I just rounded up the year's best syncs that left a more demonstrable paper trail, but here are some of the other fun ones I deemed significant enough to document publicly. Enjoy:
April 2020:
So in the last 2 days I finally started listening to the latest Guided By Voices album that dropped last October only to realize, wait, GBV releases like 3 albums a year every year and the last one they released right before this madness just so happens to be called Sweating the Plague? Yup. Gets even weirder because out of absolute nowhere I found myself obsessing over the 90’s band Course of Empire, even listening to all 3 of their albums in succession while writing on Monday night only to do some digging and unearth the fact that the last unreleased song they wrote together and performed live as a close out to their final show is entitled Creatures in Quarantine. Wow.
May 2020:
Run to the corner store and throw my iPod on shuffle. The only song that comes up during this quick trip is by Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter. Come home and less than an hour later I hear my wife blaring music upstairs as she’s cooking dinner and am like, wait, is that Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter? Answer: yes. I’m used to this shit but even I was sort of jarred by that.
A few days later an old friend e-mails me about a new album he’s just put out. I read it at work but don’t have time to respond. After work I eat dinner and take a shower. As I’m coming downstairs to finally reply to this e-mail, my wife’s watching a competitive cooking show where the dish they’re trying to outdo each other with is a Hot Brown. Why is this weird? Because the original name of the exact doom/drone project my friend e-mailed me about was Hot Brown. He changed it like 15 years ago and I never knew that was an actual thing. As it turns out, neither did he and he named it that for completely different reasons when I asked. Again, I’m used to this shit but wow.
7/18/2020 –
I am for at least a week consumed with the idea that I need to listen to the Alcohol Funnycar album Time to Make the Donuts. This is honestly quite odd as it’s a disc I’d either lost or was stolen long ago and had even pulled up on YouTube a few years back, just to determine that it wasn’t super essential honestly. A decent but not exceptional mostly unknown relic of 90’s Seattle melodic angst. But again, I’m for some reason just consumed with the idea I need to listen to this thing again, which is a sensation that feels almost like a periodic rotating black cloud floating just beneath the surface of my waking consciousness.
So I finally do and am mostly of the same opinion but I also wonder, even if I wanted to throw them a few bucks to buy this to satiate my nostalgia, could I even find it anywhere? The answer to that question is apparently no, but in seeking out that answer I realized something incredibly strange, which is that AFC had just recorded their first song in 23 years back in May to draw attention to how much the music business is fucked because of COVID. I watch the thing and because all this happens at the one point in the week where I’m a bit drunk, shit makes me weep uncontrollably. I mean, it’s really good, just god does this situation suck for that industry (link to video in comments if you want to be emotionally manipulated).
The morning this happened I just so happened to be reading a section from a Colin Wilson biography about his interest in psychometry and this is def getting into some, what, psychogeographical phonomantic territory I guess? It’s fun to come up with words. Very fascinating that social distancing has sort of forced me to notice how I’m picking up on odd telepathic ripples in the recorded history of sound. As a matter of fact, last month I had this spontaneous realization that I’d unconsciously ever so slightly rewritten the end riff to Hum’s Stars in a Chapel Supremesus track while walking my dogs, which I had absolutely never noticed before. I spent a decent amount of time thinking about how funny this is stoned and then 3 days later learned they’d just surprise dropped their first album in 22 years (which is phenomenal). Just another episode.
10/8/2020 –
Just straight up one of the trippiest synchronicities I’ve ever experienced and I’m entirely used to this sort of shit. So I catch an ad on YouTube about an upcoming Mr. Bungle digital performance in Eureka, California which leads me to finally watching the whole video for that new/old song they released a few months back. I’m honestly not that into it but afterward I decide to do my typical weekly iTunes shuffle meditation/divination thing. When I do the first song that comes up is a Fantomas track, which is fascinating and just sort of par the course in its own right. I go through the typical weekly “randomized” three song meditation sesh while projecting imaginal worlds inwardly (as I’m prone to do). The 3rd and final song that comes up is Cornflake Girl with its famous refrain of “This is not real, this is not really happ-e-na-hang! You bet your life it is!”
And with that I pull myself out of the depths but while looking back at the 3 song titles in order to glean a potential deeper meaning (as I’m also prone to do), I realize the Fantomas song that played is from their first disc and entitled Book 1 Page 19. It takes me a sec to go, wait, I’m releasing the final book in a trilogy in a few months, let me go back to book 1 of that trilogy and see what’s on page 19. And with that I dig up the thing and flip to the appropriate page, read all the way to near the end of the final paragraph without seeing any huge significance until…? Good Christ, this is the ONLY place in my writing anywhere where I mention the band Mr. Bungle, as I’m quite briefly telling the story of an acid sound experiment I did after dosing at a show on their California tour with an ex-girlfriend in Columbus. The holy shit factor there is so freaking off the charts. Just jarring.
10/20-10/21/2020 –
End up working slightly late and log out with a weird compulsion to listen to the song Rave Down by Swervedriver. So I throw on that song while I’m taking a few pre-dinner bong rips, listen to only that song and head upstairs. The very next day I stumble on an article in Brooklyn Vegan about a new shoegaze-y band, that just so happens to give a 2 paragraph write up of the song Rave Down. Not the album, not the band, just that fucking song. The exact one I had a strange compulsion to listen to after work the night before. Odds of reading an article with a 2 paragraph break down of the song Rave Down (which came out in 1991) published in the year 2020? Essentially zero.
While doing my iPod shuffle divination thing later that night, the final track that comes up is a Sonic Youth track from the Destroyed Rooms B-sides album I’ve barely listened to. This is trippy because I just so happen to have listened to more Sonic Youth in the last week than I have in a while, as I’ve been trying to finally connect with both Sonic Nurse and Rather Ripped. I’ve owned those albums for years but just hadn’t put in the necessary work. Both great. But the real trippy thing is that after looking back at the song titles, I realize that the first was Philip Jose Farber by Bloodhag.
I of course then have to inquire, who is Philip Jose Farber exactly? Well, apparently a sci fi author most famous for including sexual and spiritual themes in his work. Sounds about right. Oh, and Hawkwind have a track named after one of his books, which it turns out is quite good.
October 27th, 2020 –
The iTunes shuffle divination sync storm continues. Just explaining this is baffling honestly. So the second track out of 3 that comes up while I’m in this trance is by Bomb20, who are a digital hardcore act from the 90’s. This leads my mind to wander a bit and start thinking about how just the other week I found myself browsing through the Ipecac Records Bandcamp page and how in doing so I realized there was a second Curse of the Golden Vampire album that I didn’t know existed (they’re another digital hardcore act if you’re not getting the connection). This leads me to contemplate how Robert Pollard put out a Circus Devils album on Ipecac back in the day (Sgt. Disco) and how I’ve owned that album for over a decade and listened to it like twice. What’s the next song that comes up in shuffle? A song from that EXACT FUCKING ALBUM. Odds? Roughly 32 in 22,000 or 0.0015%.
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