This Thurs: Pool Party

We're sick of winter. There, we said it. Join us this Thursday at Grace Hotel for a party designed to give the cold weather the finger as well as unwind after fashion week. Enjoy a sweet indoor pool, steam room and sauna with night plane DJs. William plays current cosmic, Harry plays classic acid, like dis:

Swimwear recommended! (street clothes welcome too)

Grace Hotel Pool Party

Thursday Feb 18th, 8pm

125 West 45th St (btw 6th + 7th Ave)

holger czukay - movies

holger czukay - movies

Can mastermind Holger's first solo album, 1980, regularly name-checked by contemporary grand electronic wizards like Lindstrom. There's some brilliantly weird/goofy pop numbers here, like the well-known "Cool in the Pool" which sounds like bizarro Sesame Street, and "Persian Love" which finds Holg sampling an Iranian singer, much like Eno-Byrne were doing in NYC at the same time on the best album ever, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. But the Lindstrom-y epic smoothness comes in on two long-form jams, "Hollywood Symphony" and "Oh Lord Give Us More Money," both undulating, shapeshifting compositions blending electronic and organic instruments and doing all kinds of unpredictable shifts and trippy psych-prog sideswipes. 

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the new best movie theatre in Manhattan is the Regal Cinema at Battery Park. I saw Watchmen opening night there and it was great. No one goes there because it's weirdly isolated, but it's huge and has great stadium seating, etc, all the comforts of high-tech American spectacularity. I have plans to accompany a small group of male friends to see I Love You, Man, which will probably be as adorable and affirmative of an outing as the image might suggest. It was not my idea, I thought about it but didn't have the cajones to round up some intimate brethren for such a collective bro-expression - that honor goes to Mr. Zade, who in other ways has already proven the functionality of his cajones, thus this is a somewhat redundant yet not unwelcome attesticulation. 

you are aware, of course, that the word 'testimony' (and thus 'testify' and 'attestation') is derived from the word for 'testicles' in Greek? Oh, you weren't? There you go. That's not unrelated, as Freud says in a footnote somewhere, to the pecularity of the paternity test: unlike the mother, which is easy to identify, the owner of the testicles responsible must be testified to. 

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.  

dj harvey - moon shadow mixes

dj harvey - moon shadow part one

dj harvey - moon shadow part two

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Dj Harvey

these are the best easily-available mixes from harvey. The other recordings you can find with little difficulty are the black cock edits, which are widely credited as reviving interest in the disco edit as an art form but aren't that exceptionally rewarding as home listening, or the late night sessions, which harv oversaw during his residency at ministry of sound in the UK, but which sound like some generic jazz-lounge house. The kind of generic jazz-lounge house that reminds me of that place Radost FX that we used to eat at all the time when we studied abroad in Prague. Remember that place? It was severely euro-trash and had a faux-harem interior and great vegetarian food. They must have hated our guts except for the part where we dropped heavy USD every day. 

Radost FX, where we used to eat all the time, remember that?

Harvey's moon shadow mixes are deeply chilled-out, 3am outer-space epics. they involve smooth robots making love on the beach. They are great if you are interested in such activities as riding high, playing piano under the stars on LSD, and traveling to other planets in a cruise ship while drinking free mimosas. These mixes can easily serve to demonstrate everything important about being a good DJ. Here's the list: play good songs, play songs no one's ever heard before but are awesome, play songs in a good order. that's it.

Mollino polaroid

on a related note, I was explaining Carlo Mollino to a friend, and said that in addition to being an architect, designer, race car driver and pilot, Mollino had a home called Casa Mollino that was full of amazing furniture and artefacts, but in which he never slept, instead using it as a spot to bring prostitutes which he then photographed in highly elaborate and visually stunning polaroids. My friend remarked, "yes, a masturbatorium. this is what all men, consciously or not, are striving for." I said that one of my musical goals was to provide the imaginary soundtrack to Carlo's Casa - consider these mixes as Harvey's unknowing contribution. Oh, and go see him at his regular gig at Love in Greenwich Village. 

