I’m too busy on Lanzarote doing nothing in all its different aspects instead of sitting down and write down any more words with the small exception of these ones – I do fall silent for a while, good little Zen exercise, ha! Words interfere with action, words interfere with silence, and I’m too obsessed with silence and action on this island’s remote places than to melt time away with the fabric of thinking in words. So, now being officially invited to two, three exciting „cave concerts“, expecting to meet some handsome shadows from the past, and just being smashed by nice waves at Famara, under the sky blue sky (love that Wilco album!), I take a seat at Las Bajas (waiting for my second cafe con leche), and here it is, the program of my „nighthawk ego“.
The first two hours will lead you to the mountains of Gran Paradiso, to new and forthcoming albums of ECM and Hubro in large numbers, with some surprising „space music“ in between. Outer Space Brass Music, don’t laugh. The third hour will be dedicated to Brian Eno’s four classic song albums of the ’70s. Eno is smart. His is the kind of smartness that can trip itself up through overthinking, or make for art whose interest is mainly formal or „functional“. But he dodged that bullet thanks to his other great obsession, which is giving up his conscious mind’s control. Surrender is the secret code of a breathing system.
And, well, Brian has never been praised enough for finding heartbreaking melodies – the only reason a bunch of his songs became no evergreens is this one: they never hit the charts. The fourth and fifth hour will open up for the time travel department. There will be long passages of three albums played in a row in hour no. four. There will be tracks of three other albums played in special combination within the two parts of hour no. five. There are some good reasons to make Jon Balke’s forthcoming album part of these time travels: his second SIWAN project, out on Nov. 3rd, has a different line-up, but it is so good that you don’t even miss the presence of Jon Hassell!