the gap between expectation, desire and cold hard reality is rarely easily broached.

which might beg questions about whether those three should ever (could ever) meet. or whether the gaping divide between quixosis and the quotidian it might just be another previously insurmountable hurdle to look back on when you’re curled up in that still so distant home.

while with every day that passes i’m becoming surer of what i hope for and more certain of what i do not see, real life is a hard slap in the face for my daydreamy nature and inherent laziness. i let myself feel like i’m stuck in a holding pattern, watching a patchwork landscape revolve below me, feeling as detached from the ground as i am from the sky above and no nearer to the drop zone now i know its coordinates.

i guess the way to resolution is about planning to make contact with the safe and solid ground. the descent is likely to be gut-churning; my ears’ll pop and i might close my eyes and whisper silent prayers for the some of the journey but when all the wheels have touched the ground and i step, blinking, onto the tarmac and the clouds i’ve been suspended in for what has been years are finally above me that’ll all feel like a million miles away.

so having poached a neil young album title for this post i figured i’d better follow through with some of his music. young’s an artist i can still go back to in a way i’ve not managed with other former obsessions - i listened too heavily to the rolling stones, bowie and the who way back when i was building a record collection to feel like seeking out listening to them much any more but neil young’s different.

even harvest has survived those student-stoner cliches (in ways which the doors and hendrix hasn’t for me) and neil young’s successfully and comfortably passed into my adult life thanks to tillman covers and nights in paris, he’s the soundtrack to a quiet night in with a bottle of wine or a wild night out with a quart of bourbon. but this, this is more where i’m at today…

neil young - music arcade

sometimes, when i think about posting and i’ve not got a track i’m desperate for you all to hear i like to indulge myself and imagine i’ve got a column in a broadsheet - that i’m so witty and erudite that people tune in to see what’s been going on in my life this week and where that might take them. so i make a mental list of things which’ve happened in the week; anecdotes or experiences; moods or meals, and see what could spark a post. as you might have gathered from our posts of late its been a hectic, almost life-changing month for the latitudes and for it’s writers. and out of all of this what’s sparked in me the kernel of an idea tonight is getting some new perfume.

feel free, all you opportunist blog pillagers to tune out now if that offends your sensibilities. if you only came here for a french house re-edit or new-folk meandering take your booty and run by all means but i like to think that you’re along for the ride so i’ll keep trucking with this idea.

for years now i’ve worn the same scent. available in high end department stores across the globe, it’s one of those designer spin off ones in a beautiful bottle. it smells of roses and i discovered it it in new york (just off 72nd & broadway) bought my first bottle after a day of obsessively (rapturously) snuffling my wrist to catch a hint of the glamorous sweetness and after a couple of years i started getting comments about how other people couldn’t quite bring themselves to buy it because it was too familiar as my perfume.

and that felt good.

“i have” i thought proudly “a signature scent. and when my friends meet someone else wearing it they’ll think “she smells like juliet”.

its no news to any of us that smell is a peculiarly evocative sense. i have a friend who’s mother lost her sense of smell in a car accident. its more devastating than you might imagine. with it goes most of your taste palette. not to mention the ability to sense elements of danger (no early warning that you’ve left the gas on or knocked over a candle) potency of drinks, or recognise the smell of cut grass, cooked bacon or a baby’s skin.

and deeper than that, she must be denied that particular key that smell plays in memory. the whiff of cloves which instantly transports me to childhood christmas times eating leibekuchen, eucalyptus to a corsican mountainside in 1989, pipe smoke to my grandad’s soft liverpudlian brogue telling me stories in his lounge. that proustian evocation of the oddest of memories sparked by warm tar, school corridors, printing ink, new leather or baked apples. smells which remind you of home, or an idea of home.

and now i have a new scent. an engraved bottle of decadence, of itself an extravagant gift which i get to wear everyday. according to experts (or obsessives but often i’m hard pressed to tell the difference) it smells of roses, raspberries and finally sweet tobacco. to me it smells terribly grown-up, comfortable and exotic, memorable and familiar and glamorous, of flawless well-educated women of a certain era who wore bespoke lipstick and hand sewn underwear but mostly, mostly it will always smell of the day i got it. so whenever i unpack a packing case or box of books from here on in to fifty years from now and i catch a glimpse of it, i’ll be transported back to this summer.

here’s a track which takes me back to last spring, my nose pressed against the window of a eurostar carriage, pulling in to lille station still wearing that old perfume and feeling like this is was a song for a grown woman to hear and that i still had a lot of growing to do.

