#the ending of once and future king does completely sound like a space station falling into the sun

[rocksanddeadflowers]

My favorite part about Losing Track in TBI is that it sounds exactly like what Lyfrassir was seeing those repetitive days studying the same recordings over and over. The song plays out as people on the train repeating their actions and motives and goals, over and over, just the same footage repeating for Lyf the same scenes the same faces over and over. Then as the plays it's last, it almost sounds like it's distorting, being stretched and rendered down and faded, distortion static silence it's all a blur. The song sounds like the footage Lyfrassir is studying.

[grimelords]

There is no limit to how many good songs exist! There are just so many!

My June playlist is finished, and on time too! Please enjoy all manner of bangers from Dave Brubeck, Nelly Furtado and everyone in between.

listen here

Night And Day - Hot Chip: I’ve started a band with some friends and my friend Tiana (who has requested a special shoutout in this playlist and is currently receiving it!) suggested this as a song for us to learn and she was extremely right to do it! It’s extremely funky and probably the most i’ve ever liked Hot Chip because they’ve finally allowed themselves to be emotional and feel the most important emotion of all: horniness.

Infinity Guitars - Sleigh Bells: The other day a friend of mine said ‘hey whatever happened to Sleigh Bells?’ and guess what: they have five albums and continue to release new music as recently as last year. They seem to steadfastly refuse to advance their sound and you’ve got to give them props for that. When nobody else sounds anything like you the smartest thing you can do is double down on your own weird thing. I’ve always loved this song and am totally enamoured by whatever mixing trick it is that enables this song to start loud as fuck and somehow finish even louder no matter what volume you play it at.

Hurricane - Bob Dylan: I haven’t watched the Rolling Thunder Revue thing on Netflix yet but I’m excited to because this is a good Dylan era and I’m always down for more footage of the world’s freak Bobby D acting like a maniac. This song is a good example of how have no control over how music is consumed once you release it because this is ostensibly a serious and angry protest song about a great injustice but my greatest memory of it is for at least a month when I was in boarding school a guy in my dorm would play it every morning super loud and we would all yell the words along as we were getting dressed. Having a great time being fifteen and yelling happily about a miscarriage of justice.

Grindin' - Clipse: I started putting together a playlist of songs with super minimal or no pitched instrumentation that almost totally rely on the percussion and the vocals to carry it. Basically the Pharrell special because he did it on this and Drop It Like It’s Hot and I’m sure more songs of his I haven’t heard yet. But also songs like Lipgloss by Lil Mama, Fix Up Look Sharp by Dizzee Rascal, Tipsy By J-Kwon (almost if it didn’t have the baseline) and The Whisper Song by The Ying Yang Twins. There’s heaps more I’m sure. It was a real minimal style for a little while in the mid 2000s and I think it’s great. It gives you so much space in the mix and it’s a great lesson: if the beat is hot enough and you’ve got enough charisma to carry the vocal you don’t need anything else at all.

Rock Lobster - The B-52's: Did you know the guitar in this is tuned CFFFFF? Did you know this song is nearly 7 minutes long? Did you know The B-52s had a hit with this and then didn’t have another hit until Love Shack fully ten years later? Truly everything about this song is insane.

Johnny Irony - Bad//Dreems: I think ‘are you bleeding?’ is my favourite bit of pre-song hot mic dialogue i’ve ever heard. I love the energy of this song, and what a fun throwback it is to I guess reference Lead Belly’s ancient song about doing cocaine Take A Whiff On Me for a new modern twist on a song about doing cocaine.

Girls On Film - Duran Duran: Have you ever noticed how the bass in this song is absolutely popping off? It rocks. I listened to just the isolated bass track on youtube the other day and it’s my new favourite song. I’m having a big moment with this early eighties art-funk thing where someone figured out you could put huge funky basslines into rock music and completely changed the game.  

Love - Lana Del Rey: I figured out this month that my vocal range seems to be just Lana Del Rey but an octave lower which is absolutely great news for anyone that wants to hear me sing this song in a cowboy voice in my car.

Want You In My Room - Carly Rae Jepsen: I am absolutely in love with this song and also absolutely furious at it. Absolutely in love with the way it’s written like a duet with herself, trading lines and overlapping and harmonising. The big ascending guitar line that leads into the chorus. I love how horny the lyrics are, I love the very 80s robot voice in the chorus who also wants to fuck. It’s just phenomenal, which brings me to the the think that makes me so furious: this song just fades out? After the second chorus just as the saxophone comes in? Just as it’s getting good???

Genevieve (Unfinished) - Jai Paul: It's just unbelievable how good this sounds. The bass sound. The way the whole mix seems to float around. The cuts to silence that feel like someone took a razor randomly to the master. It all culminates in this frenetic nervous energy that feels like the song could just fall apart and stop at any point. And it does! It just fades to silence and then comes back in as a totally different song near the end before fading away again.