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There's no complete tracklisting for either mix. If you look on DJHistory you see some partial reconstructions at best. I'll help out with this: the last track on mix one is...Dreams by Fleetwood Mac, the best song ever made.

thanks to simply good music for posting these.

zip password: simplygoodmusic

Woolfy vs. Projections - Invisible Conga People Remix

Woolfy vs. Projections - Return of the Starlight (Invisible Conga People Remix)

one of the tracks from this week's mix is an icp rework of a number from woolfy vs. projection's balearic opus astral projections of twilight. beardo-balearia nuggets are the new downtempo/triphop. When you're sailing in these blissful waters, remember that at all times you pass between the scylla of trip-hop and the charybdis of smooth jazz. ICP (invisible conga people, not insane clown posse. unfortunately) do right by me by keeping an even keel between relaxation and adventure, between chilled-out and weirded-out. Plus it has heavily-reverbed piano that sounds like it was stolen from 'Sister Morphine,' which always wins me over.

the secret interlocutor for this track is David Crosby. With its balearic twilight grooves and lyrics like "oh captain..am I home..1000 years later..where did I go?" it's basically an ode to David's nautical weed classic "if only i could remember my name." get up with it.

Carl Craig & Moritz von Oswald: Recomposed 3

It's a shame this isn't getting released domestically. It would be a shame if you didn't hear this. It would be a shame not to share it.

Craig & Oswald - Recomposed 3 (Ravel & Mussorgsky)

W//K/ND PR/NZ Podcast: A Case of Balearia

photo of Weekend Prince by Zade, lifelong balearia sufferer: Fort Tilden, 7am

Weekend Prince Presents: A Case of Balearia

David Crosby - Orleans
Giorgio Moroder & David Bowie - The Myth
Thin Lizzy - The Sun Goes Down
Tiedye - Nothing
Night Plane - Stroke You Up
Todd Terje - Bodies (Prins Thomas Orgasmatron)
Lemon - A-Freak-A
Lee Douglas - Cum N Go
Piston Fiston - Pluto's Retreat (Fabrizio Mammarella Remix)
Kelly Polar - Sea of Sine Waves
Lindstrom - Grand Ideas
Max Essa - Back to the Beach
Zero 7 feat. Jose Gonzalez - Futures
Steve Hillage - Palm Trees - Love Guitar

We: are swathed in days of stuporous heat. The search for delicious, crushed-ice refreshments and dabutt trumps all others. Every summer has its share of ailments and remedies, and every summer around this time the disease known as Balearia begins to manifest its symptoms in those it has afflicted.

The name Balearia refers to an incurable parasitic infection both contagious and hereditary. It is derived from the musical term "Balearic," which refers to a certain style of beachy, sun-melted smooth trippy disco. The designation Balearia is used in conjunction with the symptom of: always needing to go to the beach, all the damn time. Sufferers are unable to find pleasure in non-beach activities such as: extended hanging-out in an urban environment, having to wait in line for stuff, and wearing pants.

Once an addict, they say, always an addict. Do not attempt to reason with the Balearia victim or otherwise curtail his/her efforts to get a fix. This mix is intended to be played in the car ride on the way to the beach, so that those suffering from Balearia can earn some morsel of respite while they patiently wait to arrive at the shore, like white-knuckled junkies clinging to the handrest.

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I've always wanted to open a mix with "Orleans" by David Crosby, which shows up at the very end of his solo record, and has a haunting chamber music vibe. "The Myth" is a soundtrack piece from "Cat People". "Stroke You Up" by Night Plane, you know. The Lindstrom track is fiery and is from his upcoming album release, "Where You Go I Go Too." It's three tracks long and each is an epic disco voyage ala Moroder's theme for "Battlestar Galactica."

Smooth Science 2: Midterm

[Handwritten Caption:] "There is so much evil coming off this page I had to send it away. Please don't try anything funny."

Norvorg is the name for the legendary Swedish evil spirit that preys on unsuspecting vacationers near bodies of water. This is nothing exceptional: pagan Swedish mythology is rife with malevolent forces that embody aquatic anxiety. In Norvorg's case, however, the method developed to hold the spirit at bay was unique: over generations, rural Swedes passed down brief, inanely cheerful songs, called abbania, intended to subdue the demonic entity with their breezy effervescence. Such is the direct origin of Swedish pop music as a genre, as well as Abba, the name of its most successful export.

