Asleep on the Compost Heap

My favourite albums of 2011 (#22 Hype Williams - One Nation)

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 23:00:00 +0000

Any art lovers in the audience? Sure there are. Go check out 'The Shock of the New', Robert Hughes' classic BBC documentary on modern art. You can watch the entire series starting here, which is what I did last weekend. When finished, if you fancy more old skool mind food (and who doesn't?), you should try out the entire series of Jacob Bronowski's 'The Ascent of Man' starting here. You can use the acquired skills to beat Civilisation IV or something. My twitter acquaintance @leahycoo alerted me to this stuff being on youtube a while back. They sure don't make 'em like that anymore.

#22 Hype Williams - One Nation

Do you remember Boards of Canada's Geogaddi? It was their cracked monument, an overlong, sort of sinister, maximalist lug of an album that, while harder to love than the more refined Music Has the Right to Children, arguably contained stretches of their best music. Hype Williams's One Nation is more or less Geogaddi on steroids, or Geogaddi gone to fuck, or #fuckyeahgeogaddi on Tumblr, or Geogaddi after snorting something cheap from a headshop.

I did not fall in love with 'One Nation' easily. I first listened to it while Christmas (Eve) shopping in Navan Shopping centre, and its slightly caustic mix of whining pitch-bent noise, samples and break beats made me feel uneasy and flustered. Of course, the animatronic santa clauses and sweat-drenched Navan farmers who jostled past me to get at the Family Guy Christmas slippers in Dunnes Stores did not help the overall listening experience. But something about the album stuck with me; I think it was the all that mumbo jumbo about peregrine falcons, erect penises (I think?) and reincarnation that played out at the end. Whatever it was, I gave One Nation a second chance.

And then I listened to it incessantly. It cast a spell of sorts. It has a kind of Dadaist power to fascinate. You feel that Hype Williams (there are two of them) squat grinning at the centre of the whole chaotic 'One Nation' experience, protecting what might either be secrets of great profundity or just nothing - a bit like the KLF once did in their music. An image comes to mind: all these huge metal discs spinning so fast that a musical wind whistles over them, and on their glowing surfaces you can see dim projections of youtube stoner junk and pulsing gifs. It's like the soundtrack to the internet's never ending secret picture show. It's very of the moment.

MP3: Hype Williams-Jah

everything is on the point of decline

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:56:00 +0000

See ya January. Off to fuck with you now.

February sees me taking on some work in Dublin and facing into a daily commute totalling 5 hours to and from my job. I'm trying to be as zen as possible about this and want to maximise my use of the down time afforded by the bus trip. If I turn off my phone, I can completely tune in and turn on to a good book, a podcast, or an album. I can give my attention fully over to these things without feeling the nebulous guilt that can cling to such activities at home. Nebulous guilt and/or the lure of the 7 or 8 shitty social network sites (with slightly different USPs) that take up real estate in the part of me that should probably contain a soul or something.

woohoo

Stuff I enjoy on the bus:

1: The 1UP Games, Dammit! podcast

This is an excellent podcast for many reasons: chief among them is the sharp with and intelligence of the Games, Dammit! guys who wear a lot of learning lightly and effortlessly frame games within the wider culture. For example, if a game references ancient Greek mythology, the chances are that these lads know their classics and can riff off of that sort of stuff. Their intelligent approach is a pleasant reminder of the significance of computer games in our recent cultural and social history, and the validity of taking them seriously.

2: The new Caretaker album

Leyland Kirby, everybody's favourite navigator of the softening grey landscape of the dying brain, returns with Patience (after Sebald), a new album of atrophied music. This time, he gives the music of Franz Schubert his treatment and the results are as uncannily moving as anything he has done previously. I find that watching the lights of Dunshaughlin creep past the bus window at 7am with this on my iPod makes me feel all existentially reflective and shit.

MP3: The Caretaker-When the Dog Days were Drawing to an End

3: Elizabeth Bishop's prose.

I found a book of the famous poet's lesser known prose in Chapters. It has a neat short story called 'the sea and its shore' about an alcoholic man who cleans up a beach for a living and constructs a mental world out of all the written material he finds during his surreal and lonely job. It's a bit like Beckett in how it explores the disconnect between the intended meaning of written words and how they are interpreted.

4: Oval DNA

There is a bumper compilation of Oval's music newly released. Bisto gravy granule music. DNA music. Cell music. It's for fans of lots of tiny things unfurling leisurely like a scene under a microscope. Stoners, in other words.

MP3: Oval-Australasia

Feel good post of the winter

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 17:46:00 +0000

A couple of weekends ago when I wrote my little photo essay on Kells, I had a childish fight with my twin brother (a regressive and embarrassing spectacle that happens all too often when we spend time in the family home. We are 31). He stalked me around the house, pleading with me to delete the blog post as I banged a couple of doors and muttered at him to fuck off (reminder: we are 31). He believed that the post would go viral and I'd become a pariah in Kells. Not only that, my near-certain status as town reject might rub off on him on account of our being identical, which is exactly what happened the time I finished in last place on Come Dine With Me and he had to suffer such slings and arrows as a row of Dublin teens singing "come dine with me..." to the melody of Frank Sinatra's "come fly with me" in the Savoy cinema once.

