Category Archives: memory

south africa in the twilight of liberalism: richard pithouse

Posted on by

Gautam Bhan's avatarKAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006

[Note: Recent events in South Africa – from raging student movements across university campuses to xenophobic violence in the streets of Durban – seem to echo so many struggles both inside and outside the university “here.” This is the first of hopefully several posts from South Africa, that seek to listen and travel across.]

Guest Post by RICHARD PITHOUSE

South Africa was supposed to be different. We attained our freedom, such as these things are, after everyone else but Palestine. It was late in the day but the afternoon sun was glorious and the best people, people who had passed through the long passage of struggle, told us that we would be able to avoid the mistakes made everywhere else.

There was a mass movement that, whatever its limits, had won tremendous popular support and carried some noble ideals through its travails. Its leaders cast long shadows. Our Constitution, we…

View original post 2,655 more words

ameera conrad – on exhaustion over a lack of understanding

Posted on by

ameeraI am tired
God Almighty, I am tired
of being told that we need to move on,
that we need to forget,
that we need to put the past behind us,
that Apartheid is over.

They don’t understand.
We never will.
Our bodies are monuments of centuries of torture,
trauma
terror
these exist in us
we live it every day.
We built this country
slaves
whips at our backs –
The Man holding the whip did not build –
we built.

Apartheid is not over.
No magic TRC wand can bippity-boppity-boo! it away.
Our glass carriage is still a pumpkin,
rotting,
pulled by rats.
A polite revolution over tea and crumpets, good Sir,
‘twas the order of the day.

When could we mourn?
When could we cry?
When could we scream
for our loved ones lost
our chances trampled on?

Please Mastah Baas Meneer,
Asseblief,
Gee my ‘n kans om te huil
vir my ma
en my pa
en my susters
en broers
gee my ‘n kans om te huil.

Let me stand up for myself
and for those who stood before me.
Let me march for myself
and for those who marched before me.
Let me call out AMANDLA
and raise my fist
and let me cry
after hundreds of years
let me cry.

— Ameera Conrad
4th Year
B.A. Theatre and Performance at UCT

Please visit Ameera’s blog, HERE.

ethel waters – his eye is on the sparrow

Posted on by

Pause to watch, listen and reflect.

Have you ever experienced the weird magic of coming across something obliquely on Youtube, on your way somewhere else, and it speaks so powerfully, so uncannily, to all the things happening right now around you that all the hairs on your body stand on end? This is one of those times. The scene comes from a 1952 film called The Member of the Wedding, based on the book/play by Carson McCullers, starring Ethel Waters, Julie Harris and Brandon De Wilde. I came across it because my housemate Khanyi and I were singing this old hymn, hamming it up Lauryn-Hill-in-Sister-Act-2 style. I wanted to check out some of the older versions… and this clip revealed itself to me, complete with contextual preamble.

Just to tether this to a little of my own current context (I unfortunately don’t have time to write much right now), here is something written by one of my MPhil classmates about the student protests demanding the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes that are currently happening at UCT, and here is the official SRC statement on the matter.

member-of-the-wedding-julie-harris-ethel-waters-brandon-de-wilde-1952

on a “deaf safari” with felix laband

Posted on by

Watch Felix Laband’s brilliant set at the 2015 Cape Town Electronic Music Festival on 8 February (click the hyperlink – the darn embed function doesn’t seem to work properly on WordPress).

Felix opens this particular “Deaf Safari” with a dodgy old recording (that I think I actually gave him!), of Marais and Miranda entertaining a frightfully colonial white 1950s audience with their “knowledge” of “Hottentot” and “Zooloo” linguistics. With a subversive stammer, it segues into an hour-long journey of cut-up sounds and visuals.

Laband displays fluent familiarity with and yet alienation from spectacular capitalist consumer tropes. The oversaturated bricolage of radio preachers, politicians, porn, pulp cinema, big game and exoticised cultural representations is absurd and defaced: eyeless, toothless, festering with skulls. Sound and visuals work in counterpoint: horny assemblages dripping blood and infection; a snatch of Cat Power’s languid “Satisfaction”. His work foregrounds our mindless addiction to and manipulation by these fragments bouncing off the walls onto one another, their banality dismembered, dislocated, demented, discordant, decaying.

