What is it about smell that induces nostalgia so effectively? I often wonder about how effective a form of cinema would be which could create a fabric of smell to accompany image. A form which could effect a total recall of the 'good-times'.

I wish there were some way of capturing smell, in order to induce memories of a certain time or place. If such a device were to exist, (a small glass vacuumed bottle, with a cork stopper, which could suck in perfumes and fragrances, immortalising a period of time, a date, an event in a few cubic centimeters), I would code the olfactory present, and preserve the olfactory past, for the benefit of my olfactory future.

I find myself manufacturing this kind of nostalgia through music, something which is far less potent in conjuring that crashing feeling of 'long-lost' kitsch which smell can evoke so well. On the occasion that in the present, I am able to forecast a nostalgia: a nostalgia which will only make itself evident after a certain amount of time leaves me detached from it (childishly self-conscious, I know); I find myself faced with an overwhelming desire to code that moment with a particular album, or song. For example, Black Mirror by Arcade Fire reminds me of travelling from Newark through to central Manhattan on the train, whereas Maria by Blondie will always carry memories of childhood - sitting in the back of my father's car and driving to the beach in the evening. 

I live in perpetual fear of the day that hearing a particular song reminds me of the time when I self-consciously sought to immortalise a piece of the past in the future. It is at that precise, horrifically meta moment, that I will have failed. It is also at that precise moment, that the nature of nostalgia will have shifted.

Nonetheless, if a contraption existed for preserving smells, I would cultivate a shelf full of quaint identical bottles, all containing their own memory. They would be locked in a small room, for me to indulge in. The bottles would be labelled, not with time, or place, or even a description of the contained smell, but rather, names, or events, to which those smells pertained. 

I feel like the creepy guy from that John Fowles novel The Collector.  

Excuse me.

Pantha du Prince - Asha

I only discovered Pantha du Prince recently. Addicted to his second album This Bliss. If you have spotify check it out. He's influenced by an avant-garde musical tradition, heralded largely by Cage, based around the idea  that all sounds are music. His particular sound gives pride of place to negative space, his songs seem to drift, musical structures are held together by a relentless beat, which orders chaos. It's really beautiful stuff, and inspires me to start making my own minimal, avant-garde electronic music. Perhaps that's something to start doing over summer.

Rock the Bells

Wish I could have moved my trip to New York a couple of weeks forward. So I could have gone to this. Probably the best hip-hop festival lineup I've ever seen. Immortal Technique, A Tribe Called Quest, Jedi Mind Tricks, Lauryn Hill, Wu-Tang Clan, Ill Bill, KRS-One... wow.

Recent Acquisitions

Mos Def - Black on Both Sides

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

Sigur Ros - Með Suð í Eyrum

Astronomy

Listening to a lot of new hip hop the last few weeks - Blackstar, Braintax and Army of the Pharaohs. All good stuff.

Coney Island

"Anyways, uh let's see what else uh...uh I...It was Coney Island, they called Coney Island the playground of the world. There was no place like it... in the whole world, like Coney Island when I was a youngster. No place in the world like it. It was so fabulous, now it's shrunk down to almost nothing.You see, ahah, and uh I still remember in my mind how things used to be, and uh, y'know I feel kinda very bad. But people from all over the world came here, from all over the wor... it was the playground...they called the playground of the world, over here... anyways, uh, so...but...I...uh...y'know, I even got when I was a...when I was very small I even got lost in Coney Island... but they found me, on the... on the... on the beach. And we used to sleep on the beach here, sleep overnight, but um err, they don't do it anymore, things changed you see. They don't sleep any more on the beach"

Sleep - Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Demon Seed

The sound of summer so far...