covered in wine stains. So my style.


anybody like Glass Candy?
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Glass Candy Mp3s-
Glass Candy - Beatific
Glass Candy - Candy Castle
Glass Candy - Life After Sundown
Glass Candy - Digital Versicolor

This little lady who works at my school

In the teacher's lounge there's always this little lady puttering about.
Her little locker is overflowing with disorganized scraps of paper.
She has the look of a troll doll, troll hair tied together with mismatched chopsticks.
She has ruffled and wrinkled paisley dresses that she wears under a woolen button up sweater.
Bottle cap glasses hang at the very edge of her long nose.
She's always on the go, but she must not have many classes; she's always on the go, but only in the teacher's lounge.
She talks to other teachers in urgent, but hushed, tones. As if she were debunking some grave conspiracy or working to solve some mysterious case of missing staplers.
He fanatical air reached a climax today and I was forced to come in here and write this to keep from laughing out loud.

The coffee machine had refused to return her 5 centime piece (its 45 centimes for a coffee, everybody pays with a 50 piece, and gets a 5 in return). So she stood there shaking and shouting at it. The machine stands like a giant above her, which is relatively simple since she stands at about 4'5 (5'3 when her troll hair is tied up) and the machine seems like its twice her size.

PS: if you didn't already know: Caleb's end all beef-short-rib-chili recipe. I'm thinking of pulling it out for a christmas party tonight.

A Year Ago - note: somethingsentimental

it's passed
we
have
passed 365 days
and
fuck me
for longing

I read this somewhere today and it got me thinking.



A year ago today, I was ripped from a rut I'd been in for too long.
A year ago today, I had a reason to stop being cynical.
A year ago today, I was getting ready for Costa-Rica.
A year ago today, I would stay up late working on an essay.
A year and two days ago, I ran into someone who fished in her grocery bag for a pen.
A year and three days ago, I guessed a girl's name who I'd never seen before and laughed when she scowled.
A year and three days ago, I worked door in a theatre where they taught circus performance, who would have guessed that I'd learn how to juggle, balance on perilous wires, jump through hoops, and swallow fire.
A year and four days ago, was like any other day, I woke up, I went to bed, I thought of nothing, and coldly laughed with Irony.

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Nouvelle Vague - In A Manner of Speaking

Top Albums of 2007 List

Ok, music blog standard, I have to make a list of all my favorite albums of 2007. Who would have thought it was so hard?


He spoke to me of Sei Shonagon, a lady-in-waiting to Princess Sadako in the 11th century, during the Heian period. "Do we ever know where history is really made? Rulers used complicated strategies to fight one another, while real power lay with a family of hereditary regents. The emperor's court was but a place of intrigues and intellectual games. But by learning to draw a sort of melancholy comfort from the contemplation of the tiniest things, this small group of idlers left a mark on Japanese sensibility much deeper than the mediocre thundering of the politicians. Shonagon had a passion for lists: a list of 'elegant things,' of 'distressing things,' or even of 'things not worth doing.' One day she drew up a list of 'things that quicken the heart.'"
from - Chris Marker's Sans Soleil

( 10 )---------------------
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Is Is EP

I don't know if this is cheating, its only an EP. I've always really liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (the song Maps will probably be part of me forever, DL: original/peel sessions)and the song Down Boy was one of my favorite songs of the year. Its a very strong release and deserves to be on this list of top albums even though its not really an album.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Down Boy
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Isis
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - 10 x 10
( 9 )----------------------------------
Boy Is Fiction - Boys Is Fiction

I'm always worried good ol' fashion IDM is on its way out (well it is), but this album goes to show that it won't go without a decent fight. This is a great album. It has the sweeping soundscapes and beautiful harmonies layered over these crisp and crunchy percussions. The reverb is also fantastic, sometimes heavy handed, but balanced by the piano's cool serenade. Thank you Boy is Fiction for reminding me of how beautiful old loves can be when they're dusted off and put back on the shelf.

