Auto-sugges­ted path­ways

Long time, no see. I’ve been without a computer recently. Now it’s been fixed, I’ve got a bit of a back­log of posts. This is a spoti­fy playl­ist I made a little while back. I was going for a intro­spect­ive and slightly witchy mood.

1. I Found the F- Broad­cast
I never got to see Broad­cast prop­erly live. I caught part of their set once at ATP when they were on really early, but I wasn’t in a hurry because they were a UK band, so it seemed like there were plenty of chances to see them. And then of course Trish Keen­an sadly died of pneu­mo­nia, so no more Broad­cast. I always categor­ise Broad­cast with Stere­olab and Ladytron in my head, except instead of focus­ing on 60s jet age stuff, they’ve been watch­ing loads of Oliv­er Post­g­ate and eerie 70s Nigel Kneale tv shows. Last year I went to a Halloween special event at the UCL Archae­ology depart­ment themed on “Archae­ology and the Uncanny”. As well as actu­al archae­ology there were talks about portray­als of archae­olo­gists in the media, liter­at­ure etc (Nigel Kneale was a name that came up pretty often). Fiction­al archae­olo­gists who aren’t Indi­ana Jones usually discov­er some forbid­den secret and come to a nasty end.

2. Army Dream­ers- Kate Bush
No, I didn’t go to see Kate Bush play recently. I didn’t have the money, and I’m not good with things where you have to leap on the tick­ets at just the right moment. Some people find that exhil­ar­at­ing, I just find it stress­ful. I did watch a really good docu­ment­ary on BBC4 about her though. For some reas­on her speak­ing voice surprised me. I guess I was expect­ing it to be posh­er for some reas­on, even though I know she comes from down the road from where I grew up.

3. Rose Hip Novem­ber- Vashti Bunyan
4. Juli­us Caesar (Memento Hodie)- Nico
I don’t under­stand why people call the Marble Index unlisten­able. Yes, it’s stark and bleak, but not horrible to listen to.

5. Come Into Our Room- Clin­ic

6. Turquoise Hexagon Sun- Boards of Canada
The Boards of Canada broth­ers live in a bunker in the High­lands watch­ing noth­ing but Cana­dian wild­life films and terri­fy­ing old public inform­a­tion films like this one. I refuse to believe other­wise.

7. The Bell­dog- Eno, Moebi­us, Rodeli­us
Brian Eno with Krautrock band Cluster. Only room for one Brian on stage. Not many German Brians about, luck­ily.

8. Green Grass Grows- Belbury Poly
Belbury Poly are named after the evil academ­ic insti­tute in C.S. Lewis’ That Hideous Strength. That book is my guilty pleas­ure. It’s possibly one of the most ridicu­lous things I’ve ever read. I guess Lewis went “hmm, my children’s books are very success­ful and might have encour­aged read­ers to become more reli­gious, I think I should write some reli­gious sci-fi thrillers for adults to try to make them become more reli­gious too”. The result is pretty bizarre. The main char­ac­ters are an academ­ic couple in the 50s who are having marit­al prob­lems. The husband acci­dent­ally ends up join­ing the bad guys (the wife joins the good guys, but still gets a lecture from an angel at one point for her fail­ure to stop her husband going wrong), who are an evil research insti­tute called NICE. They are commu­nic­at­ing with the devil through a severed head kept alive in a lab, and do all kinds of nasty anim­al exper­i­ments. C.S. Lewis also seemed to feel the need to shoe-horn all his pet hates and preju­dices into his portray­al of the villains. One of them is a completely over the top S&M lesbi­an secur­ity chief called Miss Hard­castle. She is fat and clanks around in tight black leath­er hold­ing a whip, and leaps at the chance to inter­rog­ate any pretty young blondes. The bad guys also have a room full of modern art which is appar­ently inten­ded to make their enemies lose their minds, but which sounds great to me. The good guys live in a commune with a bear called Mr Bulti­tude and both sides are in a race to dig up Merlin and get him to join their side. It’s a deeply, deeply odd book. (I recently found out that good old JBS Haldane was quite crit­ic­al about this book too.)

9. Nanzen Kills a Cat- The Van Pelt
I can’t really think of any other songs named after Buddhist koans.  “The monks of the east­ern and west­ern Zen halls were quar­rel­ling about a cat. Nansen held up the cat and said, ‘Monks, if one of you can say a word, I’ll spare the cat. If you can’t, I’ll put it to the sword.’ No one could respond so Nansen finally slew it. When Jōshū came back in the even­ing, Nansen told him what had happened. Jōshū, took off his straw sandals, put them on top of his head and left. Nansen said, ‘If you had been there I could have spared the cat’ (Mumonkan, Case 14).” As far as I can tell, it seems to be one of those Buddhist stor­ies supposed to show the futil­ity of trying to analyse some things logic­ally, or using words or thoughts. I’ve never really got on with Zen Buddhism. Chris Leo doesn’t seem to like reli­gion much either.

9. Dramam­ine- Modest Mouse

Someone synched up the song to this old cartoon. It works really well.

10. Pam- Slint
I can under­stand why they didn’t put this outtake on Spider­land, it wouldn’t work at all, sound­ing more like some­thing from Tweez, but that’s no bad thing. I still haven’t got round to seeing the Slint docu­ment­ary, I need to fix that pronto.

11. Paper­house- Can

12. Rain on Tin- Sonic Youth