The new load.

Of course, I would write that last post and then pile up the way I have this weekend. Not on purpose--not entirely, anyway.

When I wrote the last one I neglected to remember that I'd just a few hours before bought my first CD of 2009. It was In My Own Words, Ne-Yo's first album from 2006, which I'd only heard sparsely and in spots. I knew a couple songs but most of it I didn't at all, and while I don't subscribe to the theory of having "fucked up" by not knowing a piece of music the exact second it landed in the public eardrum, I liked this guy the second I heard him--not on the radio but on Ghostface Killah's "Back Like That," which I didn't vote for as a single that year and regret not doing. (That and Herbert's "Harmonise.") I nabbed the other two day of release but for whatever reason haven't gone back till now. (Well, the reason's obvious: he made my favorite album of last year.) Really like this a lot--not the way I do the last one, which goes deeper emotionally for me, and is more precisely written, but it's not as if he stints on feeling or fine-tuning here, either.

That's not the load, though--the load isn't even the mail. I finished the last FE shipment just in time; two new titles landed today, one of them a double-CD w/book from Rune Grammofon which is sounding tasty in a few senses. (RIYL: Hassell/Eno, Last Exit, acoustic electronica, early Crimson.) No, it's the 100+ eMusic downloads, which splits out into 10 albums: Peter Bernstein's Monk (five songs in, sounds nice--I love Monk and these guitar treatments really throw him into new light), new titles (just this week, I believe, for most of them) by Cut Off Your Hands, Antony and the Johnsons, PPP (like the previously-heard mixtape as well), Drug Rug (their name always put me off and made me curious to about equal measure--this being an EP I figured it was as good an opportunity as any), and Modern Skirts, and Tom Moon-recommended oldies by Abdullah Ibrahim, Albert King (Born Under a Bad Sign), Amalia Rodrigues, and Ali Akbar Khan.

That's a lot of music. I'll have time for it--or make time--but it's the first real roadblock I've hit with regard to SLM. I know I'll have to download at least a couple standalone tracks for It's a Hit consideration, an easy enough hump to get over; one tier for work, one for just listening. Obviously, overload crosses formats, too: I'd never be able to do this if I were to restrict myself to listening to everything exact order.

That sounds like an experiment waiting to happen, doesn't it? "I bought this CD, got two CD promos of albums I'm reviewing, downloaded five new tracks, and was sent a .zip file with a third review title. Now I have to play them in the order received." How OCD can I possibly be about this? Let's find out, etc.

Here's another experiment I'm going to try at some point to be determined: Reader Request Day(s). It's simple: I make a post asking commenters to name one recording apiece--song or album, no box sets plz--that I should listen to, and I'll spend a day doing just that, in the order received, and probably write about it here. There's a cheap gimmick for you!

It's a weird time to have to do the eMusic pile-on because I'm really in the mood to listen to cheap, gimmicky music--singles, of course. New ones. I have a couple crucial deadlines in the offing and preparing myself to bear down on them is good discipline, but when I'm done I will start diving into as many items on my get-to list and in-box folders as still look interesting. I'm still not optimistic about Pop 2009's thing-ness, but I might as well start finding out.

Caught up.

I finally am caught up with my listening. I finished off the final four FE send-outs: two last night, two today. And I also last night finished the SoulBounce playlists. Lots of good stuff on both ends, but here's what I wrote today on Facebook Twitter about FE: "Wasn't into Eleni Mandell. Really liked Intrusion. 2000 and One was iffy with a few nice peaks. The Subs: not sure what I think but it sounds like a continuation of rave-revival into a kind of popward/blog-house direction, which interests me even if I don't love it. Humcrush--played three times, didn't register much any them, but it sounds like something I should concentrate on. Chloe--loved the first two-thirds, will be going back to it. Afrobutt sounded kind of limited; will listen again to cherry-pick. Piemont sounded OK, need to re-hear. Ben Klock, too."

I have over 100 eMusic downloads left for the month; they re-up on Monday, so I'll be downloading a lot of stuff this weekend. A lot of stuff I want to at least try to hear came out this week, so that'll probably be a good amount of it. And I want to start chipping away at my "download later" Word doc. I feel like this system has shook a lot of the bedbugs out, and I can do with jumping back into things a bit.

