I Know You Know

I get sent quite a lot of emails from bands and artists who want me to listen to and write about their music and I just don't have the time or the energy to do that. Most of the emails get deleted. I remember seeing a documentary about John Peel and at one point he opens the boot of his car which is full of cassettes with letters and photocopied sheets attached to them, jiffy bags full of people's dreams. I'm not comparing myself to John Peel I hasten to add but the problem is the same even if the method of delivery has changed (and the quantity- I'm sure Peel got far more unsolicited tapes than I get emails). 

Occasionally an email gets me at the right moment for whatever reason and I follow through with it. Last week my inbox got a message from a Portland, Oregon group called Lore City about their forthcoming album Participation Mystique. This is I Know You Know, thumping drums, a swirl of FX, a drone underpinning it all and a declamatory vocal, half sung, half chanted. It sounds like the soundtrack to a ritual, dark psychedelia with some heavy historical weight attached to it.  

I replied to Lore City (Laura and Eric) and they emailed back, glad 'the sounds are resonating' with me, adding that whenever you (they) send an email 'into the void, it's always nice when the void writes back'. We tend to think of the internet as a place for communication and information but it's just as easily a void, a vast empty space with millions of people talking to themselves. Sending your music out via email to unknown recipients and blogging are both exercises in throwing words out into the void, in the hope that someone might respond. 

I Am The One is slower and slightly less intense than I Know You Know but no lesser for it- piano, atmosphere and drums and Laura's voice calling from somewhere else. Lore City's album, Participation Mystique, is out on Friday. You can get it here in various formats. 

There now follows a short break in transmission from Bagging Area towers. It looks like we picked the right week to get away to a different part of the country. See you at the end of the week.