issue number 6 is (has been) available online. Read more at the new-fangled CultureCandy website
Friday, July 31, 2009
next scene, please
Darcy Jame Argue's Secret Society - Infernal Machines (listen) This lovely and lush album on the fence of jazz and not-jazz was briefly mentioned in Nico Muhly's recent post about the notions and boundaries of scenes in New Music in New York. At first, I read this thinking I wish I had that problem, enough like-minded interesting people doing interesting things that they gather into clumps, but of course that happens here. It is difficult to write about the cultures of a place that instinctively keep to their respective owns.
itsnotyouitsme - Walled Gardens (listen) This group shares the New Amsterdam label, and thereby, maybe, a scene with the former, and has been one I keep in my handy on my phone for its quiet, slightly sad, calming qualities. My daughter and I were playing one of our bumbling beginner's chess games. Really, I am the only bumbler here because she soundly and strategically beat me while I was half- listening to this on my phone. She requested some "Harry Potter music, like the stuff without any words" and this was the only atmospheric, instrumental, to-a-kid-listenable alternative stuff on hand. I was thinking about this album while having my ass handed to he in the game: I love it, the NYTimes loved it, I'm sure their friends love it, but is that far as it goes? Should you be happy anybody at all loves what you do? Loves what you love?
Brad Mehldau - Largo (listen) - A lala listener to the Darcy James Argue records said of it:
Wow. Just plain wow. After one listen, it seems like this is my favorite jazz album since (and perhaps including) Brad Mehldau's "Largo." Unlike so many recent jazz records, it's fun to listen to, with a strong sense of texture and mood, without losing its modern adventurousness.which is enough of a recommendation to draw me in. But, I suppose, I'm easy. I love everybody. I'm a magpie. I make my nest out of all y'all's stuff. Who needs a scene when I have everything right here, at my fingertips?
BTW, this jazz Radiohead cover is tight... it should bisect at least one of your scenes, and therefore, be safe for you to check out.
The Tunes of Two Cities
The Residents - The Tunes of Two Cities (listen) This was one of the albums I couldn't work into the Oxford American article I wrote on the band last year, though it is one I love dearly. It is a tone poem about the two sides to a city, the sunny optimistic side where the decision makers live and play, and the supposedly sinister dangerous side where the others all live. Baton Rouge is very much one of those cities, with an invisible wall running down the middle of Florida Blvd that people generally, outside of downtown, don't cross. Baton Rouge is a place where streets change name as the race of people that live on them changes; it can be argued that "Jura" is ghetto for "Wisteria." I don't for a second believe this to be a uniquely local phenomenon - across the country Eisenhower's interstate system finished the job that train tracks started. It is just one that is locally palpable, and one that the work of this mysterious band explores. As the album progresses, the two sides of the city commingle, adopting each others alleged virtues and shortfalls, never quite becoming one but at least acknowledging the other, which would in most places, be a start.
The Dead by Stan Brakhage
This was the first Stan Brakhage film I ever saw, screened in a Philosophy of Film class in college. I remember a number or people being moved by the thing and I spoke up at the end, declaring this a total misfire, hastily patched and overlain, underdeveloped tourist footage from Paris, and I still stand by that physical assessment. Philosophically, though I can see it now. This is the fleeting eye of someone who no longer knows everything. At twenty, I knew everything and was thereby repulsed by this notion. This thing is not aiming for profundity, but for experience, which I suppose is all we ever have. I particularly like the wobbly gait through the cemetery at the end - nothing captures the raw human condition like walking past the graveyard.
A reader of these musings on Brakhage suggests that the rest of you, assuming there are more of you reading this than just him, might like the Brakhage documentary simply titled "Brakhage" available on iTunes, and I am happy to pass that info along.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
can you say "bobo motion"
Willie Bobo - Bobo Motion (listen) Just say it with me: "bobo motion." See? You feel better already.
Lou Donaldson - Alligator Bogalloo (listen) So much jazz in the world... here is a groovy slab of it with Mr. Donaldson blues it up on alto sax, Mr. George Benson laying down some crisp tasty guitar years before he created some of the all time worst songs to get stuck in your head and the possibly one-fingered Dr. Lonnie Smith piloting the organ in a gentle geosynchronous orbit around yr soul.