Elephant Talk - King Crimson: King Crimson is on Spotify now and I’m comically striking them off my list of Bands I Have A Grudge Against For Not Being On Spotify. It’s always kind of surprised me that for someone who loved The Mars Volta as much as I did I never really had a big King Crimson phase. I always liked them fine, and I love this song, but I never really sat down and gave them a proper listen. Maybe now they’re on streaming that’s all about to change and my girlfriend will have to suffer accordingly.

Kids In The Dark - Bat For Lashes: Very excited for Bat For Lashes next album if this is an indication of the direction. She's always had a very hazy 80s feeling, so purposefully leaning into it is only going to be great.

CHORDS For Organ - Ellen Arkbro: My favourite lady is back with 15 minutes of rock solid chords. Something I've been thinking recently in regards to Ellen Arkbro and Holly Herndon is people who make pretentious art unpretentiously, truly believing in their process and outcomes but very aware  of and fine with the fact that it's silly, useless or unlistenable to anyone who's not interested. Ellen Arkbro posted a photo of an organ on instagram the other day and wrote "turned out this was one of the biggest instruments in berlin and it was also connected up to two other organs in the same space. Despite that I ended up playing an extremely quiet version of my music. I don't really know how that happened. I will play a louder version in st giles cripple gate in london this saturday if you're around" She posts like Courtney Barnett about her experimental organ drone music, I just love it. As for the music itself I don't really know how to explain this other than if you let it it can be extremely overwhelming. It's also the closest I've come musically to Malevich's Black Square and how I feel about that, which is hard to explain properly other that to say I love it.

SWIM - Holly Herndon: I'm obsessed with this Holly Herndon album. It's just amazing though I think the marketing and a lot of the writing about it is sort of.. misleading? There's a lot of emphasis being put on the machine learning and AI aspects of it, which as undoubtedly good and cool as they are, are sort of overshadowing what's so good about this in a simple way which is that it's just choral music for the future. It feels like it reaches so far back and so far forward at the same time it's incredible.

Too Real/Television Screens - Fontaines D.C.: I really had to stop myself from putting the whole Fontaines DC album on here because quite literally every single song on this is amazing. Just when you think guitar music is well and truly dead it pulls you back in!! Also the way he says 'aaa' at the start of Too Real just absolutely kills me.

Dangerous Match Ten - Scientist: I forget where I read it but some bass player was saying she learned to play by listening to Scientist albums, and so that made me listen to Scientist for the first time and go on a long dub trail and have a very good and dangerous day where I thought “..what if I become a dub guy?”. It’s very good. I don’t know anything about dub really, we don’t really have the jamaican population here for it to have any cultural currency like it does in america and the UK so my biggest exposure is the Dub radio station from GTA III and San Andreas which I’m now learning was mostly made up of Scientist songs anyway. Anyway dub is good, please keep an eye one me and watch as this playlist evolves into me becoming an evangelical dub guy over the next few months and start calling everyone m’brethren in a racist way.

Lipitor - Longmont Potion Castle: Lipitor. This is unfortunately unavailable on Australian spotify which is a crime but if you're from anywhere else please enjoy.

A Lot’s Gonna Change/ Andromeda - Weyes Blood: I am having such a time with this Weyes Blood album. Yesterday I spent all day playing A Lot’s Gonna Change over and over and over and today I spent all day listening to Andromeda over and over and learning how to play it. I suspect this will happen to me with the entire album, it has a complete hold over me.

I’ve listened to Weyes Blood before and she’s never really grabbed me and so it took a lot of people rhapsodising about this one to get me to give it a go and I’m so glad I finally did. This album really took me by surprise, and looking back now I love the development of her sound: from her original spacy noisy thing to the bonafide soft rock of Front Row Seat To Earth to this - an expensive sounding 70s singer songwriter pop album of absolutely devastating beauty and inventiveness.

Wasting My Young Years - London Grammar: I think what's so interesting about this song is that it sounds like an acoustic cover of a trance song. I don't really know how to explain it better than that. The way the deceptively fast four on the floor drums come in, the sort of adult-contemporary The XX instrumentation, the whole structure of it, it feels like a BBC Live Lounge cover of some forgotten rave classic. I love it regardless but it's an odd song as well.

Left Hand - Beast Coast: Beast Coast is lames and I didn't make it more that halfway through the album. On the fourth song there's a verse where one of these guys is doing that rap thing of talking way to graphically about eating pussy. He says lick lick lick it's gross. Anyway this song rocks though. The beat is that perfect mix of hard as hell and a little bit spooky and I love any song where one million guys do like four lines each.

Hung Up - Madonna: In the wake of not listening to Madame X I've been reflecting on how it's been 15 years since Madonna's last true banger, Hung Up, and in my opinion she's a legend forever for this song alone. Do you remember the Madonna x Gorillaz performance at the 2006 Grammys? Where she walked BEHIND the hologram? She still has so much to teach us. 

Never Fight A Man With A Perm - IDLES: I love just how purely sweaty man muscle this song is. 'concrete to leather' are you kidding me?? That's the coolest shit I've ever heard. 'You look like you're from Love Island' also quite good.

