MALADE
OK, this week has been for sure my least productive in as long as I can remember. I spent it basically sick as a dog, but not in a way I had experienced illness before. At the start of the week, or maybe before, as it came on gradually, I developed a cough, that soon deepened. At its worst it gave the illusion of dragging a cheese grater thru my lung tissue. I never had a stuffed nose, never sneezed. Just slowly weakened to the point where getting out of bed was huge task. My one excursion outside the house since I became bedridden Thursday, to get Aden from school—a ten-minute walk—was extremely unpleasant. The outside world, bent in convex distortion, was a confusion of objects in motion that I had no idea how to make sense of. Aden was not in her usual location, so I had to navigate the halls of the school in search of her (I wasn’t the only confused parent, to give me some credit). I had dreams—some disturbing, like the dream I accompanied my mother on some kind of errand at my Junior High School, and I went to look for my teachers, realizing they were all dead now…which technically might not be universally true, but in 26 years, some of them might be, so it rang true. It was a somber realization that my school days were not just yesterday, but sliding into ancient history. An amusing dream, or part of it anyway, was me as a substitute in Led Zeppelin, except that the current performance was taking place at typical highway gas station—each member performing from within an automobile, and able to communicate with the mixer--naturlich, the guy at the register in the shop. A grizzled character who bore no resemblance whatsoever to Led Zeppelin members living or dead, displaced me, and occupied my vehicle—calling for more click track in his headphones, with the urgency of a pinned down Marine calling for air support.
So, I’ve been in bed for four days now. At the beginning of the week I received and organized and forwarded up to CentCom in Oslo the tracks and tracks of vocal harmonies that the members of
Eisley contributed to the Disciplines album—lovely, perfect! I bought
new shoes (I buy a pair of sneaks every two years, whether I need ‘em or not). I bought a turntable—the
Ion, which delivers its output analog or USB, and comes with audio capturing software I have yet to employ but it was relatively cheap and the device is very cute. The first thing I put on was a bonus single from the Isobel Campbell/Mark Lanegan album…it was such an awful pressing I thought I had purchased a lemon turntable. But then I put a piece of avant-garde 20th century music on, by (still active) French composer
Pierre Boulez, on Columbia, and it sounded just beautiful—the full depth and range and power that vinyl can offer—however, there are definitely differences in the extreme highs and lows from digital—vinyl is a bit rounded off at the extremes but you don’t miss ‘em.
This week also saw the release of
Cali’s album L’Espoir, on which I did the string arrangements for three songs (plus some backing vocals). There’s a deluxe edition that comes with a DVD, that includes a 20 minute ‘making of’ film with interviews with Cali, producer
Scott Colburn (who mixed three of the songs on ‘Soft Commands’), and so forth. There’s a very funny bit where you see the strings being recorded, and I’m in the shot, but completely motionless—I was always in the room with them for direction and moral support, but if I didn’t have to move I wouldn’t—just to prevent any unnecessary generation of noise. Anyway, it’s a beautiful album, and I am proud to have been a part of it. I guess it is available everywhere in the Francophone world—online, etc.
That’s all that’s worth reporting. I am hoping that I recover sufficiently to enable me to perform properly on Friday with the Disciplines at a private event in Oslo. If that means staying in bed all week, so be it. However, this week both Cali and Syd Matters are performing in Paris, each in my neighborhood no less, so I may have to drag my carcass out for an hour or so here and there. We’ll see how it goes.
Love
KS
Paris
