Listen to I Am Endless Sky by astrobrite.
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For my review for today, acknowledgement of a failure. On my part only.
In posting this, several things to note. First, an explanation as to what this track is from:
This is a gift from an evolving community of lovers of shoegaze, united around the memory of our brother, Danny Lackey. His generous soul touched us in many ways, whether supporting us through When The Sun Hits or washing over us with the beauty and guitars of his Deepfieldview sounds. All proceeds go to Danny’s lovely wife, Barbie, to remind her how much he is loved and appreciated. Forever.
Next, my words over on Facebook when initially linking this:
For all my shoegaze identification (for understandable reasons), I can’t say I followed everything in deep detail, and a lot of people who essentially helped turn it into a still-living approach passed me by over the years. Danny Lackey, who passed on last week — as many friends of have noted, missing the new MBV album by the closest of margins in the saddest of ironies — was one of them. I knew OF the site When the Sun Hits but that was about it, but by all accounts it sounds like he was a fine fellow. Having helped put together Lee Jackson’s tribute last year after his own untimely passing, it would be wrong of me not to share this out.
And lastly my own thoughts on this track alone, the work of the mighty Scott Cortez in his Astrobrite guise — as he describes it, “song made for danny lackey the night i learned of his passing.”
When I mentioned sonic violence in my Quietus reflections on mbv, I only underscored something that was always there in My Bloody Valentine’s music, something wrong and unsettled. It was never just cotton candy — maybe that shaped the edges and made the pill easier to digest, and there’s been plenty that’s perfectly sweet. But if sound qua sound existed to envelop it also existed to crush, destroy — and rage.
Scott’s track is mournful and immediate in its sense of mournfulness but it’s also angry, just pissed off. It’s sending someone out to the infinite while also thinking “You’re gone and fuck this stupid world for being that way.” Why be genteel about it? Why not be a little more heartfelt in the moment?
So I failed, I think, in not paying closer attention when he was there and doing what he was. But at the same time I can’t keep track of everything I wished I could or should. I wouldn’t get out of the house, I wouldn’t do my own work and come to my own conclusions. That’s no excuse, merely an explanation. But I’m glad Lackey had his many friends who were there for him, and I’m glad he’s been remembered with something alive and present, that ends only because it must.
astrobrite “i am endless sky” for Danny Lackey.
