Buried in the dust of Rajasthan

Rajasthan is the land of Kings, of desert heat, of old cities and Maharajas, Maharanas and Rajputs (and my relative misunderstanding of the differences between them.) It is of a world of tiered clay buildings, of forts on steep hills, of wearing headscarves to shade yourself from the heat. The end of the day brings the swift grace of water cutting through the dust caked on your face...


Jaipur:

Forged as the pink city, Jaipur is the gateway to the desert and the capital of Rajasthan. Considering it's a popular spot after to hit after Agra, the bazaars and rickshaws pull your scarf like a chain. Otherwise it's a charming little gem, and one where I left a few nights of fever behind.









Pushkar:

This is a holy city walking side-by-side with tourist exhaust. The story goes that Brahma (the Hindu god of creation) dropped a lotus flower on the earth and so up floated Pushkar. But its met quite the juxtaposition - a tourist bazaar causeway forms a perimeter to the lake ghats, and so the lake pilgrims wade between touts looking to con tourists into paying for puja (prayers). It is illegal to kiss, embrace, and eat meat; though drugs are frequently offered on your descent to the lake: the diffusion from an era of hippiedom. Quite the view from the top of the lone temple hill though, I must say.







Udaipur:

Called the 'Venice of the East', the old city center hovers around an ancient palace that glows purple by night. Quiet, serene, and sparkling by night - it seems quite the Indian oasis. But beyond the old city borders it is rickshaws and cows and Hindi cinemas. But at its nucleus, it is remembered like a nice bout with a valium.










Jodhpur:

While the blue painted houses of the old city once represented those of the Brahmin caste, the flavourful shade now merely hovers like a pastel jigsaw puzzle from the view from the fort above. Holding a liberal air alongside the traditional heat of Rajasthan, (with the "purs" as my Rajasthani favorites), I believe blue takes the cake over pink.





Jaisalmer:

As statistics, touts and rhetoric seem to prove; they (we) come to this collapsing sandcastle fort and the surrounding area to ride camels. And so we did. With such expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by my desert trek and the treatment of the camels: their saddles were removed every time we had a break, we stopped at troughs for water, and they were left to graze free by night. Overall, it was a graceful desert experience - the young guides delved out chai at the most epic of moments, for the camel itching her head on my leg in between her regular burps left great thanks for such rewards. We woke up after a night in the dunes to thousands of interwoven tracks, much like figure eights on an ice rink. It appears the black beetles that appeared at dusk marched on through the starry night.








Bikaner:

That city where the dust mixed with the dusk leaves you thinking you've found despair, only for it to be as refulgent by morning as the stagnant pond of sewage you passed in the autorickshaw on your way in. A large desert city slowly growing to absorb the camel safari overflow of Jaisalmer; it was our final Rajasthani jaunt before our overnight train to Delhi (actually Rewari, but that's for attempting to make late reservations on the Indian Railway system).




-Tara

Agra and the apex of the Tourist Triangle

'T' is representative for both 'Tara', and 'tourist'.
'B' is representative of both 'boy' and 'bacca' (child), one of my ten learned Hindi nouns.

B: Misses, you want picture?
T: No, no picture.
B: One picture? Yes?
T: No, no picture.
[he sits]
B: Why?
T: No picture.
B: Why?
B: Because I don't want a picture.
[long pause]
B: You have rupee?
T: No, no rupees.
B: Yes, rupees. 10 rupees.
T: No, no rupees.
B: Yes.
T: No.
B: Yes.
T: Apka naam kya hai? [What is your name?]
B: Meera naam ____ hai. Apka naam kya hai? [My name is ____. What is your name?]

I don't remember his name, nor was I armed with any other phrases to reciprocate his eagerness to indulge in Hindi yabber. I (almost) surpassed my inherent position as a tourist slot machine. Almost. Unwilling to perpetuate the bang-for-a-buck foreigner/local child relationship, I'm left eschewing the problem, snagging pictures with my meek (3.0x) zoom as I hide behind trees. Yes, in this respect, I'm very much the stereotypical tourist they've observed repeatedly and used to mold a ludicrously simple and affluent income oppurtunity.


