Six Month Stickies # 14

September 01, 2014

As usual the tracks of music that got stuck in my head in the last six months, in order.* Click image to download a ZIP of the compilation:

Geinoh Yamashirogumi – AKIRA Soundtrack

Keneda
Requim

I first saw Akira when I was a little boy and had no idea what I was getting myself into. Looking back, I can see how strongly it affected the artistic trajectory of my life. I was so deeply unnerved by the bizarre, terrifying, internally consistent, surreal imagery, music and story. I had no idea what was going on, it seemed like everything made sense, just not to me. I would spend the rest of my life addicted to that feeling. The feeling of being in over my head, into the unfamiliar logic of a mystifying, awe inspiring, alternate reality. It made the Disney movies that came out when I was a kid seem so patronizingly tame, and embarrassingly childish by comparison.

Akira set me on the path to all my favorite films and television shows like Ghost in the shell, Angels Egg, Evangelion, Aeon Flux, Eraser Head, Twin Peaks and others. The unnerving surrealism of these works have dissolved with my adult understanding of story telling and film making technique, and have been replaced with a respect and appreciation for the intelligent design and inspiration, that is required to pull off these abstract, expressionistic works.

Akira was my launching off point, and still this many years later, I can’t begin to understand how someone could compose this music. It seems like it would come fully formed out of some craggy, volcanic, underwater vent.

The ending refrain in Requiem, when the choir reassuringly calls out to Akira to sleep, still sends chills up my spine.

Led Zeppelin

Stairway to Heaven
When the Levee Breaks

I don’t think I need to explain why someone would get a Zeppelin song stuck in their head.

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds

God is in the House

I thought I had done a thorough survey of Nick Cave’s catalog. So I don’t know how I managed to miss this album. I randomly came across God is in the House, and was immediately addicted. I have such a soft spot for secular religious music.

Well-meaning little therapists
Goose-stepping twelve-stepping Tetotalitarianists
The tipsy, the reeling and the drop down pissed
We got no time for that stuff here
Zero crime and no fear
We’ve bred all our kittens white
So you can see them in the night
And at night we’re on our knees
As quiet as a mouse
Since the word got out
From the North down to the South
For no-one’s left in doubt
There’s no fear about
If we all hold hands and very quietly shout
Hallelujah
God is in the house
God is in the house
Oh I wish He would come out
God is in the house

Hallelujah

The tears are welling in my eyes again
I need twenty big buckets to catch them in
Twenty pretty girls to carry them down
Twenty deep holes to bury them in