Meshell Ndegeocello - The Chosen

image courtesy of butukgirl via flickr

right now i’m tired. i’ve done a day in the office, a stint at the gym, managed some ad-hoc dinner and i got to get me this blog post done or y’all’ll have nothing to read when you get to your desks tomorrow.

but there’s something keeping me awake, something calling me from across the room. a place i’ve started to escape to in the evenings. at weekends. damn, even on holiday when i’m already supposed to have escaped.

that place is maryland. tighter than that, that place is baltimore. and deeper even; darker than that, the place i keep going back to? well currently its the city docks. a bit ago it was the west side projects. rumour has it (though i’m not one for spoilers) that i’ll be moving to the halls of government soon enough. Read more »

seems like everywhere i turn on the internet there’s more and more beautiful things, my ongoing quest to read the whole of the internet honestly didn’t get much further today but did reach a peak with my faith being restored in the scientific community. finally i understand where all the research budgets go to with the application of science for an enormously fruitful end, yes; the formula for making the perfect bacon sandwich…

N = C + {fb (cm) . fb (tc)} + fb (Ts) + fc . ta, where N=force in Newtons required to break the cooked bacon, fb=function of the bacon type, fc=function of the condiment/filling effect, Ts=serving temperature, tc=cooking time, ta=time or duration of application of condiment/filling, cm=cooking method, C=Newtons required to break uncooked bacon.

although, personally i’d skip the science bit and head straight to canteen - that way someone else does the washing up.

thanks to another dear friend of the latitudes, joebocop, for a hook up to a superduper blog run by some guy he met at a barbeque this weekend. we have emense respect for anyone who can blog regularly and still bring home the… erm, bacon so while i can (somewhat bitterly) put the fact that these kids manage it twice in a day and have also found time to publish a book down to youthful exuberance, you all should check out out it’s nice that. i love their utterly covetable mini frisbee of a calling card which you can see hob-nobbing with the cream of beautiful blog business cards above. it’s nice that brings together so many lovely bits of design, music, film, photography, fashion… everything destracting and inspiring to my magpie eye you wonder how they have time to find the stuff let alone write the damn thing.

still, mine is not to wonder why… get to it.

and if that’s not enough then the new coco electrik album, army behind the sun, comes out today too. buy it here.

 

you know, ten days out of the city might be just about right. long enough to get some distance, far enough away to achieve perspective but not soo far gone you lose touch completely.

for me this week just gone was a watershed (and not just because of the torrential rain and plentiful opportunities to wear my brand-new, bright-yellow poncho) much like in a box of that beautifully branded Dorset muesli - if you shake it up enough, once the rattling has subsided and the oatmeal levelled, all the big stuff finally is left on the top. same thing happens in my life (only with fewer raisins) so with a week in the deafening quiet of the Poitou-Charente countryside, the dust seemed to finally settle on the last year and half and the view ahead started to clear. but i won’t bore you with the minutae of my own personal revelations because we’re here to talk about the music/film/culture/miscellania.

over the great glassy sea to my right, j.tillman’s been busy working on his new album, the Territory, and posted another beautiful demo which you might have seen on gorilla vs bear or his myspace, but since we’re always happy to lend him bandwidth on the latitudes and since it’s (somewhat unsurprisingly) achieved the repeat-repeat-repeat-feat on my itunes since i got back, High Enough to Raise is a welcome back track today.

i know i’ve waxed lyrical about josh’s gently effortless talent loads before, but his is a voice which has followed my last eighteen months through the dust storm, the chiming tales in his lyrics ringing truer than is sometimes comfortable but always worth listening to, i’d urge you buy his records so he can record more and finally get the bits of cement out of his beard.

j.tillman - high enough to raise

buy j.tillman records at fargo, yerbird, amazon or your local record store.

 

the weather in london was glorious this weekend.

no matter which window i opened it smelled like barbeque.

the sun shone, it felt like the populous was in a great mood and while i made fat apple cinnamon pancakes for my favourite breakfast companion my ipod’s shuffle function which i’d been ignoring for months threw up this tune to smother our bacon and coffee fueled morning with more than just aunt jemima’s pancake syrup.

the bees  who’s myspace ‘like to meet’ is the recipe for best dinner party i’ve never been to (yogi bear, alice coltrane, danny way, prince, darth vader, aston barrett and gza) are from a small island off this small island and this track leaked off their most recent release some time in the early spring. i loved it back then but a belly full of pork, apple & caffeine and the love of a good man made this the perfect soundtrack to a hazy weekend au soleil.

steeped in a soggy reggae shuffle, laden with ascending brass hooks and tinny multi vocal parts next time it’s sunny round your way stick this on and get marinating.

the bees - listening man

image of rosie, denison and sufjan by liz wong via her artghost blog

on thursday night i ventured out into the sultry heat of kings cross all on my own to catch a gig. i’d not been to a gig on my own before, it was a strangely liberating experience. no worry about the person you’ve invited not enjoing it as much as you’d hyped it, the ability to squeeze into a small space for a better view and cheaper rounds at the bar. plus i sort of felt like a proper music journalist (not much fear of that usually).

the gig was a bit of a double header by two friends, who are also friends of friends.

confused? get some clarity after the jump. Read more »

its been a few months, but he’s back.

and much as i wish his voice didn’t play my spine like a strung out bar-room piano and the rhythm of his melodies didn’t fit my breathing patterns so my lungs become a harmonium; they still do and j. tillman’s new album, cancer and delirium is another arc of beautiful songs which feels like a collection of ingmar bergman talking heads.

