It probably comes as no surprise to anyone that art, especially music, holds a very important role in my wellbeing. This is an idea I’m just beginning to learn how to express to others and display outwardly. Because of this, I have had an ever-growing desire to find those works of art that I can use as examples to show others exactly what it is I’m experiencing.

I recently began reading A Clockwork Orange. Alex, the main character, while being different from me in aspects that are most important to the theme of the book, has one very important thing in common with me: an undying passion for music. Yesterday I read the monologue where he first describes what he feels when listening to a piece of classical music:

Then, brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on my pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers… And there were devotchkas ripped and creeching against walls and I plunging like a shlaga into them, and indeed when the music, which was one movement only, rose to the top of its big highest tower, then, lying there on my bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I broke and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with the bliss of it. And so the lovely music glided to its glowing close.

I need to take Alex’s example as a lesson in how to express this passion of mine. I’m still learning how to do that, but as I begin to figure it out, you can rest assured that it will show up here.

I love it when I beat Pitchfork to the punch. I’ve been listening to Los Campesinos! for quite a while now after coming across their phenomenal song You! Me! Dancing! during my exploration of 2006’s countless end-of-year lists (I don’t even know who Phil Gyford is).

Several weeks later Pitchfork made small mention of them. And today they published their review of LC!’s first stateside release, Sticking Fingers Into Sockets, giving it a whopping 8.4. That’s huge for Pitchfork, in case you weren’t aware. And, for once, their excessive verbage does an album justice:

Silly names aside, Los Campesinos! play superbly crafted indie pop that bounces off walls like Love Is All, grins with the childlike exuberance of Bis, and throws the toy chest into its arrangements like Architecture in Helsinki. Glockenspiels and pizzicato violin veer into reckless guitar riffs and full-bodied handclaps– or fizz over, like Mentos and Coke, into happy-stupid crescendos. Gareth shares lead vocal duties with the similarly pseudonymous Aleksandra Campesino!, and their boy-girl exchanges give the music an extra, sweet frisson. Newfeld’s treatment turns “You! Me! Dancing!” from a lo-fi rallying cry into an unstoppable force for converting spindly legs into dancefloor blurs.

Twee on, kids. Twee on.

As of yesterday, I am a writer for a personal favorite music news site, Buzzgrinder. As I said a while back, I have been writing for their California Buzzgrinder site, but Seth asked if I’d like to contribute to the main site now. It’ll actually be easier that way, considering I tend to focus more on national acts rather than local stuff.

Anyway, that said, I’m going to make this my personal blog from now on. It’s not going to become a personal diary by any means, but I’ll be sharing more non-music stuff that interests me, such as spiritual issues, computer nerd stuff or anything else that I find thought-provoking.

I know it seems like an empty promise, but I’m still working on stuff to write here. It’s just… really big. So it’s taking a while to process and organize my thoughts, especially when so much other stuff is going on in my life at the same time. In the meantime, here’s my monthly playlist for June:

1. Björk - “Hyperballad” (Post)
2. Solarstone - “Seven Cities (Atlantis Mix)” (Ibiza Euphoria 2)
3. Björk - “It’s Oh So Quiet” (Post)
4. The Dillinger Escape Plan - “Sugar Coated Sour” (Calculating Infinity)
5. Scorpions - “No One Like You” (Blackout)
6. Rhymefest - “Fever (Dirty)” (Blue Collar)
7. Cary Brothers - “All The Rage” (Who You Are)
8. Panda Bear - “Comfy In Nautica” (Person Pitch)
9. Interpol - “Not Even Jail” (Antics)
10. Fridge - “Harmonics” (Happiness)
11. Ion Dissonance - “The Surge” (Minus The Herd)
12. Bright Eyes - “First Day Of My Life” (I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning)
13. Ryan Adams - “Come Pick Me Up” (Heartbreaker)
14. Eightball - “Drama In My Life” (Lost - Chopped And Screwed)
15. Incubus - “Dig” (Light Grenades)