Speakers Going Hammer - Soulja Boy: I was listening to this the other day and had to keep stopping and rewinding because of how advanced the flow is when he says 'Style swift hot like it's July 10th/Fly chick in my whip with nice tits/Her boyfriend paid for it, I didn't" he's like five minutes in front of the beat and combined with the internal assonance it just sounds sick as hell.

African Woman - Ebo Taylor: Man goes ham on toy piano must see

(I’m Not Your) Stepping Stone - The Monkees: My friend Tiana (who I've mentioned twice now!) came to band practice and said she saw The Monkees last night. I thought no, that's impossible. The Monkees are all long dead, forgotten legends from a forgotten age. BUT I was wrong! Michael Nesmith and Micky Dolenz, the surviving Monkees tour to this day! And she introduced me to this great song which we learned for the band! Monkees forever!

Whoo! Alright! Yeah! .. Uh Huh - The Rapture: Somehow as time goes on this song becomes more and more important to me and more and more groovy.I used to think life’s a bitter pill but it’s a grand old time. Now that’s wisdom.

World Of Stone/Loinclothing - Hunters And Collectors: I've been getting very heavily into early Hunters And Collectors over the last couple of months.  I think I put Loinclothing on last months playlist as well but fuck it, it's great. It's so primal and raw it feels like the first caveman who learned to talk fronting a band of cavemen who sing songs about caveman issues and passion. I love the incredibly wide open sound the drums and bass have and the fidgety guitar combined with the unhinged vocals creates this really unique ambience of menace and power without ever getting particularly busy and losing the spaciousness. Feels like yelling about monkeys on a wide open desert plain.

Coisa No. 10 - Marcello Gonçalves and Anat Cohen: I found this song ages ago on ABC Jazz I think, and I absolutely love the intricacies of it. It twists and folds in on itself over and over and over without ever losing the groove or relaxing into anything easy. There's so much tension in it even though the melody and groove are so fun, it's a great mix. I also found out it's from an album that's a tribute to someone I'd never heard of before named Moacir Santos, so I got the great joy of discovering his music via this song as well.

Monologue/Nana - Moacir Santos: Moacis Santos, as I understand it, was one of Henry Mancini's film composition assistants and also the guy that taught all the Boss Nova geniuses like Sergio Mendes. I love this Monologue where he tells the story of a mystical vision that inspired this song, which you assume being inspired by a vision would be of mythical importance and weight and but instead sounds like the theme to a cartoon about a grandma who has superpowers.

Weird People - Little Mix: I need more info about the identity of the robot voice in this song. What is his relationship to the singer. He starts off antagonistic: “get off the wall” then commenting on what happened to her: “fell off the wall” then just echoing her: “on the other side” then becoming her “i’m living my life”. It’s complicated and hard to explain but I believe the robot voice in this song is god. Anyway this song is a masterpiece. It’s an incredibly goofy and great piece of 80s revival that imagines a glorious alternate future where Oh Yeah by Yello is the template for all pop music.

3 Legged Dog - Marisa Anderson: Marisa Anderson used to write songs with words here and there among her instrumentals but it seems that over the last couple of albums she’s decided to stick to instrumentals only which I think is a shame. She’s obviously brilliant at it but I’d hate to be missing out on beautiful little slices like this. I love how small time this song is, it feels like a song you’d sing to yourself more than a song for anyone else.

Nighttime Suite - Adam Gnade & Demetrius Francisco Antuña: Adam Gnade is a guy I’ve been following for about ten years now who seems determined to stay obscure. He self-releases all his stuff in limited editions or on cassettes, some of my favourite things he’s ever done don’t seem to be available anywhere digitally any more (if they ever were). I remember years ago he seemed hard up for cash and he ran a deal on his website called a ‘lifetime subscription’ where if you sent him I think $100 he would send you everything he’s ever done AND would continue to send you everything he made in the future for the rest of his life. It was absolutely great, I would get CD-Rs and tapes and zines and things delivered randomly to my mailbox every so often for a couple of years and they were all fantastic. I guess at some point my lifetime subscription lapsed because he’s released a bunch of stuff I haven’t heard or read but that’s ok, you shouldn’t be able to buy someone’s eternal soul for $100.

Adam Gnade has developed his own style of folk music where he just recites a sort of prose poetry over music and it’s incredible. In the hands of anyone else it could feel overly pretentious, and he pretty often rides that line. He’s reaching for a sort of poet laureate of Americana ideal but very often he actually grabs it. His writing is great and magnifies the minor details of normal life into larger symptoms of the American mindset, like depression-era songs of marginalised and exploited people individualised and updated for the modern era. Most of the time he backs himself on a lazily strummed guitar or banjo and his music sounds like sitting on the front step or laying down in the tall grass, but for this song he’s teamed up with Demetrius Francisco Antuña for some real Godspeed feeling dark soundscapes and it’s really something.

We Are The Same - Lurch And Chief: I think it's a damn shame that Lurch And Chief broke up before they even put an album out because this song is a damn classic and I have begun praying every day for the return of Lurch and/or Chief. I love a big voice and there's two distinctly huge voices in this song fighting for position.