A voice in Queen’s English: “I was wondering what it is that you don’t want to remember so badly… To put it another way, what are you trying to forget?”

The response, implied in the guitar run sampled from Nico’s “These Days”: “Please don’t confront me with my failures… I had not forgotten them.”

Felix forces us to examine ourselves honestly. This I love most deeply about what he does: he will not allow us to forget, nor feign ignorance. There are naive melodies, but there is no innocence, no deafness nor blindness. We are taken through his cabinet of jabbering apparitions, racist, patriarchal horror haunting every suburban corner, lullabies, toyi-toyi chants… The valley of the shadow of death… We are not tourists. This is our own back yard. We stare the nightmares down, bopping in slo-mo. The voices persist, demand acknowledgement until they dissolve. It’s a kind of exorcism.

And beyond that, always, despite all the schizophrenic folly and sadness, hope and jubilation live on in the unfinished refrains of blues ghosts captured long ago on wax… Vera Hall, Stack O’Lee, prisoners and murderers alike now free… and there is space to breathe, place to be here now, without judgement… we are bathed in grace and exquisite melody.  This is strong muti for South Africans’ sickness.

deaf safari

Collage: Felix Laband

I can’t wait for his new album, and I highly recommend that you see him live if you get the chance: he’s on form like never before and it’s a profound trip.

P.S. Read Sean O’Toole’s great interview piece for Mahala on Felix’s return (his new album, Deaf Safari, is set for release next month, after an almost decade-long gestation).

life does not die. art does not die. joburg will not die. a tribute to the life of lesley perkes @LesPersonas

Posted on by

Life does not die. From Lesley's 'The Troyeville Bedtime Story' Tumblr. http://troyevillebedtimestory.tumblr.com/

Life does not die. From Lesley’s ‘The Troyeville Bedtime Story’ Tumblr.http://troyevillebedtimestory.tumblr.com/

Lesley Perkes, Joburg’s and Art’s fiercest warrior, has left Troyeville. In the only way she ever would.

But life does not die. Art does not die. And Lesley’s art and life certainly never will. And Joburg never will; because Lesley would never let it. All we can do is continue her work, her energy, her passion, her life, her chutzpah.

When I messaged her after hearing about the cancer and told her I was devastated, she responded: “Don’t be devastated. I’m going to be fine.” Her strength, humour, indefatigable idealistic realism and feistiness implore us to respond to this in the same spirit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFYRjRtTYL4

Sleep well, Lesley. You are the Troyeville Bedtime Story, and we will read you like all good oral traditions to generations to come.

Much love to you, Les,
to Chili, Marta, Sonja, the sisters, the Joburg family

Screen Shot 2015-02-13 at 09.12.27

From: https://germainedelarch.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/life-does-not-die-art-does-not-die-joburg-will-not-die-a-tribute-to-the-life-of-lesley-perkes-lespersonas/

anne sexton – a story for rose on the midnight flight to boston

Posted on by

annesextonUntil tonight they were separate specialties, different stories, the best of their own worst.

Riding my warm cabin home, I remember Betsy’s laughter; she laughed as you did, Rose, at the first story. Someday, I promised her, I’ll be someone going somewhere, and we plotted it in the humdrum school for proper girls. The next April the plane bucked me like a horse, my elevators turned and fear blew down my throat, that last profane gauge of a stomach coming up. And then returned to land, as unlovely as any seasick sailor, sincerely eighteen; my first story, my funny failure.

Maybe, Rose, there is always another story, better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory.

Half a mile down the lights of the in-between cities turn up their eyes at me. And I remember Betsy’s story, the April night of the civilian air crash and her sudden name misspelled in the evening paper, the interior of shock and the paper gone in the trash ten years now. She used the return ticket I gave her.

This was the rude kill of her; two planes cracking in mid-air over Washington, like blind birds. And the picking up afterwards, the morticians tracking bodies in the Potomac and piecing them like boards to make a leg or a face. There is only her miniature photograph left, too long now for fear to remember. Special tonight because I made her into a story that I grew to know and savor. A reason to worry, Rose, when you fix an old death like that, and outliving the impact, to find you’ve pretended.