He was half right. The post went semi viral. According to my blogger statistics it accumulated about 2,500 hits a day over the course of last week. A number of websites also linked to the post, including Kells online which featured a piece about it here.

To be honest, I shat my pants (figuratively!) before reading the Kells online piece, as Storkboy's rabid warnings had me braced for the worst. However, the piece is measured and it acknowledges that the town looks a bit shit at the moment. Indeed, it appears that my little photo essay might even provide incentive for a town clean-up.

I felt a bit bad, however, when I read the line "while it could be argued that there is a certain mean spirited tone to the article and that you could find similar sights in any town in Ireland is went set out to look for them". I would hate people to come away from my blog with the impression that I am mean-spirited about my home town and I'd hope that regular readers recognise that I have a fairly complex relationship with the place.

if your Viking longship runs into trouble approaching Kells, look out for our lighthouse

There are times when Kells feels like a dispiriting kip to me, a heritage town of enormous historical significance that perpetually fails to respect itself. But there are times too, when I come over all gooey for the town; for the motley crew of unpretentious yet arty kids I befriended in secondary school and who continue to be my closest friends in adulthood; for the dreaming monastery feel of the town on a fine Summer afternoon walk; for the weird pagan lore that seems to co-exist with the monastic past; for Ireland's only inland lighthouse; for the flat, aesthetically challenged accent that is perversely sported as a badge of honour by many; and for a stubborn character that continues to resist the severe damage Ireland's failed economy has wrought on the place.

Ah Kells, I love ta hate ya.

Asleep on the podcast heap #3

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 06:16:00 +0000

Woo hoo I finally got on top of the sound issues. My voice is dulcet on this one. Golden. *edit: it overlaps itself for about 4 seconds at the 2 minute mark*.

I have pipes like this dude...

On this week's podcast, I discuss some music social networking sites such as this is my jam, James Ferraro's creepy google muzak masterpiece (or is it?) Far Side Virtual, and the Quarter Inch Collective's new Quompilation cassette.

As usual, I'll devour any feedback like a starved dog. I'd also think it very sound of you if you enjoyed the podcast and recommended it to friends and stuff.

Episode 3 on podomatic

RSS for Episode 3

Episode 3 in dropbox

Subscribe in iTunes

Next week, I'll hot my first guest. Sean McTiernan of the excellent Them's the Vagaries.

My favourite albums of 2011 and a mini essay on techno (#23 Roman Flugel - Fatty Folders)

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 15:34:00 +0000

Music journalism cliché #29545: the phrase "dancing about architecture".

Music journalism cliché #29546: the adjectives "hazy", "ethereal", "gauzy", "widescreen".

Music journalism cliché #29547: clunky gender specific synonyms for the word songwriter when said songwriter is female, such as "songbird", "chantreause", or *retch* "songstress".

Music journalism cliché #29548: synth music only ever occurs in "stabs" (I think Karl alerted me to this one).

Music journalism cliché #29549: "X sounds like Y on acid".

For more of these, check out a funny old post by Dave Donnelly, who has a good eye for such things.

#23 Roman Flügel -Fatty Folders

oooh luxurious colouredy folds. luxurious colouredy folds of tactile techno

What is techno music about? It's a weird question isn't it? But it's one that is brought to bear on dance music by people well versed in other types of music. It is hard to write about techno using the critical tools we apply to conventional rock and pop, where the songs tend to have internal narratives full of symbols and meanings to disseminate. The language of techno is just different. And that's why it can be so cringe-worthy when a journalist approaches techno with a confident spouty approach informed by the form and function of pop and rock; something I've read Karl write similarly about rap.

I did an interview with Apparat for AU magazine earlier last year, where he provided the following wonderful quote:

"But I realised that night that techno works not because of emotion or anything like that. Techno has a function. It is functional music that helps people escape. I mean if you think about it, it is a dark room full of people dancing and fucking strobe lights and repeating music. That is what it is for."

Apparat is halfway there. Techno is functional; that's the 4/4 beat. It is also sensory; that's everything on top of the 4/4 beat. Sure it can be emotional too (look at Kompakt's love of heart-tugging pop), but anything on top of the beat and the sensory experience is extraneous. Good techno does not need to have a message. And even when it has a vocal, the vocal is not necessarily communicating a message. It does not need to tell us anything about love, life, ageing or the human condition. It just needs to provide a stimulatory present moment. A place where words and language are replaced by feelings and sensations, forms and shapes. A portal for escape. A never ending present. A feeling.

Everything about Roman Flügel's Fatty Folders is about 'feeling'. This album is tactile. From the luxuriant floaty cover art, to the odd quivering connotations of the title, to the rich gluey tech house it contains, this is a record that murmurs 'touch', 'feel', like a moon-eyed ecstasy virgin tickling their own cheek in the corner of a nightclub.

Each track on 'Fatty Folders' has a distinct identity of its own, so clearly delineated from those either side of it that in listening I am reminded of a child's activity cube with different textured surfaces (this one is rough, this one is furry, etc). So different are the productions in style that you might expect the album to play disjointedly. For example, 'How to Spread Lies' is supremely smooth glassy house in the vein of John Roberts whereas 'Bahai Blues Bootcamp' flirts with British bass music overlaid with classic AFX acid. Yet, the record hangs together quite cohesively and this is probably because of an overarching sense of Flügel's sheer love of form. What each track has in common is precision crafting down to the microscopic, fabergé-egg level.

