Today we welcome Fredrick Arnold, the face behind Future Oak Records, a producer of some of the most careful, well-crafted releases you’ll ever care to see. As the ‘About’ page on their website reads: “Future Oak is wood panelled, it smells like a dry attic. The world is a brief and unfathomable experience and thus is our music. Swaddled in art, printed by hand and born of a moment. Limited releases, lathecuts, and hand printed ephemera”.

In addition, and while we only get to see it via intermittent guest post, Fredrick also has a way with words and an array of stories to tell. I think you’ll agree he has taken the Mystery Mix to a whole new level, not least thanks to the fantastic artwork.

A L L   I S   L O S T

by Fredrick Arnold

Song you’d play during the apocalypse

Califone – 3 Legged Animals

December 20th, 2012. We had just recently moved to Pittsburgh, a brand new city with zero ties, zero history. It’s late, I’m walking to the 24 hour Sunoco gas station to buy a candy bar, contemplating the listless trajectory of my life. I pay the cashier, he says, from behind a sheet of plexiglass, “Call your mom when you get home, the world is going to end tonight”. You believe that, and this is where you’re spending your last hours? I think, curious as to why he even charged me for the King-Sized Nutrageous. The thought of surviving an apocalypse is the most horrifying thought; what a cruel joke — to toil around in the ruins of humanity with a bunch of gun-toting survivalists or mutated what-nots. No thanks. If I wake up to end days then I’m going to put on this Califone track and see to my end.

Song with an animal in the title

Bonnie Prince Billy – The Signifying Wolf

You know, when you look at an animal and they’re looking back at you with those primitive eyes that seem to look through your flesh and into your soul? I think Will Oldham sees the world with those eyes. The eyes of a wolf. He’s got some sort of primal wisdom that he croons to us, unenlightened civilization. There’s so much to be said for batting your paws in the dirt, burying your snout in wet leaves. You can see someone so much clearer when you see through them.

Song that reminds you of school

Blur – Caravan

School was essentially several long lifetimes ago. I’m old now, some sort of man. School wasn’t a good time for me, I don’t like thinking about it. Maybe it’s because I was a tortured and sensitive boy, or maybe because thinking back puts into clear focus the reality that I have failed, as an adult, to outgrow the faults of my youth. The best thing about school, though, is that Dave Quackenbush used to let me pick the music in homeroom. I would not have graduated if it wasn’t for him, for what it’s work I owe him for that piece of paper. At the time we were both really into this Blur record, so it was on heavy rotation.

Song with the most startling lyric(s)

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds – Loverman

I’ve listened to Let Love In countless times, it’s a brilliant record. Maybe the best from an artist with a catalog of bests. From one end to the next it is a tangled mess of raw emotion. There are moments of tenderness and extended periods of rage, anger and lust. As a whole, it’s hard to pick apart any moment as being more deranged than any other, however, I was driving home the other day and Loveman came on over the eternal shuffle and it hit me like a poison dagger.

It doesn’t hurt that Cave’s voice could make a Madonna song sound sinister, or that it comes after the record’s most gentle track, Nobody’s Baby Now, but the unfettered evil of Loverman stands even when stripped of context and voice. It’s easy to read the lyrics of this song like a ransom note; a threat of impending sexual aggression. Demons, monsters — the most troubling aspect is that this song is unrelentingly human.

Song that reminds you of someone special

Mississippi John Hurt – You are my Sunshine

My little sister took guitar lessons with Arthur Elliot; an old man she befriended in the Corning Dunkin’ Donuts. In an instant he became a part of our family. He died before she learned the one song he was trying to teach her, but she was really just taking the lessons as an excuse to be near him. There was a moment right before he died when all of us were together. He asked for his guitar with a voice so faint he could have been a ghost and weakly picked out a couple of verses of You are my Sunshine. My sister cried in his kitchen afterwards; he never got to play that song at my mother’s wedding.

For those of you who would prefer to listen to the mix in its entirety, here’s just the thing:

Follow Future Oak Records on Facebook and Twitter, and keep an eye on their website for news. You can find all of the entries so far in the Mystery Mini Mix series here, and be sure to check back next week for the next instalment.

The post Mystery Mini Mix: Fredrick Arnold appeared first on Various Small Flames.

