Songs about helicopters (slight return)

"Helicopter", by The Chills.

Not so much a song as a hint of an idea for a song. But, as with anything by Martin Phillipps, it bears the indelible mark of his singular way with melody.

This was released about 13 years ago as part of the three-disc "Secret Box" collection of Chills rarities, which existed thanks to the (continuing) good works of the people behind the Soft Bomb website. The set is long unavailable, and the longer we wait for further Chills recordings, the less likely it would appear that there ever will be any. (Insert sad face here.)

Anyway you can listen to this curious fragment here (right click etc; you know the drill by now), and speculate as to what might have been (and what, fate willing, may still be).

Helicopter songs of the day

Oh, what the heck. Here is every other song I know about helicopters. That I can presently think of.

1. "Helicopters", by Crayon Fields. From their first, and to me the better, album. It's Melbourne indie pop royalty. Sort of. I think you'll like it.



2. "The Helicopter Spies", by The Swell Maps. The album that this is from, which at a best guess is entitled "Swell Maps in 'Jane from Occupied Europe'", takes pride of place in my vinyl collection. It feels, and has always felt, to me to be much more art object than product. I sometimes wonder whether, in 1980, every budding musician in Dunedin was given a copy of this record.



3. "Helicopter", by XTC. This one you know.

Song of the day

"Helicopter", by M. Ward.

She doesn't know this, but when Ms Sarah Knuckey made a copy for me of M Ward's "Transfiguration of Vincent" LP, way back in twenty-zero-whatever, she changed my life. (And now I have my own copy. Ten bucks at the local second-hand music shop.) At that time, I didn't know music like this was still being made. Alongside Iron & Wine and Gillian Welch, M. Ward's music gave me renewed faith in the, uh, redemptive power of music. Or some such.

So, Sarah, if you are out there, this is for you.



Editor's note: it is entirely coincidental that the last two "songs of the day" have been about helicopters. This is not a trend.

Hypothetical mixtape: September 2012

On with the show.

"Torold Le A Konnyeidet!", by Atlas. It starts with a couple of largely atonal blasts, but quickly resolves into a classy piece of lounge music, of the kind that you could easily imagine the Karminsky Organization working into one of their "In-Flight Entertainment" collections. If they had known about it. Which they may well not have, since it hails from Hungary, which was at that time only just starting to walk, blinking into the light, out of many years of Communist oppression. Not that you'd know it from this, which would not at all have been out of place on Eurovision circa, say, 1971.

"Free", by British Electric Foundation. Perhaps not as insanely good as Tindersticks' take on "If You're Looking For A Way Out", from a few years later, but pretty damn good nevertheless. From the second volume of B.E.F.'s "Music of Quality and Distinction" project, which I recall being underwhelmed by at the time. Perhaps I had to grow up a bit more to really appreciate this song. (Perhaps I had to have developed a familiarity with the original.) Billy Mackenzie's voice is always received with a tinge of sadness, firstly because of his fate but also because that's what his voice always conveyed; to me, anyway. (Notwithstanding that "Party Fears Two" and "Club Country" are two of the greatest pop songs, not just "New Pop" songs. I understand that there is now a third volume of "Music of Quality and Distinction", on which Glenn Gregory sings the first of those two songs. That I've gotta hear.) This could also, by the way, almost be sold as a lost outtake from Scritti Politti's "Cupid & Psyche 85".

"Owner Man Skank Version", by Massive Dread. The label on the seven-inch says it all, really: "Produced by: Tapper Zukie"; "(c) 1978"; "Made in Jamaica". What could possibly go wrong?

"Keep On Movin'", by Deodato. In which everyone's favourite Brazilian lounge jazz exponent gets on a disco tip. The groove gets hit from the word go; the listener is allowed to settle in for the long haul. It will be worth it. Pre-dates David Bowie's "Let's Dance" by just enough time for speculators to speculate that Bowie might, just might, have had half an ear to this.

 "Cementerio Club", by Pescado Rabioso. It's a small step from Brazil to Argentina. "Pescado Rabioso" means "rabid fish", apparently. Now that's a band name. Where Deodato borrows from disco, these dudes have an ear on the British blues boom. I'm thinking particularly, though, of those lost-era Fleetwood Mac albums that I referred to a couple of months back.

"Circles", by Les Fleur de Lys. Hey, it's the sixties big beat sound we all know and love. You may know this song from a band called The Who. This version may not have Keith Moon on the drums, but it does have a blistering guitar solo. Which is some consolation.

