Mixtape 241 • The Hourglass
Shannon and the Clams are far more new-fangled than their name might lead you to think.
Shannon and the Clams are far more new-fangled than their name might lead you to think.
Back to the tried and true formula of new, old, obscure, and occasionally weird with tonight’s set, which features the return of Les Savy Fav and their always welcome abrasive electropunk. It’s now that time of year when I enter the studio in daylight and exit in pitch black darkness, which I always appreciate. In between, there were lots of exciting discoveries. Expect more heavily-censored Guppy in coming weeks!
Sometimes it takes a while for an album to be recognized as a classic, sometimes the shock of recognition is instant and universal. This is the case for Spoon and their latest release, Lucifer on the Sofa, which showcases much of what has made the band a constant source of solid material, but in a concentrated way that will make you start all over as soon as you hit the end.
After a dormancy of a few years, The Dodos have re-emerged and proven to be anything but extinct. This duo makes a sound that is easy to recognize but hard to describe, a sort of acoustic progressive metal filled with droning rhythms and cascading guitars that you can clearly hear on the appropriately-titled “Unicorn”.
Something’s in the water Down Under; there’s a veritable rainbow of guitar-forward fuzziness emanating from the land, and Bananagun is the kind that has a loose-limbed ability to pivot from genuine ‘60s jingleisms into full-out afrobeat.
Tjinder Singh’s easygoing voice and melodies, and penchant for carefree sunny grooves sits well at the center of this multicultural stew, where flute accents weave in and out of the loops.
The screen door banged against the frame of the small building that was once Cisco, Utah’s non-bustling post office. It’s like a ghost town abandoned by the ghosts, mused the cinematographer. Whatever once haunted this place left out of boredom. Meanwhile, the blacksmith methodically tapped the foundation along the perimeter of the building. They had brought the infractometer over from the side-by-side they had arrived in, but sometimes the old ways worked best. The rhythm etched out a Namibian bossanova that had been popular in the ‘70s. The entrance to the silo complex had to be near.
Would the tour of palaces never end? Having visited several monarchical residences, the cobbler had become habitually underwhelmed with the perpetual ostentation. Taking a seat at a padded bench to admire the mosaics of Dar al-Makhzen, the topologist hummed a Balkan square-dancing melody. The ancient Land Cruiser that had brought them here, well-cared for and highly-modified, sat in a modern parking lot that clashed with the surrounding Moroccan geometry. They pretended to take some selfies while monitoring the 360° camera feed coming from the vehicle.
Out of all the ways there were to get into Zugdidi — they could have taken the ekranoplan, for example — the agency had chosen the bus. This exasperated the developer to no end. Their gear sat somewhere in the guts of the green behemoth, guarded by six different hardware and software protocols, but it still felt queasy to be so far removed from it. The meteorologist peered across the botanical garden to the Dadiani palaces. Somewhere in there, a nondescript yogurt stand would have a small radio playing Konnakkol techno. They were to purchase two cones and overpay. Instructions would follow.
The carpenter took a leisurely walk around the perimeter. In the weird light cone projected by the light they had installed at the top of the can, the ropes they had used to rappel down looked like the undulating tentacles of a mysterious jellyfish. Outside the cylindrical building that very deliberately resembled an oversized Coca Cola can, the security guard’s radio played Chicago sambas into the crisp Manitoba evening as he idly played his flashlight over the bushes outside. The choreographer stifled a giggle. On one of the ornithopters parked atop the domed top, next to an opening that looked like someone forgot to bring a canopener, a single LED began to blink. The mission was running out of time.