A KNEES UP!

My Ode to The Discriminating Pub Attendee...
FUCKIN YAH!
Cheers!!!!

the candle glows

An afternoon haze on a summer's day
Orange glow of the light beams atop your legs
While laying upon your bed
The warmth
The smell of golden splendour
A memory
A fondness
The face that brings you warmth
The presence that bathes you as much as the sun
An adoring glance
The eyes of reassurance
Comfort
Mutuality in a beautiful dynamic
The exhale of confidence
The inhale of delight
When one look is everything
Your eyes close in theirs
Drifting off...

And while the lyrics of this ep are the complete antithesis to these reflections, the world these songs create around me, does this. Please refrain from listening to the lyrics, unless you truly are feeling miserable and want to push yourself further into that hole...but I would really think twice then about listening to this. I don't want anyone to be sad or miserable.
The lyrics are really disturbing, and I am unsure if I am disturbed because they do the polar opposite to me, but pretent the voice is just another instrument and there is nothing decipherable about it.
I feel beyond in sentiment...and listening to this right now, I am on the verge
of tears, because the above is quite personal, and very close to me right
now...so in this daydream, I looking for tints this time, instead of engulfing myself in shades...
download

Intervals During The Days of Work

I would like to send a big wave of gratitude to all the copyright breaking bloggers out there, because, thanks to you, I have been downloading some really friggin amazing shit! I owe you a bunch, and will never be able to give back all that I have taken. Nor do I intend to feel bad about taking it all shamelessly...Nor will I apologize for sitting here at work using that 280-320kps downloading connection speed...fucking brilliant!

Albums I dont want to buy, I dont have to!

Albums I didn't know existed, I now know do!
(And I didn't have to risk a hefty Ebay disaster to discover if it's crap!)

I have been exploring so many new and different projects, and enjoying each day moving through these vastly broad in spectrum variants. I get excited when I discover a new blog and must share the link with those few close ones, to either be corresponded in gratitude, or "yes lorelle, i know about this one..." ah well.
But the sharing continues and we all embrace the spirit of our excitement to share what else we found..."can you believe it's on a blog? DAMNIT! Im never going to bed!" and "Im never going to get to the gym! HA!" Most of the time I just get annoyed when someone interrupts me at work with work things when I am trying to get to files...Honestly, I have my priorities.

COME BACK LASER BEAK!!!!! PLEASE!!!!

When I used to blog in my earlier days, where mostly it was an absolute indulgence on my hair, makeup, shoes and shopping...with the occasional dorkout on music, we always had silly list posts. Many would be about "what are you listening to today?" "when you shuffle on your iPod what is the last song?" Well, I don't own, for the most part an iPod (sorry iHave an iPod Shuffle...which iUse when iGo to the gym...), but Im going to reminisce in the old days of livejournal, and do a list here!

Im going to set iTunes on shuffle and go forward 10 and see what those 10 are:
1. Reseau D'Ombres / Perska
2. The Royal Family and The Poor / Art on 45
3. A.R.Kane / Lollita
4. Of a Mesh / Burning Bride
5. Dead / Come To The Place
6. Lush / Kiss Chase
7. Kitchen and The Plastic Spoons / The Poet
8. Quel Domage / Bright Lights
9. Ova Looven / Invisible Triangle (demo)
10. The Distributors / Wireless

Gosh I'm an odd one...I mean a bunch of this is under a similar vein, but if I didn't know me, I'd be like, "What the fuck do you listen to? Who ARE these bands?"

Im bogged down with work so this is all I can spare for a post...That and what I was going to upload for a post I can't due to the fact Cyberduck doesn't want to work on this machine, strange.

Anyone want to share in the list? What's your daily listen/musical excursion. Or play the game and give me your iTunes top 10 on the shuffle :)

*cheers! And remember the greatest thing about being a musical enthusiast is sharing where and how you can...so keep those upload options comin'!