-Tara

A note home, from India

I have seen this man in your drawing a million times in India. He, most often, is hollering madame from the street. Perhaps one time he sold beedies.

Anymore dreams of horses?

My dreams have all been fabric and bazaars and chai and masala and India, her heart: all free of good price, my shop.


Did I just pop the balloon?

I am learning to write Hindi. First the script. Writing it is smooth and intoxicating, like James when he draws.

I finished 'Running in the Family'. Sri Lanka and its dynamic elite, drunk on aristocratic local norms, a taste of the flavour of the tree that grows from the ground from which you are part.

There is a big wall between me and this India.


I am a tourist.

The Adaptation of Java: Yogyakarta drops to 'd'

In case there was any discrepancy, Java is one big rice paddy.


We've made it through our ten day island journey, all without the book that even the occasional taxi driver assumes us to possess. In Indonesia, a backpacker without a Lonely Planet suffers not the severity of one without one in India; though it still bares its teeth in consequence. While little is lost in currency, much is gained in endurance. The most loathsome backpacking routine - searching for accommodation - bites tenfold. Late this afternoon, after wandering with our backpacks for over an hour; we found ourselves shelved on a retail inlay off a three-way intersection in Bogor. I laughed hysterically while attempting to capture the perfect photograph of a machet (traffic jam), watching the circumstance reinvent itself with each signal change. Amused behind the chaos, we were eventually disrupted by thirst. Throwing our mobile life back upon our shoulders, we each threw out a hand and walked the resultant track across the rumbling road. While perhaps the simplest of feats, our frantic shuffling has been replaced with heedless confidence:


As we stood in the street post our Ramadan oriented buffet-at-your-table dinner (charged for what we ate, or what we didn't; I'm not sure) - we somehow acquired four passerbys to direct us to an internet cafe. They discussed, ad-nauseum, where one was and how to get us there. The Polisi representative in the bunch eventually waved down the appropriate bus and shuffled us on our way to 'Mardeka'. We're now here, at "De-Q" internet. This sort of thing continues to baffle me. But despite certain ease, Java has been the perfect assemblage to India. Of course, these are borders we have yet to enter; but I know I've shed at least a few skins of traveler naivete.

While often surprisingly ignored, in the right areas - the train stations, the bus stations, and depending on the city - everywhere all too often; we're flagged again and again. "Mister" seems more common than "misses", though "you like my glasses, man" has has been the most amusing attempt at a western colloquialism. But compared to India, the frequent calls are mild in comparison, and almost never holding a monetary relation. I don't mean to sound hard on India, she's an intricate and convoluted fighter with gems in tow; and this is her allure, her offering.

As for the modernizing Indonesia: she is a country with an exponentially growing gap between generations, with the youth generation plummeting forward alongside her development. She is turning hard. This gap is only accentuated during this month of Ramadan (a muslim holiday where nothing can pass the lips - food, drink, cigarettes - from morning until evening prayer). Sitting on the third floor balcony of an air-con western shopopolis fifteen minutes before the designated time to feast; the deck is splattered with teenagers drinking frappucinos on dates; girl's with hair free from the muslim head scarves sold meagerly on the first floor. Ridiculous melodramas bombard the television and the superficial guitar-pop is perpetuating an adolescent niche. Contemporary advertising challenges the Muslim regard of femininity. High-class cafe's fight against Starbucks, blocks from a river where children frolic naked in a litter saturated river. It's this dichotomy that grounds Asia as it flirts with the ideas of the west.


En route from Bandung to Puncak, we spoke with a local traveling to Bogor to study English. In between tutoring us on our Bahasa, he spoke of having traveling to various country's for the sake of discovery, as well as his plans to visit friends in Australia whom he met while in Bali. Splintering away from the ideals of the Indonesian working class twenty years ago; the concept of world travel is becoming accesible in a way that was previously unfathomable.

