seen from Norway
seen from Australia
seen from Czechia
seen from United States
seen from Türkiye
seen from Italy
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from China
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from Japan
seen from Serbia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Germany
seen from France
Postlet: Pet Peeves
“Be sure to find a quite place to study.”
Yes, I know that this is an extremely easy mistake to make, but it really bothers me.
A tip: this mistake is very distracting and easy to spot. Use this to your advantage. Give your writing a good read through before finishing; this mistake should easily pop out to you. Then it is a simple matter to fix.
ayun... rush review na.. #PostLET
Polaris Short list coming up!
The Polaris short list is only a few days away, and I have no idea who will win. The fact is that there are so many great albums this year. I'm not even making this up. Last year, not all of the shortlisters I felt entirely deserved their place there. And of the longlist entries that didn't make it, there were only perhaps another ten who were eligible as good enough.
But this year, almost every album is a credible entry. There is so much solid music, I am betting on the tastes of the judges to decide how things play out, more than on the merits of the individual albums.
Here's my prediction, which incidentally also functions as a guide to what to listen to:
Very Likely to be on the Short List:
Godspeed You! Black Emperor – 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
Mac DeMarco – 2
Purity Ring – Shrines
Colin Stetson – New History Warfare Vol. 3: To See More Light
Could Very Well be on the Short List:
A Tribe Called Red – Nation II Nation
Alaclair Ensemble – Les maigres blancs d'Amérique du Noir
The Besnard Lakes – Until In Excess, Imperceptible UFO
Daphni – JIAOLONG
Evening Hymns – Spectral Dusk
Hannah Georgas – Hannah Georgas
Chilly Gonzales – Solo Piano II
Jim Guthrie – Takes Time
Hayden – Us Alone
Kid Koala – 12 bit Blues
Kobo Town – Jumbie in the Jukebox
Lee Harvey Osmond – The Folk Sinner
Les soeurs Boulay – Le poids des confettis
Corb Lund – Cabin Fever
The Luyas – Animator
Majical Cloudz – Impersonator
Metric – Synthetica
METZ – METZ
AC Newman – Shut Down The Streets
Old Man Luedecke – Tender is The Night
Lindi Ortega – Cigarettes & Truckstops
Peter Peter – Une version améliorée de la tristesse
Daniel Romano – Come Cry With Me
Tegan and Sara – Heartthrob
Young Galaxy – Ultramarine
Probably Not on the Short List:
ANCIIENTS – Heart of Oak
Louis-Jean Cormier – Le Treizième Étage
Zaki Ibrahim – Every Opposite
KEN mode – Entrench
Pierre Lapointe – Punkt
Albums I haven't heard yet:
Danny Michel with the Garifuna Collective – Black Birds Are Dancing Over Me
Rah Rah – The Poet's Dead
Rhye – Woman
Suuns – Images du futur
Al Tuck – Stranger at the Wake
Whitehorse – The Fate of the World Depends On This Kiss
That's 29 albums that I think deserve a short list nod!! That's pretty much the whole list!!! And there are five more which could be GREAT!!!! (Rhye is supposed to be good.)
Buyin stuff
Real boring.
I am very alive right now... it is a beautiful springtime in Vancouver. The flowers are just going crazy with delight - every avenue and backalley is bursting with cherry, peach, plum blossoms, and flowering bushes and trees I can't even name. Their different scents can be felt on every breeze.
In fact, every smell is more powerful in springtime, as it starts to heat up. The whole world bequeaths a layering of scent on every byway, up and down every street - even concrete and plastic brings me pleasure, making me think of summers of years past.
Today the air is thick with the sense of rain. The humidity feels like the surface tension of a bubble being held against my skin. And rain has its own smell - a subtle and clean one.
My hopes are high for the chestnut trees. There is nothing as wonderful as a chestnut tree in a blossom. The flowers form columns, or spikes, white and flush against the full and purely green leaves of the tree. And every chestnut tree seems perfectly rounded, like a green cumulus cloud anchored on earth, and so very enormous. They also have a habit of shedding those prickly chestnuts, which make convenient missiles for friends and small children.
In short, all of the world is becoming a garden, the luminous sun is bestowing itself generously, and everything is as it should be.
Well, tumblr, I've picked up a copy of Norwegian Wood. Let's see how this Murakami fellow shapes up!
(I also got The Makioka Sisters, yo. I was on a theme.)
Man, everywhere I look people are reading Haruki Murakami. When was the last time a Japanese author was so popular in the English speaking world? Yukio Mishima??
And when I say I like Japan and Japanese literature everybody brings up Murakami... and I haven't read him at all. What a bummer.
Personae
So I've written a bunch of little pieces about different female artists from around the world, all bunched together under the question of personae. A persona is a mask used in ancient Greek drama, but it has come to mean the entire character that a person performs in art. So every song lyric, every music video get-up, projects a different character, serves as a mask.
Of course, a good mask was made not to hide things, but to express them.
