Today's DailyOM Offerings...
April 4, 2012
…Until We Felt Red
Kaki King
2007
An innovative musician who started playing guitar at age four, Kaki King was just 27 when she recorded her third album …Until We Felt Red, her dazzling mastery of fret-tapping harmonics, lap steel slides, and innovative tuning indicate a true guitar prodigy. Post-rock auteur John McEntire (Tortoise, the Sea and Cake) produced Red, bringing a wide range of moods and slowly churning instrumental peaks of flugelhorn, mbira, drums, bass, shakers, and cello, and, in another changeup from King's past albums, her own unique vocals.
As King's music prior to Red was mostly instrumental, it's surprising her voice has child-ghost currency, as on the resonant shoe-gaze overlap of "Yellowcake" or the drifting "Jessica": "When the milk tasted like perfume / You had been drinking from the carton / And I knew," she sings, with guitars slowly climbing up the octaves as a backward lead goes pulsing underneath and kalimba dotting the edges like a finishing touch from a master pointillist. Fluttery octave climbs, backward guitar, and excellent dynamics make it all go down like a late afternoon dream of beautiful ghosts fading in the gray of the setting sun.
While her vocals are always intriguing, it's in the instrumental pieces where King is most dexterous. (She’s an in-demand collaborator for everyone from Carter Burwell, with whom she worked on soundtracks for the Twilight films, and Tegan and Sara. And on tracks like "Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers" she shows a feminine perspective on guitar. That she can also churn out grinding jazz-fusion licks (as on the postbuild release of "I Never Said I Loved You") shows off her time drumming and jamming with a host of other bands while coming up in the world. She can blow your mind as one of the boys then steal your heart by showing you her private childhood world. …Until We Felt Red is a place you can live in and find balance, a great union of right brain feminine emotion and left brain jazz fusion mathematics, a dark and warm world where your cool new friend has control via your ears and a mastery of her chosen axe.
April 4, 2012
Innovative Exploration
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
You may find it easier than usual to tap into your innovative brainpower today, whether you are addressing a complicated project at work or simply taking care of your everyday duties at home. A resourceful mood can compel you to look for clever or creative solutions to tricky dilemmas, even if you have always responded to predicaments in a certain way in the past. You can use your quick-witted tendencies to your advantage by analyzing the choices put before you with a bright, thoughtful eye. If you consider your work as well as your play imaginatively today, new methods of undertaking your usual obligations may come into your mind, enabling you to increase your productivity, efficiency, and creativity both domestically and professionally.
When we are willing to explore alternate routes of attaining our objectives, we can discover the best methods of moving forward. Whether we are searching for efficiency or creativity, the answers we seek can be found in our innovative minds. To approach a quandary with cleverness and an open mind is to invite the inner wisdom that typically lies dormant to take part in the goal-realization process. We discover that we are intellectually and emotionally flexible when we commit to investigating all the avenues open to us, however far-fetched they may seem. Our progressive attitude toward accomplishment can enhance both our personal and career-related affairs. When you think outside the box today, no problem will be outside the reach of your grasp.
April 4, 2012
Starting New
A Moment of Choice
We can choose to start over in this very moment, there is no need to wait for a new year or a new month or a new week.
There are times in our lives that lend themselves to starting something new. The beginning of a new year, finishing school, leaving a job, or changing homes-these all are times that turn our minds to fresh starts. Their advantage is that they bring with them the energy of that event, creating a tide of change around them that we can ride to our next shoreline. But we can choose to start anew anytime. In any moment we can decide that a bad day or a relationship that’s gotten off on the wrong foot can be started again. It is a mental shift that allows us to clean the slate and approach anything with fresh eyes, and we can make that choice at any time.
Starting new is most powerful when we focus our attention to what we are choosing to create. Giving all of our attention to the unwanted aspects of our lives allows what we resist to persist. We need to remember to leave enough room in the process of new beginnings to be kind to ourselves, because it takes time to become accustomed to anything new, no matter how much we like it. There is no need to get down on ourselves if we don’t reach our new goals instantly. Instead, we acknowledge the forward motion and choose to reset and start again, knowing that with each choice we learn, grow, and move forward.
Making the choice to start anew has its own energy-it’s a promise made to you. The forward momentum creates a sort of vacuum behind it, pulling toward you all you need to help you continue moving in your chosen direction. Once the journey has begun, it may take unexpected turns, but it never really ends. Like cycles in nature, there are periods of obvious growth and periods of dormancy that signal a time of waiting for the right moment to burst forth. Each time we choose to start anew we dedicate ourselves to becoming the best we are able to be.
