Music

Part thirty-two of an array of CD mixes I made for my wife over a long number of years! Read more about it here!

If you’ve been a tourist in Chicago, you’ve almost certainly visited Navy Pier, featured in the above cover photo (albeit from afar). I’d call it the ‘Coney Island’ of Chicago, but that’d be an insult to Coney Island. It’s basically a lakeside strip mall with a very large Ferris Wheel. (Not pictured.)

Granted, Navy Pier’s Ferris Wheel — technically called the ‘Centennial Wheel’ — is a nod to the original Ferris Wheel, which was born and built for the 1893 Worlds Fair, which was a seminal and extremely influential and inspiration technological showcase that took place in Chicago. So it has that going for it.

History aside, I think it’s a rather striking photo. Again, not much in the way of sweetening here apart from some tinting. I was lucky enough to catch the right golden hour lighting, especially since I believe I was on a booze cruise architectural tour when I snapped it.

Consequently? Pretty proud of this cover. As with the future covers, I’m not exactly sure how I shoehorned a ‘widescreen’ cover into a CD case, but that’s something past-me figured out and something that present-me doesn’t have to worry about.

Enough about temporal selfs! Onto the highlights!

EMIKA! She’s essentially on here twice — she also provides vocals on the harrowing THE BRANDT BRAUER FRICK ENSEMBLE work ‘Pretend’, as well as being the creator of ‘3 Hours’.

Emika is an amazingly astute electronic musician who has also branched out into general production and publishing work with her own label. ‘3 Hours’ is one hell of a melancholy throbber about domestic violence that, while it is difficult to listen to, the beats make it go down a lot smoother.

BLACK BOX RECORDER! Breathy, sultry indie rock that is not afraid to coast on the rails.

GRAVEYARD TRAIN! At first blush, you might mistake this for mid-era Nick Cave, but they have a bit more of a pirate-y jaunt. ‘The Ferryman’ is a great song to either wave or sink into your cup to.

Let’s get to the tracklist, shall we? (Artist / Album / Song — links go to a video of the song, if available.)

1. :GOLGATHA: / The Horns of Joy / Rising
2. ASH BLACK BUFFLO / Andasol / Go ‘way Old Ghosts
3. GRAVEYARD TRAIN / The Drink, The Devil and the Dance / The Ferryman (Audio Only)
4. PUSCIFER / The Human Condition / The Humbling River
5. ORDO ROSARIUS EQUILIBRIO / Survive The Spring / Can you see the Forest for the Trees
6. OWL SERVICE / The Burn Comes Down / When a Man’s in Love
7. THE BRANDT BRAUER FRICK ENSEMBLE / Mr. Machine / Pretend
8. EMIKA / 3 Hours / 3 Hours
9. TOM HAGERMAN / The Breakfast Playground / The Comedy
10. THOSE DARLINS / Wild One / Drivin’ Nails in My Coffin
11. CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG / Stage Whisper / Memoir
12. BLACK BOX RECORDER / The Worst Of / Brutality
13. BJÖRK / Bastards / Crystalline [Omar Souleyman]
14. KIMMO POHJONEN / Uniko / Uniko: II. Plasma
15. VIVIAN GIRLS / Everything Goes Wrong / Tension
16. TOM WAITS / Bad As Me / Bad As Me

Part twenty-nine of an array of CD mixes I made for my wife over a long number of years! Read more about it here!

Not to be prideful, but this is when I settled into a new house CD mix design style that I am quite proud of it. When I remarked earlier about wishing I’d gone more of a letterbox way with one design, well, this is when I adopted it. I also settled on the serif font that fit my intent.

I have absolutely no idea where or when I took this photo. I imagine it’s another out-of-the-car-window shot. It’s slightly doctored to give it a bit more pop and an ephemeral look, but the sunburst is real as I don’t bother trying to fake that shit. You either capture it or you don’t.

As usual, it looks better in print as this is a low-res output. The tracklist text is far cleaner. If I had to change anything, I’d find a way to incorporate the XXIX title in a more visible way because — even though I designed this cover — I stumbled while trying to find it upon re-opening it years later.

Let’s move on from metal structures! This mix is all over the place, so let’s skip to the highlights:

ESBEN & THE WITCH! Granted, it’s the remix I love here as the electro staggering and static interplay so well with the ethereal vocals. If I heard this while on a club floor? One moment I’d be swaying like a tree, then I’d be twitching around like an out-of-control puppet.

HYSTOIC VEIN! New wave garage punk, all loud and brash and unapologetic!

THE GOOD THE BAD! Sexy instrumental surfer spaghetti western rock! Not to be crass, but this is my kind of bedroom music.

LITERGY! Saw these folks at — of all places — an outdoor Chicago street fest in the blinding sunlight, which is rather antithetical to their mission statement, but I take what I can get. ‘Generation’ is seven minutes of variations on a hard-hitting theme and I am absolutely here for it.