Thus in Sweden, smooth music, at least in the bubblegum variety, was created as a mythological means of reckoning with nature, being functionally a mixture of art, technology, and religious ritual. It wasn't merely a means of accentuating a chilled-out maritime soiree, but of securing the chill-out by staying in tune with a potentially hostile universe.

Should you in the coming days find yourself in a leisurely state by the waterside, let us recommend these six sonic talismans:

- Lenny Kravitz - I Belong to You

Yep. Listen to this track and tell me it's not sick. Back when Lenny also produced "Justify My Love" for Madonna. Could you put this on while you made out with somebody, or would you laugh?

- Gabor Szabo - Azure Blue



From the Hungarian jazz guitarist's album High Contrast, which also contains the original version of Breezin', the instrumental later made famous by George Benson. Like Christopher Cross' "Sailing," "Breezin" is so programmatically smooth, it's a blueprint for the revolution. "Azure Blue" is included in the playlist instead, however, because this is the midterm: Breezin', Sailing and other such master classics are pre-reqs for the course.

George Benson - Breezin' (Live on the Old Grey Whistle Test)

- American Analog Set: The Magnificent Seventies

In high school my friends and I wore out this track and the accompanying album, From our Living Room to Yours. Wistful and lightly propulsive, like staring out of your suburban bedroom window while listening to Ege Bamyasi, the track is a jewel of airy melancholia and poppy-tinged daydreams, and is great company when navigating late at night those endless asphalt tracks that comprise the Texas highway system, and which arch in the dark like the backs of prehistoric beasts feeding on the dead.

- Lee Ritenour: Morning Glory



In crate-digging, the actual pilfering through milk crates, or Google reader or whatever it is you use, is only the first step. The second is scouring a whole album looking for that one song, the one that strikes a nerve. Smooth noodley jazz is certainly rough waters for the impassioned digger, because there is a very low diamond to shit ratio. But as Lee knows, such excursions are all part of the captain's journey. "Morning Glory" is well Steely, with a bit of CSN and some elevator thrown in for good measure.



- Azymuth: Montreal City



Azymuth [album]

Alan H. sent this in, and I've probably listened to it every day since then, Azymuth's '74/'75 Brazilian jazz debut. Alan quite correctly anticipated that I would be well down with this, as it matches nimble tropical rhythms with tinny martian synthesizers like something from the second half of either Bowie's "Low" or Closer by Joy Division. It's a fantastic record, one that rewards repeated listening. It might be a case of creeper beats: they might not hit you in the face at once, they may wait until you think you're safe and sound to deploy their weapons of sunbaked smooth....highly recommended. Alan and I had an extended follow-up conversation in which he made the observation that alot of American yacht rock ends up following a curious class trajectory, being the product of ennui-ridden rich California rockers living in the lap of luxury, sulking amidst their cuervo gold, white lady and nineteen-year olds, and making its way via muzak-systems to the quotidian world of the midwest supermarket.

- Quiet Village: Singing Sand



Another track from QV's new "Silent Movie" LP, a distant smooth cousin to DJ Shadow's Entroducing. Or as one bulletin boarder put it, beardo disco = the new trip-hop.

After three or four days in a row of epic band practices interspersed with late night brooklyn loft parties I was totally worn down and brain-dead, so while, framed by my old white window, the evening light settled softly behind the williamsburg bridge, I lay with headphones on and passed out to this new record. It is an afternoon springtime nap masterpiece. It is also shit-smooth gentle tide disco made by two bald DJs. I want to share it with you, Like a lot of very good music, it is highly practical to listen to, being a kind of sonic frozen margarita, or light Mexican beer. This track makes me think of coconut-infused suntan lotion and the gentle movements of brown skin in the dark. It's what doin' it on the beach sounds like.

Smooth Sciences: An Introduction

Wong Kar-Wai, "2046"

One of this site's guiding principles is to avoid posting entire albums. The reasoning behind this is evident in its exceptions. An entire album may be posted without derision or scorn here only when it is out of print or otherwise difficult to obtain. Or, lastly, when it is really important to do so. Because music, the most incorporeal of the arts, not only sooths beasts, on humans it can as well compel and possess.

