Far Beyond Drivel

What was I thinking when I let go of you?

2011-12-22T00:10:00.004-05:00

Lately I find myself thinking about what you might have looked like in Paris, in Winter, sitting at a café on the sidewalk under the gas-fired heaters, you stirring your coffee three times before drinking it like you always do, the sky the same color as that coat you always wear, your black hair contrasting your pale skin like a perfectly exposed photograph, your red scarf a discordant note of color in an otherwise monochrome composition, and how your face could silently speak to me more clearly than anyone who I've ever heard open their mouth.

Between you & me, I could honestly say that things can only get better

2011-02-08T23:07:00.002-05:00

Landed in New York City on a grey, cloudy afternoon, under the same sky that I thought I had left behind in Detroit. One important difference between New York and Detroit; the ratio of people I don't know to people I know is much, much higher. I take a certain strange comfort in the anonymity of being in the biggest city in the country.
The shuttle ride from LGA to midtown was almost empty. There was myself, the driver and just one other passenger in a 15 seat van. The radio was on, set to a volume that would just register as a murmur in the ear. Loud enough to cover up the silence in the van but not so loud as to have any concern to what was playing. We were all doing a good job of keeping to ourselves, 3 people whose paths would probably never cross again, when Elton John's "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" came on the radio. I'm not the biggest fan on Elton John, least of all his latter-day work, but there's something about that song that really resonates with me. I was on the verge of shattering everyone's little bubble and asking the driver to turn the radio up, when he reached over and did just that. He looked back slightly and we briefly made eye contact and silently exchanged a brief nod. That one instant communicated more than 20 minutes of idle chatter about the weather and where I was from / what I was doing in town could have possibly conveyed. That was a visceral connection through some maudlin piece of pop music. We both Got It and didn't need to ruin it with any words. I would like to have known the course of events in his past that led him to connect with it, but there's only so many miles between LaGuardia and Midtown. Life's more fun with some mystery anyway.

you struck me dumb like radium

2010-07-31T03:13:00.002-04:00

I take back everything bad I've ever said about PT Anderson's "Magnolia". I hated it the first time around, but I've watched it twice in the past three nights. A lot has changed in the past 11 years. A third of my life essentially. Back then I couldn't really relate to the lives of quiet desperation and a deep yearning for Something Else that all the characters were living. And what a knock-out cast assembled to tell those intertwining vignettes. While I can't say I'm quite thrilled about the past 6 months or so, I'm grateful to have finally come around and be able to appreciate a stunning work of art that I completely missed out on the first time around. The final shot of the film, the slow zoom on Melora Walters' face while John C. Reilly's back is to the camera while Aimee Mann's "Save Me" is right up there along side the door shutting on Diane Keaton in the Godfather and the freeze frame on Jean-Pierre Léaud in Les Quatre-Cent Coups as my favorite final shots of all time. That weary, sad smile (the first time in the whole film you don't see her in a coked-up frenzy) is the perfect image to end on, especially timing it right at the peak of Aimee Mann's "Save Me". I think Anderson's ultimate triumph is that he is able to convey an all-consuming desire for love in all the characters without resorting to schmaltz and most importantly not ignoring the uglier, darker things that are part and parcel of such a complex emotion as love, which makes the catharsis/redemption that much more believable, especially the scene when Tom Cruise finally meets face to face with his dying father, masterfully played by Jason Robards. It's nice to be reminded that there might be a light at the end of the tunnel.

did you get yr disconnection notice?

2010-06-27T21:13:00.003-04:00

I've found out what my new favorite album to listen to after eating a huge Colombian bandeja paisa dinner and laying around your sweltering tiny apartment with a cold wet cloth on your head while the liquid gold infused twilight creeps in the windows is: Sonic Youth's "Murray Street". Everything else feels like it's falling apart but the sheer degree of perfection of this exact moment is making my chest want to cave in. I know it will shatter once "Karen, Revisited" ends and I have to get up to flip the record but the past 20 minutes or so have been the best 20 minutes of the past month. Thanks Thurston, Kim, Steve, Lee & Jim. You have to latch on to moments like this and crack their bones and savor every last bit of marrow from them or else the darkness can swallow you entirely.

Tragedy or Farce?

2010-03-19T22:11:00.004-04:00

I'm not a very complicated man. As per usual, my life can be summed via the media/hubris I have accumulated from years working at record stores. Here is my current situation: I have approximately 1100 CDs and exactly 0 working CD players. That speaks volumes about me right now. I'm going to listen to some Townes Van Zandt and have it all figured out by the morning. Which morning though, I can't rightly say.

xo

Anton

Hey Joni now I've put it all behind me too

2010-01-12T16:37:00.002-05:00

I just bought and put on a Joni Mitchell record for the express purpose of listening to it for the first time in my life. I thought I should make a note of it. It is the Court & Spark LP. It's not that I had anything against Joni Mitchell ever. I just decided today would be the day to listen to her. It's not bad. Perhaps a little better than I expected it to be. Good soundtrack for a nap with late afternoon winter sunlight filtering in through my dirty windows.

au revoir

2009-09-22T02:38:00.002-04:00

"so goodbye, hallelujah
if I don't cry, don't let it fool ya"

summer is over in approximately 14 and a half hours or so. I always seem to take stock at this time more so than New Year's Eve, since I'm just about settling into my Seasonal Affective Disorder depression around then, and that is a pretty horrible time to take stock of yourself. I haven't written nearly as much as I would have liked to. In fact I've done a whole more of fuck-all than I would have liked to. I have damn near nothing to show for this summer. Didn't leave the state, let alone hardly leave town. I could blame it on lack of funds, but perhaps the truth is I've gone soft. 10 years ago I was broke and managed to have one hell of an adventure in the summer of 1999. Saw both oceans and a lot of other shit in between, got turned on to some amazing music and met some amazing people with nothing but a backpack and a few dollars. Truth be told, the 21 year old me would be pretty disappointed with the 31 year old me. I refuse to blame it on "being old", because I'm not. Saying you're too old to be doing something is essentially resigning yourself to an early death. If you're too old for adventures you might as well sit down on the couch and turn on the TV and wait to die. There's a lot more I want to write but I have to go study for an exam that I put off all weekend doing (you guessed it), nothing. Well, at least nothing of note. I read something somewhere along the lines of "at some point, winter will ask what you did all summer". I can't even look that question in the eye without feeling guilty so I hope its not asked of me this year. Anyway I hate to end anything on a bummer note so I'm posting something I found in a journal I haven't looked at in almost 2 years. This was from an entry dated October 3rd, 2007 (before Biden was VP of course, maybe even before he was in the running for VP??) and is basically just a re-telling of a weird dream I had.

From what I could tell, there was some sort of conflict. It was most likely some sort of subconscious amalgamation of all the zombie flicks I've seen where a small group of survivors hole up together in a "safe" location, only the other side was definitely human and not zombies. My brother was there somehow, but Susan wasn't, and I had some girl with me who I didn't know and while she wasn't my girlfriend there was that weird sexual tension there that I guess would be going on when you're two reasonably attractive people who have undergone some sort of extraordinary, potentially life ending trial. We were holed up in a suburb, but it had a creepy, pre-fab feeling like the Others compound on Lost. The armed contingent there were assholes, much like the security guards in the Dawn Of The Dead remake. They didn't let any of the "survivors" carry weapons and took away the guns my brother and I had upon entering. Like I said I have no idea what brought on the armed conflict, but it was spectacular. There were all sorts of terrific explosions, and secret super-fortified underground platforms being raised up to engage the enemy, who was launching over the fenced-in compound with some sort of propulsion device, silhouetted in mid-air by the flames behind them. All this was viewed over my shoulder while running in the dark between houses, searching for shelter from the fighting. I finally got through to my Mom's house on a cell phone and the outgoing message on her answering machine was really bizarre. It was a message to Senator Joe Biden saying she had left the state for somewhere safer (we live in Michigan, whats Joe Biden got to do with us??) and that Joe Biden had better take good care of her sons or else he would have hell to pay. My pseudo-girlfriend and I found a deserted house and there was a victrola and a huge stack of pre-war blues 78s. I remember playing the St. Louis Blues by Bessie Smith while she asked me if I could find her a toaster, but I didn't think it was a good idea because we shouldn't use any electricity. Then there was some unpleasantness when the armed security forces came in and found us in the house. They took my pistol, even though I had no ammo and one of them was trying to put the moves on the girl and I was getting super pissed, and then I woke up and now it's 5 am and I most likely wont get back to sleep.

Something happens that I'm head over heels

2009-04-20T02:50:00.004-04:00

I've fallen pretty hard for Wong Kar-Wai's In The Mood For Love. That film is so gorgeous and subtle in its desperation and longing and basically achieves perfection in use of both musical score and pop music and its really gotten under skin in the past couple days. In my sleep deprived state I cranked out a mediocre essay on it for class that I want to polish up a bit and post here eventually. I'll also be posting my top 10 film characters in a week or so, if I make it through this next week intact. For now its back to the pit of despair to soldier on through the long, dark night, aided only with a French coffee press, a half packet of stale cigarettes, and my fraying wits. Pray for me, friends.

Feed yr head

2009-04-08T16:14:00.003-04:00

I had a piece published in Detour, an online Detroit mag about a performance called Wonderland, a retelling of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

I swung my fiery sword, I vent my spleen at the lord

2009-04-05T21:15:00.007-04:00

Just a quick entry to vent the general malaise I've been feeling all day. As per usual, the proverbial back breaking straw is musically related. But anyway, upon opening a stack of mail from various record labels at my desk this afternoon (I'm the music director at a little radio station for those who are just joining) I got a CD compilation of Michigan artists from a label that had the letters DIY prominently figuring in its name. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself, only that the label is based in California. Having someone else print up artwork and distribute your music sort of seems to be contrary to the DIY spirit, dont'cha think? Not to be some kind of pedantic Ian MacKaye type prick about it, but is nothing sacred? It's just a bit disconcerning to see a concept as anti-corporate as DIY just turned into another marketing buzzword attempting to capitalize on the "underground", but that's not really a new thing either. It happened when Nirvana got huge and look at the current state of rap/hip-hop which has devolved from visceral DIY form of art to a commercial for athletic gear and expensive vodka. Maybe I've just been reading too much Naomi Klein lately.

Mother & Son

2009-03-30T20:40:00.005-04:00

Aleksander Sokurov's Mother & Son (1997) seems to take place in a space that falls somewhere between the conscious and unconscious. It is the story of an ailing mother tended to by her son that takes place in a small house in a very rural area of Russia. The mother seems to be on her death bed and even when she is awake it seems that she is never far from slipping back into sleep. The film begins with the mother recounting a dream she just had, which we find out was the same dream that her son had. This establishes a subconscious or metaphysical link between the mother and son, suggesting they inhabit not only the same physical space, but also the same space beyond conscious perception, which is extraordinary for something as personal as a dream. The landscape itself is also very dream-like. Much of it is filmed in soft focus with clouds and mist in the mise-en-scène, giving the film a hazy, ethereal quality. I think perhaps the most important subliminal aspect of the film is the sound. Most of what is heard on the soundtrack is not seen on the screen, so it is ambiguous as to whether the sounds are being created in the offscreen diegetic space of the film or if it is coming from an extra-diegetic source like the characters' imaginations. The film begins with a black screen and the faint sounds of waves breaking on a shore. One would expect then, that the first images on screen would be of the sea. Instead we see the mother laying in bed with her son behind her, gazing into a space off screen. Perhaps the sea is just outside the house and the son is looking at the waves through the window, but we have no idea, since the first few minutes are essentially a tableau, a static shot of the mother and son laying down. The only visual connection we have to the sounds of the waves is the rhythmic rising and falling of the mother's chest as she breathes. In later scenes we learn that the house is not adjacent to the sea, but is surrounded by rolling hills. The house itself is filled with sounds whose immediate source is not apparent. The sounds of a crackling fire are foregrounded in the soundtrack but we don't see the fire, except in a later shot. Even then the fire is relegated to an insignificant corner of the frame, almost inversely proportionate to the importance placed on its sound in the earlier scene. There is also a scene within the house where the buzzing of a fly is extremely loud and prominent within the soundtrack, yet the fly is nowhere to be seen. Outside of the house, the unseen sounds are also the dominant aspect of the soundtrack. There are natural unseen phenomena like wind, which while heard can not itself be seen, but is visually manifested in the images of bent trees and the undulating ripples in the wheat fields. There is also the sound of thunder accompanying the images of low hanging grey clouds. Man made sounds factor in as well. In one scene we hear the whistle of a train and see a plume of white smoke, but the train itself is obscured by a ridge in the landscape. There is also the faint barking of dogs, and the only other sonic evidence of humans is very faint and comes in the form of laughter and song. Since there appear to be no other dwellings nearby, it is unclear whether these sounds are sourced from within the film or within the psyches of the characters.
Mother & Son seems to almost be an antithesis to the early work of Sokorov's countrymen like Eisenstein, Pudovkin, and Vertov. Where these directors worked in opposing dialectical images in fast paced rhythmic cuts in the Soviet montage style, Sokorov uses almost exclusively long take photography. That's not to say there is no dialectic tension between the images. Here they are presented within one image on the screen, instead of a series of images like the montage directors. This is a style not unlike Jean-Luc Godard employed in films like Le Week-end and One Plus One which Brian Henderson wrote about in his essay "Towards A Non-Bourgeois Camera Style". He writes that the long takes still require the active participation of the viewer, but now in the way that André Bazin suggests the viewer selects what is important within the space of the frame during the long take. Instead Henderson suggests that "the viewer is not drawn into the image, nor does he make choices within it; he stands outside the image and judges it as a whole". I believe this theory can be applied to the scene in which the train finally makes an appearance in the frame while the son is out walking. He is by himself for once, not having to care for his mother, and the train enters the frame from the right and exits the left side while we watch him from behind as he watches the train. The train is a symbol of modernity, a contrast to the primitive dwelling that the son shares with his mother that lacks running water or electricity. Since the train also requires other people to operate it and would either be full of passengers or goods that would need to be unloaded by other people when it reaches its destination, the train can also be seen as a symbol of life. The son almost seems to be yearning to be on the train, to have it bear him away from his present surroundings. This is also the case in the scene where the mother is carried outside and is laid down on a bench by her son. She is surrounded by verdant plants with a vibrant, saturated green color, the very picture of life, that provide a contrast to her deathly pallor. The shot leading up to this scene also suggests a non-bourgeois camera style, when we see the son carrying his mother from the house to the bench in a long, deep space shot that tracks every so slowly to the left. The camera doesn't expressly follow the son, and seems to be almost an impartial observer and if the son happens to walk into the frame, then so be it. The narrative (or what narrative structure there is) also unfolds at an extremely languid pace, almost as if it is taking place through the eyes of a dying person trying to observe every minute detail of this world before moving on to the next.
Another visual aspect of the film that I believe is worth noting that it is quintessentially Russian (rolling green hills, birch trees, rippling fields of wheat) but seems to be in contrast with the Soviet-era communist films with the subject of the mother and son. This pairing seems to be representational of the iconic Madonna and child paintings that were a trademark of the Russian Orthodox churches dating back to the 15th and 16th centuries. In this case however, the context is inverted and shows the son grown up and taking care of the mother, who is rendered as helpless as a baby by whatever disease is afflicting her. This is evidenced in the scene where the son actually gives the mother a bottle to suck from, suggesting she is too feeble to even drink from a glass and has reverted to a state of infancy.

notes

Henderson, Brian. "Towards a Non-Bourgeois Camera Style". Film
Theory & Criticism. ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. 6th
edition. Oxford University Press. New York & Oxford, 2006. p. 56.

film journals - My Take On Cassavetes

2009-03-30T20:35:00.004-04:00

I'm just posting a few of my better essays from my Film History 1960 - present class.

This was my first time seeing The Killing of a Chinese Bookie(John Cassavetes, 1976), and the first thought that popped into my head after seeing the opening shot of Ben Gazzara as Cosmo Vitelli was that he looked exactly like another character I've seen him play. In his white leisure suit with the top few buttons of his shirt undone, he was the spitting image of Jackie Treehorn, the porn movie producer he played in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski. As the film progressed, it was clear that the Coen brothers appropriated his character traits as well. In The Big Lebowski when The Dude asks Jackie how the smut business is going, he replies, "I wouldn't know, I'm in the entertainment industry." Likewise, Cosmo essentially lives either a life of make believe or self-deception, however you'd like to look at it. He runs a club that he fancies as a cabaret act, but which in reality is little more than a tawdry strip club masquerading as a cabaret. He takes great care in putting on a show with singing and dancing, and even has one of his dancers open the night's entertainment by reciting poetry (Edward Lear's "The Owl & The Pussycat") with the words changed to include the club's name.. However, the patrons of the club seem to be interesting in the entertainer's other assets. Frequent shouts of "Take it off!" are heard from the crowd, and the occasional bared breast or ass elicits cheers far louder than the song or dance routines.
The club has a Master of Ceremonies called Mr. Sophistication (played by Meade Roberts) who is anything but sophisticated. It seems he is the butt of a joke but is completely clueless to that fact. He has also constructed an alternate reality in his mind that he fully buys into, since he is of the opinion that he is more of a draw for the club than the girls are, but as I've already mentioned the biggest crowd response are from bared flesh. He also attempts to add a sheen of glamour to the surroundings. "Let's transform ourselves into Paris" he implores of the patrons at the club, attempting to recreate the ambience of a cabaret show in "la ville lumière" during la belle epoque. However, the mundane reality of a late 1970s Los Angeles strip club is never quite transformed to turn of the century Parisian fantasy. It's hard to be coaxed into a flight of fancy by someone whose mustache is comically penciled in. Despite all this, Mr. Sophistication still has an undeniable underdog's charm that only someone so fully and sincerely committed to a cause against daunting odds can affect. Mr. Sophistication also seems to function as a Greek chorus somewhat, since his song towards the end of the film comments on the unifying theme of escapism and pretenses with its lyrics " imagination is funny / makes the cloudy days sunny / imagination is crazy / your perspective gets hazy".
The aforementioned Cosmo is also a dreamer, desperately trying to rise above his current station in life with no success. Towards the beginning of the film he is shown paying off a debt to a gangster type who he discredits as a lowlife with no class. Cosmo is hardly the picture of class himself though, driving around in beat up cars, drinking in dive bars, and running a strip club. He attempts to portray himself as a dapper playboy type of character in the vein of Bob le Flambeur. We see him riding around in a chaffeur driven Cadillac picking up girls who work at his club to accompany him at an all-night gambling party, to give him the air of a sophisticated gambler. However, he can not even manage to pin the corsage on his "dates" and has to enlist the help of his chauffeur pin the flowers on the ladies' gowns. There is a harsh juxtaposition between his fantasy world and reality the next morning when his Cadillac drops the girls off at their homes. His tuxedo and the ladies evening gowns, more suited to the milieu of a downtown nightclub, look somewhat ridiculous in the harsh light of morning on the manicured postage stamp lawns of the suburbs.

I feel like I should write about something.

2009-02-13T13:11:00.004-05:00

Quick recap of what I've been consuming as of late:

Let The Right One In - Strikes a balance between the first stirrings of romantic love and expressing the sentiments expressed by Moz so many years ago ("I want the one I can't have / and it's driving me mad") along with some top-notch gore to satisfy your sweet tooth, if your sweet tooth craves human blood. Also a great snapshot of the alienation that a sensitive "outsider" type (Oskar) feels in a small town inhabited by small minds who drink the winter away.

Heavy Metal in Baghdad - A powerful story that you can enjoy even if you hate heavy metal. Follows Acrassicauda (the Latin term for a black scorpion) as they literally have to cross a warzone to get to their practice space (which was later obliterated in a missile attack) in a town where wearing a Slayer shirt and having long hair is akin to painting a bullseye on your chest. As much as I love Norwegian black metal, Acrassicauda really amplifies their camp/theatricality since those guys are actually LIVED in a war zone and had to carry guns while those Scandinavians just paint their faces and wear fake blood. Sorta makes every other metal band look pretty lame by comparison. It also puts a human face on the war unlike any other media outlet has been able to. You can hear about suicide bombs killing 10 people in a market place from some anchor, but when you actually see the aftermath it's an entirely different ballgame. When you see these guys in tears after watching the footage shot in Baghdad after they had relocated to Syria, it really made me appreciate the freedom I enjoy and take for granted on a daily basis. I bitch about being broke and living in a shitty apartment and all, but my life is fucking cake compared to what they've gone through, largely due to my tax dollars.

Laura Gibson "Beast of Seasons" - Gorgeous folky tunes in the vein of Joanna Newsom and White Magic, sounds like a daydream under the golden boughs of Lothlorien.

Animal Collective "Merriweather Post Pavilion" - I don't want to verbally fellate these guys like every other nerd with a blog because that gets pretty embarrassing after awhile but I will say that this played for about 4 days straight because I can't get enough of what I imagine the music that the Druids would've made if they had electricity and laptops.

I went to see the movies up for Best Picture the other day and this year's crop isn't as strong as last year's I don't think but it was a good day regardless.
Slumdog Millionaire - Can't really objectively critique this since I'm kind of a Danny Boyle fanboy. Nowhere near his best offering (that belongs to Sunshine in my opinion, easily his most interesting film) but nonetheless an interesting concept that was well executed.
The Reader - Had the potential for greatness but there was far too much exposition and I didn't really give a damn about the characters until about halfway through the film, and while the story was compelling at that point, it felt like too little too late.
Frost/Nixon - Probably my favorite of the bunch, interesting study on the media and its relation to politics, and how our adversaries are more often than not more similar to ourselves than we think.
Milk - Came in a close second to Frost/Nixon. Sean Penn puts in a killer performance as the first openly gay man to be an elected official in a major U.S. city. As much as it kind of irks me to give credit to Q.T., it's nice to see Josh Brolin be pulled from relative obscurity to play roles in the last 2 year's Best Picture noms.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - Didn't actually stay for Benny Buttons. Was feeling ill and had enough theater popcorn to last me a month so I went home. The general consensus from my pals the next day was that while it was O.K. for what it was, it didn't deserve a Best Pic or Best Actor nod. C'est la vie.

More later I guess but who know when?

