Interior un-decorated

Here's a curiosity. Windham Hill Records (& Tapes) took a detour from their usual New Age pastoralia and veered into Japanese instrumental electronic pop. This tune feels like a half-finished skyscraper in a city that no one lives in yet. I probably wouldn't either, but I'd stand and watch as the sun sets behind it.

Interior — Technobose

A sunset for Christmas

I'm never sure if Christmas is the year's most unplugged day or a time to get lazily lost in digital places when "the most wonderful time of the year" becomes simply too much to bear (probably by early afternoon or so). In either case, if the 'blague is on your Christmas agenda, consider this tune your humble present. And let its groovy sunset vibes (or is that a marimba?) carry you gently to the threshold of 2014. This could be end-titles music to almost any cut of your cinematic year.

Letta Mbulu — Down By The River

Electric surrender

There's something gentlemanly about giving a longtime backup singer her moment in the sun. Say what you will about the power dynamics of patriarchal largess, but David Bowie did sidewoman Robin Clark a pretty nice solid when he put some celebrity muscle behind her effort as a frontwoman. As you might expect, the results are mixed, but then again her moment happened to fall in the mid-'80s. And it doesn't get much more 1985 than this. Not very healthy, but full of addictive additives.

Robin Clark — Surrender

Brainwaves

And as sure as eggs is eggs, the first frosty breaths of air have got me nursing a sore throat and swollen glands and cheerleading on the sidelines as my white blood cells rush onto the playing field. Meanwhile, my mind takes refuge in some abstract sound explorations. This one just mesmerizes me. Like having sudden visions of vast nebulae from several angles at once, as inner and outer space imitate one another. And I haven't even gotten into the cold medicine yet.

Robert Schroeder — The Inside Of Feeling

That cold

Now that autumn is making its dour way onto the scene, it seems a good time to take a musical visit to the No Fun Dept. I admit that for all my instrumental admiration and general political sympathy, I have a hard time not making funny faces in the general direction of This Heat. Someone needs to bring a little levity to the air. Otherwise, it's like listening to a very earnest, utterly humorless grad student holding forth at the bar about the systemic injustice of our economic reality and the Marxist inevitabilities that are all that can save us. That dubious discussion aside, I do wholeheartedly enjoy the severe musical bombast of Charles Hayward's guises. Especially in the increasing chill of the air.

Camberwell Now — Daddy Needs A Throne

Thumb piano dreamtime

Wouldn't you know it...a week of work stress segues right into a weekend of sore-throated body fatigue, flirting with a full-on cold. I'm always amazed how the body—ever loyal to external obligations—keeps it together just long enough to collapse when free time comes around. 

Anyway, bring on the over-the-counter feelgood agents. And throw in some semi-hallucinogenic African thumb piano grooves. This one would be a dreamy head-bobber if the dude's voice didn't detour into a terrifying place at 2:32 and 3:22. An apt segue back to the workweek.

Francis Bebey - Bissau

Air attention

My desire to remain in the rarefied air of the Cocteau Twins' lushness continues unabated. I'm not sure what it says about me that they come calling just about any time I put my headphones on these days. But speaking of air, a co-worker once told me that they were his go-to soundtrack for drifting out of consciousness on flights. My recent jaunt to San Francisco allowed me to put this to the test. The result — a distinct lack of zoning out. Which I interpret to mean that my ears are so keyed in to those guitar textures and alien vocal vibrations that true rest is not possible. It's not a tense kind of attention they command. Instead, I want to curl myself around their songs and rock back and forth. I doubt I'm alone there.

Cocteau Twins - Aikea-Guinea

Warm shimmers

I'm always grateful for a little Cocteau Twins sojourn into ethereal realms. And their atmospherifyin' is broader than they often get credit for. They actually ventured pretty far from pale English places, as evidenced by this sunset-contemplative instrumental gem. Makes me want to take a drive and plan my next move.

Cocteau Twins - Ribbed And Veined

Departure/Arrival

Well, it's end of the year time up here. I will be observing radio silence in New Zealand for the next 2 and a half weeks. Hopefully, I will be filling my ears with new 'blague-worthy sounds or at least the kind of inspiration that comes from spending solid time on the other side of the world. 

Closing out the regular season, here are a pair of cinematic instrumentals from a musician I am just getting to know, courtesy of the always stellar Growing Bin. Maybe it's just my mood, but I'm hearing them as two different musical ways to exit the scene. Or maybe one is for arrival. We'll have to test it out in the air.

Meanwhile, look out for a year-end digital mixtape right before New Years. With luck, I'll my brain will have fully made it back by then. Til soon!

Toshifumi Hinata - Chaconne

Toshifumi Hinata - Pentimento

Decided?

Well, here we are at Election Day — the merciful end to this chapter in the slo-mo theater of American decline, replete with all its absurd characters and narrative of non-issues/non-debate brought down to reality show proportions. Hopefully, it'll also mean releasing the tension of that 2+ year buildup, so we can have about 2 weeks of aftermath and then start getting ready for the next go-round. But what if it doesn't? What if we can stay locked in this mental stalemate and just keep sliding along on its grim inertia. Here's a song for that future.

Sonic Youth - Death Valley '69

Slavin' away

If Roxy Music didn't close the curtain on enough of an Armani note, then Bryan Ferry took things to an even tighter level of sophisti-pop (or cheezy soundtracking of '80s romantic montages, depending on your perspective) in his solo work. As usual, my perspective shifts pretty regularly on the matter. One thing that's beyond question — it's good music for sous-chef tasks.

