Get Thy Bearings...

Hot, sticky summer nights make anything other than listening to music (tonight it's 'Get Thy Bearings'), padding around my house barefoot and clutching a glass of ice water a chore.

Mapping

It's been a while since i've made one of these partly as i've had to move all of my mixes onto Mixcloud to ensure decent quality streaming. Feel free to have a listen!

All six volumes are available here

An Cathach Mix #6 by An Cathach on Mixcloud

Just Ask Melanie (0.00)

Overnight- Hudson Mohawk (0.30)

Let It Bleed - Goat (3.11)

Where's Me Jumper? - Sultans of Ping FC (7.01)

Na Cherniy Den - Yanka Dyagileva (10.03)

This Is The Day - The The (12.53)

Marijuana - Chrome Sparks (17.31)

Here Come The Girls - Ernie K.Doe (20.25)

I'm In Love With A German Filmstar - The Passions (23.27)

Q.U.E.E.N Feat.Erykah Badu - Janelle Monae (27.22)

The Taste Of You - Erin McKeown (32.32)

These Boots Are Made For Walkin' - Crispin Hellion Glover (34.18)

Moonage Daydream - David Bowie (37.54)

Get On It - Ruby Goe (42.25)

Want It Back - Amanda Palmer & The Grand Theft Orchestra (45.42)

Toxygene - The Orb (49.49)

Wiseman (Math Rosen Remix) - Frank Ocean (53.17)

The Mighty Sword - The Frames (58.01)

The Four Walls

"In many shamanic societies, 

if you came to a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, 

they would ask one of four questions: 

When did you stop dancing? 

When did you stop singing? 

When did you stop being enchanted by stories? 

When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?"

                                                                            Gabrielle Roth



Image: Katherine Crockett by Albert Watson

Ohrwurm

Chrome Sparks is Jeremy Malvin, a young musician and producer living in Brooklyn by way of Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor. Marijuana is a hypnotic, spiraling ear worm of a track and so darn catchy i'm surprised that some big corporation hasn't licensed it for an advert yet. 

Temerity

"...Well, Its A Dirty Job But Someone's Gotta Do It

And It's A Dirty Song But Someone's Gotta Sing It"

Cuisle Mo Chroí

“You are beautiful like demolition. Just the thought of you draws my knuckles white. I don’t need a god. I have you and your beautiful mouth, your hands holding onto me, the nails leaving unfelt wounds, your hot breath on my neck. The taste of your saliva. The darkness is ours. The nights belong to us. Everything we do is secret. Nothing we do will ever be understood; we will be feared and kept well away from. It will be the stuff of legend, endless discussion and limitless inspiration for the brave of heart. It’s you and me in this room, on this floor. Beyond life, beyond morality. 

We are gleaming animals painted in moonlit sweat glow. Our eyes turn to jewels and everything we do is an example of spontaneous perfection. I have been waiting all my life to be with you. My heart slams against my ribs when I think of the slaughtered nights I spent all over the world waiting to feel your touch. The time I annihilated while I waited like a man doing a life sentence. Now you’re here and everything we touch explodes, bursts into bloom or burns to ash. History atomizes and negates itself with our every shared breath. I need you like life needs life. I want you bad like a natural disaster. You are all I see. You are the only one I want to know.”

Henry Rollins 

An Cathach Mix #5 by An Cathach on Mixcloud

The Red Queen

Phenomena - Yeah Yeah Yeahs (0.03)
Disparate Youth - Santigold (4.08)
My Man - Regina Spektor (8.49)
Genesis - Grimes (11.36)
No Intention - Dirty Projectors (15.47)
Land Of A Thousand Dances - Wilson Pickett (20.00)
Ray Gun - Thin Lizzy (22.21)

Just Like You Imagined - Nine Inch Nails (25.24)
Triumph Of The Heart - Bjork (29.11)
Making Plans For Nigel - XTC (34.28)
Ghost Train - Electro-Tones (38.38)

