Sunday 25 November 2012

Where my head goes (full arrangement)

Where my head goes (full arrangement)

Where My Head Goes

You and me were on the beach and I think that's the way it should be babe
I sat and stared at the waves crashing in and I'm feeling fine and dandy, lighting up and smoking weed on the beach
We were running into the sunset chasing waves, holding hands
We wrote our names in the sand
I took a look at you and wiped the sand from your smile
Having a fiddle and laughing all the while

I don't know where you came from
You came crashing into my life
All I know is you're where my head goes

I met you by the roadside I met you by the lake
My soul was out on offer, my soul was yours to take
I met you in the garden I met you in the squat
And we were on the couch and we were making out
I said that I was yours and you said you were mine
I believed you for a moment but it was just a line

I was left alone for just five minutes and made a mess of myself
I was dressed like Dracula but baby you could not tell

I'm gonna suck up, suck up all of your love
Gonna drain you dry baby till you've haad enough
And when your life is mine I'll hold out my hands
Give it back to you, be my women I'll be your man

I don't know where you came from
You came crashing into my life
All I know is you're where my head goes

I met you by the roadside I met you by the lake
My soul was out on offer, my soul was yours to take
I met you in the garden I met you in the squat
And we were on the couch and we were making out
I said that I was yours and you said you were mine
I believed you for a moment but it was just a line

I was left alone for just five minutes and made a mess of myself
I was dressed like Dracula but baby you could not tell

We were dancing under neon lights and baby it was out of sight
We climbed the helter skelter and I held you tight
We were wrapped up in our love as the candy floss melts in our mouths
And you took a ride on my big wheel and you waltz your way down south

I don't know where you came from
You came crashing into my life
All I know is you're where my head goes

I met you by the roadside I met you by the lake
My soul was out on offer, my soul was yours to take
I met you in the garden I met you in the squat
And we were on the couch and we were making out
I said that I was yours and you said you were mine
I believed you for a moment but it was just a line

Where my head goes

Friday 12 October 2012

1 In A 100


Top 100 albums of me boy.

100
Various Artists - Gamelans De Bali
1964
Gamelan
Best Tracks; Le Gangdrung - 'Ouverture et Danse' and 'Air Sur le 3 Monde #2', Gamelon Djogéd Bungbung - 'Danse de L'eventail', Gamelan Saron - 'Musique Funéraire Pour le Lavement du Corps'.

And we'll start quietly, with this gentle pitter patter, chiming, smiling, beguiling. With this restless rattle and clang of percussion they call gamelan; a ancient music from Indonesia. It predominantly consists of melodic/percussive xylophone type instruments, but there's also strings, flutes  and voice. This is a lovely collection of recordings from various gamelan ensembles made in the early sixties. The first three tracks by the Gamelan Selunding sound like some kind of medieval reinterpretation of soundtracks from 80s sci-fi films. The two tracks by Le Gambuh feature bamboo flutes which sound like ghosts turning over furniture whilst storming through an ancient temple. Gamelan Saron's twelve minute 'Musique Funéraire Pour le Lavement du Corps' chugs gently along with its chocky - blocky metallophones, stopping occasionally for the heavy thump of a drum, a tranquil train journey set towards that moment in the past you try to revisit but never quite reach.

The best tracks are the numbers towards the end of the LP. The L'Angklung and Le Gangdrung tracks are played with a cheerful intensity, dance numbers that startle with their effortless syncopation, complexity, chirpy melodies and percussion. 'Ouverture et Danse' in particular is an unrestrained, rickety joy, shuffling like a quite storm until the clouds part and xylophones appear and drop softly like rain on the dry earth.

My favourite gamelan compilation, and if you're unfamiliar with the genre there's enough fun and variety here to make it a good starting point.

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Big Screen - Where Is the Friends Home?

1987
Iran

A boy accidentally takes a freinds schoolbook home and homework has to be done for the morning, so he must return it so his pal doesn't get a rollicking from their strict teacher. And nothing else really happens. But it's the minimalist nature of this film that makes it so absorbing. I took great comfort and delight last night whilst sitting with my feet up, hot chocolate in hand, watching as the camera painstakingly follows every movement of Ahmed (the boy) as he feeds and rocks a baby sibling as he attempts to explain to his mum several times that he must go and return the book to his friend, but like all the adults here, she's not listening and mutters, "No you can't go out. Finish your homework. Rock the baby", and the camera lingers on her as she thoroughly washes some clothes in a sink and wrings them out firmly as dogs bark and horseshoes clutter in the background of this gorgeous pastoral town of washed out white slums walls. It's very much from a kids perspective as we feel their frustration at the condescending, simple minded adults. There's a quite commaraderie among the children of the town and this is caught in a nice scene outside the school as a kid hurts his knee and is lead to a hose by his friend who tenderly rubs the water onto his leg, without a single word between them. The cast are not trained actors and you feel a warmth and humanity in their conversations, even when the adults speak to each other. There's a realism there that makes you care about the mundane happenings in their lives.

