Sauntering Vaguely Downward

I think I may have to give up on finding new music to post about every three out of four weeks, because what I really want to do is share the strong memory associations I have with music.

This instrumental piece, Thaïs (2), from This Mortal Coil's Filigree & Shadow spent a good deal of time on repeat during my second year at Very Expensive University located in a not-very-nice part of Los Angeles. The first half of that year was both tumultuous and miserable, and ambient music calmed my mind. The distant helicopter sound on the track echoed the actual helicopters that frequently circled overhead. The synergy of my environment with the record negated reality's menace.

The rest of the album is haunting, melancholy, jarring and wistful by turns, with sparse vocals. I find it comforting.



[This Mortal Coil's "Thaïs (2)", YouTube video, 03:14]

ETA: I simply must mention Ivy and Neet from the same album. It's a slow, simple piece dominated by a few piano chords that I kept on repeat after my grandfather died.

Ah, it's time for another trip down Memory Lane. Before I left high school, I had heard of exactly four bands that could be considered industrial (and I still hadn't heard of industrial music): Coil, Front Line Assembly, Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails. The first was my favourite at the time. I remember hearing the eponymous track from the album Love's Secret Domain, taped onto cassette by my friend Colin. I froze to the spot when I heard the words of William Blake's poem The Sick Rose, interlaced with something unrecognisable - Roy Orbison, I was to learn much later - spoken over insidious rhythms and an uneasy euphony that tingled in my mind for hours. It became one of the first albums I ever bought on CD.



[YouTube video (audio only) of Coil's "Love's Secret Domain", 03:53]

( Lyrics. )

As regularly as possible*, I catch the Festival of the Spoken Nerd along with fellow nerd/appreciators dizzykj, imyril and helpful_mammal. This lovely comedy night is normally held in a pub and attended by under a hundred people. It features maths, experiments and beautiful science songs accompanied by fine ukelele strumming. It is a joyful occasion.

Last week, the three organisers decided to up their game and held a sold-out show at the Bloomsbury Theatre at University College London. The atmosphere was less intimate but it meant that the hijinks could be more dangerous. If you read this as, "They set a lot of stuff on fire", you would be correct. One of their blazing hijinks consisted of a tube about a metre long filled with a butane-air mixture. One end of the tube was sealed with a flexible membrane. There was a row of evenly spaced pinholes along the length of the tube through which the butane could escape and be set on fire (because what else do you do with butane?). When a speaker is placed on the end with the membrane and the noise is tuned to a resonant frequency of the tube, you get a standing flame-wave.

Like so.


[Image of a Rubens flame tube in a standing wave configuration.]

Now, a flame-tube on its own is impressive, but FotSN decided this wasn't good enough. So they brought on Vid Warren, aka The Human Beatbox, to play it. And Vid Warren, even without flame-tube accompaniment, is pretty awesome, what with managing to sound like an entire percussion section using only his mouth. Hence, he's the star of the week's Music Monday.

Vid Warren from BANM Music on Vimeo.

[Vimeo video, 02:36, Vid Warren beatboxing whilst playing a pipe]

* I say this because there have been no less than three separate occasions on which my spacecraft has demanded that I stay at work to care for it rather than attend FotSN. IT KNOWS.

I've decided to indulge myself every fourth Monday with a song associated with a specific memory. This one is dedicated to four teenage girls wearing their cheerleader outfits, riding in a beat-up Ford pickup truck with all the windows down, screaming this at the tops of their lungs on the way to a(n American) football match in 1992. I sang with pure, unrestrained joy and I meant every word in the chorus with all my heart. And I still do.



[YouTube video, 03:31, of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts singin "I Love Rock N Roll"]

Cut Copy's Zonoscope is the best 1980s album that 2011 had to offer. It's as if New Order met the delightful elements of euphoric house and had eleven baby tracks.

Cut Copy - Need You Now from Cut Copy on Vimeo.

[Official Vimeo video of Cut Copy's "Need You Now", 04:10]

( +1 more video because I adore this song for evoking Front 242 circa Up Evil )