Updates are going to be less regular for a while because I have a new toy to play with: Ableton Live 4, courtesy of the incredibly kind and unbelievably patient blogger behind the excellent Triangular Sun. It really is a fantastically addictive, creative and ridiculously easy music package , although, as with any loop-based program, it does become difficult not to let into your basic instincts and let fly with mad-fast psy-trance (I always knew those Tim Leary, Hunter S Thompson and Space Odyssey wav files would come in handy). If ever I make anything that's not entirely for my own pleasure (hear the fizz of them hi-hats, let those 303s race) then perhaps I'll post some on here... at the moment I'm working on something based around the sound of yawning...
Don't wait up.
Thanks also to Kid Kameleon who sent me some excellent mix cdrs today - they're playing now - excellent stuff which my sorry, leprous 19th Century Valve dial-up Mac never thought it'd hear. I may be about 3 months behind everyone else in blogland but I am still behind...
Anyway, to Sheila Chandra. I know almost nothing about her except that everything she appears on seems to illuminate. I was putting together a compliation DVD of home movie footage (the kids racing to first place in the school sports day - i got unfairly pipped to second place by a guy who turned up in Goddamn one-piece running suit - the kids being pirates, a load of mushroomed freaks staring at fireworks on New Years Eve, a house on fire down the road... regular crap) when I noticed that you put Sheila Chandra on the soundtrack and anything immediately becomes meaningful and full of desperate sigificance: my (then) three year old waiting to start her race seems suddenly a symbol of ontological insecurity, a glyph of humanity, a scrape of being transposed to a sun-drenched field; a 13th birthday celebration seems fraught with indecision and longing...
Chandra is to the Loki family movies as Michael Nyman is to Peter Greenaway. Those images are powerful to a parent who's every moment is spent wondering idly where time is going (my oldest kid now has a friend who I swear has a moustache, either I'm missing some serious child abuse or 13 is not as young as it used to seem...) but with the music as well it's damn near unbearable. Everything looks beautifully fragrant and sad.
Do I need to know anything about Sheila Chandra?
Warning: this is another yousendit concoction so click and carry
3 comments:
Hi from Austin TX.
Sheila Chandra was in a brit-india-pop band called MONSOON who did a decent cover of Tomorrow Never Knows. Without having checked, I would imagine allmusic.com has some good info on her, and I believe sheilachandra.com is still a thing.
I love her records and found a surprising amount at the Austin Public Library. My friend and I listened to her cd QUIET while driving into the mountains of Colorado, a quite beautiful moment which sold him- my pal- on her records forever after!
a friend in austin, texas, usa,
-phil flowers
phlflwrs@yahoo.com
Sheila Chandra is great. Her 2 "Experimental EPs" and ABoneCroneDrone would probably appeal to the Idiot's Guide's tastes, if you didn't know that already.
yeah, ABone is a great album... will have to check the "experimental eps"...
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