Bon Iver - "Woods" (this is for sampling purposes)
Last week I was invited to a friend's home for dinner. I was not the only guest, and then there was her family, there were maybe eight or nine of us altogether so we had to collect chairs. I took an office chair, spent most of the meal rolling back and forth between the dining table and a computer, playing DJ. I played the new Bon Iver EP in its entirety and I couldn't contain my excitement for "Woods", which meant I blabbed all about the song, what it is, what it's built out of. I played it loud and I smiled BIG, BIG, BIG. One of my friends laughed and kept laughing; vocoders crack her up, auto-tune cracks her up. Her husband (an incredible musician, a thoughtful man) was struggling not to. He told me that, to him, the use of vocoder and/or auto-tune auto-matically "makes the song so urban." I felt compelled to recite the lyrics to them --
I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still to slow down the time.
It was a coat-of-arms, a panoply, not like prayer but like worship -- ostentatious, but beautiful. I listened through the table sounds. I thought if I told everyone to keep going with me, to wait until the end, then they'd listen too and they'd get it. I told them it was like Prince and I was mostly kidding. I told them it was like T-Pain and I was flat-out lying. I couldn't imagine how anyone could hear this music, really hear it, and hear urban, which to me suggests at a minimum that people run rampant, that the heat you feel comes from living bodies. The landscape knows your secrets. "Woods" is the landscape. It's dead, celestial and full. It could never be alone, it's too free.
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[photograph by {the excellent} Derek Vincent]
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7 comments:
haha is this shit a joke u guys sound like bitches, a buncha lil pansy ass bitches
step foot in oaktown and ud get ur teeth knocked out. i read one ur pussies lil posts about "reflectin on my thoughts, the way i am" some bullshit. maybe you should think bout this; stop being a buncha fags u sound like a buncha lil east coast small liberal arts college koochbrushes
!!!! best comment ever
Levelle, you should start a blog, I'd read it every day. (Is this what happens when you write about T-Pain too much?)
bitch i dont listen to t-pain. fool just because i dont write with perfect punctuation perfect spelling and perfect grammar dont mean that i listen to t-pain. i appreciate good music as much as u, im sure, but u come off soundin like u got ur head WAY up ur ass with the way u write. sure its good, but i can guarantee u i aint the only one that thinks ur a douche for paraphrasin pitchfork articles
"i bulls-eyed the song's heart, i plotted each fanfare, each cry" hahahah dude ur such a douche
levelle. you're passionate. instead of calling us pansies, whatever, write WHY.
i will then post that on the main page for all to see.
here is YOUR chance to shine. be expressive.
be descriptive. what offends you?
if its too "koochbrushy" for you to actually express what you mean precisely and maybe, even just maybe, constructively, we will all understand. your comments have been no more anyways...
awaiting your response,
- lil east coast small liberal arts fag.
ok clay b, ill try to keep this as nice as i can
when i read this tyler dudes shit, it sounds like hes bringing more attention to how dope he can write and how big his vocab is rather than what hes actually writin about. ya feel me? that pisses me off
why write more and say less when u can write less and say more? tell me, what sounds more real
"i bulls-eyed the song's heart, i plotted each fanfare, each cry"
or
"i truly FELT the pain in that song"
in my opinion, when u leave it at that (or whatever) its like ur inviting whoevas readin into feelin it too without giving away too much. u let them experience it fo themselves
i dunno man, r my ramblins gonna stop u fools from writing like a buncha intellectuals who look down at fools like me and go "oh he must listen to t-pain, he must be uncultured"? probably not. ye i listen to hip-hop, maybe u guys should too... and not just the hiphop that pitchfork recommends. yall ever heard smif-n-wessun? bump some of "dah shinin" its a straight classic
dont assume i listen to t-pain. that fools got dolla signz in his eyez.
i try not to overanalyze what i read and what i hear. thats what bitches do, which is why they neva know what the fuck they want in life. don't be a bitch... keep it simple boyz
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