Fiona Apple, please allow me to express how ardently I admire and love you.

In my life I have taken many opportunities to express my obsession with Fiona Apple, but here in the Current, Etc I have not yet sung her praises loud enough.  I feel like I grew up with Apple, though she is 4 years older than me.  Her lush debut “Tidal” saw me through my first makeout sessions and first hate-breakups, then more than a decade later saw me walking down the aisle.  She is a rare artist in that she actually waits until she has exceptional material before she releases music, feels no urgency and makes an album simply when it’s time to make an album.  I have always admired her raw sensibility, the way she says what she’s thinking the moment she’s thinking it without any guard stronger than the shield of her inability to communicate with most normal people.  I assure you, I count this as an extreme virtue.  Blunt honesty is undervalued, especially in the world of celebrity.  I knew she was one of my people the moment she made that infamous speech at the MTV Music Awards back in the late ‘90s.  People tend to call Apple angsty, but really she is simply real, having turmoil and depression just like the rest of us.  She is the embodiment of awkward and admits her inadequacies with reckless abandon and it is brilliant and beautiful and grotesque all within the space of one ragged breath.

Fiona Apple is one of the only artists whom I will trust enough to purchase her album the day it comes out without hearing any of it first, as I did with “The Idler Wheel is Wiser Than the Driver of the Screw and Whipping Cords Will Serve You More Than Ropes Will Ever Do” when it arrived Tuesday.  She only writes one album per seven-ish years, but it’s always worth the wait, and this endeavor is no exception to the Apple barometer of excellence.

Speaking about who Fiona is is directly speaking about how her music sounds.  She is as genuine in her sound as she is in her actions.  Her words are raw and her music is unsettling when she feels unsettled, and she does here, most definitely.  Her musical timing is discordant and doesn’t hit on the beats you think they will.  For this reason, I had a headache the first time I listened to “Idler Wheel...”, but the thing with this album is that it is imperative that you listen to it without any other distractions.  Let Fiona Fiona all over you, with headphones on.  You probably won’t like it at first, but give it a second and third try and you’ll begin to feel more than you have in years.  You’ll begin to say things like “The bare eccentric percussion that serves as an accompaniment to her witty and perfectly-placed piano melodies do nothing but accentuate her developed, rich, and emotionally articulate vocals”, such as another raw and beautiful singer named Jonathan said to me today.  If you’ve ever felt a kinship with Fiona Apple, buy this record now.

Best Song (so far, as I’m sure this will change daily over the next year, then weekly the year after that, then yearly the decades after that, as this is how “Tidal” still effects me 16 years after its’ release): "Valentine"

Best Lyrics: “Just tolerate my little fist tugging on your forest chest.”

How to make a mix: 3 indispensable rules.

As I insist upon calling myself MixtressRae, I dare say I know my way around a mix.  I’ve been pressing record/play on tape decks since the tender age of waiting for songs to come on the radio; they have to be numbering in the several hundreds at this point.  Not all of my mixes were great, of course.  Some of them were really dreadful...nay, many of them are dreadful, if you take into account the times my mix’s recipients have played/enjoyed my mixes.  All this to say, I am only an authority on mixes if you decide me to be, and I hope the sheer volume of mixes I’ve created these past two decades will recommend me to advise you on this very worthy pursuit:

Rule #1 -- Find a reason/theme for your mix.  Do you want a workout mix, a love dedication mix, or just a drivin’ around summer night mix?  The reason is what drives the emotions in a mix...even if that reason is just “songs I like right now”.  I used to have a mix called “songs I’m ashamed to like” before I learned to be ashamed of nothing...mostly.

Rule #2 -- Decide a length for your mix.  If you’re not, as you probably aren’t, using a cassette or a CD, mp3 playlists can be daunting without an expiration within a reasonable listening duration, and you need one especially if you are intending to give your mix to others.  One can’t expect a person to listen to something longer than an hour and a half, in my experience.  If you’re making a mix for an exercise routine, make it as long as your routine.  If you’re making a makeout mix, consider the phase of your relationship and time it accordingly.  Of course, if you ARE making a mix for cassette or CD, your time is already set and working within the confines of sides on a cassette is a finesse that will be appreciated by your mix’s lucky beneficiary, if they have ANY sense whatsoever.

Rule #3 -- Pick a song order (if an order doesn’t show itself to you organically).  There are many ways to do this.  If you want to make it really easy, order the songs by length (shortest to longest or vise versa) or chronology, or even by alphabet.  If you want something a bit more evocative, I’ve found that it helps to start with excitement: high beats per minute and something joyous/rawk-us.  Then, make track 2 even MORE exciting, take it down a notch on track 3, and continue to play with emotions throughout with at least a 4 or 5 track wind-down at the end...personally, I think a really good mix ends in a nap, but only if they sleep when you tell them to sleep, gosh darn it!

