HELL YES!
Link it up : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip
As a mix, it moves from slow-burning but intense/driven (1-3), to sprawling dirty grandeur (4-5), quietism without passivity (6-8), a darkness (9-11) pefiguring The End and Resurrection (12-13). Quite a history here...
Here is the cast of characters, in the order in which you ought to listen to them:
1 Eternity Is Here *The Gun Club* Danse Kalinda Boom
2 Coded Language *Krust (Featuring Saul Williams)* Coded Language
3 The Prophet *The Make-Up* Untouchable Sound—Live
4 Revelations *Panthers* The Trick
5 Dead Souls *Joy Division* Permanent
6 My Body Is A Cage *The Arcade Fire* Neon Bible
7 City Of Refuge [Acoustic Version] *Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds* B-Sides And Rarities Volume I
8 Be Thankful For What You've Got (orignially by Devaughn - live cover) *Yo La Tengo*
9 Death To Everyone *Bonnie "Prince" Billy* I See A Darkness
10 Share the Fall *Roni Size and Reprazent (Grooverider's RMX)*
11 I Swear *Tulipomania*
12 Back *Alpha* Come From Heaven
13 I Am The Resurrection *The Stone Roses* The Complete Stone Roses
DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip
Share the Fall- sparse and epic. Like Fitzgerald, as 'read to me' (i.e. quoted) by Deleuze:
"twilight on a deserted range, with an empty rifle in my hands and the targets down. No problem set — simply a silence with only the sound of my own breathing." The sound of a faraway, lifeless planet: it bakes during the day and it freezes at night.
Body is a Cage: Church organs, giving the grand sweep, the operatic heights, appropriate to the Declaration of Divinity.
Eternity is Here: Once started, this song begins to instantly, insistently proclaim itself. Whipcrack drums, plaintive guitars. Its insistence is almost a prosyletizing.
Death to Everyone: see the cover for a picture of the aforementioned planet.
Lyrically, this songs does this:
"Stars turn, balls burn / Coming kids are raging
Death to everyone is gonna come / And it makes hosing much more fun"
"So strap me on and raise me high / Cause buddy I'm not afraid to die
But life is long and it's tremendous / And we're glad that you're here with us".
Dead Souls- Joy Division made this song, which later was covered by NIN (on "The Crow" Soundtrack). You know what this one sounds like. It sounds like JoyDiv, so how could it not go on a mix about the Second (secular) Coming?:
Ian Curtis died by his own hand (as did Jesus- well, His Dad asked Him to die, and He consented - since He is, in a mysterious but essential fashion, His own father. He consented to His own death: that is, He is a suicide),
and the Crow character COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD to avenge wrongs done him. And what is Divine Justice if not supernaturally aided punishment of the wicked?
DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip
Back- Alpha is always slept on: I told you this already. Some fantastic male crooning here; you'd do well to check it out if you like Rufus Wainwright, or the more sedate Morrissey even. This song has a hazy quality: incense floating through a still afternoon.
But In A Barn.
A barn with a record player. And records (for sampling): old ones, very scratchy and mellowed with age.
I = Resurrection- Manchester Madchester : Woodblock like the cowbell in a Will Ferrel SNL skit. "I put my raver-sized corduroy pants on the same way you do, mate: except when I put on my pants, I make GOLD RECORDS!" (cue laugh track)
(please?).Coded Language - Man, when this one breaks, it B R E A K S out for real. Massive world consuming clattering drums. Some lyrics (By the great poet Saul Williams):
"Motherfuckers better realize, now is the time to self-actualize.
We have found evidence that hip hop's standard 85 rpm, when increased by a number of at least half the rate of it's standard, or decreased at a third of its speed, may be a determining factor in heightening consciousness.
[somehow, he is actually rapping all these words -
- believe, brudda, It Works]
Thus, in the name of:- believe, brudda, It Works]
Robeson, God's son, Hurston, Ahkenaton, Khalo, Kali, Whitman, Baldwin, Ghandi, Gibran, Shabazz, Hamer, Holiday, Davis, Coltrane, Morrison, Joplin, Gaye, Hathoway, Nostradamus, Nefertiti, Shiva, Ganesha, Yemaja, Kennedy, King, four little girls, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Marley, Cosby, Shakur, Those Still Aflamed, and the countless unnamed!"
By this point of the song, trust me, we are all aflamed. Lit up by millenia of song and millenia of thought, all compressed into (the Coded Language of) quantized drums. INTENSE.
DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip
Be Thankful- a mellow little interpretation of the ol' soul-ish/reggae-ish classic. Be Thankful that I put this on there. (You might even snap your fingers during it!) Yo La Tengo is supremely good at covers- get into it and see what I mean...
Revelations- Panthers started out super-Futurist, very much in the vain of !Nation of Ulysses!. The Kids wanted their revolution, by gum, and they were going to knock on the squares until they got one. Now, Panthers seems more gripped by the ennui of being a hipster who knows that he's a hipster, and who also knows what this means: they have become nearly paralyzed by awareness of self-awareness. But the music hasn't frozen - oh no - they have moved away from any formulaic punk and added that rad heavy stoner drone psych grind that the Kids these day like so well: more Black Sabbath and less !Nation!. It's a good mix- heavy, but still with momentum/propulsion.
DOWNLOAD : The Second (Secular) Coming.zip
DEATH TO ALL KINGS
LONG LIVE THE PRINCE OF PRINCES
LONG LIVE THE PRINCE OF PRINCES