Cheers,
Anton

The New Wave breaks on American shores

2008-12-17T12:07:00.003-05:00

Arthur Penn's Bonnie & Clyde marked a turning point in American cinema. Not only was it influenced by the French new wave cinema in that it explored camera angles and editing techniques that deviated from the classical Hollywood method of filmmaking, but it was also a barometer for the shift in popular culture and American society in general. As was mentioned in class, some film critics ended up being fired from their jobs for writing bad reviews of the film, since they weren't "with it" enough to understand the new generation of film makers. It was released in 1967, a time when the country was greatly polarized on issues such as the Vietnam war and and civil rights. There was a strong anti-authoritarian counter culture movement, which was embodied in the Barrow gang of the film. In the scene when Clyde (Warren Beatty) first robbed a grocery store with Bonnie (Faye Dunaway) he mentioned how she was different than the rest of the girls, that she wanted different things. This could be read as a symbol of the changing attitudes on domesticity, and the role of the woman in society. Bonnie wasn't a girl who wanted to get married and be a housewife in an apron and a pearl necklace, taking care of the kids and having dinner ready when her husband got home from work. Clyde rejects the hard work ethic that was central to the WWII generation as well. In order to get out of the work detail he was part of while in prison, he cut off his toes with an axe. He also robs banks instead of holding down an honest job, and lures others away from their jobs (C.W., the gas station attendant who steals money from the register of his shop and joins the Barrow gang). The public heralds them as folk heroes instead of reviling them as criminals, and in one scene Clyde shoots up a house with the man who has just been evicted from it by his bank. Another instance of the film tapping into the anti-authority sentiment of the late 60s is when a Texas ranger tries to arrest the gang, they turn the tables on him and place him in handcuffs and force him to pose for photos with them.
Bonnie & Clyde employed many techniques to disorient the viewer and defamiliarize the narrative as in the tradition of the French new wave. It begins with an extreme close up shot of Faye Dunaway applying lipstick and then pulls back to reveal the rest of the room (and reveal that she is naked as well) instead of following the establishing shot / medium shot / close up formula. Another instance which would have seemed at home in a Godard film is when Clyde goes in to rob the bank that has no money. He forces the teller outside to explain to Bonnie that there was no money to be had. Instead of the camera following them outside to the waiting car it stays inside the bank and photographs the scene through the window. We see the lips moving and Bonnie tilting her head back in laughter, but we can't hear any dialogue, just the running engine of the car. A similar technique with sound was used in the scene when the police were involved in a car chase with the Barrow gang. The chase scene, as with all the scenes when the Barrow gang had just done a robbery, was set to the Flatt & Scruggs "Foggy Mountain Breakdown". But the music would cut out abruptly as the scene was intercut with police interviews of witnesses to the robbery.
Also present in Bonnie & Clyde was the cinephilia of the French new wave films. There are several instances of this. The first is when Clyde makes a crack to Bonnie to the effect of "I bet you're a movie star". Later in the film, when we first meet Buck and his wife, she is reading a movie magazine in the car. C.W. gets excited and asks if there are any pictures of Myrna Loy, a pretty, popular actress in both the silent and sound eras. The gang also hides in a movie theater after killing someone robbing a bank, à la Patricia and Michel from Breathless. Like in Breathless, the movie they are watching comments on the action within the narrative. The movie they are watching is The Gold Diggers of 1933, a film that was in the backstage musical genre designed to take people's minds off the depression, which feature the famous "We're In The Money" song. The Barrow gang was flush with cash from their most recent robbery, and was living their life outside the law to escape the the poverty of the depression.
An interesting side note is how this film, which was greatly inspired by the French new wave, was an inspiration for one of the great French icons of the time, Serge Gainsbourg. He recorded a song called "Bonnie & Clyde" with Brigitte Bardot about the film, and the video had Bardot sporting a look almost identical to Faye Dunaway from the film. Here's a link in case anyone wants to see it:
Serge & Brigitte - Bonnie & Clyde

Ne me tirez pasi, suis seulement le pianiste

2008-12-16T23:15:00.003-05:00

Truffaut's Shoot The Piano Player begins using the stylistic components of the film noir genre. We are introduced to Chico being chased through dark, almost pitch black city streets, with occasional puddles of light cast from street lamps. But even from the very beginning, Truffaut is letting us know that this won't be your typical noir b-grade gangster thriller. We never see those giving Chico chase, they are in a car, but instead they shine a flashlight at him, and it almost seems like he is being chased by the light instead of the crooks. Furthermore, the moving camera, subject, and light source all make for a very kinetic mise-en-scene. However, while borrowing stylistically from the noir genre, the content of the film begins to tweak the gangster genre, and conventional cinema in general, from the very beginning. Instead of the chase ending in some grand fashion like a car crash or the quarry being caught and dragged away to a secret hideout for interrogation, the chase ends when Charlie hits his head on a lamp post and falls to the ground. This gives more of a slapstick/Three Stooges ambiance to the film, and most noirs are deadly serious. Other deviations from the noir norm come in the form of Charlie's voice overs that are filled with self doubt, a departure from the hard boiled private detective voice overs, and the almost anti-climactic shoot out at Charlie's parent's house in the country. Where a noir may have used close ups of guns being fired, blood soaked, bullet ridden clothing, and close ups of pained faces, the shootout is filmed in a long shot where the characters are visually overpowered by the house and surrounding forest.
Another way Truffaut defamiliarizes a traditional film narrative is how he introduces characters. Since Chico is the character we first see on screen, and much of the action is centered around him for the first 5 minutes or so, you begin to think he will be the main character of the film. Even when Charlie is first introduced, you get the feeling he will be a minor character instead of the lead. There are a handful of other characters who appear onscreen that seem to be a distraction of sorts from the main narrative. The first is the man who Chico is talking to after he runs into the streetlight. During their conversation the man says to Chico "I will probably never see you again," and true enough he never comes back into the picture. The same is true of Boby Lapointe, the singer in the club who gets a scene all to himself with his "Framboise" song. The scene certainly could have been cut, since it doesn't do anything to further the narrative. In fact producer Pierre Braunberger wanted it removed since he couldn't understand him, which is why Truffaut used subtitles. In an interview with Cinéaste, Truffaut reveals that his inspiration for the subtitles comes from the Canadian films of Norman McLaren where the audience sings along by following the bouncing ball over the lyrics on screen, and says that the "printed word reinforces and makes things funnier,". I particularly enjoy the third instance where Truffaut follows a character with nothing to do with the narrative, the woman leaving the music impresario's office when Charlie/Eduoard is entering. As she is walking down the hall the camera is moving with her, and when the music starts she stops to listen to but the camera still moves, leaving her behind. The next shot is the same woman walking outside, only the piano playing is still on the soundtrack. She is clearly not in the space where the music would be a diegetic element of the soundtrack, so it seems that Truffaut is suggesting that Charlie was such a great piano player that she still had the music in her head while she was walking down the street.
One of my favorite scenes is when Charlie and Lena are picked up by the crooks after his brother. As they drive in the car, the two crooks are spouting misogynist drivel, pausing every now and then to offer Lena an insincere apology if they're offending her. Charlie pipes up with a phrase his father used to say, something to the effect of "If you've had one woman, you've had them all" but his delivery seems forced, like he doesn't really believe what he is saying, and is just trying to fit in with the "cool" gangsters. We've already seen Charlie act shy around women, and as further evidence that he is no "smooth operator", with the ladies. He tries unsuccessfully to take Lena's hand while walking her home and desperately thinks of ways to make her laugh, and in a later sequence he chides himself in his inner monologue for looking at her legs while him and Lena are on the steps to her apartment. The gangsters themselves are a far cry from their counterparts in the noir films that influenced Truffaut. They bicker over their driving skills in the car like an old married couple, and are generally inept as criminals as we learn that Chico has fleeced them out of their share of a heist. In the same interview in Cinéaste, Truffaut explains that he portrays the crooks as comical due to his childhood in the Pigalle neighborhood of Paris where he witnessed thugs like that firsthand. Truffaut does not like the romanticization of the gangster archetype in film, he says that it is "snobbism on the part of artists to like gangsters. There is no reason to like them, they are bad guys...[t]hat is why I made them comical,".
One of the more innovative sequences of the film occurs in Lena's apartment. She and Charlie are shown lying in bed together after having sex, and we see images of Lena talking to Charlie intercut with images of the two of them just lying together silently. I wasn't quite sure what to make of this. I think that maybe it could have been showing what was really happening juxtaposed with what Charlie wanted to happen. Recalling the scene in the car with the gangsters, one of them says how he hates that women always want to talk after sex. So, are the scenes with Lena talking what actually happens after they have sex, and the scenes of them lying silent some sort of male fantasy world that Charlie slips off to where the woman, having pleasured him, says no more? Again, it's hard to tell if this is how Truffaut really feels about women, or if he is taking the piss out of the misogynist stereotypes using a bit of post-modern irony. It would also seem that Truffaut is poking fun at the notions of how women are perceived and should behave. Early on in the film we learn that the bar owner has a "thing" for Lena, but tells Charlie that he is too ugly for her, and that Charlie has a much better chance with her. Much later in the film, Charlie and Lena go in to quit their jobs at the bar. Lena uses some rather colorful language while telling off the boss and he throws a fit. He says he no longer is attracted to Lena since Charlie has "defiled" her, and that he is turned off by her swearing since ladies shouldn't swear. The notion that a woman is defiled after having slept with a man she isn't married to is essentially an antiquated notion in most parts of the western world today. Subsequently the bar owner is punished for holding these antiquated views, and is stabbed to death during his fight with Charlie. If Shoot The Piano Player is in part a response to some of the criticisms of Breathless, one of which was that Godard's film was misogynistic, it would seem that Truffaut lays it on the misogynism extra thick, but with a knowing wink, since he makes the characters who foster those ideas (the gangsters, the bar owner) look like buffoons.

Pickpocket

2008-12-16T22:54:00.001-05:00

Robert Bresson preferred to think of his actors more like models. I wonder if this was a decision based on Kulyeshov's experiments. Kulyeshov, of course, was the Russian theorist who juxtaposed a close up shot of an expressionless man with random objects like a bowl of soup and a child at play. When shown the combined images, audiences marveled at how the actor conveyed hunger while looking at the bowl of soup, or how tenderly and affectionately he looked at his young daughter while she was playing. Perhaps Bresson similarly used actors with emotionless faces in order for us as spectators to project whatever emotion we could extrapolate from the situations at hand. The situations in Pickpocket lead to a more complex reading than what Kulyeshov was aiming for. There is no one way to interpret how Bresson thought we should feel towards Michel. Instead of manipulating the audience to feel sympathy or disgust as a reaction to what Michel does, Bresson lets us make up our own mind. For example, even though Michel's face remains as blank as ever when he is confronted by the man whose wallet he just lifted on the metro, Bresson holds the shots on the faces for so long that we can't help feeling uncomfortable, as if we're experiencing the feelings that Michel must surely be feeling at having been caught. The interesting thing about this though, is where one person may be feeling shame for having stolen someone else's property, another may feel anger at having been caught in the act. Even though Michel ends up in jail, Bresson doesn't outright say whether he is a "bad" or "good" person. It's up to the audience to decide. My own personal interpretation was that Michel wasn't a criminal, just a lazy bum. Instead of putting forth the effort to find a job, he starts to pick pockets on the train just for kicks. He likes the rush he gets from it, and gets to make a little money as well, thus filling up the hours of the day in a way that doesn't involve reading in his squalid rented room. This concept of Michel's life of crime as a leisure activity is reinforced by the venues he chooses to "work" in as well as his "training". He steals at places like the race track or the amusement park, and sharpens the hand-eye coordination skills needed to pick pockets by playing pinball. He also divvies up the stolen money with his partner by playing cards in the café, to make it less conspicuous that money is changing hands.
To complement the relative emotional passivity of the actors, Bresson avoids any sort of peaks and valleys from the flatlined emotional state of the film by suggesting the action in ellipses. In the scene where Michel is at the amusement park with Jeanne and his friend, he is shown looking at the watch on a man's wrist at the table next to him. The next scene cuts to Michel walking up to his room with his jacket dirty and the knees of his pants torn to show bloody skin underneath. We aren't sure what happened until he pulls the watch out of his pocket, then we realize that he stole it and a chase ensued but he ultimately escaped. Showing the theft of the watch and the ensuing chase would've no doubt been a very kinetic scene that would have disrupted the generally static overall feel of the film.
One element I especially liked was the sound/framework device that Bresson used to suggest the story was a flashback being recounted in a diary entry or a letter being written, almost as a confessional. The film begins with a close up of Michel writing, accompanied by a piece of orchestral string music. Throughout the film we return to these shots of a hand writing with Michel's voice over narration, and the same musical accompaniment. This suggests the narrative is being told to us by Michel as a flashback, but since we never see where Michel is sitting as he is writing, we don't know if he is writing from jail or if it is many years later after his release.

Le Bonheur

2008-12-16T22:47:00.002-05:00

While I didn't enjoy Le Bonheur as much as Cleo From 5 to 7 or some of the other films we've seen in class, there were definitely enough interesting elements to the film that made it a worthwhile viewing. I know that some of the new wave directors were influenced by Camus' writing, and I couldn't help but wondering if there were some elements of the protagonist in "The Stranger" that Varda gave to the male lead in Le Bonheur. He didn't seem to be too broken up by the death of his wife, much like the character in The Stranger who was unmoved after the death of his mother. Likewise, he didn't seem to show any emotion on the opposite side of the spectrum as well. He never looked to be joyful or content, even after having sex, with two different women no less. The only time he registered much emotion was in the scene when he is sitting with his family after the wife's funeral. But even then, it doesn't seem so much like sorrow as it does a kind of dull shock, as if he was lamenting the break up of his stable routine more than anything else. Which is why it seems it is with relative ease that Émilie steps in to fill the void left by Therese. It seems kind of odd, both on François and Émilie's part, that they would both be willing to jump into a relationship after the sudden death of Therese.
We see an equalization of the gaze in Le Bonheur. In only one film we've seen so far has the male been the object of the female gaze, and only then it was briefly, when Jean Seberg looked at Jean-Paul Belmondo through her rolled up poster in Breathless. Most likely due to the fact that Varda is the lone female in what is essentially a boy's club, we see the gaze returned to the male just as often as it is given. We see François looking with desire at Émilie at the post office when he first meets her. At their first meeting, the gaze isn't returned to François, but in a later scene when the two of them are in a café having a drink, it is evident that there is an intense attraction between the two of them. Through uses of the close up, Varda makes it clear that Émilie is deriving just as much pleasure looking at François as he is as at her.
One element of the film I rather enjoyed was the use of color. I don't know if Varda's choice of colors was motivated by any kind of symbolism, but the color palates were very pleasing to the eye. The colors of the clothing that the actors wore seemed to mimic the backgrounds in the outdoor scenes and correspond to the natural color palates found in the different seasons.
I loved the editing in the beginning sequence, when it showed Fraçois and his family walking, intercut with a close up on the face of the sunflower. It seemed that the sunflower was serving as a stand-in for Émilie, a lone outsider looking at a family. Flowers are a recurring motif throughout the film as well. Flowers show up in vases in the apartments where François and his family live, and also in Émilie's apartment. This may be a stretch, but Varda could've used the flowers as a symbol of the transitive beauty and fragility of romantic relationships.

Day For Night

2008-12-16T22:25:00.001-05:00

Truffaut's foray into the cinephilic self-reflexivity of making a movie about making a movie was in 1973 already a path well worn by Godard and sadly doesn't fare too well against a film like Contempt. This film lacks the verve and originality of his earlier films like 400 Blows and Shoot The Piano Player. The parallel that Truffaut draws between a film crew working together while a symphony plays in the non-diegetic soundtrack seems cheap and clichéd, especially considering what we know he is capable of from his past films. It isn't much of a stretch to have himself playing the director of the fictional Je Vous Présente Pamela. While I can appreciate the whole idea of blurring the lines between documentary and reality, the goings on behind the scenes of a film isn't the most exciting fodder for filmmaking without a compelling story to go with it. Having worked on a few sets over the years, I can honestly say it is one of the most boring jobs I have ever had, and I've even worked some pretty dull jobs like the toll booth of a parking structure for a few months. It is in an interminably boring process to set up lights and the camera and block the actors and hear the same lines spoken over and over again until the director decides he has the shot he needs, then tear it all down and set it back up from a different angle and repeat the same process. Most of the time is spent standing around smoking between the shots, talking about movies (in my experience at least). The problem with Day For Night is that the behind the scenes narrative is about as dull as the movie-making process, and is presented in a rather straight ahead manner with none of the deviations from the norm that characterized the work of the new wave directors. As I said earlier, Godard's Contempt was an excellent film about moviemaking, partly because it had a great story to go with it. Werner Herzog, member of the New German Cinema group who were highly influenced by the French new wave, made a film called Fitzcarraldo that was a metaphor for the film making process, but disguised in a story about obsession and colonialism, among other themes. It's also made more entertaining by having a raving lunatic as the star. The documentary American Movie is about the movie making process and is hilarious and infinitely more entertaining than Day For Night, and a "true" story to boot. Truffaut tries to inject some humor into the proceedings by portraying the leading lady as a drunkard on the edge of a breakdown who mistakenly opens the wrong door and ruins the end of the scene, but after seeing it about 5 times in a row it just made me cringe instead of laugh. Jean-Pierre Léaud's character seems to be what would've happened had the Cahiers du Cinéma bunch turned into actors instead of directors. He is essentially the embodiment of every cinephile/fanboy's (what's the difference when you really get down to it?) dream to act in films. In a bizarre twist on the tendencies of the cinephile to watch the same film over and over again and recite the lines their favorite characters are speaking, he sits in the screening room watching the dailies and mouths the words he sees himself speaking on screen. Then after working on a film set all day, he still wants to go out and see a movie. And like most fanboys he develops a crush on the leading lady, played by Jacqueline Bisset, but again unlike all the other fanboys he actually gets to sleep with her.

Alain Resnais - Comme l'amour, comme la guerre

2008-12-16T11:27:00.004-05:00

Alain Resnais' Hiroshima, Mon Amour is a rather brilliant depiction of the transitory nature of memory and human relationships. The beginning of the film shows "Nevers", the French woman and "Hiroshima", the Japanese man visiting a museum. A major part of our memory is tied to the information that we receive from our eyes, and I wonder if Resnais was inferring a connection between museums and film. Both are primarily visual spectacles, though film has the added element of sound (well, at least since the late 20s). Both attempt to preserve time in order for spectators to revisit it again, with the obvious difference being that the images in a museum space are usually static and within the filmic space they're moving. Perhaps more importantly is the fact that both films and museums have directors. There is someone choosing what goes and what stays for spectators to see. Therefore Resnais is suggesting that memory itself is malleable and transitory. Both museums and films have a transitory nature to them as well. Museums usually have a permanent collection which holds art that visitors can see every time they go, and then a section reserved for traveling exhibitions that change every few months, so if enough time elapses between trips to the museum, it is never the same place twice. While not so much the case in Resnais' time, now with the advent of DVD the filmic narrative is subject to change as well. For example, there are now 5 different cuts of Blade Runner available to the public, and who can forget the internet nerd outrage over the defilement of the sanctity of Star Wars: A New Hope when a new cut was released showing Greedo taking a shot at Han Solo before Han shoots him. On another, perhaps more metaphysical level, film and memory are both fragile media for preserving history. While nitrate film was much more susceptible to the ravages of time even celluloid film degrades, as any viewing of an 20 year old print will display. Much like memory, which is clear and sharp to begin with, but after a few decades becomes fuzzy.
Perhaps even more important than memory in relation to the image is the context of not just the images themselves, but of the viewer of the images. What I mean is that depending on where you are standing, two people can look at the same image and see two different things. For example, to a Christian the cross is a symbol of salvation, but indigenous tribes of the Americas could see it as a symbol of genocide and the destruction of their culture. This idea is echoed in Hiroshima, Mon Amour when Nevers and Hiroshima are laying in bed and Never is talking about what she saw at the museum. Hiroshima says over and over "You didn't see anything". This could mean that as a French citizen who never saw the effects of the atomic fallout firsthand like a Japanese citizen who lived through the aftermath, she could not fully fathom what had happened. And her perhaps Resnais is suggesting that true memory is comprised of all the senses instead of just what you can see in a museum, or see and hear in a film. Nevers never heard the screams of bombing survivors, nor smelled the smoke from the burning wreckage, nor felt her skin blistering from the heat of the explosion like Hiroshima had, hence his stance that she "saw nothing".
Their relationship is transitory as well. Nevers is in Japan to work on a film, and while Hiroshima wants to see her again, she is less than enthusiastic about a future meeting. Their trysts often take place in hotels as well, spaces where people stay for a few days or weeks at most, but then move on to somewhere else. These similar themes of memory and relationships are also explored in Resnais' film Last Year At Marienbad. It is set in a posh, ultra chic hotel resort where X tries to convince A that they had met the year before at another similar resort hotel at Marienbad. However, minor details keep changing every time he recalls the scenarios, like what she was wearing or where certain events took place. Even the location of Marienbad is unclear to X though, who admits that it could have been any number of other resorts he has been to. Again, the memory is fleeting, linked to a space where people stay for a short period of time. He claims that they fell in love and that she was to leave M, her husband, in a year and run away with X. This is where there is a major difference between the characters of Hiroshima, Mon Amour. While in both films they have names that suggest they are less singular human entities rather than a representation of a larger more abstract idea, Hiroshima and Nevers are names of places where people live and there is a feeling of genuine attraction between the two of them whereas X, A, and M exist in a sterile, cold, emotionless void. The substitution of there names is similar to the variables of an algebraic equation. There is an air of great formality, not only from the tuxedos and evening gowns that the guests of the resort wear, but also in the language. The more formal "vous" form of the French verb conjugations is used instead of the "tu" which is used between people who know each other well. Husbands and wives would not address each other with the "vous" form, and neither would two lovers. This suggests and emotional distance between all of the characters. __ repeatedly says "laissez-moi", wishing to be left alone, which could mean that the affair actually did happen and she wants to forget about it the passion that may have ignited it, or that the affair never happened at all nor would she want to be a party to something like that. Another difference between the characters of the two films is their class. While the characters in Hiroshima, Mon Amour were certainly well off, at least enough to be able to travel between Japan and France, the travel was for part of their employment. The characters in Marienbad belong to the "idle rich" class. There is no mention of what anyone does for work, they all seem to do nothing but take vacations to elaborate resorts play games, watch plays, or go to balls.

Cleo From 5 to 7

2008-12-16T11:25:00.001-05:00

Cleo From 5 to 7 is different from any of the films we've seen so far. First of all it's directed by Agnes Varda, the lone female director in the boy's club of the nouvelle vague. It comes as little surprise then that the protagonist of the film is also a woman. Ironically though she appears on the surface to be just as vapid and flaky as the women in the other films we've seen. It's hard to tell at first whether Varda wants us to sympathize with Cleo or not. Most of her behavior in the film is pretty much unlikeable from the very beginning. In the beginning of the film, we see her getting her tarot cards read. The fortune teller sees an illness in her future, and Cleo goes to pieces. She breaks down crying, fearing that she is going to die. But then as she leaves the fortune teller's apartment, she looks at herself in the mirror and says that she has her beauty, and as long as she is beautiful she is alive. Further living up to the stereotype of a vapid, materialistic blonde, she goes shopping and buys a new hat to cheer herself up. In the cab ride home from shopping with her assistant the radio broadcast reports on the latest casualties in the Algerian war while she prattles on about herself. She also has contempt for the cabdriver, perhaps feeling a sense of entitlement as a diva-esque pop singer over a lowly, working class woman. The cab driver isn't the only person she condescends to. There is a subtle division between her and her assistant as well. Her assistant always addresses Cleo in the formal "vous" form whereas Cleo addresses her with the informal "tu" form. Children usually address adults in the "vous" form and vice versa, so this subtle difference in language suggests Cleo is above (or, at least fancies herself above) her assistant. She also acts like a diva when her songwriters show up for a rehearsal. She complains that the songs are too difficult to learn, and how nobody loves her and just wants to exploit her for her voice. However, I think that Cleo is ultimately redeemed through her meeting with Antoine, the soldier on leave from the Algerian war that she meets in the park. Before meeting him she is at a café and she seems to start to have an existential crisis. I'm sure it's not by coincidence that the café she goes to is Le Dôme, a café frequented by Sartre and other existential intellectuals. She plays one of her records on the jukebox and gauges the reaction of the crowd, which keeps going about their business like they were before her record started. Cleo begins to realize that the world does not revolve around her like she imagines it does, that she is just another person like anyone else. When she goes to the park and meets Antoine, she becomes even more human. At first she dismisses him and wants to be left alone, but his persistence eventually finds a chink in her armor and she becomes more vulnerable and human. We learn that her real name isn't Cleo but Florence. Through Antoine, we (or at least I) are able to feel empathy for her as a fellow human who is suffering through a disease and fears for her life.