…Until We Felt Red
Kaki King
2007
An innovative musician who started playing guitar at age four, Kaki King was just 27 when she recorded her third album …Until We Felt Red, her dazzling mastery of fret-tapping harmonics, lap steel slides, and innovative tuning indicate a true guitar prodigy. Post-rock auteur John McEntire (Tortoise, the Sea and Cake) produced Red, bringing a wide range of moods and slowly churning instrumental peaks of flugelhorn, mbira, drums, bass, shakers, and cello, and, in another changeup from King's past albums, her own unique vocals.
As King's music prior to Red was mostly instrumental, it's surprising her voice has child-ghost currency, as on the resonant shoe-gaze overlap of "Yellowcake" or the drifting "Jessica": "When the milk tasted like perfume / You had been drinking from the carton / And I knew," she sings, with guitars slowly climbing up the octaves as a backward lead goes pulsing underneath and kalimba dotting the edges like a finishing touch from a master pointillist. Fluttery octave climbs, backward guitar, and excellent dynamics make it all go down like a late afternoon dream of beautiful ghosts fading in the gray of the setting sun.
While her vocals are always intriguing, it's in the instrumental pieces where King is most dexterous. (She’s an in-demand collaborator for everyone from Carter Burwell, with whom she worked on soundtracks for the Twilight films, and Tegan and Sara. And on tracks like "Gay Sons of Lesbian Mothers" she shows a feminine perspective on guitar. That she can also churn out grinding jazz-fusion licks (as on the postbuild release of "I Never Said I Loved You") shows off her time drumming and jamming with a host of other bands while coming up in the world. She can blow your mind as one of the boys then steal your heart by showing you her private childhood world. …Until We Felt Red is a place you can live in and find balance, a great union of right brain feminine emotion and left brain jazz fusion mathematics, a dark and warm world where your cool new friend has control via your ears and a mastery of her chosen axe.
April 4, 2012
Innovative Exploration
Sagittarius Daily Horoscope
You may find it easier than usual to tap into your innovative brainpower today, whether you are addressing a complicated project at work or simply taking care of your everyday duties at home. A resourceful mood can compel you to look for clever or creative solutions to tricky dilemmas, even if you have always responded to predicaments in a certain way in the past. You can use your quick-witted tendencies to your advantage by analyzing the choices put before you with a bright, thoughtful eye. If you consider your work as well as your play imaginatively today, new methods of undertaking your usual obligations may come into your mind, enabling you to increase your productivity, efficiency, and creativity both domestically and professionally.
When we are willing to explore alternate routes of attaining our objectives, we can discover the best methods of moving forward. Whether we are searching for efficiency or creativity, the answers we seek can be found in our innovative minds. To approach a quandary with cleverness and an open mind is to invite the inner wisdom that typically lies dormant to take part in the goal-realization process. We discover that we are intellectually and emotionally flexible when we commit to investigating all the avenues open to us, however far-fetched they may seem. Our progressive attitude toward accomplishment can enhance both our personal and career-related affairs. When you think outside the box today, no problem will be outside the reach of your grasp.
April 4, 2012
Starting New
A Moment of Choice
We can choose to start over in this very moment, there is no need to wait for a new year or a new month or a new week.
There are times in our lives that lend themselves to starting something new. The beginning of a new year, finishing school, leaving a job, or changing homes-these all are times that turn our minds to fresh starts. Their advantage is that they bring with them the energy of that event, creating a tide of change around them that we can ride to our next shoreline. But we can choose to start anew anytime. In any moment we can decide that a bad day or a relationship that’s gotten off on the wrong foot can be started again. It is a mental shift that allows us to clean the slate and approach anything with fresh eyes, and we can make that choice at any time.
Starting new is most powerful when we focus our attention to what we are choosing to create. Giving all of our attention to the unwanted aspects of our lives allows what we resist to persist. We need to remember to leave enough room in the process of new beginnings to be kind to ourselves, because it takes time to become accustomed to anything new, no matter how much we like it. There is no need to get down on ourselves if we don’t reach our new goals instantly. Instead, we acknowledge the forward motion and choose to reset and start again, knowing that with each choice we learn, grow, and move forward.
Making the choice to start anew has its own energy-it’s a promise made to you. The forward momentum creates a sort of vacuum behind it, pulling toward you all you need to help you continue moving in your chosen direction. Once the journey has begun, it may take unexpected turns, but it never really ends. Like cycles in nature, there are periods of obvious growth and periods of dormancy that signal a time of waiting for the right moment to burst forth. Each time we choose to start anew we dedicate ourselves to becoming the best we are able to be.