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Dusted Features
Every Friday, Dusted Magazine publishes a series of music-related lists compiled by our favorite artists. This week: Carlos D and Birds of America.
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Listed: Carlos D + Birds of America
Carlos D
There was a time - not so long ago, in fact - when Carlos D was known merely as the goth-looking bass player for Interpol. His melodic, rotund bass lines help make him Interpol's Peter Hook - and I'm not just saying that because of the played-out Joy Division comparisons. While Interpol is still his primary claim to fame, the past year or two seen the exponential grown of what URB dubbed 'the cult of Carlos D.' This is due largely to his active/approachable alter-ego of party dj extraordinaire. Don't be mistaken by lumping Carlos D among the rock-star-as-dj crowd - Carlos is a true music fan and knows how to get a dance floor moving.
Ten Most Recently Added Albums to My iTunes:
1. Daft Punk - Homework
It's hard for dance music to be classic but this is one of those records that just won't ever get old.
2. Depeche Mode - Ultra
I automatically wrote off this album when it came out because I was disappointed with Faith, Love & Devotion but one day I went out on a limb and picked it up and felt really stupid for not listening to it at least once a week for like...forever.
3. System of a Down - Toxicity
Nu-metal? Nah. Good metal.
4. The Strokes - Is This It?
This is another classic album that tastes sweeter without an opaque cloud of hype around the band. It proves that just because a band is hyped up, doesn't mean that they're bad. Haters beware.
5. Richard Robbins - Via Crucis
This is where classical and electronica commiserate in a beautiful silky waltz to the funereal beat of hallowed religiosity. Think The Last Temptation of Christ as seen by Phillip Glass.
6. Wagner Without Words
Wagner's operas always bored me and I don't think I'm alone in this (I dare anyone to sit through the Ring Cycle without a nap). But I always thought the music was powerful and grandiose.
7. Yngwie Malmsteen - Trilogy
Ok we all know that he's a self-centered wanker who threatens flight attendants with balls of fire summoned by Zeus or Odin or Hades or whatever cooked-up mythology his muddled brain has conjured up. And I'm sure the picture of him on the cover defeating a hydra with his flame-hurling Strat may lead one to believe that this album is all guitar wankery with no substance. Sometimes it feels so good to be dead wrong.
8. Antony and the Johnsons - I Am a Bird Now
I'm not into singer-songwriters but this man's voice is too beautiful to pass up. Even for someone that hates Liberace.
9. Gang Gang Dance - God's Money
How can experimental music, electro, industrial, post-punk, and belly dancing music merge into a coherent and listenable form? I don't know, ask these four geniuses.
10. NIN - Pretty Hate Machine
Classic.
Birds of America
Hailing, like many Listed featurees, from the San Francisco Bay Area, Birds of America (aka Nat Russell) are the cornerstone of the budding and generally impressive Isota label. His new album, Current Carry, was recently released (by Isota), and Birds of America recently completed a Midwestern tour. It’s an off-kilter, catchy debut of the highest quality that blends the new, old, known, and unknown quite nicely. Russell was aided in his listing by tour mate Sam Flax Keener, a fellow Bay Arean who share aesthetic sensibilities with T. Rex (among other underworld dandies), but whose songwriting/performance are much more along the 1-man-band psychedelia lines.
All of these records were important in their own way on the recently completed American middle tour by Birds of America, Sam Flax Keener, and Sorcery.
1. Amon Duul - Paradieswaerts
There's something about being able to straddle the slippery line of transcendent beauty and the ever-enveloping darkness, and after you do that for a while, there's something about realizing they are kind of the same thing, or at least inseparable.
2. Neil Young - On the Beach
Again with the beauty and the darkness. Neil writes these songs that don't seem like the total genius they are until they sneak up on you in the night and scare the shit out of you.
3. Stooges - s/t and Neu - 75
It was really fun to listen to these two records back to back and hear how similar they are. It was on the 4th straight listen through the Stooges' first record that Sam began to convince me that Iggy was way into the Doors and that I should really stop hating on Jim Morrison.
4. Alan Watts - speech clips
I have a about 12 hours of Alan Watts lectures on mp3, and when of them would pop up on the random iPod play, it always seemed like the perfect time to sit and listen for an hour as the Midwestern landscape rolled by and the skies turned pink.
5. Arthur Russell - Calling out of Context and World of Echo
The more I listen to these records, the more I love them. World of Echo is one of the most beautiful things I've ever heard. And Calling out of Context is like when you see a painter's sketchbook, and the initial freedom of the drawings are better than finished, labored works. Except they are finished. But better. Arthur Russell was complete.
6. Chrome - Half Machine Lip Moves
The drums alone on this record are enough to turn my blood into piping hot magma. I can't believe this is from when it is. It sounds dangerous. If i were a kid, I would be afraid of it.
7. The Imposible Shapes - Tum
These are some friends from Bloomington who recorded this record in their garage, released it on vinyl in an edition of 300, and then kept moving. The song "Florida Silver Springs" is one of my favorite songs ever. Bloomington in general is the most amazing place in the world, and i would like to live there in the woods and occasionally run into The Coug while in town doing my grocery shopping. Shout outs to Church of Sun Ra, Normanoak, and Lord Fyre. Also, the Lord Fyre solo album that got handed to us is one of the best things i heard the whole trip. It summons the beast.
8. Neutral Milk Hotel - In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, On Avery Island, and some random bootleg demos
When these records come on, the van is silent for an hour. Some of the best records I’ve ever heard in my life that speak to a special place in all of us. These random bootleg demos and tapes that I dug up are pretty incredible in and of themselves, and also interesting from a total geek standpoint, seeing how some songs turned into others. The words and music transcend ownership and become part of the world.
9. R. Kelly - “Sex in the Kitchen" and "Trapped in the Closet"
Two new singles from the pied piper. I really think he might be insane or a total genius. It sounds like he just makes it up, but it's hard to deny the majesty of lines about making love "by the buttered rolls". "Trapped in the Closet" is the cliffhanger. "How 'bout if i just jump out the window/ yes, except for one thing: we're on the fifth floor" I'm waiting on parts 2 through 5. We had to rock these loud while cruising in on the Dan Ryan expressway to get into the chicago state of mind.
10. Skip Spence - Oar
The ghost of this record haunted us the whole tour. We kept kicking ourselves for not bringing it. As soon as I got home it was the first thing I listened to and it felt like taking a long, hot bath. One of the more perfect moments of imperfection in human history.
By Dusted Magazine
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