Day 12: Old Time Religion

I've pretty much been in isolation today since I have the apartment all to myself, and a lot of my friends aren't anywhere near campus right now. This means I had another day to blast through a lot of music, and thank god I could. I got some of The Kinks and a one-of Bob Dylan's oeuvre (Sweetheart Like You). Then things took a turn for the spiritual. Arvo dropped in again, this time with the somber pomp of a mass performance. Not quite to my present tastes. After that came Jesu and the Ascension album. Quite enjoyable. They strike a great balance of ambient tonal fields and engaging percussion action. Coincidentally, John Coltrane also has an album named Ascension.

Don't listen to it. Dear Jesus and a bag of chips don't fucking listen to it. Why? What puts me in such a state of almost horrified deterring? Here, let me show you.

Look carefully. What do you notice, about, maybe the time for each of the pieces? That's right. Three unholy hours of this shit. Only four tracks. Even that in itself might not be such a problem. I've had a roommate decide he enjoyed hour long techno-trance pieces, and I tolerated them. But this - this album - is a constant assault upon your notions of redundancy, harmonic relationship, and coherency. It literally sounds like a jazz band got together and all of the players just started playing randomly, following one sole directive : make sure you can be heard over everyone else. I can't overemphasize just how incoherent and stochastic it is.

And its not that I have a problem with stochastic process, aleatoric music, or even downright coherency. Just don't use those techniques to create something that makes me want chew my own ears off (I'll gladly rip out my jaws to make it happen) so that I can illegally smuggle them into a miserable former-bloc country somewhere in eastern Europe where I'm sure Coltrane will never be able to find them again. Jesus. Sorry, Jesu.

After that came a lovely dip into Elvis Perkins and his While You Were Sleeping.

Straightforward acoustics, a clean voice and elegant lyrics make for an enjoyable listen.

Next was Wilco's Ashes of American Flags. I seem to be bipolar in my reaction to Wilco. I'm either gaga over their more experimental electronic pieces, or I'm trying to keep from compulsively switch tracks when I hear the lead singer whip out this warbling country-wanna-be twang with steel guitar back up just to be cheeky. Van Morrison and DJ Shadow also got to make an appearance.

Some of the stuff from this album was just kind of funky. Weird patches of straight up dialogue and schizophrenic pieces that seemed to shift for the sake of shifting. But here, in Send Them, the jumps and interjections work incredibly well. Percussive bells keep a lively tempo over a chill base ascending line. And over this are spread some fast verses, rapid rants that play with syncopation and meter effortlessly.

Music left: 166.44gb

Cheers,
Bodhisvaha