Min enda kulturkonsumtion senaste tiden har varit filmer i genren thriller/rysare, med olika variationer.

Angående Jennifer’s Body så har jag läst att den ska vara “the best teen slasher of the 21st century”. Och Megan Fox är ju alltid het, tänker jag. Men ack så fel på alla sätt. Megan Fox är ganska ohet för att vara Megan Fox. Filmen aspirerar förvisso på att vara en teen slasher men är på tok för snäll i alla avseenden. Det är för lite nakenhet och för lite blod. Man brukar kunna gömma ett halvdant manus i denna genre i just nakenhet och blod, men i detta fall blir det väldigt tydligt att manuset suger. Tjej hoppar in i bil med rockband, offras till satan av nämnda rockband för att de ska bli världsstjärnor, men eftersom hon inte är oskuld så blir hon istället besatt av demon, hälsar på sin bästa kompis och spyr svart gojs på hennes golv så kompisen måste vara uppe hela natten och torka golvet. Och sen börjar hon döda folk också.

Betyg: 1/5

Vidare på temat teen slashers, My Bloody Valentine har betydligt mer att komma med. Här kan man verkligen snacka om 2000-talets uppdatering av teen slasher-filmer. För att pricka av checklistan – nakenhet (och sex!): check, blod i massor: check. Vad som är intressant är att man till nästan 100 % använt sig av CGI (halvkass sådan) för filmens splattereffekter, vilket leder till en del ganska spännande sådana, och jag kan bortse från CGIns kvalitet just på grund av att den är så innovativ. Jag blir glad inombords när jag ser en blodblandad käke flyga in i kameran. Inte heller här är manuset någon höjdare, men det gör desto mindre när man har sånt godis att gotta sig i.

Betyg: 2/5

Avslutningsvis ska jag belysa en lite modernare skräckhistoria, Strangers. Återigen valde jag att se en skräckfilm på grund av dess kvinnliga huvudrollsinnehavare, Liv Tyler denna gång. Jag har saknat henne under tiden hon fött barn och haft sig, eller vad hon nu har gjort. Jag bör tidigt säga att i extramaterialet nämner regissören att detta inte är en “horror movie” utan snarare en “terror movie”, det finns inga övernaturliga element men den är fruktansvärt obehaglig ändå. Liv Tyler och random male actor spelar ett par som ska spendera en natt i en stuga, då de får nattligt besök av folk som är ute efter att skrämma och döda folk för att det är roligt. Största delen av filmen är väldigt, väldigt effektiv vad det gäller terrormomentet, då den är väldigt obehaglig och suggestiv. Slutet är lite abrupt och tråkigt, som vanligt. Liv Tyler gör en ruggigt stabil skådespelarinsats och räddar random male actors platta prestation. Visst finns det hål i historien och som vanligt fattar karaktärerna dåliga beslut mest hela tiden men det är definitivt en film som får dig att låsa dörren och önska att du kunde barrikadera dina fönster på ett effektivare sätt.

Betyg 3,5/5

Cover of Björk's Homogenic (One Little Indian, 1997); image courtesy of slantmagazine.com

Cover for Björk's Vespertine (One Little Indian, 2001); image courtesy of harmony-korine.com

When I began conceptualizing this blog in the ol’ brainspace, one of the first sections I came up with was “Records That Made Me a Feminist.” I knew Björk was going to get at least one entry. Homogenic and Vespertine each played a vital part of shaping my politics. So, I figured out I’d probably have to write about them together.

Pairing albums for this section of the blog is something I originally wanted to do this when covering Erykah Badu’s Mama’s Gun, which I started listening to around the same time as PJ Harvey’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. I liked the idea of dialoguing seemingly dissimilar work by female artists with one another, but I feared covering those two albums together would short-shrift the artists who made them. However, talking about two distinct pieces of work by one woman seemed easier. And essential. So here we go.

I must admit that covering Björk’s 1997 and 2000 full-length releases present its own political challenges that makes me think critically about how I understand and practice feminism. Both of these albums made me a feminist largely because of the boys I was preoccupied with at the time.

But while my initial reception and resulting connections to them were tied up with potentially normative feelings around romantic angst and heterosexual coupling, I feel the albums speak to my development at the time as well as transcend it. In other words, Homogenic and Vespertine may remind me of boys I used to date, but they speak to larger, more overtly feminist issues as well.