The World Is As Soft As Lace

The Splendour of Fear / Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty

There are many albums that upon the first listen hit you as wonderfully as they do.
There are times when the right album listened to by unknown ears, and a heart in just the right place, can create the perfect moment for an album to be embraced and adored eternally by the listener. Thank gosh for all the elements that exist to create these moments, and allow all of us to have those albums that do that for us, we are so grateful.

Upon my journey into wide world of the ever popular post punk genre, I was in such a place that I was unsure about a few things I was embarking upon. In my head I knew I was probably doing something stupid, but thought perhaps it was a great thing at the same time, and my heart was being lured by one who knew how to pull the strings ever so perfectly. Sending forth in their melancholy, the album/compendium that meant so much to them and that they were finding solace in, I was privileged to share in the sentiments.

Felt was not a new band for me, as I owned the compilation on tape that starts with the material from Ignite the Seven Canons, and closes with the 7" of the unreleased singles. But apparently, according to this person of that moment, THESE were the songs that I was in great need of listening to...especially to move through the rainy and grey days of spring in New York.

Alas, after a sense of fond affection to these albums had began, the person left me in a state of despair, or rather, from just left, with no reason, a vanishing grace as it were. Left in a sense of misery and melancholy, with the haze of humidity to greet me every morning in NYC, I found new charm in this album. While I had a beautiful attachment to it as the sympathetic eyes of another feeling my thoughts, now knowing that I could use it as my way of being sad, it was poignant. Fortune became a soundtrack to many points of my day and seemed utterly perfect in the moment...day in and day out.

The person whom was kind enough to burn this for me, is all but a spec in my lifeline, the feelings and sentiments have allowed me to harbor treasures of emotional journies, and to always preserve that moment of foolishness and sadness, but also with a knowledge that I am past those days and can appreciate my earlier ways with a grain of sand, as I reflect on my innocence and nievity. Understanding one's lack of grace or rather appreciating the growth and sense of maturity we all make.

These albums have such stoic places in my heart, to appreciate these titles as a chapter to one's life. The Splendour of Fear happens to be the most appropriate title I could have even dreampt to contrive, for the experience and past moment to this album is almost cliché. Beyond fitting.

I ask you to find a perfect morning within a haze of being alone, take for yourself a wonderful baked item (I prefer a fresh scone), a divine cup of earl gray tea, crack open a window, take a look upon the town/place you live, and breathe it in. Put Crumbling The Antiseptic Beauty onto your player and sit down in the most comfy way and enjoy your morning breakfast still gazing upon it all, and listening to this. Let your thoughts wander ever which way...

As you progress you might want to just lay back in bed while still gazing out your window and dream off into sleepyland. And every once in a while, you might enjoy this napping option alongside a loved one....

Just make sure the weather and moment are right!
[ download @192kbs ]

Haunted in The Hollow

[O F F L I N E]
Dome Cruel When Complete
Martin Dupont Just Because
Pink Turns Blue Moon
The Lucy Show History Part One
Thule Ssel Gniemanlla

What is it about sound and production that sometimes suckers me more than the composition of the actual song itself? A song could have the worst lyrics ever, but if they are slightly muted and the sound-scape surrounding are really mystical, most likely I'll like it. Fortunately, I don't think that the above thought applies to the selections above, but I'm just saying.

I gravitate towards so many types sounds...the wall of sound with feedback galore and clashing guitars layered and layered, and when mixed down, layered more until i can't hear myself breathe. I am also drawn to things that seem a bit hollow in tones as if they were recorded in empty white rooms with no producer at all, when in fact they have just been deliberately produced to sound like that.