Puncak:



Yogya:


I found Yogyakarta (now predominantly Jodjakarata, the contemporary phonetic adaptation) to be the most effervescent of our destinations. Rotating with a carefree air, every part of the streets became a social fairground by night. There were also people skateboarding...in Asia.

As the most prominent tourist point on Java, Yogya is the layover point between the capital of Jakarta and Bali's magnetic pull to the east. It boasts two of Java's most acclaimed historical landmarks - The Prambanan (a group of ancient Hindu temples) and the Borobodur (the largest Buddhist temple in Asia). Yet, it also holds a reticent realization for its defiled tourism.


The Pramabanan Temple:


The Sultan's Palace, once a prominent tourist attraction in the heart of Yogya, is now mostly a disheveled collection of rocks woven through an array of kampungs (villages). It appears as though the earthquake of 2006 hit it hard, and there has been little incentive to rehabilitate its then already deteriorating structure. When my sister visited 15 years ago, its pools and moats were filled with water. Now a lady invites you to crawl behind her house as she sweeps, where you can look at the drained pools by pulling yourself up a wall. The museum is closed, and the foregrounds bare signs for shops that cease to exist.

Remains at the peak of the Sultan's Palace:


For Indonesia, this tourist abandonment is already reversing the economy. Both the government of New Zealand and Canada mark the country as a 'High Risk' travel destination. Backpacker's are scarce, and the streets that once met their demand bare boarded up shops and closed doors. While certain areas of Indonesia are in political strife (Banda Aceh, etc.), the main island of Java is abandoned from fearful disregard. And from what I've seen, oh so wrongfully so.

-Tara

Jakarta International Scholastic Nostalgia

Apparently, I really wanted to go to Cilandak.


I established this as I started tearing outside the Cilandak huts, twelve years after moving away from Jakarta.

Cilandak is the middle/high school campus of JIS (Jakarta International School). When I began Grade 1 at Pattimura (the elementary campus) in 1991, Cilandak housed grades 5-12. By the time I reached 4th Grade, they knocked that up to Grade 6. Halfway through my grade 5 year, we moved back to Canada. Needless to say, I never got to go to Cilandak.


For an ex-pat kid in Jakarta, this was like the loss of the San Francisco dream.

While missing 'home' was a popular hobby in Jakarta (my sister and I had a song: "snow, the white stuff/that comes from the sky/I'll probably never see it 'till the day I die") - integrating back into the Canadian public school system lacked a certain lustre. Field trips into bat caves were disdainfully exchanged for standing immobile in -30 degree weather and drawing on my shoes during banal teachings. I was a year ahead, which was compensated for by being left in the back of the classroom with a Grade 6 math textbook to forever subsist on long division. The cartoon on the student drawn classroom yearbook of my grade 5 year in Canada had a bubble above my head reading "I like to talk about Jakarta." Shortly thereafter, I gave up alluding to my long lost forlorn land in the east.

So we headed back into this hyperbole of history.

The Pattimura Tree:


To my surprise, Pattimura was a world that very comfortably took its bow. Considering the majority of my time in Jakarta was spent at that school, in our air-con home, or in the Blue Bird air-con luxury bus ride that connected the two...it was merely more than walking through a collection of recess histories. In second grade, this meant assuming I was a Terminator as I walked down the stairs without bending my knees. In third grade, crawling across the field to agitate the formal soccer arena. This irritated people, which my friends and I took as a performance reward. Playing airplane on the swings was my favourite Pattimura pastime, in which I was nominated to make the pre-departure flight announcements (familiarized from frequent travel to Singapore). This was followed by high speed gain, and spinning to twist the chains (turbulence). My (oh so) praised moments of inner reflection generally took place while blurring my vision behind the nets that separated the walkway from the four-square games. Elementary level psychotropicalia.