983/Near DT, MI - Black Midi: Fucking hell I love this Black Midi album. I'm so, so glad it exists. It feels like the next generation of the Slint Hella, Tera Melos etc lineage of math rock and I simply can't get enough of it. Pump it directly into my veins I'm obsessed with it.

Take Control - Amerie: I just screamed out loud in my car hearing this song for the first time because it samples Jimmy, Renda Se by Tom Zé one of my absolute favourite songs ever. And samples it amazingly, totally transforms it into something new while keeping the spirit of the original. Do you ever feel like a song was just made for you personally? It’s a very kind thing of my vlogger wife Amerie to do for me but I guess that’s just how she is. Also, thanks to Spotify’s new feature where you can see the actual credits for songs I got to find out that Hall And Oates are credited on this because it basically interpolates the the whole verse melody from You Make My Dreams Come True which I didn’t even realise until I looked up why they were credited.

Unsquare Dance - Dave Brubeck: Dave Brubeck's brain is huge. I can't belive it's possible to make 7/4 this funky. How come nobody else ever ripped off this rhythm? It deserves to be a whole genre. I also totally love the piano solo near the end where it turns into like a funky 7/4 stride and then abruply ends with a shave and haircut like it's 1925.

Suddenly - French Vanilla: Get a load of this fucking slice of dance punk that Discover Weekly served me up. I haven't even listened ot the album yet because I just love this song so much I'm stuck on it. Singing "I like the nightlife! I'm in the spotlight!" like you're being hunted with a knife? Incredible. The impromptue glossolalia about halfway through? Incredible. Everything about the saxophone? Incredible

Maneater - Nelly Furtado: There's nothing deft or subtle about Timbaland. Everything he does is just so heavy handed and thick. The drums in this are so straightforward and they sound like garbage cans.. Nothing ever plays at he same time as anything else . It's like a gorilla learned to play and it's absolutely fucking sick. And then the whole rest of the song! His insanely thick buzzy synth lines against the big beautifully stack clean harmonies

I, The Witchfinder - Electric Wizard: I've been getting back into Skyrim because I have a little worm living in my brain and I've discovered a good trick is to turn off the game music and turn on Electric Wizard instead. It increases the ambience because it feels like if you did an x-ray of the Dragonborn's head this is all that would be in there. It's just stoner metal in there and no other thoughts.

Music Sounds Better With You - Stardust: Can you believe how lucky we are to live in a world where the greatest song ever written is finally available on spotify? You can just listen to this any time of the night or day and immediately improve your life.

Don’t Chew - Spilled Oats: Here’s a very good and underexplored idea: what if guitar music but it sounds like chopped and screwed? Absolutely dynamite.

 As an extra bonus treat here the absolute best ever chopped and screwed channel I’ve found on youtube, please explore Scobed & Robed: https://www.youtube.com/user/scottalexanderburton

listen here

[siphonophoresupernumerary]

Non-primes for the writer asks

1. Something magic, something science, something fun, something less than pious

4. 3 in 1, I've got a world within which I can place three current projects, one of heroes, one of chocolate, one of the strange

6. I'm not good at finishing/pacing myself in detail

8. That's a very good question, though the only bit of actual heartfelt dialogue I've written was stolen from me (like the paper on which I wrote it on was stolen (and probably burned now))

9. Nothing I write is "hard" for me, but that might well be because I'm not pushing my boundaries

10. Easiest was "Chronicles of the Demon King" which encompassed 3 (complete) books and 2 incomplete stories

12. I don't know about that. Probably something from Dirk Gently

14. To plan everything out before you start writing

15. All of them! But more specifically the hero one (has to do better than DC amiright?)

16. Johnrezi (historically I suck at writing relationships, but we'll see how things go)

18. Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets, my computer notes app, my phone notes app, sticky notes, journals, and plain paper

20. All by myself!

21. Never published! Didn't know how, didn't know where, and wasn't allowed until like, 2 weeks ago

22. Drake sat in the passenger compartment of a transport ship, one of only several hundred in existence. Space transports were extremely expensive to manufacture and a lot of the technology used in them had not been approved for public use so flying cars were still not a real thing, and besides, it was illegal.

Drake had been in a space transport once before when his parents had paid for him to go to space camp among the colonies around the earth. The trip back to earth was taken in an escape pod when the sector had caught fire and several parts exploded. Of the original 457 participants, 386 escaped. It was the most recent and worst catastrophe in the 21st century not involved in the third world war.

Last time Drake had been on a space transport he was having a great time, he was with some friends (who all survived the fire), he was on his way to space, and he was on his way to a fun vacation camp.

This time things were different. Drake was on his way back to earth, he was with his sister and a whole bunch of kids he’d never seen before, and he was basically being sent to his death.

The thing is that the earth was infested with monsters. Thin, black, indestructible, and ancient monsters from a civilization that time forgot until explorers accidentally released them in a blunder that would throw the future (which is very predictable due to the world’s great progress in all things worth getting better at) to the winds of fate.