With that in mind, The Mirror Trap’s ferocious sound might come as a surprise upon first listen. Blending the energy of post-hardcore with deep, ominous drums The Twilight Sad would be proud of, Moore and Co. create weighty, atmospheric anthems inspired by the contemporary world. Financial inequality, technological identity (or the lack thereof), information overload and narcosis… The Mirror Trap are concerned with all of the things which make today’s society such a strange, confusing place. Lead single ‘Piranhas’ feels like the consequence of these pressures, a furious, frustrated scream which could be read as an act of rebellion, a burning of bridges or a desperate cry for help.

We’re up to our eyeballs, in half a million problems

Piranhas come calling and tear the flesh right off us.

I woke up this morning, with three bears in my porridge,

with no good news in paper, no let up in the weather.

I live for the weekend, a bowl to put my keys in,

I hide my desires, so you wont kick me out the gang.

As part of our Quiet, Constant Friends project, we’ve been asking people to make playlists based around a book of their choice, and thought The Mirror Trap might be just the folks to continue the Lit Links series. Lead Gary Moore stepped up the the plate with a collection of tracks inspired by a work by Orwell, which seems pretty suitable considering the themes they’re concerned with. Grab your headphones and have a read below!

George Orwell’s Keep The Aspidistra Flying
by Gary Moore

For some unknown reason I avoided George Orwell for years. I think the romantic in me insisted I only read exotic novels by wayward Frenchmen or stoic Russians. Reading the work of a British man whose real name was Eric seemed unthinkable. But a brief fascination with the Spanish Civil War led me to read Homage to Catalonia and the flood gates opened, I swiftly set about reading every word Orwell had ever written.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying is perhaps my favourite Orwell novel. Set in 1930’s London this is the story of a writer rejecting the constraints of money and the “evils” of consumer capitalism, giving up his humdrum day job in advertising to peruse his artistic passions. This appealed to me as booth a burgeoning creative and as a giant lefty. Gordon Comstock, the central character of the novel, is a man with a commendable plan and outlook but is shown throughout to be flawed and shambolic, he is not a hero or a villain, and he is just unreservedly human. He drinks too much, and smokes too much, he is neurotic and distracted.

Keep The Aspidistra Flying is raw, cynical and often bleak but is ultimately a brilliant book, in both the story it tells and the somewhat prophetic points it makes. I tend to feel a little bit dirty reading it, but in a way I rather enjoy

Tracklisting:

1) Work, Work, Work (Pub, Club Sleep) – The Rakes
2) This Charming Man – The Smith
3) Atmosphere – Joy Division
4) Cigarettes & Alcohol – Oasis
5) Shot By Both Sides – Magazine
6) ifwhiteamericatoldthetruthforonedayit’sworldwouldfallapart – Manic Street Preachers
7) Is This It – The Strokes
8) Common People – Pulp
9) I Love a Man in Uniform – Gang of Four
10) Lost in the Supermarket – The Clash
11) Bitter Sweet Symphony – The Verve
12) Fake Plastic Trees – Radiohead
13) For Tomorrow – Blur
14) Rat Race – The Specials
15 What a Waster – The Libertines

Simulations will be released on the 8th July via Riverman. The band have a few festival dates lined up before an European tour this autumn with Placebo (marked with *):

Jul 09: T In The Park, Stirling, United Kingdom
Jul 31: Y Not Festival 2016, Derby, United Kingdom
Aug 19: Astro Hall, Tokyo, Japan
Aug 21: Summer Sonic Festival, Tokyo, Japan
Oct 13: Train, Aarhus, Denmark*
Oct 14: Vega Main Hall, Copenhagen, Denmark*
Oct 16: Sentrum Scene, Oslo, Norway*
Oct 18: Cirkus, Stockholm, Sweden*
Oct 20: Hartwall Arena, Helsinki, Finland*
Oct 22: Riga Arena, Riga, Latvia*
Oct 24: St Petersburg Arena, Saint Petersburg, Russian Federation*
Oct 26: Moscow Olimpiyskiy, Moscow, Russian Federation*
Oct 29: Torwar, Warsaw, Poland*
Oct 31: Barclaycard Arena, Hamburg, Germany*
Nov 02: Laxness, Cologne, Germany*

P.S. Be sure to tune in next week, where we’ll be presenting a playlist from Gary’s cat based around Exile and the Kingdom by Camus.

P.P.S. Not really.

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