“In A Matter Of Time” [Jan-Mar 2010 // 1]

A few words about me and mixes (or, you can skip ahead).  Like year-end lists (and like a lot of other geeks, I assume), I use mixes as a heuristic–songs as things to think with.  I’ve got access to so much music, I’m a compulsive sorter and ranker, and I’m often sitting still in front of a computer when I’m listening.  To a large degree, then, mixes like these are productive multitasking.  They give me a way to listen to songs for the reason of highlighting things about the songs, or even classifying them in certain ways.  This first mix was made more or less based on groove and vibe, for instance, and it helps a lot that a lot of the songs have a suspended, liminal quality to them–lyrically and/or compositionally.  Lately, I’ve been listening to this mix when I walk my dog at night in the park across the street.  Hearing the first track, you might think I get off on scaring the shit out of myself, but bear in mind: it’s a well-lit park.

This has been a ridiculously good year for music already. Here are the leftovers of the first quarter stuff, and the stuff from the second quarter that’s stacking up quickly.  Mixes 2 and 3 will be up this week, or at the latest, early next week.  Bonus: if you put them in your iPhone, they look like this.

If it’s not immediately evident, I hope to do this again sometime in July, then again in October.  Stuff that doesn’t make it within each quarter can always get slotted in later.  As I’ve been doing the last four years, in late December I’ll cull the best of the lot, and probably some new stuff.

Mix 1: “In A Matter of Time” | 192k | 47:10 | 64.9mb (scroll down for tracks/words)

1. James Blake “The Bells Sketch” (Hessle) I don’t think a lot of people know what to do with a track like this, and that’s understandable.  It glosses more as an installation piece than mp3 of music; an immersive, seemingly unpredictable soul sound-surround.  It’s tough, you have to sort of spar with it, interrogate it as it goes, maybe wonder what’s being left out and what that stuff would sound like as its own song.  It’s worth it, very much so.
2. Balam Acab “See Birds” (Myspace) From the Department of Witch-House, or “drag,” or whatever post-dubstep lure drawer people are dropping it in.  It’s spooky, like Blake, but more formalist at the same time, more of a recognizable shape.  Its creator is more or less unknown–for the moment, at least.  I wouldn’t expect that anonymity to last long, though, you know?  People can’t deal with not knowing the identity of the person making their music.
3. Nicki Minaj “Saxon” (Young Money)  A pretty good mixtape, a great collaboration with your boss, a welter of misunderstandings about who or what she actually is.  Nicki Minaj is on her way to pop-rap queendom, and there’s no one, it seems, to stop her.  Well hurry up and release your album already, then, damn!  Out of the random bunch of stuff I’ve heard so far, I’m most fond of this track, which has an interesting trajectory of its own.  Nicki spit on top of Chase & Status’ original, and sent it to Rihanna for inclusion on Rated R, complete with a pitch-perfect impression as a guide vocal. Rihanna didn’t want it, but The Internet did, and here we are, with a weirdly great “single.”  It’ll do, for now.
4. Four Tet “This Unfolds” (Domino) The name of this track relies on what linguists call a deictic, a common form of language that points toward a particular object or event, and requires further context to elaborate on what exactly that object is.  Typically, songwriters are clear about the subjects of their odes, but others are made to travel weirdly.  Decontextualized, it’s hard to unpack Hebden’s reference point here, to know what he thinks “this” is.  Of course, it very well might just mean “the song you’re listening to,” but that’s no fun. What other things might we imagine unfolding, which this music would soundtrack appropriately?  Bolts of fabric.  An argument.  Hills, as you drive away from them.
5. White Hinterland “Icarus” (Dead Oceans) You’re forgiven for not thinking that Casey Dienel could pull off an R&B album, judging by, well, all of her past work.  Her first album under her given name comprised folky piano bar showtunes, her magnificent followup (with bandonym and solid label support) a jazzy, prim novella tracing some imagined history.  Kairos is her first total left turn; rhythm-centric, electronic, at turns nostalgic and woozy.  Shimmering opener “Icarus” is a paean to tunnelvision crafted from sustained organ drone, burbling bass, soulful coos.  The lyrics are evocative: don’t worry about emotion.  Not yet.  Let strange, soothing sensations take over. It’s not a song–more of a wash.
6. Spoon “Who Makes Your Money” (Merge) Like “Icarus,” “Who Makes Your Money” is a perfectly executed sketch; enough of a slice to get you going, but not nearly enough to shape a story, express an opinion, make an argument.  There’s no arc, just a flat line to bend at your whim.  Matthew described the vibe of this song as a “concussed haze,” the perfect evocation of the wobbly sense of realization going on here.  This might seem like a small thing, but there’s no question mark at the end of the song’s title.  It doesn’t ask not the sort of question, in other words, that a numbing financial crisis has forced us to ask.  It’s less direct, and in its own way more sinister.  “Money” is the sort of fleeting moment of realization that Britt Daniel has mastered evoking (think “Everything Hits At Once”).  Here: the person paying you owns you.  It’s not as open and clear as serfdom, but more a mundane fealty that can momentarily cripple you when you realize it.  Daniel vibes in that space between realization and feeling with a ghastly, assertive slogan that echoes through your brain, as if he’s left out the words “Don’t forget…” at the beginning of the phrase: “Who makes your money.” “Who makes your money.”
7. These New Puritans “Three Thousand” (Domino) Post-punkerly Brits with a conceptual penchant pen a shaggy, militribal rap jawn, and slay it.  Dangerously near self-parodic, but that’s sort of the point with these guys, right?
8. Erykah Badu f. Lil’ Wayne “Jump Up in the Air and Stay There” (Universal/Motown) Whereas most of the new LP sends Badu back to the nearly-quaint neo-soul of Mama’s Gun, this track–not on the album proper–finds her in that robo-soul zone, something of a 2010 fairy earthmother to Janelle Monae and Nicki Minaj.  It’s church–or better than church (Weezy’s the pastor and the primary axiom is “we don’t give a fuck”)–but Badu’s version of spiritual ascendancy never gets that high off the ground, or wants to.  Rise up a bit, then freeze.
9. Gonjasufi “Candylane” (Warp) Halfway between Stone’s Throw and glo-fi (THROW-FI [tm]) with its vibe of finding a lost Parliament studio session in a dusty bin, and vibing over it for a couple minutes.  You could CTRL-V the “ah-ooooh” from the Badu track in here just about anywhere, and it’d work.
10. Ariel Pink “Round and Round” (4AD) Glo-fi godfather stokes excitement for his upcoming 4AD debut with the most epic thing he’s done yet.
11. Beach House “Walk in the Park” (Sub Pop) February, it’s frigid outside and I’m stuck at a red light in the middle of the night, in a barren downtown.  There’s no logical reason I should be sitting here.  But here I am, shivering still, at the invisible whim of some civil engineer.  Then “Walk in the Park” shuffles up, locks in, and makes perfect sense, for the first time. A brief, seemingly pointless, frozen moment can wind itself up into something temporarily grand, but fleeting.  Victoria Legrand wallows, luxuriates in the simple fallibility of memory: “In a matter of time/ It will slip from my mind.” Oh, and it’s green now.
12. Pantha du Prince “Lay in a Shimmer” (XL) This also unfolds.  See you again soon.

(pic via)

Filed under: 2010 Quarter One  Ariel Pink  Balam Acab  Beach House  Erykah Badu  Four Tet  Gonjasufi  James Blake  Lil' Wayne  mixes  Nicki Minaj  Pantha du Prince  Spoon  These New Puritans  White Hinterland