The Wolf Eel BaKes

Just in time for the release of my Winter/Go-straight-to-jail Valentine's Day mix, I remember to put the track list and Spotify playlist link up for my Halloween 2012 mix. Better late than never, eh?


The drive-in flea market of random gum – Halloween 2012
I do not want to be your nurse-bank-mother-easy option-consolation prize-professional fluffer

The whole thing (or most of it) as a Spotify playlist.

01. Exitmusic – “Space Oddity”
Still entranced by the sounds of Exitmusic. I have some special love for David Bowie covers as well.


02. Beastie Boys – “Egg Man”
RIP Adam Yauch. I somehow did not appreciate having seen the Beasties at the first Endfest, 1992.


03. Isbells – “Heading for the Newborn”
With love and thanks to Arjen.


04. The Soft Moon and John Foxx – “Evidence”
How the ML story had to end. No stranger to tirades behind the wheel. Berlin = “Bikes, bollocks and lights”. Hang onto that first mutual, disgusted impression – it will always be the basis for how you really feel.


05. Tomten – “Ta Ta Dana”
Early spring sun on the deck, contrasting lyrics about the coldest day of the year. Thankful for the mildest winter…


06. Duran Duran – “New Moon on Monday”
Third grade field trip, Trans Am. Spring 2012, loud music at 3 a.m. First day of June, walking around Oslo with Annette and Tilda. Major nostalgia glued to new memories.


07. The Horrors – “I Can See Through You”
Nope, I am not blind. I can see through all the bullshit.


08. Father John Misty – “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings” …but I’m unsure of so many things…
“Jesus Christ, girl…” For my mom.


09. Kimbra – “Warrior”…and you’re just pushing me down, pushing me down, pushing me down…
“What am I thinking?/Oh, if you're so sure it's rational/While the world's shrinking/But that don't make it logical/What am I thinking?/If you say I'm just an animal/I feel like I'm sinking/You can't explain away the way I feel”. Stairs (but not Carstairs)


10. MSMR – “Hurricane” …I jumped the gun/so sure you'd split and run/ready for the worst/before the damage was done…
“Didn’t know what this would be/but I knew I didn’t see/what you thought/you saw in me”. Relate to this too well.


11. Santigold – “The Riot’s Gone” …Oh I'm armed and dangerous/At the whim of my command/I've been searching for an angle/For a cause I can defend…
Beautiful song, with love for Shaina.


12. Beach House – “New Year”
“All you ever wanted/Is it getting away?/Visions of a feeling/The footsteps at bay/You were getting stronger/Memories again/Now you’re open wider/It’s better this way”. Happy New Year to me.


13. Sleigh Bells – “End of the Line” …and you know it didn’t have to be this way/You know it didn’t have to be/But it’s the end of the line/So goodbye…
For Filbert. We miss you. From your friends far away.


14. Poliça – “Wandering Star” …When the day is done/and I lay me down/I sit alone in my lonely bed/And I think about the day we had/And it makes me sad/Cause you're gone…
The last bake before summer, new Oslo office, with thoughts of the man who used to bring me fresh pineapple every day. “When the day is done/and I lay me down/The sheets are cold/and your space is dark/And I hear you whisper something/but it doesn’t move any nerves in me/After all, I’m married to the wandering star/And I’ve kissed the moon/It was full when I fell in love with thee/but now the world turns without me”


15. New Build – “Do You Not Feel Loved?” …Oh looking down low/For the fragments of the heart/Breaking as we go/Shifting out of frame/What remains when we part…
“And as the party's shutting down/Do you not feel loved?/And when you've burned your paper crown/Do you not feel loved? The King is dead.


16. Donna Summer – “I Feel Love”
RIP Disco Queen


17. The West – “It Was Disco and It’s Over”
RIP Disco King, Robin Gibb (could not go so far as to include a Bee Gees song here, as much as I love to quote Saturday Night Fever). RIP disco. Now it’s really over.


18. Information Society – “What’s On Your Mind (Pure Energy)?”
Memories of late-night drives with my brother and his friends back in the old days. Not happy times but strikingly strong memories. Also dredges up hideous junior high school memories of backstabbing friendship (oh, adolescence).