Boy Is Fiction - Should Have Stopped
Boy Is Fiction - BiF vs 307

( 8 )----------------------------------
Grinderman - Grinderman

Speaking of great things that won't disappear without a fight. Nick Cave just keeps giving. Giving like the good ol' Nick too. Back on a guitar, back to his old spin around circus slashing a theatrical punk performance. It is totally excessive, but stripped back, his lyrics chaotic but refined, silly but delivered in low growls.

Grinderman - Go Tell The Women
Grinderman - No Pussy Blues

( 7 )----------------------------------
Marissa Nadler - Songs III: Bird on the Water

I'm a sucker for dreamy strange folk. This is an album that it'll bring me through the winter's long cold nights. Its perfect to listen to with sound proof headphones in crowded cafés in Paris and writing melancholy short stories. Marissa, you've created a beautifully crafted little gem that I think went under the radar this year. Its very Pentangle for our age. (and also one of the few singer/songwriter albums that really stood out this year)

Marissa Nadler - Dying Breed
Marissa Nadler - Mexican Summer

( 6 )----------------------------------
Battles - Mirrored

This album came out of no where for me. I don't know how to classify it, which is generally a good thing. Its a perfect mixup of all of my favorite kinds of music. A bit of the Boredoms' chaos and dissonance, a bit of broadcast's electronics, a bit of Marc Bolan's dead phantom. Where do you begin? Its a bit tech-metal, but not enough that its in your face, but enough to keep you guessing. The drums are a bit military but never boring. A bit Krautrock without ever sounding recycled. And somewhere in the cacophony of noise, its really catchy. It was an early 2007 release, but the year is almost over and its still just as good.

Battles - Atlas
Battles - Race-in

( 5 )----------------------------------
World's End Girlfriend - Hurtbreak Wonderland

This Japanese group came out with a fantastic album this year. Hurtbreak Wonderland is a perfect blend of post-rock, modern classical, glitch, and experimental electronica. Yeah, you heard me, glitch/breakcore/classical, and it does it without ever becoming pretentious or self-glorifying. The string section creates this euphoric soliloquy over complex squarepusher percussions stabs that are never "in your face" like so many other artists who experiment with the electronic/classical hybrid. It keeps itself restrained until it feels like exploding. Just when the dischord and frenetic drums have carried you too high for your poor heart to bear, it drops out the electric drums as if telling you to let yourself soar away carried on their string section's wings. If there was a masquerade ball waiting for all of us at the end of time, they would be at the top of the billing.

World's End Girlfriend - Ghost of a Horse Under the Chandelier
World's End Girlfriend - 100 Years of Choke

( 4 )--------------------------
Pinch - Underwater Dancehall

Pinch's new full length Underwater Dancehall does something similar to Burial. He's taken the foreground of the dubstep scene by making an album (not to mention numerous releases featured on compilations and singles released around the same time) that insists on forcing the sound to evolve before it goes stale. Intricate but minimal production, a wide range of emotion, and technique show exactly what a dubstep artist can do with the medium. In this album he's expanded the horizons of a format that is generally critiqued for being too one dimensional. The first listen I gave it didn't impress me too much. He'd released too many hot singles in the month before (singles on planet-mu, and the songs on the Soul Jazz's Box of Dub compilation). But as I listened to it more, I found it impossible to stop. I carry this album with me everywhere, because no matter how many times I've heard each song, they get better with each time.

Pinch - One Blood One Source ft. Rudy Lee
Pinch - Angels In The Rain ft. Indi Kaur

( 3 )---------------------------------
Deerhunter - Cryptograms

This album was an instant hit for me. It combines two of my favorite periods of music; The melancholy and morbid introspective moments that came out of Factory Records' production and the Psyche-rock of Amon Duul II. It has an ambient looseness at moments, only to come back sounding new and rocking. Did I mention that it rocks? Well it does.