Varda shows some amazing innovation in this film that rightly places her in the canon of the nouvelle vague along such names as Godard and Truffaut. There is one of my favorite long takes ever in the scene where Cleo is learning a new song with her lyric and music writers that signifies the isolation that Cleo feels. The camera travels slowly across the room in an arc, showing first all three characters but then slowly zooming in on just Cleo, who is standing in front of a black curtain. The camera moves in so that all we see is a medium close up of Cleo with the black curtain behind her. Cleo looks right into the camera while singing a song about dying of loneliness after being without her lover. While the song starts out with just the diegetic accompaniment of the piano, it is eventually replaced by a dynamic, orchestral string arrangement. As the music swells Cleo seems to be lost in the song. The effect is mesmerizing and is so great that the viewer gets caught up in the moment as well, and forgets (like Cleo seems to) that she is in her apartment. It instead seems like she is giving a performance in a concert hall, but then the song ends and the camera abruptly pulls back and thrusts the viewer (and Cleo) back into reality, showing us that she is indeed just in her apartment singing to an audience of three instead of a full house at a grand concert hall. There is also an incredible use of non-continuous editing in the scene where she leaves the rehearsal in her apartment and goes to the café. As she walks down the street and looks at the people looking back at her in a series of reverse shots, there are a series of shots inserted of people not on the street. We see her assistant sitting in her apartment, the songwriter sitting at his piano, patrons from the café she just left, and the man swallowing frogs on the street that walked past earlier. By showing these people in a completely different space than the one Cleo is presently occupying, it gives us an insight to her existential crisis where she is realizing that these people in fact have lives outside of the relationship to her.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Godard -or- this entry has a beginning, a middle, and an end, though not necessarily in that order

2008-12-14T11:11:00.002-05:00

This was my first time seeing 2 or 3 Things I Know About Her and my first reaction was that it was one of the most difficult of Godard's films, at least that I have seen. I found the whispering to be an effective contrast against the noise of the city, but after awhile it felt a bit heavy handed. I suppose Godard was going for a contrast between the cacophonous noises of city life and machines versus drowning out the softer tones of the human voice. Perhaps on another level it could be meant to represent the inner turmoil of the modern mind of a city dweller, trying to filter out the noises of city life that threaten to make even the simplest thoughts impossible. In one instance, in the café, the sound of the pinball machine is just as loud as the conversation and is quite distracting, perhaps a representation of modern technology impeding man's ability to communicate. Even when the shot moves to a conversation on the other side of the café, the pinball noises are still just as prominent as they were. Communication is another important theme in the film. Godard makes reference to city life being taken over by forms of communication, most notably radio and television, and calls for the formation of a new language. Not that the film is contented with simple thoughts though. In lieu of a narrative, the film consists of a series of vignettes with a prostitute called Juliette pontificating heavy philosophical questions in an inner and outer monologue. Some of the philosophizing comes off as a bit amateurish though, like when Juliette is contemplating "what if blue was called green by mistake" or "if you say a word 200 times it becomes meaningless". It sounds like something you'd hear in a freshman dorm after a bong has made a few rounds. Godard's scathing criticism of the U.S.'s involvement in the VietNam war is still present, but I didn't think it was as clever as it was in Pierrot le Fou (with the "play" put on for the American sailors)and Masculin, Feminin (when Paul distracted the soldier while his friend wrote "peace in Vietnam" on the U.S. military car). The ever present criticism of commercialism is rather humorous though, while Juliette and another of her prostitute friends are talking about the new line of Paco Rabanne dresses while they are undressing for their "date" with John Bogus. I'm still not quite sure what to make of the fact that the "American" John Bogus clearly has a French accent. I wonder if perhaps Godard is sidling France with some of the blame in Vietnam, since they were a colonial presence there for hundreds of years prior to America's involvement with the war against communism. However, Godard equated the American presence in Vietnam to Hitler's Third Reich, with the America Über Alles signs.
The one aspect of the film I found most interesting was the line that said "If you can't afford LSD, buy a color TV". There's a few levels on which you can interpret that statement. On a literal level, a dose of LSD costs considerably less than a color television, especially in the late 60s. Perhaps Godard means to say that if your mind and body can't "afford" the effects of LSD you could "tune in, turn on, and drop out" with a different drug that is just as surreal and mind warping as LSD but can be easily turned off if it gets too intense. Speaking of illicit drugs, this film's narrative "structure" feels a lot like William Burrough's experiment to derange the mind without the use of drugs, Naked Lunch, in the sense that there is no structure, just an unconnected series of vignettes like I mentioned before. This is the perfect embodiment of his theory that films should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, though not necessarily in that order. By comparison, Le Weed-End seems coherent. Godard dips into pure avant garde formalism in one scene, when the shot is just a close up of the swirling patterns in the foam of a cup of coffee. Shots like this would not have looked out of place in films by Leger or Man Ray.
The "her" in the title of the film refers not just to Juliette but to Paris itself. All the development takes place on the outskirts of town, in the banlieus or the suburbs. Paris itself doesn't have any modern high rises or skyscrapers, they are relegated to outside the periphery like the La Défense area that is the Parisian center of banking and commerce. Since Paris figures so strongly in Godard's early films, it could signify that Paris is static and unchanging. There are no shots in 2 or 3 Things... of the iconic monuments one associates with Paris, with the exception of the Arc de Triomphe which appears briefly. The focus seems to be on the construction of new buildings. Since Godard makes reference to the need for a new language to be created, it seems he is creating a new filmic language by making a film radically different from his earlier work like Breathless where the iconic Parisian landscape (Notre Dame, the Champs-Elysées, the Place de la Concorde, the Eiffel Tower) was almost like a character of the film. The problem with creating a new language though is that it will take a long time before other people can learn it.

Le Week-End

2008-12-13T18:01:00.001-05:00

The first thing I did after I got done watching this film for the first time was to press rewind and immediately watch it again. I wasn't quite sure what I had seen and wanted to make sure I hadn't hallucinated it. Jean-Luc Godard's Le Week-End is ostensibly meant on one level to hold a mirror up to the face of society in order to show how vapid a bourgeois consumerist lifestyle is. I believe it functions on that level, but the question that always comes to mind is what good is a mirror that the majority of people wouldn't want to look into? Le Week-end is definitely not a movie for the consumers on a mass level. It seems a more effective route to take would be to make something that would appeal to a mass audience and load it with a subversive message. I think there is a certain amount of naïveté in making a film so anti-society. If Godard was really so disgusted with society, there are other ways to revolt instead of making a visually compelling film that is difficult to watch. Perhaps I'm making a generalization, but the kind of person who would go see a Godard film probably isn't coming from a bourgeois, white picket fence, 9 - 5 job with 2.3 kids background. In effect, it would seem that Godard is preaching to the converted. Someone who was really fed up with society could burn all their possessions and move off the grid to the Amazon basin where no trappings of society or the modern world have penetrated. But the downside to that is, if you're a cinephile, there's nowhere to watch movies. I imagine that, like myself, Monsieur Godard likes being able to wake up in a bed under a roof, take a hot shower, and walk on pavement to a café for a sandwich and a cup of coffee before spending an afternoon watching movies. That's not to say I discredit the message behind the film. A major part of Western culture is driven by consumerism, and the vast majority of it is for things that are inessential to our survival. Case in point, if we didn't need it, why would a company spend millions of dollars convincing you that you do? Godard touches on this earlier in films like Pierrot Le Fou, in the beginning scene when the partygoers conversations are just regurgitated advertising copy, but its taken to an extreme in Le Week-end. Godard equates consumerism with murder, as is evidenced in the scene where the pig is slaughtered. The vast majority of the population in Western nations are meat-eaters, but those who have actually slaughtered and processed an animal are greatly outnumbered by those who buy their meat in a plastic wrapped package in the grocery store. In the pig slaughtering scene, Godard makes it uncomfortably clear that that package of meat you buy at the grocery store was once walking around and had to be killed in order for it to make it to your table. I think that perhaps it would have been even more shocking had Godard used footage shot in an actual slaughterhouse, where thousands of animals are slaughtered every day in more horrific ways than the pig in this film was. I don't think the metaphor stops just with what we eat. Gas stations are frequent milieus in Godard films, and in the scene when the two garbagemen deliver their political monologues, he makes references to oil companies exploiting Africans. So essentially, anyone who has ever used gasoline has blood on their hands. I wonder if any of this is directed at himself though. Film crews take up a lot of gasoline and buy a lot of film stock and all are on a payroll, all of which are also taxed by government, so indirectly even this film buys into the very system that it rails against.

Godard makes some interesting use of the text intertitle shots in Le Week-end, my favorite being the shots where the sound of a speeding enging is heard as the screen shows the Km/h like a speedometer would, and the numbers rise with the pitch of the engine. The film starts with an intertitle proclaiming that it is a film found on a dumpsite. At the end we see one that proclaims that this is the "end of cinema". It would seem that Godard is equating cinema as just another disposable commodity, to be enjoyed for a couple hours and then thrown away. This idea is hardly revolutionary though. The Lumière brothers said as much in cinemas infancy, proclaiming to be an invention without a future, only then the movies were only a couple minutes in length as opposed to hours. I think there is another link between Godard and les frères Lumières in this film. Le Week-end has an element of what film theorists refer to as the "cinema of attraction", the era of film from its birth up to 1906. A short definition of cinema of attractions is that is a non-narrative cinema that produces a shock to the system, not unlike an amusement park ride. Although Le Week-end shows a progression from city life to an almost primitive, savage-like existence, there is only the faintest thread of a narrative structure. Corinne and Roland, a bourgeois married couple, are on the road from Paris. The only thread unifying the scenes is that they all contain husband and wife. The film is also filled with shocking bits of sex and violence. The sex is only hinted at in a long scene shot in one take but it alludes to group sex, lesbianism, and kinky sex acts involving whiskey, milk, and eggs, which even in the midst of the sexual revolution of the 60s must have made some filmgoers squeamish. The wife is describing the sex to her husband, who was not present during the sex acts, which may or may not have happened. They both seem very blasé about it, as if they were describing an everyday event like what they did at work the previous day. However, the violence is not alluded to. Godard shows in graphic detail bodies lying amongst twisted wreckage with copious amounts of blood.
Jean Paul Sartre wrote that every revolutionary is bound to become a heretic or an oppressor, and if that's the case I still can't figure out which side of the line Godard intended to come down on with this film.

Les jeux sont faits, rien na va plus.

2008-12-13T17:41:00.001-05:00

This was my first time seeing Bob le Flambeur, and I was blown away. The only other works of Melville's I had seen were Le Doulos and Le Samouraï. While all three of these films work in the gangster milieu, Bob le Flambeur is decidedly more humanistic than the other two. The other two films are in a world where it is every man for himself. To put a twist on a well worn cliché Bob is the gangster with a heart of gold. We learn that Bob saved the life of a policeman years ago by pushing his accomplice's hand away as he pulled the trigger of a gun aimed at inspector Ledru. Whether it was expressly for saving the policeman's life or sparing his accomplice the maximum prison penalty that killing a cop would bring it isn't clear, but Bob could've just as easily stood by and done nothing. It's hard to imagine Silien from Le Doulos or Alain from Le Samouraï sticking his neck out like that for either reason, either to save a policeman's life or to save an accomplice some jail time. Perhaps Melville's opinions of gangsters changed over the years? It's interesting to see Melville portray the gangster type as someone with upstanding morals. Melville's portrayal of the Bob as a sharp-dressed, charming, kind-hearted gangster stands in contrast to Truffaut's from Shoot The Piano Player, where they were misogynistic, bumbling hoods.
Bob seems to respect women much more so than Truffaut's gangsters. In one of the early scenes an associate, Marc, drops by needing to borrow money to skip town. Bob gets his wallet out and is ready to loan him some francs until Marc says he is on the lam after beating up his "girlfriend" (most likely on of his hookers). Bob refuses to lend him the money and sends him away. He takes in Anne, a pretty young homeless girl, and gives her money for a hotel and then lets her sleep in his apartment without trying to use it as an advantage to have sex with her. I'm sure it's no coincidence that the apartment has a commanding view of the Sacre Coeur (Sacred Heart) basilica in the background. In the beginning we hear Melville's voiceover talking about distance between heaven & hell. The Sacre Coeur sits on the highest point of Paris (heaven) and overlooks Pigalle (hell), the sketchy part of town where Bob first sees Anne being picked up by an American sailor. Taken that into consideration, Melville portrays Bob almost as a saint, a divine guardian for wayward girls. We also learn that Bob loaned money to Yvonne to open her café. One gets the feeling that perhaps Bob and Yvonne may have been lovers at one point but that things didn't quite work out.
Bob also functions as a sort of father figure to Paulo, a young, inexperienced, gangster wanna-be. In one scene he breaks up a conversation between Paulo and Marc as they are working out the details of a scam. Bob pulls Paulo outside and warns him not to get mixed up with Marc. Behind Bob, out of focus, we see a neon sign that says "Romance" in the background as he lectures Paulo. This could be read that perhaps Bob was once like Paulo and had ideas of a romanticized life outside of the law, but is now older and wiser, having served his time in prison as a result of the path he chose. On the other side, behind Paulo, we see a sign that says Sans Souci (care-free), a comment on Paulo's inexperience and never having been arrested.
While Bob le Flambeur came out a few years prior to the new wave explosion, there are elements of the film that clearly influenced it. While it is relatively straight forward as far as its narrative, editing, and camera angles are concerned, there are still enough deviations from the classical Hollywood style to set it apart. First of all the subject matter, the gangster/criminal underworld/noir genre, would be used by Godard and Truffaut, among others in the new wave. (put in sound effects at racetrack here). There is also an excellent example of non-classical editing used in the scene where the safecracker is practicing on a mock-up of the safe they are going to rob at the D'eauville casino. The scene recalls C.T. Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc with succession of facial close-up shots of the gang of crooks (and their dog). It doesn't do anything to move the storyline ahead and is visually disorienting, and both of these techniques were used by the new wave directors.

Une Femme Est Une Femme

2008-10-30T16:15:00.001-04:00

Godard's second feature film to be shown in theaters showcases the seeds of ideas that would fully germinate in his later more experimental work. While Une Femme Est Une Femme follows a relatively straightforward narrative, its elements occur repeatedly throughout Godard's career. The film self-reflexively starts with starlet Anna Karina shouting "lights, camera, action!". Godard takes this idea to a further extreme in Tout Va Bien where the film starts with a close up of a hand writing out payroll checks for various members of a film crew, and a voice over conversation about who to find as a star for the film. Tout Va Bien also contains a heavy usage of the red, white, and blue color scheme that you see in Émile & Angela's apartment. You also see a few very languid camera pans between actors across spaces where no action is taking place. Shots like this became commonplace in his later work as well, like the 360 degree pans used in Sympathy For The Devil or the very long tracking shots in Le Week-end. Another device that would be a staple of later Godard films is the use of text on screen to comment on the narrative (or sometimes, having seemingly nothing to do with the narrative). Intertitle screens would pop up in between and sometimes during the "acts" of Masculin, Feminin. There is even the slightest hint of the leftist political slant his films would take on in the late 60s and early 70s. When the police come to Emile & Angela's apartment to take a look around, one of them notices Émile reading a communist newspaper, and offers him a word of encouragement, telling him to "keep it up".
I think that this film is much more self-conscious of its role as a film than Breathless. The film starts with Anna Karina shouting "lights! camera! action!", letting the audience hear what would normally only be heard by the cast and crew during the shooting. Godard also foregrounds the issue of spectatorship from the very beginning with the scene of Karina dancing at the club. She struts out onto the floor of the club and looks directly into the camera at us while she does her sultry song and dance act. One of the patrons looks at her through a pair of opera glasses even though she is only a few feet away from him. Another instance of foregrounding spectatorship is when Belmondo makes a comment about wanting to go home to watch Breathless on TV, a film that he starred in. Through his self-reference he steps outside of his characters role for a moment, acknowledging his existence outside of the artificiality of the filmic narrative that he is in.
The impression I got of Une Femme Est Une Femme is that it was a musical without the singing, and parodizes the classical 50s Hollywood era musicals. For example, there is a scene of Karina and Belmondo dancing in a rubble filled alley. This is a stark contrast to the glamorous settings in 50s Hollywood musical with flashy costumes and elaborately choreographed dance numbers. In the moments when you would expect the characters to break out into song, nothing happens. The one moment that stuck out in my mind the most was when Lubitsch came to their apartment. He leaves with to have dinner while Angela stays in the apartment alone. This would be the perfect moment for her to launch into a song about how her husband drives her crazy while she dances around the apartment, but instead she just sulks.

Vivre dangereusement jusqu'au bout!

2008-09-18T23:51:00.001-04:00

Phrases like "groundbreaking" and "one of the most influential films ever" are bandied around enough to almost be devoid of meaning, but Breathless is one of the few pictures actually worthy of the tag. The section of the film that shows Michel driving from Marseille to Paris loses none of its ability to disorient even after almost 50 years (and in my own case, even after the 100+ times I've seen this film in the past 10 years). Nearly every rule of continuity editing is purposefully violated, and as if to push our buttons even further, Jean-Paul Belmondo looks right at the camera (and subsequently, at us spectators) and tells us if we don't like, we can fuck ourselves. It's not just the editing rules that Godard throws out the window, but the whole moviemaking process. There was no screenplay, shooting script, or storyboards. François Truffaut and Claude Chabrol appear in the credits but that was essentially just to secure funding, since Chabrol and Truffaut had already made a name for themselves and at this point Godard had only one short film under his belt. Godard wrote the dialogue each morning before shooting, and sometimes they only had enough material to shoot for an hour or so.

Of all the films we've screened so far, this one bears the heaviest mark of the cinephilic tendencies of the French new wave directors. Before the film even starts, Godard tells us that it is dedicated to the Monogram picture company, an American production studio famous for gangster B-movies. Breathless also looks a bit different than the other films we've seen so far. Even though it was shot on a very light sensitive film stock, it was pushed almost to the limit in processing to give it a grainy look, perhaps again to emulate the B-movie pictures of the Monogram studio on a stylisitic level. The alias Poiccard chooses for himself, Laszlo Kovacs, is the name of a Hungarian cinematographer. Poiccard is also enamored of Humphrey Bogart. Like Bogey in one of his most celebrated roles (Rick in Casablanca), Michel plays the tough guy role but has a soft spot for a woman, which in the end will be his undoing. Perhaps in a nod to the escapist tendencies of the cinephile, Michel and Patricia duck into a theater to hide from the police. Godard also uses the films at these theaters like songs in a soundtrack to comment on the characters. The film being shown in the first theater that Patricia goes into on her own is Otto Preminger's Whirlpool, and the dialogue we hear a woman being asked "Does this cheap parasite mean so much to you that you're willing to cover for him?", clearly an allusion to Patricia and her situation with Michel. The use of a Preminger film has another layer of meaning as well, since Jean Seberg had starred in a Preminger film the previous year.

Michel himself is an intriguing character. Godard again breaks convention by having the leading man be someone who doesn't necessarily deserve our sympathies. With his very first line in the story he tells us, "After all, I'm an asshole." Michel's actions certainly convey this throughout the film as we see him steal money from a lady friend of his and a stranger he karate chops in the bathroom, steals numerous cars, berates a cab driver, and sneaks into Patricia's hotel room. He really doesn't exhibit any redeeming qualities, yet you can't help but want him to escape to Italy.

It's interesting to see in Godard's first feature some of the ideas that he used in later films, even though stylistically they would be radically different. Michel plays classical music records much like Jean-Pierre Léaud's character in Masculin Feminin. The long take or Patricia walking in a circle and pontificating out loud seems to be echoed in the later films, like the scene in Le Weekend when three reporters are following a young girl in a field asking her long, drawn out philosophical questions. And of course dipping into the gangster genre again with the heady mix of crime, love, and music that was to come in Band of Outsiders.

The 400 Blows

2008-09-11T20:17:00.000-04:00

Truffaut's The 400 Blows begins with a series of shots all focusing on the Eiffel Tower. After all the times I've seen this film I can't figure out his motivation for starting the film this way. The tower is never referenced again during the film and the bulk of the story takes place in Montmartre, a low rent area of the city where the tourists go to "slum it" with working class and bohemian types. I guess this could just be another example of the high/low culture juxtaposition that new wave directors favored, or perhaps a commentary on Antoine's character who is metaphorically going around in circles?
Jean-Pierre Léaud's performance is one of my favorites in all of French new wave cinema. Truffaut's choice of hiring an unexperienced actor to play this role was a minor stroke of genius. I think with an experienced actor you would've seen a performance that wasn't as naturalistic, since it would've been an actor trying to act like a troublemaking young teenager. Truffaut just cut out the middle man and hired a real troublemaking teen. This way he got someone who could actually fait les quatre-cents coups (raise hell) instead of having to be directed to do so.
Truffaut's cinephilic tendencies are clearly shown when Antoine and his friend cut class to go to the theater, but there is perhaps a reference to the earlier history of film. During the scene when Antoine is on the ride that spins around in circles, there are some shots from his POV. The bottom half of the screen shows the opposite wall of the ride, but the top half shows the people watching the ride spinning. This creates an image suggesting a zoetrope or a kinetoscope, those pre-filmic visual toys that showed moving pictures.

Les Cousins

2008-09-07T02:43:00.001-04:00

Of all the French new wave films I've seen so far, Les Cousins did appear to be the most mainstream, or perhaps a better way to describe it was that it was the most conventional, as far as the standards of classical Hollywood go. The only major stylistic deviation comes in a scene where Charles gets in the car with Paul, who shows him around Paris. There is a rapid succession of shots from the POV of inside a convertible driving along the Champs-Elysées. There is no logical order to the cuts, and you experience a sense of giddy disorientation you feel when looking all around that area of Paris for your first time, trying to take in all the sights at once. This scene seemed to me to be a precursor to the sequence in the beginning of Godard's "Breathless" when Jean-Paul Belmondo is driving and then shoots the police officer.

One of the major themes of the new wave that is present is the blending of high and low culture. For example, during the party scene in Paul's apartment, he insists on listening to classical music while everyone is getting drunk and fights break out. While the yé-yé music craze was still a couple years off, Chabrol could have used some other sorts of music more "appropriate" for such a party such as jazz, but instead he chose Wagner.

There was something else I noticed that Godard touches on in Breathless (and in a handful of his other films before he went into the extreme experimental/political realm) and that is the attitude that love is for squares, or something to be avoided altogether in favor of casual relationships. When Florence falls for Charles, Paul and his slimy friend (whose name I can't recall) essentially browbeat her until she gives up the notion of being in a relationship with Charles, and she goes on to have a fling with Paul. Belmondo's Michel Poiccard also seems to lament the fact that he has fallen for Patricia when he tells his friend Berruti, "What's worse, I think I'm in love with her" to which he replies "Damn!" You could read this either as another example of how the French new wave rejects the conventions of the classical Hollywood love story, or also perhaps as a rejection in general of their parent's generation's ideas of love and relationships.

2008-08-07T14:40:00.003-04:00

So a few thoughts on The Dark Knight, a good month or so after the fact:
(I've been meaning to write this earlier but the potholes on the road to hell won't fill themselves in. Plus it's given me a bit of time to digest it.)

So, my first gut reaction to the sequel was:
All in all it was a fun way to spend a couple hours, especially when watching it on the Imax screen, but it was not as good as Batman Begins. That's not to say I disliked the film. Heath Ledger put in the performance of his career and left a pair of shoes not likely to be filled when he shed this mortal coil. It's unfortunate he won't be around to collect the Oscar. But after having a chance to think about it for awhile, I still liked the first part better. I think the story of Batman's origin was more compelling than the all-out assault on the senses in The Dark Knight. The chase scenes, while visually stunning, seemed to be just a rehashing of the high speed racing around Gotham that we saw in Batman Begins. I did however think the disappearing pencil trick was oh so cleverly disgusting, and maybe I'm grasping at splinters here (pun intended) but was that a bit of an homage to the eyeball gouge in Fulci's Zombie?

