our house is on fire from day one
slow burn
nothing dies anymore
we mummify everything
bar after bar remixing the song
we crave mistakes and absolutes
truths disguised as fears
being wrong again
we never leave this place
fire is loud
backspace
not everything gets crossed out
…
NINE INCH NAILS - At The Heart Of It All
—
This song is from 1994. Nineteen-ninety-four. Sounds good on 2012 speakers.
It’s a dark and repetitive song that could be a soundtrack or a SALEM track (with no rap) today, but it wasn’t groundbreaking or boundary pushing at the time. It was a more rigid take on what Aphex Twin had been doing. The elements are compressed - chained together. You hear the crack and hiss of something / the echoing of heavy sounds - industrial. This sounds like a factory, parts clanging off each other. Tools building something. It’s a metronome to base all those other beats off of - Lunice, Low End Theory, static percussion. Plenty of turnoffs and opportunities for producers to leave their mark. It finds space in predictability.
While NIN’s music was confined with boundaries, this B-side remix bottom of the crate track shows how aware Reznor was of the events on a different end of the music scene. A different part of the world. And was clued in to where it was going.
Nineteen-ninety-four.
from texas to LA,
skates and makes music
get lost in tracks - zens you out
late at night, ocean breeze hair
rain and skate park clacks
rhythm like chains through bike racks
shufflin feet on our crackt ass streets
you hear that clay?
that grind and shuffle?
99 percent peace in new york
this is LA/brooks and our sound is universal
plenty of love to go around yr city
you hear that optimism in the underground?
it’s spring on the beach
how’s the weather out there?
KINDRED - EP
‘If anyone had worried about a generation of imitators tainting Burial’s style, then ‘Kindred’ should immediately put a stop to that – while immediately reminding the copycats who’s boss. With sharp percussion that could be as indebted to the precision drums of Photek as it is UK garage, there’s also hints of Slimzee-era grime in the track’s bassline – that is, after it’s been torched and stubbed out.
In short, it’s a beast and you need to hear it.’
- FACT mag
I love that, like old churchyards, factories, places out of the way. I used to get taken away to the middle of nowhere, by the sea, I love it out there, because when it’s dark, it’s totally dark, there’s none of this ambient light London thing. We used to have to walk back and hold hands and use a lighter. See the light, see where you were and then you’d walk on, and the image of where you’ve just were would still be on your retina. You couldn’t see anything, but you’d see stars. Loads of the drums on the new album are just a lighter. I love lighters and Swan Vesta matches, the drums on every tune are the same, this little noise.
- Unedited Burial Interview Transcript, 2007 [The Wire]
‘On the 30th December, s/he posted seven of the most interesting pieces of music out there in months, demonstrating new ideas and a gift for tonal and melodic understanding alongside an emotional scope rare in any music, let alone the gaseous bass sound.’
[via dummy mag]
mixtape jigsaw puzzle - december 2011
these are the artists playing for free
imagine how good they sound
in their proper format and context
Artist List: OUT OF ORDER
(burial, thom yorke, jonestown massacre tapes, shlohmo, massive attack, clams casino, mr little jeans [arcade fire], james blake, the xx, old apparatus, jamie xx, andy stott, blue daisy, crazy old veteran)
GIVE CREDIT TO THE ONES WHO DESERVE IT
PUT YOUR MONEY WHERE YOUR HEART IS
OPEN YOUR WALLETS
SUPPORT YOUR ARTISTS
I recently conducted an interview with Joan Didion. We spoke over the phone; she from her hotel in Washington. She was on tour for Blue Nights, a reminisence about the life and death of her daughter, Quintana, and Didion’s thoughts about her own mortality. Over the next few weeks, we will be posting highlights from this interview, then it will all be posted on The Believer website.
- Sheila Heti
THE BELIEVER: When you were a little girl you wanted to be an actress, not a writer?
JOAN DIDION: Right.
BLVR: But you said it’s okay, because writing is in some ways a performance. When you’re writing, are you performing a character?
JD: You’re not even a character. You’re doing a performance. Somehow writing has always seemed to me to have an element of performance.
BLVR: What is the nature of that performance? I mean, an actor performs a character—
JD: Sometimes an actor performs a character, but sometimes an actor just performs. With writing, I don’t think it’s performing a character, really, if the character you’re performing is yourself. I don’t see that as playing a role. It’s just appearing in public.
BLVR: Appearing in public and sort of saying lines—
JD: But not somebody else’s lines. Your lines. Look at me—this is me, is, I think, what you’re saying.
BLVR: And do you feel like that me is a pretty stable thing, or unstable? Is it consistent through one’s life as a writer?
JD: I think it develops into a fairly stable thing over time. I think it’s not at all stable at first. But then you kind of grow into the role you have made for yourself.
BLVR: How would you gauge the distance between the role you have made for yourself—
JD: —and the real person?
BLVR: Yeah.
JD: Well, I don’t know. The real person becomes the role you have made for yourself.
EARMILK digested witch house - tectonics in the genre.
Did regurgitate some good ones.
STLKRFXXX - Crawl
the click economy
internet archaeology
nature is the new vinyl
look up