We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat. I am almost someone going home. The story has ended.

heaven mixtapes

Posted on by

A sweetly told story of a Jo’burg boy falling in love with the night and music… Check out the mixtapes!

Marc Latilla's avatarMarc Latilla

Classic Heaven Complimentary Classic Heaven comp

Heaven was a nightclub from the mid-1980s in Johannesburg at 165 Marshall Street. Many will know this address as being that of the original Doors nightclub that opened in 1990 and operated there for many years before moving to Edenvale. Between Heaven and The Doors two other short-lived clubs called BLUES and BANGS operated on the premises.

For me, Heaven was my first proper nightclub experience. I somehow managed to get in on old years eve in 1986 (thanks to a friends brother who worked at the bar who passed me off as his little brother plus I was pretty tall for my age). I spent the night upstairs next to the DJ box absorbing the music, watching the people and more importantly – watching the DJ.

Andrew Wood in the Heaven DJ box Andrew Wood in the Heaven DJ box

Andrew is back! Andrew is back!

The music was a mixture of high energy, eurobeat and…

View original post 1,511 more words

lumumba’s ghosts: immaterial matters and matters immaterial…

Posted on by

peerenThe Archive & Public Culture Research Initiative (where I work) has invited Esther Peeren, author of The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility (Palgrave, 2014), for a week of intense discussion, academic exchange and engagement around the theme of the ghost/spectre both as archival metaphor and as conceptual figure in post-colonial and cultural studies.

Peeren is Associate Professor of Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Vice-Director of the Amsterdam Centre for Globalisation Studies (ACGS) and senior researcher at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). Her current research projects explore global spectralities and rural globalization.

On Tuesday, 26 August, she will deliver a lunchtime lecture, Lumumba’s Ghosts: Immaterial Matters and Matters Immaterial in Sven Augustijnen’s Spectres, in the Jon Berndt Thought Space (A17, Arts Block, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town). In her analysis of Belgian artist Sven Augustijnen’s 2011 multi-media exhibition, Spectres (which focuses on the mystery of the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the independent Republic of the Congo), Peeren argues that a focus on immaterialities-as-spectralities prompts the viewer to take seriously that which is not immediately apprehensible, or deemed inconsequential. At the same time, it transforms our understanding of matter itself, since immateriality is inevitably implied in materiality, both metaphorically (materialities may be considered immaterial, insignificant) and literally (over time, materialities may transform, decay or even disappear).

Appealing to Jacques Derrida’s concept of spectrality, her analysis shows how Augustijnen’s work, especially the feature-length film included in the exhibition, moves the materiality of the immaterial and the immateriality of the material centre stage, and lays out the consequences of this double imbrication for individual and collective understandings of history, memory and the archive.

If you’d like to attend pn 26 August, RSVP to APC-admin@uct.ac.za.

miners shot down

Posted on by

This chillingly insightful documentary on the Marikana massacre should be required viewing for every South African. It’s two years tomorrow since that terrible, indelible day. The film is available to watch in full on Youtube for a few days only. Don’t miss this opportunity. EDIT: 18/8: The film is no longer available on Youtube. Please visit its website to find out about future screenings.

http://youtu.be/fPfz4MGIWtY

In August 2012, mineworkers at one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages.

Six days later, on 16 August 2012, the police used live ammunition to suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more.

Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, “Miners Shot Down” follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.

What emerges is collusion at the top, spiralling violence, police brutality and the country’s first post-apartheid massacre. If you still have any doubts that this was a premeditated massacre by Lonmin, the government and the police, this documentary will change your mind with a lot of previously unseen footage. Nobody will have an excuse after watching this to continue to blame the miners.

South Africa will never be the same again.

marikana1

 

an israeli soldier’s story – eran efrati

Posted on by

This deserves to be heard. The cynical manipulation and deception happening will blow your mind. This talk by ex-Israeli Defence Force soldier Eran Efrati was filmed in Denver, Colorado on March 3, 2014 as part of The Soldier and the Refusenik U.S. tour with Maya Wind. Eran talk about his experiences in the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) and then more broadly discusses Israel, its relationship to the U.S. and the global expansion of militarism. 

