Swallowing a few loose bristles from your toothbrush

Nutrition Fun - Cold Storage
Unread #20

Immediately after lift-off, you notice that Andy Berkley (Nutrition Fun) sounds a bit throaty, almost like he's in the final stages of a nasty cold—or almost like he spent the previous night at a bar and breathed in too much secondhand smoke. This condition, which seems to afflict him throughout parts of Cold Storage, harassed me into thinking about the recording process, particularly when it comes to home-made tapes. And how recording music on your own doesn't require a home remedy for your vocal affliction—warm lemon water with honey or licorice root tea or a throat-blessing from that priest met on the subway—because you don't necessarily have to be healed by a particular day set aside for studio time. Or on a strictly artistic level, you record even with a dinged-up voice because the creative itch was particularly intense that day and to ignore it would have been like ignoring the need to breathe. Or you record even with a voice that sounds you accidentally swallowed a few loose bristles from your toothbrush because you woke up feeling strangled by the murderous urgency of everyday life and wanted to mate the fragile cycle of your heartbeat with the fragility of analog tape, and spin your art into something eternal before it's too God damn late.