Daily Listening - Tuesday 17 May 2011

One of the reasons I started this thing was to pause and take stock of some of the dataflood that scrolls, almost ceaselessly, through my system. So, starting with a daily listening log, I'm going to try and take note of some of what happens. Not only will I consider what I listen to but more interestingly how, where, and (if I can be arsed) why. This will prompt a realisation of how much listening takes place on ipod, what music I favour in certain situations, how often the turntables revolve, etc. I'll also attempt a quick summary / evaluation of what I've heard.

This is partly inspired by my brother's daily noon photo update on his Facebook page (itself inspired by Paul Auster's Smoke). Fortunately for my brother he leads the sort of pleasantly disordered life such that he's often doing something different each day at 12pm - unlike the majority of us. Mine would be static, repetitive and very boring.

Tuesday 17 May 2011
I get the tram to work each day, leaving the house around 8am. Lately I've been leaving a little earlier to avoid running into my neighbor who, while pleasant, insists on talking and preventing me my solitude. Sometimes I'll listen to music over breakfast with my daughter but not today. Usually it's ambient or classical piano music on CD, quiet like, so as not to wake the whole house.

I'd put some new stuff on the ipod the night before and always listen on the tram, usually to new stuff. Today it was this:

Leyland Kirby: Intrigue and Stuff (Vol. 1)
I love Leyland Kirby, especially as the Caretaker, but it's all good, and so was this - weird, crackly, neon synth workouts, very much of the hypnagogic zeitgeist but not derivative. More Ghost Box than Not Not Fun, slower, and spookier, with faint shades of the school science program stuff the English seem to like. Only heard the first three (of six) tracks from this single but will listen again, and more closely.


CM von Hausswolff: 800,000 Seconds in Harar (Touch)
Von Hausswolff is one of those names I always mean to hear more of but never do, being interested in the psychogeographic concepts he explores in his dense and forbidding drones. The idea here is something about a trip to the titular Ethiopian city as part of a theatre project on Rimbaud, incorporating local field recording - playing children, insects, background hum - over thick drones produced, apparently, using a stringed instrument called the krar. Three parts, the first was outstanding, very beautiful, atmospheric, geographic, all-encompassing.


Deaf Centre: Owl Splinters (Type)
I really liked aspects of Pale Ravine, all that reverb and glacial deepness, but that's been stripped for this, leaving barren, bland 'cinematic' arrangements for strings and piano. Heard the first two tracks and, while pretty, were annoyingly empty. I have a problem with much neo-pseudo classical music of this sort, Dustin O'Halloran's latest being a particular bore, so this move by Deaf Centre is disappointing. Perhaps they're aiming for rawness, a 'Nirvana Unplugged' kind of purity, but I much preferred the moody earlier stuff.


Also listened to:
Philip Sherburne: Best of 2010 'Home' Podcast for Make Like A Tree, freely downloadable here.
Appealing tracklist of hip non-dance tracks from 2010 (Forest Swords, Raime, Wildbirds and Peacedrums etc) mixed by scribe and DJ Sherburne, some of which I'd heard but little of which rocked my boat here. His 2010 house-techno mix however, also available here, is very good and kicks off with Omar S's outstanding Gunnar Wendell remix.


That was the tram to work, on the way home I listened to the Delsin Shopcast for LWE, mixed by Delta Funktionen. Excellent mix of well-paced, not too fast techno, with frequent acid squiggles, captivating.

When I walked in the door the missus was playing something unusual, Country Gazette by Harumi Hosono(of Yellow Magic Orchestra)'s World Standard. She was bored of our usual Mozart, so was I, and this was welcome.


I then put on Kraftwerk's Autobahn LP and we listened to both sides. This was the highlight:


Doubt I'll be able to muster this much info each day, now for tomorrow...