5 Artists who should do a misguided, overblown, wondrous "With Strings" album
Eels with Strings - Live at Town Hall (listen)
Vitamin Strings Quartet - Performs Radiohead's In Rainbows (listen)
Nina Simone - Nina Simone with Strings (listen)
5 Artists who should do a misguided, overblown, wondrous "With Strings" album
- Prince
- Shaun Ryder from Primal Scream (here is "The Ecstacy and the Agony" - a great, excruciating hour-long BBC documentary about him)
- Kate Bush
- Julian Cope
- RYAN ADAMS
his idea of hot is John Philips Sousa and hula hoops
Sufjan Stevens - trailer for "The BQE" - I don't care what the rocker keep-it-simple lobby is grumbling about over in the corner, I love crazy old Sufjan Stevens and his giant ideas about America. America is a big place with big problems and big things to love. It requires a prism to see it; you can't just look at one thing. You have to go bananas on it like Walt Whitman to get a sense of the place. I can't wait to see the full movie or concerto or whatever "The BQE" is. I love that it is about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. I love that his idea of hot is John Philips Sousa and hula hoops. I love that Mr. Stevens doesn't compress anything; instead, he spreads it out on his bed and picks through it like a teenage amateur archaeologist.
THE BQE- A Film By Sufjan Stevens from Asthmatic Kitty on Vimeo.
Van Dyke Parks - Jump (listen) I'll be honest, I can't really get into Van Dyke Parks, despite his being an obvious antecedent to Sufjan Stevens, but I'm perpetually compelled to give him a shot because I am certain he is onto something particular and unique, and the cornball way he goes about it is essential to getting this very important point. Like this 1984 star-spangled banterer about Uncle Remus - it is a bit hard to swallow. It's like if Busby Berkely had made it to the disco era, but once you are inured to it, there are moments of sublime beauty. I adore Ghetto Bells, the album he arranged and co-wrote with Vic Chesnutt, and one can immediately see traces of it in this.Dizzy Gillespie & His Operatic Strings Orchestra - Jazz in Paris (listen) I say I like the dazzle of America in its kalliedoscpode wonder, but just now I had to sift through email, facebook email, text messages, and all other forms of communication to find a goddamn putt-putt golf birthday party invitation so I could coordinate it with a sleepover and the effect is not unlike having all of Coney Island in the 70's crash on top of you.
You know, Sufjan should do write an opera about Coney Island, get Van Dyke Parks and Stephin Merrit on the case, tap Tim Burton to direct the movie and Johnny Depp to play a carnival barker down on his luck and Jack Nicholson as the ghost of Lawrence Ferlinghetti narrating the whole thing. Meanwhile, I will bask in the warm albumen of lush strings of the Operatic Strings Orchestra and occasional outbursts of Dizzy Gillespie's weird-looking trumpet.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
[225] CD Reviews for Secret Annexe, Harlan, The Melters, A Soup Named Stew, and Christine Balfa's solo triangle album
I have a veritable mess of CD reviews in the August Issue of 225 magazine. Click on the cover below to see the review
[225] When the Hippies Took Over Praireville
in the August 2009 issue of 225 magazineThe front page of the Sunday Advocate on Sept 1, 1969, offered a pair of divergent accounts of the event. One spoke of the New Orleans Pop Festival as “overflowing with communes of brightly painted tents with their inhabitants coming from every state in the union to hear their rock idols and to join in a few days of peace and music.” In the adjacent column, readers learned that “five young psychiatrists who have set up shop in a tin shed on the grounds of the racetrack had seen about 30 whose trips were really bad.” The hippies had descended on Baton Rouge International Speedway in Prairieville for the incongruously titled New Orleans Pop Festival, held just two weeks after Woodstock inspired hope for—or incited fear of—youth culture, depending on where you stood.
