I still haven’t found a way to extract my Last.FM data in such a way to give me Most Listened to Albums by Year of Release, but as I was preparing another yearly infodump I suddenly realized… duh, why not make a one hour mix? At least something a little more than just a Spotify playlist, so here you go.
One of my long term projects has been to get a regular podcast going (yeah yeah, I can hear the “guh, not another one!” contempt already), so consider it episode number one. For now, I’m using Mixcloud as the host, but once I get my storage and bandwidth situation worked out there will be a RSS feed for a direct download.
By the way, there was much more from 2012 I liked than could be crammed into a hour, so it more a reflection of my current state of mind than anything representative of the year.
Track listing:
The Brian Jonestown Massacre – “Seven Kinds of Wonderful”
The Vandelles – “All Aloha”
Savages – “Flying To Berlin”
Moonbell – “Still Motion”
Steve Moore – “Dawn Of Primordial Life”
All India Radio – “Tomorrowland”
Marie-Pierre Arthur – “À partir de maintenant”
School of Seven Bells – “When You Sing”
Brother Sun, Sister Moon – “All You Need”
Jessica Bailiff – “Take Me to the Sun (So Warm, So Ready)”
Kinda annoyed that I missed this one before. Knowing how Smile informed of the recording of Playing With Fire, you could probably draw lines of influence based entirely on where the font appears. Get the font here.
I’m sure the inevitable “lets play all of Murmur” ATP show is already being scheduled, but I’m going to momentarily set aside the cynicsim. They were a Big Deal for me back then and I’d still argue now that their first five album run is one of the best by any band ever. I haven’t really listened to them much since… I probably should give them all a relisten.
I was fortunate enough to see them several times back in the day. Watching this is a flashback of the highest order.
I still try out new guitars by playing “Sitting Still.”
Local art collective Neighborhood Public Radio has been hosting a series of “Engagement Parties” at the Museum Of Contemporary Art in downtown LA. Last Thursday the final event, titled “In The Air,” aimed to “[bring] together local noise musicians and sound and performance artists to facilitate a live performance gesture exploring the ways in which we sonically experience indoor and outdoor spaces, and how sound informs our perceptions of our surroundings.”
Operationally, this meant filling up the inside and outside of MOCA with 100 guitarists (a la Glen Branca) and, well, cutting loose with as much drone as you can. No way I wasn’t going to miss this.
(Yours truly rocking the ambience on the right. Azalia Snail on the left – check out her music when you get a chance)
There were some guidelines. Each player was given a small FM receiver, earphones, and a region of the museum to set up in. Regions were then “conducted” via radio but only in the loosest sense: “Region 5, play a low note.” “Region 1 play something rhythmic.” and so on. By 9pm or so, most of the players had moved up to the outside plaza under Nancy Rubins’ wrecked airplane sculpture.
(obliged to mention that I’m in the clip at the 1:01 mark – choose your own description for sound)
The YouTube video gives you a vague idea of what it sounded like, but is missing much of the subtleties… sound waves bouncing off the buildings, puzzled looks from the patrons, trying to fit your sound in between your neighbor’s. Very exhilarating (and honestly transcendent) couple of hours.
