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Gary Numan “Radio One Sessions”

Somehow nobody told me to check out Gary Numan until Adam played this in the car while he and I and Elaine were on the way to the last day of HBML and to see Ariel Pink in Boston. We listened to this almost every day at work in April.

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Harry Pussy “You’ll Never Play This Town Again”

Gangbuster compilation of live/stray living-in-the-red tunes from the ultimate in hectic crews. I listen to this in the morning on my days off.

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Olodum “Egito Madagascar”

Mike played this for me in Philly in early February. FMU posted it a while back with the plug “Listen with your sternum.” Totally. We listened to this on the way back after the first time we went to the Trader Joe’s in Warwick with Mikey and Walker, and then almost every day for two weeks while Adam cooked me omelette after omelette, morning after morning.

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Peaking Lights “Imaginary Falcons”

Top honors to this one – I listened to it cooking dinner during the first few freezing cold weeks in Providence when I paced between rooms, cleaned, and spent all day looking for jobs on the Internet, and then on repeat the first four or five times I swept and mopped the Cable Car.

Cluster “Rosa” meditations via carpeted basement and wood paneling and drop-ceiling-staring/stars through a barn roof/blueberry picking on the night lakes played mainly (I think) on electronics/guitar/voice. This is the celebratory music that plays as I put a diamond ring on anarchy’s finger and then draw and do whatever I want from 1am until dawn on a Wednesday.

Rangers “Cassette Collages II”

Listened to this for the first time while me and Adam and Colleen cooked dinner in early March. We played scrabble and Adam won. I was digging on this super hard but I don’t think they were!

The sound is a novice in the Ferraro school doing his best to bust pop songs in the master’s all middles, all spliced together, tons of repetition, reverb, and shitty tape sound style. I’m down with the chorus of Osaka (with the AOL IM sound that plays at 1:45 and comes back in at 12:29) and all of Street Smell but especially with the lean-back moment at 12:44 where it plays what will be my ringtone in the afterlife where I get free text messages that can be up to 10,000 characters long. Best played loud on a stereo and listened to while in the other room.

If you’re reading this, and I know you are an internet guy, keep up the good work dude! I play your tunes at my coffee shop at least once a week, and at least one insane old lady who dumps coffee into the plants loves it!

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Brainbombs “Burning Hell”

Evil fucking rock music like a Ren and Stimpy episode where all of the gross-out close-ups are of horrendous acts of deliberate violence perpetrated not with malice but with goofy cackling offhandedness. First time I felt sickened by music in years was listening to “Tired and Bloody” in the car this past weekend. Heaviest band and 100% favorite for getting stoked when I’m home from work to do something else.

US Girls “Live on WFMU”, “Me and Yoko” 7”

I’d been sort of feeling this for a while but it finally clicked for me after I saw her play at AS220 shortly after I got here. Swooning girl group desperation sound blasted through cracked boombox, sounds like sitting in a dirty house filled with garbage, surrounded by bugs and mice and vampire roommates, with all kinds of insane neighbors and drug zombies in the streets, but still trying to express living horror/ecstasy out a small window to a crawling night/glaring moon. “Me + Yoko” from the same 7” is probably the apex of this; “Bits and Pieces” and “Don’t Understand That Man” from the record/live set are right there too.

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Sun Ra “Universe in Blue”

Big Saturn’s return (pun so stupid that yeah, I am totally intending it) on the Sun Ra records in April care of this totally insane blog (find the link for the download there) that maintains links to uploads of most of his discography. Groovy/soft synth and band tunes bookend a slayer of a June Tyson track where it feels like a lion is going to come right out of her mouth.

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Kurt Vile “Live on WFMU”

The #1 Philadelphia song man playing raw. Honorable mentions to the Hunchback 12” and the new solo record but of the new crop this has had the most play so far.

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Oneohtrix Point Never “A Pact Between Strangers”, “Transmat Memories”
Infinity Window “Artificial Midnight”

#1 chillers in the neo-new age synth category all come from Daniel Lopatin’s projects OPN and IW. Insanely he seems to be the only dude yet capable of taking the Boards of Canada acid streaked summer sky/1970 warm winds/looking at and then going inside of a Polaroid with your old friends vibe that’s been around at least since ‘98 and doing something fresh and good with it. Really re: the BOC model, his mode is easy: he strips the beats, stretches the vibe way out, and there you go. Walk around an 80 degree afternoon in full midnight. Drink a cheap beer and become a god. Second track on Artificial Midnight playing at max volume while I mop at 4am, both OPN tapes on repeat for an age.

Honorable mentions so far to Group Bombino “Guitars from Agadaz, Vol 2″, the Fantastic Magic untitled tape I downloaded from a blog that is neither the CD-R or the 7”, the Sun Watcher tape, and Sun City Girls “Torch of the Mystics,” which I listened to as I drove into Providence on Day One.

My mom and I went to dinner tonight at a restaurant near Scranton. My mom asked me if found the music offensive. I didn’t, but the low lighting was somewhat unpleasant. This was remarkable because, taken as a general, what happened was this: A person thought a thing I cannot control that I hadn’t noticed was upsetting me, but it was in fact a different thing that I cannot control that they hadn’t noticed that was upsetting me. The key philosophical questions that arise are A) What does a person’s misreading of what in your shared environment is bothering you tell you about how that person conceptualizes you; B) [How] does this simple miscommunication affect other conversation; C) Is there ultimately a difference between being distracted by one thing or another in this way (minor and ambient), except in the difference between a second person’s perception or misperception of your distraction and how that plays out as in question A.

At dinner I had a gin and tonic. It was Gordon’s Gin and I tried to tell my mom some “tales of the unbreakable bottle” but she doesn’t like to talk about my drinking. Earlier in the day we had a hilarious car ride back from the mall, where we went to buy shirts for business breakfasts but instead ended up buying paint pens, during which she was appalled at the thought of using paint pens to write graffiti.

Also, let it be known that none of the above is a metaphor for or pointer to anything else in my life, nor is any of it a rhetorical secret internet message. However there are secret internet messages elsewhere in this entry.

I’m going to sleep now, back on a normal schedule. Tomorrow I’m going home and hopefully out to Lancaster and Monday I’m going to New York and Tuesday we’re playing a show and Wednesday I think I’m going to Boston.

I slept in my childhood bedroom last night for the first time in a few years and tonight – though I was planning to go back – I’m sleeping in my room in the attic. I walked up the night steps at 6am after drinking a bottle of wine and I turned off all the lights and looked out at the 1996 streets from behind my old curtains.