The “morning person” part of my brain never lets me sleep too long – it was up and out of the house each morning of this long weekend, onto a tram or a train or a bus, and off to some other part of town while everything was still peaceful. I took photos with numerous devices, and would've walked over 25km in total.
One morning, I spotted somebody's Christmas remnants and heard Fleetwood Mac leaking out of a popular cafe before resting in a park while a pair of masked lapwings patrolled the grass near me. Another morning, a wafting smell of food grabbed me as I crossed a railway bridge, and just nearby, a friendly cat talked to me from somebody's garden. The cat had so much to tell me, in fact, that it jumped the fence into a neighbouring garden to continue meowing to me as I walked away.
The streets remained quiet, though, for which I'm grateful. My restless mind craves a chance to breathe, to listen, to explore without the stress of a crowd. Sometimes, I'm revisiting memories; Sometimes I'm thinking about conversations I need to have, and it's all part of a never-ending battle to Remain Present. Music helps, and often it's the soundscapes that really help.
I don't often have the energy to write anymore, but I'll ride it while it's suddenly here. My listening this year wasn't particularly exploratory – I let my sub to The Wire lapse a few years back, and I miss the serendipitous references it brought me. With that, here we go:
Favourite things released this year
Tindersticks – Soft Tissue – I’m calling it a comeback, as this grabs me somehow more than other recent and not-unpleasant work. It hits a definite groove, and it's a masterpiece.
Cindy Lee – Diamond Jubilee – A box full of experiments, some of which work, and a couple of which are transcendent – Not unlike a Guided By Voices album of old in that respect, except that it’s a two-hour behemoth with a bit more 60s-inspired fuzz/reverb. Glorious.
DIIV – Frog in Boiling Water – Warm, familiar, and making the sounds they’re so good at, but the feeling that Something’s Not Right is unavoidable. A strangely unsettling album.
Jessica Pratt – Here in the Pitch – when I inevitably wake up from whatever dream this life is, I expect to hear Jessica Pratt's music softly playing, before the grand revelation that my existence was all part of some late-60s experiment.
Klein – marked – Definitely the kind of album I’d only hear about from one of two places – The Wire magazine, or one of Boomkat’s e-mails. I heard about it purely by chance, but it's the kind of discovery I relish – someone's out there pouring themselves into slabs of noise like this, and it's beautiful.
Snarski vs Snarski – Waiting for the Bell – Two musical brothers take their turns with each others’ songs through the ages, giving a bit of new life to familiar tunes via each of their lovely voices. Come for Crossing off the miles, stay for Be careful what you put your name to.
Pleasant Discoveries from other times
The Sorcerers' Ethiojazz-inspired tunes. I saw this video playing silently in the window of a shop in Northcote one evening. Not long afterwards, I saw some other reference to the band, which led me to In Pursuit of Shai-Hulud. Sometimes the universe sends you signals, I guess.
Tony Molina (thank you acb!) who reminds me of Elliott Smith, Guided by Voices and something else.
Voice Actor – Sent from my telephone – what if your stoner friend popped in every now and then with some random dream memories or other observations? I've listened through the whole album, but this feels like the perfect kind of source material to drop into a mixtape or two.
I need to spend some time with these to form proper opinions.
Late 2023 releases I brought into this year
bdrmm – I don't know – nice fuzzy noise that hits the spot. I see the next album's on the way in February, too.
Blonde Redhead – Sit Down for Dinner – if you're looking for a soundtrack to feeling overcome by wistfulness, this might be it. Had I seen them play back in June, I may well have drowned in my own tears.
Hermanos Gutiérrez – El Bueno Y El Malo – currently replacing Khruangbin as the band you'll hear in many inner-suburban situations, and rightfully so – a second example of brotherly excellence in this list, too.
Dreary #winter; time for some dreamy, drifty #music.
Shinjuku Thief's Bloody Tourist – so many years since I listened to it, but with Paul Schütze popping up again recently it's a short jump to this album that he'd produced at the start of the 90s, back when I was a nervous Young Person buying CDs from the very same Darrin Verhagen as he worked in a CBD music shop, and listening to a show on 3PBS FM that he sometimes played music on. The languid, slightly feverish Open Wound nicely fit my morning walk, as Preston struggled out of bed on a cold morning.
The transcendent nature of hearing a strange old robotically buzzy 20 year old song as the bus crested the hill on Punt Rd and, a little later, I stepped off and walked to the office; it fit the cold morning air so well.
When did I first hear this song? I’d bought the CD in Singapore and listened to it on this train trip to Kuala Lumpur in early 2004, in very different weather to this wintry morning:
I learnt so much on that trip, and saw so many things:
As we get older, it’s harder and harder to fight the pull of nostalgia. What would I have done differently? Plenty of things, but also nothing.
We visited Ueno Station one cold, grey morning, entirely because of a memory of an old song, as you do – or, well, as I do.
My wife found it odd. I couldn't really explain how songs seep into your bones over time, but it related to how I needed to experience a more random nature of Tokyo beyond other people's top-N lists.
We could've seen anything at all here, and it would've helped a few more connections form somewhere in my brain. That's what I'm looking for – the joy of less-conscious discoveries. After all, it's up to you what the image means.
I woke up to a sea of memories from musicians and other folks about Tom Verlaine and Television; my own are more second-hand.
An influential friend gave me a mixtape in the last year of high school containing a single from a local band we all liked (and whose guitarist would, in a strange mixing of worlds much later on, become my manager for a year or so). The b-side of that single was a cover of Little Johnny Jewel which lodged itself squarely in my mind, even after I bought the impossibly good Marquee Moon later on.
Somewhere among the waves, I enjoyed reading Lucy Sante mention how every gig sounded different – it almost makes me miss going along to more live music in the hope of those transcendental moments (who am I kidding? I feel too old for all that standing up).
Having some time on my hands is a gift – I've been using it to just get out and spend time on my feet, each day. I might struggle to suggest that I'm making the most of my time, but that's the point – I don't have to! The main battle has been to disconnect myself from the constant need to feel productive, and to just let it happen. This includes photographic opportunities.
Hi! I’m Cos, and I run this service. My pronouns are he/him and I live in #Naarm / #Melbourne in Australia with my wife and cats.
I’ve been hanging around the Internet since the days of UUCP connections. The distributed / less-centralized nature of those times is something that still appeals to me, which is why I’m still here #selfhosting and hosting for others – I’ve loved empowering friends to get their thoughts up and into the Internet so that it’s not just the same old nerds like me in here.
I’m trying out WriteFreely as a way to better aggregate my writing and some other information. This post serves as both an #introduction and a test.
It's hard to avoid the gravitational pull of music from our formative years – in my case, around the end of high school. One such song has its 30th birthday today, on July 16th – #Swervedriver's Son of Mustang Ford.
I wasn't early enough to enjoy the morning fog, but what a crisp morning! I braved a street I once lived in (some memories are harder than others), and pushed further west into some streets I rarely visit anymore, full of the usual mix of terrifying mansion-like things amongst the preserved prior world.
There are tiny hints amongst the blankness – subtle things, not the wall-high scrawls – I appreciate the little notes.
Remnants of another milk bar that succumbed to the ravages of our times, though I struggle to remember the particular nature of this one.
Really, it's just nice to be out, seeing nothing in particular.
Musical accompaniment was something new (competely unheard) and something old (but not listened to for a long time):
