New Cosmix: Autumn 2014/Black Forest

The transition from summer heat to autumn cool. The light shifts and slants and when Scorpio approaches, regardless the hemisphere you reside in — well, the soul goes orange and crimson — a rich Tibetan red.

Critters rustle around slowly now. There’s lots of deer about, walking right in the middle of the road and then, once spotted, jumping to disappear into thick blackberry vines (I don’t know how the vicious thorns don’t tear their hides).

Oh, and spiders are everywhere on the island now. Their geometric webs drooping with dew in the morning and looking like outer space sigils throughout the sunny days.

This is one of my longer mixes because what I’ve been listening to lately isn’t easy to compress into one category-mood and so the train has gone and on and on — an omnibus of contrasting colors. But the general tenor is melancholic percolation with periodic bursts of rhythm that require body movement — walking, shuffling, meandering and occasionally dancing.

The title of this mix is taken from Vanessa Daou‘s homage to poet/novelist Erica Jong, the song of which is included here. Daou actually transformed Jong’s poem into a dance track. The words tell you about how solitude marks time’s passage: Living in a house/near the Black Forest/without any clocks/she’s begun/to listen to the walls.

Some of these songs are blatantly out of place within the heavy load of electronic, glitch and hip hop. But then that’s the fun of doing mixes like this: How to cram disparate sonics together so you experience it as music, free from your bias and preference for genre (gag.)

So there’s Bette Midler‘s Drinking Again because I can’t get enough of the line: “Having a few.” Because you know the narrator isn’t.

And also Van Morrison‘s Fair Play from his finest excursion into stream of consciousness love poetry and immersion into Scotland and Oscar Wilde and Thoreau from his undervalued Veedon Fleece.

And I’ve been listening to a lot of the fuzzy, echoey Jesus and Mary Chain-infused shoegazy stuff from Sweden’s Radio Dept. I wish they would release something new soon. The description shoegazing must remain invigorated!

Anyway, enjoy all of this. Expose yourself for fuck’s sake. Get out of a rut. If moved you must share. Music is the one tonic that’s applicable to all and holds many secrets, that’s why very few of these songs are heard on the radio or Pandora or anywhere else where music is treated like a commodity and not as an un-categorizable art.