Disregard all of the above, and any other rules on mixes if they don’t suit you.  MAKE MIXES FOR YOU, and no one else.  Make them to your liking, not only because people are exceedingly under-appreciative of mixes in general, but also, if you aren’t putting your heart (and freakin’ rhythm ‘n’ soul!) into your mixes, they REALLY won’t be appreciated, so do what you want always and worry not how they will be received/perceived.  I always make mixes for me and if they involve thoughts of another, I give that person a copy and hope they listen/love it as much as I do.

You have it within you: go forth and follow your rockin’ psyche, mixters and mixtresses!

// Grumigold //

 


Three Albums I’m Obsessed With Right Now...

DISCLAIMER: Fair warning, my album reviews will probably always feel a bit disjointed and you kind of have to understand my particular brand of weirdness to get a good read from them, but check out all three of these albums for yourself on Spotify (or press play above), and then you’ll begin to understand if you can trust my esoteric words attached to them.

Santigold // Master of My Make-Believe: Santigold is a trip-hop electronic artist with some world beats/flavor.  This new much-anticipated installation from Santigold does not disappoint.  Within the walls of her make-believe, you can find dance euphoria, melodic hooks, world beats, and empowering ballads/statements of feminine fierceness.

Standout tracks: “Disparate Youth”, “Pirate in the Water”, and “Big Mouth”

Best Lyric: “While you’re burning away, the thing’s goin’ down...you’ve got to MOVE.  You’ve got to MOVE.” --”Pirate in the Water”

Dum Dum Girls // Only In Dreams: Dum Dum Girls are wallflower garage rock with surfer-guitar riffs.  They remind me of the ‘90s in the best possible way.  My husband described them astutely as “If The Ramones and Siouxsie & the Banshees had a baby that listened to Hole.”  They have a goth sensibility, with a weird dark optimism coming through with that surf-guitar droney thing they’ve got going on.  I’m sure the Cure is an influence, but their lyrics are much more literal and catchy.  Listening to the Dum Dum Girls makes me want to lay in my bedroom and stare at glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling wistfully thinking about a dreamy boy I can’t have...this is a good thing, a very very good thing.

Standout tracks: “Coming Down”, “Caught In One”, and “Always Looking”.

Best Lyric: “I never felt a beat in my heart ‘til you made it start.” --”Always Looking”

Grimes // Visions:  How can I describe the wonder that is Grimes?  I just discovered this electronic Master-Female a few short months ago and she’s already crept up to my #1 artist according to play-stats collected on my last.fm.  I am in love with this woman.  She makes ethereal-weird electronic music (You know how there’s Ambient Dream Pop?  Grimes is like Ambient Dream Electronic with Occasional Nightmares).  She sings guttural-low 2 seconds before Mariah-high layered on top of operatic-awesome; strings right next to bleeps and clicks and Satanic-howls.  I think she makes up words like Cocteau Twins did.  When I first heard Grimes I was confused and didn’t know if I liked it, but I just kept listening and listening until my soul became one with this little weird girl that makes phenomenal music.  Luckily for me, this is her third album, so I now have more.  If you listen to this on Spotify and love it as much as I do, I think we’re soulmates.  Email me (mixtressrae@yahoo.com), because I need someone to help me unravel the love (and I have a gift for you if you like this album and are the first to email me about it) I have for this artist.

Standout tracks: “Circumambient”, “Nightmusic”, and “Oblivion”

Best Lyric: “Oh baby, I can’t say that everything is ok.  I have a problem and I don’t know how to stop it.” --”Circumambient”

Fever.

Today I was listening to the Sound Opinions podcast whilst cleaning a house for money, like I do every Wednesday, and a song came on. It had an R&B flavor, with rap attempts...I could tell it was probably a Caucasian singer, but it was different in that it sounded like a female singing as a male. I was a little turned on by it. Is this a drag king singing R&B to a sexy lady? She/he was singing about taking me out and spending money on me and I was intrigued, nay, about to be wooed by this gender-bending smooth talker....

Then, the music faded out and Greg and Jim announced that it was a new song by....

Justin Bieber! OMG, I was being wooed by Justin freakin' Bieber! I am so ashamed...

I have previously avoided the Beeb and have in fact, never heard him sing, to my knowledge...until today. Until I thought him to be a drag king.

Oh boy.

Naturespace.

