Pretty late in the night. It's all right though. I can stay awake for a bit.
The brain is strangely reluctant to shut down tonight, grasping at muted noises and faint lights. From the window on the 9th floor, you can look out pretty far. Not that you look that often, but now you have the time and the mood, so as to say, and you can look, if you wanted to. The leaves flutter in the semi-dark of a moonless city night but then quieten quickly as if ashamed to have broken the silence on this hot, muggy night. The sky is red at the lower edges as the lights from the streetlamps and the houses bleach into the darkness. And if you stare long enough and hard enough, you can make out the clouds churning ever so slowly in the distance, with a bit of menace. The patterns they make are hypnotic and bring to mind ink-drops dissolving into a glass of water (its the other way round really, like if you could figure out a way to dissolve a drop of water into a bottle of ink, but then you can't do that). Lives, muted in sleep, go on. In urban cages. You can't even see the stars.
The Bombay rains are never easy but I just can't wait for them to arrive this night. I could use a bit of rain.
It will be a short post tonight. I won't sleep for a bit. But I am thinking too loudly to write.
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Songs now. Trying to keep the selection a bit different this time around, including a couple of acoustic/ambient ones.
1. Mofro - Brighter Days
This song and indeed this band is by now an old favorite that I keep going back to. The vocals are unusual, JJ Grey has a very Southern voice (what I assume to be one from my familiarity with US tv shows, a very scientific assumption therefore). The spare guitar and drums and the piano that leads the intro all make for a very good song. It makes me hum along (and if you know me, that's a pretty rare thing).
2. Sublime - What I Got
A guilty pleasure. But such a beautiful rhythm. I challenge you to not feel your mood change for the better while this song is playing. A mish-mash of styles with white-rap and vinyl scratches to boot, this song is simply too good to not be heard.
3. Boards of Canada - Dayvan Cowboy
The first of our instrumental/ambient entries. I don't quite remember how I found this song. But I am incredibly glad I did. The video has a story in itself and the tonal shift at around 1:40 still gives me goosebumps. Play it and ignore all other noise. P.S. their entire catalogue is pretty good.
4. Aphex Twin - Xtal
Richard James is almost the founding father of all electronic music and this song is probably the one that started the EDM craze. And while I don't really know or care about the classifications, I do really like the headspace this song gets me into. The entire album (Selected Ambient Works 85-92) is amazing and any good listen would have to be punctuated with pauses as you try to figure out where exactly you have heard all the good bits before.
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You need to see Whiplash. If you don't care about jazz, you still need to. JK Simmons bloody deserved his Oscar.
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Happy Mother's Day