19. Aztec Camera – “Oblivious”
With all my love for Jill! Fingers crossed on the escape from Ithaca…


20. Ride – “Only Now” …early on, the signals crossed…
For Terra. And for all those who realize what they lost only after it is gone. “Only now have you touched me/But by now you're who knows where/Only now has it hit me/Wasn't sure before”. How cursed I am with memory.


21. T’Pau – “Heart and Soul”
Also for Terra (T’Pow!). Always wondering where she has gone and thinking of her with love. Having meant the world to me in junior high school (when this song was popular), I can’t help but feel the sting of worry and sadness at her absence.


22. Belleruche – “Wasted Time”
I wasted all the time I am going to waste. “Crash and burn was that our way/Or so it seemed at the end of the day/It's too late to hesitate/You couldn't be arsed so we went our separate ways/It's just what you do so simple to say/But so hard to take/I find it hard to understand/I fail to see how we passed on our chance”


23. M Ward – “Poor Boy, Minor Key” …Wide world/Wide world of sorrow/Won't stand a chance…


24. Titus Andronicus – “No Future Part Three: Escape from No Future” …you will always be a loser…
For ML. “But there is another down in the dungeon who never gave up the fight/And he'll be forever screaming sometimes I hear him say on a quiet night/He says/You will always be a loser"


25. The 2 Bears – “Warm & Easy”
Long summer walks in the forest – warm and easy.


26. Firewater – “Secret” …is that what you wanted? well, congratulations. you’re such a child…
“Everybody talks/Nobody understands/Everyone takes/Just as much as they can”. (No shit.)


27. Eleni Mandell – “Magic Summertime”
I attended my first (and last) work summer party (rather by accident), and luckily Esteban and all the other “totally random” Spanish speakers kept me company. If we are not dialing ocho for Spanish-language help, we are enjoying the “falling the one of the octopus” before the “shit gets real*” (*pronounced the way Jamie Oliver does). As always, thanks to Esteban for another year of laughs. ☺


28. Buddy Holly – “Reminiscing” …you’re a cheater/and a mean mistreater…
“I’ll get over you, baby, although my heart’s still sore…”. Nights full of hula hoops and loud music.


29. Ramona Falls – “Bodies of Water” …softest lips, sharpest tongue…
"I could bet that we'll fail/I can be proven right/By withholding my love/You will shrivel and die"


30. Other Lives – “As I Lay My Head Down”


31. Rilo Kiley – “More Adventurous” …And if my hands stop working you can call me lazy/And if I get pregnant, I guess I'll just have the baby/Let it be loved, let me be loved…
“And it's only doubts that we're counting/On fingers broken long ago/I read with every broken heart we should become/More adventurous…” For Annette, for JKL, for A-x-P


32. Shannon Stephens with Bonnie Prince Billy – “Faces Like Ours”
For Annette and Tilda and our Thursday night crime-show TV viewing and Tilda’s country line-dancing future.


33. Lower Dens – “Alphabet Song”


34. Choir of Young Believers – “Sedated” …In dreams we are all closer…
“Watch the shadows dance upon the ceiling/shimmering eyes recognize no feelings/like a silent blitzkrieg coming closer/the change of light shows another day is over…” With thanks to Laurent from my garbage bin!


35. The Supremes – “Remove This Doubt” …This doubt is hurting me…
A song that clutches at my heart and throat somehow. “Each time we meet/You make me feel so incomplete/There's no joy in the air/I just don't think you care…”


36. Cowboy Junkies – “Cause Cheap Is How I Feel”
“Half moon in the sky tonight, bright enough/To come up with an answer/To the question why is it that every time I see you/My love grows a little stronger/But your memory leaves my stomach churning,/Feeling like a lie about to be revealed,/But I'll horde all this to myself/'cause cheap is how I feel”


37. Twin Shadow – “Five Seconds”
Thanks to Aurélien.


38. David Vandervelde – “Jacket” …You might have got a mind like a fortune teller,/but you never know what love is for…
“You have always got a way of being cruel/Honesty is just a misproportioned rule/You were always happy with a guarantee/In your pretty house with a cup of tea”. Goodbye, again, ML.