Of course, being a feminist doesn’t mean you can’t like boys or be hung up on them from time to time, so long as you don’t let them run your life. Which I don’t think Björk endorses in either of these records, even though she herself has an ambivalent relationship with feminism (though not with calling out the music industry’s sexist practices of attributing male engineers and instrumental songwriters).

Importantly, as both albums were prescient to my development, they also went over my head when I first listened to them. Debut and Post were more accessible and, as a result, I liked them almost immediately. It was hard for 10-year-old me not to fall for the girl dancing through New York City on a flatbed in the music video for “Big Time Sensuality.”

But Björk’s next two albums took more time to process. Both albums mark advances in the artist’s production sensibilities, approaches to music-making, and interest in electronic instrumentation. Thus, just as Björk had to evolve as a musician before creating these albums, I had to mature a bit as a person before liking them as a fan.

So, Homogenic came out just as I was starting high school. I don’t exactly remember when I bought it, but I think it was sometime toward the end of junior year. I completely ignored it at the time. Or rather, I listened to it once, went “ooh, so angry!” and put Post back on.

The particulars I’ll keep to myself for the sake of decorum. Suffice it to say that I dated someone for a little while, fell in love, we broke up, and I spent a little over a year trying to get us back together. It didn’t work out. Eventually I got over him and whatever I thought we were, but not without some pain and denial and then serious personal re-evaluation. The healing process involved some righteous anger, loud parties, several bottles of wine and other goodies, and burgeoning feminist development. After a rough start, 19 turned out to be a pretty okay year. Homogenic was its soundtrack.

Now, I have no problem acknowledging that this guy was a total jerk to me. But feminism isn’t only about recognizing and calling out chauvinistic bullshit. It’s also about self-empowerment, personal accountability, and un-learning heteronormativity and patriarchal co-dependence. It isn’t always just the guy’s fault, even when it is.

Thus, I also have to own up to being really needy and delusional at the time. I pinned my worth on whoever I was dating without questioning whether being with them was actually good for me. So I projected my own big feelings and insecurities on someone who clearly didn’t want to be with me. I was ignoring the reality of the situation and, as a result, my own well-being. I finally recognized what I was doing when confronted with the lyric “How could I be so immature to think he could replace the missing elements in me — how extremely lazy of me.” 

Kinda appropriate that a break-up record got me over mine, no? Apparently, Björk made the album after breaking up with drum’n'bass musician Goldie while they were working on their own project. Hence lines like “So you left me on my own to complete the mission, but now I’m leaving it all behind.” But it pretty much hit all the right notes of melancholy, indignation, rage, and feisty recovery for me. I’m a quarter Norwegian on my mother’s side, so even the line ”I thought I could organize freedom — how Scandinavian of me” in “Hunter” applied.

Attention must be paid to the album’s sound and how it marked a musical departure for Björk. Post was an eclectic mix that boasted songs like “Army of Me,” “Enjoy,” and “Headphones,” that opened up her sound to include state-of-the-art aggressive digital distortion and serene electronic minimalism.

While this was evident in the production work Tricky and 808 State’s Graham Massey did on Post, it wasn’t the focus. It would come to define the artistic work she began doing with producers like Mark Bell on Homogenic and would continue to do with Matmos on Vespertine. But I’d hedge that most casual listeners just remember Post’s ”It’s Oh So Quiet,” which was produced by Björk’s then-mainstay, Nellee Hooper, the man responsible for all the production on her breakthrough Debut. He was also responsible for “Hyperballad,” which I’d argue suggests the artist’s shift, which is fully evident on her next album.

Man, I wish I could post the music video, but WMG has apparently disabled the audio. All the more reason to check out Michel Gondry’s Directors Label DVD, or any of the other myriad DVD titles that have documented her videography.

So Homogenic marks a transition from being a pop star to an artist who challenges her listeners’ ears and expectations with each release. By 1997, we also heard alternative pop stars like Beck and Radiohead establish themselves similarly with Odelay and OK Computer. We would hear Radiohead do it again in 2000 with the mind-blowing Kid A, where they really demonstrated their love for electronic instrumentation and experimental production techniques.

Björk was already on this path in 1997, but while Radiohead looked outward toward the fallabilities of modern life, Björk looked inward at the seductive pleasures and wobbly peculiarities of domestic life and partnership on her next record, rapturing at her voice’s clicks and finding percussive possibilities out of shuffled decks of cards. I don’t think these innovations went unnoticed when Radiohead went to work on In Rainbows. To me, Vespertine’s influence is all over a song like “Nude,” which was originally an outtake from OK Computer. This is further confirmed by the band’s rendition of Homogenic’s ”Unravel” as a tip of the hat. As if lead singer Thom Yorke’s backing vocals on “Náttúra” aren’t enough.