Behind the optical-illusion four-square net:


They took out the fish pond and put in a pool, and replaced the gymnasium with an indoor cafeteria. Unfortunately, this steeply impedes watching flies assassinate themselves in the fluorescent lights, another lunch hour past time. The 2nd grade curriculum still covers healthy eating while focusing on the importance of a good breakfast, though Orange Bird is no longer the representative. Standing and talking to a new 2nd grade teacher in my old 2nd grade classroom, I remembered that it was the same room I did a frog jump with a pencil in my sock. I still have a piece of (artificial) lead in my leg. The paper towel dispenser in the classroom is still intact. It reads "paper towel."


Then Cilandak, where being an adolescent expat in Indonesia greets you at the gates.



Wandering the campus omnisciently reinstated my realization that most of the kids aren't really cognitive that they're living in Indonesia. The expat student demographic tends to stay confined between home and school, and so the campus becomes its own incubated society. The new FBI style security at the entrance (full with vehicle bomb check) dismisses any lingering cultural integration that had existed in the nineties. You're sheltered from adolescent pop culture, and while such vacancies are retrieved on home leave, there is both a purity and a naivete to the student life. But to them, as it was to us, Jakarta is merely a world of maids and backyard pools, of bleaching vegetables and spraying for mosquitos, of shopping at the Duty Free store for homeland imports, and of lice checks and TB tests.


It was a sterile world. But the visions once seen through windows linger and mature; carried intangible in a suitcase until you return.

-Tara

Jakarta, all amiss astray

We're in Jakarta.


Adam Air took us here, which - despite my dream about a propeller plane flying under a bridge and crashing - got us onto the Indonesian capital, unscathed. As the Best Budget Airline in Asia (Winner: 2006), their neon yellow and orange attire puts the retro uniforms of A&W to shame. And they serve a fluffy maple bun that Tim Horton's would be jealous of.

Stepping off the plane onto the polished brown brick tile of the Sukarno-Hatta terminal cordially met my memory. The terminal hasn't changed, though the 7 foot Malboro man finally climbed down from lassoing on his high horse. The habit of running to immigration proved unnecessary, though I'm unsure whether to attribute this to a more efficient bureaucracy or the 30 odd people on our flight. The immigration officer inquired three times if I was visiting anyone on Jalan Jaksa, a dedicated skepticism I later decided was linked to how the old backpacker's street has gained a reputation for prostitution. While too late, I think I won him over when I signed off with 'Terima Kasih' (Thank You).


The taksi trip from the airport was reminiscent of returning from home leave to embark on another school year at JIS (Jakarta International School). Riding through rows of billboards on a smooth rolling freeway, it seemed we were en route to our house in Kemang, which would welcome us with the heavy air of the summer-annual pesticide spray. Shortly after establishing that the road had sunken below its bordering rice patties, the gridlock began. Ahhh, yes - Jakarta. The density of the traffic left the smaller cars to initiate a third lane while the risk of high-speed collisions virtually evaporated. Although we didn't see any chicken's working through the garbage plot pecking order, the 'sidewalks' housed familiar abodes/retailers - clothes drying in the far room and snacks clothes-pinned to string at the front.


Two days in, the most fascinating difference has been the development of the 'Kusus/ Bus Way', an air-con city-link transit system with its own private lane. More retro-uniformed employees guard the doors and monitor capacity as the buses travel between designated stations and actual terminals. Apparently, the latest governor Sutiyuso instigated the development of this system in 2004. It's precisely the kind of thing that makes me realize Jakarta in 2007 is very much a different Jakarta than that of the mid-90's.


As a kid, being in public was like being thrown into the spotlight. While I was under the rather protective "western-daughter-in-foreign-third-world-country" wing of my parents, taking the streets at all was an occurrence that came few and far between. Regardless, it seemed ubiquitous for the locals to shower us with awe as they scampered over to try and pinch our cheeks. Metro Minis were the only real option for mass transport, which essentially are big mini-buses that run on a flag-em-down, hop-on/hop-off scenario. While they still scuttle into the tributary roads that the Khusus/Bus Way can't beat, the road system is more akin to home than the crown jewel of traffic chaos, India.

