Cold - 1. Melancholia

ambient, drone, light post-rock, light psychdrone

posted 11/7/11

1. Last Days Leaving Home
2. Jodis Continents
3. Jackie-O Motherfucker Good Morning Kaptain
4. Cult of Luna Marching To The Heartbeats
5. Gregor Samsa 7 07 Pseudonyms
6. Library Tapes Klosterg
7. Fell City Lights Flickering Off And On
8. Earth Crooked Axis For String Quartet
9. The Gentleman Losers Midnight Of The Garden Trees
10. Kill the Zodiac My Heart Beats From The Outside
11. A Silver Mt. Zion This Gentle Hearts Like Shot Bird's Fallen
12. 36 Geiga
13. Tor Lundvall Early hours
14. Grouper Second Skin-Zombie Wind
15. Masochistic Values Dream (Cold)
16. Near The Parenthesis I Remember It Differently
17. Ben Frost Through The Roof Of Your Mouth
18. Sora Shima The Art of Selfdestruction
19. Port Royal Jeka
20. Tim Hecker In The Air III
21. Last Days All The Lighthouses

21 songs, 1:31:12, 126.4MB

http://www.mediafire.com/?z1r976gisvnp9k2

Bookended for a reason (so much so that this should hardly be the first of the 5 installments...), but the beginning and end of Last Days - Sea have made an unbelievable impression on me, if merely by rote repetition. I listened to Sea once or twice a night, every night, for about two years, and often ended up listening to it in class or while driving too. I was utterly consumed with the conversation in 'Leaving Home', to the extent that I emailed Graham Richardson to ask him what it was (he wasn't sure, he was flipping channels, some soap opera or something; the "story" behind the song is that the man who runs away with a boat into the arctic ocean slips out in the beginning while his family is watching TV). But I could be making that up, it's been a while. So I decided to bookend the whole mix with the bookends of Sea, because it's pretty much solely responsible for me enjoying everything in between.

Fucking Continents. So you know how sometimes you aren't listening to music (for shame) and any event at all occurs in your life and you go I NEED GRINDCORE RIGHT FUCKING NOW, and you have a very narrow time window where you can find the right song? Like, if I say I NEED GRINDCORE RFN, I'll usually just head straight to Rotten Sound because there's no downtime or delay or anything; IT'S GRIND O CLOCK. Continents does that for me with drone. A lot of it is just how instantaneously the song starts. If I NEED DRONE RFN, I don't have time for a buildup or anything, I NEED TO BE SWEPT INTO TENUOUS TIDAL ARRANGEMENTS RFN! And if you double click on Continents, you have a split second before "bllleeeaaaahhh......bbbllllleeeaahhh.......bllllrrrrroooowwwwwwwwwww...............". Which easily gets you to the vocals, at which point you can just forget about doing anything ever again. Forever.

But too fucking bad, because there are even more songs!

"A sailor shouts Jeeeee,sus Chrriiiiiiiist, I'm drown-ding." Right at 2:37, when he mumbles "Sun burns yer eyyyyyes", whatever happens to the guitar tone is the most amazing thing I have ever heard in psychdrone. It sounds like the amp is threatening to actually become sentient (rampant, even), escaping the narrow tonal restraints afforded by the song and completely swallowing any waves in range like a solely-aural black hole. But it doesn't, and it's just a minor moment in a very, very potent song.

Cult of Luna shows up here because it also has lyrics. That's pretty much the only reason it's in that slot, but it's in the playlist because it is the beginning of my favorite album of theirs. It's kind of difficult, I suppose, because when I think of Cult of Luna, I actually tend to think of this song and 'and with her came the birds', instead of, you know, genesis and receiver and waiting for you like I should, but I think that's more representative of the niche they fill for me. There are a lot of times where I use Isis and Rosetta interchangeably, like deciding between oxycodone and hydrocodone, while I have never, ever used Cult of Luna when I didnt mean to. I really like Cult of Luna. They make albums like biblical scrolls, and marching to the heartbeats is flawless, especially in relief of the entire album (listen to somewhere along the highway through and play marching to the heartbeats again at the end after dark city, dead man).

