6forty project

I recollect that, when a stripling, my first exploit in squirrel-shooting was in a grove of tall walnut-trees that shades one side of the valley. I had wandered into it at noontime, when all nature is peculiarly quiet, and was startled by the roar of my own gun, as it broke the Sabbath stillness around and was prolonged and reverberated by the angry echoes. If ever I should wish for a retreat whither I might steal from the world and its distractions, and dream quietly away the remnant of a troubled life, I know of none more promising than this little valley.

From the listless repose of the place, and the peculiar character of its inhabitants, who are descendants from the original Dutch settlers, this sequestered glen has long been known by the name of Sleepy Hollow, and its rustic lads are called the Sleepy Hollow Boys throughout all the neighboring country. A drowsy, dreamy influence seems to hang over the land, and to pervade the very atmosphere. Some say that the place was bewitched by a High German doctor, during the early days of the settlement; others, that an old Indian chief, the prophet or wizard of his tribe, held his powwows there before the country was discovered by Master Hendrick Hudson. Certain it is, the place still continues under the sway of some witching power, that holds a spell over the minds of the good people, causing them to walk in a continual reverie. They are given to all kinds of marvelous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions, and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air. The whole neighborhood abounds with local tales, haunted spots, and twilight superstitions; stars shoot and meteors glare oftener across the valley than in any other part of the country, and the nightmare, with her whole ninefold, seems to make it the favorite scene of her gambols.

Please support the bands by buying their records and going to their shows. Click on each band name for more info.

6forty on twitter     ::     6forty on facebook     ::     mike@6forty.com

Sweek – A Dead Sleeping Forest   [00:00]
Giranice – Banako Zen   [10:06]
Frank Booth – How To Breathe Fire   [19:15]
Amp – Souvenir   [26:40]
Marriages – Ten Tiny Fingers   [34:00]
Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra – Mountains Made Of Steam   [39:30]
Red Room Cinema – White Arrows   [48:46]
Canyons of Static – Drift   [57:48]
Appellative – Keys   [65:03]
The Nest Itself – From Peaks To Pittance   [70:07]
Ontario Plates – Gonzo   [73:30]
This Will Destroy You – I Believe In Your Victory   [78:25]

640.068 playlist.pdf

Washington Irving, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”  Published in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, 1820 [public domain]

Outer Banks, North Carolina. August 2012

Early mornings on the deck, looking out over the beach and water, with the sunrise on the horizon, and fine tunes in my ears – such a nice way to start each day. This set of music was compiled to remind me of those lovely days. I hope you enjoy 640.066 as much as I do. Thank you for listening!

Please support the bands by buying their merchandise and going to their shows. Click on each band name for more info.

6forty on twitter   ::   6forty on facebook   ::   mike@6forty.com

Pg.lost – Spirits Stampede    [00:00]
Administration Shock Him – II    [06:32]
Powder! Go Away – the Universe Is A Huge Black Square    [14:00]
Katerwaul – February    [19:40]
Lights At Sea – Bateau    [25:51]
Joy Wants Eternity – Dark Heart Of The King    [30:17]
Caspian – Halls Of The Summer    [37:44]
Soup – Leaving The Harbour    [42:56]
The Polar Dream – Last Day, Last Breath    [47:28]
Watered – Monochrome Nights    [53:00]
Awoke – Nova    [61:50]
I Spell It Nature – The Wind At My Back    [67:37
Near Light – In Darkness, You Were My Light    [75:00]

640.066 cover phot0 by Maria Kegg.

640.066 playlist.pdf

And still the visions unfurled. With every step her astonishment grew at the variety of places and objects the Seerkind had saved from the conflagration. The Fugue was not, as she’d anticipated, simply a collection of haunted groves and thickets. Holiness was a far more democratic condition; it informed fragments of every kind: intimate and momentous, natural and artificial. Each corner and niche had its own peculiar mode of rapture.

The circumstances of their preservation meant that most of these fragments had been torn from their context like pages from a book. Their edges were still raw with the violence of that removal, and the haphazard way they’d been thrown together, only made their disunity seem more acute. But there were compensations. The very disparity of the pieces – the way the domestic abutted the public, the commonplace the fabulous – created fresh conundrums, hints of new stories that these hitherto unconnected pages might tell.

Sometimes the journey showed them collisions of elements so unlikely they defied any attempt to synthesize them. Dogs grazing beside a tomb, from fractured lid of which rose a fountain of fire that ran like water; a window set in the ground, its curtains billowing skyward on a breeze that carried the sound of the sea. These riddles, defying her power of explanation, marked her profoundly. There was nothing here that she hadn’t seen before – dogs, tombs, windows, fire – but in this flux she found them reinvented, their magic made again before her eyes.

Please support the bands by buying their records and going to their shows. Click on each link for more info.

6forty on twitter   ::   6forty on facebook   ::   mike@6forty.com

The End of the Ocean – All That Is Will Cease    [00:00]
Red Room Cinema – we Raise Our Eyes Between The Walls of Glass and Steel    [06:16]
Líam – V    [10:06]
The Orchid – Vernacular    [18:42]
MinionTV – Rockets Don’t Need Fuel    [26:05]
Killington Fall – Ghost Rockets    [31:11]
Alpha Male Tea Party – My Ship Is Shipshaped    [36:05]
Cloudkicker – Making Will Mad    [42:35]
Goonies Never Say Die – Don’t Fight The Fire, Fuck The Arsonist    [48:31]
Beware Of Safety – Crooked Nails For Catching Skin    [54:30]
Eno – Archaic Pattern    [62:46]
When Whales Collide – Defying Desire    [70:53]
Nemean Lion – Destroyed; Placed In The Sky    [74:27]
This Patch of Sky – With Morning Comes Hope    [81:38]

640.064 playlist.pdf

Clive Barker, Weaveworld, Poseidon Press, 1987

Alice looked all round her at the flowers and the blades of grass, but she did not see anything that looked like the right thing to eat or drink under the circumstances. There was a large mushroom growing near her, about the same height as herself; and when she had looked under it, it occurred to her that she might as well look and see what was on the top of it.