The selections all have a certain bleakness in tone for me that the songs seem ungrounded and not all slicked out in production hyper quality...there is a roughness to them that I like. I can say that the Thule may not seem to rough there is something within in it that I find unresolved...
The Martin Dupont track just seems vacant and roaming to me, even though its very arranged, but I listen to it and feel like I'm spiraling around in something waiting for something but not the something I'm sure about...
Pink Turns Blue, the drums resonate in such a way that it feels the way U2's Sunday Bloody Sunday video looks...somewhere out in the snow and cold. But once again I suppose a stark night time upon the view of a moon could be the same effect...but the nature of this song lingers in a haunting way to me. One of those songs that feels like you have felt, and lyrics aside the anxiousness is so dead on. And the coarse rusty driven like guitars as emotional moments...oh I can't help myself, I really like this song.
History Part One by The Lucy Show well its simply dark and rough around the edges in all the best ways. The bells of doom that ring through this, its so ominous. The nature of the recording has a slight muffling, so its very fitting, which is probably more to do with the nature of the aesthetic that time, versus the lack of proper skilled technicians...I wouldn't want it remastered and "brought into the CD clarity of the day." "Is anybody someone anybody" how can you say these lyrics are not tinged with vacancy and the sense of the blank white room....*mental note, dedicate post to Lucy Show*
You should just enjoy the Thule song, because its from the Flexipop compilations, and its a nice elegant spiralling of kind of the themes I expressed, with qualities that send you here and there a bit. Back and front...Left and Right. Still preserved with a bit of uncertainty and anxiousness.

I love being slightly irked by what I listen to....the prickles upon the back of one's neck.

The Spark That Lit the Flame

People Are People / Depeche Mode (released as single 1984)
This is the release that took a little suburban girl and changed her forever. When I was little I liked to listen to music, but nothing ever made me insane for music, I was quite young. I remember listening to this song when it came out on my Barbie radio that I got as a Christmas gift from my grandparents and they played this on 77AM which was most famous for the Don Imus and Howard Stern talk show....but because it was a very forward liberal based station, it played a decent array of music now and then for AM radio.
I remember hearing this on the radio and it seemed like the coolest thing with those metal dropping sounds at the beginning, this was definitely not Billy Joel or Carly Simon. The voice was so strange to me, everything was so strange to me, but it was so damn cool. In all its treble splendor playing out on the hand-held Barbie radio....

It was also at this time that the girl I was really good friends with, had an older sister that was really into all this new wave anglo-fronted music, and owned the album. I remember listening to it in the car when her mom would take her to a friends house, and my friend and I would accompany them, as we were too young to stay at home, at the age of 7/8. Her sister was totally cool, and we idolized her, so whatever she thought was cool, so did we.

It was strange to be a seven-year old who was obsessing over Depeche Mode and knew the words to songs that didn't make sense, but sounded, once again, so damn cool. My favorite from this album back then was Pipeline and Told You So...I thought Everything Counts was a bit sad because of the severity of the elements and objects that people were confined too...in retrospect, I think I have always had a sympathetic nature towards oppressive elements in our society, even though I would have by no means referred to it as that...mostly imagery in my head and black and white music videos.

This single pretty much saturated my head and upon owning the album on tape, I began falling further into my anglophile ways, and wanting to be british, sound british and live in all of the videos on MTV that were made in Britain. Little did I know that had it not been for America, most of the New Wave culture and music that I was freaking out over, would have failed to exist. Granted Kraftwerk helped just a little, but the stylized crafter decadence and lack of that I saw, was the hook...and much of that was because of us yanks! And a big gulp of jealousy and idolization by one Malcom MacLaren, but I digress.

This was the single most influential song/album of my life, because it was the one that sparked the flame and wanting to own more of this type of music, which is completely responsible for all the music I listen to today and how I became a music dork/obsessor who when they hear something really neat and different must own it. Perhaps, I should send them a bill for this! haa haa

I thank these 4, for even though I got to them not at the beginning of their career, I got there early enough to ride out a pretty fantastic wave of music, and that of many years to be devoted to this band...not to mention my insane school girl crush that I had for some 20 years for Martin Gore...because it was just great too that my initials wouldn't have to change. DORK!

Because it was the song specifically that hit me so, I am attaching the single, and not the album, but please play in the nostalgia...it isn't so great as all songs of their discography go, but it is reminiscent of time and place, and we can all appreciate that, no? download here

some great reward, indeed!

Tinderbox...