"Right On", by Cougars. If you had snuck this onto David Holmes's soundtrack to "Ocean's 11", I doubt that anyone would ever have been any the wiser.

"White Lines", by David Wiffen. This comes across as archetypal West Coast singer-songwriter tunage, so I was surprised to discover that David Wiffen is English, and began his career in music there before moving to Ottawa, whence sprang the album this fine song is from. Hmmm, those seventies Californian songsmiths being outdone by a Canadian: wouldn't be the first time, actually ...

"Hey Man", by Rare Bird. You would have thought the well of hitherto obscure late-sixties / early-seventies gems would have long dried up by now. You might like to think again. How good is THIS? Interesting that it was picked up for reissue by the fabulous El Records, home of Would-Be-Goods and other fine eccentric and/or understated eighties English fare.

"La Isla Bonita", by Jonathan Wilson. If it is the mark of a man that he can record a cover version of a Madonna song such that the innocent listener has no idea that he or she is listening to a Madonna song, then Jonathan Wilson is some kind of man.

"Selfish Boy", by Caribou. Proof, if proof were needed, that Dan Snaith's limited-edition tour CDs are better than most bands' actual CDs. Is that really a Beethoven sonata tucked away in there?

"Bad Street (Lindstrom & Prins Thomas Remix)", by Twin Sister. Not all latter-day L&PT remixes completely hit the mark. This one, I think does: right down to the metaphorical breaking of the storm, at the 6.45 mark. And if the start of the song reminds you of your favourite Swiss band, Yello, well, where's the harm?

"Some Time Alone, Alone", by Melody's Echo Chamber. The music on this song is supplied by Mr Tame Impala. You can kind of tell. What is surprising, though, is the level of debt this song owes to the first couple of Broadcast albums. This is not a criticism: we can never have those days again, so it's nice to get such a poignant reminder of what we will go on missing, for ever.

"Wildest Moments", by Jessie Ware. Pop music, circa 2012. *Sigh*.

"Four Times More", by Elisa Waut. Pop music, circa 1986. You cannot imagine this not having been huge. And yet, it wasn't.

"Year 90-10", by Sam Rosenthal. Instrumental electronic music from 1985; from an album released in an edition of 250 and rereleased in presumably larger numbers last year because, y'know, we are in a 25-year music cycle where everything of a certain age is new and cool again (whereas everything from, say, 2005 nobody wants to know about; but hang on to those, too, because one day they will become valuable "artefacts"; hey, we're not cynical here, not us). Anyway this does sound pretty nice. I would also have embraced it "back in the day" because these are the sounds of my own formative years. Note the pseudo-Pseudo Echo haircut on the record cover. I believe I can say with some honesty that I never had one of those; at least, not for more than a few hours.

"Mon Amour", by Alan Hawkshaw and Brian Bennett. Library music royalty. An electric piano vamps away in the background, while the Moog noodles away over the top. As a friend once said, there are not enough "O"s in "smooth".

Song of the day

"Do The Helicopter", by Frank Savage and the Citizens.

I spent much of yesterday evening helping to shift an unfeasibly large quantity of seven-inch singles from point A to point B.

"Ordinary Persons Rock And Roll", by Frank Savage and the Citizens, wasn't amongst them.

Frank Savage and the Citizens might best be described as a footnote to a footnote to the Melbourne pub rock scene circa 1980. I don't know if they ever released anything other than this one record. I have a copy of it, which for unexplainable reasons makes me feel kind of special. I have a vague notion that Frank Savage himself either hailed from, or spent time in, Toora, which was one of the feeder towns for my high school. There were Savages (savages too, heh heh) at my school but they weren't from Toora. (Of course it may well not even have been his real name.)

I never understood why "Do The Helicopter" was relegated to the B side. It is totally catchy, so much so that it has lived in my head for the last 30-odd years without me having felt the need to actually play the record in the interim.

It seems not to be on the Tube at present, but as we sit here now you can listen and/or download it from here. What are you waiting for?

(Trivia note: Rod Hayward, on guitar, played with Dave Graney in the White Buffaloes and the Coral Snakes.)

Song of the day

"Lucky", by Lusine.

How can a song be, at the same time, both a breath of fresh air and a throwback to the sound of 2000 (Luomo's "Tessio", to be precise)? Like I would know. It just is.