Inundated as we are with dystopic images of future days, it was striking to watch the future-segment of "2046" and encounter a tomorrow that seemed beautiful, naive, decadent, suffused with the neon streaks of an opiate light. Not a political warning or cultural satire, or PKD-style engagement with the schizo-dissociative powers of technology, just a completely oneiric escapist fashion-magazine spread, one that produces a radiant digital narcosis.

So here now are three works that can be said to intersect with such a dose of bright tomorrows:



Gas - Pop

"I believe in the signal of the bass drum. It it the heartbeat of my life." - Wolfgang Voigt, aka Gas, Mono.Kultur #08

The real name of ambient-techno artist Gas is Wolfgang Voigt. Voigt is the co-founder and co-owner of Kompakt records, and is a highly influential and prolific electronic musician.

There's much that can be said about the maternal heart-pulse of the techno bass drum, and as well for the warm, pulsating, embryonic womb that the well sound-system'ed club attempts to emulate (Fabric Room One, for example). This sound is compelling enough that it can keep me in its sonic amniotic suspension for minutes at a time, until the spell is broken and I am reminded that I'm in a weird dingy club in the immediate vicinity of NYU, surrounded by total randos.

A new luxurious Gas boxed set will soon be released, meaning that technically Pop still remains out of print, and well within an acceptable domain of full-album posts.

As for a description of this record, we would be hard-pressed to beat Voigt's own, from the same interview:

"I had an image in my mind of a gaseous and nebulous sound, of an exhilarating streaming music which literally flows over, which has no beginning or end no hard edges, only softness. My association was this music drifting through the coppice of a misty wood in vast sound spheres, a very elegaic sound repeated over and over in the far distance, held together by an invisible bass drum that comes marching by somewhere hidden in the woods coming closer and fading away again."

It's an amazing sunday sunset record, preferably one of those hazy interminable twilights, one of those blue-gray and feathery evening come downs.

In a sense, The Field is a kind of punk reduction of Gas's near-classical sense of dynamics and ornament - The Field takes up this loop-based ambient techno approach and fidelities it way down, brutes it up, takes it from the Germanic sylvan idyll and kicks it back into the city streets.



Manuel Gottsching "E2-E4"

So in the case of these records, geography is everything. Gas is the Germanic sylvan idyll, when you're out stamping in boots for boar among the brush.



e2-e4 is a beach record. Recorded in 1981 in Berlin on a two-track in one take by Gottsching, guitarist for supreme face-melters Ash Ra Tempel, it effectively helped invent techno music. It consists only of an unspooling of an infinite synth, and the soaring, tremulous clusters of an electric guitar windblown across the waters. Like Gas, it doesn't ever seem to be going anywhere, but unfurls blissfully in place. Again, the timelessness of the womb, the sublime "oceanic feeling" that Freud describes in Civilization and Its Discontents.

E2-e4 is often regarded as a founding track of Balearic, which is an extremely broad dance category, but generally associated with electronic beach beats. It covers everything from trippy yacht disco to the filth enjoyed by the worst baggy bepanted pill poppers the imagination can conjure.
The Guardian ran this article on the Balearic resurgence a few months ago. The descriptions of the DJing style parallel those describing Baldelli's sets at Cosmic, which marked the birth of 'cosmic disco': slow (11obpm or so), eclectic, an emphasis on experimentalism and texture.

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2253890,00.html#article_continue






Vangelis - "Memories of Green"

The original version of "Memories of Green", which would later appear in rerecorded form on the Blade Runner soundtrack, here taken from Vangelis' 1980 album, See You Later. The soundtrack's voluptous digital sheen is absent here, leaving behind the hairier, lower-fi predecessor.

Quiet Village - Silent Movie

The reader will be forgiven if it is thought that to say something is 'smoothly bearded' would mean getting lost in a contradiction in terms. However, if this something were in fact the new album Silent Movie by Quiet Village, then such an odd, yet intriguing adjective phrase might in fact gain new linguistic currency. The album is in fact bearded, in that it is drifty and psychedelic, yet it is smooth, in that makes one want to ride around in a sail boat and wear a hat.

Here is a montage video from the aforementioned album, consisting of what appears to largely be clips of 'Planet Earth' type nature documentaries. Visuals don't kick in until around 1:30. Enjoy.

Quiet Village - 'Silent Movie'



Quiet Village - "Can't be Beat"

Quiet Village on Myspace