I think the one thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was the pro-Bush undertones. Nolan wasn't very subtle with the T word, or with the issue of cell-phone eavesdropping technology. The underlying message was that your personal freedoms don't matter in a time of crisis. Batman also tells commissioner Gordon at the end that he is doing what he believes is right, no matter what anyone else says about it and if they all want to hate him they can. Sounds suspiciously like Bush's defense of unilateral actions, minus the direct link to the divine.

Vampyr

2008-05-22T16:34:00.003-04:00

So not doing to well on my resolution to keep the writing up but I've already ramped up my posting in the past month which is a good start. One new release that has caused me to start salivating in anticipation is the Criterion release of Vampyr by C.T. Dreyer. I've seen this before, but as of now it is only available on a poorly transfered DVD with subtitles that take up the bottom third of the screen, presented in a terribly annoying "creepy" olde english style font. You don't even really need the subtitles for this, as the spoken dialogue is sparse. You can enjoy this one on a purely visual level. To put it in musical terms, it's more tone poem than fully fleshed out composition. The mood and ambiance created by the visuals are so subtly disturbing that you all of the sudden find yourself in the grips of the terror, much like the proverbial frog in a pot of water slowly brought to boil. Imagine fever dream hallucinations in the bucolic environs of the French countryside and you're getting close. Particularly interesting are the scenes of the shadows on the wall that take divorce themselves from the objects casting them, and the fogged out twilight scenes. Legend has it that a member of the film crew brought it to the attention of Dreyer that the camera had a light leak and showed him the dailies, but Dreyer loved the effect and didn't fix the leak.

time flies when yr (not) having fun

2008-04-28T15:14:00.005-04:00

Wow, blog. It's been a year almost. You're still alive! Me too, barely. There's a section of Rob Sheffield's book "Love Is A Mixtape" where he debunks the Great American Adage of "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger" and counters it the observation that whatever doesn't kill you will usually leave you crippled. He's got a point. There's not enough whiskey to undo the damage done by this past semester. And what for? I graduate and then I'm like ten grand in debt and still working for Northwest (if I'm lucky and Delta doesn't downsize me) but I've got a piece of paper saying I'm not as dumb as I look. Of course I feel like an asshole saying things like that when there's people who have to worry about whether or not a mortar is going to land on their head while they're out buying groceries but overeducated, underemployed white middle class suburban guys have problems too, as is evidenced by Pavement's back catalog.
Anyway, I haven't written for the pure pleasure of bending words to my will in a long time, and lest writing become a Pavlovian response to the ka-CHUNK of a shotgun round being chambered, I figure I better get back into it. I've been meaning to write about this for awhile and since I'm damn near done with the semester, now is as good a time as any.
So anyway late last year, much to the dismay of those who waited too long to put their copy on eBay, Criterion released one of the holy grails of out-of-print cult cinema Two Lane Blacktop. Up until this point I had only ever seen it on a 2nd gen VHS dub, so seeing it fully restored was a real treat. This should be required viewing for any foreigner (or American citizen for that matter) who laments American cultural imperialism. Sure, it's a drag that McDonalds is making the world fat and all, but this serves as a reminder of why America dominates the global pop-culture market; we're just too fucking cool. Or at least, at one point we were, once upon a time. Two Lane Blacktop is like a time capsule from an era before product placement and major label manipulated soundtracks. Which is surprising, since Dennis Wilson and James Taylor (yep, that James Taylor) star in the film. They're known as The Mechanic and The Driver, respectively ( and existentially). They're a couple of drifters with a custom made, primer grey '55 Chevy making a living on illegal drag races. They get involved in a cross country road race for pink slips with GTO, played by Warren Oates. (Guess what he drives?) It's basically a trip across the country along the country two lane blacktop roads seen through the eyes of a disillusioned post-peace & love counterculture in the grips of an identity crisis and a reaction against the emergence of hyper-consumer society. Case in point, the main "conflict" of the film is the customized '55 Chevy vs. the mass produced Detroit muscle of the GTO. The only product placement is the ubiquitos Coca-Cola, but the film largely takes place in the "old weird America" of mom-and-pop diners and no-name motels along the side of The Road. Even though this film is more pertinent now than ever, it's highly unlikely anything like this would be made today in the studio system. There would have to be at least a car promotion tie-in, as well as gas stations, fast food joints, sunglasses, etc. etc. etc....

Going off on a slightly unrelated tangent. I'm just going to throw it out there that I do rather enjoy Tarantino's work. I don't particularly subscribe to his point of view where he considers himself the next Godard, but his films do strike a certain chord with me as a record/film junkie. That being said, I think he could've learned a thing or two from road movies when he was mining ideas for Death Proof: You don't have to talk so fucking much. That's the beauty of these films, like Two Lane Blacktop or Vanishing Point. The dialogue takes a back seat (no pun intended) to the wind blowing in through the windows and the Zen koan-esque roar of a red lined engine as the landscape unfurls through the windshield.

self serving bullshit, a new crush, and this week's playlist

2007-05-23T01:16:00.000-04:00

Two more reviews on the Foxy Digitalis site, this time around for James Blackshaw and Woods.

I'm swooning HARD from one track specifically on the new Keren Ann disc. She's that Israeli-born Parisienne who could basically be lumped in with that whole Norah Jones/NPR set but whatever. The new disc is kinda psych-lite, some Mazzy Star thing going on in the first track that's lovely, but it's the song "In Your Back" that really slays me. Lyrically it's basically aching & lovelorn but it sounds gorgeous. It makes me feel like when you get a phone call from a girl you're starry-eyed and super crushed out on and wondering if she's thinking about you, and since that feeling is utterly ephemeral and transforms to either sour grapes or is consummated, thus killing the butterflies and pinning them up in a little glass case, it's nice to find it distilled and encoded onto a little plastic disc so you can slip into it whenever you like. (just in case you think you want to call me a pussy, I should let you know that I'm wearing a Darkthrone t-shirt as I type this)

I've also been slacking on putting up my playlists from my radio show so I'm going to try to archive them here more regularly to indulge my own sick needs

Some Velvet Morning - May 21, 2007 - 89.3 FM streaming live at www.whfr.fm

James Blackshaw - "Cloud Of Unknowing" - Cloud Of Unknowing
Windy & Carl - "Smeared" - Mind Expansion, Vol. 1
The Delta Waves - "Lovers Leap" - Dream In Real Time
His Name Is Alive - "USA vs Gamelan" - Cloud Pop
Odd Clouds - "track 6" - Cleft Foot of the Woods
The W-Vibe - "Tape Like Cross" - Game Program
The Soundtrack Of Our Lives - "Broken Imaginary Time" - Behind The Music
Outrageous Cherry - "The Book of Dead Time" - X-Rays In The Cloudmine
MV & EE with The Bummer Road - Canned Heat Blues - Mother of Thousands
Stone Breath - "Sunshine In The Eyes Of Death" - Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis
The North Sea - "Take It From Me Brother Moses" - Exquisite Idols
Gary Higgins - "Thicker Than A Smokey" - Red Hash
Six Organs Of Admittance - "This Hand" - Dark Noontide
Giant Skyflower Band - "The Archangel (Hurray For The Beast)" - Blood Of The Sunworm
Franklin's Mint - "Carousel Baby" - Gold
Bonnie Prince Billy - "Lay & Love" - The Letting Go
Hush Arbors - "The Werewolf Om" - Hush Arbors
Current 93 - "Then Kill Caesar" - Black Ships Ate The Sky

Marissa Nadler - "Fifty Five Falls" - Ballads of Living & Dying

sun warmed synapses opened

2007-05-18T01:03:00.000-04:00

So since the last time I updated (over a month ago, I know) I've started writing for Foxy Digitalis, an online webzine for weird music. I just had my first review published there, on The Stumps, a New Zealand band, so click that link there if you want to read it.

I probably would have been updating more had the sun not been making a regular appearance over the skies of Detroit. You have to realize that when you live through a winter as ugly as there is here, those first few days of warm sunshine feel like some sort of blissful opium fueled hallucination. You're not quite sure if it's real or not but you don't really care either, I'll usually take a false sense of security over reality any day. In conjunction with this warm weather I've found my new favorite CD to listen to while staring up at a tattered American flag waving atop a skyscraper. "Person Pitch", the new solo effort by Panda Bear (aka Noah Lennox) of Animal Collective. I have a hard time coming up with words to describe something this pure and good that sounds like it comes from Utopia so I probably won't write all that much about except to tell you to go buy it. It's full of lots of warm reverb laced vocals and softly throbbing drum machine loops that will have your heart beating in some kind of sympathetic rhythm to it (like when you put two clocks next to each other and their second hands fuse, ya know?) I've found the closing track "Ponytail" to be especially hypnotic while watching the weatherworn stripes of the flag on top of the Guardian Building in a slow motion wave set against the muted blue sky. That flag is some sort of admittance of our flaws and it somehow made me feel better about being from here. We're far from perfect but at least there's enough of us to own up to it.

I also really like the new album by The North Sea called "Exquisite Idols". It's a meditation that reaches the realization that Ravi Shankar is to India what the Louvin Brothers are to America. At least that's what I got out of it. There's no need to further classify. OK, maybe raga-billy, or What Happens When Sitars and Banjos meet. But anyway, it's really just a celebration of life and diversity, many spokes emanating from the same hub. If more people took that to heart we might not be doomed. "Take It From Me Brother Moses" is a raucous hillbilly gospel stomp but then followed immediately by a debate devoid of structure between a digital tongue and its analog mouth in "Cover Me With Knives".

Thee OhSees is a band you should really be paying attention to as well. They have a new record called "Sucks Blood" that's equal parts dilated pupil psych swagger and a soft pillow to lay your fried mind on for the come down. Same thing goes for Gowns, not that they sound like Thee OhSees, just that you should probably be listening to them. There's a tune on their new album "Red State" that really got under my skin. It's called "White Like Heaven". It's a fever dream of a huge black humming monolith in a desert that you're floating towards, drawn by its energy, and once you reach it you just bask in its aura, suspended in its amniotic droning, oblivious to anything else going on in your fucked up little head. Listen to it here but so help me god don't you dare open your eyes and acknowledge the body you're imprisoned in and ruin it.

I don't mean to be so abstract but give me a break. I've been watching the films in the new Alejandro Jodorowsky box set. They've FINALLY been given a proper release. Jodorowsky has the rare combination of an unflinching artistic vision coupled with a complete lack of ego. These sort of movies would seem contrived and pretentious in less skilled hands. This is what William Blake would have been doing had film been his medium rather than ink and paper. I first saw El Topo about 8 years ago on a terrible VHS tape that seemed to be about a 6th generation dub, and it was in English no less. But now I've got that, Holy Mountain, Fando Y Lis, and an early short film called La Cravate about a girl that sells heads. To sweeten the deal, the soundtrack CDs for El Topo and Holy Mountain are included. I plan on writing a bit more on them once I've watched them a few more times. Until then, be good.

Terrible Black Ponys

2007-04-11T02:32:00.000-04:00

I put on Pavement's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain for the first time in who knows how long just now and I forgot how perfectly that album crystallizes the claustrophobic apathetic feeling that your reach will probably always exceed your grasp. To me it always sounds like idealism's quiet resignation to slow death at the hands of realism, while your escapist tendency rears its shaggy head with a "whatever" smirk plastered across its face and heavy lidded eyes.
I'm seriously not always in such an existential funk. For real. You should've seen me last Friday at the Magic Stick. I was having fun! I got there just in time to see local band The Terrible Twos take the stage. In the grand tradition of rock and roll misnomers, there were five members in the band. It would be easy to slap the "art punk" label on them since they're young, loud, and snotty but they have a keyboard player too. The truth of the matter is they just have a great, raw DIY aesthetic where musical prowess takes a backseat to the fire in your belly that you have to get out somehow. That sort of thing goes beyond any half-assed genre and sub-genre tags. Plus there were kids with honest-to-god mohawks there to see them. I'm not talking about some gentrified faux-hawk, these were big, spiky, fuck-off blue and green mohawks. They're like four leaf clovers, pretty rare to find one and it almost makes you want to go buy a lottery ticket when you see more than 3 in the same place. But the real reason I came to the show was playing next. This band makes Detroit crowds dance, and that's no small feat. Sleater-Kinney played a legendarily lackluster show in Detroit once, and had the balls to blame the crowd for "not giving them any energy". Well listen hun, I just worked 8 hours and paid too much for a shitty beer, so excuse me if I'm not doing cartwheels to your textbook indie rock. Maybe if you played something I can shake my ass too I would move more. Maybe if you were more like the Black Lips you wouldn't have a problem energizing a crowd. They were even a little more subdued this time, and still managed to have a room full of weird white kids spazzing out instead of standing with their arms crossed smoking cigarettes. And by subdued I mean I didn't see any nudity, random spontaneous hook-ups, broken bottles, or bloodied faces on the dance floor like the other times I've seen them. There was still plenty of scuzzy-fuzzy-primal-psychedelic-synapse-sizzling garage punk power to leave everyone sweaty. And unfortunately, unlike the Tijuana gig featured here, there wasn't any head butts or self-love performed by female audience members, but I wasn't really expecting all that. As fucked up as Detroit is, its nothing compared to Tijuana. Dirt cheap booze, unlimited access to pharmaceuticals, and ladies fucking donkeys make a town crazier than harsh winters and rampant unemployment. But, as an added bonus, one of the guitar players looks like a hobbit with a Paul Wall grill. You'll have to take my word for it because my camera was fucked up and I wasn't able to get any pics. The only complaint I can register is that they weren't the last band. On their previous Detroit stop they were in the opening slot as well, but The Dirtbombs played next, one of the few bands whose live show wouldn't disappoint after seeing the Black Lips. This night was a different story altogether as The Ponys were the headlining band. Don't get me wrong, I dig The Ponys. You can kinda tell that everyone in the band had an intense, all-consuming crush on bands like Ride and the Pale Saints at some point, and probably aren't strangers to an occasional bong hit or blotter tab. I love all that stuff too, but I wasn't in the mood for it after the previous set. I felt sort of like how your girlfriend must feel when you're fooling around and she comes before you do and then afterwards she's not that into it anymore. At that point she's thinking about shoes or something. So, sorry The Ponys, I still like you and all but the Black Lips made me feel like a lady and it weirded me out so I went home halfway through your set. We'll try again next time.
xoxo
Anton Lachey

the real world vs. the one in my head

2007-03-29T15:06:00.000-04:00

I don't really see how you can argue the fact that we're all connected on some level to a giant web of consciousness. You could of course call bullshit on that, and say how could that possibly be when bands like 3 Doors Down are popular, why is Paris Hilton a celebrity, etc., but the fact is, some folks are just more tuned into it than others. Case in point, The Shins' video for Phantom Limb. Here, watch the video first and then I'll expound more on the theory. Just ignore the comments posted by YouTube members though, the only people that read and respond and care about those are internet nerds who don't really know what they're on about and who no one listens to anywhere else, which is nothing like a music blog.

So anyway, there's a little known band that Pat Smear was a member of called Death Folk that have a song called '39 that I've created an amazing video for in my head over the past few years. It's much easier to direct videos that way, there's no early call times or budgets or actors or musicians to deal with. The video in my head has almost the exact same concept as The Shins video up there. It's all children, in a school play like setting, dealing with grim adult themes tempered with sugar coated special effects to take the edge off. My video had more of a pirate/nautical war theme though, where The Shins dealt more with ground war and cannibalism (I absolutely loved the Donner Party allusions).
The one scene though that really got me going on the whole unifying theory thing was when the kids were dressed as some sort of meso-american indian tribe and cut the ram's head off. In lieu of blood there a red streamer issuing from the neck. The EXACT SAME THING happens in my Death Folk "39" video! It blew my mind. In my video though, the battle climaxes with a cannon blast, and red streamers come shooting out of the torsos of its targets. Can this be considered a theft of intellectual property? I know I didn't have a copyright or anything, but that's my own private thing and I sort of feel violated that it's now out there, out in the cold harsh world, removed from the (relative) safety of my skull. But then again, once you think it, you're projecting it out there for anyone on the same vibration as you, with an albeit stronger work ethic and financial backing, to pick up on. I have a friend who is a big New York City intellectual property lawyer, but I really don't want to bother him with this. I suppose I could sue Sub Pop and director Patrick Daughters, but it wouldn't be any good. I haven't ever told anyone about my video because I'm not very articulate about the stuff that goes on in there for the most part. Plus my case wouldn't hold in any conventional court of law. I would only have a chance in some sort of Gondry-esque dimension, with Charlie Kauffman as my legal counsel. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

xoxox 666
Anton

P.S.
Is it just me, or is James Mercer, in the shots where he is seated and playing guitar with the red curtain background, looking a bit like John Cazale, a.k.a. Fredo Corleone from The Godfather films?

I knew it was you, Fredo. You broke my heart.

If I am lost it's only for a little while...

2007-03-13T01:48:00.001-04:00

Sometimes this whole blogging shit reminds me of the end of a Doogie Howser episode but...

Just when I think I'm going to pack it in and concede my lot in life as another cynical, jaded asshole with a dream deferred, brief moments of magic shine through the murk. I was well into a bottle of discount priced red wine and just wanted to put something on and sulk in a mostly dark room. Elvis Costello was on the deck but the whole High Fidelity thing was hitting a bit close to home so he just wouldn't do. So I lit a candle and chose my Band Of Horses Everything All The Time LP, since I had just played it on the radio the other night and figured "hey, these guys were in Carissa's Wierd, that was some pretty mopey shit, I know exactly what to expect from this record, all I want to do is mope, let's do this". Which was pretty much what was going on until the last 3 tracks of the LP. In the glow of the grapes and the candle those 3 songs had that amazing transcendant, soul-restorative quality that you can only achieve when music (or sex) is at it's best: it gives you a get-out-of-jail-free-card from your own head. The fucked up little bubble that you created for yourself just dissolves when you're reminded that it Really Doesn't Matter. Yes, everything is ephemeral and there's nothing you can do about that. And when you finally get that through your stupid thick skull it all comes gushing out your eyes in a torrent of salty tears and you're finally really smiling and laughing for the first time in weeks even though you're broke and have no job and think you're dealing with unrequited love or anything else that Really Doesn't Matter as long as you're still breathing. Even if the feeling won't last through to the morning, just knowing it's possible to get there again for the shortest reprieve from the darkness is all it takes to keep me going. So thank you Prometheus for the flame. Thanks René Barbier for your Mediterranean Red. And most of all thank you Band Of Horses for making me Snap Out Of It. It's the little details like that which can sometimes slip by unnoticed or be taken for granted that will save you when the big things are trying to bury you.

p.s. - I of course had to listen to the last 3 tracks about 5 times in a row, to savor the moment for as long as possible and it was on the third time that I dropped the needle in exactly the right spot in a room lit only by a flickering candle flame with most of a bottle of wine in me that I realized just how deep my vinyl addiction runs.

Some Velvet Morning playlist from 3-12-07

2007-03-13T01:33:00.000-04:00

band song album

Fursaxa - Aegean Lore - By The Fruits You Shall Know The Roots

Matt Valentine - Cork - I Burned One With God But Cocola
If I'm Peaking Which Way Is The Sky?

Stone Breath - Sunshine In The Lanterna Lucis Viriditatis
Eyes Of Death -

The Magickal Folk Being Here Has Gold Leaf Branches compilation
Of The Faraway Tree - Caused Me Sorrow -

Marissa Nadler - Diamond Heart - Songs III - Bird On The Water

Marissa Nadler - Fifty Five Falls - Ballads Of Living & Dying

SheKeepsBees - Fangs - MiniSink Hotel

Songs:Ohia - Whip-Poor-Will - Magnolia Electric Co. (bonus disc)

Smog - Say Valley Maker - A River Ain't Too Much To Love

Bonnie Prince Then The Letting The Letting Go
Billy - Go -

Alasdair Roberts - Waxwing - The Amber Gatherers

Nick Drake - Cello Song - Five Leaves Left

Gruff Rhys - The Court Of Candylion
King Arthur -

Ghost - Daggma - Doctors Without Borders box set

Damon & Naomi - A Second Life - The Earth Is Blue

Mogwai - Yes! I Am A Long Young Team
Way From Home -

Spiritualized® - Ladies & Gentlemen Ladies & Gentleman We Are Floating In
We Are Floating Space
In Space -

Dead Meadow - Beyond The Fields Dead Meadow
We Know -

Some Velvet Morning playlist, 2-26-07

2007-02-27T00:26:00.000-05:00

now that the search function is functioning on the radio station's website again, I'm archiving my playlists from each week's show here. This is more just for a record for me than anything else, but you all are free to peruse it as well. If you like what see you please listen in Monday mornings EST from 10 am - 12 noon to WHFR 89.3 FM, or for those of you unfortunate enough to live outside the Dearborn/Detroit area, we stream live online at WHFR.FM.

Feb. 26, 2007. Show #6 of Some Velvet Morning
(band - song - album - label)

1. Bardo Pond - Walking Cloud - Live In Philadelphia - Archive
2. Anagram - Put Your Arms Around Me Now - The Lights Went Up - Scenery
3. The Finches - Human Like A House - Human Like A House - Dulc-i-tone Records
4. Karrie Hopper - You Were Loved - An Unusual Move - Nobody's Favorite
5. SheKeepsBees - Fangs - Minisink Hotel - self released
6. His Name Is Alive - USA vs Gamelan - Cloud Pop - Silver Mountain Media Group
7. Masaki Batoh - A Ghost From The Darkened Sea - A Ghost From The Darkened Sea - The Now Sound
8. Amon Düül 2 - Wie Der Wind Am Ende Einer Strasse - Wolf City - United Artists
9. The Besnard Lakes - For Agent 13 - Are The Dark Horse - Jagjaguwar
10. Windy & Carl - Sirens - Depths - Kranky
11. Charalambides - Voice Box - Gold Leaf Branches - Digitalis
12. Avarus - Sataa Nuuskaa - Ruskea Timantti - Tumulti
13. Red House Painters - Down Colorful Hill - Down Colorful Hill - 4AD
14. Six Organs Of Admittance - Oak Path - Dust & Chimes - Holy Mountain
15. Earth - Lens Of Unrectified Night - Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method Southern Lord
16. Hush Arbors - The Werewolf Om - untitled (re-issue of self released CD-R) - Digitalis

The Death Of An Heir Of Sorrows

2007-02-26T23:21:00.000-05:00

Sad news from the underground, Arthur magazine calls it quits. Jay Babcock, former Arthur editor had this to say via a post on Myspace:

Laris Kreslins wanted me to buy him out of his 50% share in
Arthur [I own the other 50%] if I wanted to continue the mag since he
didn't want to do it anymore, and I couldn't raise the cash and get
someone to sign the deal that Laris wanted signed. Straight-up
greed/idiocy. Anyways Laris has now barred me from the Arthur
website/blog/mailing lists that I've maintained for the last four
years...

While there are definitely two sides to every story, it's a damn shame that Arthur won't be around anymore. They were a forum for daring, original bands who exist on the fringes of the underground, that would get little to no press elsewhere. While Mojo is still a good read, you're not going to read about Silvester Anfang or Sunburned Hand of the Man in their pages. In addition to covering music, they were an unflagging critical voice against the current political powers that be. While most of it was preaching to the choir, it was nice to have that ally. You'll be missed Arthur. On to happier news...