The Cult Song - Shannon & The Clams (40.42)
Can't Seem To Make You Mine - The Seeds (43.43)
Swerve - Shabazz Palaces (46.15)
Banned From The Roxy - Crass (51.24)
Shea - Scheer (53.39)
Camel Walk - Southern Culture On The Skids (55.59)
Nosebleed Section - Hilltop Hoods (58.31)
Aquarius - Boards Of Canada (1.02.05)

Sonar Bullets

This week I've been mostly: listening to Grimes and BATS and getting excited at the thought of my upcoming trip to Ireland.

http://batsmusic.tumblr.com/

http://bats.bandcamp.com/

Visions

Image: Tommy Chase Lucas

'Visions' is the new album from Vancouver born, Montreal based Claire Boucher aka Grimes. Drawing from a DIY ethic and involvement with Vancouver's punk/industrial scene and  Montreal's Lab Synthèse, a 4600sq ft re-appropriated textile factory; her third full length album was entirely recorded in her Montreal apartment. 

I've listened to her previous releases but none grabbed me in the way 'Visions' has. It showcases her evolving sound: swirling synths, punchy beats and those quivery,sweet vocals combining to shape beautiful soundscapes.  

                   

. 

She describes her work as “the only means through which I can be fully expressive. It is both an ethereal escape from, and a violent embrace of my experience. The creative process is a quest for the ultimate sensual, mystical and cathartic experience and the vehicle for my psychic purging. Visions was conceived in a period of self-imposed cloistering during which time I did not see day-light. ”

http://www.grimesmusic.com/

http://www.myspace.com/boucherville

Lupercalia

In the spirit of the day that's in it and for your reading pleasure, below is one of my favourite interviews with Poision Ivy and Lux Interior of The Cramps detailing their first meeting and subsequent decades long romance. They spoke to Nicholas Barber for The Independent and the piece was published in May 1998

Image of Ivy: Kimigo

POISON IVY: We were both studying art at Sacramento State college in the early Seventies. It was a very strange art department in Sacramento at that time, too, because the whole student population was made up of hippies, and they were into witchcraft and metaphysics and everything else. We met up in a class called Art and Shamanism. The textbook for that class was called The Sacred Mushroom and the Cross, and the subject of that book is how the real topic of the Bible is the Amanita muscaria mushroom and that Christ is a metaphor for this magic mushroom. The kind of instructors we'd have would say: "I haven't seen you in class for a while, what grade d'you want?" And we'd say, "Well, I guess an 'A' ", and they'd say, "Okay." So those were crazy times. It was just a very loose, very unique situation, and we met in that environment. We met in a very free way, and we fell in love very quickly.

I'd just started college, and one day I was hitchhiking back from the campus to my apartment, when Lux and a friend of his gave me a ride. I'd seen him around the campus, and I thought he was extremely exotic. He would have these pants and each leg of the pants was a different colour. That kind of thing fascinated me. Because it was the beginning of the new term, we had catalogues to see which classes we were going to take, so we were comparing to see if we'd be in any classes together. It turned out that we were, and that's where our real meeting began.

I was sitting in the Art and Shamanism class when I saw Lux walking in. It was a very large class, too, because everybody knew the teacher got high, and I was sending out psychic brainwaves of, like: "Sit by me! Sit by me! Sit by me!" And he did. He came straight to me and sat next to me. We were making small talk and I said, "It's my birthday", and he pulled a drawing out of his portfolio and gave it to me as a birthday gift right then. It was a female figure, but it was very abstract expressionist. It had a lot of physical energy that I can't describe in words.I don't know if it was past lives or what, but I felt like I'd known him all my life. It wasn't like we'd just met. We were just together constantly, and we were pretty much out of our minds constantly, to be honest. We didn't come to the surface for quite a long time.

In certain astrology, both regular astrology and Chinese astrology, there's some things that say that Lux and I, we shouldn't be together, and the reason is that the function of the astrology was to maintain social order. It had to do with arranged marriages and how a certain man would belong with a certain woman because it would fit in with the social order and they wouldn't cause trouble. And combinations that they said were bad, it didn't mean that they wouldn't get along or wouldn't enjoy each other's company; what it might mean is they'll start a revolution or that they'll cause trouble or that they'll set things on fire. I think we're definitely the kind of pair that they would have tried to keep apart, because together we cause a lot of upheaval. From our point of view, it's creation. We're creating things.