"The Autumn of the Multitaskers"

Simon Reynolds sent a nice email about this project, and my response back touches on some issues I wanted to address here anyway, so I'll rejigger some of that for this post.

The first thing to mention is Walter Kirn's "The Autumn of the Multitaskers," published November '07 in The Atlantic Monthly. Read it and see how many times you flinch. I, of course, didn't see it in the magazine but in the Best American Magazine Writing 2008 book--easily my favorite of the yearly anthologies--while on a plane going to Minneapolis for Christmas. Which kind of says everything, right? It was that trip home for the holidays that spurred SLM in the first place, and Kirn's essay played no small role in that, so I'd like to belatedly thank and acknowledge him for that.

Simon asked about "slow listening" as an idea--surely the intent should be closer to "deep listening," right? Well, maybe. The idea isn't to clean up my listening habits so much as my consumption habits. Slow Food isn't about eating slowly so much as eating with a greater degree of education of what your food comes from, as well as all the localizing/agribusiness part of it, which I won't be replicating in my own experiment but is pretty close to SFM in intent. (Fast food, after all, refers to preparation time, not necessarily eating time, though there are obviously major correlations.) If I were to really go for a Slow Food parallel league, it would involve more live shows than I'm planning to see--I almost never go out anymore--and of course tons of local music, which is not really part of the plan. The idea not so much being to listen deeply as a general consciousness about what I'm putting in my ears.

But even in my usual multitasking sort of way one thing I'm finding is that the more premeditation that goes into an album or MP3, the keener my standards are for it. That's actually gratifying because there have been times, particularly in '08, when I wondered how stringent I was really being as a listener. I still like all of the singles and albums I listed for year's end, of course, but even with those diamonds-in-the-rough, it was almost impossible to carve any real sort of narrative from my selections. (Clearly the election drained most people's energy--Simon's "theory of vibe migration" writ large.)

Simon asked if I "have ever gone so far as to . . . [shamed whisper] save up links for later DLling." I've mentioned my Word doc ere before. Right now it has about 70 items. Add to that the two "digital promos" email folders, which total 90. This is its own lesson: normally I'd have scarfed many of them up, threw 'em into a folder, then added them in bulk to an iTunes playlist and waded through them slowly-but-surely . . . until a point of no return is reached, which doesn't take all that long. Last year, when I spent a month traveling from NYC to Seattle by Amtrak, stayed in six cities, etc., a ton of my listening was done to singles/downloads, and it was great fun--singles listening can make you feel attuned to the present like nothing else. And of course I heard loads of stuff I really enjoyed. But when I got home I spent a week listening to nothing but albums.

Singles listening, exclusively, for a month, burns you out, big time. (Burnt me out, anyway.) I like immersing myself in them but it's harder to justify that--until recently I had three columns, two of which basically paid all my bills. Now I have one that pays my phone and cable bills if I'm lucky. So there's already less of a justification for just listening all the time, as well as watching TV, going to the movies, trying to read something other than the friggin' internet all day long . . . somewhere in those 160-or-so as-yet-unheard MP3s there may be a good two dozen that I'll adore, and I'll probably get to those eventually, but it's just hard to care right now. Part of it is not wanting to think about music quite so much after a month of year-end lists etc., which I obviously enjoy. But as Simon mentioned in the email, "It does prey on the mind the invisible weight of all that sound." Taking my time to get to all those freebies (bestowed on me by publicists or simply other bloggers) lifts some of that weight; the guilt of not knowing is lighter than that of having them sitting there, waiting to be heard.

DJ mixes.

I listen to a lot of dance music, and I've been a fan of mix-CDs for a long time. But I don't listen to as many online-available mixes as I might, or rather I didn't until recently. The logic is simple: the established media from which I largely make my living didn't/doesn't care about these things, for the most part. Not to mention that there are so damn many of them floating around I wouldn't know where to begin or end.

That began to change last year. Along with the single-track MP3s I picked up, I started downloading DJ mixes as well. The obvious turning point here was the Resident Advisor Podcast, which I began paying attention to early in '07 and then started looking around for older and out of print ones. Nothing like a collectible to usher you in, right? Especially an ongoing one. But it helped solidify an approach to MP3 mixes that I still basically follow: I'll happily try it out (or add it to my Word doc for later), but I never go out of my way to find a DJ set. I like them to be good accidents.

