amidst the increasingly overwhelming violence enveloping the world and our minds, this recent music mix by Xhin has been a balm, a mental and emotional salve. i go out walking again in the jungle (yes, they still exist in SG) with this on noise-cancellation earphones: i can't even hear my footsteps so i feel myself rising and disappearing into the wilderness and wildness, the falling darkness and shafts of light, far away from people and closer to our monkey cousins, who always try to rob me of my water bottle.
this embrocation of a mix contains mostly ambient/classical compositions by the likes of Anna Thorvaldsdottir, some harsher noise by the pioneering Tim Hecker and Ben Frost (almost as legendary as Sunn O))) and BORIS, who are also featured), and, of course, in these times, the much-needed Ryuichi Sakamoto (坂本龍一), who is beyond legendary already. the real highlight, i think, comes towards the end, with a multilingual spoken-word layering of a Paul Bowles quote from his existential novel 'The Sheltering Sky' (1949).
the balance here, plus open-minded diversity and subtle skill in weaving together this mix, astounds. also astounding is the fact that the multi-instrumentalist Xhin is still more well-regarded in €urope than in his $ingapore. his upcoming new album, his first on his own label The Document, is going to be something special indeed, too. keep your ear to the ground, let's recover.
Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really.
fourteenth song of 2022: Xhin – "How Many More Times Will We Watch The Full Moon Rise" (mix) http://soundcloud.com/.../how-many-more-times-will-we...
