Hi friends,
I got a new phone/ I’ll talk about my new job/ Gonna share some impactful things from 2020/ Share some music demos and tidbits for bassoon, synth, and more/ Share a link to view the Bassoon zine I made last month!
Happy Holidays to you all! I hope this letter finds you healthy, happy, and surrounded by good people. I’ve been working a seasonal retail job at the Eagle Rock Macy’s for the past month. While hardly a dream job, I am thankful for the break of unemployed monotony, financial guessing games, and relieved to work with great people, be given structure, and to get out of the house. I wish it could feel more like this ^^^, but more often feels like the below— a performance of sickening predatory capitalism co-opting and driving the holidays.
Aside from this I am immensely thankful to live where I am now at the Shipley Goon House, surrounded by great roommates and friends able to celebrate together. My roommate Marta arranged carols for our house Sushi dinner on Christmas eve:
(We were dancing to Enya’s Christmas album)
Originally you had signed up for this newsletter to stay in touch, and I hope it still does that for you all. Speaking of which, I recently got rid of my smart phone and got a really terrible flip phone and new number. While I have indeed reduced my screen time and have been more present, the flip phone has been a real obstacle to communication. Tell me about your flip phone experience if you’ve taken that plunge…Respondez-vous to this newsletter if you would like my new number!
“Pain” by Brattleboro songwriter Ruth Garbus is my #1 listened to track of 2020 according to my Spotify. I wanted to say “don’t read into this too much, it’s just a raw and exquisite song about sadness and feeling bad…” but I guess you can read into that a little. It is a year marked with pain, anxiety, anger, immense change, and (too much) time spent alone. But it has also been very reflective, morose, and transformative year marked by reckoning with and growth. I’d like to reflect on 10(ish) different things/pieces of media that were significant to me this year and how they flavored the moments and memories of 2020. (These albums and films are not necessarily from 2020 but just significant to me in this year.)
^^ Starting with the above, Ruth Garbus’ 2019 album Kleinmeister is a rare occurrence for me as it is a work I can listen to repeatedly and still find it moving, surprising, and comforting. The album delicately plays with topics of climate change and introspective explorations of pain amidst simple, hushed, and lush arrangements of guitar, voice, and piano. In January 2020 I took a job as a driver for a catering company that worked on small budget film sets. I’d often wake up at ungodly hours to pick up food from their East LA kitchen and drive it off to sets as far out as Malibu or Palmdale. While I hated the wakeup calls, I loved the solitary time in my car, wheeling across Southern California listening to my favorite music. Kleinmeister was on constant rotation, often being the only thing that kept me sane on my 3-5 hour commutes in a delirium of dangerous sleep deprivation.
In January my friend Andy was back in town visiting after moving to NYC. We spent most of the visit eating food at Smorgasbord LA and scarfing down burritos from Delia’s in Eagle Rock. At his partner Laura’s house we lounged around eating MORE junk food and combing through YouTube for music. Laura suggested watching the visual album for Solange’s 2019 album When I get Home, a spectacular piece of Afro-futurist pop steeped in southern rap and sleek experimental production. After watching the incredible film adaptation, the album remained on repeat for me well into 2020 accompanying me through valet gigs in DTLA, a frustrating stint with Postmates, and 4am commutes to Malibu to cater breakfast on a film set. I can’t think of a richer and more dense album I’ve experienced this year. I can still listen through these collagic 19 tracks and find new themes, hear fresh sounds, and get chills from what feels like the full audiovisual realization of a florid, dream-like photo album.
In September I helped my friend Jon move into a new place with his partner Sam. After we finished the move we sat on their back patio eating pizza and listening to Dougie Poole’s incredible 2020 release, The Freelancer’s Blues, a stellar album of country ballads and bluesy bops for the e-boy age. Fast forward to November and I’m returning from visiting a close friend in Santa Cruz. I’m driving east on state road 58 from San Luis Obispo across the central valley facing the Sierra Nevadas and listening to this album on repeat. A perfect soundtrack. I’ve never been much of a country music person but this album hit differently. Freelancer’s Blues is so clearly an album made by someone who has spent a lifetime loving and appreciating country music. Avoiding overused conventions of country music, Poole’s sings about vaping, internet dating, living in NYC, and flirting with Buddhism. The honky-tonk arrangements are INCREDIBLE as the album anthologizes several eras of American Country from 90s slow jams to classic country and glitzy pop-country of the aughts.
