September sucks because it's when you kind of know there's every possibility of things just getting hotter and hotter until yeah it's totally summer and that is fucked. I am ok with the middle of summer because then I know that summer is on the way out although unfortunately February is the worst (March is terrible too because you're like 'isn't summer over?' and the world is like 'you're so naive'.
In normal conditions (such as they once were) a February trip to northern Europe would be on the cards but that seems less likely every day (and that's saying something). Looks like it's just going to be a hot 2021-22 and more fires, death, disarray. I'm over it and I know I'm not the only one. Please save us Anthony Albanese.
Some records came in the mail yesterday, four actually. Two were albums I had 'always' (well, since they came out) meant to buy and never quite got round to it. Firstly, John Foxx's The Garden. I was a bit of a JF fan in 1980 when I bought Metamatic and I particularly loved its vibe, all the synthesisers-only stuff and songs about sterile environments and patched-in emotions. The Garden was perhaps less enticing to me because it added in organic materials, although I didn't mind (nor did I out-and-out love) the single 'Europe after the Rain' (which I bought as a 12") I was uncertain about the LP. I bought it from someone in the Netherlands and I like a lot of it, actually, well, side one in any case. There's a greater variety of material including some Metamatic-style tracks which appeal the most and some even punchier things like the song 'Systems of Romance' (which, strangely, has the same name as one of the Ultravox albums JF was on but I don't even really care about whatever the backstory is there). I got the Dr. Mix and the Remix album, too, which was a record that used to intrigue me when I looked at it in Exposure records forty years ago, but having no context, I just didn't know how to take it. I must have at one time known it was a covers album but this information fell out of my memory at some stage and sometime since I had absorbed the false information that it was actually a remix/sampled album in the vein of, for instance, the Justified Ancients of MuMu's first record or perhaps Culturcide's Tacky Souvenirs of Pre-War America. Well, no. It's feedback guitar cover versions of fairly unadventurous 60s-70s songs of the type favoured by punks when there wasn't enough punk music (a Roxy Music cover, a Stooges, two Sky Saxon, the Troggs' 'Can't Control Myself' etc). It's good enough to play again in some moods. Some list it as a Metal Urbain record but really I think it's just one (ex-?) member of MU. It's odd that it is rather obscure still but strangely as well there's a manifestly appalling review from Pitchfork 15+ years ago online that starts off with the reviewer saying he doesn't like non-English music and ends up with him saying that the Dr. Mix record is a testimony to how great American music is (yeah, like Roxy Music, David Bowie and The Troggs - sure). Fucking idiot. And Pitchfork is a terrible piece of shit website.
Then I also got the 'mistake' pressing of one of my favourite albums, Pere Ubu's The Art of Walking. This was a version of the record which, for whatever insane reason, was released in its initial incarnation with two 'wrong mixes' of two songs, most notably the track 'Arabia' which appears here as kind of a minimalist backing track - not in itself terrible but very strange to hear, particularly in context, when you're used to the 'real' version. It's a nice thing to have though I am not sure how much I am likely to be listening to it. Maybe a lot? I listened to it last night in any case while reading a bunch of reviews of the album most of which were takedowns by people whose opinions are stupid (none of them on Pitchfork though luckily). (I keep mistyping 'Pitchfork' as 'Pitchford', which I think is what I should call that website I set up to skewer Pitchfork at every turn, fortunately I'll never do that, because 'Pitchford' makes no sense).
I also got a compilation album which I'll discuss either later or never, need to get further into it.
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