315: “Karte” by Shugo Tokumaru

January 29, 2013 1 Comment

This test tube contains my music.Shugo Tokumaru creeps out of a hole under the carpet beneath your bed while you are at work. He diligently labors at something in the air with his speedy fingers that no human eyes can see, weaving and tussling. When he is done a few hours later, he plucks the invisible something out of the air, crams it back into his satchel, and squeezes himself back through the hole in your floor.

He is making Japanese music.

I just gave it all away. The Little People will be after me now. Shugo’s new album is In Focus? (2013). A specimen from his 2006 album L.S.T. is below.

Evidenced for biographical insight, below is a detailed translation of the back cover of a travel pamphlet Shugo Tokumaru once sat upon:

Southern-American Euphemisms – And Translations

you sure got yer dumplins mushed – you’re ugly

colder’n a witchy areola – quite cold indeed

hotter’n a skivvy swamp – quite hot indeed

like a pocketful of mayonnaise – useless

shut your face, you jackass – I do not care for you

ah eight squirrel brains – I eat squirrel brains

hornswoggled as a junebug/woolybooger in a snuff pouch/spit can – confused/bedraggled

America the Beautiful! Flights daily.

Enjoy!

Song: Karte
Artist: Shugo Tokumaru
Album: L.S.T.
Label: Active Suspension
Buy from: Amazon | iTunes
Listen: MOG | Rdio | Spotify
Watch: YouTube

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314: “Thema” by Sunna Gunnlaugs

January 22, 2013 Leave a comment

Sunna Gunnlaugs UnoI had just stepped out of the office to get normal when she (echo echo echo, wavy lines) walked by, doing that bipedal locomotion thing, with accents and flourishes in the hips… achieving actual sublimation. That’s when a solid turns directly into a gas.

Sublimate, parallel, and prismatic, as well, were the refractions of the colorations in her sight-balls when hers met mine. I was smote. And in the 14 heartbeats in which I knew her, like a timeless, smote mote did we drift, hand-in-hand on the eternal winds of worlds that could never be.

So it was, that as she walked away, I whistled loudly in her direction and shouted “Datass go BOOM!”

Yet she cast back not even the shadow of a glance from another world, and vaporized before my very sight-balls, forevermore.

~

This writing was inspired by “Thema” by Sunna Gunnlaugs, from Long Pair Bond (2011). Sunna, Icelandic jazz pianist, got Long Pair Bond’s production funded on Kickstarter, which kicks a.

Gunnlaugs is Icelandic for “Gunn laugs.” Her band mates on Long Pair Bond are Þorgrímur Jónsson on bass and Scott McLemore, drums.

I had to buy an Icelandic keyboard on eBay to type that bassist’s name. For you.

So enjoy.

Song: Thema
Artist: Sunna Gunnlaugs
Album: Long Pair Bond
Label: Sunny Sky Records
Buy from: Amazon | iTunes
Listen: MOG | Rdio
Watch: YouTube

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313: “I’ll Be Around” by Yo La Tengo

January 16, 2013 Leave a comment

Yo La Tengo is not a sand dune.A movie premise: a young boy can see farts. His dedicated mentor, played by a computer-generated Walter Matthau, helps the boy along the strange paths life takes in a world where farts are visible. And as the boy discovers his true passion, handmade dutch oven pottery, he also comes to realize that his mentor had himself been a fart all along, an amalgam of gases, animated by some unknown power, to help guide him toward the potter’s wheel and True Happiness.

Epilogue: the boy has grown into an old man, stooped over his workbench, considering the twists and turns of his life. He watches a kid crop dust his pottery studio, grins, and looks toward the sky, where a translucent Matthau hovers, silent but benevolent.

~

That’s a wicked introduction for “I’ll Be Around” by Yo La Tengo, from their brand new album Fade (2013). Enjoy!

Song: I’ll Be Around
Artist: Yo La Tengo
Album: Fade
Label: MATADOR
Buy from: Amazon | iTunes
Listen: MOG | Spotify
Watch: on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon

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312: “I’ve Got A Feeling” by The Beatles

January 7, 2013 Leave a comment

And John Lennon's children's Bar Mitvah's were OFF THE HOOK!“I’ve Got A Feeling” from Let It Be (1970) is not one of The Beatles‘ most popular classics… but if this song were a pair of socks, they would be electric and slightly wet.

Maybe you’re wondering what happened to The Beatles since Yoko Ono gave them all HIV. I have an update, from sources close to the Fab Quartet:

  • Paul McCartney is down to just the one leg now, but makes do with a lot of money from a big divorce.
  • John Lennon died from choking on John Bonham’s vomit in 1998.
  • John Paul Jones married Eric Clapton’s fiancee, and they raise alpaca in New Mexico.
  • Ringo Starr tours the world playing with world-class musicians in huge venues.

The British tabloids won’t even touch this stuff, because the Queen said she would decapitate any member of the British press that reports anything about The Beatles because Paul is the only one who will ever really “get” her and she can’t stand to see his face unless it’s coming toward her for a sloppy, molar-licking kiss. And when Her Majesty is angered, it’s like Yoda-style spinning vectors and slashes, and something you don’t want to see coming your direction at all. So coverage of post-breakup Beatles is pretty limited on the British newsstands. The public is obviously starved for the facts.

The Queen also practices the Ray Lewis dance in front of her mirror at night, as part of her posturing for the press.

Okay, I’m stopping. Just enjoy.

Song: I’ve Got A Feeling
Artist: The Beatles
Album: Let It Be
Label: Apple Records (original)
Buy from: Amazon | iTunes
Watch: YouTube

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311: “Ain’t He Heavy, He’s My Brother” by Wagon Christ

January 4, 2013 Leave a comment

Aerodynamo.How to (totally) meditate:

Find a quiet spot without any obvious distractions, free of precariously positioned buckets of water, and for the love of chakra, no bubblewrap.

Clear your mind. Focus on your breathing and picture a single image in your mind, like the flame of a candle but not the itch on your nose, or the fact that little bugs live in your eyelashes. Block that out.

No, you can’t force your mind to clarity. You must let serenity happen to you. It is okay for other thoughts to come up. Be aware of those thoughts and then let them pass. Feel yourself letting thoughts into your awareness and out of your awareness. Yes, it’s easy to get caught up in an infinity loop with the whole thinking about what you’re thinking about thing. But let that pass, too. Then let letting things pass pass, and so on, thereby creating an infinity loop of letting go to cancel out the infinity loop of awareness.

Be super careful not to mess it up at this point. If you were to think about whether you paid your light bill or a random stupid thing you said a week ago to somebody, you would totally lose the enlightenment value of the whole shebang and you might as well go eat an animal as sit here and waste time.

Anyway, when you’re floating on the current of being in a bubble of serene oneness with creation, picture something really important to you like your favorite finger food, or the spot where you like to sit on the couch. You know, the stuff that matters. It’ll feel like banging an emotional prayer gong in the middle of your soul.

Yet you’re still at peace and clear-minded and all at this point, and when you’re really like “whoa” on a level you’ve never been so like “whoa” before, then you know you just totally meditated.

You could also spend some minutes of your transit down the current of being listening to “Ain’t He Heavy, He’s My Brother” by Wagon Christ, theistic alias for Luke Vibert, a British artist/producer who gots chops like farmers.

Enjoy.

Song: Aint He Heavy, He’s My Brother
Artist: Wagon Christ
Album: Toomorrow
Label: Ninja Tune
Buy from: Amazon | iTunes
Listen: MOG | Spotify
Watch: YouTube

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