Song of the day

"Ice Machine (Ewan Pearson's Darkroom Scene Remix)", by Royksopp.

When I was thinking about what I might say about this track, the thing I kept coming up with was along the lines of, Pearson has given the original (which appears, as far as I can tell, on Royksopp's recent/forthcoming contribution to the LateNightTales series) a neat but random tweak along the lines of what I would describe, instinctively but probably erroneously, as "Nineties Depeche Mode".

Neat, yes. Random, well, in fact, no. Because I have since learnt that this is a cover of a 1981 Depeche Mode (ie Vince Clarke era) b-side, so the not-quite-subliminal Mode interjections are actually a perfect fit. I'm not entirely sure that the four-square doof-doof substructure that Pearson has constructed suits the Royksopp aesthetic, but nothing here overwhelms the hint of the uncanny that the vocals convey, and which is the thing that Royksopp do well. (I should say, one of the things that Royksopp do well.)

Plus, it's a remix of a cover version. How cool is that?

Song of the day

"Walking In The Rain", by Grace Jones.

When I do not have much spring in my step, I have probably not been listening to enough music. When I get the chance to listen to music, the spring returns. I don't know why this is. I think it has always been this way. It seems like a relatively simple and inexpensive form of therapy, and one that should be inherently manageable; and yet it doesn't always work out that way. Perhaps sometimes I am not actually in the mood for music. Or I cannot find the right way in, the correct path through the seemingly impenetrable forests of hard drive clutter. The silence of the blog tends to coincide with such phases. The takeout lesson: if I am silent here, I am most likely not travelling as well as I would like to be. Because if I am listening to music, words are usually forming in my head. Maybe descriptors. Maybe comparators. Little sentences and paragraphs arrive in my mind, perfectly formed, only to instantly vanish into the ether. But some remain, and I write them down, here, maybe out of vanity, maybe in order to empty them out of my head to make room for more useful content. Actually I don't know why I endeavour to capture and pin them. does there even have to be a reason? The 15-year-old recently asked me why there is always a song of the day, and whether there is actually a song of the day every day. I said there wasn't, that it was just what I called whatever song I was writing about. But I think there is always a song of the day, it just doesn't always (often?) get documented.

What I think I have figured out, though, finally, is why I don't do holidays and weekends well. It's because I don't always get the chance to listen to music, or at least to listen to music in a meaningful and uninterrupted fashion, at home. Because of, uh, "circumstances". Maybe the particular thing I am wanting to listen to is on a laptop that someone else is using. Or I am listening to something on the stereo in the living room when I get Bruce Doulled by the 15-year-old, so he can listen to one of his many video game soundtracks. Or the 13-year-old wanders in and says something harmless, yet damaging, like, "Ew, who is this? They can't even sing." (Jonathan Richman in particular is a frequent victim of this observation, for some reason.) In other words, normal life conspires against me.


But as the rasta man says: Don't think about me; I'm alri i i i i i ...


Because unlike, probably, most of you, I can listen to music practically all day at work (a) without getting into trouble, (b) without annoying anybody and (c) with no noticeable drop-off in productivity or quality, possibly in fact the reverse. So I am actually frequently in a better frame of mind at work than I am at home. No, I am not proud of this. Nor do I understand it. But it might actually be a useful thing for me to have figured out.

Which, somehow, if only because I have run out of anything else to type and because "Media Watch" will be on shortly, brings us to Grace Jones. A song of hers, not this one, shuffled up onto my work computer this morning, and reminded me that what I really wanted to listen to was her singing "Walking In The Rain". There is just something about it. Sly and Robbie in the rhythm section. The Compass Point vibe. The glamour of the production, of the sound (and of the singer, obviously). The synthesiser that sounds more 1986 than 1981. The fact that it was written by Harry Vanda and George Young.

Ladies and gentlemen, Miss Grace Jones ...

YouTube of the day

"Diamond Shine", by The Clean, live in Wellington, during the Rock The Quota campaign.

Admire Hamish Kilgour as he sings and plays the drums: AT THE SAME TIME!

Swoon as David Kilgour demonstrates his seemingly effortless way of extracting the maximum amount of sound -- and melody -- from a guitar.

Stare in disbelief at Robert Scott's fair impersonation of an off-duty middle-level accountant.

Yes, it's The Clean, sounding as good as you would expect. Enjoy. And please, stay for the surprise ending!



(via Doom & Gloom From The Tomb)

Song of the day

"Par Amour", by Stellar OM Source.