If I am able to do justice to this post I still will have failed

The Cocteau Twins have remained one of the most influential bands of all time in my life, or what has been the past 13 years. I never knew on the onset of my collecting days that this band had a dazzling catalogue of songs and visuals that would pretty much dictate everything from what I listened to, to the career that I embarked upon. I had seen the video for Bluebeard and I was blown away by the vocals. Her voice was like nothing else I had ever heard. Sure there were similar styles out there, but Liz's voice was absolute perfection and the music just swooned and swirled about her and the video was all shiny and like some ethereal carnival and it was something I had to own.


download @192 courtesy megaupload
After listening to this album I found that I really liked the start, and the end, but the middle fell flat to me, and such I was unsure of this band, were they solid, or was it another gimick...

I had no one else that knew them so my high school senior year ended with only that one album and I opted to go no further...until my sophomore year of college.

I had met a girl the year prior, whom was emphatically in love with them, and at the time, being huge into Rave culture thought it was fluff..."where are the beats?"
She told me I was stupid and simply didn't understand that I was listening to greatness and that one day I would learn.

And boy did I!

She left, and this other girl gave me Heaven or Las Vegas to listen to, because I was seeking paper writing music...and she said, Cocteau Twins are one of my favorite bands, if you need any of the albums to listen to, just stop by. I listened to every single one of them...except for the one she didn't own, Head Over Heels.

and this...

was how it allllll started....

during the winter of 1995/96....

I'm not even going to touch how listening to The Moon and The Melodies has changed me, that needs a post all to itself, if not a week of posts...


download @192 courtesy megaupload
I went on vacation to Wisconsin and purchased Head Over Heels, because I had to know what this sounded like as it was the only one that remained a mystery to me. I fell in love with it. Listening to it as the cold air whipped past the windows in Madison, and feeling ever so more warmed by the dramatic and insular air of the sound. It became my favorite album of that time...

Honestly this album is my favorite. M+M is my favorite, but I won't get into the syntax....Head Over Heels is a time and place in life for me, and it's the only album that hits me with such nostalgia that I love it from start to finish and never get sick of it...I never get sick of any of them.

Save for Four-Calendar Cafe...but it was my introduction to them and that is why I am notating it here. The box set of eps is my most cherished heart keepsake by them, with many of them amounting to "my favorite albums" but they alas, are eps.
(another time on that too)

I think the experience is different with everyone, but this band means more to me than some of the people I met during those years...They are almost people in themselves that I feel so close to, that I have shared so much with, that have been there to provide so much for me, and yet, we have never spoken.

There within lies the beauty.

Hurray for McCarthy

McCarthy tracks-
A Child Soon In Chains
An MP Speaks
Now Is The Time For an Iron Hand
The Process Of Popular Capitalism
The Vision of Peregrine
The Well-Fed Point of View
[offline]
One of the most addictive pop bands to ever grace my ears. And a most addictive venture to music stores to find these darn albums, eventually I caved and used the infamous Gemm...I couldn't deal with not being able to find it.

In the essence of The Smiths, McCarthy brought the truly dark lyrics to really catchy jangle pop and that is why I thought they were positively brilliant...these lyrics are really amongst the best.

In essence they changed my enthusiasm for this genre and launched me into a head first quest of all things jangly pop, inclusive of searching through the wide vast catalogues, of Aussie bands and Scottish bands, most notably contained in the C86 family. I give them much credit, and all I ask is that when listening to them, you play it loud or else its going to sound like background AM radio...

enjoy!

REFLECTIONS OF I

T H I S W E E K I'm thinking about the beginnings of my musical obsessions, and those things that changed, or had massive impressions upon me that shaped my tastes and fostered my peaked interest.



This was the first Siouxsie and The Banshees album I owned, when I was engulfing myself further into the darker tones of music. I was an insane Cure fanatic and everything that Robert Smith had a part in I had to own. At the tender age of 15 I was well aware of the Banshees, but had owned nothing by them, as I wasn't really collecting music that heavily yet...most of the reason being I really had nothing to ever play it on. All we owned was a stereo, and a record player that really was unreliable...I had a walkman, but as my father took our tape deck with him when he moved out, it became difficult at times to always find things on cassette, for this was the age of the CD's claim to fame...and things were becoming more accessible at stores on CD...finally I had gotten a cd player at Christmas and with whatever money I received as well, purchased the cd's I had been pining away for...
this being one of them.

