Category: instrumental

TRACK | Ricky Eat Acid – HYPOTHESIS

5/5 golden merles

Finally a cover that looks like it was intended for the digitally ornate frame it has received (at least, I mean to say, classically/traditionally, in some outdated sense that seems reasonable to the outsider…).

When my grandfather was expiring in the hospice we took with him an illuminated painting of the sea. Originally it was displayed in the basement of their old house for a few decades. Then it spent another couple of years more prominently displayed in his bedroom at the condominium.

Maybe it is of the forest not the sea, I can’t find the image of it on my phone. The picture is semi-translucent and a couple of electric blubs light it from behind. I know it is in one of the 20 different family text threads that arbitrarily add or exclude one or two individuals and seem to be used interchangeably.

In any case, I remember it as a representation of the sea. And it followed him around for years, idly glowing. And it resembles this cover image, probably. Ricky Eat Acid makes art with great attention to detail, metering and a deep empathy for the individual listener. That he excels at the projection of their consumption is a matter of public record.

TRACK | Mar – Mother of Broken Men

5/5 golden merles

Mar make excellent sludge metal and noise rock. This track is an aside, a kind of misrepresentative sampling of materials. But it is also my favorite track among many great ones and the one that fits best this kind of meandering assemblage of posts.

From John Ralston Saul’s Voltaire’s Bastards:

“There are no more secrets today than there were when Sun Tzu wrote. What we do have now is a worship of the idea of secrecy. The brief vogue of existentialism in the middle part of the twentieth century illustrates precisely what has happened. A philosophy which declares that people will be judged by their acts could not possibly survive in the West. (Instead) we believe that people are what they know and can be judged by their power; that is, by what they control. In a society based not upon action but upon systems, our place within the system determines our importance.

“The measure of our power is based upon the knowledge which either passes through our position or is produced by it. One of the truly curious characteristics of this society is that the individual can most easily exercise power by retaining the knowledge which is in his hands. Thus, he blocks the flow of paper or information or of instructions through his intersection to the next. And with only the smallest of efforts he can alter the information in a minor or major way. Abruptly he converts himself from a link into a barrier and demonstrates, if only to himself, his own existence.”

TRACK | The Caretaker – Hidden Sea Buried Deep

5/5 golden merles

The Caretaker’s Everywhere at the End of Time is one of those beautiful, rare experimental audio art projects that breaks through into a more mainstream audience, somewhat similar to William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops or… I’m struggling to think of another example.

An irrevocable descent into dementia never sounded so good, for my money. The entire thing is engaging and grounded in a vision which holds up upon repeated listens, growing even, and asking difficult questions.