39. David Bazan – “Please, Baby, Please”
“Those two pairs of big blue eyes/Stare me down, watch me fall/What makes a man realize/He's about to lose it all”


40. Wild Nothing – “Paradise”
“Crush me with the lies/and tell me once or twice/that love is paradise,/that love is paradise”


41. Beach House – “Wild” …heartless to say/go on pretending…


42. Blondie – “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game”
Listening to the album from which this came (The Hunter, 1982), hit by memories of taking a roadtrip around the time of the album’s release, listening to the cassette over and over again. My father would never stop during roadtrips to let us use the bathroom, so I remember sitting in the back of the car crying silently because I had to go so badly, all the while this tape the soundtrack of my misery and discomfort. The album was out-of-print for a long time but finally accessible again – this is a song that has run through my mind so many times since then even though I had not heard the album since those miserable childhood moments.

And so this is... almost Valentine's Day. It's a "holiday" that means nothing to me, but nevertheless makes me a little sad almost every year. I cannot even say why. The last couple of years, a really good friend of mine (AP) sent me flowers, and that always cheered me immensely. This year, finding myself overwhelmed by the amount of music I was digging into since my last mix (Halloween), I had to (yes, simply had to) unleash it all on others. (And by the time the discs are received around the world and this listed is posted online, I will already have nearly completed my upcoming spring mix.) Honestly, my life has never been busier than it is right now and yet I still somehow find the time and uncontrollable urge to put all this together.

Maybe it is just my love and care needing to find its outlet somewhere. Some people get music, some people get cupcakes and cookies and some people get both.



The Definitive Goo of Random Gum F*ck My Valentine 2012
You brought out the worst in me – “…a thousand memories fill/a thousand places…”

1. “Lakehouse” – Of Monsters and Men …Oh, I miss the comfort of this house…
Memories of Iceland (had to choose an Icelandic band, of course) in December 2011, Reykjavik to Mosfellsbær, emptying out the last remnants of my old life there, spending time with my friends (Jane, Alfa, Lóa, Ph), having the best coffee I have had all year (thanks to Jared and Hulda!) Lóa: Our next FMA meeting is in Kópasker! “Can you chase this fire away?”


2. “Your Eyes” – Bombay Bicycle Club …I'm there when your fingers snap/it's not where we left it at/I can see the love we trapped, coming back…
First heard from Truls, reminding me of the good old days before the communal office.


3. “Honey Bunny” – Girls …Mama, she really loved me/Even when I was bad/She’d hold my little hand/and kiss me on the cheek…
Trials of loving someone, good or bad. “And when I cried/she would hold me closely/and tell me ‘everything will be all right’”


4. “Hey Little Cobra” – The Rip Chords …Hey, little Cobra, get ready to strike…
For my mom and our 2011 Thanksgiving stuck with this song out in our heads. Endless car
discussions.


5. “Mercy Seat” – Ultra Vivid Scene …But you can taste the fire for yourself…
A sound that grinds repeatedly through the brain. With love for Naomi.


6. “Revival” – Deerhunter …Darkness always/It doesn't make much sense/Darkened hallways/Away from me, callin' "stay"…
Song for jumping around the kitchen during baking frenzies; people I dream of but have learned to leave well enough alone


7. “Soviet Disco” – The Melody Unit …Stalin is sung about/like a father or a god once more…
For the first time in almost 20 years, frontman of the MU, Kevin, and I meant to meet up in November, but I ran out of time. Meanwhile I love this song. It makes me think about letting go of the past. I had carried around ancient reminders of the girl I used to be (hundreds of books about Russia). I let it all go in 2011, advancing with the “noise of time*” (*Шум времени, Osip Mandelstam)

8. “My Mistakes Were Made for You” – The Last Shadow Puppets …Innocence and arrogance entwined/in the filthiest of minds…
“About as subtle as an earthquake, I know…”


9. “The Dream” – Thee Oh Sees


10. “Don’t Call Me Darling” – The Fall …people hate beauty/I cannot fathom it/they smell of old paneling…
Soundtrack to my indie movie full of unknown actors. (And while you’re at it, don’t call me “babes” either.)


11. “The Bell Song” – Sumi Jo (Lakmé)


12. “Marooned” – Wire …Not present in the present, overboard with limited future…
“A blue-white polar bear arrives at the end/Diverting his attention, his feelings froze over…”Love for Ph and Teddy


13. “Gunfight Epiphany” – Rob Duncan …Living on the lam is like living on the sun…
Still missing Terriers, for which this was the theme. “And I walked like a ghost among the living and the born free…”


14. “Behind the Mask” – Yellow Magic Orchestra
I heard this again recently, reviving old half-joking love for Ryuichi Sakamoto. Sometimes we let go, sometimes we rediscover.