Eran Efrati, 28, was born and raised in Jerusalem. After graduating high school he enlisted in the IDF, where he served as a combat soldier and company sergeant in Battalion 50 of the Nachal Division. He spent most of his service in Hebron and throughout the West Bank. In 2009, he was discharged and joined Breaking the Silence, an organization of veteran Israeli soldiers working to raise awareness about the daily reality in the Occupied Territories.

He worked as the chief investigator of the organization, collecting testimonies from IDF soldiers about their activities. He also guided political tours and to the West Bank and worked to educate Israeli youth about the reality of being a soldier in an occupying army. His collected testimonies appear in the booklet “Operation Cast Lead” and their most recent release “Our Harsh Logic”.

Since leaving Breaking the Silence, his investigative reports appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Guardian. Today he is active with the Israeli groups Anarchists Against the Wall and Boycott from Within.

 

stories we tell

Posted on by

http://youtu.be/ytq4VZ2Nyxg

Go and see this at the Encounters Documentary Festival, on right now in Cape Town and Jo’burg: the brilliant Sarah Polley‘s genre-defying examination of the workings of memory and narrative related to her own family’s secrets. It’s a gentle yet unflinching interrogation of how truth is shaped by the stories we tell ourselves when making sense of the things that happen in our lives. Humorous, poignant, profound… highly recommended.

serge gainsbourg – le chanson de prévert

Posted on by

http://youtu.be/IzuTdVJG-ck

Oh how I want you to remember,
this song was yours,
it was your favourite, I think
Written by Prévert and Kosma.

And each time “Fallen Leaves”
brings back my memories of you,
day after day
the fallen loves
are never done dying.

I abandon myself to other’s arms, of course
but their song is dull
and I grow ever more indifferent,
there is no helping it.

Because each time “Fallen Leaves”
brings back my memories of you,
day after day
the fallen loves
are never done dying.

Is it ever possible to know
the beginning or the end of indifference?
May fall pass, may winter come,
and may Prévert’s song,
this song,
“Fallen Leaves“,
vanish from my memories,
and on that day
my fallen loves
will be done dying.

And on that day,
my fallen loves
will be done dying.

laurie anderson – the dream before (for walter benjamin)

Posted on by

http://youtu.be/fWuNEw0EHMc

” A Paul Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; his wings are caught in it with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” 

— Walter Benjamin, 1940

paul-klee-angelus-novus

Paul Klee – Angelus Novus (1920)

“if i get killed, please don’t bury my soul”

Posted on by

The New York Times recently published an evocative long-form article penned by John Jeremiah Sullivan about the enigmatic Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, woman blues musicians who haunt the archive with just six songs ever recorded, pressed on cheap, poor quality 78s by Paramount in 1930, as was the custom with “race” records not intended for mainstream markets.

I have been gripped on every listening by “Last Kind Words Blues” since I first heard it on the soundtrack to Crumb in the late ’90s (the same place Sullivan did), so I understood what Caitlyn Love, who did much of the the on-the-ground research for Sullivan, meant about its haunting her. From her blog:

When I first started doing research for John Jeremiah Sullivan for his article about Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, two women who changed American music and then vanished without a trace, I kept Wiley’s song “Last Kind Words Blues” on repeat for days. I hadn’t listened closely to her songs before this project, but I was aware of the mythology around them. Now, I found myself hearing something new: a haunting, a mystery.

I began my research splitting time between the Clayton Library Center for Genealogical Research, hunting among death, birth and marriage records, and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, looking through old maps, photographs and city-directory records. All of these materials provided context for the era that Lillie Mae (Geetchie) Wiley and L.V. Thomas lived through.

Eventually we learned a great deal about Thomas’s personal history. But leads to Wiley went nowhere. I made myself dizzy scrolling through rolls of microfilm to find any meaningful clue. She had disappeared. The trail only picked up once, but it picked up sharply.

 “We may have found Geeshie’s grave yesterday. Not 100 percent but optimistic,” John wrote in an email to editors at the magazine.

Continue reading about Caitlyn Love’s quest HERE.

Read John Jeremiah Sullivan’s piece HERE – it’s beautifully written, and reflects in deep ways on the romance and violence of the archive.

