Said the Gramophone

My own Myspace

Kikagaku Moyo - "Green Sugar" [Buy]

Here in Montreal, we had Pop Montreal festival last weekend. and we also have Redbull Music Academy this month.

I like festivals because I see many friends across Canada and US, I haven't seen for a long time. It's simply really nice to see them.

I also enjoy being alone and read books a lot. Now I had a great dose of socializing. I want to have an alone time.

So I logged to into my old myspace account. just to be alone.

ROMAN HOLIDAY

Kate Maki - "September Sun". A song like a closing eye, a stone rolling downhill, like the vanishing sun in September. Time is of the essence, Kate Maki has none to waste - go go go, roll roll roll, quick while you can, before it's dark. The guitar won't keep up with her voice, the drums won't keep up with the guitar, don't catch your breath just go on, while there's still light, while there's still light, until winter lands, like two hands, placed flat on the table. [buy]

Sinéad Harnett - "Say What You Mean". Her best glass, the most famous works, were made during earthquakes. She'd begin a piece during the first tremors, in spite of them - melting in the crucible, working the molten solid, blowing the glass into form. She worked through the wobbles; she didn't care; she could make the finest things even as the land leaped, as the ground leapt beneath her feet. [produced by Kaytranada / buy]

A TO Z

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - "Storm"

Montreal is music.

This week two great music festivals are happening - A Varning from Montreal, the festival of international DIY punk rock at the Katacombes, and Pop Montreal all over the city. And Godspeed You! Black Emperor are playing a four-night residency at Théâtre Paradoxe in Ville-Émard. So so so much great music!

I moved here seventeen years ago this month and the first show I went to was skinhead bands at Jailhouse Rock. I wanted to see Daddy's Hands, but I got the date wrong. I should have noticed the haircuts and Fred Perrys before I paid the cover, but I stuck around and got my five bucks worth, shouting oi! oi! oi! with everyone else in the pit.

My second show was at the old Hotel 2 Tango, where one of Rob Crow's bands was playing. I biked north with Moskos and we missed the turn for Van Horne and went under the underpass. We had to ask directions from the gas station attendant at the Canadian Tire. The opening band was two guys with contact mics in their mouths, chewing pieces of paper. I took a break and walked down to St. Viateur to get bagels, magical and steamy.

My third show as a Montrealer was Godspeed You! Black Emperor at l'Olympia.

Since those first shows I've seen music everywhere in this town from Aux Vivres to Zoobizarre and dozens of parks, lofts, pools, and living rooms along the way. Montreal loves live music, when it's good we freak out, we lose our shit, we yell, we swivel our hips and get down. This week is going to be full of discovery, circle-pits, excitement, bum-shaking, and humming tunes on the way home.

[buy Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven]

(photo by Spike)

Typical Tree Behaviour

Yo La Tengo - The Fireside

These days I live with my friend Layne. Phrasing it like that kinda makes it sound like we were friends first, then lived together, but we didn't actually know each other at all until I moved into her house 2 years ago, sight-near-unseen, in a hasty decision made after a deep breakup that could have gone terribly awry. We barely knew each other then, but Layne still took me to IKEA when I moved in, and then helped me put together the bed I bought there once we got home. She's like that, equal parts capable and open - the kind of person who will drive you across the desert just because you thought it might be fun to go look at some art in Texas, and then while you are there, strike up a conversation with the local giving you a tour of the Judd sculptures, and then somehow next thing you know you will find yourselves at a party at the edge of town in an airstream trailer against the most beautiful sunset you've ever seen. I am not like this. I'm a shy person, a note-taker. I wait and see, stay quiet. When you're like I am, it's important to know people who are not like you. Who open doors and make things go.

For the past few months I have seen Layne less and less as she's spent more and more time putting together this big art festival, the most ambitious thing she's ever done. Before today, I knew a lot about it: that it was on the island that used to be Ontario Place, land of a thousand childhood daycare-field-trip memories; that it was full of site-specific art; that she was excited for it; that she was endlessly busy putting it together.