'Fatty Folders' isn't some sort of crazy masterpiece. It's just a beautifully rendered, sonically rich album that offers us nothing more or less than pure aural sensation. Take it on those terms, and you have one of the finest techno/house albums of 2011.

MP3: Roman Flügel-Deo

My favourite albums of 2011 (#24 Pure X - Pleasure)

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:19:00 +0000

The asleep on the compost heap podcast is now set up with iTunes. You can subscribe to it right here. In other podcast news, I am going to record some episodes where guests chat about their favourite things. Yes, it will be a 100% rip-off of pitchfork's guest list feature. To complete this lousy act of blatant intellectual theft, I need a good name for the feature; something that is not 'guest list'. If you have any ideas please leave them in the comment box below.

Many people pointed out to me that my voice came burbling out all up close and demented (not good) towards the end of the last podcast, and also that there was a significant discrepancy between the music and voice volume. Well I'm on it like a sonnet, and the next podcast will be gleamingly produced. I'm even making a screen thing with an old pair of tights to filter out the popping sounds. Check out how good it sounds on Friday.

#24 Pure X - Pleasure

and the WTF album cover of 2011 award goes to...

I'd wager that almost every critic who has a go at certain artists for being generic or copyists makes exceptions for bands that peddle whatever particular formula is that critic's kryptonite (it makes hypocrites of us, of course, but hey, spineless double standards are part and parcel of music journalism amirite?). The Galaxie 500 sound is my purest kryptonite, and young Texan band Pure X lay on the Galaxie 500 shtick so thickly that I hope they never ever change. I want them to continue forever making records with keening guitars that move like a slow motion tsunami of molasses and double-tracked vocals that echo their news from a huge cavern containing all the lonely teens.

I know that my blog is probably full of instances where I call out bands that I don't like for being formulaic. And I know I will do it again. All I can do is hold up my hands and admit I'm a big fat hypocrite. Now excuse me while I play 'twisted mirror' again and wallow in a big luxurious vat of liquefied misery.

MP3: Pure X-Twisted Mirror

My favourite albums of 2011 (#25 Sun Araw - Ancient Romans)

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 03:25:00 +0000

Hmm, I'll have to admit, this feels a bit awkward and wayward of me, my starting this list now, six weeks later than I really ought to have done. Even that notorious tortoise Karl appears to be putting his list to bed over on those geese (it's an excellent list by the way; you all should read it, but come back here won't yis). The path ahead looks lonely and punishing as fuck...and to think I started blogging because I thought it would be fun.

THIS YEAR...IN A WORLD...ONE BRAVE MUSIC BLOGGER'S JOURNEY AGAINST THE ODDS...HE SET OUT TO WRITE A LIST...BUT ENDED UP WRITING THE STORY OF HIS HEART...YOU'LL LAUGH...YOU'LL CRY...YOU'LL EVACUATE PSYCHEDELIC SUBSTANCES ALL OVER YOURSELF AND HOWL WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM LYRICS AT THE MOON IN A VOICE THAT IS NOT YOUR OWN WHILE YOUR EYEBALLS TREMBLE AND SQUEAK IN THEIR SOCKETS AND YOUR EARDRUMS IMPLODE AS LANA DEL REY SKITTERS BACKWARDS DOWN YOUR STAIRS ON ALL FOURS LIKE THAT BIT IN THE EXORCIST...[Huge subwoofer sound effect. Screen dims to black. The flaming words 'Asleep on the Compost Heap' fade slowly into view]...ASLEEP ON THE COMPOST HEAP...[Words dim to black followed by scratching record needle sound and goofy surprise gag, precisely 1.5 seconds long, featuring Rob Schneider].

#25 Sun Araw - Ancient Romans

There's a long tradition of psychogeographical holiday making in freak-out music, and such excursions through both time and physical geography are particularly evident in krautrock. Popol Vuh, for example, explore ancient Egypt on In den Garten Pharaos; on Alpha Centauri, Tangerine Dream aim their spaceship for that particular star; and so on. There's an earnest desire to seek on such albums, a desire that is irony free and feels a bit quaint or even innocent in this era of inverted commas around everything.

Sun Araw's Ancient Romans is spiritual kin to those records that bring to mind the illustrated covers of old science fiction books at jumble sales and afternoon escapes to inward panoramas. It's a serious minded album of expansively rolling jam music which has a single, pure, function: to free the imagination from stifling real world associations so it can travel to places vast and strange.

The album's conceptual 'thing' is that it is loosely based on the mystic bacchanalia rites of ancient Rome. As classics students find out in University (according to Donna Tartt's 'The Secret History' anyway), the world of the ancients is separated from us not only by time and space but by systems of thought. One reason the average Ancient Roman lives in a different world to us, is that he perceives the world differently. Teleport him into the present and he will still exist in a reality that is profoundly altered in relation to ours.

Stallones clearly wants us to get inside that lad's mind, and he fiddles with the hinges of this conceptual window using colossal dubby soundscapes and submerged rhythms that speak of ritual and trance. The tunes unfurl slowly and luxuriously, more often than not breaking the ten minute barrier, with giant parts shifting slowly in relation to each other like scenery in parallax. Vocals, meanwhile, are used sparingly. They are dreamlike and dissociated in a reverb-heavy fog, ecstatic yelps and exhortations that serve to draw the listener ever further into this mysterious and fine album in the krautrock tradition.

