yesterday i had an impulse to listen to The Boy With the Arab Strap. i wasted words putting it down. it's just right for summer, like ice tinkling in a glass, then the glass sweats a little and you're listenening to Seymour Stein, then you're crunching ice on Dirty Dream #2, then you're a bit tight (faux anglais) on The Boy With the Arab Strap dancing wildly on the verandah to the sound of cicadas (the influence of L. Alder). i don't know if it's the production B & S decided upon, but the effect of this record is subtler than previous stuff, and Fold Your Hands Child You Walk Like A Peasant puts it in context: the way a watercolor with the color practically washed out stands out next to a rich oil painting. it's the way stinging tears seem inappropriate in gorgeous summer weather - golden sand grains stuck between your toes and light reflecting off the ocean - until you start to wonder what it was all about. but all that is a dream. i'm in a darkened room with the curtain drawn against the glaring sun. LC got the words to 2cv a bit wrong at the concert. i can't imagine a London sun being cruel though, nothing like here. when things happen for the first time they're more likely to surprise you in an obvious way; Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister seem right for that, but strings and crescendos seem right for driving in the pouring rain, for when your mental life is separate and your actions are subdued. for a man to like children, does he have to be a paedophile? maybe the combination of zippers and children sounds unusual, but it's out of context. unless everyone is smirking again as they're writing, or it's just a easy hook in a campaign against tenderness. a woman with child-bearing hips and a man who can be tender without being a sop, how out-of-fashion! a while back mouche wrote: Just a brief note to leap to the defence of Electronic Renaissance. It gorgeous! The synthesizers sort of sound like... smiles breaking out all over the place. I love that. D'you know Synthstrument by Lou Barlow? It's that kind of sound. Lovely kodakcolor sunshine. sorry to go on about this again, but it was exciting to read this cos i think i hear the part he's talking about in the same way. imagine time-lapse photography of flowers blooming to that sound. yours, youn +----------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the undead Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "tech-heads and students" +-+ +-+ "the cardie wearing biscuit nibbling belle & sebastian list" +-+ +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "peculiarly deranged fanbase" "frighteningly named +-+ +-+ Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +----------------------------------------------------------------------+