But today I actually went, and realized I hadn't really understood the magnitude of the whole project at all. Ontario Place, an amusement park on an island off Toronto's lakeshore, has been abandoned for 5 years. It feels a little grown-over, and now, thanks to this festival the whole island is covered in beautiful, weird art that feels both of the place and apart from it - just like all the buildings do against the landscape, just like the way nature and time have begun to encroach upon those same buildings at the edges. All through the park there are sculptures and sound pieces and videos, galleries built in abandoned pavilions, floating docks out on the water where artists perform, and somehow, all of it feels like it belongs to the place. A natural extension. I took a walk down the shoreline on the far edge of the island and saw an array of tiny sculptures scattered across the rocky beach, mixed in with the garbage that had accumulated there over time. I went to the Cinesphere and watched a movie made up of old IMAX footage, past and present leaning into each other. At one point, walking down a path, I glanced absentmindedly up at a man-made cliff and saw a single tree, spotlit, at the top of it. At first I thought it was just part of the landscape, but then - slowly, hilariously - it started to rotate, first one way and then the other. ("Confounding expectations of typical tree behaviour," said the wall text I found posted up on the side of the cave.)

If this were a review of the festival or an attempt at promoting it, I'd probably have to say that I knew its co-creator and then try to make that fact seem insignificant. But since we're here instead, I can tell you something else: having heard about all of this as it was coming together made the whole thing feel slightly, magically unreal - like Layne had conjured this whole place out of thin air, out of the stories she'd told me about it.

Plus, as I walked around, I started to realize that the pleasure of the whole experience was shot through with this other feeling - something less delightful and more uncanny. After I'd spent some time wandering through the forest alone in the dark at 10pm, using different light sculptures as beacons, I realized that walking around at this festival was maybe the first time in my life that I've felt truly, completely safe wandering around a place that felt off-limits. Otherworldly. As an adult human woman I've taught myself (and been taught, over and over and over again), to steer clear of shadows and mystery and darkness. But here, in this abandoned place that's been recovered but not stripped or worked out of its wildness, I felt safe exploring, and it felt like a gift. Like true play, the kind you only really get to glimpse in memories of being a kid, or dreams about it.

All that said, this is still a music blog, and I am still here to tell you about music. In/Future is a music festival too; there are performances by all kinds of bands, and they are good and interesting, and you should check them out. But also, the island makes its own music, and it's one of the best things about being there. All you have to do is walk a little down a path or along the shore, and suddenly you start to hear all these wind-borne duets: the sound of a guy down the beach playing the trumpet weaving in and out of the ambient drone of someone's far-off sound exhibit. A chorus of crickets in the woods alongside the lake, the traffic, someone gently DJing by the main gates. It's all strange, it's all wonderful, and I can't reproduce it here. You have to hear it for yourself.

[buy Popular Songs // go to in/future // photo is mine]

I'm waiting for my phone(to update)

Ant'lrd - "Kasuisai" [Buy]

I just finished work and was going to go home and eat and watch Narcos last episode of season 2 but my phone asked me to update IOS. So I decided to do it.

He(my phone) has been asking me almost everytime I look at the phone. "You wanna update?" I was like, "nah one day, I'll do it." or " not today dude. not today. I'm not feeling it."

But oh man, he is persistent. Finally 20 mins ago, I said. "alright sure. It's only gonna take a couple of minutes right?"

I was wrong, I'm still here looking at stupid Apple logo and taking so long. so gonna listen to music or watch fail videos on youtube.

good night.

SORRY GIRLS

Sorry Girls - "This Game". I was swept off my feet by Sorry Girls' debut single, a song that marries Lorde-like electro-pop and the drums-heavy disillusionment that drew me (in part) to Basia Bulat's early work. The band's a duo - singer Heather Foster Kirkpatrick and producer Dylan Konrad Obront, who live in Montreal - and this is the first thing they've ever released. That's a high bar, and maybe it explains the delay on a long-promised first EP. But I like to imagine that a song like "This Game" can act less like a measuring stick and more like a turbine, a little engine prodding Sorry Girls to keep hitting the practice space, to keep pressing record. Art-making mostly comes down to persistence; long live anything that eases the outpouring of blood, sweat and tears. Sorry Girls know how to write and sing a hook, they know how to make breathless what could easily be a lament. They're as well-served by their confidence as by their vulnerability - after all, pop music's greatest flavour is probably "bittersweet." [bandcamp]

Preview

Tennyson - "Lay-By"

You wake up in the afternoon. There is day left. Bright. The sun streams blankly through the window. Outside there is no sound. Inside the house there is no sound. Breathe in and feel it bloom up in your chest, deep as a lake. As dark and timeless. A frequency, a signal settles up and shimmers in the air same as it sparks against your teeth in darker rooms than this one. You think this body that you have is what you use to tune it in, roll around, scrape yourself against the edges. You think about your body, what it is. Think about your parents and their sadness, what you can't ask. Day, the blank light, what occurs to you without it. Think about your body and the mess of wires inside.

