Mixtape 169 • TV Dinner
For quite some time, Mommyheads have delivered the sort of complex pop and lyrical insight that fills in the cracks and gaps in your musical thinking with new ideas and sounds.
For quite some time, Mommyheads have delivered the sort of complex pop and lyrical insight that fills in the cracks and gaps in your musical thinking with new ideas and sounds.
Tonight started out with an hour of the sickest music around, which is to say songs about illness, medication, and other health-related issues. The following two hours were the usual incomprehensible mixture of genres and bad attitudes.
Out of many odd cover-filled releases bands have ejected over the last year-plus, this is one of the most disparate and interesting, partly from the selections and the interstitial music, but mostly because it’s not what you expect from black midi.
There was no official name for this giant hole, this cavern that truly made you realize the proper utilization of the word “cavernous”. Those who knew of its existence referred to it as the “Sarlacc Pit”, while the geologists debated what to call this previously unseen feature in the farthest reaches of British Columbia. The ophthalmologist could not help but recount these facts as they descended into its depths; they were the chatty sort and had barely endured a few hours of self-reflection in the noisy Chinook that had brought the expedition here. The conductor whistled a short melody and listened for the glorious reverberation. The nearest person who could recognize its Peruvian punk origins was 2,524 miles away.
The courier unrolled the blueprints onto the brightly-lit drafting table. The basement of the Gomel Regional Museum of Military Glory was not only roomy enough to house several specimens of large weaponry, but also extremely well illuminated. The historian had mused, repeatedly, on how some of the bigger pieces must have been disassembled in the field then reassembled in here for storage, hence the need for the lights. Upstairs, the gala which had served as their cover for entry continued into the night, the band now striking up some sort of Caspian samba. Quite an elaborate operation, but they needed to machine a new aileron for the ekranoplan, and this was the only place they would find the designs.
The mason laid a bare hand on the stone block. It was nearly three hours since the sun had set, yet the western-facing brick, part of the multitudinous grid that made up Port Blair’s Cellular Jail, still retained a significant amount of heat. The cryptographer glanced back at the yelp of surprise, but continued scraping a sample into a container with a microchip at its bottom using a dental tool, humming along with Caribbean tango audible in the distance. They were supposed to meet the man with the elephant down at the beach in only forty-seven minutes. It was still unclear why the plan called for such a journey as part of their extraction to Viper Island.
Shrugging through the rose thorns, protected by a heavy leather apron, the blacksmith adjusted the thick gloves, proof against stray hammers and cinders but well-worn enough to allow the gentlest of movements. A stem was carefully pincered and brought in view of the entomologist’s face, who scanned it for aphids. Across Sarmiento Park, a teen herd’s boombox gave voice to an excited Córdoban DJ, announcing the latest from the latin bhangra scene. A traffic cop was nosing around their parked Alfa Romeo, assuming it was just another family sedan that forgot to feed the meter.
Insistent angular weirdfunk, songs that sound like tape loops that have fallen out of order and yet maintain a diligent desire to be songs.