music | Nate East

red brick chimneys and pigeon colored roofs

I put together a top ten albums of 2009 list a couple weeks ago for the “customer favorites” at Aquarius Records, and thought I might at as well share it on here too:

Favorites of 2009:
Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough
Girls – Album
DOOM – Born Like This
Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer
Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem
The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart – S/T
The Horrors – Primary Colours
Wavves – Wavves
Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Other 2009 records I really really liked:
ducktails – backyard
grand lake – nevermint EP and louise EP
true widow – true widow
sun araw – heavy deeds
deerhunter – rainwater cassette exchange
sun 0))) – monoliths and dimensions
raekwon – only built for cuban linx… pt. II
xeno and oaklander – sentinelle
bill callahan – sometimes i wish we were an eagle
blank dogs – under and under

Word. Other news: recently started a book by Sam Shepard; more on that later; also been spending lotsa time still looking at photos/art online, which led me to re-visit one of my favorite spots in SF that I actually hadn’t been to in months and months, Needles and Pens
They’re a really great shop filled with DIY goods, interesting zines/books/journals/artwork, and even a rad gallery with monthly rotating exhibits. The folks who work there are great too, and even have carried some of my poetry zines for a while! There are still copies of ‘Serious Culture Bastards’ on the shelf, which I think I photocopied in like June… not selling too well apparently!!

Anyway, they have lots of especially good stuff now, and I had a big list of to-buy stuff including the new issue of Cometbus, the Sandy Kim photo book, and an issue of Scam, but I settled on On the Lower Frequencies, the recent book by zine-guy/writer Erick Lyle. I’ve read a number of his articles in the Chronicle and heard some NPR podcasts and am super hyped to check out the book!

In terms of writing I’ve been getting a lot done in terms of material for larger pieces, and also have some stuff in submission queues at websites/journals, so as always if you’re interested shoot me an email and I’ll forward the latest along. Bigger update soon!

Kind of Mish-Mash Update

I posted a small story here the other day, but took then took it down since I ended up using a piece of it for a submission. I’ll hear back soon though, and then I’ll throw it back up, WITH IMPROVEMENTS!

In the meantime here are some things I’ve been checking out lately:

1. Miranda July‘s short story collection. Very fun read, although I have to say that for the style of “hipster yuppie disaffected Berkeley vegan etc” fiction I probably prefer Tao Lin. Very cool nonetheless.

mirandajulynoone-720870 2. This novel by Tao Lin. It’s the second book I’ve read by him, and compared to SFAA (see previous post) it’s a lot funnier (I actually laughed out loud a couple times reading it) and also more intensely emotional. Stylistically much more like a “novel” rather than a pure transcription of Tao’s thoughts. Both are great. Check ’em out!

eeee and I’m currently reading an unbelievable short story collection by Richard Lange, which I’ll post a more in-depth thing on later, for sure. Really devastating so far. Devastating in a good way. Also working through one of Bolano’s poetry collections.