Dog Days: The Refinery 29 Summer Playlist

refinery 29 summer playlist mix

curated by the good folks at ref29, with commentary by J Forgang aka Jonny Bocce aka my Glacial Lakes pardner, and done mixed by me as Night Plane. All the latest gauzy/bouyant/effervescent summer jams - please enjoy!

visit glacial lakes

glacial lakes - the magic cavern

a special bonus glacial gem for you to inaugurate our online refuge - the eminently pauseable "magic cavern", what jonny bocce describes sounding like "balearic Fela." Traipse through dense forests of exotic flora, sunlight passing through the canopy, the clatter of painted insects, until you reach the shadowy and glowing mouth of the cavern.

Now go visit some lakes, hit some tunes, explore new unforeseen dimensions of sound, chill hard.

glacial lakes dot net

glacial lakes - the rooftop special (mix)

glacial lakes - festival

glacial lakes - deep kicks

glacial lakes - the rooftop special (mix)

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just in time for memorial day, me & jonny, aka billy withers and jonny bocce, return as glacial lakes to bring you a tropicalic summer-jam mix: brimming with trippy beach disco, sandy soul, afro-house meltdowns and dubby delights. as always lots of original cosmic-dub and balearic-tinged interludes surface to make a one-of-a-kind voyage custom built for rooftop bbq and sunny cocktails. get your whites on. oh, and here's two of our original tracks as well: more dubby, tropical bliss. stay tuned for a website and more tunes. 

the rooftop special - track list

william devaughn - be thankful for what you got 

glacial lakes - gangsta white walls

glacial lakes - quiet rider

intrustion - little angel

tones on tail - lions

glacial lakes - after a couple of drinks I think straight

steel n' skin - afro punk reggae (dub)

willie colon - set fire to me (jazzbo mix)

lord rhaburn combo - disco connection (glacial lakes mix)

culhoe de song - african subway

glacial lakes - (take you) in the magic cavern

lawson plus four more - if you want me, you know where to find me

the tough alliance - a new chance

fever ray - when I grow up (Lissvik version)

david byrne - ade

glacial lakes - circular quay

andreas vollenweider - belladonna (tangoterje edit)

wind harp - song from the hill

wind harp - song from the hill

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forgang-foraged, glacial-lakes approved jewel of deep 70s field-recording weirdness. A bunch of cultic flower children built this wind harp on a hill and let nature take its course. look how huge that beast is. It's like ten times the size of a pleasant hippy toddler.

I'm not even going to go into detail about how surprisingly moody and sinister the recording is. I also really like that the album is credited to wind harp like it's alive. There is an excellent blog post already out there about this album which you can read in full here and which I quote:

"It is undoubtedly a spiritual sound, just not in a way that I suspect either the record company nor the hippies were anticipating. Certainly anyone sticking this on to accompany a meditation session or drug trip would get more than they bargained for; bummers, paranoia, bloody noses; all are possibilities. For however much we may be taught to view nature, and atmospheric conditions / weather systems in particular, as an entirely beautiful, harmonious system through which we can gain understanding of ourselves via an impression of dissolution within it’s patterns, it swiftly becomes clear upon dropping the needle that the sounds emerging from this here Wind Harp were REALLY FUCKING MALEVOLENT."

glacial lakes dj set: thurs @ savalas

glacial lakes - festival

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UR invited: this thursday @ Savalas in Brooklyn: 285 Bedford Ave. 10PM. 

jonathan & billy are glacial lakes. at Savalas they will be playing:

deep kicks

balearic bliss

robot disco

cosmic beats

as well as some original productions and exclusive re-edits of stuff like  'long train running' by the doobie brothers. counteract winter climes and their concurrent affective disorders with activities such as: pleasant conversation, good-natured socializing with friends and well-meaning strangers, drinking, dancing, and giving your favorite glacial lake DJ a hug. 

and check out a GL track just for you, the sun-dappled 'festival,' recorded on location during j & b's visit to the african nation of balearia.

related podcast material: ridin' high w/glacial lakes

01.06.09

12.02.08 

riding high podcast 1.06.09: glacial lakes

download mediafire (re-up)

download divshare

jonathan forgang and william rauscher reconvene as glacial lakes for 2009, sending you more echoey downtempo bliss, cooked with brazilian nuts and marinaded in dub, but this time beginning with a little AM radio muscle. as is the GL tradition, the real gems here are some exclusive jams borne on the backs of smooth grooves, which take flight under a glowing moon before finally leaving you face down on the beach at sunrise. you know, we just can't help ourselves - we try to stay on the shore, but when the oceanic birds of paradise begin to call, the synth solos and echo chambers come out and it's all over. 