One of the best moments is when the boy sees his mother distracted and seizing the moment he's been waiting so long for, he grabs the schoolbook and makes a dash . . . only to realise his picked up the wrong book again and cautiously returns for the right one. Ahmed finally meets someone who's willing to listen to him, a nice old man who speaks of the windows he once fitted around the town which are now being replaced and of the family that have left him for the city. It's charming stuff and the boy listens respectably.

The biggest star of the film for me was Iran itself, my foreign eyes getting a rare glimpse into this world. The town of Koker looks like some beautiful medieval labyrinth of alleys, stairwells and underpasses that, as night approaches and a strong wind gathers, becomes quite a creepy place. Ahmed doesn't return the book in the end as he became too frightened. But he completes his friends homework himself and what we are left with is a simple, charming tale of friendship.

Moribund Ball of Dregs

It ain't so bad you know, lying there in the back garden during peak summer on that awkwardly unfolded chair which nearly flips you over backwards whenever you sit up in it. You can hear the snap and sizzle of Mr Ramblebottom's BBQ next door, as smoke swells and swirls over the fence and, lo! what is that? Rambles has some music playing! I never knew he had it in him the drab old square! But what is this joyful sound and sunburst? It's certainly not Pink Floyd. Why this moribund ball of dregs might be worth saving after all!

The sound of some lazy vibraphone patter mingles with the smell of burning delicious fat and you look up to an aeroplane shooting streaks of white into the cloudless blue and for that one fleshy moment you're locked inside that scratchy reggae groove, hands as light as wisps of smoke, hungry, on fire. There are wrens and magpies and alders and aspens and you are not separate. You are soil you are silicon you are stone. You are God. You are swine that's been sweating in the same t-shirt for three days. What joy! What a dreadful musky stench.

You see a wood pigeon shi . . . . AHHHHHHH! A fly! You flip over backwards from the chair and spill some lemonade up your leg and you curse and compose yourself as the fly decides to take a swim in the glass of severely lacking lemonade. What would Mr Ramblebottom think? He's scratching his bum and nodding at his beer can. I think I got way with it. Ah, bless him and his gluttony. Then the buttery fingers of the sun creep up and around your neck whilst a passing breeze caresses your cheeks and you relax and drink the lemonade anyway. Such a treacherous life dear English summer!



But instead you're in a freezing cold flat with dead spider guts on the walls listening to some mildly irritating elevator music. In Croydon.


Friday 24 August 2012

The Room Of Hollow Eyes

The room was small the eyes were hollow, all dregs and decay.
Ruffled hair, dry scalp and seamen stains
Nails being bitten, cobwebbed corners, bedwetted sheets.
The room is smaller now, the air is ringing
Riddle me, riddle me
Why must thou haunt me?
The darkness strangles, the eyes crushed like two grapes on glass
The merciless unseen, taunting with her movents
Maniacal cackling, a loosening of hinges
Trouble is silent
Silence is trouble
Riddle me, riddle me
Take me already


Thursday 24 May 2012

Summer Buzzing

Main Source - Breaking Atoms
Spent the afternoon lazing in the garden's sunshine listening to this. It was fucking bliss. The rippling bass lines, the fruity organs, the rays of the sunshine and the snap and crackle of the beats causing tingling feelings round the spine. The thoughtful humility of the words with not an ounce of lazy misogyny in sight. There were several moments - the keyboard solo of 'Watch Roger', Elephant Memory's hazy "ooo aahh"'s backing 'Baseball', the bass line to 'Vamos', the cries of "he got so much soul, he don't need no music" -  moments where I had a strange primal urge to run up my garden shed and cling on to the roof, pull myself up and take the big run and leap onto the roof of my house Parkour style and raise a triumphant fist up to the neighbourhood below. The fact that I'm recovering from a broken leg may have saved a few blushes.  The entire LP kills it and will receive a lot summer spins.