Read more...
calling all Minóy fans
Minóy - "Pretty Young Negro Man"/"Outback" (via Mutant Sounds) Minóy was a major player in the late 80's/early 90's cassette culture scene with whom I had the privilege of working and meeting way back then, and am writing an article about him. If you are a Minóy fan catching this on a search or were an accomplice that would like to be included in this, have some copies of his work that I could borrow, hit me up in the comments with your contact info, or drop me a line. Or if you want to come mail-art correct, contact me for an address and mail me a package of xerox art.
[The Record Crate] You Roots are Showing
I have two new favorite local musical acts, both witnessed at the second week of the Red Dragon’s Fenceapalooza fundraiser last Saturday. The first is singer-songwriter Erin Miley, sitting alone with a simply and confidently strummed guitar as the framework for her haunting, spectral voice. Somewhere between mournful and moonstruck, it’s the kind of voice that’s thrilling to witness. I really hope she records something soon so I can sing its praises. You can take it in for yourself when she performs with Elsah and Atomic Hearts at Red Star on Saturday.
A different kind of sonic purity was found in Becca & the Levee Pushers, a bona fide string band that does not cute up the material with a milligram of shtick, opting to allow a song its own charms instead. Closely surrounded by her bandmates on guitar, fiddle and banjo, all singing with the gale force unity of the Carter family, Becca held onto her upright bass like she was dancing with a charmed bear. I don’t know where they are playing next, but I hope I’m there to see it.
The Pine Hill Haints are a backwoods rock ’n’ roll tornado appearing at Chelsea’s on Friday. Pitting singing saw against banjo against actual washtub guitar against manic guitar, they summon some of the most feral music I’ve heard in a long time. The Legendary Shack Shakers deal in the same kind of firewater at Spanish Moon on Monday—along with Bobby Bare Jr., a master portraitist of the gloriously downtrodden. All in all, it’s a week of music that might just set you right once the hangover subsides and that tattoo you woke up with heals. Enjoy!
Monday, July 27, 2009
hardly contributed at all
Lunar Testing Lab - Seashore Blvd. (from OngakuBaka) Walked up and down the levee in the sun with this purring from my phone against frogs and crickets and he occassional motorcycle doppler ploughing down River Road. In fact this album hardly contributed at all to the greater sound, but somehow made it all grogeous.
Belle & Sebastian - The BBC Sessions (listen) My daughter and I bond over Belle & Sebastian, or maybe I just bond over them and she's a good sport and we worked on our equally amateur chess games to "Like Dylan at the Movies" which might be my favorite song if I could stop looking at it lovingly long enough to figure out what he's going on about.
White - White (myspace) Krautnoise via Chinarock under the watchful titrating eye of German QA industrialists to ensure there is nary afingerprint on this thing. sometimes its as sterile as a dissecting table, others warm as a sodium lamp. I'm really into this record. I love that it is a nearly unsearchable band name.
Crawfish nacho cheese burrito, tiny bottle Coke and custard
I'm at a conference situation where they have to feed 450 people very quickly with a minimum of logistcal hangups, so this is the sole thing on the menu. It's pretty good all things considered, but who, even in Louisiana, thinks, "Ohhh, just do crawfish nacho cheese burritos and custard. You know, something everybody likes..."
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Goat cheese, tomato, jalapeño, and cucumber sandwich on artesan French bread
Goat cheese, tomato, jalapeño, and cucumber sandwich on artesan French bread, originally uploaded by real_voodooboy.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Erin Miley at the Red Dragon, Baton Rouge, LA
Haunting voice echoing against spectral acoustic exoskeleton guitar.
She should make a CD that sounds just like this so I can sing it's
praises
She should make a CD that sounds just like this so I can sing it's
praises
Dog Star Man by Stan Brakhage
Dog Star Man, part II
I have seen this film a number of times; I used to have a VHS copy that I made an epic journey to Los Angeles to get, which like the film, was a largely abstract, ego-drowned, enigmatic, futility obsessed trip unto itself. Dog Star Man was made when Mr. Brakhage was staying unemployed at his wife's parents home, what I imagine to be a crucible of self-loathing for the young filmmaker. The story goes that he asked for something to do, and it was suggested he go out into the snow and chop wood, which in the mind of the indolent becomes an epic and meaningful endeavor. You are bringing fire! You are conquering nature! You are meeting yourself at the crossroads of usefulness and self-purpose at the moment of existential dawn, and it is that way that Mr. Brakhage, whether it be ironically or melodramatically depicts himself lumbering through the snow with a dog and an axe trying to fell a small tree.
