Like a face being eaten by a jungle.

Scott Walker has a new album coming out a month from now. Given how rarely he releases new music, that this is coming a mere six years after The Drift is a minor miracle. I guess he wasn’t kidding when he said he wanted to work a little faster because he’s getting older and may not live long enough to put out another album if he stuck to his once-a-decade release schedule.

Stranger still, a bona fide music video has been released for one of the songs. I hesitate to call it a “single”, because…well…it’s Scott Walker. But it does have something resembling a chorus that recurs a few times during its ten minute run-time.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say this may be the strangest music video you’ll see this year. For me, it kind of feels like a fascinating nightmare that’s not quite unsettling enough to necessitate waking up, but sometimes it almost gets there. The same can probably be said of a lot of the music Scott’s been making over the past three decades. I love how the little ukulele-driven bit at the end is the prettiest, most normal moment there’s been in any Scott Walker song in decades…and it lasts maybe ten seconds.

A lot of other music seems pretty redundant and small-minded by comparison the first little while after I’ve listened to a new album from Scott. So to say I’m looking forward to this one would be a bit of an understatement. It goes without saying that this kind of music is not for everyone. But it’s definitely for me (and I wrote about what happened to me when I got my first taste of it over here).

It even arrives before the world ends in December! Sometimes you do get to have your cheesecake and eat it too.

Making the wrong mistakes.

Still haven’t quite got my momentum back blog-wise. I am, however, in the process of capturing the recording of a song on video so I can put it up here. Finally. I thought I should make good on the threat at some point before the world ends, since they say that’s going to happen in a little less than two months now. Look out for that in a day or three, hopefully, maybe.

In the meantime, here is a random song. This one was an out-take recorded during the LOVE SONGS FOR NIHILISTS sessions. It’s really just a casual improvisation around a few chords. More of a mood than a song. And while I like the mood well enough, it never felt like album material. It’ll probably end up on another out-takes compilation at some point.

Still, I pulled it out for a listen a few days ago for the first time in a long while, and I think I like it more now than I did at the time it was recorded. It doesn’t really go anywhere, but maybe not all songs need to have clear destinations. I like that there’s no set rhythm to the thing and the drums just shuffle around and whisper in the background. The electric guitar was recorded with a very distant mic for a change. Not that you can tell with all the reverb it’s swimming in.

It might not have hurt to play around with layering more sounds to make things more interesting on a sonic level. Alas, I think that ship has sailed. I’d feel funny messing with the song this late in the game.

More soon.

Making the Wrong Mistakes