Inside a Metro Mini:


Throwing our old air-con chauffeur morals to the dirt, we let frugality call to the most primal of JKT-travel options. We rode the three-legged bajais that have about as much torque as a child's Power Wheels, though they still fight in the mass struggle. Upon finally riding a Metro Mini, I broke apart my age long myth: the man who hangs out the back door isn't the last rider squishing in, but the dexterous runner who collects the rupiah. Running through the bus or hanging with one hand from the back door, he's a true busser - sliding from person to person, from the door to the street to the other door, jingling coins in his hand to make those who haven't paid speak up, though his multi-tasking memory has it recorded regardless. While these buses still run strong, the emerging middle class is rapidly paying off the bilingual, marquee station-announcing, Bus Way.

The Monas, the capital monument built to signify Indonesian Independence:


This emerging middle class just didn't exist before. While Jakarta is still obviously over populated and rampendly accessorized with garbage; poverty is scarce. All the personal vehicles (of which there are many) seem to have been produced in the last decade, while strictly adhering to a 1-of-3 colour model.

Evidently, this has to do with the 'Krismon' (monetary crisis), which demolished the rapidly developing middle class in the late nineties. This began when the Thai Baht's value slid and proceeded to float (no longer monitored by the government) in 1996. As the most powerful currency and the economic powerhouse of the SE Asian core, it pulled the Rinngit (Malaysia) and the Rupiah (Indonesia) down with it. Considering Indonesia's already sensitive political state, the economic crisis left the country in upheaval. As the banks closed, those with money bought what they could, and money became something that didn't want to be advertised. Riots broke out and the city remained in anarchist mayhem for months as the long standing regime of Suharto was overthrown. In conjunction with the Bali bombings of 2003 and an array of overblown earthquakes, Jakarta is left relatively uninhabited in terms of tourism; though its probably safer than it's ever been.

The side street between our hotel and Jalan Jaksa:


While my Indian travel tendencies have left me skeptical of everything and driven me to ignore all shouts from the street, peoples genuine outlook and amiable approach to travelers continues to leave me with a precious smirk. This is a world where a foreign mind and body can traipse in flip-flops through traffic and streets, explore the system and fall back on the nets of the people that know it.

YVR to Singapore

Selemat Datang:


I'm in Singapore . Sing-a-pura. We got here via the wings of Singapore Airlines:


I have engaged in a course called "Transform Yourself", teaching me how to succeed and integrate myself into the developing Sinaporean market while developing confidence in interpersonal skills*. Here is my icebreaker shot:


YVR was a slumber of a time. After being queried as to whether or not I was traveling with the fellow sleeping on the bench in front of me, I established that the airport really does keep tabs on its terminal inhabitants. This lad from Belgium was on night two: "do you have a boarding pass for a connected flights?" No. Denied: further terminal access.


Also: the benches at YVR are some sort of hyper-balance phenomenon. At about 2 am someone deployed their tired sleeping body to accompany me on the other side, and every movement began to feel like a car hitting a rumble strip. The planet, as existent within the boundaries of this bench, were shaking.

The airport awoke at 4 am, with the first scheduled flight was at 6. I have always fantasized that airports were one of the places that are perpetually in effect, denying the routines of night/day. But hibernate away half their functioning from 1-4 am. Departures are partially governed by the timezone in which they disembark. But sure, drop me into Delhi at 2 am. That's fine.

As for the air: Singapore Airlines is still the top of the food chain in terms of international airlines. Once the carts get to the end of the row, they've instantaneously transported themselves to the other side to serve something else. They provide hot towels and more orange juice than you can handle. Yes, free alcohol. 12 years later, the safety video still preaches that in case of oxygen shortage in the cabin "attend to yourself first, THEN THE CHILD." The audio program housed Neon Bible and Sound of Silver in their full-length integrity. Yes, it is a fanciful little bubble in the sky that brainwashes you from the reality you are about to endure, if you're going to India. But...I was going to Singapore.


