Archives : all posts by Dan

Screamin' Jay Hawkins - "I Hear Voices"

Edmund in a basement apartment. Unable to return to his place with May, he took the first thing he could find, just so he wouldn't have to go anywhere else. A house with six other people. "We share expenses here, we live communally." He wondered how long he would last in the face of mandatory dinners and the shared smells of bodies and a decaying house. He was in his mid-forties, and this was supposed to be some kind of badge of honour, the feather in his cap that was actually nailed to his head. He imagined Frank, his 11-year-old, coming here. He could see the boy's normally scared face downright petrified of the sheer height of these people, their confidence, their beaded everything. He lay on his mattress on the floor of the basement, the power out, and headlights cutting along the ceiling in jagged scrapes. He seemed to sink like a chemical burn into the ground.

[28 days left on the auction]

Angel Olsen - "Lights Out"
K's Choice - "Not an Addict"

Edmund walked out on May. He walked out on May and into the slanted streets at two in the morning. The late March ice was collecting in slanted flat puddles, like the whole world was tilted on its side and frozen that way. It seemed like there was nothing in his chest, no heart, no lungs, no ribs. Nothing but an electrical buzz. A buzz that seemed to be propelling him forward into the night and away from his fourth marriage. Carolyn, Alison, Jen, and now May. And the women in between, of course. And the women during. He grimaced into a donut and let it surge through him like his blood was sewage. There is no such thing as a normal mental state. There is no word that exists that isn't constantly being contorted into letters. There is no such thing as nature. There is only the buzz. The clicking, insatiable buzz.

[Buy Burn Your Fire for No Witness]
[Buy Paradise in Me]

(image)

Timber Timbre - "The New Tomorrow"

That face. Push that face into place. Today is the day when I spend it all. When I eat it all. I used to feel my life like a bright fuzzy line that stretched into time, and who knew what details would come into focus, but the general shape was there. There was length, it stretched far. But now the future feels exploding. After here, there is just *pow* space. It glimmers and sparkles but it goes everywhere, you can't look at it. That's the real problem with i//THAT FACE//t is that you can't look at it. You can't point in every direction, because then it's no longer a direction. It is simply everything and nothing. So I'll spend it all. Anything for that face.

[pre-order]

Each Other - "About the Crowd"
WAIT

WAIT

WAIT

WAIT

WAIT

Dig the basement and wall the basement. Build the desk and sand the desk. Seal the desk and build the chair. Make the candle and light the candle. Sit at the desk in the chair and write the letter. Write the letter with everything you have, everything left after digging the basement and building the desk and making the chair and sanding the chair and making the candle and lighting it. Put the letter in the envelope and seal the envelope with the wax from the candle. Make the lock for the drawer of the desk, and cut the key. Put the letter in the drawer and lock the drawer and put the key in your pocket. Take a walk and buy some chocolate; eat the chocolate. Walk to the bridge and throw away the key. Walk home and knock down the wall in the basement.

WAIT

[Buy from Fat Possum]

Schoolboy Q - "Collard Greens (feat. Kendrick Lamar)"

Pinball Sex. Moves like a Stretch Painting. Speaks stacked in Vertical Sentence. The kind of place where the mats scratch their backs on your boots and the beds resurrect beneath you, passed out. Reverse consumption. Cars that only slow down. Hydraulic Walk. I can only see electricity, I can only see your thoughts. Equal parts Slippery Sweat and friction point bisssshhhh.

[Buy]

(thanks to Miguel)

Li'l Andy - "The Powers of Our Day"

Three place settings. Three simple promises. Three long horizons. Dinner was either dipped in sunset or cold night crickets, and people were allowed to say things they didn't mean. They could do that, and nothing happened to them, they just went on. There was no God under the table or in the closet or in the furnace or in the floor. There was no God anywhere and people just said and did whatever they wanted. Three empty fields. Three ragged fenceposts. Three lousy words.

[Buy]

Girl Tears - "You're Nothing"

Focus on the out-breath. Feel the out-breath and let it go. Accept yourself as an animal. Accept that you will bellow and howl and stamp your feet and lose control. Honour your impulses and be gentle with your wild urges. Let go of self-punishment like it were the out-breath. Do not dwell on having behaved like a depraved teenager with a gun. Do not begrudge yourself the thoughts that keep you in the shower. Know yourself. Know the sticky, ragged caverns of your own dripping soul, it is the wealth and beauty of your place in the world. See the thick, buttery layers of baseless aggrandizement and the scuffed and swollen membrane of the stubborn switch that's stuck on 'run'. Know it. Measure it, with your fingers. And then take your fingers away and look at that space. That space is the distance between complete self-actualization and total annihilation. Out-breath in that space. [$5 USD]

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Hot 8 Brass Band - "Sexual Healing"

Today would have been my friend Joel's 35th birthday. He was responsible for recommending this gem that has been one of my most "I loved that one" posts ever (NB: Joel AND the Hot 8 show up in the comments!), so I think of him every time. He was an incredible soul and he is dearly missed. [Buy]