24. See 21

25. A beta? (Only betas I know are fish and sburb)

26. Beta...? Oh! I go by BlaiddBeta on Steam, does that count?

27. Would be nice, but my attempts haven't gotten off the ground

28. Uh... Diane Duane...?

30. Sure

32. It's got a place in the world, I don't create it

33. Don't do bad drugs people, I guess

34. Absolutely no clue what that means :)

35. Yeah

36. I only know about A03 so

38. One time I had an acquaintance read "Interplanar" and that was a good thing

39. Not really, but it provokes thought

40. Y'all don't know what this means but ;)

Samantha slammed her fist on the ancient console, two cubes of tungsten popping into existence and clattering to the stone floor.

"Why is it still falling? We sent them the materials they needed to fix this!"

Herin tilted their head in a shrug, crawling over to get a better look at the monitors.

"They've misapplied the sealing foam, they didn't have enough in the end"

Samantha groaned and covered her face with a hand

"Any change in the collision trajectory?"

"It should strike the school in 1 hour"

Samantha spun around and conjured up a radio and began to add modules and several batteries, the materials appearing out of nothing.

An LED flicked on and Samantha yelled into the microphone

"There is a space station on a collision course with the school, get out of there now!"

------

Over the school's PA a voice crackled, telling the occupants to get out, and had this message happened on a day that was not today they might have been able to listen.

This was not that day.

The Angel, her fists bloodied and with red spattered across her wings stalked across the cafeteria to the small group of people armed with various weapons one might expect to find in the apocalypse. None had proved very useful.

Behind the bloody Angel lay a demon clutching his stomach, lying in a small pool of red blood turning black. Another demon stood over him, her skin burning red and with sightless sets of yellow eyes, and behind them lay an angel with shadows clutching her neck.

"Leave us alone!" Andrew yelled brandishing a shovel

"No" the Angel said simply

Andrew disappeared and then reappeared over and over again in the act of whacking, landing blow after blow until she lashed out with a clear green energy and Andrew fell to the floor his chest slashed up

"It sounds like this blasted school is soon to be destroyed" the angel smiled, "now the question is whether you'll be in here or with me when it is."

Nobody moved

"If that's how it's-" she began before being engulfed in a stream of fire from Drake

"Quick! The windows!" He yelled straining to increase the temperature

A hail of gunfire shattered a few windows and there was a mad dash for them

A second later Drake fell, his arms scratched up heavily

The Angel darted forward after the ones who were cutting their arms and shoulders on broken glass in their haste.

"No. You. Don't" she yelled, grabbing a chubby girl by the leg and throwing her back before grabbing a boy and doing the same to him

A fist connected with her shoulder with the force of a train, sending her flying back at a wall, but before she could hit it the shadows jumped forward, catching her.

The boy who punched her punched the wall, opening a hole barely large enough to squeeze through. He winced and punched it two more times before pushing people through the wider hole.

Almost everyone was out now, besides the 4 unconscious bodies.

The Angel ran to the windows and lashed out at them as they ran, cutting their backs as if with a whip, but they had escaped.

She snarled and turned in time to see Drake patching up Andrew.

"You!" She yelled, lunging for them, but they vanished before she could reach them, the other two bodies disappearing shortly later.

She stood, fists clenched, in the middle of the ruined cafeteria. Before turning to face her .

"They'll pay later. Let's get out of here. As much as I hated this place I don't want to be destroyed with it."

The red demon lifted the bleeding demon and the shadows enveloped the other Angel and followed her out.

---

Samantha watched as the station hit the atmosphere and began to burn. Her shoulders slumped and she sat back on a chair she'd created for herself.

She crossed her arms on the desk and put her head down. Defeated.

"There's a good chance they escaped" Herin said, their animated expression glitching on their screen face. "Your radio functioned perfectly"

"Just leave me alone" she groaned "I'll find them in a bit, just let me sit here..."

Herin stared at her for a beat before crawling away to talk to the other Datans about this.

[enz-fan]

Article by Margo Huxley - early days in Australia, 1975. 

“On stage are what appear to be seven refugees from an op shop run by a lunatic asylum. They wear suits that are too big, too small or both at once. The singer’s hair is a frizz of tangles that falls over his heavily be-rouged face. He moves like a sped up movie of Charlie Chaplin doing an imitation of Harpo Marx - or is it vice versa? He comes on with a patter that sounds like ‘Waiting for Godot’ done by a music hall M.C.

Somewhere in the shadows lurks Groucho, complete with eyebrows and moustache, playing a Gibson electric guitar. Next to him, but only briefly, stands a fellow in a baggy brown suit from the set of the Godfather - he plays bass.

Round-faced and cherubic sits the drummer, almost hidden behind his kit, but visible enough to show that his suit too is certainly somebody’s cast-off.

A resurrected James Dean, white faced and hollow-eyed in a teddy boy suit of brilliant red, the pants of which are far too long and bag around the lower part of his legs, plays acoustic, electric suitar and mandolin.