Can you feel the sunset telling you the tracklist format? (Artist / Album / Song — links go to a video of the song, if available):

1. KIMMO POHJONEN / Uniko / Uniko: IV. Kalma – Kimmo Pohjonen
2. PARENTHETICAL GIRLS / Privilege, Pt. III: Mend & Make Do / The Pornographer
3. EZRA FURMAN & THE HARPOONS / Mysterious Time / Hard Time in a Terrible Land
4. FEVER FEVER / Keys in the Bowl/Stage Shoes / Stage Shoes
5. HYSTOIC VEIN / FAKE / DECA-DENCE
6. BORN GOLD (née GOBBLE GOBBLE) / Bodysongs / Lawn Knives
7. BEATS ANTIQUE / Contraption Vol. 1 / Extra Extra
8. AUSTRA / Feel It Break / Beat And The Pulse
9. ESBEN & THE WITCH / Chorea / Chorea [Christian AIDS] (This video is for the original, not the remix.)
10. HAM SANDWICH / White Fox / The Naturist
11. THE AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT / All At Once / All At Once
12. ALINA SIMONE / Make Your Own Danger / My Love Is A Mountain
13. THE GOOD THE BAD / From 001 to 017 / 006 (This particular track isn’t available to stream, so this video goes to a01 from the same album.)
14. ART BRUT / Brilliant! Tragic! / I Am the Psychic (Audio only as it’s unavailable to stream)
15. TURISAS / Battle Metal / Sahti Waari
16. LITERGY / Aesthethica / Generation
17. JOHNNY LOVE / The Switch / Sonora [Udachi]
18. LE TIGRE / Le Tigre / Hot Topic (The video here is a live version. Frustratingly, every live version I’ve found excises their shout-outs towards their inspirational creatives for some reason.)
19. THE KILLS / Blood Pressures / Future Starts Slow
20. X-RAY SPECS / Oh Bondage Up Yours! / Oh Bondage Up Yours!

Part twenty-eight of an array of CD mixes I made for my wife over a long number of years! Read more about it here!

Ugh. I like the photo. Unlikely that I had to tweak it much, as that’s pretty much quintessential Chicago in February/March. No idea where I took it. Probably was just walking around and noted that the above power lines looked like a clothesline from an apocalypse.

The text does nothing to heighten the cover. In fact, it would have been improved if I just stripped all of the text from it and just scribbled down the tracklist on a scrap of lined paper and slipped it into the CD-R case.

Oh well. There are far better covers ahead.

There’s a lot of great stuff here. More metal! Old-school Indian songs! The escalating throb of Keyboard Milk! One of the few CURRENT 93 tracks I actually like! (Nothing against ’em — they just aren’t my thing.) That Peter Lorre song I mentioned in XXII! More GOBBLE GOBBLE!

Wait, what’s that sound? It’s the sound of highlights!

ENSIFERUM! When I first saw this band it was when they had been around for more than a handful of years. A friend suggested that we catch ’em at Reggies Rock Club. (Reggie’s is a club I’d like to attend more often, but it is a very long trek for me.) They were playing with TURISAS and I realized “Oh, huh, I really like Finnish metal!”

‘Stone Cold Metal’ is supremely epic, very mannered for metal and is so very well-structured and — oh, you poor neighbors — you can’t help but want to shout along. The accompanying video is 14 years old and while the CGI nowadays would be easy to render, back then this must have been quite the expensive effort. It was worth it though.

LE BUTCHERETTES! ‘Mr. Tolstoi’ is a whirling blast, and her vocal trill is delightful. The break and subsequent escalation will have you pumping your fist in the air and leave you breathless.

I somehow caught wind of this now-defunct Mexican garage/punk band in time to see them tour for their first album ‘Sin, Sin, Sin’. As if that album title wasn’t enough to capture my attention, the name of the band leader ‘Teri Gender Bender’ certainly did. They played at Subterranean — the same venue I saw BLOOD RED SHOES — and it was all sweat and raised fists and hair whipping around and glorious.

FEVER FEVER! Goddamn this post-punk band is absolutely unrelenting. Monster is a blur of guitars and snare bursts at full volume and you can’t help but be dragged along with ’em until the song immediately runs out of steam and you’re left panting.

Here’s the tracklist, if you are feeling too exhausted to do anything else but read an enumerated list. (Artist / Album / Song — links go to a video of the song, if available):

1. RÖYKSOPP / Forsaken Cowboy / Keyboard Milk (Unofficial but gorgeous video)
2. CURRENT 93 / Black Ships Heat the Dancefloor / Black Ships Ate the Sky II [JG Thirwell]
3. TURISAS / The Varangian Way / A Portage To The Unknown
4. ENSIFERUM / From Afar / Stone Cold Metal (Their video for ‘From Afar’ is well-worth a watch!)
5. FINNTROLL / Ur Jordens Djup / En Mäktig Här
6. DROPKICK MURPHYS / Going Out In Style / The Irish Rover
7. THE WORLD/INFERNO FRIENDSHIP SOCIETY / Addicted To Bad Ideas / Peter Lorre Overture
8. LE BUTCHERETTES / Sin Sin Sin / Mr. Tolstoi
9. JOHNNY LOVE / The Switch / Sonora [Udachi]
10. CHICKS ON SPEED / Cutting The Edge / Sex In Der Stadt (Audio only)
11. ALINA SIMONE / Make Your Own Danger / Glitterati
12. GOBBLE GOBBLE / Lawn Knives & End Of Days / End of Days
13. ANURADHA PAUDWAL & SURESH WADKAR / College Girl/Amiri Garibi / Aankhon Mein Basalo
14. ASHA BHOSLE, RAHUL DEV BURMAN / / Duniya Mein Logon Ko
15. JOSE GONZALEZ / Red Dead Redemption OST / Far Away
16. UNTHANKS / Here’s The Tender Coming / The Testimony Of Patience Kershaw
17. FEVER FEVER / Monster / Monster