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file under: balearic twilight, infinite smoothness, so bearded 

tracks:

doobie brothers - long train runnin' (gl edit)

kongas - tattoo woman

tim buckley - sweet surrender (gl edit)

glacial lakes - deep release (south beach demo)

henrik schwartz, ame and dixon  - D.P.O.M.B. (version 2)

glacial lakes - carla

michel hoeullebecq depresses the shit out of me

edu lobo - feira de santarem

caetano veloso - canto do povo de um lugar (gl epic edit)

glacial lakes - raindance

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as we're dealing with a lot of original material here, in lieu of track commentary, some things should be noted:

FIRST, don't bother trying to edit the doobie brothers sober. you're going to need one, maybe two brooklyn brown ales in you at least before you can even approach the doobies' wavelength. 

SECOND, if you screw up and accidentally record yourselves talking trash about contemporary european fiction while digitizing vinyl, leave it in. 

THIRD, if you're composing spacey shoreline tunes, don't restrict yourself to test-running them in your drab apartment in a frozen northeastern metropolis. in this case, jonathan personally went all the way to florida just so he could be absolutely certain that these new glacial lake jams are the real deal. he literally floated in a saltwater pool and listened to them coming out of speakers hidden in palm trees while babes walked by. scientific proof.  

The Temptations - Smiling Faces Sometimes

The Temptations - Smiling Faces Sometimes

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One of the most grand productions by Normal Whitfield (1940-2008), the high priest of long-form psychedelic soul, one of Motown's legendary greats, also responsible for such testaments to human creativity as "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" and "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." 

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By way of a prologue I can only say that I hope the lyrics of this song and the anecdotes I want to pass to you are related only by having nothing in common with each other. That is, I would sincerely have many fingers crossed that all the smiling faces met were actually telling the truth, and that they don't tell lies, of which I have proof.

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 Ultimately it seems that the protagonist of yesterday's course of events was not me, but new york city, the new york city of december 2008. I was there to mark the path of time, remaining aware of how uniquely NYC dec 2008 every plot turn and twist was, every intersection of people and places, actions and thoughts, dreams and obstacles.

 1. During the day I served as a model at a stock photo shoot, the photographer of which is a friend of mine who is talented, dedicated and clearly relishes his work, as does his art director, a warm person and inventive collaborator, whose husband drums in a popular dance-rock outfit. The shoot was held in the tin-ceiling’d, exposed-brick loft space of a couple who owns now two stores specializing in fine Scandanavian wares. Near 11am, two of my fellow models, a mother-daughter team, became so entangled in an edgy emotional meltdown that the husband was called and the two were evacuated.  The sustained burst of histrionics as well as the sudden departure of both their adult female model and child model was a very rough curveball in my friends’ plans, fortunately, my friend D, a recent transplant from Denver, was available on ultra short-notice, and served as a gracious and spritely replacement, her warmth and ease a welcome relief from the affectations of her haughty, ill-tempered predecessor.

 2. In the early evening I visited J, one of my oldest friends, at his new residence in Brooklyn Heights, we hung out with craig on the rooftop that beheld a great vision of New York, where the sleek neon menace of manhattan skyscrapers beamed down over that remarkable cluster of Sleepy-Hollow style residences that sits just south of the Brooklyn Bridge.  I had to think that my friend’s new digs were a fine step at a time of great personal change; it was clear that the new scene would allow him to re-affirm his love of NYC and the bold explorations it welcomes.

 3. We made our way to a party in honor of the birthdays of P & E, two beloved, gregarious charmers, held at the China Chalet in the financial district. Wall Street at the hour of 12am betwen Friday and Saturday is unquestionably spectral. The bank institution edifices stare unceasingly at passersby, their interiors, full of dreamlike roman columns and impossibly large, low-hanging chandeliers, all seem the elements of some temple left abandoned but wholly intact, their symbols and sacraments having since become indecipherable. It's like a Dario Argento movie filmed in Tokyo. On the way he said that getting roundly fucked up was useful in those moments when you felt your whole self freeze, like an overworked computer, and you needed nothing more than a cleansing reset.

