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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.

Here are some things for you to click on.

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Kites INC 2006

The biggest update is that after like six years off I listen to dance music again!

Short news this time around =

I am in Gray House Philadelphia working on a pair of projects for Saturday’s <a href=”http://www.215festival.com”>215 Festival</a>. One is a two-sided 8.5×11 – the three-years-coming sequel to my fake newspaper, “There Is No Such Thing as News” that compiles the normal inside jokes and bullshit in a disposable three column format – while the other is way more involved. I decided to do a five page comic in an edition of 10 where every page is completely done by hand. Each page is 5×7 and fully watercolored and inked. I’m stoked on the results so far and am about 60% done. <a href=”http://www.markpriceisafactory.com”>Mark Price</a> is going to have Darcone Triangle printed by Friday so I’ll have that too.

We played Ospreys swoop maybe four times since I’ve been here. Jams have been excursions into new territory for sure. It’s fun and weird to rejoin after long periods of doing our own things into the old duo format and find as ever that there’s still so much ground left to cover. I’m hoping we get to play out before I leave but if not at least we’re recording.

I’ve been sleeping in my sleeping bag upstairs in the office. In the morning, Pumpkin comes up and licks my face. For the first few days Molly my favorite dog alive has been here too, and she was coming up and getting in my area too. Some mornings they’d both lay back down with me for an hour, one on each side. The bum deal is that I’ve been having horrendous stress nightmares (camp failure, haunted house, empty labyrinthine farm, overgrown everything), but I can only hope that has as much to do with all that’s on the actual up that I’m spending so much energy on as all that’s up in the air that I’m so actually worried about.

Mike and Allen and Justin and I went to the Y the other night and looked at the Tropicana Juice train as it rolled on by. Before that, Mike and I went to South Philly and looked at trash trains. $1 covers a lot of ground. Men’s Group. Sorry for being vague about this, because it’s really no big deal, but you don’t know who with how much time is googling what about whom.

Current plans are to stay here until Halloween because I am extremely stoked to see top five Philly band ever ANGELDUST, who so succinctly and horrendously conjure everything I love and hate about this place in the most perfect sweaty baby’s fist full of drugs and razorblades imaginable/possible.

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Then I’m going home, vote, go to Vermont, and then either head to Salt Lake or lurk in the northeast for a while. As ever I’m open to suggestions.

The last few months of work-work have been extremely productive (re: especially a near-complete redo of the Mark Dion site, which I produced a ton of work for and did all of the building with Lord Whimsy art directing; a game I did some video work on for discoverychannel.com; a Flash project I produced with Hall Media crew), but as my two main, long term office projects both coincidentally end exactly as camp starts, and as our project management and workflow methods have evolved to the point that there isn’t even so much sidebar/cleanup work for me to do anymore anyway, the time to call it a wrap seemed perfect. I enjoy my final Beer Thursday at Lime Projects after the Dion install on the 20th, and what a mighty and beautiful two years it’s been. My infinite thanks and debt and permanent salutes to Laris and Kendra from every desk and city I work at from here out.

In conjunction with leaving my job, I decided it would be productive to move out of the random house and see what’s up in the world. I’ll be in Philadelphia until June 30th and then will be traveling and at camp until the end of August. After that is anyone’s guess. Feel free to contact me if you need work done; pretty much wherever you are I can come to you.

I haven’t worked on very much of public interest since band tour, other than a slow moving book/cd project that documents that move. If you want a copy of it, it’s still in development hell (which really just means done by mid-July), but you can have one for free if you get at me before I print them up. Otherwise, I’m in the middle of a fellowship application for a writing program in the fall (marking the first time I’ve drafted anything in probably four years), and am generally enjoying the early summer via bike/Men’s Group as much as possible before the hot street doldrums and mosquitos roll in and I head out.

In normal totally boring recounting of the week’s efforts news, I spent Wednesday with Lexie at the bar, Thursday in Newark airport with Susy, Friday at my old house on 43rd with Jon and the Team, Saturday with Ben and Mike at the Wiese / D. Charles Spear shows and eventually the train bridge (word to Chris Bee Mask who lives here now and gave me his new killah tape), today at the Magnet City thing downtown and then in my slippers and long weekend yawns. Tonight I’m going to see Matthew from Charlottesville’s band; I guess those kids all live up here or in Brooklyn now.

Horizon items =
- Ospreys / Robedoor / Pocahaunted / Natalie Wiseblood / Woods June 28th.
- Ospreys / Wilde Stallions C60 on wether’s new label
- New book in July before I go, as above
- I will be in New York June 11th-15th on camp/nonsense business
- One or two new website ideas, maybe for sooner, maybe for later

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Last Wednesday it was 70 degrees out and threatening rain so we went ahead and went to the Wissahickon anyway. Mike’s argument was the always compelling and strangely effective “it won’t rain if we don’t want it to.” After we ran through some hills, he pulled three ticks off of his pants, and I began to cough.

Little else happened this week. I had a fever, I drove to Boston with it, I languished there. On Sunday we went to Redbone’s after I finished coloring a shirt of Susy’s I started well over a year ago. I watched Karate Kid 3, Jurassic Park, part of Die Hard, Mysterious Skin and maybe two seasons of the Mighty Boosh on youtube.

