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Underground > Radio & Music >

Self-indulgent 'home alone' music

01:04 / 18.01.03

I'm sure I've started a thread on this before but, being pleasantly wazzed on a nice Australian grenache - and, crucially, with Xoc having headed bedwards - I find myself surrendering all matters of notional taste, cool and consideration for anyone else's listening pleasure, and going with the here-and-now, my musical Id.

I'm in that restless mood, chopping and changing tracks as soon as my (incredibly low) boredom threshold is breached. Highlights include The Flaming Lips' 'Fight Test', 'Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots pt1' and 'Waitin' for a Superman'; Fischerspooner's 'The 15th', 'Emerge' and the hidden track, 'Megacolon' (which always cracks me up when I'm the right sort of pissed); All Saints' 'Pure Shores' and Moby's 'Porcelain', both from 'The Beach' soundtrack (and both of which remind me of our last idyllic holiday in India); Coldplay's 'Politik', 'Im My Place', 'The Scientist' and 'Clocks' (after which time I got sick of the recurring images of Gwyneth Paltrow and had to whip 'em off); the utterly, utterly fabulous 'Natural Born Killers' soundtrack, with its combination of Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Cowboy Junkies, Nine Inch Nails, Patsy Cline and, er, L7; REM's immensely moving 'Imitation of Life'; Saint Etienne's engaging 'Amateur' and 'Soft Like Me'; Billie Holiday's 'Strange Fruit' and 'That Ole Devil Called Love'.

I guess my 'home alone' music has changed because Xoc is now living with me in London; it's less melodramatically I. Am. Alone. Having said which, I've progressed (regressed) to the Pet Shop Boys: 'Being Boring', 'My October Symphony' and 'You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk'. Bed beckons.

What do you listen to when your significant other's absent/gone to bed/dead/non-existent and you're insomniacally awake/drunk?

Goodness Gracious Meme

01:31 / 18.01.03

Gawd. you drama-queen you. At various times, with various SO's , it's been

off the top of my head, but i'll be back, no doubt:

Tindersticks, Portishead, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Patti Smith slowies, Ambient Works I and II, parts of Orbitals InSides

PSBs 'it couldn't happen here' is an all-time/any occasion one. Sooooo sad and beautiful

10:58 / 18.01.03

At the moment Snapping Turtle is ice skating, and I'm in good natured competition with my neighbours downstairs. They're playing the Beach Boys (who rule. I have no problem with the BBs) and I'm trying to give them a WTF moment with the Acid Mother's Temple Family Compilation.

To be honest, I play most of my music when the Turtle's gone out, as 99% of it terrifies her.

14:52 / 18.01.03

I'm not entirely sure how to answer this thread as (hopefully this doesn't make me that much of a sad bastard?) most of my music listening is done in private and based on whatever I want to hear at any given moment..

If you mean 'when everyone's out of the house and there's nobody round to disturb', well, I tend to give in to my baser instincts and crank up Mudhoney or the Stooges..

15:27 / 18.01.03

Bing Crosy

09:50 / 20.01.03

Smiths, Morrissey, Nick Cave, Counting Crows, with Tom Waits making more and more of an incursion these days. After many many years am starting to play Counting Crows a little bit less, but nothing beats their first album for insomniac misery:

It's four thirty am on a Tuesday.
It doesn't get much worse than this.
In beds in little rooms in buildings
in the middle of these lives
which are completely meaningless.

Once I was listening to this and I realized it was 4.30am on a Tuesday. He's talking to me, maaaaan.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:18 / 20.01.03

I take great pride in helping beat Loomis towards the era of fey gloom wherein he doth now dwell. Rock.

Now? Me? Largely the same. But also with Dirty Three. At MIND-SHEARING VOLUME. And Mingus. Oho yes.

21:45 / 20.01.03

[crying snottily] Am I Mingusing? [/crying snottily]

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:18 / 20.01.03

Better git hit in yo' soul, 'Nesh.