 4. The China Chalet, you may be surprised to learn, has nothing to do with a chalet, unless the traditional Chinese understanding of the term means “a very long series of rooms perfunctorily and tackily furnished, akin to a Chuck E Cheese for grown-ups, that is, minus the pizza and plastic ball-pit but with booze and a dancefloor.” In any case this set-up seems fantastically well-suited for tremendous outpourings of randy, booze-fuelled mirth and late-night affection, such as those in full force last night during what by all indications was a heavy banger. As I left I paused to watch the owner, a garrulous Chinaman, fend off a small group of cops who had gathered in the entranceway, seemingly displeased by the sheer volume of rowdy attendees. He stood on a chair and fussed clumsily with the “maxium attendance” sign while rebuffing the policemen’s accusations.

5. My good friend S, a fashion designer, was there, dressed flawlessly, it was rightly said to her in passing, as a 90's ballerina teacher. Later, while pumping my fist to a song I’d never heard before, I was entertained to watch her receive the advances of a particularly fervently-gyrating blonde gentleman. I reflected that the best course of action when figuring out how to dance is to move as if the song’s rhythm is a limber, muscular equestrian bucking in time between your legs. This is not at all the preferred method of the fervent blonde, who preferred outrageous, heaven-aimed hand gestures and bursts of deep grindage.

6. Enthused on the floor, my Glacial Lakes partner J correctly text-spotted: it was in fact "I Believe in Miracles" by The Jackson Sisters that played at wonderfully deafening volume while I was at the bar, trying with great vanity to order heinekens from the stunningly oblivious middle-aged bartender. 

 7. Severe dancefloor rowdiness ensued, a grinding sea, when during a fiery re-edit of James Brown’s “There Was A Time,” the speakers seemed to fume smoke like from the nostrils of some Oriental beast.

 8. Around 2am I met J & V, two lively bosom buddies, near the coat check. One urged us to slap her red-denimed ass while the other searched in vain for a red bull or some substitute. I theorized to this pair that the dark secret between them was perhaps in fact that V was truly the bad one, and J truly the good one. V answered that the reason she had no tattoos was she had never found one bad enough, which caused J to expound on what such a perfectly vulgar image might consist of. 

9. If I were ever struck by the desire to scrap this blog and start a new, non-music themed one in its place, I would start a blog about politesse. I obsessively read advice columns. Dan Savage, of course. Between Dear Prudence and Cary Tennis, who warrant comparison by virtue of both writing for a different website with a 5-letter name that begins with S, I love Prudence for her no-nonsense tenacity and abhor Cary for his smarmy, limp-wristed, self-indulgent healing talk. Prudence's answers are rarely longer than a full paragraph, Cary's rarely less than a turgid several pages. Prudence often restrains her advice to comments which mean in essence "you need to shut the f*ck up and get over yourself." While Cary's lean towards "I hear your pain. I want you to turn your computer off and go. Go outside, go into the world. Smell a flower. Listen to an old blues song. Pause to watch a bird cut a sublime path through the endless blue sky. Love yourself. etc." 

In this case, politesse is extra important today when social mores have become diffuse, unpredictable, unspoken. Above all these mores have been and always will be mostly about how boys and girls* should handle each other. When Lacan famously said "there is no sexual rapport," he meant, there is no -one- sexual rapport. No instructions or rules for behavior can ever bridge the drafty void that exists between boys and girls, and this fact makes us want all the more furiously to attempt to.  For example, in my own case, I refrain from making advances on someone I genuinely like if it appears that alcohol or other factors may be interfering with their faculties. It seems disingenuous to my own inner sentiments, disrepectful to them, and to myself, as I don't particularly relish the thought of filling the role of 'guy who is standing right there when you're inebriated and looking to score.' This is merely my own psychological limitation, if it can be called a limitation: whether in work or in love, I only proceed forward on the strength of my certainty, and where this strength is lacking, there you will find me in calculated repose.

 *I mean here also 'girls and girls' 'boys and boys' or what have you. I mean simply 'two people who want to hit it.'

Ridin' High Podcast 12/02/2008: Glacial Lakes

download - mediafire (re-up) 

RH podcast 12/02/2008: Glacial Lakes 

A special podcast this week, courtesy of Glacial Lakes, an edit team composed of myself and J Forgang. Except for the milton and eddie jams, all tracks are either new material or substantial remixes, composed in the last seven days. This cast spends its morning hours bathing in fresh dubbed-out grooves before ascending midday for some precarious peak-time climbing. 

please enjoy

track list:

grifter's cove (theme from glacial lakes)

mi ami - clearlight (GL mix)
super mama djombo - festival (GL Mix)

night plane - the foxhole

milton nascimento - os escravos de jo

quicksilver messenger service - wolf run (GL mix)

night plane - mantra

eddie gale - the coming of gwilu