don't worry, i'm not writing about eel again (for now).
i was going to write about the anacortes vinyl, but i haven't really processed any of it yet (although i listened to 2/3 of the microphones, and the watery graves of portland and genevieve, and they're really good).
today though (a monday) i have been lurching through one unfinished chore to another. my hot water's off and i want to take a shower, and i'm waiting for the man to fix the pipes. i'm greasy from work yesterday, and irritable, and my mind keeps wandering (small wonder, since i've only fed it coffee today). i've been playing all sorts of stuff as i scuttle around my apartment, with the constant rainfall serving as interlude between the discs. i've already listened to the microphones (as i said), pet politics (the swedish band, not the silver jews song, or the mountain goats cover of the silver jews song), shonen knife (in english), shonen knife (in japanese), and finally a buttload of john vanderslice. about halfway through suddenly it all went dark (a limited-edition cd from barsuk feauring j.v. in a chicken coop in california with a two-track and the songs from trance manual) and i saw the postman out the window trudging wetly away from the house.
there's very little i enjoy as much as the anticipation of what the mail will bring, and there are many pending parcels somewhere in the world heading my way, so i walked down the stairs to check the box. apart from the new issue of dwell, there was also a new cd-r sent from a young guitarist in ireland called cian nugent.
his first solo disc, a recording of his fourth-ever live performance, childhood, christian lies & slaughter, is a quietly strong instrumental set filledwith stunning meanderings through cian's original songs. sounding much less than "trad," traditional irish music, and far more like american blues married to spanish classical, nugent's able fingerwork and slightly unholy sensibilities make for the perfect accompaniment to the grey tedium of early october seattle. listening to it i think also of the eerily cheerful score to the wicker man (1973) by paul giovanni. there's an appalachian twang in some of the phrases and a timelessness as well, and the overall effect is compelling and slightly ominous (hence the affinity with the wicker man--actually, it also sounds a little like the creepier work by the decemberists, like the tain and some of the songs on the crane wife). and then of course, there's the fine, suggestively flawed character of the album's title. nice one.
i should also mention, as an aside, the reason i came across cian nugent in the first place. i was surfing around the myspace music world (on midday veil's page, if i'm not mistaken) and i saw one of those "ad-comments" labels/bands/venues/whatever tend to pop onto the space. the ad was from the flemish label audiomer, and it had this gorgeous image of a bloodred medieval landscape with a massive, po-faced donkey (or something) hauling in its mouth the prone body of a man (these in black ink rather than crimson). the whole scene was super-creepy, and gorgeously drawn, by belgian designer/audiomer-honcho wouter smeraldina-rima, to resemble germanic woodcut engravings of the sixteenth century. the image also reminded me strongly of the illustrations for the arturo pérez-reverte novel el club dumas (which was adapted (sloppily, but engrossingly) for the screen by roman polanski as the ninth gate) the woodcuts in that story, executed by lucifer himself, lead a wolfish book dealer named corso (johnny depp, very well-cast, in the film) on the path to ultimate seduction by the devil.
while the recording is far less diabolical than the path of associations that led me to it, the seduction of nugent's strings is evident, as is his clear talent.
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