
Audio files: The shakuhachi; Sexsonica; and Virgo birthdays
Welcome back to another edition of “Audio Files,” where blind eyes look into the vapid maw of Jennifer Lopez and see greatness. There’s lots happening this week, so let’s teleport to Elysium, where fields of asphodel await our rumpled back-parts. Chin up, fellow travelers.
NEWS
- Can your radio station do this? (Warning: mammarian items, moving up and down, and Slovenian language.)
- On this day in 1989, “Ozzy Osbourne was charged with threatening to kill his wife Sharon.”
- “Sexsonica is the musical project of a virtual band whose music is sensual and erotic, with rhythms and sounds created exclusively for sex.”
- Some Oregonians are getting hush money so infrasonic death machines can murder bats and avian wildlife.
- Wet Riffs gathers guitar-in-the-shower photos and displays them online.
HEATING UP MY PLAYLIST
- Glenn Danzig, “And the Angels Weep.”
- Goldfrapp, “Number 1.”
- Prince & the Revolution, “Girls & Boys.”
- Stephen Malkmus, “Deado.” Generally, I dislike snide, aloof, cool, slacker, brown-pants, dude-their-first-album-was-great-and-then-everything-started-to-suck indie rock. The genre fills the brevities of my gymnastics with soiled shame and shriveled knackwurst. Still, life is full of paradoxes and complexity. Which might explain my fondness for the music of Steve Malkmus. The guy has a gift for melody, and though his lyrics are full of smug, contemptible irony, the aggregate effect of a Malkmus song is good. Melody heals all wounds.
- The Dukes of Stratosphear, “Vanishing Girl.”
- The Kilimmanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, “Lobby.”
RANDOM SHARDS OF SONIC INFORMATION
- A water-powered musical instrument.
- Enter: The Church of Beethoven.
- Music-mapping Slayer.
- The shakuhachi’s value lies in its versatility — you can use it to create beautiful music, or you can bludgeon someone with it.
- Winners of the World’s Worst Rap Competition.
SAILING THE SEAS OF YOUTUBE
- Heavy metal church in Colombia rocks Jesus into your skull.
- Huge storms always happen when the Great Leader shouts. (Look at his stateliness — he sits astride a white horse. He is living light.)
- Operatic 10-year-old.
- The dangerous music of tesla coils.
- The ominous sounds of 9/11.
SYMPHONIC FLICKR
- Eva, nude on the sofa, with Korg synthesizers.
- Heavy Metal.
- Pin-up music.
- Stereo Lays an Egg.
- The Singing, Ringing Tree.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
It’s September 2. If today is your birthday, you are blessed to share it with Laurindo Almeida, John Zorn, Hugo Montenegro, and Kraftwerk’s Michael Rother. Happy birthday, you earthy, mutable Virgos, from me and Harvey Sid Fisher both. Additional birthday greetings come via the Monkees, and their Jack Nicholson-directed opus Head, a.k.a. the greatest movie of all time. Head had the best assemblage of actors in history too — Frank Zappa, Toni Basil, Annette Funicello, Teri Garr, and football legend Ray Nitschke (fun fact: I went to school with Ray’s daughter).
Anyway, the Beatles suck.
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