Discreet Music by Brian Eno 1975 I remember exactly how this record came into my life. Unlike other important records, it did not come during some late-night study session, algorithmic recommendation or YouTube sidebar hopping spree. I don't return to this often, but when I do I'm reminded why this hour-long gem has lodged itself into my psyche. Brian Eno was the first ambient composer that I discovered, and I was immediately pulled into the strange and beautiful worlds that seemed baked into the music. I was, up until this point, interested in finding music that discarded genre and form as I knew it (just pop music, basically). I was drawn to bands like A Place to Bury Strangers with their supernova-like, ear-crushing loudness that wouldn't sound too out of place on an airport tarmac, experimental artists like Dreamcrusher who are about as abrasive as one can get and Lightning Bolt , who sound like pushing a marching band down a flight of stairs. My ide...
I've been trying to avoid the checklists of vacations. The "36 hours in XYZ" approach to a new city that feels so intrinsic to how I've approached traveling in the past. I landed in San Francisco late on Thursday evening (Halloween 🎃) without a semblance of a plan for the next 6 or so days. My great-aunt lives about an hour outside of the city in Concord, so I took the BART directly from the airport on the Antioch line straight to her. I always forget the specific layout of her home; the ways that the rooms flow into one another and how the backyard unfolds into the valley. I had barely walked in with two unruly bags of clothes before I heard "Conor what's your guess?" Kathy (the homeowner since 1984) asks me before I can put my bags down."How many trick or treater's do you think we're getting tonight? We've been tallying them every year since 2003." It was around 7:30pm; that sweet spot where only a few groups of kids were begin...