ONLY NICE THINGS

23:56 / 20.01.03

I've just been listenign to the Olivia Tremor Control's "Lov", and some songs from "Once More With Feeling". At the moment I am listening to REM's "Bang and Blame", because it is the archetypal PGP song, and I need some PGP inspiration. In general, alonely music includes the Magnetic Fields, pretty much passim, Ladytron "604", Sleater Kinney, Dot Allison, the Tiny Clocks at ludicrous and utterly inappropriate volume....

Old brown-eye is back

11:53 / 21.01.03

Electro Shock Blues by The Eels did the job very nicely last night. More regularly, it's been Solid Air by John Martyn (how a man with a stroke wrote tunes that fine is beyond me) and Pavement's Slow Century DVD.

Old brown-eye is back

12:01 / 21.01.03

Mingus? At bed time?

12:55 / 21.01.03

The cat's away and the mice will play r &B pop bitch time!! Generally yes all the stuff I miss from Chicago and just for some reason never get around to listening to in London like Nelly and Foxy Brown and Ashanti and piece of R&B pop trash. And prince, of course.

Old brown-eye is back

13:36 / 21.01.03

Yay! Prince!

10:47 / 22.01.03

"Alive alone" by The Chemical Brothers and "This is a Low" by Blur. Hugely indulgent and melancholy. Although that was when I was seventeen.

The Natural Way

11:04 / 22.01.03

'Once More w/ Feeling' gets pretty heavy rotation, as does Brian Eno's lovelywarm 'Apollo' and 'My Life in the Bush of Ghosts', some vere spesh Harold Budd albums (whose name's escape me at the mo'), an MMMMMmmmmnice Benny Goodman compilation, the Cocteau Twins 'Garlands' (yes, I know it's all heroiny, but it's still cosy in a smacked out kinda way), the Mulholland Drive and the Fire Walk w/ Me soundtracks and Jonathan Richman (because I will never tire of him and how nice and vunerable he is - and how much he makes me laugh), esp 'Cornerstore'.

Nice gooooodwarmthness.

The Return Of Rothkoid

12:21 / 22.01.03

Mingus? At bed time?
Yep. Let My Children Hear Music is great sleepies stuff.

As is Low. Though the two are slightly different...

Goodness Gracious Meme

16:54 / 22.01.03

on the tack of music that i love being alone with and makes me feel good because it's so great;

Stevie wonder - innversions, talkingbook, songs in the key of life.
love - forever changes
spritualised - ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space
ella fitzgerald - the cole porter songbook

Tryphena Absent

17:21 / 22.01.03

Dot Allison, Ella Fitzgerald 'Live in Berlin', Miles Davies particularly 'Someday my Prince Will Come' and Thelonious Monk's alternative edition of 'Misterioso'. If I'm in my parent's house I like to listen to Sun Ra's 'Untitled' Jupiter track. The Rent soundtrack (I like to wail along to it and believe me -it is wailing), The Stone Roses, anything on Radio 3 or Resonance fm because I'm loving it more and more as I listen, Cream, Beth Orton when I feel really miserable and the newest Incubus album that everyone else seems to hate.

Tryphena Absent

17:23 / 22.01.03

Ooh and Molvaer's track that's been remixed by Herbaliser... fantastic stuff.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:22 / 22.01.03

Anna: of all the Miles I've got, I'd have to say that Ascenseur Pour L'Échafaud is the night-time music. What it loses to In A Silent Way it replaces in Gitanes cool.

00:01 / 23.01.03

I will second the Ascenseur, save that I always force others to listen to it as well -- I suppose for me it would be the depresso stuff -- Joy Division and what have you. Also if I have to hear a particular song or piece of music over & over, I'll do it at night when nobody's around. One night it was the Heptones' Sweet Talkin played for hours on end until I couldn't cry anymore. Whew.

01:45 / 23.01.03

Right at this insomniacally awake minute, it's Dion's Born to Be With You.There's not much better than HUGE songs that sound like they're beamed down from heaven, directly into your brain, for curing those lonesome, early hours blues. Next: Otis Blue.