This is not a waveform
T minus four days before departure, so what better time to weigh in with a stateside perspective on thrilling blond monsters on today's boogie playgrounds?
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July 29, 2005
July 24, 2005
Don't Cha Won't Cha
The backstory of a hit.
July 20, 2005
Holding on
Just in case anyone was worried, I figured I'd better show what's remaining. (And this is just a portion — I'm realizing that I've now become simply a mildly obsessive, moderately messy person, as opposed to the total trainwreck I was before.)
The real concern I have now is how to reunite many dozens of empty sleeves with their records — the products of many hasty, how-do-I-fit-80-records-into-a-50-record-bag separations. I never was very good at that game "Concentration," either.
Letting go
"This or any other procedure is merely a dam against the spring tide of memories which surges toward any collector as he contemplates his possessions. Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories. More than that: the chance, the fate, that suffuse the past before my eyes are conspicuously present in the accustomed confusion of these books. For what else is this collection but a disorder to which habit has accommodated itself to such an extent that it can appear as order? You have all heard of people whom the loss of their books has turned into invalids, or of those who in order to acquire them became criminals. These are the very areas in which any order is a balancing act of extreme precariousness." —Walter Benjamin, "Unpacking My Library: A Talk about Book Collecting"
I dynamited my dam yesterday. Anyone interested in a partial glimpse into the habituated disorder of some 20 years of my life may find traces of it — 3000 some such traces, in fact — creeping into the shelves of San Francisco's Amoeba records in the next few weeks. You might expect me to mourn, but I feel strangely invigorated. It's refreshing, releasing all those little beasties back into the wild.
July 06, 2005
On the periphery
Dear faithful readers,
I have been wildly remiss. While you have been visiting my blog, albeit in perhaps predictably dwindling numbers, hoping for any sort of update in the past three weeks, I have been gallivanting around Spain having all sorts of misadventures, the likes of which shall never see print. I survived another Sónar, played records alongside my trusty cohort DJ Omar for the delightfully up-for-it patrons of the Moog club, braved volleys of firecrackers the night of San Joan in order to catch Luciano's stellar beach party set, and barely rescued a laptop from the ravages of Diet Coke. (Well, the Apple Geniuses are doing the rescuing, along with a good bit of help from the kind folks at Citicard. Folks, don't drink and blog. The hard drive you save could be your own.)
If you crave news, choices are several. I talk with Jamie Lidell for the current issue of XLR8R, riff on the riff in today's update of Pitchfork, and tomorrow will be back with a new installment of Earplug. Coming soon are liner notes for Coconut FM, a compilation of reggaeton, cumbia and funk carioca put together by Atom Heart for Germany's Essay Recordings, home to the excellent Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats collection; a forthcoming monthly column in Barcelona's Go Mag; and surely some other sundry bits that have, sadly, completely slipped my mind right now. Oh yeah, and a piece on Barcelona's anarchic spirit is on newsstands now in the current issue of Res.
Speaking of Barcelona (something I seem to do a lot), and by way of explaining my recent absence — well, whatever's not explained by the fact that I am the proud new owner of an Elektron MachineDrum, a miracle piece of gear (can I call it a gearacle? Ok, I won't) that essentially moots all desires to live a normal, productive existence — now it can finally be revealed: I'm up and quitting the US for a while, and moving myself and a small fraction of my records to Barcelona. "How long?" people keep asking me. This is a good question, and one for which I ought to have an answer when, well, I suppose when living in Barcelona doesn't seem like a good idea any more. (The rest of my records are going to live in my mother's basement in Portland — she has no idea what she's in for.) Until then, the internet is my friend, and I am yours, so please keep reading. Barring fresh posts, you can always find me on the beaches of Barceloneta.
What follows are photographs from the periphery of Sónar — because sometimes what happens in the background is as striking as the main-stage attractions.
Love and fuet,
Philip