It was January of 92 in New York, in the Long Island suburb of Huntington, and around I walked listening to this on the tape I dubbed from the CD on my walkman and listening to this album at loud levels at home, and feeling this haunting chill and unexplainable dark decadence that I had never experienced with anything I owned. I would walk around at the night hours listening to this album and become more and more enchanted with it, thinking this was the album that expressed everything about this time of year at this hour...dark and urgent...

Only years later would I read about the fact that this is one of their least favorites, and its one of the most panned of them, but the most popular. I can't resolve this, for it is the only album that contributes more tracks than any other on the greatest hits cd's, ergo, Twice Upon A Time...

It still remains a great album, no longer a favorite, but while listening to it yesterday it brought back all those feelings of roaming around in the cold night times and staring into the sky and wondering about others whom might possibility relate to me and these moments. And wondering "what seething, unsated, and dervish meant," and "what was belladonna," and "why did I always read Preacher as Pre Acher and think what the heck a Pre Acher was...,"
That and having an obsession with the illustration on the cover and tracing it over and over until i got it right...

If you would like to share this memory and have it now to reflect on, well then...
care of bigupload / 128kps

beneathe the projekt of her 4ad

for many years i was a devotee of the Projekt label and especially its main entity Black Tape For A Blue Girl...and many years of these album covers and the names that appeared as titles and group names...well I think Projekt has every other label beat for highly pretencious titles...however many furnish some great music--ie: Loveliescrushing, Love Spirals Downwards, Soul Whirling Somehere, Love Is Colder Than Death...Especially LSD, my favorite of all Projekt bands...

It is with an essence of respect that i think of the sepia and color washed images of womens faces, either in goth cleopatra eyegear (ie: many a compilation cover) and these overly indulged long names that I found a knack for the mimicry of title creating...
So here lies some in the moment examples of my homage to the label and its genre

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ready?

Her Multifoiled Calvalcades of Ethereal Splendour
Some Pale Misfortuned Stoic Grace Does The Beauty Shine
Within the Grey Tales of Dazzling Watercolour
Shimmers Beyond The Troubled Path
Soft Spoken Only Next to Silent Misfortune
Her Breath Upon The Secret Snow (<-- now thats a band name if ever there was!)
Falter Forward Upon My Cold Darling
My Garden of Encrusted Memories Dies Pale
(these would all make great song titles! tell your friends!)
Shared Moments of Memories Gleam
Shards Upon the Daunting Past
The Gray Hours Unto These Places Between Us
Blind Within the Dusk House Lies
From the Pale Walls Her White Hand Fell
(great opening lines for any poem!)
Your Empty Silver Meadow Calls Upon This Pallid Lake
(great for pick up lines too!)
Closets Unlock This Below Mournful Grace
These Shimmering Windows From Whence They Mourn

It's almost to the point that I can't keep myself contained...
So perhaps one day I shall saddle up upon ye keyboard of design things and bring one of these to fruition with trademark cover...

Did they heist a Liz Frasier photo from the Bluebeard years on that one above? haa!

Once again these are quite a gross exaggeration, but fun in the spirit...

Its something I used to do with friends and I would usually win because I seem to be able to keep coming up with more and more of them...is it more pathetic that i won or the methods as to how i won...
?


(you just put your poetic hat with feather on and think of
the most ridiculous things that no romance poet ever did...
or just aspire to the grace of Baudelaire...)

From and Towards

Colin Newman-Image
Dirty Rosanne-Nebulous Canaan
Pieter Nooten+Michael Brook-Searching
Weimar Gesang-
Mittageisen-Danach
[OFFLINE]
Progression.
Movement.
Stored memories that seem to have changed.
A new glance to a new view.
A familiar presence.
Novelty.