We're not married. I don't know what you'd call what we are. We're deeply in love and feel like we've been together for more than this lifetime, but we're not aware of any particular ritual that would consecrate it in a way that makes sense to us. We sure don't need to make it any kind of institutionalised situation. Nature upholds our bond.

There's not anything that we deny each other. I'll always hear somebody say, "Oh, I'd like to buy that but my wife would kill me", or vice versa, and I'm, like, "God, what is that?" We don't feel that either one of us has any right to say anything about the other's needs. We just have to trust that person and what that person is entitled to. Fortunately, we happen to like a lot of the same things, but even if we didn't, that shouldn't matter. We're both real free-thinkers. We're nice to each other. There's all those reasons why we're together, but I think it's also karmic. We're karmically entwined.

He's easy to love. He's someone I can get crazy with, I knew that about him right away. I thought: "Oh boy, what's gonna happen now? Something exciting!" It's still happening.

Image of Lux: Ray Stevenston

LUX INTERIOR: First time I saw her she was walking down the street, hitch- hiking, and she was wearing a halter top and short shorts with a big hole in the ass with red panties showing through. I was with this other guy, a friend of mine, and we both just went, "Who-o-o-oh!" We pulled over and I think I had a hard-on about three seconds after I saw her.

It was 1972, and we were at Sacramento State college, although saying it was a college is stretching it a bit. You'd get credit for going there and everything, but it was just a bunch of weirdoes. It was crazy. Half the teachers were just fucking the students and getting paid for it. It was really a great time, those days. Really a creative environment.

We had to register for our classes and we had this pamphlet in the car that told you what classes you could take, and one was called Art and Shamanism. I remember I said: "What is shamanism?" She explained it to me, and I thought, boy, that sounds pretty interesting, I think I'll take that. And then when I showed up for that class she was there.

I remember the first day of that class, the teacher had us all sit around in a circle on the floor and hold hands. It was some kind of weird exercise, some mumbo-jumbo crazy cult thing where there was supposed to be energy which would fly around clockwise, and then he made it go counter-clockwise. It was great, it really worked, but just holding hands with her I felt about a thousand times the energy that I was getting from him.

She's incredibly beautiful, that was the first thing I noticed. And then when I talked to her she was incredibly smart, too. We just had a bond. A week and a half, maybe two weeks later we started living together. We just couldn't hardly stand to be away from each other. People would even tell us: "That's not right, it's not healthy, you guys shouldn't be spending all your time together." And they tell us that to this day.

It was a while on before the group actually happened. All my life I'd been to see rock'n'roll bands, but I'd never quite been in one myself until I met her. I remember her saying, "Well, we should do that", and I'd say, "Well, yeah, I guess we could do that", and she'd go, "Of course we could do it!" I think we just talked each other into it. Sometimes you have friends and they'll talk you out of doing things. They'll say: "You? Oh yeah, sure." But the same thing can happen, you'll meet someone who'll talk you into doing things, too. If I hadn't met Ivy I might just still be going to rock'n'roll shows.

She's really courageous and she's really smart. At first, when we started out we just wanted to have fun and we didn't want to have anything to do with the business part of all this band stuff, but every time we've tried to have somebody manage us it's been some kind of a bad experience, so she's taken over managing the band and she really does it great. That's why the Cramps are still around after all this time, because she cares about it and she's capable of unbelievable acts.

This is our dreamchild or something, this is something that we make and we do together, and we're real protective of it. And we're also appreciative of the fact that we invented this thing called the Cramps, and from that has sprung a subculture of people all over the world, and we feel we're representative of them. We take that real seriously. We've thought about having children before, but we've always been so busy doing this, and this seems more important to us. We have three cats and we can't even stand to leave them to go on tour. So I don't know how we'd deal with a child.

