When we bought our house nearly 20 years ago, Fremont was Seattle’s funkiest neighborhood, famous for housing artists who couldn’t afford Capitol Hill. Ballard was known for fishing boats and elderly Norwegians. Our house was in the awkward space between those neighborhoods, an area affectionately known as Frelard. We assured ourselves that we really lived in Fremont. But even then, things were starting to change, and we joked that in 20 years we’d be trying to convince people that our house was actually in Ballard.
When I started researching my upcoming trip to Norway, I was surprised how many Nobel laureates in literature came from that small country. Why three of them had lived in the small town of Lillehammer!
Then I remembered why Norway might be over-represented on that list. I still like to read the literature of a county I’m about to visit, so I put books by Ibsen and Hamsun on hold at the library.
I started writing this post back in November, then it got buried in my drafts. Anyway, it wasn’t all this week, but I liked Groza, Jo Quail, Violet Cold, The Kronk Men, and lots of Southeast Asian Post-Rock.
Groza
I discovered Groza’s Unified in Void in a review on Angry Metal Guy, which linked them to Mgla, which I like. I liked Groza, too. So here it is.
Jo Quail
On Exsolve, Jo Quail plays creepy cello. Need I say more?
Violet Cold
Wait what? I saw Violet Cold on a music blog, where they were described as Azerbaijan-based post-everything. Post is my musical catnip and I’m a sucker for unusual origins. Then I went to their bandcamp page where they were described as
Violet Cold is an experimental AI simulated music project from 40°22’37.7″N 49°50’51.6″E
Is this some kind of vocaloid scenario? Probably it’s just a smart-ass bio, but either way, I like how k0smik sounds.
The Kronk Men
So I’m always interested in bands from places I’ve traveled. So when No Clean Singing broke their rule to feature The Kronk Men‘s doom surf chaos from the high desert of central Oregon (read the middle of nowhere outside of Bend) I was defenseless. Bonus for the Bosch/Dali type cover art.
Southeast Asian Post-Rock
I’m breaking my own rules here. Instead of focusing on an album, I discovered a genre. Or more properly a scene? Anyway Bandcamp Daily does these wonderful genre histories and scene summaries. I liked everything I heard in their list of Southeast Asian Post-Rock. For the sake of symmetry, though, I’ll just post the first band mentioned, Pandelic from Myanmar.
When I went to China with my daughter, I researched everything to the last detail. I found the Castle Boutique Hotel, which doesn’t have its own English-language web site, on review sites like TripAdvisor and Agoda. It was one of the hotels that I could book with points from my travel rewards card, so we could stay there for the full 10 days paying for only 2 of them outright.
The hotel is located on the grounds of the old governor’s mansion in the German Concession neighborhood, surrounded by lovely, quiet gardens. All of the reviews were adamant that you should insist on a room in the front overlooking the gardens.
I don’t remember now if I tried to do so or not, but we ended up in a room at the back, overlooking the neighbors’ back yards. I’m so glad we did. It offered us an oddly intimate view of everyday life in a country where it can be very difficult for tourists to meet locals.
Every morning we woke up and peered out our window overlooking the routines of the family next door. An older couple watched their granddaughter during the day. The grandmother hung laundry and the grandfather gardened while the little girl rode her tricycle around the yard.
I felt like a voyeur who had been caught when one day they noticed us watching them from above. But they were good-natured about it and waved hello. After that, every morning we woke up and peered out our window overlooking the family next door and waved good morning.
Every year the Pacific Northwest Ballet School performs a story ballet on the McCaw Hall stage as part of the Family Matinee Series. They rotate through three ballets. I’ve already seen and written about Hansel & Gretel and Snow White. This year I finally got to see Pinocchio.
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