Mixtape: Skyscape
According to my account information, I created my Twitter handle on March 16, 2009. I had been leaving short album reviews as status updates in my Google Chat window and my roommate at the time said, "These would be great on Twitter!"
For the next 15 years, I'd not only find an online community of like minded music nerds but also journalists, chefs, activists, musicians, theologians, pop culture junkies and whatnot — even an archeologist — who liked and supported my work and bad band puns… and I theirs. There were up-and-coming music journalists who I found really smart and, as a result, I gave some now-published authors their first major byline. And, not for nothing, I made real-life friends there. For as messy as Twitter could be, it held at least some of the promise of the internet: To expand horizons… and start dumb debates when we were bored or needed a distraction from the hell that the world can sometimes be.
So, yeah, I'm a little bummed that it's time to leave Twitter. But you really can't put too much of yourself into a corporation — or a politician, or a platform, or a system — because the capitalist endgame will never align with the people who made them worthwhile. Bleak! But a lesson learned the hard way. That's why I moved this newsletter off Substack and left Spotify — I didn't think it would accomplish much in the short term (both seem to be doing just fine without me), but it just doesn't feel good, to me, to be in spaces that not only allow but actively encourage harm.
What a weird form of grief! Is there an essay about the parallels and contrasts between social media expats and exvangelicals, yet?
None of this a judgement on those in stay in those spaces. Truly. I don't care. But my sanity and creative energy needs to be put to better use. I haven't decided if I'm totally gonna delete the Twitter account — the archivist within screams — but I won't be active there anymore. I signed up for Bluesky, mostly to maintain my long-running handle (named for this Don Cherry track), but pretty meh about starting another social media journey.
Be excellent to each other. —Lars Gotrich
Side 1, Track 1: Julia Sabra, "Skyscape"
Let's try a new feature. I make these mixtapes with themes and dynamics in mind, but there's always a song that I want you to hear first. So lemme tell you why.
Pain can make beauty. Not exclusively, of course — that toxic way of thinking not only warps our sense of artistic process but the person at the center of the work. But it is, for instance, how we got "Amazing Grace" and someone like Aretha Franklin to sing the hell out of it.
Julia Sabra's "Skyscape" breathes light through thin sheets. You hear its tender touch in a fingerpicked chord progression that doesn't shift, but somehow drifts through the memory of someone lost. Images of frozen skin, a river and a crystalline hand take us both into and out of the past and present, as Sabra — in a vocal performance that will melt your heart — dreams of what should have been.
Julia, a member of the Lebanese dream-pop trio Postcards and one-half of Snakeskin, says that "Skyscape" was inspired by a visual prompt: Genesis Baez's Skyscape. “All I could see was the shroud used to wrap the dead with, as it was the beginning of the war on Gaza. The song reimagines a gentler, more dignified goodbye to the dead.”
You don't really need to know what the song's about to know that it is beautiful, but if you look away, you’ll miss the edges of creation.
Stream the Viking's Choice mixtape via BNDCMPR. Follow my Bandcamp collection. Tracklist below:
Julia Sabra, "Skyscape"
Sade Adu, "Young Lion"
The Sewerheads, "Memories"
Al-Qasar (feat. Mamani Keita & Cheick Tidian Seck), "Promises"
FACS, "Wish Defense"
Thirdface, "Sour"
Prevention, "Culture"
Don Cherry & Ed Blackwell, "Total Vibration (Part 2)"
Saba Alizadeh, "Plain of the free"
Michael Ranta, "Seven Pieces for Three Percussionists: 5"
Feral Light, "Shattered and Broken at the Base of Time, Part I"
Jules Reidy, "Every Day There's a Sunset"
Roberta Michel, "Angélica Negrón: Hush"
David Lord, "Sessile Earth Star"
Markgraf, "Burg Windeck"
Hibushibire, "Snow Sniffing Matador"
Hexen House, "The Hag"
Mugger, "Candy Apple Baseball"
Maria Teriaeva, "What is to be Done?"
Michaela Antalová & Adrian Myhr, "Dolu Ovce Dolinami"
ML Wah (feat. Wednesday Knudsen(, "Living Space"
Aga Ujma, "345"
Cleo Sol, "Fear When You Fly"
NEXCYIA, "Things Fall Apart"