A pair of school friends from the rural countryside of upstate New York (near the old race track south of Lake George) have turned simple synth sounds serendipitously into an international music career.

Here’s “Don’t Move” from Phantogram‘s Nightlife EP released by barsuk records:

I’m not your nervous feeling
Each time we say goodnight
You picture buildings burning to the ground
From a basement in the street light
I’m not your drinking problem
A hole is in the sky
It’s not your heart that you’ve been thinking of,
Just the feeling like you’re gonna die

Chorus

I’m not your paranoia
When someone’s at the door
Vision fangs clawing out the throat of a body rising through the floor

I’m not your fortune teller
I’m not your spinning head
I’ll never make you uncomfortable too
This is starting to fuck with my head

All you know how to do is shake shake
Keep your body still
Keep your body still
All you do is shake shake shake
Keep your body still
Keep your body still

Don’t you realize you’re fine
Why can’t you see that you’re fine
You know that you’re still alive
You know that you’re still alive
Why don’t you know you’re alive
Don’t you know you’re alive
Buried in the sky

During times of unemployment and tough career-choices, especially in rural America, their story is an inspiration. They have managed to avoid the pressure for relocation to the big city to be discovered. Information technology not only brought easy access to information but also helped them gain fans quickly and reach a global audience. Hopefully they are not the exception but rather evidence of new rules being written.

In their music I sense a late 1980s revival of etherial melodies and lilting voices over prominent drum beats along the lines of Cocteau Twins, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Kate Bush…at the same time I can’t help but notice that Josh Carter captures perfectly the look and feel of the disenfranchised artists of late 1950s New York. Both periods are known for strong counterculture and youthful escape from the broken rules and fallen dreams of a prior generation. Interesting mashup.

James Franco plays Allen Ginsberg in Howl

Here’s the acoustic version of their single “When I’m Small”:

Lucy’s underground,
She’s got a mouth to feed
Am I underground,
Or am I in between

Lucy’s underground,
She’s got a mouse to feed
Am I underground,
Or am I in too deep

Show me love,
You’ve got your hand on the button now
Sure enough,
You’ve got your hand on the button now

Lucy’s underground,
She’s never coming back
Am I still alive,
Or has the light gone black

Take me underground,
Take me all the way
Bring me to fire,
Throw me in the flames

So show me love,
You’ve got your hands on the button now
Sure enough,
You’ve got your hand on the button now

I’d rather die,
I’d rather die,
Than to be with you

…and here’s the polished version as produced by barsuk records.

Sweden began rule over Finland in the 13th century. As the ruling monarchy adopted Christianity in the 16th century they began to attack traditions in Finland and to destroy pagan rituals, as I also wrote last year.

Not all was lost. The following video is of Jussi Huovinen who is said to be one of the only people able to sing a traditional rune of Finland that could be as old as 1000 BCE.

National Geographic explains the significance

A collection of these runes, comparable to India’s Ramayana, or the Greek Odyssey, is known in Finland as the Kalevala, and those who sing its lyrical verses from memory are known as rune singers. These elders long carried in their minds the entire record of the Finnish language.

“In an oral tradition, the total richness of the language is no more than the vocabulary of the best storyteller,” Davis explains. “In other words, at any one point in time the boundaries of the language are being stretched according to the memory of the best storyteller.”

The video and the article both speak of how the information is written permanently to memory. It begs the question of the strength of controls in poetry and story-telling (alliteration, consonance, rhyme, rhythm, hymn, repetition).

Kalevala has eight syllables per line, stressing every other one (using rules similar to trochaic tetrametre).

Syllables fall into three types: strong, weak, and neutral. A long syllable (one that contains a long vowel or a diphthong, or ends in a consonant) with a main stress is metrically strong, and a short syllable with a main stress is metrically weak. All syllables without a main stress are metrically neutral. A strong syllable can only occur in the rising part of the second, third, and fourth foot of a line.

Amazing how we can have confidence in this data storage integrity method; that a story remains the same over thousands of years when no one but a few, or even just one, can remember them.