I've mentioned before that I very much enjoy not only immersing myself in nature, but also recording it from time to time.  At some point I'd like to get more hightech recording equipment in order to get some really good recordings, but for now I just use the voicememo app on my iPhone to record flora and fauna.  Below is my first ever video uploaded to YouTube of Vero Beach this last March.  Forgive the cheesy electronic music.  The wind on the actual sound of this video was loud, so I chose one of the rights-free YouTube music options in lieu of silence and this was one of the only tolerable ones available.

  And below this text is a playlist I've made on SoundCloud of all of my naturesounds I've deemed worthy enough to keep.  They're, again, by no means awesome, but they're fun for me to record and can be fun to practice some deep-breathing to...

everythinginitsrightplace

Another mix.  This one I have posted in so many formats that it's becoming ridiculous.  The tracklist can be found here.  It is about calm in the face of extreme anxiety.  I've chosen most of the songs because they are calming to me and one of the elements that can be found in most of these songs is a resonant voice.  A voice that vibrates deep in the back of my throat when I hear it.  This is my calm center, apparently.  I suspect this mix won't be as calming to everyone as it is to me, but perhaps you'll find something here you enjoy.

There's one song missing from the YouTube playlist below and that's a track I have in my library as Macka's "Baggage".  I've not been able to find it anywhere online, so I either have a very rare song or my track information is inaccurate.  Either way, I figure this is fair game to upload the song to Soundcloud, so it is provided below, because I think it is a spectacular song.  If anyone has information on why I can't find it anywhere online (is my info wrong, is this a rare artist, etc?) let me know, because I'd love to have more from this man's resonant voice.

Top Five.

This is the Current, Etc article that came out last Thursday:

If we, as a society, have learned anything from High Fidelity (the book and/or the movie) I hope that it is this: that Top Five lists are important not only in everyday conversation, but in knowing if someone is worth your time or not.  You might want to reevaluate a friendship after finding that Lynyrd Skynyrd is among their Top Five Artists of All Time.  Your crush on that redhead in Physics may turn to true love when she states that Beck’s “Sea Change” is on her Top Five Breakup Albums, because now you know she REALLY gets you.  Your assignment for the end of May is to compose some Top Five lists of your own: they can be Top Five Flavors of Pop Tarts or Top Five People In My Life.  These lists can be about anything, and making them may just tell you something you didn’t know about yourself or those you love.  Email me your lists at mixtressrae@yahoo.com

Here are some of my music-related Top Five Lists (hopefully none of these will be dealbreakers, but in friendships, you gotta put it all out there, I always say):

Top Five Albums Ever:

*Portishead // Dummy

*The Cure // Pornography

*Fiona Apple // Tidal

*Kate Bush // The Dreaming

*Tori Amos // Under the Pink

Top Five Breakup Albums:

*Tori Amos // Boys for Pele

*Beck // Sea Change

*The Cure // Disintegration

*Fiona Apple // Extraordinary Machine

*Zero7 // When It Falls

Top Five Makeout Albums:

*Sarah McLachlan // Fumbling Towards Ecstasy

*Massive Attack // Heligoland

*Goldfrapp // Supernature

*Cibo Matto // Viva! La Woman

*Fiona Apple // Tidal

Top Five Dance Songs:

*Lady GaGa // Telephone

*Beyonce // Run the World (Girls)

*Benny Benassi // California Dreamin’

*Goldfrapp // Ooh La La

*Shakira // Ojos Asi

Top Five Soundtracks/Scores:

*Marie Antoinette

*Virgin Suicides

*Velvet Goldmine

*Passion: Music for the Last Temptation of Christ

*Social Network

Top Five MarioKart Albums for the 5-disc Shuffle (whilst playing MarioKart 64, of course):

*Cake // Fashion Nugget

*Queens of the Stone Age // Lullabies to Paralyze

*MIA // /\/\ /\ Y /\

*Weezer // (blue album)

*Radiohead // Kid A

Top Five Albums of 2012:

*Santigold // Master of My Make Believe

*Sleigh Bells // Reign of Terror

*Grimes // Visions

*Fiona Apple // Idler Wheel... (yeah, it’s not out yet, I have THAT much confidence in it)

*TBA (We’ve still got 7 months for something AWESOME to happen, and I’m sure it will, as long as The Wolf & the Wolverine put something out...hint hint)

The Distance.

Another mix, babies.  If you're looking for a way to celebrate the anniversary of the Destructive Wind of 2011 that's a little more funky than the Tour of Destruction that's going on tomorrow, here's a mix I made about survival, again via YouTube.  This one is almost entirely music videos, so it can be very visually stimulating--no tornado footage, I promise!  The below soundcloud file is an introduction from Ms. Jackson, 'cause I know you're nasty.  Play that first.