Via...Tokyo. I knew it was Japan because the bathrooms had marble floors and the giftshop had Sanrio everything. There were also kimonos, and things priced in Yen. The terminal was adorned with inaccessible glass rooms hosting post-modern architecture and Zen gardens.


But now I'm in Singapore, and it's so...easy. Considering this is Asia, I was mesmerized at the flawless efficiency with which we reached a street to which I could barely dictate the name. Airport shuttle: $7; Taxi: $20; Taxi-Limo; $35. As I was not staying at The Hyatt, The Marriott or the Raffles Hotel, the airport shuttle was not an option. So we got into the taxi queue, and at 130 km/h, we paid $19.40 to reach out destination. And so we checked into a hostel with the functionality of an HI.

Singapore is a perplexing amalgamation of parts. It holds the appearance of Asia: open sewers, grass that grows like ferns, scuttling cockroaches with yellow headbands, no bullshit retailers (see: 'You Need It' convenience). But then it has: no people, no litter, no poverty; and unbelievably functional and immaculate infrastructure.

Me and the Merlion in the Lion City:


We spent the day walking the city and returning to our old haunts (my sister and I used to fly here once a month for orthodontics). These consisted of: the Hyatt Regency, Sunny's Bookshop, Dunkin' Donuts, McDonalds, and the Aloha Dental Clinic; all of which were confined to about three blocks. It took a good hour and a half to get to this upper-class shopping mecca on foot, in which we covered about fifty percent of Singapore. 12 years in the future, and the Dunkin' Donuts was replaced with a 7-11 and the McDonald's with a Burger King. They also filled our secret swimming cave in the gardens of the Hyatt with plants. We paid too much for dinner in the name of history, though I'm still calling Pete's Place one of the best Italian restaurants I know. Transit took us back, on a bus with a 'no durian' sign. Ah yes, another Asian paradigm.


-Tara

*This information is included in comedic defense of the photograph.

A First Commute

You need to be at the airport by 7:30 am. Situated in East Vancouver at Commercial/Broadway at 6:00 am (Pacific Standard Time), you have to make three connections before arriving at the airport: skytrain, bus, bus.

The SkyTrain leaves King George at 6:08 am, arriving at Broadway (your station) 30 minutes later. You ride the SkyTrain for 9 minutes, where you disembark at Burrard and immediately catch a bus to Airport Station. This bus takes 15 minutes. You wait at Airport Station for 9 minutes when your last bus arrives and takes you to the airport terminal in 7 minutes, flat.

Does this necessitate sleeping at the airport?

Fly Mordecai, Fly

So, I suppose this is a departure. A call to arms, a random dispersion, a duck crossing the street in front of a car. I'm leaving, to go, go go - and that's it I guess.

Will this be a post of musical concoctions? I don't even really know anymore. I don't know how much I am going to have to say about things like that. My iPod is synched, and this is it. 8 months. No new music, essentially. Though I'll still fork out $1 US for an album to some British import pirating his way through an entreprenuership in Phnom Penh - sure. You take what you can get.

What hurts a little:

a) Yesayer , and the lack there of:
I have tried almost daily to see if this leaked onto my favourite BitTorrent, but it hasn't. I have '2080' and 'Sunrise', which are enough to calm my mind with their benevolent energy, and 'Final Path' for icing on the cake - but, ah(!) - All Hour's Cymbals will have to wait.

b) if Radiohead plays Canada:
Working on an album to come in 2007, and now 2008. Yes, we all know what that means: tour. Radiohead, 2003. That's all I have to say. If such a situation rearises and I happen to be overseas, I might think something like "hey, this is like when Ravi Shankar played Calgary when I was in India."

c) My stereo system is in a storage room.
So, everything stacks nicely before the slant in the ceiling, but...I am now, only, headphones. For acceptance: Low, because Drums and Guns should be had on headphones.

d) On a certain Saturday night.
Animal Collective is playing in Vancouver the night I fly out. Yes - I'll be wading over the International Dateline as Avey Tare spastically pours all over the Commodore. That's kind of great, I suppose.