The maestro of the keyboards - synthesizer, mellotron, string synthesizer and a piano that looks like someone has taken an axe to it, (and though electric, it sounds just like the real thing) - he is resplendent in tails, almost normal except that one sleeve ends at the left elbow and the other is about a foot beyond his right hand.

Then there’s this fellow just standing there, seemingly redundant in an ill-fitting pale blue suit, his head hanging like a broken marionette. Redundant that is, until he breaks forth with a pair of spoons in his hand, playing them against his head, his feet, his knees, anywhere. The rest of the time he plays slightly pixillated triangle, xylophone, bell-tree and tambourine to mention a few. Occasionally he strides up to a microphone, any microphone, to throw in a world or two of vocals.

Suddenly the demented action stops and the whole band stands in cameo stillness for a burst of electronic sound that fills the hall.

“Who are they?” a bloke in the audience asks his mate. “Dunno” the mate replies. “I think they’re Captain Matchbox.”

WRONG! This is Split Enz and as their name implies, they hail from New Zealand. Don’t be fooled. Just because they “dress funny” doesn’t mean they are like Captain Matchbox, skyhooks or - “Anyone who compares us with Roxy Music hasn’t heard Roxy Music” says Timothy Finn, lead singer.

Neither are they like Yes, King Crimson, The Sensational Alex Harvey Band, Beefheart, Zappa, Schonbert, Cage, Al Jolson, Scott Joplin, The Goons, Marcel Marceau, Monty Python or anyone else you like to mention. But comparisons are inevitable.

Comparisons are the direction with which we chart the waters of a new experience. In Split Enz music you fill find everything: classical and neo-classical; music hall honkeytonk and sleazy vaudeville; acoustic and electronic, with a blues and a boogie thrown in here and there; good ol’ rock’n’ roll; and just when you think they’ve done it all they hit you with a piano full of cool jazz, some Gregorian chants or calypso shouts for good measure.

These analogies are only signposts; the more you hear their music, the less you need them, and the more you come to realise that Split Enz create music that is individually theirs. Their lyrics conjure up nightmare visions, obsessions with madness and the macabre, woven out of cliches that spring at you with renewed vigour; phrases such as “time to kill”, “dead to the world” suggest sinister overtomes. Lines like “just hold me down if I have a fit... I think I’ll be all right... I’ll be normal someday”, “the rats are crawling up my back, it can only mean you’re coming back” are delivered with frenetic, demented mime that is more demonic than lunatic.

Some songs perhaps threaten to fall apart at the seams as style, rhythm and reference change and pile upon one another, but for the most part each song, as each performance, is carefully arranged.

“It’s a bloody orchestra.” one innocent bystander is heard to remark. And indeed ‘orchestrated’ is a better word for the music, and ‘choreographed’ a better word for the performance.

The taped Andrews Sisters-type music at the beginning with canned applause and the announcement “... SPLIT ENZ!”, the discourse on “how to get from A to B”, walking on an invisible conveyer belt going nowhere - the whole performance is a carefully planned sequence.

But not stilted, not unspontaneous. There are always new surprises even when, at daytime gigs they dispense with make up and stage clothes and appear as their normal selves. Despite the parodies and satires implied in their music - “Spoofs” is the word Timothy Finn uses - there clings to them an aura of innocence and naivety, like a Henri Rousseau painting.

This impression persists with them off stage. They are quietly spoken and polite. although their normal dress is somewhat - uh - eccentric in these days blue jeans and T-shirts, they are not the formidably intimidating maniacs they become on stage.

Timothy Finn, whose hair is no more manageable off stage than on, does most of the talking. Eddie Rayner of the keyboards is more relaxed, with a fresh-faced charm like the captain of the school cricket.

He joined Split Enz from Space Waltz, a group in which he earned much deserved renown for his wizardry on the ivories and electronic switches.

Jonathon Michael Chunn of the bass guitar has Byronic good looks that even his stage make up cannot hide, and Wally Wilkinson, moustache free from blackening and eyebrows normal is full of witty irrelevancies.

Emlyn Crowther, the man behind the drums, looks as Welsh as his name and smiles a lot. Noel Crombie is the owner of the chattering spoons. He is also the designer and maker of costumes, silent and forlorn looking, like a lost pup. And Philip Judd is reserved, almost disdainful, and stripped of grease paint, looks more like Rudolf Valentino than James Dean – that might be something to do with the scarf knotted at his throat.

Split Enz was formed about 3 years ago, but the present line up has only been together for about 10 months and work remarkably well. Timothy Finn and Philip Judd are responsible for the genesis of the words and music which the whole group then fashion into a final stage presentation.

They don’t like to talk about ‘influences’ – “The Beatles” says Timothy Finn without so much as a bat of an eyelid. And when you think about it anyone who plays music today can’t have escaped the ubiquitous presence of the Beatles. Anyway, Split Enz have admitted to liking the Kinds and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band. You can make what you like of that. It’s not a definitive list.