While vibing out in my room last week, where the ground was completely covered in discarded clothes, dishes, assorted art refuse, towels, books and the rest, where the only light was from the harsh overheads or nothing, I dreamed that I went with a red tin can of gasoline to my cousin Michael’s house. He and his brother were inside lying on their stomachs watching TV while my Aunt Mary Pat and my Uncle Mike sat at the kitchen table reading the newspaper and eating salads. I threw the gasoline on the house’s white siding and threw the can under the tree in their back yard and set a match to it. The flame licked along under a panel until it burned in a straight line down the length of the house. I thought, I couldn’t not do this. I had to. But then I found a wet rag and went down along the line of flame, wiping it off of the house. I couldn’t do it with their garden hose because they would have heard from inside and come out, wondering why I would burn their house for nothing, with them inside, right in the afternoon. When I finished wiping out the fire I went inside to check on them and none of them looked up.

Normal readouts from the broken monitors at home: I stayed at Gray house last night and slept on the floor with Pumpkin, projects are moving along, playing music, planning a tour, the norm. At Amber’s school Nasir told me I was a good friend. This week I am catching up on many emails and tons of lost time both pretty much re: five days in the fever death bag, continuing to search for personal purpose in this stupid life, etc. I’m hoping to spend one night drinking red wine until I don’t want any more. I may visit my parents this weekend. Mike and I are meeting with Davey re: band tour.

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I would not have graduated college if the Internet ruled as much then as it does now.

Updated this in the morning with a couple I forgot.

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Never say die

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Moog cookbook black hole sun. Same mylar ripple effect as Tbolt pagoda / barbarian movie at a minute in.

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Moroder promo from Laris = sick vocoder part at 1:30

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Teachers

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Hi kids we’re home early

The rest of these are archival rap relatable:

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I love this track because it is the first one I remember hearing where the fact that it is a remix is a part of the song. “Dancin to this remix makes me want to step.” I want to go to Charlottesville and act like an idiot when I listen to it.

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Throw Some Ds = Valhalla of radio raps. Mike and I heard this for this first time on January 22nd 2007 in Atlanta, where we correctly assumed that their raps would be at least two months ahead of ours. We immediately realized what we had found and I for one completely flipped my shit. Video is so good.

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Gillie

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Hitler Biggie

And now on to the normal crawl, L.I.F.E. on a pixel, life on a bristle, life on a sheet: things I did, thought and ate, January 6th, year of our wonder and sorrow 2008.

While I made coffee or possibly lunch (Sunday meal plan = dinner: pasta with trader joe sausage sauce, lovely cheese, fresh onion/peppers/mushrooms; breakfast = granola + yogurt; lunch = ??; also had two glasses of tang, a sip of a root beer float, three beers), Bonsky said, “Tom, you thought it would take you twenty minutes because you have no sense of time.” We were talking about how I went to Kinko’s to make that zine up above thinking it would only take me twenty minutes to go in, print and get out, when it took upwards of two hours.

After reflecting on it (during Alphaville and Training Day mostly, both of which are terrible movies), I got to thinking that maybe the issue isn’t so much one of time lapse, but more generally of primarily storing experiences in impressionistic ways rather than in emotional or empirical ones. This seams to speak more fully to the ways I think about reading, listening to music, cooking, traveling, and so on. Not that I don’t perceive time in these things, but I do find that time (and emotional response, and empirical fact) often distorts around the more prominent forms of memory, i.e., light, color, temperature. We can talk about it maybe.

Asked for examples of my not being able to perceive time, Bonsky went on to point out that I often used to say I would be over “in a little while” and then not show up for three or more hours. I think this is more just my being socially untimely and cluttered than my not being able to understand time, but I’m including this point of his so you might form your own opinion.

At night I went to see the mighty Blues Control and everything shuddered back into place. I always know when I like bands and when I don’t, but sometimes I forget when I straight up love bands. Total jammers. Check these dudes outtttt!

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Ten years ago I was a creator on the Discworld MUD. I had just “met” Larissa Sky, while Jeremiah and I had already worked together on at least one major project. Good heavens.

Next in life = planning a tour to New Orleans and back.

On this day Sunday December 9: I had long afternoon dreams, got out of bed, and drew them. I painted for most of the early afternoon, worked on house junk (literally – sorting and discarding the last of the junk pile) until it was dark, drew for two hours, cleaned the stove for an hour, worked on the kitchen wallpaper, painted for a while longer. I conceptualized for an upcoming art show (January 5th), began to think out loud about how to use the rest of the house, and continued to think about while avoiding other less important internet projects.

I had granola for breakfast, a tuna sandwich in the evening and granola for dinner. I drank coffee from the french press, regular black tea that Robyn left, green tea that’s been here forever and a glass of milk. I wore my long underwear, my slippers from high school, a tshirt and a blue sweater. I listened to Wu Tang and NPR all afternoon.

Retired this week: “Tongue planted firmly in cheek”

This weekend I’m going to Boston to run a 5k and hopefully check out Emeralds / Caboladies in PDX.

Youtube Videos I Watched:

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Stop motion mario kart student film

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Nerd party