The Black Lips signed to Vice Records, who have released a recording documenting the glorious, shit hot rock-n-roll trainwreck of their live performances called Los Valientes Del Mundo Nuevo, loosely translated as "The Brave Ones of the New World". In Tijuana of all places. Usually, live recordings aren't worth the time it takes to listen to it, or the plastic used to press them. I've gone back and listened to shows that I had a great time at, but taken out of the context of the connection between artist and performer, it loses its effect. Luckily the Black Lips shows are crazy enough that the energy is translated in the recordings. Albeit in a muted form, but you can still feel that presence. Here's a couple clips from the show it was recorded at:
Boomerang

Now I'm not sure if any of you have ever been to Tijuana, but I have. Boomerang is the perfect Tijuana theme song. After sitting at sidewalk bars drinking 75 cent Tecate cans while the hookers (with rooms conveniently located upstairs) cruise the gringos, your Xanax that you bought at the pharmacia finally kicks in and you feel like walking. Boomerang is the perfect soundtrack, all sloppy diazapam swagger and trying not to attract the attention of la policia (or something worse) while you're pissing in a poorly lit alley. This next clip though is the real meat and potatoes of the record.

Sea Of Blasphemy

This is the first song I've ever heard by this band, the first track on the "Let It Bloom" record. This version however, leaves the original in the dust. It's pure breakneck amphetamine garage punk, played at twice the speed of the original, magnified by that effect pedal the Electric Prunes used on "I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night" (I'm not going to pretend to know what it is, I'm no guitarist, I have no delusions). There's also barely contained physical violence and the sweet sounds of smashing bottles, the mark of any good party, as well as a young chica in tight black pants who is so overwhelmed the only thing she can think to do is lay down and manually stimulate herself. That is why every blogger wants to be in a band. No woman is reading this and being driven wild with lust to the point that she throws herself to the floor and pleasures herself. It's been far too long since I've been to Tijuana, my last trip to Mexico was Cancun, which really pales in comparison. There were way too many gueros for it to really feel like Mexico. Oh and by the way all you gueros, it's pronounced "Tee-HWA-nuh", not "tee-ya-wa-nuh". This concludes the Spanish lesson portion of the update.

Marissa Nadler has a new CD coming in March called Songs III:Bird On The Water. I don't really want to cheapen it by giving it some insignificant review that isn't going to come close to conveying the heartache and beauty present her music and tormented angelic vocals. Just go to her Myspace page and listen to "Diamond Heart" and buy the 7 inch.

Another band I can't get enough of lately is The Besnard Lakes. First off, they're a band from Montreal without "Wolf" in their name, nor do they play overdone dancey punk. They do however deliver a lovely brand of narcotic shoegazery reverb drenched surfy psychedelic anthems, so give them a listen you hosers.

Finally, I'd like to thank the Academy for finally recognizing the significant contributions that Martin Scorsese has brought to the world of film. Shame on you elitist bastards for taking so long to award him one. I still haven't seen The Departed though.

Belated Best-Of List

2007-01-22T22:22:00.000-05:00

Yeah so what, I've never been in a real big hurry to do stuff. At least it's still the first month of the new year while I'm getting my best-of 2006 list together. I've also never really been into the big rush to get it done while it is still 2006, sometimes December can pull off some surprises, but that's really just a flimsy explanation for my laziness.

1. Current 93 - Black Ships Ate The Sky
I can without a doubt say this was my favorite album of the year. David Tibet (with a little shot in the arm from Mr. Six Organs Ben Chasny) visualizes the apocalypse in the form of the hungry-for-the-heavens black ships. Equal parts delicate beauty and creeping terror until the climactic title track, when he self destructs the odd little world he spent the whole album creating, then gives it a haunting requiem with a reprise from an earlier song. Interspersed with the black ship song cycle are renditions of an early Methodist hymn as interpreted by the likes of Antony, Baby Dee, Bonnie Prince Billy, and Marc Almond. While it is the same song sung about 8 different times, with this cast of mad geniuses putting their stamp on each version it's far from repetitive.

2. Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies
Dan Bejar sets out to make you forget that anyone else ever wrote guitar based pop songs before he did, but does it by continually referencing those that came before him. If that made sense to you, then you "get it" and don't need me to push this record on you. If not, just give these dense, complex, highly literate yet utterly accessible gems (oh god, sorry, Destroyer's Rubies + gems = terribly "clever" music critic play on words) a few listens and see if you're not converted to the "Dan Bejar is the second coming of Tim Buckley" club. I'm not just the president, I'm also a client.

3. sunnO))) + Boris - Altar
Ever since I read about this one I knew it would most likely end up on this list. It wasn't the nasty, evil, sludgy, droney wreck of an album I was expecting but it was by no means a let down. While the track "Etna" is a slowly bubbling black cauldron of low-end sound, the rest of the album is more akin to extrapolations of sunn's White 1 & 2 ambience and the quieter moments of Boris' "Pink". The grand scope of this album really didn't hit me full force until I was standing in the shadows of Mayan ruins this past December. I was in the grips of a full on psychedelic spell walking along sun-dappled paths to ancient stone edifices listening to Jesse Sykes' ethereal vocals on "The Sinking Belle", which kind of comes off as an utterly hopeless Mazzy Star tune. (that's a compliment BTW) By the time I made it back to the main "castillo" pyramid and "Akuma No Kuma" was playing, I was pretty sure the limestone rocks were vibrating at the same frequency as what was flooding my ears, and me this insignificant bag of skin and blood and organs in the middle of it all. Well even if you can't listen to this masterpiece at Chichen-Itza, you'll still dig Joe Preston's vocoder enhanced vox and the Conan (the Barbarian, not O'Brien) worthy horn arrangements and tympani/gong crashes.

4. Warmer Milks - Radish On Light
Louisville's sons of midwestern darkness have captured the same sort of toned-down ferocity that you can find on "Bad Moon Rising" era Sonic Youth, but crank the weirdness up to 10 and make it their own. Four lengthy cuts comprise the WM's first proper, unclassifiable full length release, ranging from meandering psychedelic dirges with feral, decelerated black metal-esque vocals (In The Fields) Black Sabbath meets the mummy (Pentagram Of Sores) to straight up noise rock exploration on the title cut. The perfect soundtrack for those who've embraced the notion of going to hell in a handbasket and who want to enjoy the ride. Also, you can't help but admire a band who puts THX TO NO ONE in their liner notes.

5. Howlin' Rain - Howlin' Rain
Ethan Miller (Comets on Fire) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand Of The Man) tone down the weirdness, dust off some Allman Bros. riffs, and get back to the land with this idyllic disc. Miller's voice, unlike in his Comets material, is clearly discernible and imparts a wonderful Canned Heat/early 70s Jerry Garcia vibe to the excellent lyrics, ranging from thunderbolt struck non-believers (Calling Lightning With A Scythe) to modern day murder ballads (The Firing Of The Midnight Rain). It makes you wonder what you're missing on Blue Cathedral. This is what your dad and his brothers would have listened to if they had it in those old photos you've seen when they all have long hair and perfect mustaches and are sitting around with their shirts off drinking beer in the summer.

6. Joanna Newsom - Ys
Appalachian chipmunk warbling accompanied by a lone harp is replaced by a more polished voice delivering epic length fairy tale narratives and grandiose string arrangements, courtesy of a collaboration with Van Dyke Parks. This was another very pleasant surprise for me. I'm glad the elfin Ms. Newsom didn't succumb to the sophomore suck after such a critically acclaimed debut. (Are you paying attention, Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah?)

7. MV / EE & The Bummer Road - Mother Of Thousands
Hippie folk-raga-rock with its bare feet firmly rooted in the New England soil while its head drifts around in the black voids of space. I'm not using hippie as a derogatory term here either. These people are shining bastions of good taste in an otherwise squalid sub-culture, applying all the best aspects of the tune in-turn on- drop out ethos in a contemporary way. They're slowly but surely taking it back from the post-Phish and String Cheese Incident shabby-chic, unwashed, poorly dressed yet expensive pot smoking, SUV with a save the planet bumper sticker driving masses. This should be required listening to anyone with an extensive live bootleg collection who uses the term "dude, you gotta see 'em live" more often than their hair brush.

8. Bonnie Prince Billy - The Letting Go
Even if this wasn't one of Will Oldham's strongest albums since "Master & Everyone", this would make the list solely based on the performance of "Strange Form Of Life" from Conan O'Brien this past fall where Andrew W.K. played piano and it looked like Will's pants split at the end after dancing his weird little jig all throughout the song and howling into the microphone at the appropriate times. Bonus points for being recorded in Iceland and for the achingly sweet vocal harmonies with Dawn "Faun Fables" McCarthy. It's a nice complement to Will's world weary, cracking timbre.

9. Six Organs of Admittance - The Sun Awakens
Ben Chasny puts the cryptic, solo acoustic dust & chimes thing on the backburner and unleashes this dark psychedelic beast of an album. He bookends fretboard searing rock (Black Wall) and Ennio Morricone recording with Bedouin nomads (Attar) with a pair Octavio Paz-esque numbers (Torn By Wolves, Wolves Pup) before the murky waters of "River Of Transfiguration" swirl around and carry you down a pulsing, chanting stream of (un)conciousness while ravens in dead trees on the banks look down at you.

10. Various Artists - Jukebox Buddha
The Buddha Machine, the meditation sensation from the Far East (an ingenious little plastic box that plays 9 different mp3 loops) acts as the raw material for this CD that has artists like sunnO))), Robert Henke, Blixa Bargeld, and the Sun City Girls manipulating the loops into lovely walls of sound.

Honorable mentions and comps and shit like that:

Tom Waits - Orphans
Not to be overly pedantic but this wasn't really recorded in 2006. However, the man is a genius and I'm kinda pissed it's taken this long for a collection like this to come out.

Cat Power - The Greatest
Chan Marshall pilfers the Hi Records rhythm band and puts out the best blue eyed soul since Dusty went to Memphis.

Pink Mountaintops - Axis Of Evol
Drum machines and weird electronic tones meet hairy drug music.

The Raconteurs - Broken Boy Soldiers
Brendan Benson's polish acts as the foil to Jack White's snarl while they mine the classic vein of rock without being dicks about it (Are you listening, Wolfmother?). Jack's guitar also sounds great with a real rhythm section behind it.

Belle & Sebastian - The Life's Pursuit
They finally get over losing Isobel and put a record worth listening to the whole way through since her departure.

Tim Hecker - Harmony In Ultraviolet
Dreamy electro lullaby sound washes wrap around you like a warm blanket to shield you from the hard, cold world outside.

Everything the Numero Group released
For real kids, if you're a music nerd, you'll drool over the compilations that this label puts out. Obscure enough to satisfy even the most discriminating snobs, ranging from northern soul to Belizean funk.

Pop Levi - Blue Honey EP
Ladytron's old bass player put out a fun little fuzzy 60's psych pop flavored EP. There's also a delta blues/flamenco number on it. One of these things is not like the other...

no title

2007-01-11T23:27:00.000-05:00

Listen, I won't lie, I'm shitfaced right now. There is this delicious beer put out by a brewery called Unibroue in French Canada (I'd link you to it if I wasn't smashed, so just google it if you want.) called LA FIN DU MONDE which translates into THE END OF THE WORLD par anglais. anyway I have been meaning to write up my best of 2006 albums list since I am one of "those" lost souls, but I've just been really busy procrastinating. I will say however that I was finally revealed the true power of the ALTAR album while I was visiting the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza in the Yucatan jungle, more of that to come at a later date. I've also been doing the radio show bit here and there but haven't been able to post my playlists due to some sort of problem on the station's website. Hope you all are doing well, if any of you are reading anything I write.

playlist from 12-13-06

2006-12-14T12:09:00.000-05:00

I filled in on the Random Acts of Music radio program and played the following

(band-song-album)

Magnolia Electric Co. - The Dark Don't Hide It - Trials & Errors
Lucero - Little Silver Heart - S/T
Frank Black & The Catholics - Manitoba - Show Me Your Tears
Brian Jonestown Massacre - Nevertheless - Tepid Peppermint Wonderland
Galaxie 500 - Don't Let Our Youth Go To Waste
Marissa Nadler - Hay Tantos Muertos - Ballads of Living & Dying
Animal Collective - Grass - Feels
Mogwai - Like Herod - Young Team
Warmer Milks - Pentagram of Sores - Radish on Light
Comets On Fire - Whiskey River - Blue Cathedral
Dungen - Panda - Ta Det Lugnt
Black Lips - Boomerang - Let It Bloom
Skygreen Leopards - Places West of Shawnapee - Disciples of California
My Morning Jacket - The Way That He Sings - At Dawn
Howlin' Rain - Calling Lightening With a Scythe - S/T
Franklin's Mint - Carousel Baby - Gold
Flin Flon - Leading Tickles - Boo Boo
Ween - The Golden Eel - The Mollusk
Growing - Cutting, Opening, Swimming Southern Wrights - The Sky's Run Into The Sea
Spacemen 3 - Take Me To The Other Side - Perfect Prescription
The Gories - Goin' To The River - I Know You Be Houserockin'
The Dirtbombs - I Started A Joke - If You Don't Already Have A Look

playlist from 12-03-06

2006-12-04T01:35:00.000-05:00

I sat in on the Mrs. Robinson show (indie & electronic) on 89.3 WHFR-Dearborn tonight while she was finishing up a paper for school.
Playlist

(band - song - album - label)

1. Unrest - Can't Sit Still - Fuck Pussy Galore & All Her Friends! - Teenbeat
2. Unrest - Scott & Zelda - Fuck Pussy Galore & All Her Friends! - Teenbeat
3. The Black Lips - Boomerang - Let It Bloom - In The Red
4. Super Furry Animals - Sidewalk Serfer Girl - Rings Around The World - XL
5. Of Montreal - Requiem For O.M.M. 2 - The Sunlandic Twins - Polyvinyl
6. Four Tet - Smile Around The Face - Everything's Ecstatic - Domino
7. Stereo Total - C'est La Mort - Oh Ah - Kill Rock Stars
8. Cibo Matto - Birthday Cake - Viva La Woman - Warner Bros.
9. Miho Hatori - A Song For Kids - Ecdysis - Rykodisc
10. Tom Waits - Tango Til They're Sore - VH1 Storytellers
11. Tom Waits - Ol' 55 - VH1 Storytellers
12. Tom Waits - Day After Tomorrow - Real Gone - Anti
13. Death In Vegas - Help Yourself - Scorpio Rising - Sanctuary
14. Nouvelle Vague - Love Will Tear Us Apart - Self Titled - Luaka Bop
15. Spiritualized - Shine A Light - Royal Albert Hall, 10 October 1997, live - Arista
16. Early Day Miners - Return of the Native - Offshore - Secretly Canadian
17. Brian Eno - Deep Blue Day - Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks - E.G. Edition
18. The Vaselines - Son Of A Gun - The Way Of The Vaselines - Sub Pop
19. Orange Juice - Blue Boy - The Glasgow School - Domino
20. Felt - The Spanish House - The Strange Idols Pattern & Other Short Stories - Cherry Red
21. The Reindeer Section - Whodunnit? - Son Of Evil Reindeer - Bright Star Recordings
22. Edith Frost - Stars Fading - It's A Game - Drag City
23. Six Organs Of Admittance - Words For Two - School Of The Flower - Drag City
24. Joanna Newsom - Monkey & Bear - Ys - Drag City

playlist from 11-27-06

2006-12-04T01:11:00.000-05:00

I'm now a DJ on WHFR Dearborn, a college radio station. Our internet address is www.whfr.fm, we stream live in realtime for those of you unfortunate enough to live outside of our broadcasting range. My first show was last Monday night, sitting in on the Cloak & Dagger radio show, whose DJs had prior commitments. I haven't got my own show just yet, so I'm filling in for other DJs who can't do their show for whatever reason. It was my first time being live on the air, and I predictably sucked. Since I'm a packrat who can't throw anything away I decided to keep a log of the songs I played for each show I do.

Playlist from 11-27-06, sitting in on the Cloak & Dagger show (indie rock)

(the format is band-song-album-label)

1. Spoon - The Beast & Dragon, Adored - Gimme Fiction - Merge
2. Arab Strap - The Shy Retirer - The Shy Retirer EP - Chemikal Underground
3. Luna - Lovedust - Romantica - Jetset
4. The Moldy Peaches - Lucky #9 - self-title - Rough Trade
5. Early Day Miners - Return Of The Native - Offshore - Secretly Canadian
6. Saturday Looks Good To Me - Since You Stole My Heart - Every Night - Polyvinyl
7. Tom Waits - The House Where Nobody Lives - Mule Variations - Anti/Epitaph
8. Hush Arbors - Broken Bones - Landscape Of Bones - Three Lobed
9. Marissa Nadler - Annabelle Lee - Ballads Of Living & Dying - Eclipse
10. Destroyer - The Sublimation Hour - Streethawk: A Seduction - Misra
11. The Magnolia Electric Co. - 31 Seasons In The Minor Leagues - Hard To Love A Man EP - Secretly Canadian
12. Songs:Ohia - Whip-Poor-Will - The Magnolia Electric Co. (bonus disc) - Secretly Canadian
13. The Shins - Turn On Me - Wincing The Night Away - Sub Pop
14. The Shins - Girl Sailor - Wincing The Night Away - Sub Pop
15. Elf Power - Peel Back The Moon, Beware! - Back To The Web - Rykodisc
16. Guided By Voices - Liquid Indian - Do The Collapse - TVT
17. The Renderers - Dream Of The Sea - A Dream Of The Sea - Siltbreeze
18. The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Sailor - Tepid Peppermint Wonderland - Tee Pee
19. Bonnie Prince Billy - Buried Treasure - Cold & Wet 12" - Drag City
20. Silver Jews - Room Games & Diamond Rain - Bright Flight - Drag City
21. Angels Of Light - Song For My Father - Doctors Without Borders box set - Durtro-Jnana records
22. SunnO))) & Boris - The Sinking Belle (Blue Sheep) - Altar - Southern Lord
23. Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter - The Dreaming Dead - Oh, My Girl - Barsuk
24. Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy, pt. 2 - In The Aeroplane Over The Sea - Merge

Dirt Road Ragas and Expatriate Gypsy Flamenco Blues

2006-12-03T13:46:00.000-05:00

When I was a little kid, if my room was dark enough and I couldn't get to sleep at night, I would get a strange sensation that there were no walls around me and I was just floating alone in a big black void. Every now and then when I'm lucky enough I still get that sensation, and it usually has to do with music. I definitely got a big dose of it seeing Jack Rose perform last night. (for a laugh, check out what other musical act comes up when you google Jack Rose) He was playing in a really intimate, quiet room and the droning Americana infused ragas he coaxed out his 12 strings (well, 11 after one of them broke) were utterly transcendant. I had my eyes shut and lost track of time and my surroundings and found myself with that sensation that the walls around me had ceased to exist and I was all alone. It wasn't a hopeless feeling of complete isolation though, but quite the contrary. It's more in line with the Hindu concept of brahman, that we're all connected to the formless, transcendental, and immanent divine. That we're all plugged into the same life energy, like spokes on a wheel issuing from a central hub or those giant aspen tree groves whose root systems are intertwined. It's a really beautiful feeling that will probably last until I see someone with a Calvin pissing on Islam sticker on their truck or hear an Aerosmith song on the radio. It is nice to know it's there though (our connection to the divine no matter how distant, not stupid bumper stickers). He also played some really far out slide stuff on his lap guitar towards the end of his set but unfortunately for me my bladder was full to the bursting point and it was detracting from my blissed out mindset. Jack had a great new CD for sale available on the Archive label. Beautiful die cut and letter pressed packaging in a limited pressing of 1,000. Get yours now before the parasites have them listed on eBay when they're sold out.

After short break and a much needed trip to the bathroom, Peter Walker came out to play. I hadn't heard of this guy until a couple weeks ago when a CD of his came into the record store where I help out. The label on it had Ben Chasny heralding him as the biggest single influence on his music, so my interest was piqued. I hadn't heard him until last night and his performance was astounding. He had been in Spain studying with flamenco guitar masters in the early 60s, and was telling stories of clubs in caves that were hundreds of years old, where they beat you up and break your guitar if you disrespect their culture by playing poorly. His style was a seamless blend of Indian ragas (he had also studied with Ravi Shankar), gypsy flamenco, and American folk. He was also telling stories about how the gypsy music wasn't too far removed from Indian music, and the influence they had on flamenco music. I hadn't really made that connection, but it made perfect sense, and his guitar articulated it more clearly than anyone talking about it could have. It was his first time touring in the United States since the 60s, and it was very inspiring to hear an elder statesmen figure of the counter-culture talk about how he had been playing places like this all around the country, that it was nice to see the underground rising up again. It gives you hope that maybe we're not quite fucked yet. I should take a minute to talk about the venue, The Bohemian National Home. A couple months ago I figured out that I used to go there all the time when I was younger as it was a Lithuanian social club in the 80s. It's a non-descript brick building in a sketchy, very un-fashionable neighborhood that weeds out casual concert goers or someone just looking for a place to hang out and drink. You won't have to filter out overheard inane drunken chatter or cell phone conversations during the music because everyone there is going to be focused on the music. The crowds are always hushed and reverent at the types of shows like last night, but they also have punk and noise shows in the bigger rooms there. They also sell beer for a very reasonable price and keep admission prices low. I feel lucky that there are places like this in my city to go to.

Gravest Hits

2006-10-31T23:50:00.000-05:00

Goooood evening...
I bet you all thought I was dead. I've just been sleeping. Like Lestat. My the rumblings of Altar have brought me forth from my slumber. Yup SunnO))) and Boris have collaborated. Not released a split, but all 5 have fused together to create a drony spacey masterpiece. It's good Halloween music. It got me to thinking about my favorite records to listen to around Halloween. So here they are, for this year (since none of these lists are ever definitive), my top 10 Halloween jams. I tried to stay away from stuff like goth (because I'm not 16 anymore), metal (duh, no brainer), or the Misfits (double duh, what song of theirs wasn't about Halloween or a horror movie?)

1. Warren Zevon - Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner
Yeah, yeah, I know that Werewolves of London is the one all the classic rock stations dust off this time of year, but let's give the man some respect. He wrote more than one tune.

2. Pink Floyd - Interstellar Overdrive
Awesome scary psych song. I love the formula of the introduction of the main musical theme, then an open-ended middle exploration before gradually making its way back to the original theme. Much like this next one....

3. Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
O.K. seriously. My dad saw Iron Butterfly with Canned Heat at the Fillmore East in 1970. He said it was a "drug supermarket" and that this song scared the shit out of him. I bet he was on a few barrels of Orange Sunshine at the time. (I think they should bring back barrels of LSD. Just for nostalgia. Like Wacky Packs.) But this song is the ultimate one-microgram-over-the-line anthem. I heard it on FM radio a few days ago but they pussied out and just played the single version so when I got home I put it on the turntable and cranked up to 11. That evil organ part is perfect for the season.

4. Flaming Lips - Scratchin' The Door
Another one in the same vein as the last 2. It's basically their version of Interstellar Overdrive. Creepy, crawly psych guitar lines and weirdo lyrics to boot.

5. Hawkwind - Masters of the Universe
This is my own personal drug freakout song. The first time I heard this song I was ripped on acid. It was terrifying. All I wanted to do was clamp my hands over my ears and go put on the Grateful Dead's "Anthem of the Sun" or something. But my inner Tyler Durden was urging me on, "This could be the greatest moment of your life and you're ruining it!" So I sucked it up and embraced the fear and came out the better for it. I mean, look at me, I got a blog now.

6. SunnO))) - Bathory Erzsebet
The whole BlackOne album is pretty amazing October music, and it's really hard to pick one track, but I mean they fucking locked Malefic in a coffin, miked it, and put it in the back of a hearse to record the vocals. Oh, and the dude has crippling claustrophobia. How does that not make for real terror in the vocals. Mixed with the deepest low end your puny human ears can pick up and the tolling iron bells, it's real mood music. Plus it's for Elizabeth Bathory, who according to legend, bathed in the blood of virgins to keep herself looking young. Cher took a beauty tip from her I bet.