Their conversation is free of swearing and they don’t smoke, but have been seen to drink a beer or two on the odd occasion. They are naturally “un-hip”. They avoid words like ‘hassle’, ‘dig’, ‘gig’ and anyone in the group who makes such a blunder is gently offered alternatives like ‘bother’, ‘appreciate’, ‘job’.

Confusion occurs about their names – again because of their desire to reject the clichés of the pop world. They decided to take their second Christian names as first names which is why if you ever come across anything written about them in New Zealand, the names won’t tally. Sometimes they themselves forget and call each other by their old names, but the error is always quickly corrected.

However, some of them nationalistically flaunt the great New Zealand ‘eh’ on the end of their sentences. “That’s a great new piano we’ve just bought, eh” – not a question, a statement. But they are dropping the tag “New Zealand’s Top Band” and such like, which, while it is undoubtedly true, is just another cliché to be avoided like the plague (whoops, sorry).

Already their stay of three weeks in Australia has been extended to six in order to record with Festival in Sydney. The album will be produced by their manager Dave Russell and the cover design by ex art student Philip Judd. Out on Mushroom, the album will be a token of Michael Gudinski’s enthusiasm for this band.

They have been deluged with work, after an initially slow start in Sydney. They are the support act for the Leo Sayer Melbourne concert and have done an ABC GTK which was an immediate success. More than 60 phone calls came in after it was shown to ask who the band were – that’s some sort of record.

Up until this Australian tour, the group has always had plenty of time to recuperate from the last job and plan and prepare the next. But they are finding the rigours of touring with jobs every day or so, and sometimes more than one a day, very wearing. Any spare energy left over from the last performance must be channelled into preparing for the one following close on its heels.

Another result of the GTK spot was an approach from an ABC producer to do the sound track for a documentary called “Ten Australians”. In particular they are to back a sequence featuring the artist Sydney Ball at work.

Their plans for the future include a return to New Zealand for a couple of months, followed by a longer sojourn in Australia (amen to that), and depending on reactions to their album they hope to go to England…

Of course such an esoteric band does not have universal appeal, and being unknown in Australia, sight unseen, it’s even harder to win hearts and minds. They have great hopes that the album, plus their shows here and a bit of media exposure will make their return to Australia somewhat easier.

They do not appeal to the younger age groups – “they are no the audience we are really aiming at”. They got a poor reception at the Melbourne Festival Hall Skyhooks concert, where they were first on. The audience didn’t know and didn’t want to. (But I seem to remember once a long time ago, Skyhooks was an “underground” band). But at the Reefer Cabaret, at Unis and the Station Hotel standing ovations are the order of the day.

“There are many ways of saying goodbye:” Timothy Finn lurches into his pitch for the final number – limbs jerking, face twitching at the mercy of some drunken puppeteer; “Goodbye, Byebye, Adieu, See you later, Au revoir…” etc. “…SO LONG FOR NOW”.

Never fear, we have not seen the last of Split Enz. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is A Good Thing.”

[mykatesingh-blog]

    Times are tight right now with a small income and tiny grocery budget. But life has never been so good! I’ve never been happier. How could that be? I did a vlog on YouTube recently titled “Can being broke improve the quality of your life?”.

The key to being broke and thriving is your mindset. If I turn it into a game, a big, fun challenge, I enjoy life. I become industrious and creative, I turn within and learn a lot about what I’m capable of doing with very little. I also learn to just be present and self-entertain on a large scale. I learn from others, which can be very interesting.

To make it with our little funds I put us on a zero spend season. I reduced our grocery budget down to what the government would give a family of four with a person working. I wanted to see if I could feed us delicious and nutritious food and stay within the limit. We also had to reduce our bill to $350 in order to rebuild a saving that is almost none existent. We have always had large savings and taken great comfort in it. It’s stressful to not have that emergency fund, especially when you’ve recently been informed a root canal is in your near future.

Each month we improve our budgeting skills vastly but are still not perfect. This month I spent $60 on nine cases of canning jars I found on craigslist. I’ve already gone over the grocery budget by $50 and we still have two more weeks.

It’s a process of learning, failing, improving. On the upside, I have learned to make homemade pasta by hand and spent last weekend canning up a storm. I have learned that double coupon days at Sprouts doesn’t save any money when talking canning and that Davis farms in Sacramento still does a You Pick for .30 cents a pound. I will be doing that or finding farms where I can glean the end of a harvest.  I have learned that Winco is the only place I can shop right now to make the grocery envelope happy.

As for entertainment, I have taken up crocheting again, making scarves for my sons when it gets cold, and one little purple scarf for our neighbors’ little girl as a birthday gift.

I’m gardening like crazy to offset grocery cost, but it seems the local squirrel has taken to shopping in my lettuce patch. I did learn how to freeze corn without blanching. Canning was very fun and successful. I now have dilly beans, triple berry jam, and spaghetti sauce. I have learned that making homemade pasta with eggs gets pricey and now I’m trying it with flour and semolina like the Pasta Grannies on YouTube.