MP3: Sun Araw-Crown Shell

My Home Town: a photo essay (NSFW or NSFCL Not Safe For Cat Lovers)

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 16:32:00 +0000

Visitors to the Kells online website will note the town's quixotic quest to have a volume of a famous manuscript removed from Trinity College and permanently 'returned' to us (because, erm, a treasure of national significance belongs to the town near where it was found). Understanding the magnitude of the endeavour, I've decided to help the town's chamber of commerce with some photojournalism to bolster their PR effort. It's a series of images that give a flavour of the picturesque and historical town on a quiet Sunday afternoon.

I call it My Home Town: A Photo Essay in eight parts. Enjoy.

When in my home town, why not engage in some retail therapy?

The 'some things he can't pick up' campaign targets town dogowners...

...yet fails to take off

hungry? try our Meath-renowned curry chips

Who needs Paris's Left Bank when you can people watch on the town's great thoroughfare, Farrell Street?

a wise man said that Ireland experiences cultural renaissance in times of recession

we welcome the smoker...

...and the outdoor drinker...

do not click 'read more' below if you are a cat lover or squeamish...

...cats, however, might consider a diversion to Navan

All Pulitzer related correspondence can be directed towards asleepontheheap@gmail.com.

Asleep on the podcast heap #2

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 03:53:00 +0000

This week's episode finds me considering...

- gloomy witchy techno from England

- Guided by Voices' heartbreakingly ordinary new album

- and Nim, the tragic chimp whose life was ruined by a pompous turtlenecked professor with a hard-on for his female postgrad students and a disregard for the simple simian's heart.

the hipster chimp with the heart of gold

I feel much happier with episode 2 than I was with episode 1. I've managed to iron out a few technical kinks and improved my diction. This episode also includes music clips to add context to my discussion, and I feel like I was more focused and engaged in my chattering. Once again, I had great fun putting it together.

I'd greatly appreciate your taking a listen to this and giving any feedback at all. If you weren't so sure about episode 1, I'd still encourage you give this one a go as it's much further along the learning curve.

Podcast MP3 in Dropbox

MP3: Asleep on the Compost Heap-Episode 2

Podcast hosted on Podomatic

Click Here

Podcast RSS feed

Click Here

Give us a shout in the comments if you have any ideas for future episodes.

Day 17 - something that grows

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:29:00 +0000

Some of these are just plain tricky to make interesting. Something that grows? Not my bank balance anyway (boom boom). How about Skrillex's hair? Skrillex's hair gone sentient, growing out of your toilet at a hundred miles an hour, wrapping around your ankles as you run screaming for the door.

SKRILLLLLLLLLLLEXXXXXXXXXXXX (click to make big)

MP3: Harold Budd-Flowered Knife Shadows

Over the Christmas period I vibed hard to a lot of music that probably gets stocked in the HMV rack marked 'New Age'. I'm not sure if this means I'm on some kinda slippery slope that will end with me buying limited edition porcelain unicorns out of Sunday tabloid supplements; all I know for sure is that I've developed a taste for a type of music which my younger self would have recoiled, nay cringed, at. Am I slipping over the Enya event horizon? If I am, let's blame Animal Collective. Fucking Animal Collective. The rot started with Animal Collective.

Quick podcast update - podcast episode 2 will be online tomorrow after Coronation Street.

darkling

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 18:02:00 +0000

There are few sights as dispiriting as Christmas decorations at this time of year. At any given moment on the fifth of January, a piece of tinsel detaches from a hard piece of blue tack and see-saws slowly towards a floor, somewhere in Ireland, while a drunk man cries. In a thousand playrooms, a thousand interactive toys dimly light up for the final time, playing horribly distorted electronic lullabies as batteries (which will never be replaced) die. Meanwhile, blocks of barely touched stilton squat in fridges, unpopular quality streets make their inevitable greasy descent down the gullets of the self-loathing, and oddly coloured stains streak the nation's porcelain.

That first snowdrop or crocus needs to hurry the fuck up.

In the meantime, the Compost Heap will illuminate the blustery gloom with a countdown of my 25 favourite albums of 2011. This year, I am going to devote a full post to every album in order to apply a modicum of critical depth to the process. I'll try my best to post very regularly (ideally three times a week) and in between the albums I'll post up the remains of my series of doodles from last year.

The podcast will return tomorrow or Saturday. I was delighted to get some IRL feedback on it, and further to suggestions (ooh see how I just lapsed into shitty business speak, might as well run with it) I'm going to address technical issues moving forward - after all we are all climbing this strategic staircase together, and we will hopefully hit the ground running in the next quarter.

In other words, I'm going to cut down on the 'ems' and 'aws' when I speak, and integrate small clips of the music I discuss into the podcast.

Before I go, here is Grimes's ace new song. She's going to take off this year, mark my words.