Mr. Brakhage is generally described as an abstract filmmaker because his images are smeared, bent, chopped up, flickering descendants of cohesive thoughts. He has made abstract films, some painstakingly drawn directly on tape, freeing image from external meaning, but Dog Star Man is not one of those films. His techniques are put here to a most romantic end - overlaying the struggle of life in reality with the fever of life in the mind. He accomplishes this by actually layering film over film, each of the five parts becoming tighter and more dense as they proceed.
One can only imagine his father-in-law's dismay when he asked for firewood and instead got this nearly unwatchable monstrosity clogging up his 16mm projector. I say unwatchable because, beautiful as his imagery is, this is a difficult film to pay attention to. Feature-length, silent, recycling images throughout - it puts you either in a trance or asleep. I've never been able to watch it all the way through in silence like intended, in this case, halfway through the extended prelude, I put on a super-minimal La Monte Young cello piece just to have something that would not force any unintended juxtapositions, though as it happens, the piece came to a halt tidily at the end of part IV.
I have also seen The Art of Vision, a four-hour "un mix" of Dog Star Man where the layers are separated and recombined in every permutation. I saw it on my one trip to New York about fifteen years ago, at the Anthology Film Archives. It had a reasonably sized crowd when it started but most of the people, including the two I brought with me, abandoned ship after 45 minutes. I was determined to bleed through partly because I thought the bearded guy sitting right next to the projection booth window must be Stan Brakhage even though he was not introduced as such, and because I'd come all that way, not just to see this, but partially to see this.
My Dog Star Man trip to LA involved my staying at the house of a deeply depressed person with whom I'd corresponded with by mail and phone, trading tapes and books and letters. Immediatley upon arrival I was informed that he'd lived in this house for ten years with his boyfriend and mother and thousands of tapes and records and books without a single visitor, not even a friend coming over. I knew he was gay and a little eccentric but was not prepared for the severity of his condition. His combination of powerful anti-psychotic drugs made him gargantuan, sweaty and emotionally erratic. He generally did not leave the house except to buy pornography and records. We went to see a movie after the third consecutive day of being cooped up in the house listening to records (albeit ones that have shaped my thinking from that point on) and when a guy in the row in front of us turned to shush us, he exploded in a rage, marching down the aisle bellowing "FUCK YOU ALL" over and over at shuddering capacity. We heard him screaming through the lobby and out into the street before following to look for him.
It was the reality of Ignacius Reilly, Arturo Bandini and a number of celebrated disconnected figures without the distance of literature. I didn't know a soul in LA, had no where to go. He proceeded to scream in their little car for the 45-minute drive home, and then locked himself in his room for the next day and a half as I was left to prowl his house in fear. But while I was going to sleep the night before I left, he did peer into my room holding a tape of Dog Star Man, and set it on the dresser. It was nestled on the tape between hours of pornographic Japanese game-shows and vintage muscle man videos, but there it was. That tape was later stolen by some druggy kids that hung around the house next to my apartment, no doubt a profound disappointment when they popped it in.
So, having gone through that trial once, I lasted through the entire four hours of The Art of Vision, me and one other guy sitting a few rows back. I shook his hand after, he said he'd come down from Boston to see it, and looking through the material accompanying this Criterion collection of Brakhage films, I'm guessing he might have been the anthology's producer Fred Camper. Whoever he was, it became clear I was in the presence of an even more committed viewer when I suggested we go get a beer after, and the guy politely declined. "I'm going to go ask the projectionist if I can sit up there and watch it again."
