Gorillaz, Insomnia, Electronics, and the God of the Internet

I can't read The Sleepers enough, here, 6am, and I wonder if it's more of a sin against the night to not sleep through the night than it is to sleep through the night. and I wonder if failure is the only thing I write poetry about. And I wonder when that came to be, since I remember a time when I wasn't writing about failure. And failing at it. But night, and headphones, are good for music. Quiet, sad music, for not sleeping.

Mini-mix-tape time. I've been far too long in the lo-fi post-folk, let's get some electronics and high production values.


Gorillaz - Hong Kong
His Name Is Alive - Go to Hell Mountain
Momus - Nervous Heartbeat


"Hong Kong" is the prettiest thing I've heard off the indie wire in ages. Damon Albarn sounds old and tired, there's emptiness and claustrophobia and East Asia, it's long and sparse and sad. The chinese harp playing for the whole seven minutes -- quiet, arrhythmic, harsh attack with no sustain -- almost sounds electronic. The aesthetic, that is. Guess everything digital has an organic basis. Also says something how Gorillaz, which isn't even a band at all you know, nevertheless has a sound. This could be an old Blur song, and yet, and yet, there's still that Demon Days feel, over the guitars mostly.

Which plays nicely into the new His Name Is Alive album. Halfway through, "Go to Hell Mountain" breaks into a solo, a strange, fuzzy, processed-to-hell solo. and yet it works so nicely in the song, testament to how good Warren Defever is in making uncomfortable mixes of organics and inorganics. The song, like a lot of Xmmer, goes right to the edge of plausibility, being almost too cute and happy to be a song about heartbreak. But irony has always been a part of the HNIA mix -- not irony like sarcasm, more like going "Oh my god nothing goes right ever" while smiling, looking straight up, closing your eyes and spinning in circles.

And let's end with the lord of irony himself, with the "big ballad" off last years's Ocky Milk -- an operatic and sweet little love song that might be the first use of the Cher-autotuned-vocals that doesn't sound like Cher. How'd he do it? By fucking with it. Momus is fairly much all electronic by this stage in his career, both in terms of music and himself -- a fast-blogging globe-trotter zipping from cultural center to cultural center faster than you can say "gentrification". If there is a god of the internet, I bet it at least looks like him.

Poet's House Farewell Toast, Lotsa Wine, Jean Valentine

I was a little too sick to be drinking, and yet, free wine @ Poet's House farewell celebration


philip levine




Jean Valentine is so old her face is curly.

Hiro Ballroom, Mr Flash, Passing Out on the Floor, Good Times

Last night was free Lucky Beer 10-11 at Hiro Ballroom, with some DJs or something behind the beer -- whatever, I wasn't paying attention. The stage has been replaced by a small faux-Japanese altar with a single mac laying upon it, bright white apple shining for all to see and worship, some tattooed dude administering to it like a high priest.



Open Bars, of course, are a science. One beer per person at a time for an hour isn't all that much beer, especially when they don't let you in for a half an hour. However, after downing two beers in frenetic desperation I come upon the formula: one beer per person at a time, spread out over four bartenders is like, a beer every three minutes, without drawing too much attention. So I clear out some table space for my stash and muster about seven beers, and figure I'll be good for the night.





I did manage to drink all the beers I hunter-gathered for myself and still managed to leave early. The only one I didn't drink was the one given to me by the other dudes at the table, a set of three older fellows in their 30s, one asian, one a large man who could have been hispanic or greek, the last one white. They were literally smoking cigarettes under the table, flirting with the URB magazine intern taking photos. All the while I'm thinking, shit, I'm totally hanging with the dirtiest dudes in town.

Meanwhile I'm snapping photos of random shit just in case anything cool happens. Well, nothing cool happens.





Mind you, I get pretty friggin' drunk and stumble all the way to the 6 with the help of a few well-placed phone calls, two crunchy tacos, and a spacious inner jacket pocket for the remaining beer (which, I find, made it all the way home and is still on my bookshelf, half-full, in the morning).



What I didn't do is make it to work in the morning, since I woke up on the floor of my room at 9 and realized I couldn't move without assistance. So: single remaining steady source of income finally blown off, and we are once again floating in the breeze