As I know it, the art of recording is so much time travel. Superfuzz pedals, soul samples, every old Fender sold - all of these are sepia tinting tools, machines to explore the fourth dimension. It's all a little sickening at times, but when it works, the audience is exposed to a hall of mirrors, cultural reflexivity - a kind of sonic intertextuality.
Lee Fields and the Expressions - Honey Dove - 2002
The thing about this kind of time travel is that it's not like you get to go into the past wholesale. It's more like you send a container back into the past and hope someone puts something in it. The surreal possibility of sending something into the unknown and receiving possibly cursed magic in return; of converting yourself into a cargo cult.
William Gibson - Hinterlands - Burning Chrome
http://www.voidspace.org.uk/
Bit of a head twister of a read. The sheer unadulterated raw dreamstuff of genius. Burning Chrome is still my favourite collection of short stories ever.
There's the fine line between inspiration/evocation and straight up cogging. Still, it's not as joyless as Wolfmother.
The Black Keys - Things Ain't Like They Used To Be - 2008
Then, of course, there's shameless beautiful tourism. Charmingly, I've seen this referred to as "brownsploitation". Maybe we need a poll, but I, for one, am down with that.
Dan the Automator and DJ Shadow - My Guru - 1999
The album is called Bombay the Hard Way: Guns, Cars and Sitars. I need a copy for the lounge I will one day set up, or alternately, just to help arrange the mishmash that is the 21st century Indian head. Any Indian born in the twentieth century lives partly in Kalyanji-Anandji land, the effect of endless replays of Bacchan movies, movies with Inspectors in them, black rotary phones, garlanded photos on the wall and beautiful chunky suspense music. Just a thin layer of fuzz away.
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