Mr. Brakhage has said that he believes the vision of an individual can transform the world, and though I don't know if I believe this to be true, I do think that the need to see one's own vision can radiate from a person and affect those around them. I know that in some part, my vision has been forever overlayed by the psychic residue of this film, whether by the lengths I took to see it or the backstory of the film or the content of the film itself, is irrelevant.
Friday, July 24, 2009
no one here wants any harm to come to Lindsey Buckingham
Richard Buckner - Devotion + Doubt (listen) Sigh. What a great record.
The Cave Singers - s/t (Available 8/18) I listened to this last night while eating dinner and am now a bit smitten with it. I thought last night it sounded like what would transpire if Lindsey Buckingham had one of those rock-n-roll motorcycle wreck revelations and made an earnest folky but taut and sweet acoustic record, fitted with the right amount of filigree and embellishment. All in the mytho-theoretical: no one here wants any harm to come to Lindsey Buckingham. Here, take a listen.
Beach House (192k mp3)
Buckingham Nicks - s/t See, now I'm paranoid to look at the usual websites in fear of seeing that Lindsey Buckingham was just in some sort of accident. A delicate, intricate folky album isn't worth it; plus, he already did one in 1973 before his Fleetwood Mac days, and sigh, it's a great record too. An astute listener commented on one of these videos "Somebody should make a movie" and yes, I think they should.
Vic Chesnutt's "Little"
Vic Chesnutt - Little (listen) I don't remember if I've listened to this one, the songs don't seem familiar to me, though it feels like I have, like when you dream something that is close to real but not. The other night I dreamed about my email window, or maybe the Facebook window, and there was something I could overlay on a group of entries and it made the sender appear - not materialized, more like a snowy hologram video conference that teenage cartoon superheroes might have with boss back at HQ. I woke up a little bummed that I dreamed about an inbox but then what do I do first thing out of the show but check that very inbox. Nothing whatsoever materialized from it.
I love how "Danny Carlisle" in the song below would rather "dream than fuck" and how Vic Chesnutt would rather drag the word out to "fuuuuuuuu...." instead of just saying it because in the dream-life you don't really say anything directly.
OK, now I know I haven't listened to this album because I'd never heard "Mr. Reilly", a song in which precisely expresses the dreamed reality of my fair city
Well there's a Mr. Reilly who swearsI say dreamed because this is partially true, intentionally true, maybe even archetypally true that no one here cares about your philosophy and everything is the same, but of course this is not true. But it feels true, like a movie projected on a wall that moves your heart, even though the wall and the dust caught in the cone of light from the projector is far more real than anything that makes it to the screen. We are bound by that wall; the dust is made of us. The movie is just there to make things interesting.
That in Baton Rouge, Louisiana
They don't care about his philosophy
He swears that any time in Baton Rouge
Everything is the same
In "Speed Racer" he declares himself an atheist and not a victim on this basis
I used to watch Speed Racer with that hyper attitudewhich is pretty much how I got to mine, looking for those buttons on the steering wheel that lets me jump ahead a little or unfolds the saw blades that cut away the brush as I plow ahead or releases that little remote control bird from the hood so it may flies to do this things I cannot because I am running a goddamn race up a mountain pass right now , OK? I don't have time for the Acrobatic Racing Team bouncing all around me or a bullshit brother in a mask. I am however, unlike Speed Racer, forever thankful for that kid with the monkey that wants to stow away in the trunk and help me out on my adventures, even if the races are run largely through inboxes and Baton Rouge and walls and dust and projections and dreams.
That carried me to this flourescent enlightenment
Click here for a video explaining what all the buttons on the Mach 5 steering wheel do, in case I lost you up there.
Thursday, July 23, 2009
the most adorable teenage rebellion band ever
Jandek - Follow Your Footsteps - Jandek is "if all else fails" music, if I writhe away from everything else, this is where I turn. I have to say I'm less enrapt with him after his disappointing performance in New Orleans a while back. Before that show, I figured, here is a guy that is not doing it for any other reason than the doing it, and well, I'm not so sure, and I guess it doesn't really matter. I still really like his music in those moments when I am tuned to like it, especially this album at this moment. This is brittle folk rock on the other edge of crumbling, already disintegrating by the time it gets to you, falling apart in your hands and blowing off.
