animal collective

since it came out on september 11, i have been listening to strawberry jam by animal collective a whole lot. i really dig the sense of community coming from the band, being a group of four guys who just like to make music together. they are wholly original and amazing. for reverend green, fireworks, winter wonderland, and peacebone.... all truly amazing songs.

i dunno... they just really appeal to me right now. lyrically they are outstanding. musically they are groundbreaking. i can really think of no artist to compare them to at all but i have greatly enjoyed listening to them. the first time i heard them was in 2005, when a friend burned the previous album, feels for me. i was immediately taken with grass and the purple bottle and have since learned to love the album in its entirety. it is poppy without being unoriginal, groundbreaking without being unaccessible. i then began to hunt down every piece of music these guys have ever created, hearing their almost spiritual sounding campfire songs and loving it, as well as their other releases. panda bear, the drummer/keyboardist/singer/lots of other stuff also put out an album of brian wilson inspired songs entitled person pitch that is equally as good while being amazing in its own way. if i could recommend one band to you who you may never have heard of before, it would be animal collective.

i'm floating in rainbows...

radiohead released a new album on october 10th and after listening to it straight through since then, i have decided that, shockingly, it is quite amazing. first of all, obviously, is the music. it is the most endearing, human feeling album they have put out since OK computer, and it is a nice change coming from the electric coldness (but still brilliance) of kid a and amnesiac. it is (*gasp*) accessible, without sacrificing anything, which is what makes it so brilliant. second of all, they, as of yet, have released it without signing on to any label. they released it on the tenth as a download only mp3 zip file for a price to be named by each buyer. since this is such an unorthodox way to release music, no figures have been produced as to sales, but according to unconfirmed sources "close to the band," the file was downloaded almost 1.3 million times in its first day, making it "platinum." another note of importance is the fact that last.fm lists the ten songs from the album as the top ten most played songs in their database since it came out, with the tenth song being played twice as many times as the next closest song. they are truly something special.

apocalypse

something i wrote, inspired by the road by cormac mccarthy.

they had come on the news saying all would be okay
the smiling hand shakers that pretended to be movers
they said that we were prepared for this.
nothing could have been further from the truth.

that night, the black came full
the overpowering color of hate came to the skies
the billowing clouds and the pillars of dust
that came and took my world away

the world is black and all i've left
is this part of me that was born that day
in the hospital of revelations at 12:07
the glittering scales shimmered in the sun

now we walk the road that is littered with the flesh of the dead
we talk and survive and do the best we can
i teach him to survive because i know the truth
i am soon to die and he will be alone

we head to the ocean hoping to find someone else like us
another carrier of the light, someone we can trust
instead we find the cattle herds of survivors
being raised for their harvested limbs for food

we raise in the morning, we are walking dead
the flesh droops from his too old face
someone as young as he should not have seen this much pain
why did this have to happen to him?

we come upon an unused shelter, a gift from a nonexistent god
for surely if he existed, he would not allow this to happen
but at least we have this haven for a few lonely days
the less you think, the less you feel

we are living in hell, always hungry, always scavenging
he is losing weight, i am coughing through the night
the ultimate ending is soon to come for me
but what will become of him after i am gone

should i make this easier for him? the thought enters my mind
i hold the tool in my pockets, two metal tickets for a train
heading straight out of hell but to where i don't know
i hope that it will not come to that

today we came across a hunter, wanting to kill us for our flesh
the depravity of it is mindblowing
my actions must be justified, i did what i had to do
i protected my last piece of peace by putting one of the tickets in the hunters brain

this morning i didn't wake up and he cried over my body
his thoughts turned to his future, he had never considered this
"what will i do, i don't know what to do
i am lost, i am scared, i am going to die"

now he is just waiting for someone, somebody to help
in this world of pain and this hell of hate
someone does come and offers him shelter
but to help him or kill him, i'll never know

art

while i was in new york city, i went to the museum of modern art, mainly to see the sculptural exhibition of richard serra. according to my cousin cari-esta, it was a once in a lifetime experience and i truly enjoyed it. his work is challenging and epic. my dad and i entered the museum first because of good planning on his part and so we were able to get some pictures of me in the work that would have been impossible at any other point while there.

i was also privileged enough to see the first american exhibition by dan perjovschi, a romanian artist who in completely inspired by the current state of the media and its representation of current events. he creates grafitti inspired, site-specific drawings with a "big fat black marker" that are in a way comic, but far more intelligent and thought provoking than most comics could dream of. he is constantly offering what appears at first glance to be simply funny drawing but when reviewed are quite incisive to the current social state of the world and intelligent. i greatly enjoyed the exhibition and hope to see him gain some exposure in the states.

writing

this is not written by aesop rock as the previous one, but by me:

i don't see why superficial assholes who only think of sex
so easily get good girls out of their dress
i do all things right method acting as myself
i sacrilegiously go through life ringing the rusted bell
the rocket toting lethargic tourists around me
wave their flying peace signs on kite string
this american dream of life in school
drinking, fucking, hating all that's not "cool"
this anti-aesthetic fear of art is struck down
by those who listen, their endangering the crown
worn by a king who can't sit upon the falsely furnished throne
and order all about, "be this and that you disinterested clone"
these people strike down the fear of love and life and pain
really are well endowed, the world is theirs to gain

insanity

In August of 2001 my seemingly splinter-proof
brain bone, scaffling imploded
I kept it on the hush, but nearly tumbling
to the cold hard concrete on near bodega trips
for ciggaretes and soda, shook me to kasper
Dizzy with a nothern chaser, motor sensory eraser
Gorophobe tunnel vision, guilt, self loathing arrangements
Rose rapidly outta bog I'd never fished in
that abates three separate foreign men's
While I seems to hook lines and syncro simple fishing
Simple primitive self taught, easing of soul, mind and body
but the symptoms rejected my cave-man modus operandi
So now it's one fish belly up, through medicated mol edge
Shrinks that get 250 an hour for awkward silence
And, I'd be lying if I said all of this
made even the slightest fragment of sense to me
That's frail... Simply put
I don't know what happened, or what's still happening
I literally feel like I'm teetering on the blunt edge of my sanity

okcomputer

i listened to ok computer in its entirety yesterday and have been listening to it since. i had of course heard and loved the album before yesterday but due to the mp3 digital age (ironically), i have taken to listening to music on a song by song basis, which is unfortunate when concerning radiohead. the album is amazing in the fact that each song is so good, and yet the next song is even better. the build up is insanely intense and the last song is of course the best. but then again, so is the first song, and the second song, etc. in a technologically uncertain time, the CD still resounds, even more fully than it did upon its release in 1997. the songs sing of alienation, dehumanization through technology, globalization, loneliness, mundaneness. quite a dark CD but amazing.... simply amazing.



the preceeding paragraph can easily be applied to any radiohead album. they are my favorite band and i cannot wait for the new CD to come out.