At the start of quarantine I challenged myself to see how long I could remain in my apartment as I was someone who normally wouldn’t stay at home more than 8-9 hours at a time. After an isolated spell of only 4 days, I realized I was going insane and drove off to Mt. Washington for a walk. While my typical walk up there lasts about 30 min, I took my time getting home spending over an hour winding my way down using narrow squirming backroads in Mt. Washington and Cypress Park. These neighborhoods are quiet, lush with greenery, and the view at night of downtown Los Angeles is stunning, comforting, and bittersweet. I listened to a catalogue of ambient and drone releases on these indulgent drives home including Oren Ambarchi’s 2019 release Simian Angel. Ambarchi makes the album entirely with an electric guitar ran through a laptop alongside the percussive shadings of Brazilian musician Cyro Baptista. The two tracks expand and contract across spacious harmonies and alien timbres from Ambarchi’s guitar. There are flavors of Indian classical music, Laraaji, and ambient techno folded patiently into the fabric of the music. When listening through good speakers or headphones you cannot miss the painstakingly crisp mastering details of Rashad Becker who deftly coaxes out intriguing frequencies and satisfying space. Other ambient introspection recs include Heathered Pearls 2012 debut Loyal, Jim O’Rourke and Fennesz’ epic longform It’s hard for me to say I’m sorry, Ana Roxanne’s delicate and rich 2019 release “~~~”, and Eliane Radigue’s expansive, patient, and sacred music for the ARP 2500 synthesizer (start with L'Île Re-Sonante)
I met Jon Axtell in 2018 on tour with the Lentils. Jon had set up a show at a fascinating DIY space in West Oakland called the Space Station. As Jon greeted us at the door he wore a neon gardening visor and these incredible vibey red hued cat-eye sunglasses. After a very fun and rambunctious show and welcome to Oakland, Jon hosted us at his beautiful apartment after a button-popping dinner at a local Korean pub affectionately known as the “Porno Palace”. Jon and I became friends, bonding over shared broad interests, music, similarly bizarre religious upbringings, and ultimately a deep love for our communities and people. Two years later, Jon has moved to L.A and it’s only then I learn that he was one of only a handful of people who escaped the second floor of the devastating Ghost Ship fire in 2016. Early this past fall, Jon told me of his idea to create a podcast to honor the legacy of those who perished and to breath life and healing into a thriving time in Oakland’s vibrant artistic community. Jon recounts his time spent in Oakland through lovingly detailed recollections of folks, makers, and places that fostered an electric community in the East Bay. I hope this project is as much catharsis for him as it is inspiration for us to love, value, and lift up our own communities, carrying on the legacy of those who were lost. Proceeds from these podcasts to support artists, spaces, and victim funds in the Bay Area.
Long before I moved into the Shipley Goon house, I was recording with Luke in his bedroom for a new Lentils project. At one point I asked him about previous projects and he mentioned his “techno-pop” album with M.R Chadwick as Plum Professional. I totally forgot to check it out then but in early 2020 their 2017 release Employee Handbook was on repeat in my speakers. The jazzy shifty harmonies, glossy horn accompaniments, synthy boogie, and abstract poetic lyrics evoked some kind of Yacht Rock, Indie, synthpop hybrid listening like a psychedelic summer cocktail. I may be biased since my roommates made this but I honestly think this record is massively underrated and I’m so happy it soundtracked my last catering shifts and early lockdown walks.
If no other aspect of my life or part of me changed in 2020, my cooking and time spent in the kitchen definitely did. Early in quar like all of us, I found myself forced to master efficient grocery shopping and learn to make better food that I actually wanted to eat over and over. Nothing has given me more satisfaction than cooking this year– no album, no book, no place, no film; nada. When I lived with Nigel and Roger on La Prada, they were both avid cooks, cooking a full meal every single breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Roger made kombucha, sourdough bread, and vegan Korean food, while Nigel baked cookies, made pancakes, and tidal waves of vegan tacos. I bought new kitchen utensils, a cast-iron skillet, and better ingredients and set out tackling recipes for Apple Pies, Roasted Chicken Provençal, Spicy Pickles, Pierogis, Persian Eggplant stew (Khoresh Bademjan), Okroshka, Pão de queijo, a Ghanaian Peanut Soup, Farro n Roasted Shrooms, simple pasta dishes, an INCREDIBLE vegan Jambalaya, fermented garlic honey, and more. Here at the Goon house Breakfast hash reigns supreme. We frequently make sushi and tempura together, and we’ve been taking some wild fermentation adventures with a house Kombucha– Some of my favorite flavors being watermelon basil, vanilla mint, and Papaya Mango. A Rose Cannabis and Beet Ginger Kombucha is on the docket next…
~~I’ve really enjoyed cooking and food content on YouTube. While I am almost always entertained and learn from this content, I am often bugged by the spick and span settings and emphasis on flashy perfect editing. (Check out this v entertaining video essay about it.) I wish there was more content where people ate this food together or made it more of a community effort and talked about building meals….Definitely spurs potential ideas… Would you watch my absurdist skuzzy kitchen cooking show where I cook with and for friends? Inching more towards this vibe are these YouTuber chefs: Delish’s June Xie, Binging with Babish's Stump Sohla, and Internet Shaquille^^ above. If you perhaps are looking for a more Bob Ross/ASMR vibe, look no further than the impossibly detailed and beautiful recipes of Japan’s Peaceful Cuisine or Chocolate Cacao.