Moe Tucker - I Spent a Week there the Other Night (listen) I dig this disheveled solo thing from the Velvet Underground drummer. I won't say I love it, but I dig it all the way. Super sweet thrashy trashy garage rock from possibly an actual garage. The whole Underground appears on this record, if not together but on separate tracks, never recapturing the magic or anything, but having a hoot. She should do an album with Calvin Johnson of Beat Happening, if she hasn't already, and let that record have babies who grow up to form the most adorable teenage rebellion band ever.
Yoko Ono - Approximately Infinite Universe - This would be a case of an album I love more than I dig. Yoko is projected over the light funk and trashy rock of this record in a cheery awkward and totally brave way. It is naked to the point of discomfort and not a little maudlin, but I am way into it lately. I was walking the dog last night wishing she'd at least have had better lyrics to work with on this song, but what else did I want her to say? She is, from all the way back in1973, addressing the fact that people (to this day) think her to be a cruel chicky baby and she (also to this day) wants me to join her revolution, whether I dig it or not. What else do I need her to say?
Vic Chesnutt - Ghetto Bells (listen) Picking a favorite Vic Chesnutt album it like pointing me to the grocery store and asking my favorite food. I dunno, sometimes I like watermelon, sometimes I like Pop Tarts. This album falls at the midpoint between watermelon and Pop Tarts without coming off in any way like a watermelon Pop Tart. "Vesuvius" on that record is non-stop genius from "logic squeezed out like mustard on a corn dog" to "Christian charity is a lace doily on my death boner" and beyond.
Trout po-boy at Save More Market, Baton Rouge, LA
Catfish is a much more po-boy-conducive fish, but I had to experience firsthand the possibility a $4.59 poboy this long...
The poboys here are long as my arm, or more scientifically, three Goya soda cans in length. The bread is at the right balance of spongy and crispy, seasoned right, dressed right and big as my arm. Trout is a bit greasy for this situation, as one might imagine, but adventure reaps its own rewards. My co-worker swapped halves with his shrimp po-poy which was equally bounteous. Despite it looking like the teeming birth spot of all things good and batter-fried, I prefer less and bigger shrimp. That point of contention did not prevent me in any way of eating my half.
Plus, Goya drinks! and a giant sandwich on the sign! and meat pies right next the corn dogs and the fried okra, luminous under the heat lamp Prometheus stole from the gods so that we mortals may know The Way!
I like anyplace that has a variety of meat boxes for sale and think a matted and hung display of the hand-lettered signs describing the varieties offered at this nondescript Nicholson Drive convenience store should be entered as the Louisiana delegate to some high-profile art biennial. I would suggest titling the exhibition "Cobra Special"
And now for the meat porn.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
the houses of cousins
KISS - Destroyer (listen) particularly "Detroit Rock City" in Satan's service, or at least in the service of writing that book in my sleep.
KISS from "The Paul Lynde Halloween Special" that I watched my very own self on a B&W TV in in 1976. I like how flabbergasted Paul Lynde is in one of the opening crowd shots of this clip. This and their TV movie "KISS Meet the Phantom of the Park" (Part 1 of which is posted below) is the only direct contact I had with KISS back then. The rest we made up for ourselves.
The YouTube comment that rings the truest: Oh wow, I remember watching this at my cousins house
This is indeed the stuff of which that is watched in the houses of cousins.
5 things that people said recently, and my reaction
Iggy Pop - "I'm Bored"
- "Problem w 21stc rock & roll is no one's high as kites or losing pals to junk or w a childhood under the Luftwaffe. Apartheid is over, too." Thoughtful nod in 75% agreement.
- "Can you try to get them in earlier, though?" Humbled compliance.
- "What little I've read of your blog entries has me thinking you could write a much better book than Downtown Owl in your sleep." Whoa. OK.
- "Ok, you know how this works- you turn on your mp3 player, hit random and jot down the first X # of songs- no editing, etc." Did as requested and listed below.
