The Big Black Bear just woke up from a 5-hour Sunday nap. Such an unplanned hibernation leaves one a bit woozy feeling. I’m just getting the muscles working again, so I will be posting some random songs without a central theme, other than a vague tendency to post in threes.

First, some samples of three upcoming releases, starting with one from the Grizzly Bear. No relation to the Big Black Bear. The poor Grizzlies have seen their new album leak all over the internet. Veckatimest is out May 26, and I urge everyone to buy it if you like this sampler. I’m excited about it, and from what I’ve heard, it seems that the songwriting and production bears some similarities to the Department of Eagles side project. Following that is a track from the upcoming Camera Obscura album My Maudlin Career (April 13). I’m ready to be heartbroken. Finally there’s one from the upcoming Pet Shop Boys’ album Yes (March 23). Judging by this track and “Love, Etc.,” it promises to be a good one.
Grizzly Bear: Two Weeks
Camera Obscura: French Navy
Pet Shop Boys: Did You See Me Coming?

And now, three for Crozier, all from recent or upcoming singles. The first one (to be released March 31), from the Crystal Stilts, that has stuck itself on repeat in my head; hope you like it too. Their drummer, incidentally, used to play with the Vivian Girls, and we’ll be seeing them soon; I’ve posted the a-side to a September 2008 single. Also on that same bill is Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti, so I did a bit of research on them. Weird stuff that goes under the name of freak folk. This track is from a December 2008 single. Sounds like a warped version of a song that might have  appeared on the complimentary 8-track mix tape that came with my parents’ Oldsmobile back in the late 70s.
Crystal Stilts: Love Is A Wave
The Vivian Girls: I Can’t Stay
Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti: Can’t Hear My Eyes

And finally, three of my favorites from the world of hip hop; all of these songs are exactly three minutes long.
The Cool Kids: What Up Man
Dangerdoom: Korn Dogs
Quasimoto: Green Power

Minnesotan rapper P.O.S. has been in constant rotation on my playlist since he released his album Never Better a few weeks ago. Here’s a blistering condemnation of consumerist society, and a bare examination of what it is we really need in life. I need music. You? Just four walls and adobe slats for your girls, maybe?
P.O.S.: The Basics (Alright)

Tragic Epilogue: Physically it was before itself

In Western culture we look forward into the future. In some Eastern cultures, and in the world of logic, where one reads only after another has written, human consciousness looks backward as time marches forward. In a lecture and reading I attended years ago, the poet Li-Young Lee first acquainted me with this theme, which appears frequently in his writing (see: This Room And Everything In It).

Moving loosely from that idea, it occurred to me what a mess our perspective can be, and how hard it is to live in the moment, The Eternal Now. Many religions have tapped into this concept, and epiphanies, I believe, are a vertical, not a horizontal, when plotted throughout the plane we call “time.”

Moving very loosely then from that idea, I thought about the physical state of the body, and the matter that houses soul (which I take on faith exists) during the most infinitesimal of moments. As a movie is made up of multiple still frames of film, so are our actions and thoughts made up of still moments. What really comes first, second, and third, then? Especially in a highly intuitive mind, or in the instinctive and highly-skilled athlete, can we really plot out a progression of points?

I then thought of one of my favorite hip-hop albums of all time, Tragic Epilogue by Antipop Consortium. Lyrically denser even than this post, the combined forces of MCs Beans, High Priest, M. Sayyid, and Earl Blaize shocked me with torrents of science, metaphysics, human longing, non-sequitirs, and word disassociation back in 2001. I truly could not process what I was hearing. I still can’t. But I love trying.

This track “Disorientation” does just what it says on the tin. It starts out with a guest MC (uncredited on the sleeve; can anyone shed light on who she is?) brilliantly chopping her way through a dissertation on mic technique (both from the point of view of the performer and the listener) in a controlled stutter, and then hands it over to Earl Blaize (I think), who presents us with “fusion and fission in collision.” High Priest then casts the entire treatise in the context of war and dismembered bodies. All the while we are challenged to listen: “adjust your vision.”

Antipop Consortium: Disorientation

“Disorientation” is actually one of the tamer tracks. If you like what you hear, I ask you to do one or two things: 1. please comment on this post and let us all know what you hear in the midst of “Disorientation,” and/or 2. purchase Tragic Epilogue, and/or go further down the rabbit hole toward post-APC projects like Airborn Audio or Beans or High Priest solo material.

Airborn Audio: Inside The Globe
High Priest: Nostrand Avenue
Beans: Fearless Leader