If everybody in the world were like me, the professional world would basically be grinding to a halt for the next couple of hours because we would all be rocking back and forth at our desk jobs where we can’t listen to music, pulling at our hair, itching to get home so we can finally listen to this cool thing we just heard about on the internet. Much to my narcissistic chagrin (and, apparently, my mother’s delight) I am the only me, so the world will probably keep on spinning. However, that doesn’t mean other people might not also feel lead to shirk their professional responsibilities once they feel the gentle warmth of the knowledge bomb I’m about to drop.
Check it, nerds: a Greek music blog called Soundeyet has released a free compilation based on J.G. Ballard’s excellent short story “The Enormous Space,” and I am so far beyond stoked I’m coming around for a second pass. Though it is literally all Greek to me, and in spite of Google Translate’s constant attempts to further defamiliarize the English language, I can at least say for sure that the blog covers a wide range of interesting music, some of which will be familiar to TMT readers. For example, recent posts cover Alan Licht’s Four Years Older (TMT Review) and Urpf Lanze’s Procession of Talking Mirrors (Chocolate Grinder). The compilation itself boasts contributions from Andrew Pekler, Call Back the Giants, Locust, Marcia Bassett, and several others, all of whom provide music that seeks either to soundtrack a particular scene in Ballard’s story, or highlight the mood or atmosphere (check out the tracklisting below for a complete list of contributors.)
Regardless of whether you listen to this comp or not (though, if you don’t, you can consider this burgeoning internet friendship OVER), Ballard’s 1989 story is worth your time to an almost comical degree (Soundeyet posted a Scribd link if you’ve not yet had the pleasure of making the story’s acquaintance). It describes the personal dystopia of a recently divorced man who cuts himself off from the world by permanently holing up in his home, and it does what Ballard does best, by taking an interesting, if simple, premise to darkly surreal ends.
The Enormous Space tracklisting:
01. Expo ‘70, “Primitive Crystallized Hemisphere”
02. Mordant Music, “Martinique or Mauritius”
03. Locust, “Carpenter’s Interlude”
04. Alastair Galbraith, “A View To Endless Black”
05. Decimus, “The Letter Slot Rattles”
06. Troy Schafer, “Untitled”
07. Tom Carter & Barry Weisblat, “The Enormous Space”
08. Bridget Hayden, “Shipwrecked”
09. Call Back The Giants, “Cat Trap”
10. Migraine Inducers, “Sunset Gun / Smashed Milk”
11. Marcia Bassett, “The Enormous Space”
12. Andrew Pekler, “Sustain”
• Soundeyet: http://soundeyet.blogspot.gr
• J.G. Ballard: http://www.jgballard.ca
More about: Andrew Pekler, Call Back the Giants, Decimus, Marcia Bassett, Tom Carter