And here's the tracklist in case you want to skip through to your favorites:

Army of Me // Bjork
Bad Reputation // Joan Jett
Blackbird // Glee version
Blow // Ke$ha
The Bomb // New Young Pony Club
Born This Way // Lady GaGa
Bulletproof // La Roux
Cheated Hearts // Yeah Yeah Yeahs
The Distance // Cake
Empty // Metric
Everybody Got Their Something // Nikka Costa
Extraordinary Machine // Fiona Apple
Human Nature // Madonna
Outta Me, Onto You // Ani DiFranco
Run the World (Girls) // Beyonce
Silent All These Years // Tori Amos
Strut // Sheena Easton
Telephone // Lady GaGa
Try Again // Aaliyah
You Don't Own Me // Lesley Gore

Million Dollar Man.

This is an experiment.  Above you will find a mix that I made a few days ago called "Million Dollar Man".  It is all songs from 2011 and 2012, mostly female artists I'm obsessed with right now.

I've been searching for ways to embed an entire playlist into my zineblog.  Youtube seems to be the easiest option.  I wasn't able to do it with mixpod (because none of their links seem to work) or soundcloud (because the music isn't made by me).  Let me know if this works for you.  Most of these aren't music videos, just sound, so theoretically you can press play and listen to the thing without watching.  Give me feedback, especially if you know of a more elegant solution to embedding a mix than Youtube.  Another option if you have Spotify would be to look up milliondollarman playlist on my Spotify, and you can listen to it there in its entirety.  I wish I could do this more gracefully...perhaps I will figure it out soon.

Here's the original tracklist (two of the songs weren't available in Youtube--they're the ones in a different color).


Move // The Wolf And The Wolverine
No Light, No Light (remix) // Florence + the Machine
Look At These Hoes // Santigold
Million Dollar Man // Lana Del Rey
Circumambient // Grimes
Never Say Die // Sleigh Bells
Wasted Away // Dum Dum Girls
Disparate Youth // Santigold
Summertime Sadness // Lana Del Rey
Nightmusic (feat. Majical Clouds) // Grimes
Comeback Kid // Sleigh Bells
Immigrant Song // Karen O, Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Freak Like Me  // Santigold
Video Games // Lana Del Rey
Symphonia IX (My Wait Is U) // Grimes
Crush // Sleigh Bells
Always Looking // Dum Dum Girls
Pirate In the Water // Santigold
Born to Die // Lana Del Rey
Infinite Love Without Fulfilment // Grimes
Demons // Sleigh Bells
Hardest Of Hearts // Florence + The Machine

The 16th of May, 2011...

you don't hear much about her, but she's an important day last year too.  Don't discredit her.  So, at 4:14pm, May 16, 2011 I recorded this voice memo at the Fairview Cemetery on Maiden Lane:

Be thy silent slumber as peaceful
 as day dreams of youth.

I was on my lunch break from work.  It was a Monday.  This was recorded on my 3GS and it's terrible sound quality, but the part you may be interested in, because I was, is minute 2 to minute 3ish.  If you listen really close, you can hear a faraway buzzing that gets louder and louder and then fades away again.  This is the sound of thousands (yes, THOUSANDS....maybe millions?) of bees flying past my head as I lay on my rainbow blanket I always keep in my car.  The sky was black with bees.  I was pretty scared and I kept looking at the tombstone next to me, trying to stay as quiet as possible so as not to be noticed by the bees.  Stiff as a board, still like a corpse, I thought to myself as I meditated upon the tombstone pictured at right.  I was so glad I was laying down and not sitting up!  A full minute these bees fled past a girl on her lunch break peacefully digesting and recording nature from what would, in 6 days,  be a scarred town.  The 16th was only a day after the storm system that would become that wretched tornado began.

So, today I did a very superstitious thing.  I went back to the exact same spot at the exact same time with the exact same blanket (I rescued it from Sushilla [the dearly departed 2008 Yaris] after the tornado and still keep it in my new trunk, of course.  My new car's name is Agador Spartacus.) and recorded for the exact same duration on the voice memo app of my 4S (her name is Daughter of Avalanche, if you like to know names of my electronics as well as my vehicles, and I know you do).  No bees this time, but the sound quality is much better (there is still annoying wind, because I don't have fancy recording equipment or anything, just my phone), if you want to listen to that.  I've put it here for posterity and ritual-ness.  I tried to meditate as I was recording and I sat up so the bees would have to confront me directly if they showed their buzzy little selves again.  I am convinced that last year they knew it was time to go and that danger was afoot.  They were swarming northeast, is that a migratory thing or just a weird anomaly?  In my warped mind, the fact that millions of bees didn't swarm past me this 16th of May, proves that I am ok.  So, if this weird superstition makes you feel more ok, press play on the below sound file and meditate on the absence of bees.  Mmmmm....no bees.