Monday, November 1st, 2010 // Paperhouse
I’m going to write about a song that I honestly believe should make its way into the lives of every human being. Recently it has been influencing every aspect of my life.
Let’s go over the progression of this song: Giselle speaks. A piano gently backs her. This is a song of longing. What’s funny is that I’m in no way in a rut of lonely unrequited love. I’m no beautiful damsel dripping in gold, but the song resonates because it captures an emotion so fully. The lyrics are effectively paralleled in the instrumentation, and together they create an image that’s impossible to shake. Tasting the hushed blazes of orange behind plum-speckled clouds, feeling like you’re floating gently through a glowing forest of jellyfish, you are wrapped in Giselle’s words like the gentlest smoke of incense.
What makes this song such an earworm? I would have to say that it’s due to the simple layered progression of the song. Each layer is simple and memorable and satisfying in its own right. Nevertheless, the song is a gem because whenever a single constituent part of the song is remembered, the rest of it hovers in your mind, gently holding your memory like a lover easing into bed. Despite how memorable each individual piece of the song is, there’s a particular inimitable reverb on Giselle’s voice that makes every listening drip with pleasure.
This is the kind of song that, oddly enough, makes you want to make sure that your mom knows how much you love her and how fortunate you feel for having been raised by her. So, that’s what I’m off to do. By gosh, I’m going to make her proud of this kid she’s brought into this beautiful world! Again, the song is “Crave You (ft. Giselle)” by Flight Facilities. Look it up online. Readers, I promise you’ll love it.
As per usual, if you want to get down with the WRCT sound, check out the following artists and their respective songs: “Duck Sauce” by Barbara Streisand, “El Remolon” by Cumbia Bichera (Tremor Mix), “Minotaur Shock” by The Downs, “Rye Rye” by Sunshine ft. M.I.A., and “This Unfolds” by Four Tet
-Juan Fernandez
Monday, October 25th, 2010 // Paperhouse
I would talk about Bauhaus and Bela Lugosi being dead, but Halloween’s not my style. Sorry folks, I’m an All Saints Day kind of guy. Speaking of saints, let’s talk about Benoit Mandelbrot. He passed away this week. That’s right; that guy who was responsible for the entire field of mathematics that you’re currently studying was still alive a week ago. Let’s just take a minute and think about how radically he morphed how we as humans experience reality.
Ah, good reader, you’re back! So, you’ve come to the realization that you’re nothing more than an emergent behavior phenomenon and that the way in which you interact with other humans and the world around you is paralleled by the way that cellular structures interact with each other, have you? Well, that’s great. I guess that it’s only natural then that we talk about psychedelic music. Psychedelic musical history is a funny one in that at the time of its origins — the late ‘60s and early ‘70s — the music that was being produced under this name was some pansy-ass folk. You had the Grateful Dead, the Mamas and the Papas, Moby Grape, the Yardbirds, and the 13th Floor Elevators. Simply put, psychedelic music started out slow. Boy, have things changed! Thanks to the pace of audio recording technology, things have gotten loud, abrasive, euphoric and stupidly complex, all of which are good things.
If you’re interested in exploring the truly avant-garde psychedelia that was manifesting itself throughout the world in the ‘70s, explore the Finders Keepers catalogue. Dedicated to introducing fans of psychedelic, jazz, folk, funk, avant-garde, and whacked-out movie muzak to a lost world of undiscovered vinyl artifacts from the annals of alternative pop history, you’ll find the artists that paved the road for contemporary psychedelia. They can be found at .
You don’t have to be tripping hard to experience psychedelia. Check out the following and you’ll see what I mean: Flying Lotus, Acid Mothers Temple & the Melting Paraiso U.F.O., Kristin Miltner, Boards of Canada.
-Juan Fernandez
Monday, October 11th, 2010 // Paperhouse
One day on the Cut this autumn I was scritchin’ and scratchin’ — you know, you know, professionally beat matchin’ some vinyl — when a shadowy figure loomed before me. I squinted my eyes and saw what appeared to be an android bearing an anthracite guitar and a glowing red 2001 iMac monitor on his head. He said no words; rather, he tilted his head, and white buzzing squares on the screen began to race. Slowly he spit out two CDs from his palms and handed them to me.
He turned and began to leave without saying a word. I couldn’t allow myself to see him leave without knowing his name, so I quickly slipped, “Wh— Who are you?” In a bitcrushed tone he crunched back, “Robot Cowboy.”
Robot Cowboy — Dan Wilcox: a futuristic, expatriate American space ranger who combines wearable computing, MIDI guitar, and live energy to wander the digi-range playing for dying astronauts. This is a low-fi guitar show with algorithmic balls from a devospud, laptop-stomping idiot wearing exposed electronics.
His mission, you ask?
“You are unwittingly controlled by your machines; I feel obligated to return the favor through sonic variations in time and booty shaking. I will protect you from the arcane sonic forces which threaten your very existence.”
He’s roaming on campus somewhere. You should find him and ask him for a demo on how to masterfully use PureData.
Want to hear what he’s got in store for you, cosmonaut? Type this universal resource locator into your Internet browser: http://www.robotcowboy.com/category/media/
-Juan Fernandez
