Books Good For You!

I am pretty old and need young friends to keep current with the latest releases. Basement editor/sound/engineer guy Jay Wolting has been my pipeline to current releases for the past year or so. Jay introduced me to The Books, a group I had heard of before, but had largely ignored.

Because things move very fast these days I tend to resist anything "new" at first. Just a sort of way of maintaining control, I guess. New releases zip by and the most of them are pretty good but the constant stream creates a predictable flow. Pleasant but not particularly exciting. I have to be taken off guard, as it were, by something new.

On a recent trip to Sub-Saharan Africa working on my film, Y Africa (still working on it...2 years and counting) I let my ITunes run on repeat as I was retiring. Many nights I fell asleep to the beautiful, dreamy Panda Bear album, other nights it was Bon Iver or even Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians or Four Tet. Then one night in Burkina Faso, I decided to let The Books' The Lemon of Pink play me off to sleep and I now want to use The Books music for the doc. A masterful use of samples and dialogue from films within a framework of truly beautiful guitar, banjo, violin, voices and found sound. Check out their website below.

http://www.thebooksmusic.com

Girlin and the snowman

Screw "It's a wonderful life", as far as I'm concerned the most poignant and affecting Christmas films of all time are "Bad Santa" by Terry Zwigoff and "The Snowman"by Raymond Briggs. They're both staples at my house during the holidays ( and yes "the Grinch..." but that goes without saying).
"The Snowman" is not your typical Christmas time viewing because while it is stunningly beautiful - it's also thoroughly depressing! It's as if "Frosty the snowman" had been directed by Vittorio de Sica...Once the snowman melts, there is no magic hat to bring him back. It's heavy. It's about loss. Not very Christmas-sy. (I mean Raymond Briggs also wrote "Where the wind blows" - a stark tale about a little old couple's experiences through a nuclear holocaust). But wow!! What a piece of art.
Anyways, here's a gorgeous song from "The Snowman" that my daughter Corrina loves. Not very uplifting either. But perfect for that post-holidaze come down.

basement music #6 now available!

Basement music #6 is live!

Playlist:

Pulp - This Is Hardcore
Stars - Ageless Beauty
Animal Collective - Summertime Clothes
Taken By Trees - To Lose Someone
Girls - Lust for Life
Jason Lytle - Ghost of My Old Dog
Dirty Projectors & David Byrne - Knotty Pine
Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
Mount Eerie - Between Two Mysteries
Grizzly Bear - While You Wait For the Others
DOOM - Gazillion Ear
Bill Callahan - Too Many Birds
Big Star - Jesus Christ

My Best Albums of 2009

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3.4.

5.6.

7.8.

9.10.

11.12.

13.14.

15.16.

17.18.

19.20.