Category: music

They say silence is music’s original alternative. And when I say “they”, I mean me and Todd Snider.

hAppy whEn it RaiNs || J&MC

Step back and watch the sweet thing
Breaking everything she sees
She can take my darkest feeling
Tear it up, till I'm on me knees

Warping the loom was not the right thing for my evening. This attempt went very wrong, then worse — so I manned-up and admitted I needed to come back to it in a different state of mind (I blame my state on this one: a bit crusty around the rough edges).

I sat there, trying to grasp the tiger’s tail of something, a faint wisp of thought, maybe a bit of spirit from one of the foxes in the tangled copse behind a neighbor’s house, maybe the ghost of a Ghost. Maybe I just ate too much for dinner.

Then I had a bit of flashback to a neverwhen.

Or, I don’t recall it being a when that was part of this waking, so perhaps it was dream, and may have actually been a when on that side of sleep.

I needed this song from my past this evening, and the unmoored memories that came with letting it into my soul. There was a never-her like this and I miss having not-her around although we never-were together. It reminded me that disaster-warps are not everything, and there is a lovely kind power to be able to recall something of that what this song evoked — even if it was based on nothing at all.

I went from thinking moments before that amor vincit omnia is a pile of horse turds to — well, maybe it sometimes conquers when you allow phantom dreams to pass through you on their journey to wherever inmachinations drift to when they long for another dream.

Then it sometimes rains. Or, in Minnesota, it dumps a shit-tonne of snow as it did today.

Lucky for me, I’m happy when it rains.

Heilung | Anoana

This song’s “chorus” has been earworming me for weeks now.

I figure someone (or my brain) is trying to tell me something. I honestly cannot shake it from my head. Bedtime. Cooking meals. Showers. Work. What have you.

Aelwao anoana tuwatuwa
Tau liiu anoana tuwatuwa

The song is composed of runic inscriptions carved on protective amulets, or bracteates, according to several sources (including Heilung’s Bandcamp page). Other sites say that the above is likely untranslatable. The argument is that the phrases from the amulets are probably encoded spells.

The video is a new find for me: I wasn’t aware one had been made for the song until this morning. It is in the vein of videos I like far more than most that have been produced in recent years — it has an actual story tied into it, which is what (to me) music videos are meant to be — not clean-copy concert footage or people milling about doing things unrelated to the lyrics.

Anyway, perhaps my earworm will become yours.

Almost absurdimentally. And workplace.

©2022 Michael Raven

Long day. A shift, fluid, around me.

As I put it earlier today: a week ago, I was invited to vacate my personal office in the company’s leased space by no later than November 30th of this year. I had the audacity to elect to continue to work from home when given a choice about the matter. Who would want to do such things?

Continue reading “Almost absurdimentally. And workplace.” →

An evening with Heilung

©2022 Michael Raven

Heilung at Myth Live, Saint Paul, MN (15 Sept 22) | Opening Ceremony [photo credit: Michael Raven]

Heilung is one of those bands/acts/performances/whatever I have wanted to see since I was introduced to them about two years ago. I saw one of their videos for a live performance and was instantly hooked. This, I thought, is what ritual should be about.

Continue reading “An evening with Heilung” →

Tonight: Heilung

©2022 Michael Raven

I’m really looking forward to this event. And, while I quite enjoy the band and their music, I am most interested in the “ceremonial” ritual experience that they bring more than the music itself. If I think of it and it seems appropriate, I’ll snap some pictures — but I’m not going to make it a production to do so.

I may also try to hang out before or stick around after the show if I get a sense I can get an autograph or meet the band.

This should be, at the very least, interesting.

Cockatiel

©2022 Michael Raven

Still grooving on the whole take a short bit of time out of my day to improv a composition. We’ll see how long that lasts before I burn out, but I am liking the stretch I’m giving to my creative muscles that’s a bit different than the writing (poetry/short story) muscles.

Here we have something more along the lines of historic music by myself (non-electronica). Muddy, phased, shoegaze rhythm guitars, overchorus’d bass, plodding drums, C-minor key and phrases melody that echoes itself with minor variation. It’s been a very long time since I wrote something along these lines and, while I was tinkering, I came up with plenty of more melody phrases to play off of if I want to pursue it further. This is more like what you’d hear in the interlude between verses. The verses themselves would be simpler on the melody elements to leave the vocals room to breathe. Not sure if I would have a chorus structure (thinking Joy Division influence, there).

I might come back to this one, as I feel it has potential.

It has a little more post-processing on it than Chinese Take-Out, but it’s still “demo” level of production; i.e., see if it sticks in my head and I want to come back to it. Some ‘verb and compression, a hint of echo, a touch of stereo.

Lemme know your thoughts. As good or better than yesterday? Or “shitcan that shit”?

About 90-105 minutes of experimentation on this one before you have what you have below. I started with nothing in mind, just grabbed a drum phrase and started dinking around.

You’ll only waste about a minute of your time listening to this one.