She stretched herself up on tiptoe, and peeped over the edge of the mushroom, and her eyes immediately met those of a large caterpillar, that was sitting on the top with its arms folded, quietly smoking a long hookah, and taking not the smallest notice of her or of anything else.

Chapter V. Advice from a Caterpillar

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other for some time in silence: at last the Caterpillar took the hookah out of its mouth, and addressed her in a languid, sleepy voice.

‘Who are you?’ said the Caterpillar.

This was not an encouraging opening for the conversation. Alice replied, rather shyly, ‘I–I hardly know, sir, just at present–at least I know who I WAS when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.’

‘What do you mean by that?’ said the Caterpillar sternly. ‘Explain yourself!’

‘I can’t explain myself, I’m afraid, sir,’ said Alice, ‘because I’m not myself, you see.’

‘I don’t see,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘I’m afraid I can’t put it more clearly,’ Alice replied very politely, ‘for I can’t understand it myself to begin with; and being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing.’

‘It isn’t,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘Well, perhaps you haven’t found it so yet,’ said Alice, ‘but when you have to turn into a chrysalis–you will someday, you know–and then after that into a butterfly, I should think you’ll feel it a little queer, won’t you?’

‘Not a bit,’ said the Caterpillar.

‘Well, perhaps your feelings may be different,’ said Alice; ‘all I know is, it would feel very queer to me.’

‘You!’ said the Caterpillar contemptuously. ‘Who are you?’

Which brought them back again to the beginning of the conversation.

Please support the bands by buying their records and going to their shows. Click on each link for more info.

6forty on twitter   ::   6forty on facebook   ::   mike@6forty.com

Red Sparowes – In Every Mind   [00:00]
Collapse Under The Empire – Dragonfly   [03:06]
The Cure – M   [09:17]
Giants – O’ Tide   [12:22]
Flies Are Spies From Hell – Nerves Still Beating   [19:11]
Light – Place Without Reason   [25:54]
New Order – Truth   [31:03]
Yume Bitsu – Team Yume   [35:19]
Mohican – You Have Deep Circles   [43:40]
Slowdive – Avalyn I   [49:48]
Eyes Like Mirrors – Meadows Breathe Beneath Mountains   [54:33]
Our Ceasing Voice – Within The Nick Of Time   [60:14]
Bye Horus – Cherbourg   [67:56]
Willow – 1172   [76:35]

640.063 playlist.pdf

[Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll, Macmillan, 1865]

The man, grieved by his own conscientiousness, rummaged in his leathery bag and seized forth an iron contraption.

“Take this, free! Why? One of those houses will be struck by lightning! Without this rod, bang’. Fire and ash, roast pork and cinders!  Grab!”

The salesman released the rod. Jim did not move, But Will caught the iron and gasped.

“Boy, it’s heavy! And funny-looking. Never seen a lightning rod like this. Look, Jim!”

And Jim, at last, stretched like a cat, and turned his head. His green eyes got big and then very narrow.

The metal thing was hammered and shaped half-crescent, half-cross. Around the rim of the main rod little curlicues and doohingies had been soldered on, later. The entire surface of the rod was finely scratched and etched with strange languages, names that could tie the tongue or break the jaw, numerals that added to incomprehensible sums, pictographs of insect-animals all bristle, chaff, and claw.

“That’s Egyptian.” Jim pointed his nose at a bug soldered to the iron. “Scarab beetle.”

“So it is, boy.”

Jim squinted. “And those there — Phoenician hen tracks.”

“Right!”

“Why?” asked Jim.

“Why?” said the man. “Why the Egyptian, Arabic, Abyssinian, Choctaw? Well, what tongue does the wind talk? What nationality is a storm? What country do rains come from? What color is lightning? Where does thunder go when it dies? Boys, you got to be ready in every dialect with every shape and form to hex the St. Elmo’s fires, the balls of blue light that prowl the earth like sizzling cats. I got the only lightning rods in the world that hear, feel, know, and sass back any storm, no matter what tongue, voice, or sign. No foreign thunder so loud this rod can’t soft-talk it!”

Please support the bands by buying their records and going to their shows. Click on each link for more info.

6forty on twitter   ::   6forty on facebook   ::   mike@6forty.com

Maserati – This Is A Sight We Had One Day From The High Mountain / Show Me The Season   [00:00]
Spaces – Hadley / Edge Of Forever   [12:14]
obe – Standard Fog   [17:18]
Rumour Cubes – 1871   [23:23]
A Far Off Reason – Force de Vente   [26:47]
Ten Past Seven – Johnstons Cows   [32:57]
Marriages – White Shape   [40:06]
Wiltz – Ice Cream Cake (Revisited)   [43:52]
Do Not Be Surprised What Is Happening – We Love You, Termi…   [49:24]
Tuber – Attack From Mars   [53:45]
Terraformer – Crusade   [60:13]
Meniscus – 130   [64:02]
Chiaroscuro – Silent Snow   [70:40]
Joy Wants Eternity – Shut Your Eyes And You’ll burst Into Flames   [75:36]

640.062 playlist.pdf

Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes, Simon & Schuster, 1962