MP3: Grimes-Genesis

the garden of forking paths and/or frozen puke

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 21:42:00 +0000

I saw in the end of 2011 watching TV with my mother in our front room. A tin of chocolate sweets sat open in a no man's zone on the floor between us (a slightly out of reach spot that allowed us to maintain a feeble delusion about not being chocolate crazed Christmas pigs). Before midnight, my mother, engaging in one of her weirder habits, went into the kitchen to microwave her cold mug of tea. I gulped a mouthful of Tesco diet cola, farted softly while there was a sly getting away with it, and un-muted The Vaccines who were gurning silently on Jools Holland's Hootenany.

My mother returned, squinted at the indie-landfill tableaux of forced jolliness on telly, and remarked "it's the same fella again. Does he come on every year?"; a comment which sent me tunnelling down a churning vortex of slowly rotating Quality Street wrappers into a clammy state of seasonal deja vu. She said the exact same thing to me the year before, right down to the word. I was sure of it. Which implied that we shared a similar experience the year before that too. I was reminded of an American novel I once read where a character pukes in the precise same spot in the same garden every New Year's Eve for the guts of a decade.

There's a grim repetitiveness about New Year's Eve (for me anyway), and when the scene repeats, only with you a little older, it can begin to feel like a cruel cosmic joke. In early 2011 I envisaged I'd be in Canada on New Year's Eve, standing out on my pinewood deck, watching fireworks pop brightly in the chill Vancouver night, one gloved hand holding a hot drink, the other thrown chummily around the furry shoulder of my pet bear, Ben. Oh, such dreams...

the glimmering dream

the shitty reality

Yet something has changed. Something important for me. I gave up alcohol. Even though I've only been off it for three months, I've already gained enough insight to know that Canada would have been what the old dudes in AA call a geographical escape. I'd more than likely make the usual tit of myself and do the usual damage to me and to others, except in a different country; a freezing cold country, for that matter, where the consequences of falling asleep on your doorstep (or indeed a compost heap!) might make for a slightly less funny story than here in Ireland.

I have no idea what the coming year will bring. But I know one thing - I am not going to let that fact bother me. Earlier this year, someone gave me a little keyring with 'live in the now' written on it, which is a fitting new year's resolution for me, with my tendency to live either in grossly exaggerated replays of shitty events from my past or in pipe-dream futures. And, ignoring the giant recession shaped boat we are all sitting in, 'now' isn't that bad for me. I have my family, my friends, a warm place to live, some good books to read, a bunch of hobbies to occupy myself, and my health.

Happy new year everyone!

MP3: Ray Lynch-The Oh of Pleasure
(pleasant new age burblings recommended by Astonishing Sod, aka music for contemplating the universe as a dribble of wheat enema snakes across your yoga mat.)

Asleep on the podcast heap

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:37:00 +0000

For better or for worse here it is, my first podcast, thirty minutes of me sitting alone in my room awkwardly talking to a laptop screen. Topics covered include...

This guy doing this stuff

The same guy doing this stuff

This supremely hypnotic and borderline frigthening thing (eccojam)

This blog

And This blog

Advance warning - there is a certain amount of popping microphone sound which I will endeavour to remove from future podcats (by putting the mic on a stand). If you can identify things that might be problematic in the sound and have fixes for said things, please let me know.

This is all very much a work in progress for me. If I continue to maintain the podcast I intend to improve its structure by including regular features, listener response sections, and guest slots. Because it is all so embryonic at the moment I would greatly appreciate your input, even if that only means a one word comment on what you think; for example, what you like/don't like/would change/would improve.

It was fun making this.

The podcast episode is available as an rss on this devoted tumblr (I'd love if you followed).

And here is the podcast MP3.

MP3: Asleep on the Compost Heap Podcast-Episode 1
The podcast RSS

Props to Karl and Sean (my inspiration).

Bonus MP3s

MP3: Chuck Person-Eccojam A2
MP3: Ford and Lopatin-Channel Pressure
MP3: Oneohtrix Point Never-Sleep Dealer

Watch the Drone - My Favourite Tracks of 2011 part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:45:00 +0000

I'm going to lash into these (you'll hopefully excuse the brevity as I am working on the podcast). Without further ado...

Ho Ho Howaryis kids

#5 Grimes - Vanessa

Claire Boucher's voice is weird. Weird like something out of an 80's horror film on VHS - the bit where a possessed little old lady's eyes turn electric white and she sings in a child's voice as contrails of ectoplasm whip past her face and chairs levitate. On earlier albums her weirdness was concentrate weirdness without additives, but on Vanessa it is dissolved through some lovely pulsing pop and the result is stunning.

MP3: Grimes-Vanessa

#4 Danny Daze - Your Everything

Last year my tracks of the year featured Axel Boman's Purple Drank, a clinically obese house track with a dissociated male vocal. Dissociated male vocals were all the rage in dance again this year, slurring over beats with a torpid nonchalance suggestive of chemical signals from the brain gaining traction in spinal fluid thick with animal tranquillisers. Your Everything is syrupy, funky, a bit out of its head, and impossible to resist.

#3 tUnEyArDs - Bizness

tUnEyArDs is one of the few distinctive talents to emerge from the post-Animal Collective detritus of hip bands who clatter stuff. Bizness is exhilarating song of some subtlety in that it manages to sound so spontaneous in spite of being precision engineered within an inch of its life, and to sound celebratory in spite of having a visceral lyric that paints a picture of a dysfunctional and codependent relationship.