Stellar OM Source, then, is the latest in a seemingly endless line of Ladies With Synths. Long may they reign. Is this cutting edge electronic music disguised as a slice of soul diva action, or is it the reverse? And does it matter? A couple of minutes before the end of the song, we get a line that might be "then I feel", and the arpeggiator kicks in. I interpret this to mean, "then 'I Feel Love'". Gets my vote.

Hypothetical mixtape: August 2012

On the other hand, some months seem like Christmas: trying to narrow the choices down to those that would fit on one CD feels like a form of cruel and unusual punishment. (Shed a tear for the ones that got away.)

"She", by Charles Kynard. Kynard is a lesser-known exponent of the Hammond B-3 in a jazz setting. You would probably call this Acid Jazz today, but it wasn't called that in 1971. The back cover photo has him grinning in a manner that reminds us of that other Hero of the Hammond, Barry Morgan. 

"The Soul of Patrick Lee", by John Cale. In his long solo career, John Cale has produced many records, great swathes of which are, to be diplomatic, "not to my taste". Anyway it just goes to show that you have to keep listening, because there are always gems to be discovered. You might have expected to find this song on "Paris, 1919" (one of his two solo masterpieces, if you ask me) but instead it is buried on the "Church of Anthrax" album, made in collaboration with the original minimalist, Terry Riley, an album which is otherwise largely experimental in outlook. Evidently that is not Cale singing. You could have fooled me.

"Cherokee (Nicolas Jaar Remix)", by Cat Power. I was rather taken by the previous couple of Cat Power albums, but "Sun", from last year, left me largely unexcited. (For which I feel like I should apologise. Um, "sorry".) This Nicolas Jaar remix, however, is another story entirely. It pitches Marshall's voice against a droning, almost ambient bed of sounds, both organic and electronic, formed into a contextually perfect descending chord sequence. I think it is marvellous.

"Elephant (Todd Rundgren Remix)", by Tame Impala. It's nice to see pop all-rounder Todd Rundgren making a second (or fifth?) career as a remixer. He did a number on a Lindstrom track a while back, and now we have him taking whatever it is that makes Tame Impala sound so timeless and tweaking it ever so gently in order to tease out the pop possibilities of the song (no mean feat, given that the original song itself is pretty darned catchy). It may even sound like a seventies idea of a 21st century dancefloor smash, but, if anything, that works in its favour. I particularly like that he picks up the line "here he comes", which appears fleetingly in the middle of the original, and places it front and centre of the remix, as if slyly welcoming himself aboard.

"Satisfaction", by Mountain. Sludge guitars extracted forcibly from the foul-smelling bowels of 1974, and employed in service of this Rolling Stones cover. (The sound of these guitars is not a million miles away from Tame Impala.) On the same album they also cover "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On". I'd like to hear that. Although there's no way it's going to beat Lee Hazlewood.

"We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together (Country Mix)", by Taylor Swift. So sue me. A great pop song is a great pop song. And that never goes out of style. Or fashion. Or your head. Co-written, it won't surprise you, by Max Martin, who seems to know what he is doing.

"Prove To Me", by Seapony. Speaking of never going out of fashion: chiming, jangly guitars paired with dreamy female vocals. There are days when I wouldn't want to listen to anything else.

"Gas on F", by White Denim. In which the rambling -- and prolific -- Texans channel, in their own way, Uncle Neil's "Down By The River". At least, it starts off that way, before morphing into its own gently psychedelic sound field. (That would be a field with contented cows.)

"Ooh-Ah-Ee", by Vern Blair Debate. There is, in fact, no debate whatsoever, Vern. Supremely funky guitars, straight out of Haircut 100, are the order of the day here. Instrumental as anything!

"Hot, Funky and Sweaty", by The Soul Lifters. What it says.

"Take It From A Friend", by Janey and Dennis. Remember songs like "Seabird", by The Alessi Brothers? You will after you have listened to this. Hipsters have given this kind of song the label "sunshine pop", but there is the slightest air of melancholy sitting just underneath the surface to add some substance to the sweetness and light. I imagine it is possible to trace a line from this song, via The Carpenters and, if you're from Australia, The Moir Sisters, to "Trees and Flowers", by Strawberry Switchblade, and thence, heading backwards again in time, to The Roches' "Hammond Song", and maybe even "You Make The Sunshine", by The Temprees.