- "'chairman of the bored.' We used to rock that one all the time..." Agreed and posted above.
Micachu & the Shapes - Wrong
Hoots & Hellmouth - Roots of the Century
Super Furry Animals - Cardiff in the Sun
British Sea Power - Tiger King
Willem Maker - Rain on a Shinin
Man Plus Building - Leaves
Frozen Bears - tape Eater
Bonnie "Prince" billy - I Am Goodbye
The Veils - Killed by the Boom
Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
Jandek - The Cell: part 8
Future of the Left - Lapsed Catholics
Los Amigos Invisibles - Desnudos
Tortoise - High Class Slim Came Floatin In
James Blackshaw - Bled
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stuimmung, part 26
Sturart Murdoch - Hiding Neath My Umbrella
Mia Doi Todd - Electrafficbirds One
Frozen Bears - American Way
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Stuimmung, part 7
Julian Cope - Slow Rider
Sonic Youth - Sacred Trickster
The Veils - The Letter
Belle & Sebastian - The Magic of a Kind Word
Micachu & the Shapes - Golden Phone
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
[outsideleft] The Kids Hate Dirty Projectors
Dirty Projectors have captured the hearts and minds of nearly everyone except those across the lower end of the generation gap (more...)
Update: the mom of the Dirty Projectors' drummer commented on the review!
not-metal on actual metal
Einstürzende Neubauten - The Jewels (listen) Somebody is listening to some black metal in the parking lot outside my open window, sending tendrils of brimstone curling into the air, and it makes me happy. I spent the day in a training class that made me want to pop my own eyes out, and extreme metal is the music to accompany such a thing, but the class is over and I don't want to listen to metal. I'd rather listen to someone else listen to metal. Or really, I'll listen to people make explicitly not-metal on actual metal, as Einstürzende Neubauten are famous for doing. Curiously, lala has this categorized as Genre: Metal/Industrial Metal, which would be correct if they replaced genre with ingredients.
Here is "Armenia," a 1986 Einstürzende Neubauten video by Sogo Ishii, where the sound of not-metal being played on metal is set against images of metal.
Monday, July 20, 2009
100 words about the Apollo moon landing
“We were in a BBC TV studio jamming to the landing. It was a live broadcast, and there was a panel of scientists on one side of the studio, with us on the other. I was 23.
The programming was a little looser in those days, and if a producer of a late-night programme felt like it, they would do something a bit off the wall. Funnily enough I’ve never really heard it since, but it is on YouTube. They were broadcasting the moon landing and they thought that to provide a bit of a break they would show us jamming. It was only about five minutes long. The song was called Moonhead — it’s a nice, atmospheric, spacey 12-bar blues.” -David Gilmour, guitarist for Pink Floyd
(ganked wholesale from ROOT BLOG)
I was born in March of 1969, and supposedly my father held me up in front of the TV for the moon landing footage and for years I swore I remembered being held up like that. No more impossible than the actual moon landing footage, I thought. A tin can guided by clocks and rockets, back looped through TV and being held. The projection and protection of this false memory has a much to do with being held as it does a man on the moon. Not saying that neither ever happened, but remembering is more about wanting than being.
make do with the fleeting
The Fall - Imperial Wax Solvent (listen) The unseasonably pleasantness in the air this past weekend and today feels all the world like fall around here, so why not evoke the mighty Fall to keep the ball rolling. One could dig in the crates and discover the old pleasures of Hex Enduction Hour as others are doing, an endeavor I highly recommend if you don't know that thorny endgame-but-not of a record; it was originally intended to be their final album but instead they kept going for decades years more. Maybe the real meaning of the band's name is not a Camus reference but that they are doomed to forever fall toward a rock bottom they never hit and have had to make do with the fleeting scenery as they plummet - but the point of the seasons is not their predictability as much as they progress, cycling through the same each time but always a little different, influenced and mutated by the previous ones. So in that light, and by the breeze of my open office window, I present the massively-ignored, most current (I think), and high quality record by the band which bears the scars and muscle of the past right under a bloodshot eye squinting ever at perpetuity.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)