Ô PAON masques

what a great reverence made by Geneviève Castrée to Réjean Ducharme's (the french canadian Salinger, if you want) L'avalée des avalées.

right now translated into german by the very gifted T.B. expect something unique.

listen.

buy as long as you can!

THE MICROPHONES lanterns (or: let go of everything)

listening to this, it's hard for me to connect my present life on it.

is this an irreversible step (forward)?

dear Elverum afficionado, tell me.

listen.

MOUNT EERIE i whale OR i am about to see my heart OR my heart is difficult to see, like a whale on the bottom of the ocean, but it's coming

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[The Whale] says: 'Knock knock!' from beneath
'You know it's me!
I'm your heart, I'm a whale
I'm the bottom of the deep black sea
My mouth is white and toothy'

listen.


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MOUNT EERIE do not be afraid, you will be 'in the mountains', and 'in the mountains' means 'in the world', and 'the world', though dark, will hold you

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this is the first record i got from Phil Elverum. bought at the legendary Cheap Thrills store, one year after i had been at Mount Eerie's show at Sala Rossa (in the late summer of 2004, if my memory is right).

don't know why it took me so long. don't know why i started with this obscure live-recorded split 7inch.

a couple weeks later, i got No Flashlight. still my personal fave, and a record i consider to be immensely underrated.

i totally understand if you cannot stand this song due to its 'evangelical gesture', especially if that's something you've been confronted with in your life (i haven't).


listen.


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THE MICROPHONES get off the internet

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(my cheap digicam was unable to focus on that cover)

many people hate this sincere preachy vein in Phil Elverum's work.

but, first of all, on this issue, he's right.

and, secondly, this song is too much to not be fun. Elverum knows what self-irony means.


yes, you can love The Microphones and Michael Jackson at the same time.

don't ask me why he released this 7" under the old moniker - i don't know.


listen.


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WOELV le niveau de la mer

.
Geneviève Castrée, Phil Elverum's wife.

one of my favourite visual artists - and apart from her somewhat annoying hot potato in your mouth -singing gym, a musician by her own, in and beyond the Microphones-galaxy.


listen.

listen to the b-side


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MICROPHONES where it's hotter part 1, 2 & 3

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from Phil Elverum's (at that time he wrote his name Elvrum) first 7inch release - on Up Records.

everything is already there- Phil's semi-absent, semi-haunted voice reciting some mono-dia-logues, the overwhelmingly bursting drums overlapping the coexisiting song-cluster.

i'm the adver(bjec)tising guy, you know.


listen.


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MOUNT EERIE let's get out of the romance (black)

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Phil Elverum, who used to play under the MICROPHONES moniker.

a bodhisattva or a megalomaniac sarcastic hippie? it's up to you.

the song also appears on the No Flashlight lp (the moan it's called there) - a revelation, to me.
but in a different version, this one being rawer, less controlled.

be in the dark without light. be in a relation to someone without any certitudes.


here's the 'real' Let's Get Out-song:




the black ink on the cover is as dark as can be. coal-black.
oh, and the vinyl is white. all the first Mount Eerie records had to be on white vinyl.

does it matter?
it does.


listen.


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