bespoke

[hands cold, liver warm]

I don't know who sent it and the compilation doesn't appear to have a name, although on my CD text display the title may be ;OTHER LANG;. My CD player is taunting me again. I'll call it after one of the tracks, Painbirds. Although if the owner wants me to change that then pm me.

So how do you review a CD without spoiling the surprise for the people who will listen to it in the future? I don't know but, by George, I'm going to go for it in the ponciest way I now how, by making up a story.

To my ears, this compilation is a metaphor of internal redemption for a man adrift on an uninhabited island. He is alone, his boat gone. The first half of the compilation swings between hope and fear as he learns to survive on the island beaches, hoping for rescuers to come, hoping that somebody knows he is missing. This paradise has become a prison, the bright sun offering false warmth, the sand only a shallow relief. Everything he has reminds him of what he is missing, his Junk Shop Clothes a souvenir of his relationship with an Oxfam volunteer. The magical, mysterious Simian beetles that run from his fire every night act to remind the man of his fondness for his collection of old fab four records, which are probably now in the window of an Oxfam shop.

The cries of the circling Pain Birds echo through the man's head, every chirp is a knife through whatever has become of his heart. Their migration through the sky only exposes how motionless the man is, how unable he is to save himself. The man starts to lose his mind but his salvation emerges from his self-awareness. He knows that no Ohio River Boat will save him, there are only fowl quacks of disappointment. The man decides to leave the quiet melancholy of the golden beach and enters the jungle, with all its darkness and noise. Interestingly the change in mood of the compilation is beckoned by Low, perhaps a nod to the Bowie album of the same name where instrumental playfulness comes to the fore on the second side.

The man knows that there is no safety in the jungle, there is no way out. The dense vegetation, full of invisible life, produces plays of light, flashes of filtered sun highlighting blocked paths and dead ends. The beeps and burps of the living forest emerge musically, acting as both a comfort and a threat to the listener. The man, exhausted and thirsty, experiences illusions of the life he once took for granted. Disembodied voices of distant loved ones, "Get me another tie, get me another shirt", bounce between the man and his soggy jungle grave. He dies about 2 minutes from the end of the last track. Poor sod.

Ace compilation. Really enjoyed it.

And I think the first song contains the lyric "I look towards Floyd's knob"