"Silversong", by Mellow Candle. Oops, I almost wrote, "by Espers". Both parties should take that as a compliment. This is the kind of song that Espers do better than anyone else in recent memory; here's how it was done in 1972.

"I'm A Man", by Cisneros and Garza Group. Actual, certifiably authentic Texas sixties garage rock; and a cover of the Spencer Davis Group classic. What could possibly go wrong? Okay, the flute solo, for one thing ...

"Magic Mirror", by Aphrodite's Child. So you thought Vangelis was responsible for nothing more than the "Blade Runner" soundtrack and windy new age mumbo jumbo assisted by the helium-voiced dude from Yes? That Demis Roussos was nothing more than a facilitator of wet handkerchiefs? Think again.

"Kyenkyen Bi Adi M'awu", by Alhaji K. Frimpong. Music for your back porch on a summer evening. If your back porch was in Africa.

"Still I Love You", by Isaac Tichauer. Australian content alert! Dude has clearly been listening to Dan Snaith (especially in his Daphni guise), Nicolas Jaar, Andy Stott and the like, but has managed to come up with his own sound. And I like it. There's a particularly nice "Tubular Bells" kind of thing that surfaces every now and then.

"Mauve Mood (Gavin Russom remix)", by Alice Cohen. As best as I can figure out, this is the same Alice Cohen that Wikipedia describes as a New York­-based musician and visual artist, active since the late seventies. I'm surprised I haven't run across her before; this is exactly the type of analog synth-based tunesmithery (think, for example, early Nite Jewel) that I fall heavily for every time I hear it. Actually, the analog nature of the remix, not surprisingly, is Russom's own work; the original song is carried along on a 1980s digital synth-pop sheen.

"Sandsings (remixed by Boards of Canada)", by Mira Calix. At the time when we were trawling through the internet in search of the songs that would ultimately form the basis of this hypothetical mixtape, a new Boards of Canada album seemed impossible to even imagine. Thus we were inclined to leap on anything bearing the Boards of Canada name with a haste that perhaps no longer seems entirely dignified.

Song of the day

"Victor Trumper", by The Lucksmiths.

To be listened to, preferably, while reading this.

Song of the day

"Mango Walk", by The Chosen Brothers.

This one's for Bart, who has been constantly in my thoughts over the last couple of weeks, but who I haven't actually spoken to, mainly because I don't know what I would say. As an only child, I have no direct experience of my own to draw on as to what it's like to have, and to lose, a brother. Nevertheless, though it be a cliche, I think I can say that I feel your pain.

They say that you can choose your friends, but that you can't choose your family. They may be right; but in this case I suspect that if Bart had been granted the magical power to choose his brother, that power would have been wasted on him; he would have chosen Max.

Hence, the Chosen Brothers:



Bonus beats (just for the heck of it):

Song of the day

"Man", by Neko Case.

You might think that Neko Case's fifties-via-seventies voice and M. Ward's twenties-via-sixties guitar would be a match made in heaven. You might even be right; but this song probably isn't the result you expected. Ward's contributions are about as far from She & Him as you could find. It's a bit closer to his solo work but, basically, he dirties and spikes things up a bit more than usual, in a way that some of us wish he would do more often.

Lyrically, meanwhile, well, it's probably only coincidence that "Man" rhymes with "Mann", but on this song Case comes across like she got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning and, stumbling around in the dark, managed to put on a pair of Aimee Mann's crankypants.

Listen to Neko Case swear like she means it.



 Or download it from, for example, here.

Song of the day

"Hallogallo", by Neu!.

All roads led to this being a "song of the day". Well, two, anyway.

Road one: I was walking home from the bus stop in the brisk Canberra winter evening, with Stereolab's "Jenny Ondioline" coming through the headphones for warmth. My thoughts (though I should have been concentrating on the road I was crossing) wandered in the direction of how that one song might well be the essence of Stereolab: from Laetitia Sadier's crypto-Marxist lyrics, to Mary Hansen's gorgeous harmony vocals, to the propulsive motorik rhythm that drives the thing along for most of its 18 minutes. That brought me to the notion that "Jenny Ondioline" might be thought of as a remix of Neu!'s "Hallogallo" with added vocals. (The entire early career of Stereolab might well fall under that one umbrella, actually.) This thought was confirmed when I arrived at the four-minute coda, which, it then dawned on me, loosely approximates the tape loop / varispeed shenanigans that take place on side two of Neu!'s second album, "Neu! 2".

