Old standbys « And Also This

Archive for the ‘Old standbys’ Category

March 2nd, 2011

It’s been a long time.

Winter was a sort of interminable prison sentence this year, but spring is finally doing its slidy dance into the corners of the grass plots of Brooklyn. This month I don’t have any great back stories or epic inspirations, just an old cliché: the-best-of-something-or-other. So, this mix is the Best of White Gilt.

As a very few of you may know, my good friend Shay and I hold a sporadic dance party in Greenpoint called White Gilt, which was the name of our band, but then I turned 30 and we both got very career oriented. So, why not turn it into a DJ night, which is much more mature and serious-minded? This was, we both agreed, a Good Idea. Read the rest of this entry »

The Dalek’s Dream

July 30th, 2010

Being addicted to British television has its perks. In addition to off-color sitcoms and Welsh cartoons, the BBC has a very nice way with music documentaries. Synth Britannia is a well-researched, extremely interesting piece about how a once marginalized and underground genre of music came to be the defining style of a decade. It’s difficult to imagine PBS devoting the same kind of attention and care to these acts’ American counterparts, mainly (I suppose) because production costs would far outweigh interest in the subject. Read the rest of this entry »

The Elephant Vanishes

December 13th, 2009

I stumbled upon the work of Haruki Murakami around 1997, picking up a copy of Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World at my local bookstore. I had never heard of him, but the blurb sounded interesting enough, and I had been trying to find out more about Japanese literature– the internet left something to be desired at that point as far as research went. Read the rest of this entry »

The Ceremony of Innocence

October 17th, 2009

Fall is a funny season. For me, it has the dual connotation of innocence– new school books and pencils, and of decay, the inevitable end of the warm season, and the yearly celebrations surrounding the reminder of mortality. Heavy? Kind of. Read the rest of this entry »

No serious thing; an ode to June in New York…

June 9th, 2009

Really, Rimbaud said it best, so I won’t compete. This year and every year, summer makes us all feel young again, at least for a little while. At least until Monday.
A mix for a Sunday rooftop, waiting for next week’s weekend, laughing, playing cards… Read the rest of this entry »

It's hard to say…

February 20th, 2009

Sometimes it is difficult to say what you mean, more difficult to do what you intend– intentions are slippery creatures, constantly shifting with context and emotion. I intended to be productive this winter, to come up with a sort of road map for the next few years, but I find myself at the tail end of it having done almost none of my own work, though I have so far managed not to become a casualty of the economic downturn (yet). So, instead of a road map for the next few years, I made a mix for the next few months– something that reminds me of the coming changes, something somewhat wistful, somewhat quiet. What I really want is to record it onto an old cassette tape and take off somewhere in a beat-up car, but we can’t have everything, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »

Books about fighting, and the suitcase of the past…

December 23rd, 2008

So, this is the end of the year, yet again. I am currently back in the Southlands, which make me alternately Very Happy (the excellent comforts of good food and general moody ambiance) and Very Unhappy (needing to drive everywhere and not owning my own vehicle, being held to other people’s schedules, lack of the internet). It’s strange not to have visited in an entire year. Contrary to what we may think, towns and cities are very much alive, constantly shifting and changing whether we observe them or no. Geographies are not fixed, but are a matter of pure context, rather like time. Read the rest of this entry »

Meanwhile, in the basement

November 18th, 2008

Let’s cut away from the strobe lights, neon gyrating, and glitter for a second to see what’s going on in a sweaty, ill-lit, bottle festooned basement bar down the street. Well, I’ll be hog-tied: it’s Post Punk! Read the rest of this entry »

Synth and spin

November 12th, 2008

In an attempt to up the tempo here a bit, I hereby present to you a collection of songs falling into the oft-maligned category ‘disco’. However, I am no disco fanatic, nor do I harbor false nostalgia for seventies sleaze (I wasn’t born yet). Instead, all of these lean more to early house, rap, or synth– for some reason, this particular genre is the absolute best for putting a smile on your face as you saunter down the well-pounded pavements of the Lower East Side. At least until you hit a pothole and faceplant in front of a Reena Spaulings opening. But don’t blame me. Read the rest of this entry »

A paean to youthful error, volume 1

November 7th, 2008

At a certain point in getting to know people, we all tend to pull out the ‘once upon a time’ stories. Once, when I was really drunk, once when I ate too much rank Texican food, once before I had heard of GWAR…you know. All of these temporal framings are supposed to imply that now, after we’ve gotten some perspective, we can look back at these times and laugh, or at least snort derisively.

Well, once upon a time, I was Goth. Read the rest of this entry »