i'm full of false promises

it's true.

i have insomnia. i should be asleep right now, but i can't keep my mind from wandering. generally, this signifies a state of depression, but i've been along way from nadirs of such for a couple of months now. sixteen months of misery is history. well, i can't say that every moment of that sixteen-month stretch was stricken with woe, but the moments of unadulterated happiness were fleeting, at best. i'm at work right now, listening to silberbart on the ipod, deliberating whether or not i should take a power nap. during the hours of darkness, power naps tend to make me even more tired. and that's if i can even relax my brain enough so that sleep has a chance of winning out over consciousness. does this make sense? if it doesn't, i'll just chock it up to 21st-century existence (or lackthereof?). this silberbart album rules.

perhaps tomorrow i should create a new entry full of profundities (or platitudes, depending on the reader's interpretation). girls like profound dudes, right? the less-discerning types, i mean. the girls who can see through the facade just roll their eyes and emit some sort of sardonic, even more platitudinous (or profound?!?!?) comment in response. if i'm lucky, they'll leave a comment.

yes, it's time for a power nap.

what

it's feburary 16

it's saturday afternoon, although it feels like saturday morning. i ain't done shit all day except upload albums and laugh at hillary/obama photoshops. my contribution to the common good is over there on the right. lately, i've been revisiting my mantra of my sophomore year of college: "please send me evenings and weekends." while i haven't listened to gang of four in a mayan cycle, the combination of sixty-hour work weeks with the newfound realization that i've got to get in shape and keep my apartment relatively spotless has really been draggin' me down. so what do i do with my leisure? what to do for pleasure? i've done absolutely nothing, and it's been an enormously relaxing day. now if i can manage to intersperse some social interaction in this evening, it will be a perfect day. maybe i can smoke a blunt and scarf down a couple ambien in the presence of some attractive members of the opposite sex. hell, any members of the opposite sex would be ok. in regards to getting in shape, i've been working out on a regular basis, and, now that all the junk food in my apartment has made its way through my intestinal tract, i've embarked on the path to healthy dieting. i've become addicted to tossing tofu and broccoli in a frying pan, queuing up ege bamyasi or some popol vuh on the itunes, and magicking myself up a delightful blend that's tastier and cheaper than anything i can get at taste of china. in fact, i'm cooking right now.

so last time i updated this thing, i promised more frequent entries. well, finally, i'm gonna deliver on that. updating the ol' blog is a great way to kill time at work, especially when people are in the office and i can't watch episodes of entourage and weeds on surfthechannel. while i can't upload albums, i can offer the teeming billions of folks who read this blog a few witticisms (hopefully!). so, f'real this time, I'M GONNA WRITE IN THIS SHIT!

i was gonna go see the messiah this morning but i slept in

it's as if god doesn't want me to go to church anymore. my mom's birthday was on monday, and of course you know i called her to say "happy birthday mom, i love you, do you wanna drive down to road that parallels the interstate and has all the staples of 21st century america, you know where you sit down and have a cute delta gamma sister write down your orders for sweet tea and loaded cheese fries before slamming down a 1500 calorie meal which is followed by the entire staple's staff singing--or better yet, chanting--some clever variation of 'happy birthday?" my mom, bogged down in grading papers, declined, instead asking me if i would attend the methodist church's rendition of handel's messiah. although i haven't been to church in three years, i said "sure mom, i'll do it," fully intending on doing it. so where did i go wrong? a friend of mine is moving, and i attended his going away party (appropriately and cleverly titled "john voyage!") on saturday night. i needed to wake up around 10:00 in order to make it to the service on time, but i set my alarm for 9:30 so that i could sneak in the first half of the arsenal-chelsea fixture before watching the legion of virtuosos virtuoso their baby off. i limited myself to one shot of tequila and maybe six or seven offerings of beer, and i even left the party before closing time. fell asleep around 5:30 and somehow woke up at 12:15, completely missing the performance and probably completely dashing my mom's confidence in myself as a human being. i called her later in the day, and we both exchanged instances of "well, it happens," and i guess her confidence in myself as a human being isn't completely dashed.

if i start updating this regularly, maybe people will read it. maybe i'll upload more albums, too. people tell me i should write. hopefully they're not lying? if so, i'm gonna kill myself repeatedly. metaphorically, of course, and a little bit at a time. listen to satan-affirming sludge metal riffs and be happy that artists can play god in order to create satan.

skullflower - exquisite fucking boredom

First release in 7 YEARS from mighty UK heavy/drone/psych gods Skullfower. Matthew Bower (Sunroof!, Total) resurrects his slumbering free-noise behemoth with this gorgeous blast of hypnotic, pummeling, droning crush, equal parts shimmering skree, damaged motorik rhythms, murky and druggy psych-rock riffs and swirling fuzzed-out guitars.

Exquisite Fucking Boredom's core is the epic, expansive and never ending, four part suite 'Celestial Highway', a sludgy sabbathy seventies rock riff, repeated adinfinitum, a dangerously unstable entropic jam whererin the riff slowly drifts apart, sinking into a churning tarpit of abstract whir and hum, gradually mutating into a drifting, throbbing pulse, as warbly synths, chirping birds, and thick washes of dreamy sonic turbulence overtake and subdue any traces of the original riff. Mesmeric and hypnotic and totally otherworldly. Like UK mantric rockers Loop, on repeat play, while your boombox runs out of batteries, or a sweeter, prettier version of Dutch minimal metal gods Gore, or imagine Steve Reich or Terry Riley composing for Black Sabbath.

The remaining tracks retain their Krautrockish propulsion but drift closer to Sunroof! territory, loosening the psychedelic electronic riffscapes from their moorings, letting them float lazily through a gauzy soundscape of buzzing melodies, luminous shards of shimmering feedback and rumbling waves of drowsy, druggy drone. Like Neu! or Kraftwerk, doped up and drifting off, run through a bank of cheap effects, and broadcast out of an underwater leslie speaker, the lo-fi rhythms suffocating under a thick blanket of gossamer guitars and sonic detritus.

Hypnotic and savage, dreamy and otherworldly, quixotic and godlike! -tUMULt records

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lol

guru guru - ufo

Guru Guru's debut album shows why the band, even if it never reached the levels of appreciation and influence the likes of Can or Neu! did, still maintained a healthy reputation over the moons for its early work. Opening number "Stone In" has a quite appropriate title for a starting track -- it is wonderfully tripped out, to be sure, and if Manuel Gottsching was more of a guitar god, Genrich kicks up a lot of frazzled noise. The principle of the Trepte/Neumeier rhythm section seems to have been "find loud weird grooves and then play them, sometimes chaotically." Again, they aren't Can's wickedly effective combination of Holger Czukay and Jaki Leibezeit, but they're not just falling over themselves either. The title track is the most memorable song, almost entirely eschewing conventional rhythm for an inward collapse of feedback and noise that sounds either like the Stooges' "LA Blues" even more strung out or early Main with a conventional band lineup. "Girl Call" and "Next Time See You at the Dalai" (a classic example of a just-groansome enough Krautrock pun that only Germans seemed to love) makes for a good combination, the increasing freakiness of the one leading into the start-stop chug and explosion of the latter. Genrich really gets to show off a bit on both, demonstrating that there is such a thing as technical ability that doesn't equal pointless fret abuse. "Der LSD-Marsch" is actually the most conventional of the tracks -- while a good-enough slow burn up to a freakout (mostly provided by Neumeier's drum solo), it's too short to be truly epic and not otherwise distinguishable from many similar songs by the likes of Amon Duul II, say. For all that, though, it ends this enjoyable effort well enough.

(allmusic guide)

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