MP3: tUnEyArDs-Bizness

#2 Scuba - Adrenalin

Scuba opened up his sound this year to incorporate elements of 90s trance, a once sniffed-at genre of music that is now providing base materials for optimistic sounding techno from the likes of him and other heads such as The Field and Joy Orbison. Adrenalin is unashamedly skyward looking. This is simple, brilliantly executed music for seas of arms and upturned faces, transient euphoria and secular communion. It was the most played techno track on my iPod this year.

#1 Destroyer - Kaputt
M83 released a double album this year in which he tried to create a 'world' of sorts, an extension of the 80s teen scene tropes that flit in an out of his earlier work. In my opinion the album is a disaster, humourless, lumbering, and it gasps under its heaped stuffing of re-appropriated music (and po-faced concepts) like a sumo wrestler dying from a stroke. He should have looked to Dan Bejar to see how to create a far more convincing world with lighter brush strokes. Kaputt is a gleaming dream of a song that follows a protagonist into a bleary coked-up fantasy world that the listener suspects is for all its charms, like Tennyson's island of the lotos eaters, a hollow paradise. But what a lush and dreamy paradise.

MP3: Destroyer-Kaputt

For tracks 10-5 click here yall.

Proper Chrimbo

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 11:57:00 +0000

I heard Mariah Carey's Christmas song on the radio today (pre Bieber version) and it made me feel very Christmassy, or at least Christmassy enough to open a packet of lebkuchen. But here's the funny thing - I clearly remember watching that song on telly when it came out in 1994 and thinking to myself "all the new Christmas songs are shit; there'll never be a good one again". All I want for Christmas struck me as trying far too hard with that super eight footage ski-chalet video clip and its gratuitous use of sleigh bells. Yet now, I almost well up listening to it, and it's not just Mariah who has this effect; the Darkness and believe it or not even this ultra-crapulous Bo Selecta effort can make me feel a little festive.

Brian Harvey in happier days (aka before he ran over himself with his own car while his jacket potato dinner burned LOL)

I was thinking about all of this because there was a little piece in the Guardian today about the elements of a successful Christmas song, and the feature included talk of bells, modalities, singing in thirds, and such. But it seems to me that the major factor in a Christmas song's success is a simple rule from classical conditioning coupled with time. Pair a Christmas song (no matter how ropey it is) with enough good times over enough Christmases, and it will eventually work itself into a magical frosted memory bank, euphoric recollections rubbing off on it and imbuing it with charms far beyond those it has in isolation.

It's through this phenomenon that songs lacking any Christmas qualities whatsoever (such as Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'The Power of Love') have become yule classics that seem to exude the glittery essence of the season. One very specific and local example of this for me is Dexy's Midnight Runner's 'Come on Eileen'. This song is the eternal soundtrack to that strange tinselly dead-zone that was spent between Christmas Eve and New Years Day in the pubs around Kells down the years.

Every new Christmas song, then, will be a sad specimen at first, either underwhelming, or transparently kitted out with bells and choirs to cheaply invoke the season, or just plain shite. But theoretically none of these shortcomings can stop a Christmas song from succeeding. Provided it gets played intensely enough, and repeatedly enough, it will develop a life of its own, fattening itself on (and in) our memories until it becomes a standard like any other.

The Best (non) Christmas Song Ever

MP3: East 17-Stay Another Day

on year end lists

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:12:00 +0000

Music critics should be suspicious of consensus. When the same two or three indie-shmindie albums end up in year end top fives you can only wonder whether in fact these items objectively contain the best music of the year? Do writers who evangelise these albums really care that much about them or are they just following a trail of breadcrumbs dropped by noted tastemakers such as pitchfork?

That M83 album is as phoney as a nine bob note

How many music journalists and bloggers really care about music? How many even like music? I sometimes think music criticism is the broadest, shallowest ocean of pure meaningless hackery in all writing about the arts, full of the worst clichés, of the most half-baked opinions, of weasel words chosen with one eye on the general consensus; a motorway pile-up of tired adjectives followed by ratings close (but not too close) to Pitchfork's and others' scores.

We are all capable of forming original thoughts about objects offered up for our critical appraisal. They might not be blindingly insightful or in line with the status quo, but as long as they speak of one's individual reaction, then they are infinitely more useful to read than cowardly consensus. It's okay to experience intense dislike of an album that gets high scores all over the shop. In fact, a few honest words trying to figure out such dislike would make for an engaging critical read. It would go some way towards marking the writer out as an identifiable voice. And here's a thing about music journalism; there are countless writers, yet only a handful of voices.

MP3: Half Man Half Biscuit-Joy Division Oven Gloves

Game of Drones - My Favourite Tracks of 2011 part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:45:00 +0000

Ah lookit, ye all came. So nice to see so many familiar faces; or it will be, as soon as our eyes adjust to the gloom. The smell? Oh that's only a common chemical reaction that happens when quicklime reacts with Justin Vernon's and Fleet Foxes' corpses.

Now, are we all sitting tight? I hope the cable-ties aren't too restrictive; I just can't have you all skipping off to Nialler 9's or Karl's sites. You see, what I share with you, my six or seven readers, is an exclusive relationship, and though I am a generous lover, I can get jealous. If that happens because ooh let's just say you mess around on other blogs, well that's when fingers start to disappear, and Christmas crackers are best pulled with a full set of fingers, amirite?

