#boring ecstasy

[colorlessvessel]

snap me at the axis baby

and you can watch me glow

let’s lay like a dead cat that fell asleep in the snow

[jarjake]

I know she won't forgive me For the things that I took From her, It's fine I'm gonna wait for her this time

[desperatelark]

Alex G// Cards

[cranemarsh]

Boring Ecstasy: The Bedroom Pop of Orchid Tapes (2014) Review

Listen to it here.

Every so often I throw off my sleep schedule completely. It’s usually in the summer, when obligations and responsibilities are at a minimum; I find myself with no reason not to stay up until 5, 6, 7 am. And then I find no reason to get up before 6 pm.

When this happens, as it did at the start of the summer, I turn to music. 

One morning I found myself rifling through my CD collection, trying to get my aging boombox to play an Elliott Smith CD. I got all the way to New Moon before it started working, and hearing ‘Angel in the Snow’ start to play was a relief on several levels. When I’m truly exhausted, too tired to sleep and too tired to truly function, I can always count on music to usher me out of consciousness.

This late night/early morning sleeplessness calls for a particular type of music. When I was young, Brian Eno was a regular feature in the ‘sleepytime’ playlist that my dad made on the family iPod. Now, I turn to slow pop.

I’ve heard a couple names for it, chamber pop being the most common. That slow, ambient noise with quiet vocals: the auditory equivalent of ripples in a pond. Perfume Genius, Foxes in Fiction, even some of Owen Pallett’s songs are the perfect soundtrack to the kind of hour that is too late to consider being very alive in.

If you’ve heard Foxes in Fiction then you’ll probably know that Warren Hildebrand, the mastermind behind it, started the record label Orchid Tapes in order to make physical copies of his last album. Now, Orchid Tapes hosts about 30 musicians, many with the same kind of sound. In 2014, fourteen of these artists contributed to a sampler of sorts: “Boring Ecstasy: the Bedroom Pop of Orchid Tapes.”

It’s a fairly slow-paced, too-sleepy-to-be-sensuous kind of album. There are exceptions: some tracks feature rhythms almost jarringly upbeat in comparison to the more bedroom-y of the other songs - The Sweater I Gave You’s song ‘Nobody’s Baby’ is an early example. There’s a slight but noticeable genre clash at times, as well - Infinity Crush’s ‘Spoiled’ feels more grunge than pop (depending on where you draw the lines for pop, I suppose). If you go in expecting another Foxes in Fiction album, you will almost certainly be disappointed. However, if you’re looking for an album to turn down low and strain to hear the words until you fall asleep, then you’re in luck.

Official recommendation: listen to during a sleepless cycle, if you want to be lulled into something, or write all the song titles down and pick one randomly to be the soundtrack for the scene in your new movie where character A drives through the night as character B falls asleep against the window. A very gentle album.

[ed. note - This was the first review ever written for this blog, and thus is one of the rougher ones. It wouldn’t have been published at all except Helen is exceptionally bad at writing things for her own projects.]

[ztapes]

[altartv-blog]

Alex G: Cards

this is a great, kinda depressing song, by Alex G (not me), reminds me of Sad Sappy Sucker era Modest Mouse.

[drvink]

[roday]

i ordered boring ecstasy in march and woke up hospitalized 24 hours later

it arrived yesterday after weeks of heart-wrenching conversations taking responsibility for too many awful things, helping and healing wounds that ive blinded myself to for too long

a week from now i'll be waiting in the airport, meeting the only person to hold my hand in the best times and the worst, through two years of late skype calls and sloppy elvis depressedly covers over bad lines

three months ago everything was dark and hopeless; i knew i'd never live to see myself growing into someone who can change positively and move forward without guilt. i am so blessed to prove myself wrong

im excited to be alive

s/o to orchidtapes for punctuating my bizarre, surreal life with beautiful things made by caring hands  (and thanks for the test press xx) 

love + light