What I'm Listening To, 2025.4.28
"em dee em ahh"
Jet lag is a fucking trip all on its own. I was wide awake at four this morning. I discovered a new coffee shop in my neighborhood because it’s the first one to open and I’ve never needed that feature before. I walked down to look out at Elliott Bay. The port is looking almost Covid-empty these days.
My partner and I were sitting in restaurant on the west side of the Vltava River. I think she was annoyed that I was getting distracted by all the gig posters on the wall. One great gift of travel is a glimpse into scenes that we’ll never be part of. One was for an artist called Maria Kalashnikow. They seem like the kind of euro club music that’s only possible with cheap party drugs and second-hand drum machines. Most of their tracks sound like they’d be decent bangers on a PA in a warehouse somewhere, but this track, “mdma (maria 05)” translates well to headphones. (The artist’s songs seem to all have sequential track numbers like albums in a small label catalog from the 80s.)
I don’t speak any languages other than English (competently), Spanish (incompetently), and Latin (for humor purposes only), so I don’t know what the lyrics are actually about. If there’s some sinister message or something in them, please don’t blame me. But I’d wager good money that the entire semantic content of the song can be summed up in the affectionate, swelling chorus and the synthetic hi-hats.
No one raves for the lyrics anyway.
Short column this week. I’m going to go try and convince my body that it isn’t the small hours of the morning by going to see Sinners. Because a warm, dark theater is exactly the best environment to stave off sleep.