Now that we're all on the same page, let's begin. Here is the first part of a list of ten of my favourite songs from 2011. As usual, my techno tastes will be more evident throughout this list and my proclivity towards the experimental will show in the album list later in the week.

#10 Joe Goddard ft. Valentina - Gabriel

"This moomin this moomin this moomin oh woah stop"

For my money Joe Goddard's Gabriel single tops his work with Hot Chip (which can sometimes seem a bit sterile). It's a classically English sounding dance pop banger with a soulful vocal hook big enough to harpoon Moby Dick. I'm not sure how well it did in the charts (if they even count any more), but during the perfect summer this sort of shit would always be number one.

#9 Unknown Mortal Orchestra - Ffunny Ffrends

Have you any ffunny ffrends? I have three. Ffido the ffunny dog who always eats my mushrooms, Ffergus the ffuny ffrog who I sometimes lick ffor ffreaky ffrights, and Ffred the ffunny ffsychiatric nurse who looks after me. We all enjoy listening to this sick jam when watching cosmic cartoons on the hospital ceiling.

MP3: Unknown Mortal Orchestra-Ffunny Ffriends

#8 Nicolas Jaar - Space is Only Noise if You Can See

Nicolas Jaar's song might thumb its nose at the accepted model of physics, but strange goings on at CERN may yet shed light on the scientifically preposterous title and his exortation to 'wind your clock, baby wind your clock' (a lyric that makes a lot of practical sense on the last Sunday of March). In the meantime lets just appreciate the track for being one of the truly forward-looking pieces of music of 2011, its rippling cosmic soul pulsing towards a sophisticated new horizon in dance.

#7 The Last Days of 1984 - River's Edge

The Irish duo's first single is a stunner, a stirring swirl of Balearic euphoria with a strong vein of sadness running through it in the manner of so much great dance pop from the Pet Shop boys through New Order to all those great musicians on Sincerely Yours. Anyone who has danced in a space full of young people with the sun coming up will know that such moments are transient, and one of life's bittersweet truths is that as we age we spend exponentially more time looking back longingly on those moments than we spend experiencing them. This track communicates such truths.

#6 Lana Del Rey - Video Games

"Ooooh she's got fake lips" moaned half the internet. "Her Dad's in the music industry" bawled others. But why would you give a fuck? Seriously. If she was assembled from vulcanised rubber in an underground lab in North Korea would it still stop Video Games from shitting all over something like Fleet Foxes' crappy sophomore album from a height? No. No it would not.

Before I go, may I ask a little question; what would ye think of an asleep on the compost heap podcast? It wouldn't be anything groundbreaking, just me sharing some music and talking about about why it fascinates me. That would be to start with; I'm sure it would evolve if I maintained it. Let me know what ye think, yeah?

More tracks of the year will follow in a day or two.

Day 16 - your inspiration

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:03:00 +0000

I'm shunting the songs/albums of the year thingy back a day or two on account of becoming hypnotised by Skyrim on the Xbox (I'm a dual spell caster and after six hours of roaming around under the northern lights with two orbs of coloured energy crackling softly around my digitised hands, 'hypnotised' is frankly the only word that describes my torpid condition).

In the meantime here is something I wrote about the Arcade Fire for a magazine a while back. The mag was doing a piece on bands its reviewers don't 'get'.

For years now, I've tried to pin down what it is about this band that galls me so, but the answer always slips away, eel-like. It might be something to do with tortured lyrics about peeing the bed aged seven (which is what all Arcade Fire songs in are about in my head, okay?) that ring insincere when married to the monotonous exaggerated bombast of the band's music - a sort of Wagnerian indie march of the dead sung by a married duo who've obviously bonded deeply over their mutual need for a throat lozenge.

Or maybe it is the onion-like layers of pretension that keep peeling away to reveal a dour, humourless, self-absorbed core. In fact, perhaps that's what really sticks in my craw, the humourlessness of the entire Arcade Fire endeavour - their scowling faux-Amish faces in every single photo-shoot they've ever done. To paraphrase '90s dance one hit wonder Snap, they are 'as serious as cancer', and listening to them, for me, is about as fun as getting diagnosed with it. The ginger bloke in the crash helmet seems alright though. He should join Architecture in Helsinki or something. Ah, getting that off the chest felt pretty good. Now, on to the National...

Some inspiration...

Ireland's oldest local paper dontcha know

An MP3

MP3: Andy Stott-Bad Wires

Andy Stott's two records of curdled demon-techno 'We Stay Together' and 'Passed Me By' are among the year's best, appearing to come from a similar Lovecraftian abyss to that which spawned his Modern Love labelmates Demdike Stare. I wonder if Modern Love owns some slime covered hole in the Yorkshire Moors from which these lads come crawling pallidly forth?

It's music that speaks to the part of my mind that sometimes wakes me up whispering dry chittering nonsense after dreams of dead spaces. The part of me that savours blackness and dread.

Some bloke on Pitchfork described 'Bad Wires' as sounding like Surgeon played through a cubic metre of boiled wool. I'll go one step further and say it sounds like Shed played through a slow burning heap of blackened livestock corpses during a BSE scare.