And because they're long and because I am honor-bound to play them through--and because it's January and the big thing I'm working on isn't about records, I have time to troll through things at my leisure--I've been listening to more mixes. RA.137 just finished, RA.138 now begun--137 sounded nice, no real bead on it, though. I've played the Joker Purple Wow Sound mix FACT put up (and Philip just mentioned) a few times, no serious bead on that one other than I like it and it's probably definitive for all that weirdo bass stuff I like. (Which is a bead, sure, but that's exactly as far as it goes: I'm talking about the vibe/hype surrounding it. That all feels factual to me. I'd just need to dig deeper into it to figure out the ways it's doing those things, to my ears and to the folks inside that circle.) I've been listening to Grandfather Paradox to review.

And of course, I'm behind: seven minutes into the hourlong Rene Breitbarth RA.138, playing it now out of necessity (though hey, techno sounds good right now). That's because I never got back to those SoulBounce playlists; I could probably guess which songs were the ones I need to hear and play them, but I do enjoy hearing this stuff in groups--I don't know a lot of it, so it helps to hear in sequence. I still have nOvaMatic's and Ro's left. (None of them are complete, by the way. As mentioned, I can't find my Jazmine Sullivan CD.)

I might as well lay out what else I'm behind on. I still have five of those Forced Exposure CDs to play, though the pile they occupied by their lonesome got shuffled around big-time over the past few days. Worse, I requested two more from their most recent promo mailing. An upshot: I realized today that I haven't bought a single CD yet this year. I wonder how long I can keep that up.

What I listened to today: Saturday, Jan. 17

The Bush Chemists [King General], “Money Run Tings” and “Money Run Tings Dub” (Conscious Sounds, 1996)
Disciples, “Prowling Lion” (Boom Shacka Lacka, 1993)
[Cheshire Cat and] Love Grocer, “A Little Rain Must Fall” and “A Little Version” (Dubhead, 2001)
Dread & Fred, “Warriors Stance” (Jah Shaka, 1988)
Twilight Dub Sound System ft. Lutan Fyah, “We Can Make It Work” (M, 2006)
Aisha, “The Creator” (Ariwa, 1985)
Alpha and Omega, “Rastafari” (Alpha and Omega, 1990s)
Danny Red, “Be Grateful” (white label, 1993)
Disciples, “Return to Addis Ababa” and “Version” (Boom Shacka Lacka, 1994)
Earl Sixteen, “Natural Roots” (three versions) (Riz/Downtown, 1997)
Jah Mason, “Rainbow Circle Throne” (Jah Warrior, 2003)
All found via eMusic (apart from Jah Mason, from Amazon), all from Woofah issue 3’s Top 30 UK Dub tracks. I’ve mentioned my abiding interest in lists as listening guides; this is an area I know very little about as a scene other than that it exists, but whenever I tune in, as here, I’m always somehow disappointed because it sounds like, what do you know, reggae. I guess I expect something more overtly post-punky, or even proto-ravey, or something other than basic, if well made, roots-rooted stuff. And since I couldn’t tell a King Tubby dub track from a Lee Perry one in the dark, on fantastic marijuana, I don’t know what the differences between these guys are either. Not that I mind this at all: some of these sounded nice, and I’ll undoubtedly go back to the playlist now that it’s made. A couple sounded in passing like they’d be good to play out.

Drum & Bass Selection 4 (Breakdown, 1995)
The unmixed, two-CD version, not the 19-track mix that I think was the only way it was made available in the U.S. So it’s an import; I found it used for about eight bucks a few years ago, an absolute steal. The roster is impeccable; it’s not the last collection ever made before drum & bass’s factions began to splinter, but listening made me feel that way. And that unity is bolstered by checking the credits: these 20 tracks were licensed from 15 labels, and while some were subsidiaries of each other, that still says something about its breadth. I don’t mean that this is anywhere near kaleidoscopic or differently-charged as History 1 & 2, just that for a relatively straightforward compendium of a pretty straightforward sound at a time when its muscled were fully flexed, every tune has something uniquely its own. I’d hear a melody or a particularly well turned break and check the track list, and boom: yep, that’s Dillinja; uh-huh, it’s Shy FX (“Simple Tings,” what a lovely track)—oh yeah, of course, Tom & Jerry a.k.a. 4 Hero in lighthearted mode. I don’t know if I ever realized just how good this comp is before.

