Stadiums & Shrines

Songs I Wouldn’t Mind Dying To: A Mix by Circuit des Yeux

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Circuit des Yeux Guest Mix
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Haley Fohr doesn’t do things lightly. Overdue, her latest LP under the name Circuit des Yeux, almost demands its own intensely serious listening conditions (an isolated: highway, late night, or at least, headspace). So her response to the open-ended guest mix task is not surprising. Though it is far beyond what we could’ve imagined she’d assemble.

In her words, “these are all tracks that hit me in that special way. A knife to the heart, wearing shades in the dark, upside down on your bed, hair slightly brushing the floor type of jams. These are the top 40 radio hit songs of my indifferent side of life.”

Songs I Wouldn’t Mind Dying To (Singer Songwriter Edition):

Cynthia Dall, Untitled – “Berlin, 1945”
Tucker Zimmerman, S/T – “She’s an Easy Rider”
Ted Lucas, S/T – “Baby Where You Are”
Bob Trimble, Harvest of Dreams – “Premonitions Boy – The Reality”
V-3, Evil Love Deeper – “Your Leader”
David Lee Jr., Evolution – “Love Parable”
Nico, The Marble Index – “Frozen Warnings”
Sandra Bell, Dreams of Falling – “The Country Girls”
Dave Bixby, Ode To Quetzalcoatl – “Drug Song”
Gary Higgins, Red Hash – “It Didn’t Take Too Long”
John Fahey, Requia – “Requiem for Molly (Part 3)”
Tim Buckley, Lorca – “Lorca”
Neil Young, Silver & Gold: “Razor Love”

Overdue is out as of last week. And, having just finished a string of shows through the Midwest with Bill Callahan, Haley is now headed east alongside Jason Lescalleet.

Believer

· Mixes ·
Dream Believer
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Last week we made MTV a mix. For good measure, and to further underscore the artists included, it’s been placed here as well.

Sunny Dunes – Patience (Waiting For Summer)
Eola – And I Love Her [The Beatles]
M. Sage – Veridian ii
Monster Rally – Orchids
Bill Fay – Was It You I Saw Today
Candy Claws – A Glimpse of Dreamland
Night Sides – Dream [The Everly Brothers]
M O N E Y – Goodnight London
M. Sage – Veridian i
Timi Yuro – Hurt
WALL – Something On Your Mind [Karen Dalton]
Cuddle Formation – Duckfangs Tickle My Ankles
The Fleetwoods – Tragedy [Thomas Wayne]
M. Sage – Impossible Fenceline

The first and most apparent influence on Dream Believer is the music of our good friend and frequent collaborator, Matthew Sage. His work has a way of warping reference points, often recontextualizing both the beautiful and the mundane. The second is a recent dive back into the Micromix series that Bradford Cox did on his blog years ago (a collection at this point I consider historically significant, and personally one of the most profound experiences with “old music” I’ll ever have). The inclusion of “Tragedy” by The Fleetwoods is an homage to him. With those two on the mind lately, I tried to assemble a listen that made sense of this link, or at least further nonsense of it. I hear it as a compilation of songs—noctambulant & lovesick—from some lost era (at sea, perhaps), like those late night infomercials that run titles over footage of the performers. By mixing the new with the classic, and newer covers of classics, the idea is that we lose orientation with time itself—which is a microcosmic parallel of what we attempt with S&S in general.

Lost My Way

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Lost My Way
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From the onset, “Lost My Way” is not trying to find or be found. While anxious, the song maintains a meandering pace, as if accepting its fate, the mist, this labyrinthine circumstance. A voice navigates throughout, quite sublimely, almost to a point of orientation but then in the final third, latches onto the lead of a late piano. There’s a sense this could go on forever; perhaps behind the next tree is a harp, and so on, into the abyss… an alluring loop. Fortunately, its creator—Tokyo-born, Berlin-based artist Cuushe—does have the last say here, knowing just when to wipe the ground out from below us.

Butterfly Case is out September 23rd on Flau.

Hark

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Hark
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Whatever film London, Ontario artist Joshua Cwintal has in mind here, it is no doubt striking. While not an actual score, Hark does soundtrack a few slow-moving characters: “The Archivist” dwarfed in dusty halls of recorded history. “The Cartographer” hunched over a desk, meticulously modeling reality into spatial information. Then at the EP’s center is a cerebral (almost Reznor/Ross-ian) piano piece, capable of turning a casual listen into a scene itself.

Hark is available at bandcamp.