Bury Me in Los Angeles in a Tower Facing the Sun

Click to play A Great Design:

Listening to Black Marble

by Nic Ishaq

Sometimes all I want to do is smoke, bliss out, drive around in my car in the summer, in the heat, in the sun and play records like this.  I love records like this.  They shine right through the stereo into the solar plexus.  They electrify and glow.  Make you lose the fringes of your body.

I’m talking about Black Marble’s A Different Arrangement, which a friend of mine graciously dropped on me the other day.  It’s a record that has the ability to make you feel silky and beautiful. But a record not without flaws.  Some of the tracks fall a little flat but only because of how intense and fantastic the others are.  I’m speaking about the difference between a track like A Great Design and a track like Last, the latter of which is by no means a bad song; it just lacks that heightened sense of melody, which pushes your body into outer space.  To listen to the song A Great Design is to understand why someone coined the genre term: cold wave and to see how it applies to Black Marble.

Maybe I could describe cold wave as a shower in which the water runs down your skin past your feet and hits some nerve in the center of the earth, which being awoken rises up through your toes, your body, and your hair in ecstasy.  That could be it in its best moments.  Or it could be simple like stepping outside the city to become aware of the sky again.  Whatever it is, it’s clarifying and clean.

In some ways cold wave is fashion because to listen to this music is to feel glamorous.  Your body fits into the perfect cut of these songs, into their silken grooves.  This isn’t the music for Joe in his uncle’s basement pouring over the nuances of old folk albums.  No sir.  This is music for Johnny who taking a pinch of Molly douses his tongue and moves into the night, leaving his old self in a wake behind him.  Johnny who’s making his way into the jet stream of gold light.  Johnny whose L.A. heart is pumping in desire.  Johnny whose black clothes are felt by the hands of a gorgeous blonde, which he dreamed into existence.  A blonde who runs though his veins.  Maybe Johnny can’t hear the lyrics to his life but fuck he feels amazing.