And this is the short version of the story, from a Youtube comment posted last week:

It is now believed that Elvie (L.V. Thomas nee Grant) and Geechie (Lillie Mae Wiley) recorded all of their songs in Grafton, WI for Paramount in 1930. According to L.V., she would play and Geechie would “bass” behind her or she’d play (guitar) and Geechie would “bass” behind her. Thus, it might very well be Geechie we hear doing this fine guitar work. L.V. turned her back on the blues (life) and dedicated herself to her local church in Texas. Geeshie disappeared into the unknown. Recent records indicate she killed her husband with a knife in 1931. She may have changed her name/I.D. to avoid being found.

motherless child blues

elvis presley – make the world go away (take 1 and take 3)

Posted on by

An undubbed outtake from the June 1970 recording sessions for Elvis Country (I’m 10,000 Years Old), released as part of a rerelease of the album (Follow That Dream, 2008).  

I’m not a fan of Elvis in general – I mostly find his delivery way too glib. But in this session I can hear his fragility… I can hear he feels what he is singing deeply, and he would give anything to get the glibness back.

I was just thinking that it’s a common trajectory that an artist starts out passionate and edgy, becoming increasingly jaded, cynical and safe post-40 (anyone been keeping half an eye on Bob Dylan lately?). I think it was the other way round for Elvis, which is why he eventually imploded. I think something similar happened to Michael Jackson. They stopped believing in their own illusions, and it killed them.

belinda carlisle – la luna

Posted on by

Lunar eclipse with a blood moon tonight…

I remember this song and video came out at the end of my Standard 4 year – the first year I had ever been to a proper teenage “disco” (how scary and thrilling). I remember thinking her thrashing around for the whole song in that bunched-up sheet was silly… And that she was in love with that poncy Amadeus guy was silly too. Lunatics. And yet the chorus would be going round and round in my head for months, entwined with an interminable summer holiday yearning for I-didn’t-quite-know-what. This and the Bangles’ Eternal Flame.

wislawa szymborska – consolation

Posted on by

Darwin.
They say he read novels to relax,
But only certain kinds:
nothing that ended unhappily.
If anything like that turned up,
enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,
I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,
he’d had enough of dying species,
the triumphs of the strong over the weak,
the endless struggles to survive,
all doomed sooner or later.
He’d earned the right to happy endings,
at least in fiction
with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable
silver lining,
the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,
the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,
fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,
stiff-necked neighbours mending their ways,
good names restored, greed daunted,
old maids married off to worthy parsons,
troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,
forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,
seducers scurrying to the altar,
orphans sheltered, widows comforted,
pride humbled, wounds healed over,
prodigal sons summoned home,
cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,
hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,
general merriment and celebration,
and the dog Fido,
gone astray in the first chapter,
turns up barking gladly
in the last.

electric jive huntley archive goes live!

Posted on by
IBH-DJ-Cover-Front-medium

Psych “Big T” Ntsele on the cover of “Keeping Time”, the recently published book of Ian Bruce Huntley’s photographs that this archive of recordings accompanies.

SO VERY EXCITED TO BE ABLE TO SHARE THIS AT LAST! I’ve had the privilege of being involved in putting this amazing archive online over the past few months.

Find out more HERE, and then visit the archive for free downloads of more than 56 hours of jazz played in Cape Town between 1964 to 1972 by South African musicians — some famous, others who have had little exposure. Download a PDF of the book, browse the pictures, engage, enjoy!

thuli madonsela’s letter to her 16-year-old self

Posted on by

This letter to her 16-year-old self gives insight into Thuli Madonsela‘s life before she became South Africa’s formidable Public Protector – one of the few current SA government office bearers who retain any integrity. Read her report on the misuse of public funds at the private residence of President Jacob Zuma at Nkandla. You can tell between the lines of this letter that she had to learn early in life to be comfortable with making unpopular choices to be able to do the things she believed in.

The following is an extract from From Me to Me: Letters to my 16-and-a-half-year old self (Jacana Media, 2012), a collection of letters written by South Africans to their teenage selves.

