PJ Harvey - "Rub 'Till It Bleeds" [buy]
Can - "Vitamin C" [buy]

The door swung open. Steve was over six feet tall and had thick arms from all the tinkering he did: assembly, disassembly, rogue missions under the cover of night. He gave Ben a big hug.

"Your neighbour was giving me the stink-eye," Ben said.

"Ah," Steve waved his hand dismissively, "they all think I'm dealing." He laughed and led Ben up the stairs.

"I didn't know the station was back up and running until I heard it coming from a chip truck downtown," Ben told Steve.

At the top of the stairs they turned left and into a double room in an intricate state of disarray. Piles of records leaned against every wall and the room was criss-crossed with wires. In one corner was a long table covered in turntables, amps, and tape decks.

"That's amazing. I didn't think our signal was broadcasting that far north." Steve held up a finger as he sat down at the table and pulled a pair of headphones up to his right ear.

The song playing on a nearby speaker faded out in a swirl of distortion as Steve grabbed a microphone and pulled the crossfader. "You're listening to CSIC, Seasick Radio, and that last cut was 'Rub 'til It Bleeds' by the brilliant PJ Harvey. Next up we're going to go deep into another world," Steve hit the reverb switch and his voice went wobbly.

Steve had explained to Ben how this whole pirate radio station worked. To him it was all child's play, plugging one thing into another and another, and then shimmying up the side of a building and installing a rigged-up broadcast tower. Nothing to it, Steve said, but Ben was in awe. It was all magic to him.

"Our guides on this journey," Steve continued his intro, "are the one and only German funkateers. Ladies and gentleman. Here is Can." His reverby voice left off as the first intricate drumbeats of the song faded in.
--
RIP Jaki Liebezeit

Blithe Field - "Clasped Hands"
Blithe Field - "In the Moonlight"

In the director's cut of my life - the one where I move to the Maritimes for school and to take long sad walks by the freezing cold water, where I own better sweaters and more knitted blankets, let my friends cook me spaghetti dinners on board game night and grow slowly into someone whose heart fits right inside her, am swept up some nights by dusk and fog but quietly and without the need for repair, where I learn to sleep in real quiet and have a better record collection and am in love with a woman whose hair spills across our sheets like sun through the blinds and who teaches me to make things with my hands, where I write poems with line breaks in them and read only books I can steal from the thrift store, where on weekends I clamber alone up the muddy banks to somewhere, see the view and come home winded, where in quiet moments I feel the weight of my failures pressing into brand new parts of me, am tethered entirely different than I am to myself here, in this version, the one in which I'm writing now - this is what the walk home sounds like.

[buy Warm Blood]

Chavez - "The Bully Boys" [buy]

The crushing riff at the heart of "The Bully Boys" feels archeological, like it was discovered deep in a mountain cave or found sun-scorched in the desert after years of searching. Hypnotically repeated, the riff is our careening path into the song, something to follow as the whole thing lights up with pyrotechnics. Geological bass, sick guitarmonies, and ragged singing over drums galloping forward into double-time. When it all feels a bit too much, the band relents, pulling back into a breakdown as it fades. The first new Chavez song in two decades finds the band easily picking up where they left off, updating and refining a sound that was quintessentially nineties into a twenty-first century jam.

Trust Fund - "Like a frog".

A cathedral of marshmallow - the dyed kind, pale green and cotton-candy pink, marshmallows for looking at more than eating. It was designed over six years and took 80 more to build. Portico, cantilever, gothic spires like arrows to the sky. Artisans were brought from the other side of the world - architects, sculptors, carpenters, glaziers, mallow-masons, plumbers to raise the holy water. What a cathedral it would be. What a cathedral it was. A cathedral of marshmallow - the dyed kind, pale green and cotton-candy pink. When it was finally finished the bishop stood in its nave and closed his eyes, feeling God upon him. The pilgrims came, the congregants. They worshiped there. When no one was looking, they delicately licked the walls. Seven months later, the cathedral melted in a fire.

[buy]

Leather Jacuzzi - "Check My Piss"
Leather Jacuzzi - "Coca Cola Hammock Station"

A kitchen cart. A haircut. One single milky moonstone in a small translucent blue bag. 6 thin sticks of Palo Santo in a black velvet pouch. A candle shaped like a small crystal. At least 5 cards that made me cry a little. A beautiful calendar that Paterson made. A gigantic chocolate cat with orange candy eyes that follow you as you walk around the apartment, like the eyes in portraits lining the halls of cartoon haunted mansions. A tape with my friends singing punk songs about each other and their dogs and relaxing in hammocks. Jesse's book. 4 beautiful glass bottles of Topo Chico, lined up and shining in the windowsill now that we've cleaned up from the party, like magic tokens plucked from a dream.

[buy Monsters, Narcs and Idiots]

My top 10 albums which had a huge impact on me when I was an infant.

-dad farting(best of)
-mom farting
-dog barking
-birds singing
-dog farting
-dog burping(B-sides)
-dad burping
-mom burping
-brother farting(Peel sessions)
-dad snoring(Demo)

Comments:

This is the best year-end list I've ever seen, aside from Sean's of course.

by blayze, Jan 14, 2017

thanx! took a long time to compile!

by Mitz, Jan 14, 2017

Lol...When life was simple!

by Marcus, Jan 14, 2017

great laugh to start the week :) thanks! Kat

by katherine, Jan 16, 2017

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Black Mountain - "Don't Run Our Hearts Around" [buy]

The mountain path was narrow and it had been days since Lin had seen a fellow traveller. Barnabas, loaded down with her few possessions, was growing tired. His tail was drooping, and his paws were sore. There was no food for him on this narrow trail.

Together they moved forward along the thin edge, always hoping that around each corner the path would lead down into the valley, or open into a plateau where they could both rest. They were exhausted after hours of walking on slate and knowing that any lapse in concentration might bring about a long fall into nothingness.

Barnabas stopped, noticing a vulture wheeling high above them, effortlessly riding the wind.

Lin tugged on his harness, and spoke quietly into his raised ear. "Come Barnabas, that bird will not make a meal of us today." Lin's voice cracked as she talked. She found her waterskin and drank from it freely. She had been refilling it along the way from the freshets of meltwater that ran down the mountain rocks.

Lin poured water into a small bowl, which Barnabas lapped quickly. "There you go," she said. Then she reminded him "We have many days of walking ahead of us. We can't slow down. Mica's life depends on this." Barnabas dipped his head in understanding and Lin patted him between the eyes.

But as she turned to start walking she felt something, an unexpected weight pulling at her. It was as if an invisible hand was pushing her off the cliff face. She tried to steady herself but couldn't resist the force. In a moment she was leaning sideways and then falling from the mountain.

Barnabas howled. In a second Lin disappeared from his view as she plunged into the unknown.

Comments:

Srry, what´s that pic..?

by Petr, Jan 11, 2017

Hey Petr, thanks for asking! It's a photo I took on a hiking trail just outside the town of Banff, Alberta.

by Jeff, Jan 11, 2017

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