Gregor Samsa - Pseudonyms: I've had this one for a while, but it's hard to pick exactly why. I didn't keep much of the album because....shit I dont know. This song has really nice vocals but they kind of remind me of antimatter and theatre of tragedy and once all those bands are grouped I just get really disinterested. Seems kind of wanky, I dunno. But Pseudonyms has that rapidly-struck dulcimer/piano (maybe? i couldnt tell you what it actually is) layer that sounds like theory of machines, and the last 90 seconds is fucking retard amazing and i wish the end was longer.

Ive never listened to Klosterg in the winter yet, because I just got it. Also I cant keep writing this much because blahnbnlanhlnnewrnjgiajooijweoijvngkndgkgne

So City Lights, as you know, is amazing. It is also, conveniently, a very winter song for me. This is a focal point of these 5 sections that I probably should have mentioned earlier: some of these songs (particularly in parts 2 and 4) may be included because I have a very explicit association between them and winter (ex. NOFX, the idiots are taking over in part 4 is included because we tried to cover it in winter and listened to it a shit ton in late 06/ early 07). City Lights (and 12:59 lullaby in part 4) are intrinsically related to that same winter for me, which involved a lot of driving around and falling in love and snowstorms and drifting sanchez around corners in gomez' neighborhood and trying to measure how long the heaters would stay warm running only off the car battery and giving up and just leaving the engine running for hours so she could sleep. Lots of City Lights. Just listen to it, it's a really apt song, especially since they are local and I know exactly what our city lights look like from a good vantage.

Back to writing less, EARTH.

Gentleman Losers - described in detail on PnB, this song is here because it sounds fucking COLD. very tor lundvall. easily sounds as though (as mentioned earlier, it's very soundtrack-y) it could have the sound of someone crunching through frozen night snow over the entire thing.

This isnt my winter kill the zodiac song, but that one (we breathe from the same mask) is a bit louder and i didnt want that yet. i really wish i could have been friends with this kid in high school. the sound of this song is just so tenuous and brittle it seems amazing that it ends, that it's not just a background noise that you carry with you always.

Lodged right in the middle is ASMZ, and the most important song in this section. I'd say more, but...i dunno. It's all aforementioned gomez stuff plus a lot of bright clear nights and suicide and pressure. it was hard to watch brick after hearing this song; the best parts of the brick soundtrack sound very, very similar to this.

36 - didnt want to put 'home' on yet another fucking mix, so it was between geiga and drowning. geiga probably won because of filesize, because all of his songs from hollow or memories in widescreen sound like drowning. hollow just has the advantage of sounding like drowning in winter.

Tor lundvall made it, obviously. Doesnt necessarily sound cold (if you consider what the entire album sounds like), but fuck it's empty.

I started collecting grouper albums the same time I started drinking constantly. The first time I heard this (lol genetics lab sometime in Feb 2009) I was taken aback by how her voice is shaped. I only had dragging a dead deer before way their crept, so I was used to hearing her sing, but this is something else. That's not singing.

Is it weird that I have an interlude on a mix that could be entirely interludes? LUUUUUUDES

Near the parenthesis! A very inviting, but crisp song. More like salt flats at night than a winter wonderland, but fuck you this is my favorite NTP song.

Because there was no way Ben Frost wasnt making it in here. Cmon. I want to talk about him forever to anyone (much like Gorgoroth) but there is like fuck all I can try to say here and not sound like I'm speaking pitchfork-english. So just know that Ben Frost is the tops.

Sora shima is...somehow related to kill the zodiac. Might be the same people. It pairs very nicely with

Jeka - Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit. I find it weird that Port Royal used this as the beginning of Flares, because it's a very conclusive song to me. Gomez asked me once a lonnnng long time ago what song I would hear if I died and I immediately said Jeka. Jeka and Last Days - All The Lighthouses pretty much made Sommeil Sans Reves for me (listen to them shits. all 3. then try to tell the difference).

Tim Hecker is another guaranteed member here. Ravedeath is flawless, and the In The Air ending trilogy is just...penetrating.

Aaaaannnnd Last Days. If I was ever so fucked up I got knuckle tattoos...LAST DAYS.

Fin. Here's the link again. Put em in order. Or I'll turn you into a fucking tree.

http://www.mediafire.com/?z1r976gisvnp9k2