wind harp - song from the hill

wind harp - song from the hill

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forgang-foraged, glacial-lakes approved jewel of deep 70s field-recording weirdness. A bunch of cultic flower children built this wind harp on a hill and let nature take its course. look how huge that beast is. It's like ten times the size of a pleasant hippy toddler.

I'm not even going to go into detail about how surprisingly moody and sinister the recording is. I also really like that the album is credited to wind harp like it's alive. There is an excellent blog post already out there about this album which you can read in full here and which I quote:

"It is undoubtedly a spiritual sound, just not in a way that I suspect either the record company nor the hippies were anticipating. Certainly anyone sticking this on to accompany a meditation session or drug trip would get more than they bargained for; bummers, paranoia, bloody noses; all are possibilities. For however much we may be taught to view nature, and atmospheric conditions / weather systems in particular, as an entirely beautiful, harmonious system through which we can gain understanding of ourselves via an impression of dissolution within it’s patterns, it swiftly becomes clear upon dropping the needle that the sounds emerging from this here Wind Harp were REALLY FUCKING MALEVOLENT."

jonathan - li song

jonathan - li song

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An acknowledged classic exclusive.  On the heels of Heldon, it's some extremely rare, awesome seventies German deep scifi-prog, with a powerful head-nodding drum groove that's very DJ Shadow-worthy. On top of the solid Bonham pound there's heavenly shimmering organ chords like on Popol Vuh and cheerful analog flutes.  I really want to hear this song with hip-hop scratches. Remember how on Endtroducing there's a part that uses the break from "Sunday Bloody Sunday"? You could do something like that with this. Look out for an exclusive "808s and Drum Breaks" remix here soon. 

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here is the backstory of finding this album. two summers ago my glacial lakes partner jonathan came to visit brave and I in Berlin, where as is our custom we were holded up for the season, practicing in Prenzlauer Berg, spieling fahrrads, hanging with falcon, and drinking beer on the streets. there's a good story involving being a hero goose that is too long to attend to here. Suffice to say one weekend afternoon we were scouting around the Mauer flea market, poking through records, when I handed a copy of the Jonathan album to its namesake, and we beheld its lovely serendipity - you see the music of Jonathan is performed by a keys & drums duo, which is exactly the same lineup of my band with brave. The coincision of these elements had a near astral intensity. J, however, in an odd move, put the record back, noting its high price tag. Curiously, that was only one of two magic flea market finds that day which would fail to make it back to the States with us - brave later procured a fantastic druid garment that quickly became an inofficial band outfit, truly coronating him as the homeless wizard he is. That find too somehow missed rescue, cosigned to the absurdly spacious sublet apartment we left behind in Kreuzberg. 

Needless to say, it's not hard to regret passing up purchasing a tantalizing obscure record that bears your own name, especially when the cover art is your name in huge stone letters on the moon, and there's a kind of apple that's also your name floating above it. Also, trying googling this album. We all thought it lost to the dustbins of time, until one day stina and I were in a random East Village record store and spied it, there, hanging on the wall! the Jonathan record! 

The End

Spiritualized - I Think I'm In Love

Spiritualized - I Think I'm In Love

I have a friend who does not ride for Spiritualized. More offensively, he even refused when asked at point blank to ride even just for this song. This is egregious enough that I will not embarrass him by mentioning that his name is Jonathan Forgang. 

You can't make someone like a song by explaining it to them. It's like trying to make a joke funny by explaining it. I will leave my unnamed friend to his opinion, because I don't need to make other people agree with me in order to feel good about my own point of view. I already feel very good about it. I feel very good, specifically, about "I Think I'm in Love." 

It is one of the best sunny-day walking songs ever, a gorgeous steam-powered whirlwind of smooth-groove gospel-tinged psychedelic rock. Above all, the lyrics perfectly nail the at-times devastating energy of possibly being in love. That's the de-stablizing, disorienting, freak-you-out part, because, as J. Spaceman sings, you could be totally wrong. That's the sheer force of maybe being in love, because it's de-coupled from all kinds of knowledge or certainty. You have to just ride the wave. After beatlessly singing about lying in a room on heroin, J. goes on to say:

I think I'm in love 
Probably just hungry 
I think I'm your friend 
Probably just lonely 
I think you got me in a spin now 
Probably just turning 
I think I'm a fool for you babe 
Probably just yearning 
I think I can rock and rool 
Probably just twisting 
I think I wanna tell the world 
Probably ain't listening 
Come on 

I think I can fly 
Probably just falling 
I think I'm the life and soul 
Probably just snorting 
I think I can hit the mark 
Probably just aiming 
I think my name is on your lips 
Probably complaining 
I think I have caught it bad 
Probably contagious 
I think I'm a winner baby 
Probably Las vegas 
Come on 

I think I'm alive 
Probably just breathing 
I think you stole my heart now baby 
Probably just thieving 
I think I'm on fire 
Probably just smoking 
I think that you're my dream girl 
Probably just dreaming 
I think I'm the best babe 
Probably like all the rest 
I think that I could be your man 
Probably just think you can 
Come on 

I think I'm in love 

J. Spaceman knows enough about drugs (including love) not to blindly trust the insight they offer. All the beauty and danger of ecstatic feeling lies in the absence of suture between how you feel when you're high, high on anything, dancing, shopping, creating, screwing, drinking, and the condition of the world after you come down again. That's why some addicts end up revolutionaries, some become messiahs, some melancholic and alienated. 

I'm a Rausch-er, take it from me.