Oh, and considering that music will soon stop being spoon fed to me by my own personal laptop; this just became a travel blog.

A travel blog: listen to me be erratic and explorative and enlightened and naive, here on these pages of ones and zeros. This is the ether.

-Tara

Azeda Booth; remembering suburbia

They live where cars die:


In a land of mirrored houses and empty roads; sitting by a pond at the end of the train line listening to ( ) can reprieve isolation. This is The Lonesome Crowded West, though there it is said with more shrewd callings and less sensationalism.

I lived in Calgary for eight years, and it started with snow. Like perpetual dusk, it is a season that takes the city and what it possesses and builds it to become something torpid and molecular. Beneath packed snow and the c-train tracks that run like arteries to her residential buroughs, the city often buzzes only notches above hibernation. Through blue light and the fear of becoming completely latent, it fights, for six months or more, through wasted space and desolate fairgrounds.

During my time as an inhabitant, Calgary housed a stuffy scene. It was tightly woven as it punched like a relentless business agenda, locking itself from innovation with its linear punk ideals. But a week ago, I trekked to my local tavern in my two-year home of Victoria to find something that shattered this stigma.

The group accountable was Calgary's Azeda Booth, and they altered the air of the room like a cell phone signal sparked by a gas tank. It was as though they had resurrected the dirt [the gravel, the salt] I had shuffled my feet over again and again. Reassembling that which had left me jaded, I was convinced: they've survived nuclear winter; they've seen it, they know.

Though their EP, Mysterious Body, is composed of tracks that date back to when the band was only Jordon and Morgan; these recorded songs have grown live into their current six member incarnation.

Jordon's erratic falsetto held the nucleus, embellished by a web of members rotating instruments as they fused bewildering and elastic heroics. It was not post-anything, with the hearse heading to one climactic destination; but a collective of people in a snowstorm, drift struck and sincere.

There is something to them that is sordid, and so pungently serious; yet they build a force that is empowering and as strong as their unanimous trust. So much so, they may structure an isle of bells and drumsticks in the audience as an offering, and may I suggest to take up the oppurtunity.

Fusing nostalgia for a place I abandoned from exhaustion, maybe too easily; they reamained and caught fire. Oh, Azeda - you made it. Now we wait in a poised penchant for you to record.

Azeda Booth - Dead Girls
[MySpace]

In summer 2008, may they reach the island.

-Tara

Miracle Fortress and the Alberta wild rose

Cottan candy and benevolent whimsy in a pretty parcel of pink:


I digress: Grande Prairie, visiting my last living grandparent hours away from the town where my father grew up. This city is the prime exemplification of Alberta's boom (and eventual bust): suburbia is gaining like an epidemic, and every waitress at dinner walked in and got the serving job most people spend a year handing out menus in a pretty dress to obtain. Despite the canola fields and bolstering blue skies, I'm left thinking:

"Oh, gluttonous, material Alberta. You're the Canada that makes me want to celebrate July 1st parading inebriated around the streets among red leafs and white caps."

But on that day I was still on the Island in a dark mini theater, simplifying myself to a plethora of fuschia illusions over the music of Miracle Fortress. The notebook reports:

Purple-pink resonation in feet and tentacles (the sea).
Oh, how you dispose of opulent beauty and replace it with fists of bloom.
Oh, you frigid, flowering mass;
Sugar-coated synthesis, pay your pension to the pedal.

Yes, I have degenerated myself to an array of blissful summer effigies through the sonic semblance of Miracle Fortress. Generated by the mastermind Graham Van Pelt (also of the Toronto band Think About Life) it appears his debut solo album Five Roses wraps the nostalgia of being a kid, swimming in lollipop sugar and flying; all at the same time.