[buy With You]

Siri eating

Postcards - "Gum" [Buy]

In my day job, I make furniture and lately, I'm getting a lot of orders overseas and US.

So I had to call around freight shipping companies to get quotes. I called about 20 places.
Some are nice and some are not so nice. I don't blame them. Call centre must be exhausting. Respect to them.

One person though, was quite interesting. I don't remember her name but she was nice but her tone of voice, her mind was somewhere else. She sounded like a robot. I almost thought it was Siri.

(BTW I'm gonna name my next pet, Siri so I can ask him/her, "Siri! what's the weather today?" and Siri would answer, "woof woof" or "meow meoooww" and I would be "awesome! thanx!")

anyways, she sounded really like a machine but she was so good! So smooth and perfect. professional. just like Siri. But while I had to look up my customers address and she was waiting for me, I could hear like she was chewing a gum. I swore she was. but not too hard like Lions eating zebra chewing. More like a little bunny eating corn. Quiet but fast.

I wanted to ask her if she was chewing something but didn't want to think I was accusing her of anything because I realized she was probably trying to catch up on chewing gum or eating something while she can. Fast and smooth and Professional.

very cool that's all for today.

ps if you own or work at crate shipping company or custom broker, please let me know lol haha.

thanx have a great day!

NEVER TOO LATE

Yo La Tengo - "Sugarcube"

My major musical discovery this summer was Yo La Tengo. Yup, that band that's been around forever, which I was first exposed to on mixtapes back in the nineties. I didn't dislike them previously; it was worse than that. I wrote them off as being merely okay. But this summer something shifted in my mind as I listened to I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One. I finally see the genius of Yo La Tengo's sonic ambidextrousness, the way they move through sheets of noise as comfortably as they do tender little ditties. They somehow make the loud and quiet, distorted and clean, tongue-in-cheek and sincere all fit together perfectly.

I don't know what my eureka moment was exactly, but it might have been when I was listening to "Sugarcube" on the Metro to work one day. Hearing Ira Kaplan singing that he was trying to be more assured, less uptight, and more aware over the swirl of gloriously noisy pop really hit home. Those are the things I'm trying to do. Yo La Tengo makes it clear that it's never too late to try to be a better a person, to fall in love with an old band, to see beyond what you thought you knew. To squeeze a drop of blood from a sugarcube.

[buy]

person

Oh-OK - "Person" [Buy]

I went to leather supply place because my girlfriend couldn't go buy since she has to work but before I went, she warned me the guy who works there is a sexist racist old dude.

Well, he was. I was talking to my girlfriend on the phone and asking her to make sure which leather and he said, "oh women eh? they are picky."

I said, "no, we just wanna make sure it's the right one."

Then, there was black lady came in and he said, "Jamaica."

"what?" I said but he said like singing with handclap.

WTF????

and then, I went to buy cat food at Costco and this guy approached me and started asking me, "you wanna buy designer perfumes?" He had a paperbag full of perfumes....

I said, "no" so he said, "where you from? China?? You people are so cheap man!"

I ignored him.

Oh man, I hate people. I mean stupid people like these guys. sick of them.

Then, inside Costco, I was trying on glasses. My glasses is half broken and its been like that for 3 weeks. Temporary fixed with scotch tape on the sides. It gives me 3D theatre feel everyday all day. Blair Witch Project motion sickness all day everyday.

As you know, when you try out new glasses, you can see much since you have to take of glasses.

I was alone there. I needed someone. I needed a person.

But I figured it out. I took selfies with all the glasses and I didn't need another person. I hate and sick of stupid sexist racist losers. well, ya i like people! thanks for listening me rant.