26 April 2012

Dear Thuli

thuliIt is April 2012, 5 months before our big 5-0 birthday. I am your future. At the moment, you are 16-and-a half years old, doing grade 11, known as form four then, at Evelyn Baring High School in Swaziland, the year being 1979. You are wondering what you will be, caught between thoughts of pursuing medicine and law. Your pastor’s disapproving views on the latter are not in any way helpful. I know you are socially awkward, plagued by a nagging feeling of being unloved and ugly.

Perhaps this comes from being teased about your big head and, more recently, two of your academically inferior classmates have started taunting you, too. Having two sisters whose beauty is always noticed and praised has not helped either. Secure in your academic prowess – for which you are always praised at home and at school – you are regarded as helpful and relied on by your family, friends, teachers and your church. This makes you feel significant. You will excel, academically, throughout your life and this will bring you to where you are right now. I’m writing to tell you to relax because you are a perfect expression of God’s magnificence.

You are the mother of two wonderful children, a beautiful daughter Wenzile Una and a handsome son Mbusowabantu “Wantu” Fidel. Your fears of being unlovable were unfounded. You have been loved and supported beyond measure throughout your life. Today, you are the nation’s Public Protector – a very responsible position that helps curb excesses in the exercise of public power while enabling the people to exact justice for state wrongs. You had the privilege of playing some role in bringing about change in this country, including the drafting of the new constitution that saw Nelson Mandela become the first black President. Mama was right, education is the great leveler. I’m glad I listened to her.

You have experienced tough times and great times, been met with nurturers and detractors, but all these life lessons have been necessary to help you bloom. You have come to realize that you are perfect for your life’s purpose. You’ve always been a dreamer, an eternal optimist. Keep dreaming, for dreams have wings. But live consciously and take time to smell the roses otherwise life will pass you by, including the opportunity to appreciate the finite precious moments you will enjoy with your late partner, younger sisters and parents.

Above all, remember that love is everything and don’t forget to forgive yourself and others.

Love you unconditionally,

Thuli Nomkhosi Madonsela (Your older Self)

burning at both ends

Posted on by

“My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

I made this sleepless mix in 2003 on a slide into depression after I had to abandon my MA dissertation after three years’ work, like an almost-full-term still birth (I’ve just gone back to give varsity another shot, more than a decade later)… I was djing almost every weekend and hanging out with lost people on drugs talking mostly empty crap at one another until the sun came up. I passed many hours in the company of some beautiful, talented, bored, unhappy, bitter humans… and also a fat complement of irredeemable oxygen thieves. Anything to distract from the rip in the fabric of who I had thought I was, to cackle in the face of hopelessness. It just made me lonelier and lonelier. I would come home with the scabs over the hole in my soul all picked off, and listen to music like this to feel OK.

When we were kids, my dad used to warn us that “late nights make sad mornings”. He was right, though not for the reasons he thought.

Track list:

1. Velvet Underground – After Hours
2. Dntel – Umbrella
3. Lali Puna – Bi Pet
4. Grauzone – Eisbaer
5. The Kills – Space Race/Electric Horse
6. Suzanne Vega – Fat Man & Dancing Girl
7. Richard Hell & the Voidoids – Blank Generation
8. David Bowie – Kooks
9. Faust – I’ve Got My Car & My TV
10. Wire – I Feel Mysterious Today
11. Sparklehorse – My Yoke Is Heavy
12. Yo La Tengo – The Summer
13. My Bloody Valentine – Off Your Face
14. Adorable – Sunshine Smile
15. Slowdive – Alison
16. Lloyd Cole & the Commotions – Forest Fire
17. The Microphones – I Want Wind To Blow
18. Bauhaus – All We Ever Wanted
19. Einstuerzende Neubauten – Blume
20. Madrugada – Hidden track off Grit
21. Pixies – Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf mix)

chelsea wolfe – halfsleeper (live)

Posted on by

All the things we yell don’t mean a thing
When we’re spinning out of darkened meadow wind
When we’re flying like we’re Mary’s angels through the shattered glass
When we find that tall dark shadow waiting there with outstretched hands
He has given me a dress of red and you a skin of gray
We’ll be twisting here for hours ’til the light will bring us day

And we’re spread across the open road
And we’re spread across the asphalt on the open road
And we’re streaming in the wind like cassette tape or jellyfish
Long dark veins and records playing memories

(Hear the album version HERE.)