2562, Aerial (Tectonic, 2008)
Put on the promo a couple weeks ago after ripping it to my EHD along with some other things on year-end lists—and remembered why I didn’t go deeper into it when I’d first put it on back in spring: promobot attack! You’d think that would work better on atmospheric instrumental beat music, but no, it just sucked. Last night I did some record browsing before a movie and remembered I’d wanted to buy a copy to evade the promobot, but they didn’t have it, and as I was walking into the theater I remembered that it was on eMusic, so I downloaded it last night and remembered I needed to listen to it some more.

Anthony Hamilton, The Point of It All (Mister’s Music/So So Def/Zomba, 2008)
I always want to like this guy more than I do, but whenever I put his records on I remember that it isn’t just in theory that he’s boring.

SoulBounce Top 10 of 2008: ill Mami
I need to finish listening to these before I do much of anything. A week ago I got a few MP3s from Amazon to fill in gaps on the five year-end lists SB did. I still don’t have everything—need to unearth my Jazmine Sullivan CD to fill gaps on four lists, after which I’ll have two complete. Yes, I know this is tres baseball-card of me. Anyway, once I listen to everything I got for these—and since I can’t remember what it was, that means I listen to each incomplete list in their entirety. Right after buying the MP3s, I got through the first two. Tonight I just did one. After this: Match Game!

On clutter panic.

Right after hitting "publish" on the last one an idea occurred to me: I wonder if I'll undergo some kind of "clutter panic" as a result of all this streamlining.

I've been a slob all my life, as my mother will assure you, though I have a very good memory for which random spot I left whichever random object on my way to making a mess bigger than any sane person would live with. Whenever I do clean up my space, the difference is phenomenal: everything becomes much more clear, visually and otherwise. But I never work to make that be the case all the time; I'm used to clutter, and embrace it by default, by not doing anything about it.

I could pretty easily see the one-in-one-out method to objects (physical or otherwise) beyond music driving me to some kind of stir craziness. When you buy lots of records as an afterthought for more than half your life, it's not simply a habit. There's something psychological at hand, surely, and while what exactly that might be isn't the point here, taking it away is very likely to provoke some kind of reaction. The fact that I even thought of this wrinkle should tell you something. Greil Marcus once described an R. Crumb comic as being "about the disease of record collecting"; maybe it's something akin to that.

I just realized.

There's a side effect of Slow Listening I hadn't foreseen. Typically my iTunes folder gets huge and stays that way for most of the year, because I tended to not erase important-for-later stuff from it, not to mention that I kept the 10-track playlists through to the end of year, for final mix- or list-making or whatever. But pretty much by accident, I stopped doing it that way this month. I made a "2009" folder just to put stray MP3s in, but instead it became a weird monster, favored album tracks, new singles, and (the monstrous part) DJ mixes ranging from 20 minutes to eight hours (right, that one). It looks like an EKG chart laid out vertically, and I kind of dig it--seems/feels more like the way music occupies my life, a couple minutes here, a colossus there. So I added a "-1" to the name and am just going to do one per month. And when I'm done with that month's stuff, and have put it in its own special folder on the EHD*, I can then delete it all from hy laptop, because, at fucking last, there's nothing on it I won't have listened to.

What a relief this is. And what a strain it's already beginning to show. I am behind on the RA Podcast; I have a small but serious stack of CDs in front of me that I'm writing about in the coming week. I just downloaded another title for another review, which I'm playing now. (On track 3, of 16.) I've auditioned two CDs just before this one (the first of which was 74 minutes--can't remember the last rock album of that I even listened to), to back up my pitching them to eMusic.

This is the treadmill starting up again. It's kind of a relief: when I don't have deadlines to meet, my schedule goes to pieces. Well, it does anyway, and I've been late with things this week, though hopefully not fatally. But it's a symptom. Once my sleeping patterns are conquered (I so enjoyed being a morning person between Thanksgiving and Christmas; that's the goal), I should be able to manage even more and better listening time. But I'm doing pretty well so far. It's starting to really dawn on me how uncluttering this experiment actually is.

*I may in fact be such a fussbudget I'll copy-and-paste the tracklist of each onto a Word doc and stow it on the EHD as well. I'll try not to format it, but something tells me I won't be able to resist.