7. Six Organs of Admittance - River of Transfiguration
This has more of a psychological scary vibe to it. It's not so much terror as it is the prelude to terror. You know something bad is going to happen in the movie when you hear this, and that moment is stretched out to nearly a half hour on this cut.

8. The Eagles - Hotel California
Don Henley. 3 guitars playing the most over-rated, overblown guitar solo in rock history. Everytime I hear this, I know there's a middle aged guy with a mustache and a business mullet working on his old Camaro in the garage and he closes his eyes and gets really into it at the end and shakes his head along with the notes and maybe makes a little bit of the lead guitar face. The horror.....the horror.

9. Tom Waits - like, most of the songs on The Black Rider
O.K. this one's got November, Flash Pan Hunter, Just The Right Bullets, Crossroads, and T'aint No Sin with William S Burrough's creepy old "I'm not dead yet" junkie vocals on it. Need I say more? This is the ultimate album for fall. For the cold rain blowing down your upturned collar. For scarecrows, rotting pumpkins, and grey skies. Just one more reminder like the thousands of wet leaves plastered to the concrete like thousands of advertisements for summer's demise. But goddammit, it sounds so good.

10. Faust - Faust Wakes Nosferatu
You can't really single out just one track on this album. It's more about creating an overall mood. Ideally there would be no track breaks on this album. Fantomas tried doing that but it didn't really work. It would for this. Plus, they're German.

Well that's it for tonight kiddies. I've got a few cans of beer and a mound of candy to eat (where the fuck are the trick-or-treaters? When I was their age we were out in force, dammit! Nowadays everyone is too scared from watching the news to let the kids go out) and some bad movies to watch. May the night fires and blood sacrifice of Samhain bring us a healthy crop next year! HAIL!

xoxo
Anton

On PBR & Echoplexes

2006-09-08T01:04:00.000-04:00

Comets On Fire played one of the scariest, most intense, fucked up, exhilirating sets I've ever witnessed the other night. It reminded me somewhat of Charles Baudelaire's book "On Wine & Hashish" in which he theorized that the only way to deal with living in a fucked up world is to get fucked up. He theorized that you should get intoxicated in any way you see fit, be it "on wine, poetry, or virtue" (I ran into my old roommate and he was on mushrooms but unfortunately he didn't have any more). Comets On Fire use outside sources I'm sure, but those thick, dissonant guitars, ear splitting echoplex and thundering rhythm section is a hell of a way to counter things like your own government doing things to you that they're supposed to protect you from, and soldiers and civilians alike getting blown away for no reason. It was a seldom relenting squall of noise that was like having an electric current passing through your ears and bouncing around the inside of your skull. They all looked like shamans in a trance, leading their small but faithful flock through some kind of ritual. I've listened to the new album Avatar a couple times and wasn't too impressed by it, but live the songs took on a ferocious new life. I'll have to go back and give it another listen and see if they sound different to me now that I've had my ears blown open to them. Another thing that struck me while they were playing is that I don't think there's ever been a band whose name describes what they sound like as well as Comets On Fire. Something from the reaches of outer space hurtling around the heavens at an ungodly speed with a seemingly indiscriminate destination while pieces of it break off and burn away. Today is the first day that my neck muscles don't hurt. I'd gladly suffer another two day bangover to be able to relive that set again.

Oh and I also need to type a few words on the opening act, Miss Alex White & The Red Orchestra. They came off like a faster paced, less polished version of Brian Jonestown Massacre. More of a garagey-psych-punk kinda sound, and instead of a junkie asshole for a lead singer they have a pint-sized curly headed ball of energy who didn't try to start fights with anyone there. Here's a video of a performance from Hamtramck a couple nights before opening for Comets On Fire.

Get this video and more at MySpace.com

Missing The Boat

2006-09-01T00:42:00.000-04:00

Yep, it happens even to nerds like me who are always online. Here's a couple reviews that I have missed the boat on.
Espers - Espers II The first time I had ever heard the Espers was today. They're one of those bands I know I'm supposed to like but I had never gotten around to listening to them. I've been missing out on some good shit. They're in the upper echelon of the whole freak-folk/new weird America whatever you want to call that scene. Very similiar to The Feathers. The one thing that really sets them apart is the exquisite trance inducing vocals. Musically they create dense, dreamy, fuzzy soundscapes that are infused with the perfect amount of electricity to keep you from drifting off into acoustic lullaby-land, like on the opening track Dead Queen from the new album.

The Coachwhips - Double Dead Sadly, this is a posthumous CD/DVD release by San Francisco lo-fi trashy danceable (but not dance) punk band The Coachwhips. The CD portion compiles 26 previously unreleased cuts, mostly b-sides, covers, and studio shenanigans. It's really a shame that this band decided to hang it up, as besides the Black Lips, there aren't too many bands pulling off this kind of thing nowadays. Every song on this disc is like the funnest party you've ever been to, raw 2 minute energetic blasts of guitars cranked up to the breaking point, indecipherable shouted lyrics, all pushed at a breakneck speed by an organ. There's even a Gories cover on it. If you don't love this, you haven't got a pulse. I haven't seen the DVD yet but I'm sure it's a blast. If you weren't fortunate enough to catch the Coachwhips live , you should definitely check out this DVD so you can cry into your beer about having never seen one of the most frenetic live acts of the past 5 years. Rest In Pieces, oh ye Coachwhips.

Bummer In The Summer

2006-08-04T19:12:00.000-04:00

So it's been awhile since I've had the time to update. I started school again. What kind of dope goes to school in summer? Me, I guess. Since it's been so long, this is going to cover a lot of stuff with some short passages, sort of a tapas style review. The title of this update doesn't refer to the paper I just wrote on the United States' Middle East foreign policy (although it could) but instead to this

Arthur Lee dead at 61
Arthur Lee, frontman for the legendary psych-rock band Love has lost the battle to leukemia. Lee's manager released the following statement:
"His death comes as a shock to me because Arthur had the uncanny ability to bounce back from everything, and leukemia was no exception. He was confident that he would be back on stage by the fall. When I visited with him recently, he was visibly moved by the stories and pictures from the NYC benefit concert. He was truly grateful for the outpouring of love from friends and fans all over the world since news of his illness became public. Arthur always lived in the moment, and said what he thought when he thought it. I'll miss his phone calls, and his long voice messages, but most of all I'll miss Arthur playing Arthur's music."
Arthur was a wild man on and off the stage. On the last tour he did, he would refer to himself as "the first black hippie", boasting that he beat Hendrix to that title. He also served time in jail for drug and illegal firearms possession. I was fortunate enough to see Arthur perform a few years ago with Baby Lemonade backing him. When push comes to shove, Forever Changes is probably my favorite album ever made, which I am listening to as I type this. You'll be missed, Arthur.

Moving on to news from the WTF? sector, according to PitchforkMedia.com Smiths' guitarist Johnny Marr is now a member of Modest Mouse. Apparently Johnny had been lending a hand on the new Modest Mouse album and that was supposed to be it, but he had so much fun that he decided to become a full-fledged touring member. In other news, Modest Mouse frontman Isaac Brock has had to throw out all his old pants and buy a new set with a larger front area to accomodate the permanent boner he will be sporting since Marr's decision to join the band. I'm going to keep an open mind about this. I was a big fan of a couple of the earlier MM albums, maybe Johnny joining the band will be a shot in the arm. OK, onto what I've been playing lately:

Six Organs Of Admittance - The Sun Awakens Ben Chansy follows up last year's gorgeous, folky School Of The Flower with a visceral, dark psychedelic rock album. There are a couple pretty instrumental sections on here, and also stuff that sounds like Ennio Morricone recording with bedouin nomads, but the last track is a long instrumental ambient drone mind-fuck that sounds like those dreams you have where you're walking through a tunnel of living muscle tissue that keeps getting narrower while you're bathed in a pulsing red light. But maybe that's just me. It's heavy, heady stuff, even though the drumming isn't as good as the work Chris Corsano turned in on School Of The Flower. Check out the scorching electric version of the acoustic song "You Will Be The Sun" Chasny submitted to David Tibet's "Not Alone" 5 CD box set, titled "Black Wall" on The Sun Awakens.

Six Organs Of Admittance - Days Of Blood tour CD-R Incredible live recordings from last year's fall tour. Half of the disc is Ben playing solo electric, the other half featurs Keith Wood (aka Hush Arbors on bass and Sunburned Hand's John Moloney on drums. If you weren't lucky enough to see them this summer tour, try looking at Eclipse Records for a copy.

Sunburned Hand Of The Man - self titled? - also picked up at the Six Organs show, this just comes in a purple digi-pack case with a skull and crossbones on the disc that contains 4 untitled tracks of the unnerving, nail biting, heavy drug use induced stupors that you love this band for.

Om / Current '93 split 10"- Inerrant Rays Of Infallible Sun (Blackship Shrinebuilder - Om and Current 93 join forces on this incredible record. The Om side features the trademark rock solid drumming by Chris Hakius supporting Al Cisernos' heavy bass lines and chanted vocals on Rays Of The Sun / To The Shrinebuilder, a more faster tune that's heavier than the selections from their At Gize album. The Current 93 side features David Tibet's apocalyptic poetry atop a single riff repeated until the end of the song (perhaps influenced by Om?). Again, this is heavier than anything from "Black Ships Ate The Sky" that he released earlier in the year, save for maybe the title track. Also, he name drops Reese Witherspoon and Pol Pot in the same verse. I don't get it either, this guy is light years ahead of you or I.

MV / EE with The Bummer Road - Mother Of Thousands - if you only buy one of the dozen or so Matt Valentine / Erika Elder releases this year, make it this one. Available on CD or a 2 LP set, it's a collection of some structured hippie folk rock songs in the vein of The Tower Recordings, as well as long, free-form psychedelic excursions with weird instrumentations. There's a side long version of the traditional "Death Don't Have No Mercy" that was a staple for the Grateful Dead in their early days, but don't look for any Jerry worship on this version, it's a completely different species.

Suishou no Fune - Where The Spirits Are - Far-out and heavy Japanese psychedelic space rock trio on Holy Mountain. Goes from sounding like The Ventures if they were from a galaxy far, far away to ragged extrapolations of the middle freak out section of "Whole Lotta Love". I highly recommend this one for late night herbal influenced headphone voyages.

The Eccentric Soul series - Vol. 8: Wayfaring Strangers-Ladies From The Canyon and Vol. 9: The Big Mack Label - The Numero Group has put out a killer series of CD's re-issuing uber-obscure songs sure to surprise even the most jaded "I've heard it all" music snob assholes on these compilations. The first, Ladies From The Canyon focuses on early 70's hippie folk acts, some with a Jesus slant, with female vocalists. Every song on this is just beautiful, with the exception of Eternal Life by Shira Small, whose utterly tuneless vocals just make it painful to listen to. But the tune "And I A Fairytale Lady" by Propinquity will make your jaw drop. The second is a collection of tunes from a little known label from Detroit called Big Mack Records. Where Motown was slick, Big Mack is raw. They didn't have a rhythm section like the Funk Brothers or an excellent recording studio to work with. These 19 tracks range from raw garage soul to heavy funk. These aren't the most talented musicians that Detroit had to offer (anyone could walk into Big Mack studios with 15 bucks and get a 45 cut) but these recordings were made by folks with a fire in their bellies that supercedes a need for musical ability. Highlights are the Mae Young track "The Man Puts Sugar In My Soul" that out-Tinas Tina Turner, the thunderous, sax heavy instrumentals by L Hollis and the Mackadoos, and the porno funk version of the old jazz standard "Fever" by Essence, complete with Barry White-esque spoken word intro.

well that's it for now. everyone keep cool, especially those in the midwest/east coast.

ciao
Anton

Howlin' Rain

2006-06-13T11:23:00.000-04:00

The new project by Ethan Miller (Comets On Fire) and John Moloney (Sunburned Hand Of The Man) called Howlin' Rain can be succinctly summed up in two words: FUCK YEAH!. This is the second side project from brain damaging psychedelic bands to take a turn towards a pastoral classic rock sound. Phil Franklin (also of Sunburned) had released his Franklin's Mint album a couple months earlier, but these albums aren't really cut from the same cloth. As I stated earlier in the Franklin's Mint review that it's is a good hangover record, but the Howlin' Rain is a record to listen to while you're putting your body through what will cause you to be hungover the next morning. It has a hanging out at your friend's weird cousin's farm and drinking beer with your shirt off and blasting at your empty cans with shotguns and all the dudes have long hair and the chicks are wearing tank tops and cut off shorts and there's a barbeque and a bunch of dogs running around and at night someone rolls up joints on a Skynyrd album and everyone gets naked and jumps in the pond kinda vibe. They channel the same kind of energy running through early 70's Allman Bros. and Grateful Dead albums, but it's not without some of the Comets/Sunburned nastiness. (And say what you will about the Grateful Dead being boring hippie wankers. While in the mid-80's they turned into a parody of themselves and Garcia weighed 300+ pounds and was more interested in Haagen Dazs and heroin than remembering lyrics to songs he had been singing for decades, you can't deny that Workingman's Dead and American Beauty are some solid country tinged rock n roll albums). Ethan Miller's voice sounds like a red-lined, beat-up pick-up truck careening down a dusty road on a beer run, especially towards the end of "Death Prayer In Heaven's Orchard" and on "The Hanging Heart", the latter a blistering 9 minute plus epic with Miller dipping into his Comet's styled fuzzy freaked-out guitar tone. A couple tunes feature nice little touches of banjo, like on "Calling Lightning From A Scythe" before they wind themselves up into barbarous rock-n-roll abandon. Tim Daly brings the squalling saxophone sound that appeared on the Comet's "Blue Cathedral" record to a few songs as well, most notably on "Indians, Whores, And Spanish Men Of God", which also has the coolest bass line since Grand Funk stopped being relevant. The album closing murder ballad "The Firing Of The Midnight Rain" is one of my favorites. It's another one of the tunes that they're in no apparent hurry to finish up, with it's deep, head-nodding bass groove anchoring some guitar licks inspired by the aforementioned pair of Grateful Dead albums. In contrast to the gravelly vocals on most of the other songs Miller's voice is more soothing, and has an extended repetitive outro with the album's finest vocal harmonizing singing "all young men sleep easy / in the mud beneath the midnight rain / all love flows towards the ocean / with a smile upon my still face". And the second best reason to actually go out and buy this album instead of downloading it is the blotter paper worthy watercolor art work done by Arik Roper.

The events of my 6-6-06

2006-06-07T11:05:00.000-04:00

Here's a quick breakdown of how I spent my 6-6-06:
12:00 midnight: camping on state land with some old friends. while we didn't quite adhere to all the slasher flick cliches (no booze, drugs, or sex) we did have the classic 3 dudes/2 chicks ratio and brought an axe to chop firewood with, but luckily for us the only blood drawn was from mosquitos. went to sleep uneasily with visions of dying at the hands of serial killers. Left the axe stuck ominously in the tree. I have seen far too many movies.
3 a.m. Awoken by a text message that read "Let him who have understanding reckon the number of the beast, for it is a human number, six hundred and sixty six". as if I needed a reminder. Spend the next 5 hours tossing and turning because it's too hot under my sleeping bag and the coyotes keep howling and I can hear other things crashing through the woods.
11 a.m. Back in Detroit. Had my fill of sleeping without a roof over my head for a year. It's not natural to not have concrete under my feet. I sleep easier to the sound of gunfire and squealing tires. Win $27.50 in a single slot machine pull as I walk through the casino to get my parking garage ticket validated, so not only do I park for free, but make a tidy profit as well. Suckers.
6 p.m. Finally awake and really hungry. Go to the bar for "one quick beer" to strategize the rest of the evening. Want to play Slayer on the jukebox but there isn't any. Instead of going to get a nice healthy veggie burrito, the freezer at the bar breaks and there is a free feast of onion rings, fries, and chicken wings which I eat because I have been the world's worst vegetarian lately. 3 beers later I get a call saying I'm on the guest list for the Whirlwind Heat show so I make my way over there feeling like I may vomit from the grease.
9 p.m. Watching Whirlwind Heat. It looks like my friends and I are the oldest ones there, except for the one mom that is also in attendance. Their set was hot, but needed to be played in a smaller room. There probably weren't more than 80 people there in a room which holds around 450. Their spastic energy was somewhat diminished by all the empty space, but that didn't stop them from kicking out their fuzzy 33-rpm-porno-funk-cranked-up-to-45 jams to an appreciative audience. I guess it's hard to really get too crazy with someone's mom around. Still trying to figure out which side of the fine line that separates stupid from clever that the song about selling sperm is on.
10:15 Left the Stick before Be Your Own Pet played and made my way to the Lager House for Wolfbait. While waiting at the bar for their set to start, get a text message about how terrible Be Your Own Pet is from the door guy of the Stick. I figured as much, and there was no way I was going to miss Wolfbait on 6-6-06. I would pretty much be a fucking fraud. In a world where metal is in danger of taking itself way too seriously, all these brooding pasty boys with black hair and lip piercings screaming in bands with sentence fragment names (As I Lay Dying With My Bride In November or whatever), Wolfbait celebrates the glory days of metal with tongue in cheek reverence. When's the last time you saw a guy wearing Blind Guardian t-shirt and a black hooded cloak onstage while he cranked out Maiden and Priest worthy licks on his guitar? I didn't think so. He can even wax philosophical with the best metal frontmen with words of wisdom like "Midnight only lasts for a minute". You couldn't even see the fucking drummer because his kit was too big, and hell yes he has a double bass drum. They also have a song called "Eat Pussy Til We Puke" which is just as good of a name of any Anal Cunt song, but about a thousand times easier to listen to. I really wanted to stick around to see the new band featuring members of Rocket 455 (the greatest Detroit band you've never heard of who for all practical purposes should've been big rock stars) but I was just too worn out at that point. Wolfbait rocked my ass off.
11:45 p.m. Urinated on the tree in my backyard before wearily making my way to my bed for a proper night's sleep, free from the howling of coyotes and other things crashing through the woods.

Amplifier Worship

2006-05-31T23:34:00.000-04:00

A bit late on the update from this one, but last Saturday had me driving down to Columbus to catch SunnO))) and Boris. I had been pretty excited for this show ever since I read about it a couple months ago. I was hoping for an unholy droning east-meets-west sludgefest and was not let down in the slightest. Boris brought the thunder from the east, alternating between Blue Cheer-y, wooly-mammoth-stuck-in-the-tar-pit heaviness and more spastic prog-with-a-fork-stuck-in-a-220-volt socket numbers. They had the younger kids moshing during the latter and the fat, long-haired & bearded dudes in black t-shirts with the sleeves cut off banging their heads slowly in approval during the former tunes. After a short break, the house lights went down and the stage began to fill with fog. Along with the blue stage lights and the numerous tiny red light bulbs hung around, it started to make the transition from concert hall to ceremonial drone cave where the evening's cochlea sacrifice would proceed.
Oren Ambarchi came out (shrouded in the de rigeur black hooded cloak) and began filling the air with piercing tones from his heavily processed guitar. After a few minutes of that O'Malley and Anderson, the High Priests of the Unholy Drone, came out, plugged in, and unleashed the power of the sunn amps. This was the first time I had seen them perform live and had heard how the sound manifests itself physically, but was completely unprepared for it. Up until that point, the loudest band I had seen was Mogwai, but that pain could be alleviated with earplugs. Not so with Sunn. The low end rumbles through your innards and vibrates your teeth. Like some sort of tribal shamans, they had their flock all resonating at the same frequency. If Shiva had an audio accompaniment to his work of destroying planets, it would definitely be SunnO))). (Curiously enough, someone told me that the word "sunno" in Hindi means "listen", but I've been too lazy to look into that. I prefer just believing blindly what he told me) Added to the steel string reverberations were Atsuo's (Boris' drummer) vocal chords and gong hits. Perched at the edge of the stage, and even jumping into the sea of outstretched arms at one point, his blasphemous shrieking-in-tongues whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

This was one of the best performances I've seen in awhile. Added to the fact that it's great music, the atmosphere they create just takes it up to another level. It's a lot more interesting that way than just a bunch of dudes who haven't showered in awhile in the same jeans and t-shirts they've had on for 3 days. With their stage theatrics, Sunn walks the line between over the top, Spinal Tap-esque heavy metal shlock and true reverence. Maybe I'm just some hack writer who completely missed the point, but the boundaries between taking the piss and exalting the dark forces were obscured by the fog machines. As always, the merch tables at shows like this get me into trouble but I was able to sufficiently restrain myself to keep a few bucks in my pocket for a post-show Waffle House stop. Nothing better to fill a post-drone rumbled belly with than a pecan waffle. If I was an enterprising opportunist I would've picked up a couple of the tour-only Sunn discs to flog on eBay (one went for over $140 bucks) but I was content to just pick up the one for myself, along with the picture disc LP of Black One and the high concept 2 disc Dronevil set by Boris. It's somewhat along the lines of the Flaming Lips' "Zaireeka", you sync up the 2 discs to play at the same time. They're impressive enough on their own, but when you actually do sync them up on 2 players, the result is stupefying.

R.I.P. Desmond Dekker

2006-05-27T00:58:00.000-04:00

Just a quick shout out to the memory of the man who turned me on to a whole genre of music I would've otherwise missed out on. I went to high school with a bunch of kids who were into ska, but they were all nerds with shaved heads and two-tone suspenders who listened to The Toasters and stuff like that. Not my cup of tea. Then the only experience I had with reggae was the Bob Marley discs that always played at my uncle's house while they all smoked pot. Bob Marley bored me to tears. Let's face it, he's basically the (half) black Jimmy Buffett. I know college freshmen everywhere will disagree with that statement (just look for any dorm room with a poster of Bob smoking a huge spleef), but it's pretty much the truth. My indifference to reggae all changed once I heard a little tune called "The Israelites" in a little movie called "Drugstore Cowboy". That snakey guitar line, repetitive rhythm, and soulful voice was cooler than Matt Dillon's outfits, and that's saying a lot because he looked pretty awesome in that movie. So I credit Desmond Dekker and Trojan Records (for all their amazing re-issues and box sets) for turning me onto a powerful, vibrant form of music that I otherwise would've just dismissed as the soundtrack to overpriveleged white college kids with dreadlocks preaching about the evils of "Babylon".
Here's an awesome video from a TV show show in the vein of "Top Of The Pops" of Desmond Dekker & The Aces performing "The Israelites" to a bunch of Dutch dudes with weird haircuts.

