Recently, I've had a brutal nostalgia for the late 00s. In some ways I find this odd, because that time period is largely a cold, lonely bubble for me. At the same time, I am a person who often enjoys cold, lonely bubbles, and winter always brings that out in me, so I guess this is all right on schedule.
The other thing about the time period in question is, by and large, the late 2000s didn't seem at the time like a hallmark era for new music. There was a definite feeling of lethargy and fraud as the digital file model began to destroy the industry we had known. Looking back now though, there was a lot of good stuff (not as much as now). Just look at a lot of the what's been creeping into these pages the last few weeks and you'll get a taste of what I was listening to during those years: LCD Soundsystem, Underworld, Burial, Kylie, Friendly Fires, Crystal Castles, Arab Strap. Lots of electronic, pop, and dance. I feel like the first decade of the new century, my second and final, ended when I fell back hard into metal, specifically black metal. The interest had been bubbling up again for a few years - Opeth and High on Fire were really the only 'metal' bands I listened to consistently during this time (Type O doesn't really count as the kind of metal I'm talking about and they're always a constant), and then really only closer to year's end. Somewhere around 2009 I got curious and began skulking through the metal sections of the few remaining record stores in the area. I discovered The Ocean Collective's Fluxion, the reissue, and from there it wasn't long until Blut Aus Nord blew my mind and sent me into a progressive Black Metal spiral. But as I said, most of that era was electronic music-oriented for me, and I'm falling back into those sounds pretty hard right now. Especially Burial's 2007 debut, possibly both the most iconic and enigmatic record of the era. Nosing around online for a track to post here, I found this:
I haven't had a chance to watch this documentary yet, but I can't wait to dig into the story of this album, because as I intimated above, I was still under the impression there was a cloud of secrecy around Burial and his music. I knew at some point an actual picture of him made some rounds online, but other than that I know nothing. Also, this is another little tidbit I found that blew my mind.
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To wrap around back to a topic from a few days ago, during my recent re-watch of 28 Weeks Later, I found that it contains one of the most horrifying sequences I've seen on film. A lot of the horror is created in the camera work, but let's not gloss over directing a crowd this size; the sequence really gives you the feeling of utter helplessness that can accompany being stuck in a surging crowd. I've been there - not on this level, but in my teens I was at a Pantera show at Chicago's Aragon Ballroom where, after the show as everyone filed out of the concert area and down the double stairs that led to the ground floor exit, some stupid with a taser began to send wicked jolts of electricity running through the nuts-to-buts crowd. This was only a year or so after the AC/DC stampede that killed several people, so probably with that fresh in their minds, the crowd began to panic. Luckily, the situation never escalated beyond mere potential for disaster, and we all made it home safe after all.
Here's a little bit of that scene I'm talking about; it will suffer viewed out of context, so I'm really only leaving this here as a frame of reference for what I'm talking about. If it's been a while since you watched it, or if you haven't seen it, 28 Weeks Later is one of the most worthy sequels to a fantastic original film in recent memory, and very much worth your time. Plus, Robert Carlyle:
Playlist from 11/02:
Frank Sinatra - Ultimate Sinatra
Zombie Zombie - A Land For Renegades
Playlist - NIN between live sets (get HERE)
Opeth - Deliverance
Burial - Untrue
David Bowie - Low
Jóhann Jóhannsson - Mandy OST
11/03:
The Music - Eponymous
Burial - Untrue
Arab Strap - The Red Thread
Brainiac - Hissing Prigs in Static Couture
Polvo - Today's Active Lifestyles
Mastodon - Once More Round the Sun
Uniform/The Body - Mental Wounds Not Healing
Perturbator - B-Sides and Remixes, Vol. 1
Card of the day:
Instability. Situations that can lead to hot-tempers. This is a work-related pull, I think so I guess I should be on the look out for things that piss me off here and try to play it cool when I encounter them.