Road two: later that very same evening, while catching up on some episodes of "Portlandia", we came upon the one where the parents of the preschool kid (in which Fred Armisen, with his long grey hair, looks not unlike recent photos of Lee Ranaldo), at a meeting of parents, complain about the records that the preschool has available for their children's listening, which, after some fun but perhaps overly knowing references (eg later Clash vs early Clash), culminates in the general horror of everyone present that the preschool teacher has never heard of Neu!. (Ah; hipster comedy.)

So: "Hallogallo".

Song of the day

"Spacer (12" version)", by Sheila & B Devotion.

Now that the entire world is up all night to get lucky (North Korea we're not sure about) it's worth remembering that, although the badge on the front says "Daft Punk", the song would be just a song without the contribution of Nile Rodgers, keeper of the Chic Organization flame.

In what must be the finest cash-in ever, Rhino has released "Up All Night" (see what they did there?), a two-CD collection that pulls together all the disparate strands of the Nile Rodgers / Bernard Edwards story. It's all here: every classic Chic track, songs you know and love by Sister Sledge and Diana Ross, even the Carly Simon 12" I mentioned the other day. In fact I can't think of anything that has been left out. (I'm probably wrong.) All in one place. How can that be wrong?

Possibly my favourite, although not as well known as some of the others (at least in this country, where the internet tells me it peaked at number 95: oh dear), is "Spacer", which is also here, bathed in copious amounts of extended 12" might and power. And joy.



(As an aside, Jules and I last week discovered the ideal listening conditions for "Random Access Memories": driving down the Hume Highway, in a hire car, at night. We got through two and a bit cycles of what is a rather long album anyway, and it just got better the further we went, the darker and later it got, and the sparser the road became. Good Times.)

Hypothetical mixtape: July 2012

There are months where you just can't find what you're looking for. Or maybe you were just in a cranky mood when playing back the stuff you were able to find. Or maybe, even, you just had the winter blues. We are talking here about what I was able to find, on my regular internet trawls, in July of last year. Which is not to say that everything that follows is a stinky dud; just that the culling process wasn't as agonising as it often is. First world problems. On with the show.

"The Shadow Of Your Smile", by Jack McDuff. The stereo separation on this is so extreme that your brain will tell you the Hammond is coming from one corner of the room and the guitar from the opposite corner, some way from where your speakers are actually parked. Hammond jazz as a genre, done well, I find irresistible. This is done well.

"128 Harps (Anthony Naples Remix)", by Four Tet. I have a mental list of people whose work I will jump on when it comes out, reviews be damned. It isn't a huge list, but nor is it made up exclusively of old fogeys. Kieren Hebden is on that list. Here is a track from his last album, "Pink", something of a tentative, explorative step towards the dancefloor (at least that's one way of reading it), remixed. We went through that last time.

"Comenius Garden", by The Field. Free music! On the internet! (Last year!) Man, I love this place.

"House of Jealous Lovers", by The Rapture. It's interesting to listen to this after the wave has subsided. This really, in many senses, was where DFA records came in. The opening bass line is straight off "Metal Box", the guitars are pure No Wave distortion. Cowbells and disco cymbals are obviously of importance. The bass changes up to New Wave propulsion (am I thinking Liquid Liquid here? I'm not quite sure) and the guitars that come in are within a lawsuit's distance of Gang of Four's "Entertainment".

"Is Your Love Big Enough?", by Lianne La Havas. Okay, so this is more or less standard 21st century soul singing (you can hear elements of both Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen, should you choose to do so) but the song itself is way catchy, and the guitar carries with it the faintest scent of African sands. Do African sands have a scent? What does that even mean?

"Fineshrine", by Purity Ring. This rather sounds like R'n'B with its insides pulled out. I can't say I entirely understand its musical language, but I like it. Maybe you will, too. (I have no idea what is going on in this video. I will probably have bad dreams now.)

"Only In My Dreams", by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti. I had an idea that Ariel Pink was some kind of postmodern pop-music faker, or, uh, "artiste". I don't know where I got that from. If I have ever heard a more perfect pop song that this IN MY ENTIRE LIFE I don't know what it would be. As that ad says, it's got everything you could possibly want. And a little bit more.

"Oh! Tengo Suerte", by Masayoshi Takanaka. Spellbinding. Kind of as if Manuel Gottsching got stranded on a Pacific Island with only his guitars and a box of effects pedals, and something to crack open the coconuts. Bonus: album cover of the month.

