Out there, it’s surging, it’s hot and there are a lot of languages in the air, Spanish, German, French, and English accents from England and America and probably a lot more I haven’t spotted yet – I might not recognise Czech. This is living in a popular tourist destination and warm to boot, it’s the early hours and I’m too hot sitting here. In the day I head for the shade, I never walk in the sun if I don’t have to, zigzagging in the streets as I wind my way to the record store. It depends on the time of day where the shade lies and I’m constantly crossing the road to find the dark side – Mwaahaha!

I picked up my copy of the new Blonde Redhead album today, Sit Down for Dinner (2023). It’s been a while since they made a record, their last album Barragán was released in 2014. I saw them once in Stockholm and have most of their albums, they are an intriguing art rock band with Japanese singer Kazu Makino on lead vocals and instruments and Italian twin brothers Amedeo and Simone Pace on the other instruments, forming in the New York underground scene in the early nineties. A fascinating band, it’s well worth exploring their ten albums.

I also picked up three ridiculously low-priced brand-new Cat Power CDs, Moon Pix (1998), Sun (2012), and Covers (2022). Also, The Orange Juice by, you guessed it, their third and final album from 1984. Not in the ridiculously cheap section but in the ‘oh my, how can this amazing CD be so inexpensive’ section, I picked up Holger Czukay’s Movies (1979).

Olivia was out at a Portuguese lesson, Olivia’s mum was at the art museum and the plan was to meet back at the ranch for Olivia’s mamma’s last night in town. Olivia and I met at Chico’s second-hand record store where I bought a great condition second-hand copy of Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series Vol. 14, the double, More Blood, More Tracks (2018).

Music today has been none of these things, they all go into the library and are then plucked out through the years, today it was Engineers – Always Returning (2014). It was their fourth album and first to feature Mark Peters on vocals instead of Simon Phipps – read all about it on Wikipedia. It’s a moody, shoegazery, mellow, soft electronic, piano, and guitar album with inviting rhythms and a dreamy production – and lovely melodic songs, plus it comes with an instrumental disc. Highly recommended, if you like this kind of thing.

Music Of The Daze