Deerhunter - Providence
Deerhunter-Lake Somerset

( 2 )---------------------------------
Panda Bear - Person Pitch

Yeah, I have this instead of Animal Collective's Strawberry Jam. Noah Lennox did more with this solo album than Strawberry Jam could even close to. It has repetitive looped structures that give it the feel of dance music, but instead of making your body move, the loops keep your mind in looping structures of dischordant harmonies that could stretch into oblivion. There's a certain sublime that comes from this album that I won't quickly forget. The melodies are soft and evanescent like you could see them in the shadow play at the end of a hallway that goes on forever. The psychedelic feeling of this album is like taking the Beach Boys' at their finest in Smiley Smile and submerging it in a deep well then lighting it from underneath with florescent bulbs and watching it through a kaleidoscope as is skips off yours irises.

Panda Bear - Bros
Panda Bear - Carrots

( 1 )---------------------------
Burial - Untrue

When asking my friend for ideas for my list because its been racking my brain for a few days, he was like, "you have a certain responsibility to mention Burial." Well, here it is, I have a responsibility to mention it, but personal preference makes it my number 1.

This album is stellar. I can't get it across how great this album is. I must say I liked his first album (self titled) more but he's created something wonderful with this one. His drums are so perfect, his minimal sampling, the way it slips into your subconscious. I've found it really hard to try and explain this album to someone who doesn't listen to this type of music. Its backround music, not in the sense that you can just put it on and forget about it, like in elevators, but its music that works into your dreaming mind and warps the backround of wherever you are. Listen to it while taking public transit and all of a sudden the speed of commuters, the rushing cityscapes outside the windows, the tired faces of city people, begin to morph into a melancholy parade of whatever urban living is supposed to be. It also shows new producers what you can achieve from really stripping a song and focusing more on creating rolling textures. Bravo.

Burial - Untrue
Burial - Etched Head Plate

( 0th / Wildcard )----------------------------------
Tenniscoats - Tan-Tan Therapy and Totemo Aimasho

Oh they're neat! Love them! Love them! Umm. yeah, no review for them, I'm burnt out from this little list, but if Sei Shonagon were to make a list of cute little Japanese artists who made her heart race she'd definitely have Tenniscoats on the list. They're my eleventh choice. Not because they're eleventh best (like Yeah Yeah Yeahs is 10th on my list), but because you can put them anywhere.

Tenniscoats - Umbarepa!
Tenniscoats - Oetsu to Kanki no Nanoriuta (Given song by sob and joy)



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Honorable Mentions:
Health - Health
Disrupt - Foundation Bit
White Williams - Smoke
Stereo Total - Paris - Berlin
Efterklang - Parades
umm.. the list keeps going so i'm not going to bother with this.

Goodmorning

Some songs to start the day.
I'm off to the mosque for tea and a good book.

Today is a good day.

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Santogold - Shove It feat. Spank Rock (Switch remix)
Arovane - A Secret
Arvo Part - Astoria
Arovane - Ten Hours
Four Tet - Smile Around the Face
Arovane - Tokyo Ghost Stories
Arovane - A Storm
Panda Bear - Comfy in Nautica
Marissa Nadler - Diamond Heart

Art I like

Well, I've written a lot about how I love the author Haruki Murakami, but I'm also really into the artist Takashi Murakami.
If you live in NYC, go to the MOCA, they're doing a retrospective on him right now.
Images:




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Waaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Polysics - Plus Chicker (New Recording)
Polysics - Modern (New Recording)

Nonexistant

Ok, well, i'm taking a break for this week, sorry readers. My internet at home is defunct and I'm dealing with a lot of bureaucratic/financial issues right now. If I was to write, it would be bitchy. We all get our bad moods, and I'd prefer not to use this blog to display them publicly.

I'll be back soon. (Probably by wednesday)

Love

feel free to write me at sidenote@dubstep.ca

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Billy Holiday - Gloomy Sunday
Bjork - Gloomy Sunday