In thinking about one shift to the other and how we move about and start from one end to another in hopes of things being better. A hope for something that will be great. Your old eyes seeing the possibilities of new ways.

The sadness shifts, even though it will never be forgotten. It shouldn't be.
We look ahead as the clouds roll and the breeze comforts.

But Never When It Rains

Oh Mr I.A....



Time For the Weekend...
is it not...

Out of Mind...

Its Sinead...with a splash of candles and a horse, huh?

I just found myself in the mood for a Sinead video, and Im not really sure how listening to Weimar Gesang did that, but it did. And then I was reminded about this song which I no longer have, because I sold the album, and I always thought this was the best song on the album and it was one of the best songs that I felt she had between the first two albums.

This is the first time I have seen a video to this, and I have to say that I dont really care for it and I find it actually very dated looking, but I can recall many videos looking like this...The sad thing, is that I think the video to "Nothing Compares 2 U" would have been the perfect video for this song, because its very bare and I think this song is more bare than the other.

Regardless, I think this song is beautiful and it evokes a very stillness, which is poignant for this moment...

A R KANE

[tracks]
A R Kane-Lollita
A R Kane- So Far Away
M|A|R|R|S- Anitina
[offline]

All things that I revel in musically are in this song, save for the one major factor of a kickin bassline. But I have a huge weakness for really fragile delicate, frozen in the movement of its own composition type songs. One's that seem to be almost of another era in feeling, and by that, they conjure up nothing that feels like that which is around you. Lollita is one of my all time favorite songs, ever! An awesome find for this ep I bought in LA many years back for 3$ in the bargain bin at Vinyl Fetish. From the first time I listened to it, it grabbed my most haunted essence and I was completely mesmerized by it. The dynamic of the dueling entities both fragile and cherished and captivated....pushed to loud and abrasive....then back to fragile....extreme movement in tone that push and pull at each other and balance out so perfectly that you dont even see it as a balance but as a perfect compliment that keeps contradicting. DO you know what I mean? Well I do. Frozen ice. Scorching sun, but its like being hot and lying on a cold duvet...both things against but work with.

A person who roams about and just peers through the spaces left by buildings that sit side by side. Head down and thinking about it. Roaming the streets by yourself. Sitting by yourself by the streetside and watching the people and other histories pass. Watching moments form for others, and having those outside elements reflect your inside yesterdays. You seem so far away but the moments are fragments that are broken because they no longer exist but still mirror within an ebb and flow, gracing the eyes always when they are recalled to the memory.

I hate Colourbox. We all usually know why that phrase exists, do I have to even say why? But, with having a fondness for the A side of this MARRS 12" I never bothered to like it so much to buying it for I figured it wasn't worth it. I had the chance to hear the flip side numerous times but never did. And then I had my ass kicked with it about a few months ago one day in January and I'll never be the same...

This song kicks ass, and as a certain someone said, "I love, love...this song." I have to say that I have to agree...and now I own the said 12", but the one with the shorter version...but i have this long version now two places, so as long as I have it, that's all that matters. I can't say that I can put a visual with it, but it makes me feel damn good whenever I hear it. The fall out when all the guitars do this layering action, holy, it sends me...I blast that part because its gorgeous!
wait for it at the 5:41 and blast it.

The song is just beyond words to me, and such moments of discovering things that hit you in this way make musical discovery worth it every time!

(more to come on that last thought*)

ITN

the sad thing is the drums are fairly lost, save for the snare...but the bass drops out pretty much...its one of my most fond of ITN's early work, and at that, their early work is the work i prefer the most. i have thoughts roaming around listening to this, and just really liking the drumming, but as always thinking of how much it sounds like a militant spin number by joy division...

i do wish their was not this imagery to this song...its so cliché...but it is fitting to the song...

im basically posting this because i was a bit surprised to find it...so in case i forget about, i know where to find it.

another thought, another band i need to have full recordings of the early stuff...i only have that darned compilation. ah well....