BLASST 80 TRACKLIST + NOTES

BLASST 80 TRACKLIST
1. Talk Talk - "It's My Life"
2. Talk Talk - "The Rainbow"
3. Talk Talk - "Ascension Day"
4. Mark Hollis - "A Life (1895 - 1915)"
5. Nisennenmondai - "Disco"
6. Miharu Koshi & Haruomi Hosono - "Swing Slow"
7. J Dilla - "I Told Y'all"
8. Jim O'Rourke - "Eureka"

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

NOTES:
Still encountering a few production hiccups with the new setup, I think I may be in search of a more sophisticated mixer to get this show done, given what I'm capable of producing now. My little 4-track Alesis mixer is not entirely up for the task, I think. Or I should say, it's not equipped for this kind of production. Namely, the kind of problems one can come across when trying to send stereo audio sources through mono channels and getting things to sound good. I'm probably speaking gibberish to all of you technically uninterested types reading this right now. My sincerest apologies.

This was a good show, hiccups aside. For example, I mistakenly claim Laughing Stock, the final Talk Talk album, is not the album that follows Spirit of Eden, when it does in actuality. C'est la vie. I'm glad to have played a little tribute to Mark Hollis of Talk Talk for the first half of the show just the same. I never delved beyond Spirit of Eden until hearing of his passing, so today's news really sent me down a rabbit hole of his music, to see the narrative of the band and himself as an artist over time. I like doing that, seeing the full picture, from beginning to end. This can be harder to do when you don't know what the end is yet. Life can be that way sometimes.

Anyway, a good half of the show is dedicated to Mark Hollis and the other half to stuff I've been into lately. I've been diving back into the record that started my Haruomi Hosono/YMO obsession of the past few years, Swing Slow, HH's collaboration with Miharu Koshi, another juggernaut of the Japanese pop world. It's such a beautifully nuanced record, complete with strange mechanical interludes between varying stylistic vignettes. Just beautiful. I also play another japanese group I've taken a liking to called Nisennenmondai. I don't know much about them but I came across their music and found it's best listened to while I'm working. 

And lastly, we closed with the title track off of Jim O'Rourke's now-20-years-old masterpiece, Eureka, "Eureka". It's hard to believe these sounds are 20 years old. It's a thought that is humbling, comforting, and depressing all at once. Humbling and comforting because it means there's a world of innovation that precedes our present day and acts as a guide for the future as it progresses forward into the unknown. It's depressing, however, because it makes whatever is being regarded in our present day as 'innovative' and 'creative' seem violently regressive.

At the same time, if we think about something like musique concréte, which utterly stupefied people nearly 100 years ago and made anything that followed it seem pedestrian by comparison, life may seem to have periods of progression and regression. A pattern of sorts. Maybe a dance. Or perhaps it's a ball with many dances occurring within it at the same time. Which will you choose? It is, after all your choice, and this song won't last forever. Perhaps it's best that you choose the one you will find to be the most appropriate for you. If this means you dance alone, take solace in the fact that are now the first of which others will inevitably follow, because life just happens to work that way. There will always be worse dances that more people are doing, because most people have either have poor taste, or absolutely must dance with others, with little concern for the quality of dance to begin with for that matter, so why waste your time with that? Anyway, enough rambling for this week. See y'all in the next one. Get your tickets for Dreams III if you haven't yet! You can do so here.
 
E-Mail us at uupunk at gmail dot com
Instagram
Twitter
Mixcloud