Mixtape 205 :: Holding The Ocean
Enter Tommy Guerrero’s world of light breeze and perfect t-shirt weather.
Enter Tommy Guerrero’s world of light breeze and perfect t-shirt weather.
Out of all the songs to receive Animal Collective’s swirling dayglo treatment, “Jimmy Mack” might be the most unexpected yet the most deserving. Elsewhere tonight, loyal listener Underdog, usually located in the wilds of Georgia, was able to tune in around lunchtime while traveling in Japan, making the second show in a row with a listener based in Asia. Get me marketing!
The effervescent jangle of German trio A Tale of Golden Keys is intricately engineered to make your ears ask “what was that?”
It’s edgy and manic and insistent, and it’ll surely drive your lunatic friends to ask you who is making that racket. Make sure you tell them Clifffs is spelled with three Fs.
The strategist made to pick up a card, then withdrew their hand. A cool breeze, laden with yesterday’s afternoon dust, stirred through the empty square near the Musée Ahmed Zabana, knocking discarded paper cups against the stone table’s legs. The tandem scooter, not something you usually see in these parts of Northern Africa, come to think of it the world, leaned against the bench the investigator slouched on. “Make your move” their eyes implored in exasperation, as the pair waited for the gift shop to open.
Getting into Darra Adam Khel had not been easy. Getting into Pakistan was relatively straightforward, with the right-colored passports and decoy suitcases full of Western tourist necessities. The ride towards the Khyber Pass had been less so, and the necessary disguises and bribes to get past the checkpoints that turned away foreigners were more of an ordeal than ordinary. The dusty vehicle, neither truck nor passenger car nor jeep but somehow all three, had been recalcitrant for most of the trip, providing constant frequent minor breakdowns, keeping the mechanic perpetually busy. Now they were on a shooting range on the roof of a well-stocked arms shop, surrounded by dozens of identical shops and shooting ranges. As the linguist lifted the replica Berthier carbine to their shoulder, they darkly thought it would be just their luck, after all of this, to be caught in some rooftop crossfire from other purchasers testing their new toys.
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.
Modern electronic soul, richly layered and intricately produced, with decidedly old-fashioned influences from ‘60s girl groups, ‘70s AM radio, ‘80s club hits, and so on.
The parade stretched through the downtown area, its colorful participants a completely normal distribution of small-town denizens. The statistician knew otherwise. They stood waving from the platform of the float, their flysuits carefully integrated with the diorama to give the appearance of animated mechanical humans. All they needed to do was get within twenty feet of The Mayor, and the technology built into the platform would do the rest. The imagineer adjusted the EQ on the float’s sound system, giving the Estonian techno which poured from the speakers more high-end sparkle. The crowd reacted favorably, some of them breaking out into dance.
I have never been so uncomfortable, thought the hacker as they strained to match the wires in the fusebox, their head inches from one of the combine’s many potentially lethal harvesting blades. The lookout’s shadow was barely visible against the hangar door. Straining to clip the blue wire into the scanner, they heard a soft call and nearly lost an ear before remembering their uncomfortable position.