be careful how you respond / or you might end up in this song

Panda Bear

Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) is one quarter of Animal Collective, who's somehow managed to put together several acclaimed solo albums over the years while working with "the freak-folk/baroque pop" quartet, with his latest (2007's Person Pitch) coming in at #1 in Pitchfork's Album of the Year.

If you like the songs below or just are enamoured of Animal Collective in general, an interview here at popmatters.com is enlightening, if you can get over phrases like "surreal sonic tapestries", no matter how appropriate they are...

In particular, the article does well in describing the transition from Panda Bear/AC's sound from a heavy acoustic guitar focus (think Sung Tongs) to the electronic sampling of Strawberry Jam and Merriweather Post Pavillion.

"...I got excited about trying to work with purely electronic means and trying to get something that felt really soulful out of something that didn’t have any soul, if you know what I’m saying..."

Panda Bear - Comfy In Nautica

Panda Bear - Take Pills

Radiohead - Live from the Basement

look "radiohead live basement" up on youtube...

In case previous posts haven't made it painfully obvious, I do rather enjoy Radiohead. Strangely they still languish behind Why?, Gang of Four, Faux Pas and Of Montreal in my last.fm listens, this will soon be remedied (Hot Chip are even further behind, what's going on?)

Asides aside, I just discovered, after watching the entire set on youtube in rapt fascination, that you can "legally acquire" Radiohead's live set from the mysterious "Basement". I would go so far as to say that it sounds better than the studio-recorded album; songs like Where I End and You Begin and Reckoner really shine through. That said, here's House of Cards.

Radiohead - House of Cards (Live from the Basement)

Calum, if you're out there, I'll burn you a copy of the whole thing, have no fear.

Thom Yorke remixed by XXXChange

just when you thought you'd seen the last of anyone vaguely radiohead-affiliated...

XXXChange's remix of Thom Yorke's solo song The Eraser takes it to another place. While I love Thom's voice, I think his move towards electronica in his solo work doesn't work as well as something more acoustic-driven. However, this remix takes the best of both world's, bringing up Yorke's voice and framing it within bubbly, precise percussion.

Thom Yorke - The Eraser (XXXChange Remix)

This will be my last post for about two and a half weeks; here in Australia we have a thing called "Year 12" and I've got three SAC's the same week as I'm performing Midsummer Night's Dream...

don't forget your roots

my autumn's / done come

This time, less self-indulgent saga, more music. That Radiohead song in the post beneath is worth wading through my reminiscences for though; unadulterated genius.

Merriweather Post Pavillion

i just want four walls and adobe slabs / for my girls

I must admit, I got the latest Animal Collective album as soon as it leaked on Christmas Day, but felt bad about posting anything from it before now. That said, everyone on hypemachine has been going hell for leather since then, which would have alleviated any guilt...

The three songs I'm particularly enamoured of are In the Flowers, My Girls, and Brothersport, but its only the last that remains consistently great all the way through. That said, In the Flowers after "if i could just leave my body / for a night" takes a tribal turn for the terrific as the powerful percussion pounds away over trademark AC distortion.

Animal Collective - My Girls

The Smiths

I've always listened to a lot of Smiths ever since Abbey burnt me a cd of Hatful of Hollow. While Abbey may have graduated to the higher purpose of waking me up at 2am, my love for this band burns on, despite the fact that a lot of electronic music has superceded them in ephemeral, last.fm rankings...if you like Modest Mouse and haven't heard of the Smiths then check these out; the guitarist Johnny Marr was a founding member before "floating on".

The Smiths - William, It Was Really Nothing

The Smiths - Still Ill

Beach House

"Atmosphere rock". That's a description of Beach House I like and I'm going to stick with it. Speaking of genres, I've got one of my own; myth-rock. Like math-rock, except in terms of comparison its more manti-core. Download this, make up for that joke. Beach House is great music to listen to when working, particularly if you like listening to similar songs all the way through prolonged periods of time. Alternatively, Joe Jackson's Steppin Out or the Idjut Boy's rework of Phil Collin's I'm Not Moving are both extremely effective on repeat.

See if you can pick up the "David-Bowie-percussion-from-the-album-Low-as-in-Warswaza" vibes in this, as in the majority of Beach House...

Beach House - Gila

in pitch dark / i go walking through your landscape

Anyone here for music should skip down a few lines...

"not poppy, nor mandragora, nor all the drowsy spirits of the world, shall e'er medicine thee to that sweet sleep thou owed'st yesterday..."

No, I'm not taking an (intentional) ego trip down memory lane, its bad enough that Sonic Youth wrote Eric's Trip about me: "I can't see anything at all, all I see is me".

I was flicking through "My Pictures" and came across Exhibit A above, and thought I should just reflect on it. So far its been far too easy for me to blog away in my little electronic corner of the interweb, adding glib little critiques onto the end of other people's music. I hadn't really thought about the experience until this week, when I was asked "when are you most like you?", amongst other things, as part of a leadership etc. course.

Why I do things like Othello is because I think the stage is where you can be alone in the best way possible. It's interesting in that respect, that you need others to be alone, the audience, the other actors. But the audience are there to see you, they don't care about the way you feel. While I'd hate to dismiss the importance of other actors in a play, the most egocentric option available, I think of them in the same way as the audience. They're there for you - just as you are there for them - so that escaping reality for two fragile hours is made all the easier by your relationships with believable characters. For me the theatre is escapism but in the most bittersweet of ways. At all times, no matter how emotionally involved you are, the character whose form you take refuge in can only survive until the curtain-call. SomethingI only considered the other day, often the character is a reflection or magnification of certain aspects of your own personality; equally grounding and exhilarating. That said, it seems unhealthy (or at the least unnatural) to want to become someone else just to understand yourself.


On that bombshell, here's one of my favourite Radiohead songs from one of my equal favourite Radiohead albums.

Radiohead - There There (The Boney King Of Nowhere)

there's always a siren / singing in the shipwreck

zen state, etc.