15. “Alive” – The Soft Moon


16. “India Sleeping” – Mars


17. “The Snow Leopard” – Shearwater …Well, I've had enough/wasting my body, my life…


18. “Lemonade” – Braids …And what I, and what I found is that we/We're all just sleeping around…
For Aurélien, one of the first to introduce me to Braids. “Well I was joking with my lemonade/I told him to get fucked and then get laid./Now what do you say to a man who's got no taste,/Who's really got no potential...” Also for ML and JKL, all gone


19. “Hacienda Motel” – Pickwick …I’ll just take what I can get/I got it where I want it/or should I place a bigger bet…
Some Seattle music that vaguely reminds me of other things and makes me miss things I never really had.


20. “Keadilan” – Nasida Ria
Indonesia! I have long loved the sound of this and finally remembered to include it somewhere. (Can't find a copy to use here.)

21. “Lightworks” – Atlas Sound …everywhere I look I see a light…


22. “Following” – The Phenomenal Handclap Band …who do you think you’ll be following/in this room in this room in this room?…


23. “Civilization” – Justice …lost in the silence, the call from the turbulent times/bound by the science that lives on the lips of the wise…


24. “The Drill” – Gui Boratto


25. “Something’s Turning Over” – Low …And just because you never hear their voices/Don't mean they won't kill you in your sleep…


26. “Leave It” – Bombay Bicycle Club …Don't you go evade me now/Come see what you've done…


27. “Headlong to Ground” – Jupe Jupe


28. “Too Insistent” – The Dø …why won’t you let me go?…
The Bruno spell persists. Persistent, insistent thoughts of BB, JKL and A


29. “Second Chance” – Peter Bjorn and John …You can’t count on a second chance/The second chance will never be found…
Lots of second chances after hurtful moments, but there is only one straw moment. The end.


30. “Berlin” – Modeselektor
For my brief and former Berlin coterie


31. “Meet Me in the Dollar Bin” – Les Savy Fav …we got old/but we got good/and we did all/we said we would…


32. “Honey Come Home” – The Head and the Heart …Do you remember every block, every minute of every walk we used to take/we were young so many years ago…
Sad, melancholy lyrics. “Someday you will miss my head lying next to yours in our marriage bed”


33. “Twins” – Lia Ices …This is not the body/that I will grow old in…
With all my love for Jane. “In the morning, we rise and fall like flames/And we start sifting and sort through my remains…”


34. “Swing Your Heartache” – Young Galaxy …the institutions of the world will only serve to enslave us…
“Love is a battle” and “We believe in time that you will see/the frontier is misery…”


35. “Coming Down” – Dum Dum Girls …You abuse the ones who love you/You abuse the ones who won't/If you ever had a real heart/I don't think you'd know where to start…
You abusive individuals, you know who you are. Fuck Valentine’s Day and bullshit love clichés.

Imitation, as the oft-quoted but unidentified “they” say, is the sincerest form of flattery. There is nothing, however, that is more cringeworthy to me than imitation. This applies for butter, for maple syrup. Why would you bother with margarine? But the most annoying thing: the wholesale adoption of someone else’s vocabulary, sayings, mannerisms, style of written expression (and opinion probably goes without saying, yeah?). Certainly using a word here or there as an homage to how cool you think someone’s means of expression can be does not violate any tenets of self-expression. The key, though, is self-expression. If you parrot someone else almost verbatim, where is your voice? Lost, somewhere, never heard. Is this really a display of lack of personality or confidence in what you have to say (or in the coolness of your own vocabulary and the content of what you have to say)? Is it a language issue?

Soundtrack du jour: Pulp - Bad Cover Version

"The original was so good -- the one you no longer own."



"It's not easy to forget me, it's so hard to disconnect
When it's electronically reprocessed to give a more life-like effect.

Aah, sing your song about all the sad imitations that got it so wrong..."

Soundtrack du jour: 土曜の夜何かが起きる -- 黛ジュン (Jun Mayuzumi)

Baking A LOT this evening. Details to come.

Listening a lot to AM & Shawn Lee - "Dark Into Light"