“The tape is packed with so many vivid images that the bigger picture becomes indistinct, like the recollections of a man so old and tired that the border between reality and fantasy has become porous”

The track draws inspiration from two works of literature: The title is taken from the James Salter story ‘Akhnilo’ and the falcon/falconer imagery was plucked out of Yeats’ ‘The Second Coming’.

The artwork for this one is by Erika.

You can buy Quiet, Constant Friends now the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. All tapes come with super-limited edition postcard art prints, and all profits will go to Worldreader.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Wes Tirey – Akhnilo Blues appeared first on Various Small Flames.

The art piece for this track is by the multi-talented Kat Burns, an artist, voice-over actor and musician (formerly Forest City Lovers, now KASHKA. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram.You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page, both digitally and on limited edition cassette.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Salt Altars – Little Big Man appeared first on Various Small Flames.

This drink doesn’t make me sleep
Didn’t think it would
The numbers on the clock are green
The rest of this is mud
We let off the heavy chains
But I’m not free
Til you say this life is worse without me
You must say the right thing some time.
And you know that I’ll wait up
As if though for my true love
And you know that I’ll wait up.

The artwork for this song was done by Teresa Romo from Santiago, Chile. You can follow her on Tumblr, Facebook and Instagram, and buy her lovely work on her Etsy page.

Pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now via the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. Every penny goes straight to Worldreader, so spoil yourself with a clear conscience.

P.S. If you are a fan of Lotte Kestner, let me point you in the direction of a new collection of covers she released this week. Best of: Requested Cover Songs is comprised of her take on 17 songs requested by fans, including Beck, Slowdive, Radiohead and Pink Floyd.

The post Quiet, Constant Friends: Lotte Kestner – Cattleya appeared first on Various Small Flames.

Today we are delighted to unveil ‘King of Crumbs’ by Ben Seretan. The song is taken from his album In Two, recorded as Ben Seretan & The Early in 2012, and is inspired, at least in part, by the writing of Patti Smith. As Ben explains:

“I wrote the lyrics to this song on a cocktail napkin on an airplane to Portland, Oregon after reading Patti Smith’s description of Jim Carroll in Just Kids – in writing about their romance, she describes him as a mix of Rimbaud and Parsifal, the holy fool, who in Wagner’s last opera, wanders a magical kingdom where “time becomes space.”

The track is a strange one, the instrumentation dischordant and unsettling, Seretan’s vocals delivered in a detached murmur. Things grow increasingly ominous right up to the noisy finale, where the music comes together in a clattering collision of percussion and guitars and the snarled mantra of “let slip the dogs of war”. Check out the full lyrics below and see how much of Parsifal and Patti Smith you can glean from them:

“The brass ring fell from my grip
Trip to the moon
Sleep in the daytime
Tennessee fell in the ocean
Our drugstore home under a shipwreck

Call me the fool, wander the kingdom
I broke my bow over my knee
Honey the lids, hang by the ankles
The king of crumbs biting his thumb

Let slip the dogs of war”

The artwork is by the excellent Nottingham-based artist Mouni Feddag. You can check out her work here, buy some lovely things here, or follow her on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram.You can pre-order Quiet, Constant Friends now from the Wake The Deaf Bandcamp page. Remember that the tapes comes with extremely limited edition art prints, so if you like the work of Mouni and Co. then be sure to get your order in.

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Illustrated by Joe Sumner, the book charts Wyld’s life, from hearing Aussie fishermen stories aged six to her grown adult self. From the moment her brother is brought the jaws of a bronze whaler by Father Christmas, Wyld becomes preoccupied with sharks. The captivation is not helped when she discovers a book on shark attacks and falls in love with Rodney Fox‘s “salty eyes” and look which said “the whole thing was just fine”.

Back in London Wyld finds obsession continuing, scouring the Sydenham library for shark books while plagued by a fear which makes baths difficult and forces her to sit with all appendages safely on-board the sofa. An ill-advised viewing of Jaws cements her mindset before the family return to Australia and encounter more sharks in a variety of situations (imaginary and otherwise).

What this simplification of the plot leaves out are the small details of familial life squeezed into both the writing and illustration, the astute observations and interactions from Wyld’s juvenile viewpoint which reveal what the book is really about. Wyld’s father, the pale Englishman, often cuts a lone figure, isolated in London by work and wine and in Australia by layers of clothing and high-factor sun-cream, while her mother floats with Wyld in the pool at night because “she is awake anyway”. When Wyld’s older brother begins “linger[ing] in doorways with a blank look on his face”, and returning home cut and bruised, the home is loaded with tension yet remains cryptic to Wyld, and by extension, us. Be they adolescent anxieties, genuine enduring depressions or just good old fashioned existential ennui, the emotions of the adults remain alien, unknowable and for the most part hidden, present only as dark, lingering shapes and ominous choppy wake.

Indeed, this sharks-as-emotions allegory can be extended further than sadness. From her father’s well-meaning day trip to ‘Vic Hislop’s Killer Shark Show’, to her encounter with an uncomfortably comic doctor, pretty much all of Wyld’s interactions are surrounded by the unseen forces of love and loss. Sumner’s artwork highlights this paradoxically by adding photo-realistic sharks and wounds to his otherwise simple drawings, beasts which often stalk Wyld when, consciously or otherwise, she is considering losing a loved one. Although she doesn’t quite understand it yet, she is thinking about love through its most illuminating prism – the loss of it. She is thinking about death.

While this morbid idea is true and central to the plot, it would be naive and unfair to dwell on it without noticing that, amongst it all, life not only goes on but flourishes. Wyld is never caught by the shark, nor is her brother or mother or father. She might have felt ill examining the colossal White Pointer at Vic Hislop’s museum but the next day she was braver in the sea. Our relationship with sharks is changing, with The Discovery Channel and National Geographic and the seemingly monthly event of ‘Shark Week’ beaming out pro-shark propaganda in which deep-tanned marine biologists preach education and understanding and love. Similarly, the message from Wyld seems not so much ‘LOOK OUT LIFE WANTS TO EAT YOU!’ but rather ‘life could eat you, sure, but such occurrences are exceedingly rare and even then you can poke it in the eye and escape to the hands of kind strangers who prod your guts back into your body’. In other words, learning to accept the atavistic, bone-level violence and pain as something natural, unaware and worthy of careful respect. Its strikes are few and far between, and even then, it’s nothing personal.

Everything Is Teeth is out now on Jonathan Cape/Random House.

As per usual, we’ve made you a playlist of songs that are related to the book. Nothing too subtle this time, I’m afraid, just plenty of teeth and blood sprinkled with Australians and capped off with the definitive garage-rock  anthem for sharks.

Tracklisting:

1. The Race – Oh Pep
2. Teeth – Bowerbirds
3. Drawn to the Blood – Sufjan Stevens
4. Swim – Surfer Blood
5. I Want Blood – Water Liars
6. Ocean’s Nerves – Songs:Ohia
7. Jaws of Life – Wintersleep
8. Find Me In The Ocean – Will Samson
9. Blood Song – Stupid Loser
10. Everywhere I Go Smells Like Fish – Donovan Woods
11. King Fish – Sun Kil Moon
12. Lurk Underneath – Trouble Books
13. Blood – The Middle East
14. Shark? – Shark?

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