hair blown by artic winds, voices dipping below the crash of waves or the squall of gulls. tundras and cities. tears, funerals, wild flowers and redemption. plucked banjos; eerie steel guitar; ghostly, yearning vocals and the implied crackle of vinyl.

for a north country boy (kinda) josh’s evocative lyrics are fever dreams upholstered with swathes of southern gothic cadence, albeit tempered by the fairer mountains of his seattle home instead of looming monsoon clouds and swamp fogs. cancer and delirium is more pared down than last year’s minor works which might have something to do with the turning of the seasons (this was recorded over a cold christmas and new year). these simple, apartment recordings do more to evoke the wrapped in an old rug, down-home personal style of josh’s songwriting than months in a studio with someone like ethan johns could ever do. which probably says something about notions of authenticity, but the integrity of the whole production binds the songs, lyrics, recording, arrangements and intentions together in a creeping ivy scaffold.

and although the album’s available in europe through fargo from the 27th of this month (and in the us now through the brilliant yerbird) you, dear reader, can have one sooner (royal mail permitting) if you email us and tell us why you deserve it.

that’s right - a proper old school competition, so drop us a note (with your contact details) before monday 23rd and we’ll send a copy of cancer & delirium to the best response.

and if that wasn’t enough excitment he’s coming back to the uk supporting the lovely jesse sykes on a european tour next month.

i’ve never managed a whole album review and i know i won’t this time either, since i get distracted by my own reactions, dreams and memories but as j. tillman will be taking the stage at the bush hall here in london on may 10th it would be terrible shame if you all didn’t come and say hi to him.

see you down the front.

j.tillman - evans and falls

people can do strange things in the name of love. they can kill, suppress, obliterate and deny. they can hurt, hate and destroy.

and then theres the things people do for love.

out of and in love.

it might be the joys of spring and bursting buds in the canalside hedgerows i’ve just walked past but i’ve been thinking that surely the best of life is that which is created in the expansive security which true love provides.

of all the beautiful things in the world, of all the art, music, architecture, literature, film, poetry. of all the feats of endurance, of sporting prowess, of academic, philosophical or scientific research and discovery. of all that was ever created to bring joy or to say thanks, the best and most affecting are those which came from the place of surity in the creator’s heart that they could and would accomplish what they had set out to do because they were doing it for love, with passion and confidence, with scope to fail and even more scope to achieve.

and despite what the first law of thermodynamics says about energy not being created or destroyed it seems that the exception which continues to prove that rule is when you open up to the possibilities of honestly loving something (or someone) it comes back at you ten fold.

and in a funny way that means the pressures off.

that old adage about setting that which you love free and having it return to you, i’d always thought was an angsty self sacrificial paean to accepting all manner of ill treatment in the name of love but i’d been putting the emphasis in all the wrong places in the sentence, in fact, maybe it should say if you love something then you let it free.

anyhoo, since we’re all a bit busy at hl’s various london outposts and things might be quiet this week i’m going to take the self indulgent liberty of posting my favourite birthday present, something which i’ve been looping so much that i’m starting to hear the hook in the city’s twilight chorus, passing shop doorways i think i catch it on a radio and the hydraulic closing of tube doors on the jubilee line mimics it’s tempo perfectly, from the crazy exclusive ‘in the light of day’ ep a man called horse spreads a little love in all your directions with this beautiful piece of work.

a man called horse - the way you want

ahhh, its been a while since i’ve been able to drop in on the latitudes and i’ve missed it, trouble this is only a flying visit…

but it is a something for the weekend, and this is sort of for my last weekend as well as this coming one since which’ll be spent soaking up the early spring sunshine by the pool of a pimpin’ villa just outside of Cannes (now, now, don’t be playa-hating, that don’t suit no one). last weekend was a music fuelled dance fest what with an early slice of wholemeal with all the trimmings full basilkism at the elbow rooms in shoreditch and then a blister inducing four hour solid dance off with the noisy house-party stylings of She Don’t Care vs Show Yer Bones at Cargo… this track (via discobelle and doubtless a whole lot of other blogs since its damn hot) would have slotted as perfectly into that night as i’m sure it will into this saturday (it’s french - see the link?!).

a demo (something which the band are keen to point out) from the soon to be released D.A.N.C.E./B.E.A.T. ep by slightly mysterious frenchies, Justice D.A.N.C.E. could draw lazy comparisons with the go team, jackson five and daft punk buuuut we’re better than that so i’m going to say imagine an episode of sesame street brought to you by the letters d, a,n,c and e, the number 2007 and the colour of a spotlight glinting off a disco ball; with a bedtime story by Nile Rodgers. its one of those time-stands-still type joints which gets me working ‘repeat’ on overtime in a ’surely four and half minutes haven’t passed since i pressed play?’ way…

les garcons justice who call ed banger records home (and therefore have to share a bathroom with hl favourite dj mehdi, denim-blighted mr oizo and amanda blank-esque, filth-pot, female mc uffie) are Gaspard and Xavier and following last year’s twisted glitchy electro outing, phan+om are due to put out an album and ep later in the year… mais pour ce weekend, laisse avoir de l’amusement.

jus+ice - D.A.N.C.E. (demo)