In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out ‘I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random’ and it went on about how the quality of randomness, spontaneity, surprise, unexpectedness and irrationality in our lives is a very precious thing. And if you suppress that to have a nice orderly life, you kill off what’s most important. Whereas in the Penguin Cafe your unconscious can just be. It’s acceptable there, and that’s how everybody is. There is an acceptance there that has to do with living the present with no fear in ourselves.

— Simon Jeffes
(on how the idea for the great Penguin Café Orchestra came to him)

Aaron Starkey kindly turned me onto this last week. Former Fleet Foxes drummer, J. Tillman, has been making his own music for years. Now he’s playing under the pseudonym Father John Misty. This is the standout track from his new album Fear Fun. If you want to get the hair on your neck to stand up straight, here’s the official vid for the song.

Although it may seem like it, I don’t think the voice is overdubbed. It would be captioned then right? “I feel happy of myself!”

Charlton Heston breakbeats and scratches his way to the Ape Hall dance contest…

“Tin Man” by Future Islands
“Baby Says” by The Kills
“Ballad of Spider John” by Willis Alan Ramsey

El Diablo – Applescal from Amos Mulder on Vimeo.

And it’s a climbing movie as a heads up…Filmed by Corey Richards, one of a three-person team comprised of Richards, Simone Moro, and Denis Urubko on their ascent of Gasherbrum II (summited February 2, 2011). Directed and well-edited by Anson Fogel. Rock and Ice says, “a winter ascent of an 8000-meter peak has never been completed in the Karakorum.”

COLD – TRAILER from Anson Fogel on Vimeo.