Music and other stuff
Gold Panda's latest album, TON UP, is exactly what I need this morning: hi-energy house that deeply reminds me of the old Paris is Burning style of life.
This album is a lot of fun and high-tempo throughout. Somehow, this album makes me think of SebastiAn's recent DJ session at Peacock Society.
#music #MusicTips #GoldPanda #EdBanger #SebastiAn #HighEnergy #house #techno
In a few months, it's election time in Sweden. The Tidö parties are probably going to lose, which is the best thing for anyone. They're a pack of xenophobic power-hungry political parties that engage in power, disguising their desires as ideology.
Tomma Intet are a Swedish indie-rock collective. Imagine a Californian sect that've been forced to sing choral hymns and gorge themselves only on music by The Radio Dept. Here you are. This song is sweet and dreamy. Kind of like something that George Harrison would have made and added a prog drive.
The chorus goes like this:
Själlösa jävla parasiter ni kan dra åt helvete
...which translates to something like this; translation by yours truly:
Soulless fucking parasites go to hell
If that's not love, what is.
Today dear Will Sheff releases his sophomore album, Extra Mile. It's a good leap from his first album, Nothing Special.
Will once co-founded Okkervil River and Shearwater, two bands that I love. He's now making thoughtful, visceral, and lovely music to which we hum and swing our hips.
I love Jackass. Most of the contents. There's no real negativity in the series. There's pranks, stuff that would usually be embarrassing, many gut-laughs, a lot of pain.
Steve-O is a Jackass cast member, well-known for performing some of the more painful and stunts that would be embarrassing to most people. I'm reading his first memoir, Professional Idiot: a Memoir. His dad was an absent and careless extremely-high-up executive at Pepsico; Steve-O's mom was a stay-at-home alcoholic.
One of the more interesting things about Steve-O is that he's a classic twelve-step alcoholic: he's a person who's made his way through the Alcoholics Anonymous twelve-step program.
I think that the charm of Jackass is in us being able to not take ourselves too seriously. You can't be super-macho in Jackass: you have to embrace the fact that you look uncool. That ability to not take ourselves seriously and be OK in compromising situations, I think, is endearing. —Steve-O
There's a lot of immediate shit about Jackass that puts it aside to a lot of pop-culture events. It's naturally not only about laughter, fear, and pain; it's about friendship and love. It's easy to see that those guys like and even love each other. In a larger perspective, Jackass is a story about what happens when regular people become world-famous. Drugs, alcohol, sex, addiction, money, jealousy, hate, falling to pieces, trying to pick oneself up.
It just so happened that Johnny Knoxville and some of the people in our Jackass world staged an intervention: they locked me up in a psychiatric ward, and I was locked up long enough and exposed to the right kind of message that I realised, 'Wow, I have to do something.' I've been sober ever since. —Steve-O
One of the more wonderful things about Steve-O is that he's fairly erudite about life, like a lot of other AA peeps; you get to know what's truly valuable in life when everything you 'valued' is bullshit, when your 'friends' are really parasites and vultures or buried deep in addiction, like yourself. Getting your head out of that instead of trying to find out what barbecue coal to buy is real.
Before Twitter collapsed completely (due to Elon Musk being forced to buy the platform, something he didn't want to do, I was lucky to be allowed to reproduce an email that was sent by David Berman, the musician and writer, to a guy who asked him for advice on sobriety. I love that letter.
Jocelyn West was previously named Jocelyn Montgomery. She is one of the founding members of the wondrous band Miranda Sex Garden.
West's song on this album is wonderful. It floats, it builds, it takes great care of Hildegard von Bingen's work and legacy. David Lynch's work is also evident, making the voice float and carry through. That said, I'm not sure how much work Lynch did on the album.
From Lynchnet:
In 1998, David Lynch completed work on a new album by Jocelyn Montgomery, the Scottish fiddle player seen in Pretty as a Picture. The album is based on 12th century verses by Hildegard von Bingen. The album was released in the US on August 25, 1998.
Jocelyn Montgomery: The experiences I've had singing Hildegard and performing it, is that it's always been a very natural and instinctive thing. I've always deeply identified with it. It's the most beautiful music I've ever come across ... ever sung.
#MusicTips #music #JocelynMontgomery #DavidLynch #JocelynWest
From the Bandcamp page:
ABADIR, known to his friends as Rami Abadir, is a music producer, sound designer, DJ and music critic born in Cairo, Egypt and based in Berlin, Germany.
When I started listening to this EP, I thought Omar Souleyman had a child with Zuli.
This is Egypt, jungle, and intense percussive movements. I dig this stuff.
This is one of the most weird metal-music releases I've heard in 2026. Here's what I wrote on Record Club after I heard the EP:
Vocals seem to be by that little guy who's chained to Jabba the Hutt.
The synths and piano breaks do my little head in.
Imagine Elton John collabing with Darkthrone.
This is a list of books that David Berman, the poet, musician, composer, front person of Silver Jews, and wondrous blogger, mentioned as somehow influential on him. If you visit the list on Bookwyrm, you'll see a note with every book that contains a short quote or just a reference to where and when Berman mentioned the book.
The song 'This Train Don’t Stop There Anymore' would not be the shit if it weren't for its three components:
The video stars Justin Timberlake as Elton John during the height of John's 1970s popularity. LaChapelle cast Paul Reubens (best known as Pee-Wee Herman) as John Reid, who was John's manager for 25 years.
I love the lyrics paired with the video; everything's sad. And the video is beautiful in its slow-mo wonders.
Side notes: Gary 'Take That' Barlow sings backing vocals on this track. The track's been covered by Rosanne Cash and Emmylou Harris:
#music #MusicTips #EltonJohn #BernieTaupin #DavidLachapelle #PaulReubens #video
James Blake posted this a while back.
It's not a trip into negativity; for me, at least, this is a reminder to remember the art, the work, the fun, not the metrics nor the bullshit behind all of it.
Unfortunately, for professional artists, they do need to keep their ear to the grindstone.
While Christie's are auctioning away 'approximately 80 guitars' that Johnny Marr owns, people like Jon Spencer have to grind.
In this podcast episode, Spencer speaks about his latest album, how he runs his own record label, and how he books every single gig. He actually did that most of the time while in Boss Hog, Heavy Trash, and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. That's saying something. Also, that's what Johnny Marr and Morrissey (and Morrissey's mum, if I'm not mistaken) did during their heyday.
Run your own record label and handle your own affairs: complete control and extremely taxing.
Let a record label handle your shit, unless it's a very good record label: get fucking swindled and dumped at the side of the road after your first album.
When you see something like this, you know music's for real. The people are for real. And the world is on fire.
#music #MusicTips #JonSpencer #JamesBlake #MusicBusiness #BrokenRecord