Tag: UK

TRACK | Dana Gavanski – Catch

5/5 golden merles

Sometimes the world can be pushed forward a millimeter at a time and other times a yard. And it is not always possible to tell which we are engaged in while the action is taken or underway. Further, we are lucky if at any given moment we are able to tell which direction is forward.

But at least in this instance it is clear to me that this is a fine and good gesture toward something worthwhile.

And, similarly, it is both necessary and good to proceed in a manner which leaves a bridge for those we’ve left behind.

Gavanski’s “Yesterday is Gone” contains a lot of bridges forward. Catch, One by One, and Good Instead of Bad all have featured on a variety of mixes, and I am very much also looking forward to her output [[[going forward]]].

TRACK | Sibylle Baier – Tonight

5/5 golden merles

Sibylle Baier’s Colour Green was “Recorded in the early 70’s in her home on a reel to reel recording device,” then sat unreleased for 40-50 years.

It is with a profound sense of dread that you consider this and realize that this set of tracks was one of the lucky ones. That most things of this caliber are, if recorded at all, languishing in moldy basements, storage lockers and landfills.

These were things that played live in a community, maybe, a handful of times, then had no outlet. Songs that the corporate scouting and release structure had no use for on commercial grounds, in a culture plagued by products. Ads on, in , and bracketing all media, like cancer in the body, determining what lives and dies. As artists or creators we have a responsibility to mitigate or eliminate this if possible.

Which is why Bandcamp is such a fine platform and model to emulate. Perhaps it will be bought out and crushed eventually. But for now it is the very best option available.

TRACK | The Worms – Quality Time

5/5 golden merles

I have so many tabs open… I have not yet gotten to The Worms 2020 release Back to the Bog. But I did enjoy the holy hell out of 2016’s Everything in Order. So it would be no surprise if there are gems in there as well.

There is great buoyancy within this fuzz, and an elastic reverberation of muscle and meat. It is music made by humans and more or less for them. That is a compliment of the highest order, as I am also a man, of sorts, and prefer this type of music.

If you too make music for humans there might also be 5 Golden Merles in it for you. This is incentivization. This is priming the pump of the indifferent universe. I am accessorizing the void.

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.


TRACK | Alabster DePlume – Whisky Story Time

5/5 golden merles

This song is built of energy, particles in motion, maybe more so than others. It is full of might and fraught with warmth, threatening to break into pure light at any moment.

There is a great regard for the anecdote embedded in this thing, it feels like a great account. It is a special thing and worthy of revisiting.


TRACK | The Proper Ornaments – Who Thought

5/5 golden merles

On this dead blog we celebrate winding loops of guitars nestling into the parietal lobe.

Also, this from Denis:

It is a fine, beautiful
and lovely time of warm dusk,
having perhaps just a touch
too much

enveloping damp;
but nice, with its idle strollers,
of whom I am one,
and it’s true,
their capacity for good

is limitless, you can tell.
And then—ascending
over roofs, the budded tips
of trees, in the twilight, very whole
and official,
its black
markings like a face

that has loomed in every city
I have known—it arrives,
the gigantic yellow warrant
for my arrest,
one sixth the size
of the world. I’m speaking
of the moon. I would not give
you a fistful of earth for
the entire moon, I might as well tell you.

For across the futile and empty
street, in the excruciating
gymnasium, they
are commencing—
degrees are being bestowed
on the deserving,
whereas I’m the incalculable

dullard in the teeshirt here.
Gentlemen of the moon:
I don’t even have
my real shoes on. These are some reformed
hoodlum’s shoes, from the Goodwill. Let

me rest, let me rest in the wake
of others’ steady progress,
closing my eyes,
closing my heart,

shutting the door
in face after face
that has nourished me.

Denis Johnson, “This is Thursday, Your Exam was Tuesday.”


ALBUM | Cate Le Bon – Mug Museum

5/5 golden merles

The title track off 2013’s Mug Museum is one of my favorites among many. The whole album is intriguingly sonically textured and well written.

One of the two primary reasons my partner responded to my online profile was a reference to Cate Le Bon and another to David Mitchell & Robert Webb’s Peepshow. So I am in it’s/her debt.

Though I have felt slightly distanced from the colder, more abstracted art rock direction she is exploring in the last few releases, it is all still worth looking into. But to my taste, she has not yet returned to this level of melodic and lyrically qualitative consistency since.

On this record, the bridge has yet to be retracted. There is a great effort at precision in the lines and the onus is not put upon the audience to rearrange the fragments of coherence. Which is fine, too. An audience has been built, tediously, over decades. Do what you like. We don’t need the same thing in endlessly mild variations.

All that shit said, I am still very glad Mug Museum exists and it is proudly one of the paltry 19 vinyl records in my collection.

TRACK | Gorgeous Bully – Stamp

5/5 golden merles

Stamp is one of them joyous garage rock lamentations, end to end.

Everything down to the outro refrain and terminal exclamation are so well balanced and calibrated, it almost defies belief. The fuzz and fade are most agreeably punctuated by the lead guitars tremolo.

Disgust and disillusionment never sounded so kindly, even merry. Tom Waits enjoys “Beautiful melodies telling (him) terrible things,” and so do I.

It is Good.