On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ There are worse ways to wake up than to news there’s a new track of trademark slacker exotica from Tortoise. Apparently it’s their first new recording in almost a decade. All percolating rhythms and dreamy washes, it almost sounds like they’re auditioning some theme music for an espionage TV series. The most “Tortoise” thing about it may be not so merely how it switches gears at the last moment, but how the contrast let’s you hear the gears grind.
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▰ I’m sure I’ve heard, and even seen, the guitarist Simon Farintosh (whom I’ve interviewed about his Aphex Twin transcriptions), play electric — rather than acoustic or, more frequently, classical — guitar, but I don’t recall having done so. Here he performs “Sycamore Trees,” from the score to Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me. The thing about musicians who do a lot of work in the realm of covers and transcriptions is how those pieces of music then, in turn, become their set of repertoire. Thus it’s interesting to think of Badalamenti alongside Aphex Twin and Boards of Canada and the other musicians whom Farintosh has explored.
▰ Listening to the band Earth, you may hear things you’ve heard before, from the rousing bravado of Social Distortion to the fuzzed-out roots rock of Neil Young to the drone metal of Sunn O))), but those are just flavors, not the real thick of it. Earth is its own special entity, and the key to the sound is the pace, set by drummer Adrienne Davies, half the band, alongside with founder Dylan Carlson, in this iteration. This video has been online for a year, but I only just stumbled on it.
