Oliver Land!!!

Aspiring writer, filmmaker, social researcher, poet, world traveller, & chef Favourite Books New Seeds of Contemplation  Actual Air  Normal People The Secret Sharer  Blood Meridian  The Lord of the Rings Tropic of Cancer  Queer  Revolutionary Suicide Favourite Music Artists Nina Simone  Public Enemy  PJ Harvey  Les Rallizes Denudes Arthur Russell  The Gun Club  Bill Evans  John Coltrane  J Dilla Nujabes  Kate Bush  Townes Van Zandt  Sade  Natalia Lafourcade John Fahey  Autechre  Silver Jews  A$AP Rocky  Eric Dolphy black midi  Cocteau Twins  Ichiko Aoba  Boris  Sophie Liturgy  Boredoms  Alvin Dahn  Fugazi  The Fall Julia Holter  Avalanches  Burial  Jobim Favourite Filmmakers Gregg Araki  John Cassavettes  Ingmar Bergman  Robert Altman Paul Schrader  Michael Mann  Kelly Reichardt  Stan Brakhage  Wong Kar Wai  Richard Kern  David Lynch  Les Blank Sarah Jacobsen  Marlon Riggs  Todd Haynes

[asaparaki]

The Power Out - Electrelane

This is one of the most underrated records of the 2000s indie scene. At first it kinda feels like a more doomer Stereolab, but then gets funky, gets caustic, gets noisy, all while being a bit mellow the whole time. An incredible work of tonal balance. Definitely listen to this if you're into that era of early Pitchfork darlings or cool post punk/indie.

[asaparaki]

Go watch a Vittorio de Seta film! Been obsessed with these poetic, anthropological documentary shorts from de Seta these last couple weeks. The work of labourers, fishing, cooking, and mining is rendered with such grace and beauty. His images have a fiction film level of beauty (think Malick), making them even more surreal and astonishing. Highly recommend Sea Countrymen as a start.

[asaparaki]

The Hounds of Love title track is once of the greatest songs ever! Queen Kate's artistry is so incredible. Texturally and vocally her music is totally singular, and with her added physicality in the performances she just transcends her art pop peers. Her album before this is a proto-Bjork freak out, so it's insane that her transition to these sweeping 80s ballads is seamless and every bit as inspired. The blueprint.

[asaparaki]

A Constant Stranger Version #2

Still workshopping the last bit of this poem, but wanted to share its infant stage.

I'm in need of a constant stranger

Someone to hold me as they're far away

I'm in need of alien tenderness

Someone to skin me from behind the veil

I'm in need of the perpetual mystery

That lurks in the frozen spaces where we once walked

That's abyss goes out to greet our own

Locks fingers with them, and lets all be known without speaking.

[asaparaki]

Hurricane Version #2

A poem I cooked up during my radio shift

I'm enamoured with you in an unknown way

For all the softness you claim

Your presence is unwieldy and encompassing and beautiful to behold

You laugh off compliments

Shrug off affection

But I need to you to know

Perhaps at the cost of everything

That what I've told you is true

Even if I'm a stranger drowning

[asaparaki]

Poem I Wrote for Soc Class

From a few months ago:

I went into the water with my clothes on 

I couldn’t stand for you to see my skin 

Drying in the sun I felt the same coldness

As the bathroom floor I’d become a patron in

You lay before me an angel

Blasphemously saying we’ll try 

I’m crueller than refinery smoke 

When I hold you tender as a lie

We’re the wreckage of life and love 

Each pore on our skin bears the weight of time

I’m tired. You’re tired.

If we bleed out is that a crime? 

[asaparaki]

Happy belated birthday to this game changing album! There are so many beats on here that feel like discovering music for the first time.

[asaparaki]

Everybody Watch Maps to the Stars (2014)

Literally the greatest depiction of Hollywood ever! So uncomfortable, so funny in the bleakest way possible, and ultimately very incisive about the vapid nature of it all.