Black Ships Ate The Sky

2006-05-24T22:02:00.000-04:00

David Tibet, the primary creative force behind Current 93 describes his newest album “Black Ships Ate The Sky” as “the closest I have come to picturing what I hope, and feel, and love, and fear.” It takes a certain amount of guts to do something like that, to tear down every shred of a protective barrier around your core and expose it to the elements and see what the end result is. What if no one cares? Or even worse, what if when you train that deep of an eye into the deepest recesses of yourself, the end result bores you? Luckily for us what resides inside of David Tibet is something so awe-inspiring, frightening, and magnificient that it’s resulted in the best album these ears have heard in the past 5 or so years. “Black Ships Ate The Sky” is the latest of Tibet’s prolific work with Current 93, released on his own Durtro-Jnana record label. The songs on this album are distinctly divided into two categories. The central theme is a rendition of Idumea (a hymn written in 1793 by the brother of the founder of the Methodist church), interpreted by the likes of Marc Almond, “Bonnie” Prince Billy, and Shirley Collins. Idumea is an interesting choice of a song to cover. It’s lyrical content is similar Tibet’s own lyrics (death, the afterlife/spirit world, eternity) but even more so when you consider the history of the song and who he chooses to interpret it. Idumea made a transatlantic journey and became a staple in Appalachian folk hymns (versions of it appeared on the Cold Mountain soundtrack) and by choosing both American and English artists to cover it, Tibet creates a musical bridge spanning oceans and centuries and left his own mark on an ever evolving art form. Even though this song appears 9 times on the album it never feels repetitive because each artists’ interpretation of it is quite different, the highlight being the almost a capella version sung by Antony. His voice is too beautiful to be human, it sounds like it’s coming from from an impossibly perfect blank eyed marble statue with angelic vocal chords. A modern day Pygmalion. The other half of the album is a song cycle concerning the mysterious black ships. At the peak of his song writing powers, Tibet is on par with the poetry of William Blake. The lyrics paint strange and wonderful and disturbing images of copper kings, umbrella ladies, and black ships devouring the clouds in your head, set to delicately picked folky acoustic guitars and the deep mournful tone of a cello. To the ever changing roster of musicians in Current 93, Tibet has added Ben Chasny. His style meshes so well with Tibet's that it's a wonder it has taken this long for it to happen. The album climaxes towards the end lyrically, musically, and emotionally with the title track, with corrosive, distorted guitars pounding the same chord repeatedly while the cello squeals and wails like John Cale's viola on "Heroin", with an impassioned David Tibet intoning “Who will deliver me from myself? “ over and over. At this point you're so far caught up in the web Tibet has gently spun, lulling you with soothing tones, that the industrial overtones of this song are rather jarring. After Tibet destroys the entire world he had created in the span of those 4 minutes, he uses a reprise of Why Caesar Is Burning as its requiem, and to ease your re-entry back into the "real world". I'm not exactly sure what the black ships are supposed to signify. The one theory I keep returning to is that it's symbolic of humanity's propensity towards self destruction. Of a fate we're almost certainly doomed for if we stay the present course. It's almost as if Tibet is hoping that there is in fact a deus ex machina to deliver us from ourselves.

Finally, the hippies have good record collections

2006-05-24T02:38:00.001-04:00

Maybe it has to do with the fact that Phish broke up and the hippies with nowhere else to go have finally started listening to non-jamband fare. Maybe the hippies just decided that the String Cheese Incident wasn't doing it for them and started delving into authentic psychedelic weirdness. Dungen is championing Trad Gras Och Stenar, Devendra Banhart has Vashti Bunyan, Ben Chasny has uncovered Gary Higgins from whatever rock he's been hiding under. For the record I'm not calling Ben a hippie, just using that as a point of reference. And for the record, I think the term "freak-folk" is a really lame buzzword cooked up by lazy journalists who have to categorize everything. For good or ill, as of late there seems to be an overabundance of bands practicing a sort of hippie-ish/back-to-the-land ethos. The problem with a glut of bands in any one “scene”, other than the inevitable backlash, is separating the wheat from the chaff. Feathers, a collective from the white mountains of Vermont, fall into the former category. They were the backing musicians on the aforementioned Banhart’s most recent studio album “Cripple Crow”, but their self-titled debut released on Banhart’s gnomonsong label is far superior. This record has me almost ready to put all my metal records in a pile and light it on fire and dance around it barefoot drinking mushroom tea under a full moon. (almost). Their songs have a psychedelic-folky vibe that makes them sound like they were recorded in a sunlit meadow amongst wildflowers swaying in a gentle breeze or in a circle of gypsy wagons around a campfire. The one track that has especially captured my heart as of late is the closing "Come Around". The harmonies are achingly sweet and the multi-layered instrumental arrangement is just perfect. More importantly, they have an authentic quality to them that leaves you wondering if the songs were recorded now or in 1973. They don’t come off as a fly-by-night bandwagon jumping act who all of the sudden started waving their freak-folk flag for an already built in niche audience.

Mogwai and a really shitty band and a ray of hope to not end on a bummer

2006-05-23T00:36:00.000-04:00

Sometimes the peripheral things happening at a show are just as entertaining as the main event. The bathroom lines at the Mogwai show last Thursday night at St. Andrew's were one of those moments. A few of the choice overhead comments:

"What the fuck is with this line? I walked past the ladies room and there isn't a line at all"
"That's because there's only like four chicks here"

a guy to another guy washing his hands after peeing:
"What are you doing? Is there something that wrong with your dick that you have to wash your hands every time you touch it?"

then one of the times I went down (I think I put down about 5 tall boys at the show, so there were frequent trips after a certain point) and there were 2 guys bitching about the wait, which was only about 3 minutes or so but that can seem like an eternity with a full bladder. Anyway, these guys were already INSIDE the bathroom waiting for the next available stall/urinal, but one guy egged the other guy on into pissing in the trash can. Then someone else started pissing in the sink. Pretty fuckin' punk rock. Needless to say it's the hardest I've probably ever laughed inside a bathroom other than the time at the House of Blues in Chicago when there were two guys arguing over who was doing more of their stash of blow in a stall next to me. As much fun as the bathroom was, the Mogwai set was even better. Easily one of the more powerful live acts still going today. If you subscribe to the theory that matter is neither created nor destroyed in a chemical reaction, Mogwai will completely remind you that every particle of your body (and everywhere else for that matter) has been around since the Big Bang. They're so fierce live, and the sheer volume of it is like the sixth member of Mogwai. It was simultaneously beautiful and violent. Of the brilliant new album all I recognized was my personal favorite Friend of the Night and a monstrous version of Glasgow Mega-Snake that closed the show, complete with an extended noisy ending. Other than the opening Yes! I Am A Long Way From Home, the rest was just a blur of their brilliant brand of tension and release. Paik and Film School were playing at the Stick that night as well, but after Mogwai I was just too shattered. Plus seeing anyone else that night (even Paik) would've just been anti-climactic.

After the brilliance of Mogwai on Thursday, I witnessed one of the WORST live acts I've ever come across. I had gone to Small's for the purpose of seeing Light play, and one of the openers just ruined my night. They were called Canada, which is a slight on our neighbors to the north. Knowing that Canada is basically a nation of pacifists that don't shoot each other over sneakers and wouldn't howl for blood over the fact that their name was attached to such a horrible band. If a group of tuneless Canadian pseudo-hippie pot smokers who thought that their THC addled "jamming" in the basement was worthy of putting a group together to torment people who drink at bars formed a band and called themselves U.S.A., I wouldn't doubt a full-on minutemen type assault to put an end to it. As an act of good faith I think their heads should be mounted on pikes in Hart Plaza, facing Canada, with a big banner that says SORE-REE (the phonetic Canadian pronunciation of "sorry") over top of it as an act of good faith. Maybe spare the two lady cello players, but the guys must go. They all switched instruments, which included a fucking xylophone and one of those melodicas that only sound good in dub reggae tunes or if used by Brian Eno. Maybe if they would've all stuck to focusing their effort on one instrument it might've been easier to listen to, but probably not.

As promised I'm not ending on a bummer (well, not exactly). Jason Molina, this generation's Springsteen, has another solo album coming out in August, similar to the Pyramid Electric Co. album from a couple years ago. Molina talks about it here.

thanks for reading, if anyone out there is
xoxox
Anton

Ridiculous

2006-05-17T02:55:00.000-04:00

Never underestimate the insanity of an obsessive Morrissey fan(atic). Remember all the crazy shit that supposedly linked Lincoln and Kennedy? Well, some crazy Smiths/Moz fan with a bit too much time on their hands has established a link between Morrissey's lyrics and the death of Princess Di. Here are just a few examples:

Morrissey started THE QUEEN IS DEAD with audio from the film THE L-SHAPED ROOM
about a woman - played by actress Lesley Caron - who moved from France to England.
Diana's body was moved from France to England.
Lesley Caron was born on July 1st.
Diana was born on July 1st.

Morrissey's lyrics to THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT from THE QUEEN IS DEAD concern:
two people
on a date
at night
in the city
driving in a car
fantasizing about getting killed in a car crash
gripped by fear in an underpass

Over a decade later we have Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed:
two people
on a date
at night
in the city
driving in a car
getting killed in a car crash
in an underpass

In 1987, this very same song - THERE IS A LIGHT THAT NEVER GOES OUT from THE QUEEN IS DEAD -
became the 'A'-side of the only Smiths single ('B'-side: HALF A PERSON) in the lifetime of the band to be
released exclusively in France.
Princess Diana died in France.

Oh boy. I wouldn't poke fun if I wasn't completely obsessed with The Smiths myself. It really just makes me feel a whole lot better about it. If ever I think I've gone too far, I can always fall back on the "at least I didn't make a whole website about Moz predicting Princess Diana's death" defense. If you want to read the rest of the material, by all means visit THE DIANA-MORRISSEY PHENOMENOM website.

Acid Mother's Day

2006-05-16T10:17:00.000-04:00

What is it with some of my countrymen? I think it comes as an honest-to-god SHOCK to some of them that there are people who don't speak English out there. Before the Acid Mothers Temple show Sunday night (dubbed Acid Mother's Day, clever huh?), I was at the merch table checking out what they had for me to buy when some duder was having a really hard time trying to find out why there was no Acid Mother's vinyl for sale. He kept talking very sloooowly as you would to a child who is mentally retarded and was visibly flustered and kept saying "Well you know, it's a rather common practice for bands to press their albums on to vinyl." I could just see Higashi and Kawabata sitting there thinking, "Fuck you guy, we're going home where we can play pachinko and buy school girl's worn underwear in a couple weeks." The opening act were some band called The Antarcticans who weren't bad but they kinda need to get over the whole Godspeed thing.
The Acid Mothers took the stage to Atsushi-san greeting us in perfect Engrish by saying "Herro Detroit Rock City, happy Acid Mother's Day, how many of you are mother fuckers?" It was already shaping up to be an interesting show. Half the fun is just watching them play. They're not the types of dudes you see every day. I was thinking about what it must be like on tour for them in the middle of nowhere when they stop for gas at 3 in the morning and the guy working at the gas station sees a tall Japanese guy with long silver hair and long pointy beard in pyjama pants walking around the store. Some people just aren't ready for that. I find Japanese hippies to be infinitely cooler than the American brand. I guess when you have a culture that's already a little weird to begin with and then you add LSD into the equation you're just bound to come up with something more fun than kicking around a hacky sack in your birks and twirling devil sticks with a Bob Marley disc playing. But I digress. I was hoping to hear more of the heavy, sludgy, Black Sabbath-meets-Flower Travellin Band type of stuff (which there was some of) but the majority of the show was more along the lines of jazzy free form psych space rock with a lot of feedback freak-out breakdowns and just pure Eddie Hazel-style cosmic slop rock-n-roll. Another thing that's great about Acid Mothers is how their brand of psych isn't blues based like so many of the 60's American and British bands, but is based more on droning eastern ragas, and fed through Marshall stacks and loads of effects pedals it turns into whole different creature. I like to think of it as some form of electric Zen buddhism, because it has that effect on the mind. It occupies the front part of your brain with its mantra (the part that worries about your bills, putting gas in the car, paying rent, etc. etc.) and lets the rest of the mind wander. It's a little reminder that there is a lot more to being human than slaving away to buy a false sense of happiness. That there's more of "us" than there are of "them" and if everybody one day decided to burn their passports and their flags and their credit card bill, that there's nothing "they" will be able to do about it. They got the guns but we got the numbers. I know it all sounds really naive and utopian but it's not a bad fantasy to have, and besides, everyone loves an underdog. That's why I'm glad there are bands like this. I know I'm not the only one who feels this way. You just have to throw those seeds to the wind and hope they find purchase somewhere. You'll have to forgive me for all the hippie drivel, my mind is still reeling from the dose of Acid Mothers. Oh and by the way that's all I was on Sunday night, just the feedback, no drugs of any sort so this isn't some sort of post-lysergic revelation or anything. I'll be back to my jaded, cynical self in a couple days I'm sure. It's just nice to know you can slip into that every now and then when you need a reminder that it's not all that bad. That if you free your mind, your ass will follow, no matter what sort of limitations the material world has placed on you. After the show I stopped by the merch table to try and pick out one of the 2 dozen or so CDs for sale. I settled on the Acid Mothers Temple Soul Collective Tour 2003 disc, mainly because there was a pic of Cotton Casino on the cover and I sorta have a thing for her. There are 3 long pieces on it from various Acid Mothers side projects. The first is a gorgeous electric guitar space symphony done solo by Kawabata Makoto that starts off with what sounds like an improv for about 15 minutes before breaking into the familiar melody of Pink Lady Lemonade. The second piece is a side project of Cotton Casino and Higashi Hiroshi called Duo. It's a moog/synth/keyboard soundtrack for spacewalks, ethereal blips and bloops for floating weightlessly through the starlit black void. And finally, as almost an antithesis to the previous 2 pieces is Tsurubami, a 3 piece with Kawabata and Higashi and Emi Nobuko. This is an all improvised, recorded live, corrosive metallic noisy sonic punishment. After a couple minutes it mellows out and settles into an uneasy truce with your ears in an electric drone before going back into the cacophonous squalling and ending on a note of screeching feedback.

2006-05-12T14:40:00.000-04:00

Nothing is worse than being outside in the rain. Unless of course you're walking a stupid fucking dog who walks into the biggest puddle in the field and lays down and will not come when you call so you have to wade in there to collar him again and get soaked up to your fucking ankles. I would've been in way more of a foul mood had it not been for the new Stills to keep me musical company. I'll admit, I rolled my eyes when I opened the envelope that this came in. I had seen these dudes open for Echo & the Bunnymen a couple years ago and was thoroughly unimpressed, and really could've cared less for their last album. So I listened to it thoroughly preparing to hate it, but what I heard when I pressed play was quite a pleasant surprise. It didn't even sound like the same band. Where their debut seemed overly somber, calculated, and derivative, their follow up disc Without Feathers has a completely updated sound. It actually reminds me a bit of The Jesus & Mary Chain's "Stoned & Dethroned" album. The opening cut "In The Beginning" starts off with a chugging rhythm, then adds a marching cadence of a drumbeat, and swirling organ chords and guitar licks that turns it into a triumphant psychedelic pop rock tune, complete with a false ending to assuage your disappointment when you think it ends too early and say "Awww, man, that's IT?". While not a perfect album by any means (some of the slower songs seem a bit tedious and "The House We Live In" is sort of a weak tune to end on) the good far outweighs the bad. "Oh Shoplifter" and "Baby Blues" especially stand out.

The new Whirlwind Heat record "Types Of Wood" has also been in heavy rotation over here lately. I don't think these guys get enough credit. At it's best moments "Types Of Wood" will make you feel like you're seeing Erase Errata after they fired their guitar player and got Mark Mothersbaugh to play with them at a crowded house party with a lot of shitty beer in kegs in the basement and everyone's good looking and horny and going nuts and swinging from the rafters and sweaty bodies flailing everywhere. Take a listen to "My Electric Underwear" if you don't believe me. It's that kind of party. Porno funk basslines, brain frying Moogs, and stupid lyrics. That's not a bad thing either by the way, just listen to "Gene Pool Style" to see what I mean. They also have an awesome, hilarious, self-directed video for the spastic "Air Miami" that has more edits than that movie "Spun" but it's a lot more fun and you don't have to see Brittany Murphy.

We Dream In Sound

2006-05-05T03:06:00.000-04:00

If I was a lot smarter and knew more about politics I would be blogging about the resignation of Porter Goss, but since my time in college was spent on other pursuits I'm blogging about seeing Elf Power last night. So I ended up going to see them even though it was a last minute decision on my part. And a better decision couldn't have been made on a whim on a Thursday night. I have quite a weakness for Elephant 6 bands. Everyone remembers their first time listening to "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea". That was basically my Fisher-Price My Very First Indie Band Album. And through that I devoured anything from that collective (and their like) that I could get my hands on. Olivia Tremor Control, Of Montreal, Apples In Stereo, Dressy Bessy, and of course, Elf Power. The show last night was just FUN. It brought me back to being in my early 20s (not that they're that far behind me or anything). It sounded like going to sleep and waking up to the sound of babbling bongs, of having a job that afforded me the luxury of setting my own schedule and striking out to whatever destinations caught my fancy. It sounded like smoking cigarettes on a warm sunlit porch with nothing at all to do but maybe scrape together some change and go get a 40. It sounded like optimism and infinite possibilities, which everyone needs a dose of every now and then, no matter how hippie it sounds. There wasn't as much of the really heavy, grimy psych sound from the organs that I liked so much from their earlier albums. They had a lady playing cello which put a different twist on stuff like "We Dream In Sound". I haven't heard much of the stuff from the new album, but the couple songs they played sounded not too different from the stuff on "Creatures" (really nice clean tone from the electric 12 string and a much fuzzier sound from the lead) which was my favorite album of theirs. They did play "Everlasting Scream" and closed with "Let The Serpent Sleep" from that album. I unfortunately didn't have any money left to pick up the new LP (daddy likes his whiskey) but I will definitely keep an eye out for it when my next check comes in.

Plugged in & ready to fall

2006-04-24T14:31:00.000-04:00

So...
Last night saw the Alkaline Trio. I was sort of indifferent about going, figured it would just be something to do on a Sunday night, but I ended up having a really good time. They played the Goddamnit album in it’s entirety, Matt and Dan each did a few acoustic songs (which brought back memories of the in-store performance at Desirable Discs in Garden City from way back) then played for about another half hour after that. It was funny hearing all the cheering from the crowd when Matt was talking about all the great fans that had been with them for the last 10 years. When the average age of the people in the crowd 10 years ago would've been about, oh, 9 or 10. on to what I'm listening to...

The new Om album "Conference of the Birds" is quickly becoming my favorite of the year so far behind Current 93's "Black Ships Ate The Sky". (and as luck would have it, those 2 bands are appearing on a split 10" record to be released in May). It took a few listens for it to really click, but this is nothing short of a masterpiece. How Chris and Al can do so much with just drums and a bass is beyond me. It's like building a full sized Eiffel Tower with matchsticks and Elmer's glue. The opening "At Giza" is aptly named. It has a definite middle eastern influence to it. It sounds like the pyramids. It's gigantic, it's mysterious, there are secrets to it that can be revealed if you're willing to explore it. They're tapping into something ancient, timeless, that was here long before you and will be around long after your bones have turned to dust. The bass is utterly hypnotic, starting off soft and slow, lulling you deeper and deeper into its trance and the mantra-like vocals pull you further in. Then it just keeps building and building into a motherfucker of a crescendo about 13 minutes into it. If you're a believer, you can feel it starting down in the small of your back and slowly rising up your spine until it explodes out the top of your head, opening your third eye in the process. The release is almost orgasmic. Om is taking stoner metal to the astral plane, dudes. After that, it's "Flight of the Eagle", no teasing this time, just a thick, Sabbath worthy bass line and the drums anchoring it like the stones of a pyramid while the vocals chant and lock you into the trance created on the first track until you don't even notice that 17 minutes have passed. Lather, rinse, and repeat. This is metal for the mind and soul.

I'm not exactly sure what's going on with music writers at places like Entertainment Weekly and other mags of that caliber, but all the reviews of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Show Your Bones" album I've read kept comparing it to the White Stripes/garage rock stuff. They couldn't be further from the truth. Sure a few songs have big, gnarly, dirty hooks (Fancy, Honey Bear) but it owes a lot more The Pretenders than the White Stripes. I have to say that my favorite on the album is the single, Gold Lion. Like any great pop single it burrows itself into your brain and you'll still be singing the "ooooh OOOOH" vocals hours after you last heard it while you're in line at the bank. Top to bottom it's an incredibly solid album and shows a lot of progress from Fever To Tell. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs clean up pretty good, the slicker production on Show Your Bones does a lot more for me than the post-punky/electro sound from Fever To Tell, and also shows that they can progress beyond a flavor-of-the-month trend and evolve into something else. Some other New York bands should take note. (I'm lookin' at you, Casablancas)

O.K. so I like a lot of what could be called "pussy music" (Belle & Sebastian, Elliot Smith, Iron & Wine, etc) but even I feel like a bit of a ponce listening to Keane. I mean sure it's well crafted pop songs with pianos and stuff, but come on lads, grow some balls. The Guillemots must've felt the same way. Their debut "From The Cliffs" is definitely worth a listen. They write really catchy tunes with piano (and horns and synths and great string arrangements) that don't make you feel like you're in a khakis commercial when you listen to them. "Trains To Brazil" is my favorite on the album, referencing mid-90's brit pop in the vein of Pulp.

when you say ALRIGHT it makes me feel ALRIGHT!

2006-04-18T02:51:00.001-04:00

OK so add this to the long list of reasons why I have a hard time leaving Detroit:
Even though we're at double the national unemployment rate and it really is just an ugly city that no one could love unless they were born here (seriously, have you ever been to San Francisco?), where else can you can go see the

The Hard Lessons play a free show on a Monday night and just completely annihilate the place? You know, I've always thought that The Who would've been the greatest power trio ever if Roger Daltrey had never been in the band. Sometimes, you just DON'T need a fourth member. Seeing the Hard Lessons tonight kinda made me feel like that's what it would've been like. And I'm talking early Who, where it was all proto-punk rock-n-roll energy mashed together with that raw mod/soul/driving your car into the pool of the Flint Holiday Inn on your 20th birthday thing they had going on in the beginning. Have you ever seen Quadrophenia? You know that part where Phil Daniels is wasted out of his mind on speed and booze and jumps off the balcony of the club that's playing northern soul while everyone there is going wild? That's what it felt like tonight, but imagine that moment stretched out for about 50 minutes straight. That was easily the best show I have seen in months. The Belmont is a small enough place, and seeing the Hard Lessons there just now was like watching a fireworks display in a studio apartment. Their timing is a bit off, they just missed the rest of the world caring about Detroit music by about 9 months or so, but if there's any justice in the world, some A & R guy will catch a set like the one they just played and sign them to a lucrative record deal You'd figure after 6 weeks on the road they would be tired out, but the performace tonight was like the burn of a straight shot of Everclear. Ugh, I'm out of lame metaphors, it's really almost pointless for me to write anymore about it, you kinda had to be there. All I'm saying is, catch this band the next time they're around. If it was a tenth as good as it was tonight you're in for a treat.

finally...

2006-04-05T11:02:00.000-04:00

So, living in Detroit, it's easy to hate life in the months between November and April. The sun is replaced by a thick, low hanging layer of grey clouds, it's fucking cold, you're part of the 14% unemployment statistic, etc., etc., etc. And it's not helping much that I've been listening to lots and lots of drone/doom/sludge. I've basically been turning into Gollum (and we forgot the sound of trees, the softness of the wind...) Anyway, a little ray of sonic sunshine came to me in my e-mail the other day. The new Envelopes album is out as a reminder that winter pays for summer. Coming from Sweden, they know a thing or 2 about brutal winters. They combat that by making bright sunshine-y pop music. "Free Jazz" has sort of a late-era Talking Heads/Tom Tom Club vibe to it, lily-white funk rhythms with really cool spaced out keyboards. "Isabel & Leonard" and "Sister In Love" are reminiscent of classic Elephant 6 indie pop, bouncy, fuzzy, songs with sugary sweet melodies and fun/stupid lyrics that get stuck in your head for hours afterward. For those living in northern climates, this will remind you that soon you'll be riding your bike and eating sandwiches on the grass in the park and watching girls walk around in skirts and tank tops again. mp3s / videos here!

read up, there's a contest in this one!

2006-04-04T13:07:00.000-04:00

I've got fuck all to do with myself this morning so I figure I will catch up on blogging. I'm about recovered from last night's Arab Strap show and the related festivities. It was a pretty good show, nothing mind blowing and they're actually a bit better on record than live, but it was still a good way to spend a Monday night. My only gripe was that they played "The Shy Retirer" with just an acoustic guitar and Aidan singing. I like it better the other way. Anyway I woke up with the slightest touch of a hangover that I knocked out with a strong cup of tea and "Gold", the new Franklin's Mint album. It's Phil Franklin's (from The Sunburned Hand Of The Man) new side project. It sounds nothing like Sunburned's frenzied, terrifying acid trip freak outs, it's more like the most soothing, laid back country/psych tinged folky rock you can imagine hearing. It's so good that a time machine should be invented so someone can go back in time and kill The Eagles when they first started and replace them with Franklin's Mint. It's seriously tied with Velvet Underground & Nico as my favorite album to hear after a rough night out. The acoustic guitars are tempered with organs, strings, a touch of fuzz, and just the right tempo drums to ease you into the day. It also comes in a beautifully silkscreened package in a limited edition pressing of 1,000, available at Eclipse Records .

