Field Notes

hooray hooray hooray

2010-01-11T23:03:00.000-08:00

asator

2009-11-14T02:49:00.000-08:00

jag vill resa hem.

2009-09-03T02:05:00.001-07:00

At the End of the Road

2009-07-18T03:56:00.000-07:00

The land here absorbs light

Grit erodes a skein of earth

Like roots into the ocean

Fall unto

Fistful of roadside flowers

2009-03-18T16:11:00.000-07:00

30°

2009-03-12T15:37:00.000-07:00

Etymology

2008-12-29T23:39:00.000-08:00

Late, but still rad.

det snöar

2008-12-26T11:48:00.000-08:00

fucking bullshit.

2008-12-02T23:20:00.000-08:00

lower me to the soil / skulls - reign down / on you

2008-11-22T02:03:00.000-08:00

my words were useless again

2008-11-20T14:35:00.001-08:00

bullshit video, but i can't get the song out of my head.

invictus

2008-11-06T17:31:00.000-08:00

fuck. yeah.

Swedish people are the best people.

2008-11-03T23:19:00.000-08:00

Att vandringa = to wander
En stad = a city
Stadsvandringar = city-wandering

til satan

2008-10-27T14:42:00.000-07:00

No matter how broad the scope of music I'm into gets, I always find myself irresistibly drawn back to black metal.

I think, fundamentally, I just really like listening to music in the woods in the middle of the night.

On that note, this is grim as fuck:

All those useless pains and fears are things that i won't miss

2008-10-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

Spent 20 minutes looking at pictures to post, but everything just looks like crap right now, so i ended up listening to these two instead, trying to chill out.

Suomalainen.

2008-10-16T20:19:00.000-07:00

Though Apocalyptica have since moved on to writing their own stuff, Metallica on an assortment of cellos is still pretty rad. Hetfield's solo sounds surprisingly badass bowed, as does the underlying riff. I think more bands need to explore the distorted cello. I love how quintessentially Finnish the video is, with the blond-haired, fresh-faced couple breathing steam out in the snow. That, and the fact that the entire band is wearing turtleneck sweaters.

Really, any band that plays the cello standing up at Wacken is ok with me.

weekend.

2008-10-15T22:36:00.001-07:00

.

2008-10-08T21:51:00.000-07:00

Svensk metall är bästa metallen.

2008-10-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

Or: a study in contrasting video techniques using the first three Swedish metal bands I found on Youtube.

At the Gates. What is there to even say about At the Gates? Adrian Erlandsson could basically only play two beats, and Tomas Lindberg looked ridiculous with that hair, but still, the best goddamn melodic death metal band ever. Period. Goooooooo Göteborg!

Cult of Luna is probably (arguably) the most artistically "deep" (whatever the hell that means, really) of the bands, but also (because of?) the least interesting to talk about. So whatever, good song, good video, woooo post-metal.

God I love Amon Amarth. I feel like, as long as there are still bands like this in the world, things can't really be that bad. I mean, they sing about vikings, everyone in the band looks like a viking, they got a bunch of their fans to dress up as vikings and fucking fight each other, DOES IT EVEN GET ANY MORE RAD THAN THAT? NO. IT DOES NOT.

The song is actually about Thor battling Jörmungand at Ragnarök (reference earlier "deep" comment), which I actually think could have provided an even better, more gloriously cheesy video concept, but whatever. The Amon Amarth signature synchronized helicopter headbanging is notably absent, but it's made up for when suddenly one of the guys is holding both a flaming sword and shield. Practical? Probably not. Metal? Yes. Really, I just wish I could've been there when somebody was like "wait, you know what would make this even more awesome? if we LIT EVERYTHING ON FUCKING FIRE."

And on a musical note, that harmonized pinch-harmonic part right before the guitar solo, (3:25ish) is so goddamn sweet I can hardly stand it.

The water's deep here.

2008-09-28T23:49:00.000-07:00

In fact it's where music comes from.

2008-09-25T00:32:00.001-07:00

This has been in my head all damn week.

too drunk to dream

2008-09-22T12:50:00.000-07:00

Garden of Light

2008-09-17T12:51:00.000-07:00

I'm glad someone re-upped this, because it's basically my favorite thing in the world.

I don't know how much the animation has been altered from it's original form to fit the song, so I can't comment extensively, but it's interesting how well it mirror's Isis's general musical structure. Rather than any type of strongly cohesive narrative, it's just images, rising and falling in intensity, but unified by the common theme of the robot. The robot in itself is funny, considering the way in which this album (and song, especially) saw Isis moving away from the somewhat robot-like adherence to time that marked their earlier work.

Also: Aaron Tuner will always be my hero just because he rocks a telecaster.

Nonus Aequilibrium

2008-09-14T13:10:00.000-07:00

The only black metal love song? Probably not. But definitely the best. Thank you Ihsahn.

Certainly one of the least emo love songs of all time, but, especially with metal, I've noticed that the removal of one type of cheese usually results in the addition of a different-but-equivalent layer. Sort of a musical homeostasis.

Also: I first heard this song when I was 15, but when the blastbeats come in at the beginning, it still blows my mind. So heavy.

Mountain(s) of Might

2008-09-09T18:01:00.000-07:00

Went to Mt. Rainier.

Mountains are fucking metal.

Also: Saw a marmot.

Nom nom nom.

blood, sweat, tears

2008-09-07T02:46:00.000-07:00

Today somebody asked me why I play music. It's a huge, vague question, but I immediately thought of this video:

To me, the supreme state in which music can be delivered is through a type of transcendence, in which the musicians, the instruments, the notes, the song, sublimate into one another and become a type of giant totality, a wave of sound that carries with it a suffusion of emotion much greater than the sum of its parts. As a musician, it's a type of spiritual self-destruction, in which, in order to give yourself completely to the song, you're forced to lay down your fears, your ego, and let the sound flow through you and embody it. In a way, it's a lot like zazen, in which you concentrate on your breath to the point at which you no longer notice yourself or your body, or even really the act of breathing, you just exist and breathe, in the moment. In the same way, musically, you can't anticipate the chord changes or the time, you need to know it in such a way that you play it almost as if you don't know it, as if the entirety of the composition was some profound improvisation. When Noah Landis pounds the shit out of those bass pedals, it's not a premeditated act, it's just what the song dictates, and it becomes in a way a personification of the song, the spirit of it made manifest physically. When Sid Vicious ripped a broken bottle across his chest, or when Iggy Pop bent over backwards, it was the same thing. I wrote about this in a previous blog, but when I saw Neurosis play last, at the end of the last song Scott Kelly headbutted the microphone until it broke off the stand and blood ran down his face. This was also the same. When music is played in this way, it becomes a thing beyond playing an instrument, beyond technique or thought. Musicians become a medium for the sound, the oscillations travel through them and they give them, give the sound and the spirit of that sound, screaming to the world.

Low Light

2008-08-28T16:29:00.000-07:00

broken plates, asphalt.

2008-07-15T20:07:00.000-07:00

summer?

2008-06-19T02:37:00.000-07:00

finished quarter, three weeks of sleeplessness late night waking insanity term papers. read about peyote for three days straight then wrote ten pages in about 7 hours one day i will learn time management. want to go to the woods and listen to gorgoroth watch the sky fall through the branches. could have gone to the farm didn't truck needs new fuel filter injectors soul couldn't make it over the pass. got cubase, ezdrummer, sm-57, preamp music will be coming soon once i figure it out shit is complicated.

Grim.

2008-06-03T23:52:00.000-07:00

Fuckin' Black Metal.

nynyborjan

2008-06-03T23:51:00.000-07:00

old.