Mixtape 197 • Derek Spears
The voice of your conscience is a very close match to the one you hear coming from Grandaddy.
The voice of your conscience is a very close match to the one you hear coming from Grandaddy.
I meant to write the notes for this show sooner than a month after the fact, but travel plans got in the way and here I am struggling for an intro. I can tell you that hearing Sparklehorse take on Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians’ “Listening to the Higsons” for the first time, mere weeks ago, felt like someone became obsessed with the same cassette as I did thirty years ago, but actually got around to letting the hen out.
The catamarine knifed silently upstream, its passage discernible only as a faint twin wake on the surface of the river. Up ahead, the sonar array was already picking up the turbulence from the Mbocaruzú falls, the staccato warning pings slicing neatly between the Mozambique big-band swing being piped into the earpieces. In their individual pods, the cartographer and the miner reviewed their maps, surveys, and orders. Up ahead, behind the rushing down-flow of the water and completely out of sight, a set of steel doors silently opened and awaited the pair’s arrival.
At the extreme end of DIY is DEY — do everything yourself. It’s a unique solipsistic sound, and Stoltz is very good at it, blending a variety of rock, psych, and synth influences into his own sound.