Bryan Ferry - Slave To Love

Apart on me

Having finally reached a state of exhaustion, I'm incapable of hearing any kitsch or weirdness in the DIY synth funk of Jeff Phelps. Just some tender diva-ing and a drum machine that understands every shade of the song's emotion.

Jeff Phelps - Don't Fall Apart On Me

Two birds with one soundtrack

If you find yourself looking for surprisingly good/somewhat under-the-radar movies with actors who went on to become famous (before becoming not famous anymore), check out Alan Parker's Birdy. I remember being underwhelmed by the similarly under-the-radar soundtrack as I was first devouring Peter Gabriel solo albums. Having listened to it recently with an ear far more sympathetic to atmospheric music that doesn't mind concealing itself, I'm in rediscovery heaven. I'm not saying you need to make like Matthew Modine and perch naked on the bed to enjoy. Then again, does music ever sound worse that way?

Peter Gabriel - Dressing The Wound

Peter Gabriel - Slow Marimbas

Moments in frames

It's always a happy homecoming to return to the music of Eno, Cluster, or any combination of those guys. It's not so much that these ambient pioneers made specifically "soothing" music, although it often is that. For me, their work seems to frame and magnify a single, deceptively simple moment, revealing all the fine contours, and then place it in a gallery in my brain that doesn't really demand my attention, but finds a way to make me drift toward it. It's easy to say music feels painterly, something else to experience it via those same aesthetic receptors. I could let these dudes soundtrack large portions of any day.

Eno, Mobius, Roedelius, Plank - Es War Einmal

Eno, Mobius, Roedelius, Plank - Für Luise

To get well known like you

It doesn't get much more full-on '80s than the big bright cloying pop of Howard Jones. Despite a name more suited to pushing paper in a government office, this dude is responsible for a fair amount of the bedroom poster pop of my childhood. And addictive stuff at that. Sure, the pseudo-reggae groove is totally plastic and may as well be the soundtrack for the official marginalization of urban poverty in the Reagan era. But no reason to hold that against the man. A man of such vertical hair volume can only be asked to do so much.

Howard Jones - Like To Get To Know You Well

Good airs

More and more, the arrival of spring air makes my ears ears go gooey for unabashedly new age vibes. Case in point — 3 gentlemen from Germany whose album came to my attention sometime in winter, but who have been lifting me skyward only in the last couple weeks. This despite the unfortunate moustaches and perspective fail on their album cover.

Kolbe/Illenberger/Dauner - Annalisa
Kolbe/Illenberger/Dauner - Zen Tri Fuge

Dark is the color

I don't know much about this Alan Shearer, but he has now impressed me twice, so he goes on my good list. Listening to this one, I think back to my imaginary boyhood in mid-'80s Tokyo, stepping out of the arcade into the neon dusk and all its perfumed confusion.

Alan Shearer - Sons Of The Snake

Jangle in the attic

What is it about slightly maudlin jangle pop that sounds so good when captured on cheap cassettes? It's like jewels found in the attic, covered in dust and neglect, and all the more precious for it. At least dudes like Ariel Pink were paying attention. Martin Newell went on to form the Cleaners From Venus, who were just about as unheard as these early recordings. Another nice Internet rescue from the out-of-printdom.

Martin Newell - Julie Profumo
Martin Newell - Winter Palace 2

Give me the words

Drawing together a couple threads from the week — extroverted vox à la Peter Hammill and a cover treatment courtesy of Nouvelle Vague. (The latter is actually where I heard this tune first.) I don't often listen to these San Francisco avant-theatrical dudes, but I'm always happy when I do. Or at least made happily ill-at-ease. Such is their art, although this one is absolute pop for them. Also, they sport one of my all-time favorite band names.

Tuxedomoon - In a Manner of Speaking

Know nothings

Is it really just serendipity when a couple of bandmates put out solo albums containing songs with the same title? It wouldn't interest me too much if I hadn't been oddly obsessed with '80s Genesis for a while now. I'll try to explain later. Of course, Mike Rutherford's effort was summarily ignored, while the other guy got his goofy mug on many magazine covers. Actually, it's a little sad. Acting Very Strange isn't that bad an album. It's just that some guys are destined to be the bearded one with the bass (or double neck). But who knew his voice was so gruff!? This one's just honest-to-pop catchy. And the beat is hot, courtesy of Stewart Copeland, for any of you drumming trainspotters. Apparently, he was enlisted for the session while they were playing polo.

Mike Rutherford - I Don't Wanna Know

A confession — I love No Jacket Required. We used to listen to it in the car on special Saturdays when my mom would drive me and my sister an hour and half up South Jersey to the big mall that was noticeably less shabby than our local one. Phil Collins had accidentally taken over the charts, in the way that stars did back then—a breakthrough album pumping out hits like Hasidic babies. (Let's take a moment now to reflect on that simpler time, with seamless successions of albums soundtracking your life for months at a time, Thriller to No Jacket Required to Hysteria.)

I found a vinyl copy of this album at a flea market last summer and it all came flooding back, the radio fodder mixed in with the tracks that insinuated themselves into mid-'80s mythology. And then, this song, with a strange power that arena-sizes the pop knack that had humbly plugged along for years previous. Good on him. Seriously, if you've got no love for the triumph of Sweet Phil, I've got none back for you.

Phil Collins - I Don't Wanna Know