Chloé Zhao’s 2016 film Songs my brother taught me has to be one of my favorite films watched this year. The film follows Lakota Sioux siblings Johnny and Jashaun who grow up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota as Johnny considers a move to L.A with his girlfriend. The film is beautifully cast and set in a stunning South Dakota landscape. Multiple strings of conflict, desire, and coming-of age-twist and turn throughout the film shedding light on the harshness of “Res Life” and the complexities of home and identity. I learned of this film during a kind of personal zeitgeist consuming media surrounding Indigenous people’s culture, struggle, and identity. Earlier in the year I read Tommy Orange’s There There, a gut wrenching and expertly crafted tale of growing up Native American in the San Francisco Bay Area. Later I read Greenlandic writer Niviaq Korneliussen’s Last Night in Nuuk, a queer romance set in shifting, closely connected social circles in Greenland’s capital. A must read is also Oglala Lakota poet Layli Long Soldier’s chewy, dense, and impactful work in Whereas. I watched the Greenlandic films Sumé - The Sound of a Revolution about Greenland’s first acclaimed rock band and the countercultural and independence movement in the 1970s, and Village at the End of the World following the only teenager in a tiny Greenlandic settlement in the far north. There is also the beautifully paced and quiet Ainu Mosir, a coming of age and identity story following an Ainu teen in a gorgeous Hokkaido town. On the music side, Aymara-American producer Elysia Crampton Chuquimia released her stunning album ORCORARA 2010. Dedicated to a formerly incarcerated friend, the album unpacks themes of Christian violence and a return to an ancestral and theoretical state known as Mama Cocha, AKA the sea of nowhere. It’s a fascinating and involved listen, drawing influence from international folk music cultures, rave sound, and contemporary western classical. Proceeds from album sales support the American Indian Movement West / AIM SoCal chapters.
Regardless of what Spotify says about my listening habits, John Carroll Kirby’s 2020 release My Garden is unquestionably my most listened to album of the year. It arrived in my headphones after years of obsession with electric keyboard music, learning of a diverse array of production credits to Kirby (Solange, Sebastian Tellier, Frank Ocean, The Avalanches), and from a personal recommendation from my friend Logan Hone, who dropped some windy soothing flute on his tandem 2020 release, Conflict (which can be downloaded for free here.) Kirby’s approaches songs delicately with relaxed satisfying timbres and lulled jazz harmonies. His songs are often simple but immaculately smooth with unobtrusive flirty drum machines. My Garden listens like a lazy warm morning and I don’t expect to stop listening any time soon. To follow up Kirby’s solo albums check out the production he did on Eddie Chacon’s new album; a sultry, well spiced, and delicate RnB treasure out on Day End Records.
Earlier this year, my friend Sivan dropped a link to Brazilian musician Ivan Lins’ 1981 release Daquilo que eu sei, an MPB (Música popular brasileira) masterpiece of electric keyboard glory, slap-bass greatness, flashy horn lines, and psychedelic jazzy harmonies. During mid-quar, my roommate Nigel and I began going on weekly hikes throughout southern California; from Palmdale, to Santa Clarita, Whittier, Malibu, and Big Bear. A fond memory with this music was driving back down the mountains outside of Big Bear around midnight blasting these Brazilian anthems.
I wrapped up my bassoon zine Not a bassoonist last month and finally have it ready to view. I only did a limited print run and most of those are accounted for but you can view it here on Issuu. It’s not laid out the way I’d like but at least you can see all the illustrations and text. There is an accompanying mix that you can listen to here!
Here are a few tidbits and drafts of music I’ve been working on for synths, bassoons, and more~
Thanks for reading, friends. Stay warm, safe, happy, in touch, curious, and ridiculous.
luv,
Cody