Nick Warren - Global Underground 28: Shanghai

For those of you who take your salvation in liquid form, allow me to say this: the Elixir of Life is a crystalline concoction, served over ice, often arriving in a tall cylindrical container. It can be ordered from the old man at the Guang Hua Duong ginseng house, an establishment of ill-repute in Beijing’s Xiang Do district. It has been known to exist at the club Extinction, in West Hollywood, but you must ask for it by an alias that won’t be repeated here. In Tunis, it’s used to ward off the evil eye; in San Cristobal, it’s administered by Gnostics. And Camus consumed it in the tiny Bar Le Chiropractic, in Paris’ grimy Arabic quarter, about halfway down an alley named Rue Kerouac.

Here’s what you must do if you come across it: you must cradle it. You must feel its coldness. You must consider the drink’s infinitesimal bubbles as they helix their way up, slipping past the ice as they ascend. And when the moment of inspiration arrives: drink. You will instantly feel every fiber of your body repaired, the zest of your spirit restored. You will be more refreshed than you’ve been in years.

String theory physicists have yet to explain the phenomenon. (Some of the more subversive ones have participated in it.) I happen to believe that the task of comprehending the Elixir’s nature is better undertaken by witch doctors and voodoo priests. But for someone like me -- a guy who doesn’t believe much in explication -- the Elixir is, quite simply, the sheet music to a rhythm tapped out by the liver.

This is the knowledge I impart to you.

Kindly,
Mr. Gavins

Feist - Let it Die

I stifle a chortle as I stare down. She mumbles adorably, eyes closed, lost in post-coital satisfaction. Feist, the universally-adopted antidote to human savagery, slurps softly from inside the stereo.

I pause to reflect, my jowls dripping. It's conclusive: I am the lion in the den of iniquity. Tonight, the lion's work is complete.

In the distance, a firey haze silhouettes the bridge magnificently. The haze unfolds slowly, a sustained atomic blast of orange. It perches mightily, cascading into the horizon, beautifully apocalyptic.

The inferno is looking rather prim, framed tidily in the white of my windowframe. "Neat," I think to myself. As I gaze out, I'm reclining, Buddha-like, in perfect opposition to the molten tableau.

The plucking of chintzy synth strings pulls me back. I recall something I heard somewhere -- a story about Amazonian shamans playing Feist to ward off violent spirits and cure all sorts of jungle maladies. There was another account, an article published in some anthropological journal, about Mongolian herdsmen using this strange Canadian chanteuse to calm their beasts. In fact, I can practically hear that inchoate voice, a vessel deprived of the slightest trace of vibrato, carried swiftly and coldly over the vast steppe.

Lightnin' Hopkins - Double Blues

My home is built upon 5,500 feet of superimpacted memories -- layer upon layer of sedimentary dreams and thoughts, one folded upon the other until the landscape emerges into the cold air in deeply-carved crinkles reminiscent of a discarded bedsheet.

My memories roll with the land in waves where the light casts long, dark shadows between rows of crests.

Memories... remember when we used to visit the old breakfast diner on 20th street in Denver? Eggs, bacon, hash browns and coffee -- all for less than six bucks. And I would sit there at the window and stare out at that windswept stretch of 20th, coffee steaming wide.

I remember the precise gleam of the Greyhound in autumn light as it passed, first moment's gleam of a long, lonely haul to Chicago, kicking dried leaves in its wake.

The 20th st. diner was a grimy joint, a real Lightnin' Hopkins sort of place. This was the place where arteries came to die. Ah, but what a death, child.

My landscape is mountains and dry brush; Hopkins sings of an altogether different emotional topography. His is a deep south of roads, shacks and shame that sizzles hard on the skillet.

Listen to me, son. Ol' Lightnin' is the voice of God. There is no disputing that.

Paolo Nutini - These Streets

Somewhere near the plaza, you'll see a set of crumbling stone steps. Here, the weary traveler may sit unmolested and enjoy the warm mountain sunlight. And if you visit in the autumn months, you'll see a man sitting there alone, peeling an orange. Sometimes he smokes a cigarette. He wears a straw fedora hat, brown trousers and a beat pair of sandals. His countenance – well, I’ll let you witness that for yourself. Suffice to say that I didn't believe in the saints until that moment...

There are days when the air crackles with energy. You savor that. For me, it happens in the fall, when the weather and leaves are crisp. Everything sparks at the touch. This is when I feel most alive – when the year is in the throes of death. This is when I saw him.

He too was entering the winter of his life. He’d achieved that magisterial calm, that unbreakable peace, that resignation. A distillation of decades of hardship. I stared at his wormwood hands, his fingernails splintering at the tips.

And this is what I ponder as I sit a little farther up those stairs, tucked in a desolate cafe. The old man is gone now, but I think: may we live to be as ripe, and if we do, may we be allowed to sit on the steps in peace; may we enjoy the sun as it warms our scraggly stubble and our craggy dispositions. And when the time comes, may I blow away and be forgotten, like so many brittle leaves in the season’s waning…

William Orbit - Hello Waveforms

Monday. The rain blows through Hotaling alley -- a gusty, nautical spray. If I close my eyes and add the scent of sea salt, it's easy to imagine the Transamerica has sunk into the ocean -- and I'm instead standing before an endless, sloshing field of blue.

There's something instantly refreshing about this wind-whipped coastal squall -- damn refreshing, I'd say. My senses are energized, my inner scot awakened.

As I consume this meteorological tonic, I'm thinking about William Orbit and his magical album. It's a good album. A great album. In fact, it's pretty much a masterpiece. I wouldn't say this if I didn't believe Hello Waveforms can withstand some pretty high expectations.

This is the music that I would give to Richard Bruce. This is the music that adds dimension to almost any day, regardless of season or weather. This is the music that you always suspected was being made by forest elves in some forgotten, half-lit glade. Or perhaps it was crafted deep below the ocean's surface by a school of superintelligent squid.

As I listen, it seems that the opium-induced dreams of Ulrich Schnauss have melted into caramelized memories of a carnival from my youth, played back at one-half speed.

A toast to William Orbit. The man is the acoustic equivalent of sublime.