MK Stop 44: Muttley - Back To Mine Pt.3 - Dark Days, They Make Us Believe We're Someone Else

The 50th SubVersion instalment brings a special New Year gift into circulation...

Muttley - Back To Mine Pt.3 - Dark Days, They Make Us Believe We're Someone Else

Well here it be: my opus to end 2009. The first 'Back To Mine' - "Overshadowed" - was heralded as a return to being myself. The second - "Reflections" - a home listening catch-all for mental disorders. This, in its unhurried incantation, is for putting the past behind me, revisiting, and travelling to and from my chosen occupation - painting and decorating. I've been in this job since I left school at 16, obtained an NVQ at college in two years and was the best person I could be socially. I never got in scrapes with classmates, or verbal trade-offs, however I remained very much reclusive, although this could be inherent from being there just one day a week, with a demographic of opinions lesser linked to mine in interests and moldability.

Around this period I furthered my inquisitivity for classical and ambient music, speaking to a 60-nearing friend there of his passion for opera. But it was also where I failed the medical examination for my last planned kickboxing contest. Memories are vague as it's likely I desired to forget the bad luck. I recall misery and suicidal thinking as the blackest of colouring of my anxious temperament. I had a dream the night I write this where I desired to have a rematch with the opponent to prove myself properly and that even if I couldn't be part of the gym I frequented, I would undertake it out of my family's identity. Surely, the sense of loss has stayed with me, even if I've moved on so far.

"Dark Days, They Make Us Believe We're Someone Else" is a nod to the old days briefly written, but moreover, an aid to get myself in the right mindset to guarantee I don't have ensuing problems of magnitude large or small. And I have experienced a lot of sensory congestion in recent months. Once I re-enter the car from a day of thinking on my feet, in the get-go I try to remind myself that self-questioning is vital to establishing clear sight ahead of us. No apothesis is thrown up. I'd never wish to cause a buzzing effect.

Onto the selections. "Where Are You?" I discovered via Paradigm X's excellent 15 Minutes Of Fame debut - "Vocalisms". I decided I needed a rhetorical counterpoint, and buffer, to maximise the changing of styles early in the set, and the calming of contrapuntal mental textures with the musical. The transition isn't smooth - I aimed to undercut the subsidence to a minimal drone, where synchronizing written with aural was a conduit - "How To Catch The Right Thought" (track 4) in a field of madness?

Often my thoughts maintain a pertinent aura when they are fertile and fragile, swirling in a reverie, building castles in the air. But when these buildings open fire and the gates slam down hard, I have to be ready for tides of relinquished instability.

This is what awaits us, subjectively - a well of despair and self-destruction, where our true self is disconnected from our peripheral vision, and self-doubt, disharmonic, and defective behaviour longs for spiritual manna. We have to rise above the deep mass of panic and scurry away from danger. The dark days that populate our forlorn form of consciousness are just temporary. And so I continued the mixtape with a handful of reserved niceties to buoy and balance the demonic whirlwinds of confusion.

Favourites, that have stayed with me through thick and thin, resolve the loose ends. Most notably Koen Holtkamp's "Night Swimmer", Richard Skelton's "Shore" and Mogwai's "Chocky" are emotionally poignant enough to heal the deepest of cuts; the awkward, impermanent silences where gaps are filled with sensations to cry out and scream uncontrollably. Whether an alteration in my medication will have a positive effect is yet debatable.

The last tune on this, Sigur Rós' "Viõrar Vel Til Loftárasa" I'd like to have played at my funeral. I have sat up until early hours on NYE with this serenading the room and it always sends shivers down my spine when the closing crescendo hits. I hope you have a productive 2010 and that "Dark Days, They Make Us Believe We're Someone Else" won't dim your lights, those which I hope will shine brighter towards the good in the coming echoes.

TRACKLISTING

01. Coil - Where Are You? (from the album Musik To Play In The Dark CD 2)
02. Zelienople - Slaving (from the album Gone OST)
03. Oophoi - Dimensional Passage (from the album Night Currents)
04. Hildur Gudanottir, BJ Nilsen & Stillupsteypa - How To Catch The Right Thought (from the album Second Childhood)
05. Fennesz - City Of Light (from the album Venice)
06. Milieu - Six Fourteen (from the album Brother)
07. Aphex Twin - SAW Untitled 1 (from the album Selected Ambient Works Vol.2)
08. Lawrence English & Tom Hall - Lines Twine Oscillation (from the album Euphonia)
09. Koen Holtkamp - Night Swimmer (from the album Field Rituals)
10. Obfusc - Alto Piano (from the split w/ David Tagg)
11. Atomic Skunk - Suspended Ascent (free download - www.atomicskunk.com)
12. Inverz - New Found Lands, New Found Sounds (from the album Slow)
13. Richard Skelton - Shore (from the album Marking Time)
14. Mogwai - Chocky (from the album Come On Die Young)
15. Lamenter - Kinski For Halloween (from the album Sleeping Me)
16. Inverz - Everything In Order (from the album Slow)
17. Greg Haines - Caesura (from the album Slumber Tides)
18. Mono & World's End Girlfriend - Trailer 1 (from the album Palmless Prayer: Mass Murder Refrain)
19. Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Blaise Bailey Finnegan III (excerpt) (from the album Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada)
20. Arvo Part - The Beatitudes (from the album Part)
21. Sigur Rós - Viõrar Vel Til Loftárasa (from the album Ágætis Byrjun)

Download