I have found a few new channels that I enjoy and are helping me with my cost effective strategies. One being Jan Creson with her Dollar Tree meals that are very creative, delicious looking, but something that one may want to keep to once a month meal for health reasons. With this grocery budget, it intrigues me. I never thought of cooking meals comprised of Dollar Tree items. Olivia’s Romantic House is a tour through a real live dollhouse. She has children and a tiny home that she decorates on a budget with so much creativity and gratitude. I have collected some ideas for the future. Our One Acre Homestead is a new one for me that covers everything from quilting to farming. I love anything to do with saving money, decorating on a penny, and homesteading. And then there is a trip to another country with Pasta Grannies.

In the mornings I have a big mug of creamy coffee and thumb through my Complete Tightwad Gazette to keep inspired then set about my days. I would love to travel to the coast or see friends in Marin but that isn’t a necessity, thus not supported by the zero spend rules we set in place. To keep myself busy and satisfied I do things that I can really look forward to or makes my life easier.

With music and coffee, I become enthusiastic about rearranging furniture, decluttering at surprising levels and decorating with what I have, even pulling from the garage or patio to make a room come together. It is a weekly ritual. Along with that, I have become more invested in my housework than ever before with deep cleaning rituals that have even incorporated scrub brushes and the cleaning of areas never ventured before, and yet I still have not found my two pairs of eyeglasses! Dang it, I could really use them about now with my old pair so scratched up I keep wiping them thinking it’s dirty smudges.

I’m trying desperately to get back into my writing of fiction and read stacks of books, among them Stephen King’s On Writing. I’ve joined the Nanowrimo group and even wrote a whole novel in less than a month. Only to delete it along with 5 other books in this year. I have obsessively created and recreated a space for myself with a desk because Stephen King said that to write one must have a room to go into, close the door and focus. The living room was a bad idea for obvious reasons. The dining room was just as bad…and then the cheap fold-out table I was using as a desk began to fall apart. I wound up with a small table from the patio shoved in a corner between the pantry and dogs feeding area. Bali made me a fancy desk chair from a crate in the garage. Office furniture compliments of our yard.

I have to say, despite the pathetic appearance, this space is more conducive to writing and work than any other in all of the house. Stephen King suggests facing the wall when working. I thought that was an awful idea, I wanted to face the garden for inspiration, but now I have to admit that the wall is working wonders. Instead of staring out at the apple trees and morning doves, I write! Go figure.

I keep writing and continue looking to the future when my imagination kicks in again. How I miss thee.

I have found that when it becomes a struggle to work with the budget one must become industrious. I have been fortunate enough to start babysitting my neighbor’s daughter once a week. My YouTube channel has taken off recently after some studying the art and changing the way I make vlogs. I even hired (pro bono work of course) my husband to record me to make my vlogs more enjoyable and precise. It worked and with a surge in subscribers, I was able to monetize the Channel. I’m thrilled with these small victories.

I think the biggest way to enjoy financially challenging times is to know that they are temporary. I have visions for the future and dreams. This may sound cuckoo, but I do feel I somehow manifested this period of tiny funds. For me, it is a field study. It is an experience I called in to learn some simple things about life and to help others in this position. What I am learning are the realities of working with limited resources and what it takes to Improvise, Adapt, and Overcome. This is a Marine motto handed to me by an ex-boyfriend and former Marine. It has been invaluable and I apply it to any situation that requires work.

Improvise: we do this when we have no money. We cut cost, change phone companies, find ways to do things in free or far less expensive ways. For example; I need to shop for groceries, but my health food store is too pricey so I now go to Winco and spend 1/4th of the cost. I use old furniture from the garage to make a writing space. I use what I have when it comes to decorating or cooking. I make gifts instead of buying them.

Adapt: It takes time to slow and eventually stop the spending train. It takes time to go from spending $1,000 on groceries down to $350. It takes time to relearn the art of self-entertainment and staycations. It takes time to find inner contentment and peace in just being. And with no money, that is what you do a lot of…just being. Just being home, just being satisfied with another rice and bean dinner, just spending the weekend cleaning and repairing what you have. Just being grateful for what you do have.

Overcome: At some point you stop whining and longing and feeling sorry for yourself and family. You find hidden gems in the weekend at home painting the bathroom and repairing your dining room chairs. You find such accomplishment in canning for the first time and having 100% success. You find a beloved ritual in scrubbing and reorganizing your home with a mug of coffee in hand and a good radio station filling the rooms. You find bliss while watering your garden in the morning and seeing the young shoots of greens that will fill your soup pots and save you hundreds of dollars in organics. You find true pleasure in rolling out pasta and watching vlogs of women in Italy teaching you this ancient art. Your family finds a new pride in their mother when she presents them with homebaked bread and homemade jam on Sunday mornings.

Do I want to be this broke forever? No, but there is no such thing as forever and I have created a dream board, a dream box, and I’m working on first finding joy in life as it is and then being expectant of the abundance that is already coming to us.

But as our life prospers, I will look back on this time with fondness and nostalgia and we will never stray too far from this way of life that we have learned through challenging times. This simple life is the richest.

Living on a food stamp budget. Times are tight right now with a small income and tiny grocery budget. But life has never been so good!