all horse force

Squarepusher: A Journey To Reedham (7 A.M. Mix)
from Big Loada (Warp 1997)

Today I’d like to talk about what makes a “Song of Hope for the New Millennium”. That’s the title IK awarded to this track, way back in the halcyon days of high school. The world was a brighter, happier place then, and while we had plenty of excess angst to stew in, deep down we knew that it was just a phase. We would go on to college and big things, navigating the Information Superhighway at full speed, stopping only to collect our rewards for being so cool and doing such interesting stuff.
I don’t think I can really sum up my feeling about the track any better than with a video treatment I’ve been carrying around in my head ever since I first heard it. It begins with a shot of an open manhole cover on a New York street. Slowly rising out of it is a life-size Super Mario, rendered in old school 8-bit glory. He begins to walk through the city, which is almost completely empty, like early on a Saturday morning. Along the way he finds other beloved Nintendo characters, who start following him around, until finally they form a huge pyramidal procession down Fifth Avenue. I wasn’t even that huge a gamer when I was younger, but there’s still a lot of nostalgia bound up in those characters for me, and I think their triumphal parade through the real world speaks of the optimism a lot of us felt about the merging of the virtual and the physical in those wild pre-millennial days.

Blockhead: Insomniac Olympics
from Music By Cavelight (Ninja Tune 2003)

Alas, the actual new millennium leaves a little bit to be desired. Even if 9/11 and its ensuing conflicts did not, in fact, change math and Jesus, it did change a lot about how much hope we had for this brave new era we had entered. Things weren’t going to be shiny and awesome all the time. For me, this Blockhead track captures perfectly the slight menace bred by the fear and uncertainty we all feel a bit of now. It’s not terrifying, nor is it angry or indignant; it’s just vaguely creepy, in the most beautiful way. It’s also a march, like the Squarepusher track, but this parade can’t be attended by anything so unserious as videogame characters. It’s got a be a brotherhood of broken but hopeful people finding their way through the urban canyons, kept going by the sunlight that peeks through the clouds.
The beat here is of course undeniable, but it’s the primal, warbling vocal sample of the chorus that carries the day. It stirs you from complacency and demands that you see the good in the world, and do some good of your own. That makes it my new official Song of Hope for the (still) New Millennium. If anyone else wants to hope along with me, feel free.

evan :: Oct.24.2005 :: The Roll :: 2 Comments »

Hello and welcome. This is where the music is going to be posted. The name may change, domains may be added, but this page will always be here for you. The music will live here for about a month, after which the mp3, but not the entry, will be deleted*. We aspire to have something new for you every week at least, but if we fall behind, don’t kick us off your blogroll right away. Be assured that we’re just taking extra time to find tracks that are just that much better.We hope that you enjoy the show, and anyone interested in contributing, let us know at putmeon@horseforce.net.

*-Anyone who can prove that they are authorized to make such requests on behalf of the copyright owner can request that the file be taken down before then. All reasonable requests will be honored immediately, but an email that just says “take down my song, you sunuvabitch”, even if from lars@metallica.com, will require some further explanation and evidence.

evan :: Oct.23.2005 :: The Hole :: No Comments »

So it’s been a hop, skip, and a jump away from a while since I posted anything. It should not be surprising to anybody if I blame starting law school for that drought. I don’t want to make excuses, but god, if you’re still checking back and reading this, the least I owe you is an explanation.

Everyone says the first year of law school is hard, but I thought I was ready. I’d studied hard and done well on the LSAT; I’d just study hard and do well in class. I guess that formula is simple enough that it might yet hold true, but the experience couldn’t be less familiar. The LSAT just demanded that I lock myself in a room every Sunday for ten weeks and take a practice exam. It was a matter of discipline more than concentration, raw hours clocked rather then focused analysis. I’m learning that law school is actually much more than just a big logic game of shuffling seating arrangments and allocating people between vehicles; perhaps they should make wedding planners take the LSAT instead of law students. Law school seems to be instead a constant game of hide-and-go-seek between you and the professors, where you duck down and try not to get called on when you don’t know your shit and run around trying to tag them when you do. Once you get on call, by whichever side’s machinations, you get to go play on the Problematizing Seesaw, where you vacillate back and forth between clear rules and borderline cases as long as the professor stays amused. Afterwards you resolve to be a better seesawer next time, so you spend the evening going back and forth on your own imaginary seesaw, but it never feels quite like the real thing.

The end result is that after a month of school I feel a little dizzy. I think I’ve kept up alright, but my brain feels out of focus. I can’t get the two hemispheres to converge on any one idea. I have some faith that I’ll get my groove back soon enough, but I didn’t realize how out of practice I was. Three years without any significant intellectual challenges has built up a lot of cruft, and I’ve been getting by on a neat turn of phrase and a furrowed brow for too long. Big words don’t impress anyone in law school; neither do lazy analogies or unwarranted assumptions. It’s definitely going to take my focused and sustained attention over the rest of the year to get my domepiece back to fighting weight.

So I’m going on a diet. Not a food diet (though I’ve recently switched to Diet Coke after years of resistance, which should save me a few bajillion calories a year), but an information diet. I’ve decided that I really have to cut down on distractions, and right now I try to be knowledgable about too many things. I now have 99 feeds in my aggregator; there’s no way I can stay up on all of them and have a chance to be even a passably good law student. It’s nice to be well rounded, but I really feel like it’s time to stop sacrificing depth for breadth. If I need to get up to speed on something, I’ll do some research on it; no more trying to be preemptively informed.

That said, everyone needs to have a hobby. I’m not capable of banishing everything but Law from the life of my mind. The other thing I’m allowing myself is Music. It may be a cop out, since there was no way I was going to stop listening to music, but I’m going to try to actually devote more time to it. I think if I have a default thing to do when I’m not doing Law things, I’ll be more focused generally. My project is going to be an MP3 blog, similar to those under the Music heading in the sidebar on the left. The idea is no more complicated than me posting a track or two and some thoughts about them every week or so, but I think it will be get me (and hopefully you) more engaged with my collection and music in general. Ideally, I’ll be able to convince some others to join me in the endeavor, so I (we) can be up on what they’re up on.

So keep an eye out, and don’t forget to peep our brother publications, Beer Burgers and Dsquared, which have been publishing with renewed vigor as of late.

evan :: Oct.12.2005 :: Notices :: 3 Comments »