We're different in a lot of ways. I tend to fly off the handle and go crazy and start screaming and she tends to be a bit wiser and calmer and more patient than I am - before she starts going wild, too. I think she's a lot classier than I am, but I think I've gained a lot of class from her. It's hard to figure out how we're different because we're together all the time and we always do everything together. In a way it's kind of one thing, me and her, but she's also very much an individual and very strong. She grows like a tree. She's faceted like a diamond. There's a million sides to Ivy and I just love all of them.

We Recognize Our Own Kind

"I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing......Only I will remain."

The Litany Against Fear -  Frank Herbert

Bangin' On The Dashboard

M.I.A returns with tires blazing and bhangra beats swirling, to vamp it up in the new video for 'Bad Girls'. Romain Gavras who previously directed her video for 'Born Free' shot this in Ouarzazate, Morocco. 'Bad Girls' was originally featured as part of M.I.A's 36 minute and free to download mixtape 'Vicki Leekx'. The mixtape was released at the end of 2010 and 'Bad Girls' is set to be the first single from her upcoming/as yet untitled album due  in summer 2012. 

http://www.miauk.com/

Download Vicki Leekx here

Old Age Will Distill You

If you're not, if you're not
if you're not, if you're not
if you're not getting happier as you get older
then you're fuckin' up

if you're not, if you're not
if you're not, if you're not
if you're not aware that what you put out
is what you get back
that you make the world through the way you act
you can't harness the awesome power of that fact..."

From Ani's new (her seventeenth!) studio album '¿Which Side Are You On? '

Moanin'

 If I profane with my unworthiest hand this holy shrine, the gentle sin is this: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand to smooth the rough touch with a gentle kiss.

Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much, which mannerly devotion shows in this; for saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch, and palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.

Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?

Ay, pilgrim, lips are things to use in prayer.

Oh...O then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do; they pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.

Saints do not move, though grant for prayers' sake.

Then move not, while my prayer's effect I take. Thus from my lips by thine, my sin is purged.

Bad Music for Bad People

In addition to creating some of my favourite music, Lux and Ivy were avid fans of surf music, blues, northern soul, rockabilly, 60’s garage, novelty songs and general aural weirdness.


A Cramps fan painstakingly compiled a list of songs that Lux and Ivy had referenced in interviews and books or in his own words "It started as a way to keep track of some of the songs Lux, and or Ivy, mentioned in THE INCREDIBLY STRANGE MUSIC BOOK. It was never really intended as anything but a way for a friend of mine and me to have 2 really kick ass compilations. So we went about the arduous process of finding all the songs mentioned in that interview. One thing lead to another and when word got around that these compilations were out there, they started being traded from fan to fan to fan. So, at some point I decided to put them up on Napster and let anyone who wanted them have them. As the years went buy, more interviews with Lux and Ivy kept popping up, and the list of songs they mentioned got longer and longer. This resulted in new volumes. "

The compilations are a musical education featuring the likes of Ersal Hickey, Slim Harpo, Jackie & The Starlighters, Charlie Feathers, The Sparkles, Booker T. & the MG’s and the 13th Floor Elevators. I downloaded all eleven and it has taken me months to wade through the amazing and often difficult to find tracks.

Links to download the 11 compilations are at:
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/02/lux-and-ivys-favorites-mp3s.html


and click after the jump for a full track listing

Wild Woman

Eagerly counting down the days to November 21st when the new Kate Bush album '50 Words For Snow' is released. Embedded below is the gorgeous new single 'Wild Man' .

http://www.katebushnews.com/

Zeus

"...but you can't will yourself happy

you can't will your cunt wet

you can't keep standing at the station

pretending you're being met

you can't wear a sign that says 'yours'

when that ain't what you get



it flows and flows away from me

my love is a stream

your love is a vaudeville show

so charming and obscene

we both had our moments

we both had our fun

and then i hated to prove 'em all right

all those who said i'd run."

Binat haLev

Tearing down seldom used roads in search of a red fir, bare feet planted on the dashboard, sun speckled faces with wind whipping through the window. Lying in warm water sending pungent smoke signals to the starry sky.

Hunicorn

Using All the Colors of Blue

Marble House

Judging from the feedback regarding the previous two mixes, some of you seem to be enjoying them. So here's another one!