"Robots In Heat", by Lem. There is, or at least there used to be, a blog of that name that posted rare and/or unusual tracks at a rate of one per day: perfect source material for someone like me. I take this opportunity to thank them. This is early '80s angsty-and-angular, herky-jerky electronic pop (you know the one) of the highest order. Oh. It's actually from 1977. It all gets a bit hazy from this distance (and at this age!) but that seems surprisingly early to me. Well done them. Brief pause: this actually reminds me, a little bit, of Tiga. Weird.

"Choreography", by Modern Eon. Similarly, this 1979 business sounds like it could have come from a couple of years later. (Although on the other hand it would have fit in quite well with "A Forest"; and also with "Vienna" and "Fade To Grey" (both 1981 -- I get so confused!).) Check it; it's a lovely song.

"Space", by Magic Wands. This on the other hand, although it is a 2012 production, might as well be a lost chart hit from 1981. Is it just "A Forest" with different vocals? Would it even matter if it was? Listen to it and try to stop your arms from pinwheeling.

"Brolene", by Welcome Stranger". Being a re-edit of, of all things, "Jolene", by Olivia Newton-John. When your old dad sits you down and says, "What's a re-edit, son?", you say, "Well, dad, that's when some tech-head with musical instincts pulls apart an existing recording and puts it back together leaving intact just the punctum (not a word your old dad would have used) and none of the padding. It either works or it doesn't, depending on the coincidence of your own taste and the taste of the dude doing the re-editing". And he will probably just nod his head and smile. Or you could just play him this, at which he will say something like, "I remember this song, but I don't remember it being anywhere near this good; or, really, any good at all". Which, in a nutshell, is the mark of a successful re-edit.

"Dancer", by KZA. Another re-edit. Same principle; different source material. Solid result.

"Inaccessible Mystery", by Jack White. Proof, if proof were needed, that Jack White's B-sides are better than your A-sides.

"Smoke Rings", by David Wiffen. Seems like we come to this point near the end of every damn playlist: a lost country-tinged gem that either sounds like it came from LA in the early seventies or, in fact, did. This one came from Canada in 1973. Which is close enough. Will have you crying in your maple syrup.

"Crystals", by Thom Janusz. Funky electric-piano-based "jazz" number from 1975. From an album called "Ronn Forella ... Moves". Who is Ronn Forella, and why does he "move", will have to be left for another day.  

Japanese commercials of the day

First we watched this one:



And then we watched this one:



At which point we were in danger of culture-shock overload. So we stopped.

(Links courtesy of our in-house student of Japanese. I have a sneaking suspicion this is what they "study" at school.)

Song of the day

"Reach for the Dead", by Boards of Canada.

When they are good, they are very, very, very good.

And they have always been, and continue to be, good.

Daft Punk is playing at my house

Sasha Frere-Jones writes at length about "Random Access Memories", while veering into various sub-topics of a broader cultural nature, on the New Yorker blogs. He casts some doubts on the negative portrayal of the effect of album leakage on record sales. He echoes what I wrote on these very pages about "Get Lucky" not so long ago. (Him: you can play it eight billion times without tiring of it. Me: even when you have heard it so many times that you never want to hear it again, you want to hear it again. Personally, I think I like mine better; but then I would say that. I wrote it.)

He also owns up to writing his New Yorker column on the album after having listened to it one time. I'm not sure how I feel about that. One expects New Yorker criticism to be actual reasoned criticism, not first impressions. (Is the magazine so caught up in the endless, blog-driven new-release rollercoaster? I wouldn't have thought so, and I certainly hope not.) Nevertheless, it is also surprising how well he dealt with it after such brief exposure, and how closely his conclusions, doubts, and confusions, mirror my own.

Also worth noting is how well the old dear (the New Yorker, that is) has, after a shaky start, come to grips with the new world of the Internet and how it might be used to enhance, rather than cannibalise, the paper-and-ink magazine. Apparently this is being reflected in overall subscription numbers (especially international; makes me proud), which is pleasing to those of us with a recurring wake-in-fright nightmare that any issue could be the last. Sasha's blog post, which largely explains, builds upon and to some extent questions what is cast in stone in the magazine itself, is a good example.

Well, kids, I think it's time to listen to "Get Lucky" for the eight-billion-and-first time. (Contains some of the smoothest moves you will ever see.)