listen | pale hoarse

The snow came back today after a few days tease of April (sickening name), and nobody blinked at it much. Of course it was coming. And it had a sound to it, the righting of the season, like the churchglory molargrind of a cello on the low-end. Do you know that sound I mean? The sound of a grizzly bear ziplining a piano chord with its fingernails. Sunlight through a funeral tree. That same sinister harmony, that deep cello worry, it warbles sick off the meth-cracked lips of Kim Pierce and Kyle Ranson who are Pale Hoarse from San Francisco, and it vibrates the teeth in their country gums same as it has my speakers all winter morning.

Their long gone handmade record is The Gospels and it's all lost religion and murder ballads and dead Christmas highway sounds. Does such a sound make any sense in San Francisco? Are there gutworn hilltop cow barns there on the Marin side? Are their roofs busted out? Hell. Look at January turning me cross-eyed and shameless. Let's get right.

Pale Hoarse plays the Maya Hayuk opening at Gallery 16 in San Francisco February 5. Here are two songs with one name.

DOWNLOAD: Pale Hoarse - Untitled [MP3]
DOWNLOAD: Pale Hoarse - Untitled [MP3]

+ DOWNLOAD: Pale Hoarse - Darkness Has Taken Over Me [MP3]

watch | sweetgrass

we saw sweetgrass together at the film forum tuesday. kalen, jeff, me. it was dull as anything you ever saw. no kidding. very boring. but i'm telling you, what an inviting stretch of boredom. no reaction shots or symphonies to screw your lazy thoughts up or stop your head from shaking or your mouth from hanging open at the magic light. i mean light like you wouldn't believe. and shot on film in montana's sweetest summer hours with hardly any talking or explanations. it's 2:24 am now and my eyes are switching over to dreams. one second i am typing and the next i am rolling hard middle eastern fabrics into tubes. i will delete this in the morning, but i mean every word. definitely see sweetgrass. they made it for you to think on, these anthropologists from harvard. you'll see. read it from jeff. he says it clear.

look | the hubble ultra deep field

apparently this 11.3 day exposure shows 10,000 galaxies. just eyeballing it i'd guess more like 350. but who am i to count? i am nobody. this is about five years old i guess, but new to me. just look at it. not much else to do.

look | katy mcleod's vintage slide collection

newly minted falconer katy mcleod never fails to inspire and then explode my mind with all of her uninventable sidejobs and curiosities. she is the anthropological taxidermist granddaughter of the golden age of airplanes. a fish builder, a longshoreman-slang-slinger and a two-time tarantula-owner. shall i go on? here is her new website, on which she invites you to look down her microscope for a closer look at psychedelic insects. voila.

look | benny and devi by devi and benny

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look | 3rd aspen arts festival, 1977

another minor miracle from expired amateur photographer nick dewolf, whose ever-growing archive project continues to provide some of the internet's tenderest surprises. i hope that doesn't make you uncomfortable.

+ thanks to jtk for inspiring the james blackshaw soundtrack

watch | orouni

good morning and welcome to the year ten, one of the world's most promising times so far. forgive my past few weeks of silence. i was tied up in a baby caper, i won a three-day/four-night getaway to central missouri from this fun-filled website that will be a big hit with fans of clip art, i got kicked out of winter science camp for not being a teenager (don't ask, still mad) and i volunteered twice at my favorite old home. last night i dreamed about a platonic shower with three of my flickr contacts. between the four of us, we could have clothed a young bear with our pubic hair. dense. i woke up to find out that our old friend orouni from the unreachably distant land of france has created a new video using claymation and music. it is above, so i imagine that you have already watched it. you love it. happy new year.