Washed Out is Ernest Greene, a young man from Perry, Georgia. He recorded his EP, Life of Leisure, at the end of last summer, but it has been the source of my winter 2010 jams (not including "Party in the USA"). Pitchfork describes his music as "bedroom synthpop that sounds blurred and woozily evocative, like someone smeared Vaseline all over an early OMD demo tape, then stayed up all night trying to recreate what they heard." That works, I guess. I just see him as the standout artist from the recent glo-fi moment of last year.
In one of the best acting performances in my memory, Austrian actor Christoph Waltz plays the "unplayable" part of Colonel Hans Landa in Quentin Taratino's Inglourious Basterds. Here is Waltz at the round table with Charlie Rose:
When I was younger, my mom had an electric plug-in air freshener (thing-a-ma-jig) in her bathroom. When it was plugged in, it created the most hideous sound that would quickly seep out of her bathroom and into the rest of the house. Really, I could only hear it well if I was downstairs, but it was bothersome nonetheless.
One day I finally told her she had to get rid of it. That conversation went something like this:
Me: Mom, can you please trash that stupid thing?
Mom: Why?
Me: Because of that awful high pitched noise it makes when it's plugged in.
Mom: What noise?
Me: Are you kidding?
After a while of trying to explain the noise, I finally took her into her bathroom and prepared a demonstration. I took the plug-in out of the wall, and put it back in. I took it back out. I put it back in. During this, my ears were oscillating between extreme discomfort and heavenly respite. But Mom was all "Huh?"
Sigh.
It turns out that there are certain frequencies that humans can only hear up to a certain age - I think the consensus is around 25. I am 24 now, and I hope to God that on July 17, 2010, I will stop hearing this wretched frequency emitted by televisions, Glade plug-ins, and robots (probably).
So, can you still hear this frequency? Let me know in the comments!
SPEAKERS (or headphones) UP!
Frequency 451 (because that is the frequency at which the cochlea burns):
