Free At Last

If I’m bored with music, what should I listen to, silence? Impossible.

I’m bored with my music. There’s a lot in my library, but I can’t just put it on shuffle, because there are 183 T.Rex songs on there, and they are sure to come up. I don’t want that to happen, even though the reason I’ve kept them on there is so that I can eventually listen to them.

What sort of music might I be inclined to listen to? Electronica? Techno? Folk? Indie Pop? Pub Rock? Not Pub Rock. I want to hear beautiful voices, in the vein of Nick Cave, The Dresden Dolls, Sarah Blasko, The Fleet Foxes or Antony And The Johnsons. I got tired of electro because I kept listening to Daft Punk, La Roux or Pnau. There are only so many times you can listen to Grafton Primary, Cut Copy or even Metronomy.

There is of course more to electro than that, but some of the other bands, Fukkk Offf for instance, bore me faster by a factor of 10. Most of Fukkk Offf’s stuff is throwaway, but Bloodfuck is always good. Most of the other songs are ruined because that bitch sings in it. I hate it when some bitch ruins a song. It annoys me though, that the rest of the album is disregarded and one song held up to be good, all their hard work on the other songs just reduced to a singularity.

With techno, it’s not just something to dance to. There are compositions; there is so much to it, but you need an entry point; an Apparat. But you can’t just listen to something that techno-fags can talk about as though it’s a piece of art. I might like how a building looks because it references Russian Constructivism, but you don’t know or care what that is, so that doesn’t make it something good in itself.

I’m interested in anything Karen from the Knife is doing, because hearing her voice always brings me back to electro. The last sound from her was Fever Ray, and that wasn’t even considered good enough for the Hottest 100. On the other hand, the new Vampire Weekend songs were inexplicably considered adequate. The new MGMT is shit, but apparently Vampire Weekend are still good. I have refused to listen to either, for a reason called Autotune. Sorry, but you stop being sweet and innocent when you pull Cher and Kanye on us.

So I will come back to Antony And The Johnsons. One might think that a song called “Free At Last” might sound nice, you know, with freedom being nice. Kind of in the same way that I get good feelings from Cat Power’s song “Free”, from the album “You Are Free,” and the band name has cat in it. Antony’s nasal mistake has tainted my concept of freedom, so I think I’ll stick with silence.

Unlike Santa, The Easter Bunny Isn't Afraid To Completely Freak Out Children In Broad Daylight

Now, I want to tell you about my neighbourhood. My philosophical thoughts on the subject began when I realised I could see my shitty creekside suburb from Nas' harbourside penthouse apartment, during our intense architecture social club party. The apartment remained relatively undamaged, considering people passed out in the corridor, had sex in the fire escape and the beds and bathtub, and did cocaine in the toilets. The main recipient of the cocaine, Amir, used the word postmodern at least 50 times throughout the night.

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. Last night (the day following the big party) we had a quiet weed smoking session at my house, with my housemate and his friends. It was all fine, but then sometime after we got stoned, (only about 9PM), I heard some drunk yelling/talking/warbling from the front of the house. Some strange co-incidence had brought an obvious drug dealer to our house, who was absolutely smashed. We gave him directions to the suburb he had lost (across the creek) and grifted about 10 buds of marajuana from him- he was carrying phreshly cut weed in a plastic shopping bag.

Every day, when I ride west I go through the park where the prostitutes pick up. Everyone knows you might get randomly shot at if you go there at night, so I don't, but even during the day I always see this dealer incessantly doing laps around the running track, bumbag bouncing as he goes. I've seen him do deals too; I think he deals ecstacy. So this is where I live now- the park is 2 blocks from my house, the bridge across the creek is even closer. Up in that penthouse at the harbour is where you do the classier drugs, but down in the valley is where the business is done, and you can sit in your backyard and smell the pot waft in the air from the backyards of your neighbours, all of which you can see into. Your neighbours say hi from across the street, and it's handy to get on with them, because you have to share the public phone with them and if you're lucky, they might give you a racing bike.