Frost - Endless Love (Analogue Euromix by Royksopp)
not a perfect song by any means, there's some very mediocre sung melodies here, but what makes this track stand out is the true dancefloor euphoria that hits when the singer stops and royksopp slathers on the instruments in ridiculously lush layers into starry eyed propulsion like they know how to do best. slithering flying floating lines of melody compete and bob.

Radiohead - "Skttrbrain" (Four Tet remix)
"The song is a perfect match for Four Tet, first of all. The original is stretched-out and whinsome, Yorke's voice like a piano playing gently in an empty room. Four Tet adds in jumbles of percussion, a more flickering guitar, bells and steampunk sounds. All of a sudden, Radiohead's barren, boring tune has this thick inner life: it's like we're hearing the thump and ooze of Yorke's lovesick robot heart. Organic and fascinating and a much, much better track than the original."

Music of the Moment
Radiohead - 2+2=5
Madonna - Hollywood (Jacques Lu Cont's Thin White Duke Mix)
Jill Sobule - Nothing Natural
Kylie Minogue - Slow
M83 - Dead Cities, Red Seas, and Lost Ghosts

Madonna - La Isla Bonita
throughout my childhood i was only occasionally exposed to mainstream american music. i do however remember a tape of madonna videos. this was fantastic, alien music. i liked it, but i was at an age where i wasn't really sure why, i couldn't express it in words. i just sat there entranced by my senses, in a thoughtless reverie. it's exotic, it's groovy, it's melodic. there's a very vivid brightness about it, and that "transportation to another place" quality. i also felt an intense attraction towards madonna, though at that age (elementary school), i had no idea what it was. i just felt burning and heated, my thoughts a mush. so, i sat there enveloped in these sensations, being not anywhere near comprehension, but just feeling. it was an exquisite experience, sitting there watching these videos, my senses whirling around burning themselves into me, in a complete daze.

what makes this memory completely fucking awesome, is that i go through day to day with such worded out constructions. they come in almost completely formed sentences, clumsy and inelegant, but still formed. pure sensation without thought seems very rare to me, to the point where when it does happen i glorify it. live shows, blissed out songs, when it happens, it's music as transcendence. madonna happens to be one of the first artists that i associate this experience with.

listening to it now, it's almost as good as when i first heard it. the absolute catchiness of the chorus, the transcendent "aAaahhhh"s of the harmony, the funky latin backing track. most of all, madonna's totally fucking sexy voice. and i cant listen to this song without her dancing around in this smoking red outfit in my head.

but it sound's only almost as good -- my ear is much more finely tuned no. the 80s production is weak, apparenty very early in the song, like it isn't eq-ed right or something. the bassline is lackluster, and many of the sounds are just dinky. but all that becomes secondary once she starts singing.

Kings of Convenience - The Weight of My Words (Four Tet Remix)
loping thoughts musing over a string quartet recording shattered into glistening drops

LFO - 'Premacy
here i am procrastinating on my essay for finals. fuck it, i'm listening to this.

Come Into My World (Fischerspooner remix)
fat pulsating throb throb throb. a bath of unapologetically electronic textures stairstepping to sex.

Bubbles - Bidibodi Bidibu (Super Troopers Mix)
tantalizingly catchy and simple hooks and hypnotic repetiveness. this is what i thought all electronic music sounded like before i had really heard any. what little i did hear was boomed out of car stereos and funked in short snippets on tv, absolutely compelling me to hear more.

µ-ziq - Lunatic Harness
getting stoned out of my mind, sinking into aaron's massive comfy bed, listening to manic drums rain down on me from outerspace

ok, no more middleschool poetry and overwrought prose! just songs/albums and short thoughts, if i can be bothered.

Air - All I Need
aaron: is this madonna?
fred: no.

(on a separate occasion)
aaron: i love madonna.

Air - La Femme D'Argent
better than sexy boy (off the same album). works the same mercury floating through space territory, except less poppy and more heady.

Jeffy Buckley - So Real
this is the song i played so i could cry. i remember the jack, i remember the pain of trying to will up the emotion to squeeze out some tears, i remember the depressing agony of having to use outside aids to help me cry because i felt so fucking dead to the world.

Chris Clark - Empty the Bones of You
crumbling sod walls closing in
trapping light, forever spinning
underground moistly dirt mouth scream muffled

Typical Cats - Snake Oil
it completely encapsulates this romanticized construct of austin i've built in my mind -- an arteest paradise where there's an anything happens vibe.

the song is infuriatingly effortless. i can't help but love that jazzy bohemian air that it conjures up in my mind. all slouched figures and smiles seen through cigarette smoke, united by communal head nodding. for me the song is about the type of environment that just breeds the creative process.

infuriating though, because it's something that just wasn't within my grasp. i think of austin when i listen to this song... not the austin i lived in though, but the austin of the achingly hip artist/musician/trendwhore. i saw flashes of this austin, but it wasn't the austin i lived in. my suffocating depression and social anxiety held me back, had me looking in from the outside. which ironically sucked because, it IS the quintessential outsider community. i should've belonged, but i didn't.