Miracle Fortress - Maybe Lately
Miracle Fortress - Hold Your Secrets to Your Heart

If anyone can disclose the very acute allusion in Maybe Lately to a very distinct Beach Boys melody line, you're one step further up the ladder than me on your Wilsonism's.

[MySpace]

I leave my Oma's tomorrow afternoon and return to the Island, and I have yet to be graced by a prairie thunder shower. One more sleep on the deck in hope.

-Tara

Neu! Trans Am

May the internet drown the world with exposure.


Just a few months ago, I was thinking that Trans Am's Sex Change was a tasty little mercury groove, rolling its metallic lustre through crevasses and pipelines while driving with what felt like a perfectly balanced miniscus. This was Thrill Jockey, the electronic psych-in-my-synthesizer label of the nineties, circa 2006.

Well, here's to balancing musical vectors with historical embarkation.

Expanding on my relatively short lived Kraut rock awareness spearheaded by my fascination with Can's Ege Bamyasi , I went on to discover Neu!. While the boy's post-Kraftwerk self-titled debut flies between gleaming smooth swiftness and a vicious dose of plexi-disassembly, the opening track may have well been "4,738 Regrets" 35 years later. Considering that amounts to 13 years at one regret a day, I wonder who they were mimicking in 1994. Signs point to Tortoise .


Neu! - Hallogallo [from Neu! , 1972]
Trans Am - 4,738 Regrets [from Sex Change , 2006]

As for Lieber Honig, the last song on Neu!, 1972 - it could be Kria Brekkan as a man, a few jaded steps left from of completely angelic.

I'm losing face.

-Tara

Yeasayer Ease the Move East

Yes, I'm abandoning this little island town in a few silver flecks beyond the three month mark.

WTF? Oh, definitely.

Thankfully, to bridge my headspace between East and West, Yeasayer have come along with works of resplendent harmonizing, an oasis heavy glow, and a galloping army of majestic strength.

They also gave hats off to Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn in their band influences.

Their songs are both delicate and purposeful, graceful and sturdy. By the end of 2080, it sounds like they've convinced all the kids in the kampung that singing along is more fun than riding three to a bicycle. I say snake eyes.

Yeasayer - 2080
Yeasayer - Final Path

The album is being released on NY label Monitor, the same label that put out Indian Jewelry's album last year, which hexed me in a similar manner. So far, the release date is TBA circa the fall, meaning it will presumably come out subsequent to my flight across the great blue ocean. At least they have hot towelettes on the airplane.

[MySpace]

-Tara

Steve Reich vs. LCD Soundsystem

I spent a lot of time in resorts as a kid. During my weakest moments of socialization, my mother would scan the pool to find a child to satisfy my distraction for the forthcoming days; meaning any kid my age (plus or minus three years) whom was yet to be befriended. After that it was imminent enrollment in the crafts club; stuck inside the vortex of the kid’s Club Med nightmare, powerless to escape, making lady bugs out of paper.

But I should be empathetic - her naivete is no worse than me comparing Steve Reich to LCD Soundsystem . I realize these two songs merely share one shallow characteristic: stacatto piano cycles. Don’t try to shoot me down with the vocal approaches - I know choral coos and willfull proclamations are not one in the same.

Yet, somehow "You Are Whoever Your Thoughts Are" had me reminiscing about “All My Friends”.

LCD Soundsystem - All My Friends
[website]

Steve Reich - You Are Wherever Your Thoughts Are
[website]

So in defense of Reich: he is fleeting with the same urgency as the composer's of the Baroque era, working instead with a haunting and persisting minimalism that is steadily detering a soft and quiescent electronic apocolypse.

And LCD? The romance of hedonism traveling a metropolis with a heavy head of accusations. "North American Scum” clearly is the post-modern response to Bowie's "Young Americans."

If this were a mash-up, it would start with Reich at 3:40. But I'm still stuck on which song is snow falling on cedars and which is the settling of nuclear fallout.

-Tara