On to the new Morrissey. Been listening to this one pretty much non-stop for the past week. I'm really not capable of giving a non-biased review of this as I'm pretty much queer for anything Smiths/Moz related. In short, I love it. After sort of a weak spell for awhile, "You Are The Quarry" found him back in top form, and the new "Ringleader Of The Tormentors" is even better. As is evident from the cover art (showing Steve The Nutter playing a violin, bedecked in a tux) there's a lot of strings on this album. He even got Ennio Morricone to write and arrange the string section on "Dear God Please Help Me", the song that probably has the most sexually explicit lyrics to appear in a Moz song. "Now I'm spreading your legs / with mine in between / dear God if I could, I would help you." However, still no mention on the gender of the leg spreadee, so the debate rages on.
One thing that I do have to bitch about politically (other than the requisite PETA plug in the liner notes) is the photo on the inner booklet of Steve sitting on a Vespa with the words SMASH BUSH spray painted on a wall behind him. The word BUSH seems suspiciously photoshopped, the wall behind it is considerably darker than the rest of the wall so the letters are a bit blurred, and the rearview mirror from the Vespa somewhat obscures the B so it's not easily read at first glance. If anything they should've photoshopped it to stand out more, to really get the point across. Maybe the label didn't want to alienate the Republican For Moz fanbase, but somehow I doubt that minority would care much. Don't underestimate the rabidness of the Morrissey disciples. Even the hardline right wing Morrissey fans (of which I'm sure there are, somewhere) are cheerily singing along to "If your God bestows protection upon you / and if the USA doesn't bomb you / I believe I will see you somewhere safe". It all comes down to the fact that underneath all the narcissism and militant neo-fascist vegetarianism, the dude is just a really great singer/lyricist and that transcends even the most mundane aspects of the baggage that comes along with it.

Here's a fun little game to play. Which of the following are real Morrissey song names, and which are phonies? see how many you can get right! e-mail (antonlachey@yahoo.com) me and I'll send you a mix tape if you get them all right, and no fair cheating with search engines and what not. If anyone is even reading this.

1. The World Is Full Of Crashing Bores
2. The Maitre d' Has Killed Any Chance I Had At True Happiness
3. Russian Hands, Roman Fingers
4. Pregnant For The Last Time
5. The Last Of The Famous International Playboys
6. I Will Lay My Dreams To Rest Next To You On A Bed Of Nails
7. Satan Rejected My Soul
8. No One Will Ever Fill Your Shoes
9. Won't Anyone Ever Take Me To Tea With The Queen?
10. Don't Make Fun Of Daddy's Voice

not feeling too clever tonight

2006-01-31T01:45:00.000-05:00

all right enough bullshit, i'll get to the point
Trad Gras Och Stenar - Got a re-issue of an album called "Djungelns Lag" recorded live in 1971. These guys are a band of Swedish hippies and can get a bit wanky at times, but it's pretty solid even if it is a bit longwinded. The shorter songs are easier to listen to but even the longer songs are worth sticking out til the end because they're still really interesting and well played and trippy.

Wolfmother - "Dimension" EP - Right, I know what you're thinking, ANOTHER fucking band with the word "wolf" in their name. It was about enough to make me not want to play the advance copy I got but I did anyway and was very impressed. They come off sounding something like Deep Purple without the classic rock baggage. Cool keyboard parts and really heavy fuzzed out guitar riffs to feed your head. The EP "Dimension" should be out now at your favorite Local Indie Record Shop. Apparently these guys are great live but I couldn't tell you. However what I've heard on the new EP is definitely worth a listen. Stop by their page on the new crack (myspace) for a listen. Wolfmother

Some Girls - "Heaven's Pregnant Teens" - Holy shit would I ever be into this band if I was about 10 years younger. Even being a jaded old jerk I can still appreciate this. It's like metal with all the fat trimmed and smashed into minute and half long spazzed out thrashing blasts of sonic torture. It's also got really cool, dark lyrics that aren't all stupid and sounding like they were pulled from a sullen high school sophomore's notebook. Go here to hear a couple of the tracks. But as usual the better songs aren't up there and you're better off just getting the whole album and listening to it. On vinyl from ThreeOneG records and on CD from Epitaph.

The Cloud Room - self-titled - So this is a Brooklyn band, but they have an England thing happening. It's tough to pin down, sorta the midway point between the early 90s musical forces from the other side of the Atlantic, brit-pop and shoegaze, but with more energy than either. "Hey Now Now" is catchier than syphilis at a Thai whore house, but a lot more fun. click here to see what I'm talking about

Cat Power "The Greatest" - I can't really say enough good stuff about this record. I can't wait to make out to it. Amazing blue eyed soul to make you fall in love with Chan Marshall, as if you haven't already. More to follow once my review gets published in the A2 Paper.

I saw Low tonight and was pretty underwhelmed. I love sitting at home listening to them in a dark room but I don't think it really translates so much to the stage. At least not in a club with a bar where people are being loud and drinking. Also, Alan Sparhawk said that opening band His Name Is Alive were a bunch of dicks and I don't think he said it in a friendly, joking manner. Maybe he was mad about having a tough act to follow. Does anybody read this?

\m/ Early Man \m/

2005-12-16T01:47:00.000-05:00

So as of late Early Man has been in heavy fucking rotation. And I do mean heavy. This record is a late comer into my top 10 list for 2005. The story goes like this: these 2 guys were raised in the Pentecostal faith and had no knowledge of secular pop culture until the age of 19, when they discovered rock and roll. After being ostracized by their families they move to New York and start a band. Could be a bullshit story to fuel the hype machine, but at least it's a killer story. More compelling than a drum and guitar duo claiming to be brother and sister but are ex-lovers. Anyway, this particular drum and guitar duo make a hell of a racket. Pulling from classic metal influences like early Sabbath, Iron Maiden, and Judas Priest, the fact that these guys had been allegedly shielded from pop culture may be their saving grace. I'll just be blunt and say that most popular (or mainstream or whatever you want to call it) heavy acts these days just fucking suck (although there are exceptions to the rule). (excuse the double parentheses in that last sentence by the way) Maybe whatever it is that these two weren't exposed to as kids kept them from having short black hair, multiple lip piercings, a black t-shirt with another shitty bands logo sloppily screen printed on it, and writing "metal" songs about heartbreak. Let's face it, Zappa was right, broken hearts ARE for assholes. There's no crying in metal. Early Man knows this. That's why they wrote "Death Is The Answer". It starts off with this slow, lumbering Sabbath riff and heavily reverbed Ozzy influenced vocals. It makes you want to forgive the "Prince of Darkness" for his "reality" show follies and that hag he married and the 2 brats he spawned. Then it moves into a faster paced middle section, with scorching twin leads before reprising with the aforementioned Sabbath intro. Overall it's just a solid, heavy record that can be played from start to finish without having to skip any weak tracks. Although you'll probably want to replay Death is the Answer a few times. Enough of me flapping my god damn gums about it, I like to carry on after a few drinks. Just listen to it http://static3.state51.co.uk/matadorrecords.com/mpeg/early_man/early_man_death.mp3. Oh yeah, their full length was put out by Matador, who is also putting out the next Belle & Sebastian LP in February. AKA the polar opposite of what Early Man sounds like.

another recruit for the medicated girls brigade

2005-12-11T13:24:00.000-05:00

Hey Voltaire has a new band. Shut up, don't wrinkle your nose up like that. Called The Oddz, it sounds absolutely nothing like his main band. Instead of melancholy cello drenched dirges, this is happy indie pop-meets-new wave, yielding highly infectious results. The song that I've been listening to non-stop over the past couple days is "Medicated Girls Brigade". It almost reminds me of the Dead Milkmen, both for the clean, jangly guitar tone and the liberal dose of dark humor thrown into the the lyrics . (and listen to the chord changes, is that a brighter, slowed down "Skulls" by The Misfits??) Lyrics wise, it's a lighthearted, whimsical protest paean against pharmaceutical corporations and their doctors/pushers. He beseeches his beloved to not take her mind altering medications " i love your eyes and their far off gleam / i love your smile crooked as it seems / i love the way that you see the world / and i just cant see why they would want / to make you just like every other girl", employing the Warren Zevon "I'd rather feel fucked up than feel nothing at all" school of thought. And be sure to listen to "1 Semester Lesbian", about a girl going off to school and experimenting with alternative lifestyles after seeing the Rocky Horror Picture Show. You don't have to take my word for it, because ultimately I'm just a dude sitting in front of my computer in my underwear on a Sunday afternoon feeling groggy from the NyQuil I drank last night to knock out my cold. go to www.myspace.com/theoddz and listen to it firsthand.

more weird fucking belgians - Silvester Anfang

2005-12-04T23:21:00.000-05:00

as (not) published in the Dec. issue of the Ann Arbor paper (i wrote it for them but they did not publish it. no one got reviews published this month, just the top 10 list of the year from all of us "journalist" scum)

Right now there’s a little-known, mostly improvisational noise/folk/drone collective called Funeral Folk in Belgium that is the best export besides their drunkenness-is-next-to-godliness beer. (That’s not meant to be sacrilegious, their beers are brewed by monks in abbeys for Christ’s sake. Literally.) These artists are heavily influenced by the aforementioned ales, and also have a great sense of humor about them. Many of the band names are references to Scandinavian black metal (Chainsaw Gutsfuck and Silvester Anfang are both names of Mayhem songs) but instead of blast-beat drumming and abrasive, shredding guitar riffs they are cranking out experimental lo-fi recordings made with acoustic guitars, didgeridoos, melodicas, bells, keyboards, toy pianos, alarm clocks, televisions, and basically anything else that can make a noise. Silvester Anfang’s “Raping The Goat” CD-R is their American debut on Digitalis Recordings. The cover art takes the piss out of satanic imagery found on black metal records, inverted hot pink crosses and “100% Evil” scrawled across the back in hot pink letters. Doesn’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of non-believers. It is two tracks of airy, meandering improvisation that stretch nearly 40 minutes in length. If you’re a patient listener you will love this CD. The opening track “Raping The Goat” begins with an extended ambient intro which finally falls into a marching drum beat and more structured guitar chord progression, punctuated by random blasts of horns. “Ripping The Rectum” sounds a bit like a less psychotic Sunburned Hand Of The Man song, with its click-click-click percussion sounds and guitar and horn interplay. All in all it basically sounds like those impromptu jam sessions you have in the basement of a friend’s house who has a lot of random instruments laying around and you’ve been drinking into the wee hours of the night. But you don’t have to take my word for it. Visit www.funeralfolk.tk to hear some soundclips. This particular release is available at foxydigitalis.com in a limited edition run of 100

SunnO))) "Black One" review

2005-11-03T05:47:00.000-05:00

as published in the November issue of the Ann Arbor Paper

Remember that old Cheech & Chong bit about the guy who played Black Sabbath at 78 speed and saw god? Have you ever wondered what would happen if that idea was reversed, and you played Sabbath at 16 speed? Instead of a stairway to heaven, are you subjected to a glimpse into the underworld? Guitarists Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson of SunnO))) have been seeking an answer to that question since 1998 when armed with their guitars, stacks of vintage Sunn amps, head to toe black hooded cloaks, and a bong they recorded The Grimmrobe Demos. Since then they have been modern day prophets of doom, unleashing album after album of droning, skull-crushing, low-end riffs, usually augmented with guest vocalists and musicians. As their website states, “The powers that be contracted the heaviest low end destructors SunnO))) to create the most subharmonic drone recording ever put to tape. A test impossible for most mortals. Prepare your sound system!” Aptly titled “Black One”, their sixth album on Southern Lord records is also the darkest so far. This release is denser and more focused than their previous two albums (White 1 and White 2) which explored more ambient territory with keyboards and percussion. “Black One” is a return to bleak,atmospheric droning and gargantuan guitar chords that plumb the bottom of the spectrum of audible sound.

“It Took The Night To Believe” features a decelerated Norwegian black metal riff atop a steadily droning rhythm joined with an impossibly deep vocal track that sounds like it’s issuing from a crack leading to the earth’s molten core.
As on their past albums, guest “vokillists” (this time Wrest and Malefic of Lurker of Chalice and Xasthur, respectively) articulate the lyrics. The vocals range from deep, demonic, unintelligible invocations on “It Took The Night To Believe” to shrill banshee wails on “CandleGoat”. At times the vocals can be a bit over the top, blurring the line between comically absurd and geniunely frightening. Malefic goes so far as to be sealed in a coffin and placed in a hearse while recording the vocals to closing track “Bathory Erzsebet”, his claustrophobia adding a palpable sense of terror to his screaming.
SunnO))) is quite a departure from your average heavy metal band. In a field flooded with unoriginal and just plain untalented acts, they have won over a few anti-metal friends of mine with their willingness to experiment and not be imprisoned by the boundaries of any genre. “Black One” is an excellent accompanitment to the days getting shorter, the falling leaves, and the jack-o-lanterns rotting on your porch. Play this album as a fond farewell to the last vestiges of warm weather and prepare for a long dark winter.

Oren Ambarchi "Triste" review

2005-10-03T03:25:00.000-04:00

as published in the October issue of the Ann Arbor Paper

In the 17th century, people weren’t ready to buy into Galileo’s claim that the earth revolved around the sun. Likewise, the masses won’t be clamoring to purchase Oren Armbachi’s CD reissue of “Triste” . You won’t hear it blaring from a sorority girl’s SUV at a red light or on the latest episode of the OC, but just wait a couple centuries or so and it will probably sound contemporary. The sounds encoded on this little plastic disc are very futuristic. Originally available on a long out of print vinyl LP, Southern Lord records has reissued it in CD form and sweetened the pot with some new remixes. An Australian native who has collaborated with a diverse cross section of musicians including avant garde jazz artists John Zorn and Otomo Yoshihide, as well as the drone metal band sunnO))), Armbachi seems to reinvent himself on every solo release. “Triste” is a two-part minimalist composition made with a heavily electronically processed guitar. Part one is the slower of the two, where we are familiarized with the handful of guitar notes that will comprise the bulk of the music. Each one is sustained at length, almost like savoring a mouthful of vintage wine. These notes are then played in quicker succession in a seemingly random order. This is perfect for those nights when you can’t sleep. When every sound outside your window makes you jump, when you’re just staring at the weird patterns of diffused light and shadow on the walls and instead of closing your eyes to make it go away, you want to revel in the strangeness of the moment. As the first segment draws to an end the individual guitar notes give way to a spooky, almost subsonic droning, punctuated by erratic popping sounds which sound like a guitar being plugged in and out of an amplifier, which is then topped by a wavering shrill tone. If you could physically see music, this is what it would look like in the reflection of a fun house mirror. The guitar tones are folded, spindled, mutilated, mutated, and layered until it sounds like a digital swamp populated with frogs, birds, and crickets. The second segment comes to an end in a cacophony which I can only describe as what it might sound like if a robot were to disgorge its electronic innards. Following the original two sections of “Triste” are remixes of each track by tape loop artiste and founding member of the Los Angeles Free Music society Tom Recchion. Though greatly abbreviated in length, Recchion fleshes out the stark compositions with hints of percussion, keyboard flourishes, and more droning. As I said before, this piece is definitely not for everyone, but anyone who enjoys music from the deepest sectors of left field is sure to enjoy this.

Daniel Lanois Belladonna review

2005-09-05T06:05:00.000-04:00

as published in the September issue of the Ann Arbor Paper

Daniel Lanois is jack-of-all-trades in the music business. He made a name for himself by composing and playing music on Brian Eno’s groundbreaking ambient albums On Land and Apollo: Atmospheres and Soundtracks. Rolling Stone magazine hailed Lanois as “the most important record producer to emerge in the ‘80s,” most notably for his work on U2’s legendary The Joshua Tree and Peter Gabriel’s So. Upon my first listen to Belladonna, the latest in a series of releases on the Anti label, the album struck me as unremarkable. I liked it enough for the echoes of his collaborations with Eno, and I found it pleasant enough as background listening.

But an underhanded brilliance slowly burns throughout Belladonna. It wasn’t until a late night drive through the streets of downtown Detroit that I finally crossed the invisible line from listening to hearing. Focused on nothing but the road, I let the dulcet tones of Lanois’ pedal steel guitar envelope me. This is the soundtrack to one of those dreams in which you’re in a place that you recognize but somehow everything is different. The lurid light from street lamps shining through the steam billowing from sewer grates combined with the music to transform my short drive home to an ethereal interplanetary voyage.

Once home I went straight to my room and started Belladonna from the beginning, fully immersing myself in this parallel sonic dimension via my headphones. It’s almost a shame that Lanois even bothered separating this album into 13 individual tracks; it’d be better enjoyed from start to finish with no interruptions. Each track builds on the one preceding it like chapters in a book. Let “Sketches” take you to the bright side of the moon, where the keyboard notes fall like silvery raindrops, the whisper-like drums just barely audible. Listen closely to the eerie approximation of vocals on “Oaxaca” and try to figure out if they were generated by man or machine. Drop in on the mariachi fiesta of “Agave,” a bit of a nod to Morricone with its horn arrangements and militaristic marching drums, evoking images of spaghetti westerns with cowboys in space suits, finding out who has the fastest gun on Mars. Linger on the impressive finale of “Todos Santos” where the washes of sound are not unlike the colors of a Rothko painting. The landscape of this album flows so seamlessly from lush, densely layered compositions to spacious, airy sections that it never becomes tedious. It’s the perfect antidote to the short-attention-span sickness that infects our society.

weird fucking Belgians

2005-08-11T06:22:00.000-04:00

I came across a lo-fi DIY drone/free folk/noise/improv collective called Funeral Folk. Hailing from Belgium, it seems these guys do nothing but drink those potent ales and make fucked up recordings. What initially grabbed my attention were the names of the bands, which were mostly all inspired by Norwegian black metal. There's Silvester Anfang,Chainsaw Gutsfuck, Per & Oystein, all inspired by Mayhem. Also Hellvete (meaning "hell" in Nordic tongues). And the name sure to strike fear into the hearts of the public The Death Penalty Roommates. I figured these guys had to have a killer sense of humor to put names like that on the music they were making, which is a good indication that they're not taking themselves too seriously. After listening to the sound clips available on the website ( www.funeralfolk.tk) I selected works by Edgar Wappenhalter and Chainsaw Gutsfuck. I got the tapes from Eclipse Records (www.eclipse-records.com) out of Arizona, I think the only distributor in the States for them right now. Apparently FoxyDigitalis has some CD-R releases planned for the future. I love the punk inspired artwork, completely hand cut-and-pasted and photocopied and folded up and jammed into the cases. The Wappenhalter artwork had images of what looked like holocaust survivors while Chainsaw Gutsfuck has piles of skulls and weird images pulled from old books. As far as the music goes, Wappenhalter lays down some dusty, creaky acoustic ramblings, augmented with bells and what sounds like bongos. I like to imagine it was recorded in a shack in some heavily forested European region, while frightened children dare to peek in through windows at the scary old hermit inside, or make their way past like protagonists from a cautionary fable. Reminds me somewhat of the darker Six Organs material. The Chainsaw Gutsfuck is a thundering, noisy mess of lo-fi guitars and throbbing primal percussion. This would be a great soundtrack for a Conan the Barbarian type movie as the heroes ride to their impending doom in battle against supernatural evil forces.

solo road trip

2004-09-27T22:08:00.000-04:00

Instead of risking a potential disaster by driving my shitty car for a grand total of about 400 miles i was able to use my dad's new Escape to drive down to Columbus for Ghost. Very nice stereo system. So with Tom Waits, Television, Ride, The Waxwings, and B&S for sonic support i took off for Columbus. Since it was a Saturday night in a big ten college town it was full of college type dudes standing in the front yards of their homes drinking from a keg of some sort of horrid domestic swill with lite or ice as a suffix and trying to date rape girls in tight black pants and those shirts with only one shoulder on them. It reminded me of why i hated living in East Lansing. And of course since it was a Saturday night and the place was right on the edge of campus there were no parking spots and I wasted almost a half hour looking for one. Once I got in I was very pleased with the place. It's perfect for that type of show. No smoking, and there was no bar so the ringing of cash registers and people shouting drink orders wouldn't conflict with the quiet kind of music being played. It was a pretty small room too, I dont think it could've held more than 500 people, and only about 300 were there. It was really nice to be in a quiet, attentive crowd too, no yahoos there talking during the music. Six Organs had already played most of his set by the time i got there. I got to see about 3 and a half of his songs though, and it was pretty amazing to hear all those sounds coming out of just one guitar. The way Ben got a really cool drone by hitting the open top string with his thumb while picking out notes on the lower strings was pretty amazing. It was as if he was playing lead and rhythm parts simultaneously. After his set I asked if Comets On Fire would be touring anytime soon for the new album and he wasn't sure exactly when or where they would be playing but there would be some shows coming up. By this time I was really excited for the main event. Ghost took the stage to a Tibetan monk chant and tuned up while that faded away and started to gradually play their own stuff. Masaki was wearing this really bizarre crushed purple velvet get up with a sunburst pattern on the shirt and pants that were far too tight. He looked like a Japanese version of Bowie from Labyrinth. He had a very mystical stage presence, almost like that of a shaman. You can tell he has done a lot of psychedelic drugs but they haven't taken a toll on him like they have some people. Definitely looked pretty spaced out but still hasn't lost the cognitive ability. Musically speaking, Michio impressed me most. His lead guitar playing on the albums really impressed me but seeing him live took it to a whole new level. At times he was motionless, hunched over his Gibson playing slide notes, but when he was into it he was thrashing around, looking like he was fighting with a wolverine in a closet. He made sounds that I didn't think were possible to coerce out of an electric guitar. After the show I of course had to stop by the merch table I had been trying to avoid since I walked in. I bought Snuffbox Immanence and the Masaki Batoh solo collection on vinyl, then cds of Michio's side project Stars (which I havent been able to find anywhere since it was a pretty limited japanese import) and Six Organs' Dark Noontide. Of course I put the 10 dollars my dad gave me for food (since he felt bad about not taking me out to dinner lately) towards my music but I had pretty much planned that it would happen like that. On the walk back to my car I was accused of being a homosexual by a car full of the OSU students, no doubt in the honors program and ambassadors of goodwill. I wasn't offended, I rather took it as a compliment to the fact that I had dressed well that night. I had to drive home fast since I was hungry and getting sleepy. I could've eaten at the Waffle House on the way home but it felt wrong, seeing as how I was north of the mason/dixon line. It was cool driving solo that far. I kinda wish Jeff had went with me to the show, but he couldnt make it. He is my favorite traveling partner, due in no small part to that fact that I don't think anyone else shares the same indifference to the Beatles and for the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" album as I do. The Six Organs cd made for an interesting ride home on the weird Ohio backroads leading from Columbus back to I-75, as did the new Tom Waits record. Like I said before, it's perfect for the fall, but even more so when you're driving on creepy, empty, moonlit midwestern roads. No one really captures the weirder side of this part of the country quite like Tom does. I hate to break it to the rest of the country but people living in Illinois, Wisconson, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana just get Tom more than people who don't. You can listen to Tom, but you can't really HEAR him, dig? I'm not saying that to be snooty, it's just how it is. Like how the Proclaimers make more sense if you're from Scotland.