Day 15 - Family picture

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 18:31:00 +0000

When Storkboy and I were very young we had corkscrew curls and looked like identical miniature Leo Sayers in matching dungarees - novelty children by any measure (and well used to stares). The curls disappeared by our fourth birthday because, according to our mother anyway, we stopped eating vegetables. The rest of our childhoods and teenage years were spent in an open revolt against the identity-crushing tyranny of matching outfits.

Now that we're 30 and don't give a fiddler's about such things, our outfits have not only begun to match again, but look like the sort of shit we wore aged four (chinos and patterned jumpers). The circle of regression completes itself.

which is which?

MP3: Orbital-You Lot

I watched Terrence Malick's Tree of Life on DVD earlier today and found it very moving if a bit bobbins in places. Anyhow, when it got to the epic pan-out of stars forming, rotating galaxies, and the crinkly little dinosaur fetus, this cheeky Orbital track bubbled into my head. Instead of the momentous choral music, I imagined its druggy Manc-inflected commentary about DNA cut over the scene and had a little laugh to myself.

"Cheeky Bastids".

Day 14 - A fairytale

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 16:12:00 +0000

Rumpelstiltskin "in his rage drove his right foot so far into the ground that it sank in up to his waist; then in a passion he seized the left foot with both hands and tore himself in two".

The Brothers Grimm delivering the goods as usual.

After that day, Joanna Newsom never made another album

MP3: Darkside (Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington) - A1

Nicolas Jaar just frosted his 2011 cake with the slinky Darkside EP, a collaborative effort with the guitarist Dave Harrington. It's rather a gleaming object, this EP, a multifaceted hunk of slow funk that's reminiscent of Prins Thomas and Lindstrom. One might happily get through a lot of cocaine and durex with it playing on the stereo, if one were that way inclined.

In other news, business will return to the 'heap as usual from Monday with a yearly countdown of its favourite albums of 2k11. And in the off-chance that anyone enjoyed the interlude of scribbles, they will continue every other day or so until the meme has run its course. Also, if you want to see them in a larger format just click on them.

Thanks for all the comments you left in my absence you guys. It's good to be back.

day 13-a comic

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 02:09:00 +0000

Before pumpkin man was admitted to a psychiatric hospital covered in fecal matter, bleeding from both ears, and smelling of decomposed squash vegetable, he was an ordinary teenage boy. This is his origin story.

the long hours I spent on this storyboard will hopefully pay dividends as soon as I hear back from Pixar

MP3: Danny Brown-Die Like a Rockstar

It's a good rule of thumb that drug stories are as boring in the retelling as dreams, and people who always want to talk about the krazy shit they did when they were last high tend to be crashing bores anyway. Danny Brown gets away with it though. On his XXX album, he spends pretty much the bulk of it rapping about all the various forms of chemical crud he monsters like some kind of human Dyson, and never sounds anything less than riveting. Extraordinarily weird shit altogether.

Day 12-a recent achievement

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:53:00 +0000

A recent achievement? Oh drawing challenge, your subtle mockery cuts sly and deep.

final fantasy III is genuinely shit hard on the Nintendo DS, okay? No really, it is.

MP3: Cosmin TRG-Amor Y Otros

This sequence of drawings is missing something, namely a banging techno donk. Amor Y Otros is the first track on Cosmin TRG's excellent Simulat album, a stop starty dub-techno thing with a huge dark pulse that needs, nay demands to be played at the sort of volume that attracts the guards to your front door.

Day 11-a turning point in your life

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 01:44:00 +0000

This one's a Freudian turning point in every child's life...

and for the rest of that day at 'Paul's House' not a single fuck was given

MP3: Chad VanGaalen-Sara

Chad VanGaalen's album from which the gorgeous song above is taken is called Diaper Island. I remember hearing the word diaper for the first time when I was small and finding out that it was the American for nappy. I thought it was the most gloriously stupid sounding word I ever heard and if I ever wanted to send myself into paroxysms of laughter I'd just say the words 'poopy diaper' out loud in a drawn out American accent. Oh fuck, I'm in paroxysms of laughter right now just thinking about it. Go on, say it. I know you want to. Just say it.

Poopy diaper.

Day 10-Your Favourite Sweets

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 01:32:00 +0000

Bertie Bassett didn't always have a smiling friendly face you know. Before his modern incarnation, Bertie was this strange faceless thing...

it lives behind a mysterious door in the old sweet shop. it knows where the missing children are

MP3: Annie-Chewing Gum

How come Annie never made it huge? I'll tell you why. Because there's obviously something seriously fucking wrong with the world, is why.

Day 9-Your favourite TV show

noreply@blogger.com (Gardenhead) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 01:27:00 +0000

To quote Rolph Harris, can ye till what it is yet?

elyts ni kcab emoc ot gniog si ekil uoy mug eht

MP3: Julee Cruise-The Nightingale

David Lynch's new album Crazy Clown Time is a zany mess with a few redeeming moments, but not enough to rescue it from being a curiosity. After listening to it once or twice I bolted back to the Angelo Badalamenti soundtracks to his film and TV work.

Julie Cruise's vocal in this song is so smooth and frictionless that I wonder if she gargled KY jelly between takes? Listening to it makes me want to pull the curtains and waltz in slow motion around the sitting room with a mannekin, crying softly to myself of course. Either that, or broodingly polish a motorbike under a sodium street light at dusk, while the semi-clothed milf next door watches me from behind net curtains.