Hmmm. Maybe at some point, I’ll consider Yorke’s duets with Björk and PJ Harvey. Yorke is one of my favorite vocalists, a fact confirmed by a recent revisit of Hail to the Thief. If one of my friends ran a blog on male masculinity and music culture, I’d pen a guest entry in a second.

But I was afflicted with a troubled mind when Vespertine first came out. In addition to boy heartache, I was going through some considerable familial strife. I was also starting my first semester of college, so a tackier person might blame 9/11.

After seeing the music video for “Hidden Place,” I dutifully bought the album, along with My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, another at-the-time inscrutable release, at the Tower Records by campus. I listened to the album a few times, but my head was not in the right place for it. It was too contented and quiet. I couldn’t hear it. And then for a little while all I could hear was Homogenic at full volume.

Stills from the video that convinced me to buy "Vespertine"; image courtesy of unit.bjork.com

To be blunt, Vespertine didn’t really make sense to me until I started having sex. Critics like Ryan Dombal would seem to concur. I remember seeing her performance of ”Cocoon” on Jay Leno and thinking that it was really quiet, but totally not getting how micro-embodied intimacy is the song’s entire purpose. While I had a good understanding of mechanics and had engaged in related activities before going into my first listen, I don’t think a song like “Cocoon” makes sense to a person unless they’ve experienced it, to speak euphemistically, in a corporeal sense.

BTW, yes that is Bill O’Reilly adjusting his tie. If he was actually listening to the song, I’m sure he’d be appalled by how delightfully, defiantly sexual this song is and that it was performed uncensored on network television. Watching it now, I can’t believe I wasn’t really listening. Maybe I should have been leaning into the television.  

Again, the particulars here aren’t really important. I was a week or so into being 20 and, frankly,  didn’t want to be a virgin anymore. The guy was someone willing, it was fun, and didn’t last very long.

In short, the romanticism and emotional connectedness that is often built into such an experience was not there, nor do I regret that it wasn’t. I would find that later, which would make my understanding of those aspects of Vespertine more profound and further develop my feminist principles.

I bring sex into the discussion because I, to borrow briefly from Arrested Development’s George Michael Bluth, find Vespertine’s complex eroticism one of its most key contributions to what made me a feminist. Though perhaps a stretch and certainly not without its own distinctions, I tend to think of this album in accord with Audre Lorde’s wonderful essay “Uses of the erotic: the erotic as power.”

And while I don’t know if this entry’s subject has read the essay, something tells me that the same woman who identifies as bisexual and recognizes the erotic potential in mundane activities would concur with much of the theorist’s thesis.

Of course, feminists must also have the wherewithal to recognize that eroticism, even ephemeral evidence like orgasms, are luxuries to some women and girls. Not everyone is given a space, a country, or a political system that allows them the safety and freedom to enjoy and explore these possibilities.

But eroticism isn’t about cataloging who did what to whom for Björk. As David Fricke gestured toward in his review of the album for Rolling Stone, it might be everywhere, at once tangible and theoretical.

This is where I think it’s important to consider the album’s production sensibilities and Björk’s particular uses of her voice. In addition to non-conventional practices like sampling and turning seemingly non-musical domestic items into instruments, the singer’s voice is the album’s real focus. Because of how closely she’s miked, you can hear every tic, breath, whispered turn of phrase, and any other sound coming out of her mouth. As a result, her voice becomes a varied and vital instrument, an idea she has continued to develop and that has continued to stay with me.

Iestādijums ar nosaukumu Es Tevi Mīlu uz nedēļu veras ciet, lai 27. novembri vērtos vaļā jaunā paskatā. Būšot diezgan savādāks iekārtojums un viskautkas cits. Cita starpā pie sienām būšot bildes ar ziedu laiku “mēbelēm”, kuri rokās tur savu mīļāko mūzikas albumu. Protams man ar bija jāsagatavojās fočēšanai utt. Un tad gadijās, tas, ka es atklāju man nemaz nav mīļākā albuma. Katrā ziņā es īsti laikam nesaprotu, ko tas nozīmē. Vai ka ejot gulēt ņem līdz vai ari vislaik atskaņo. Man nav neviena ne otra. Bet tad es tā padomāju, ka man ir vairāki tādi, kuri acīmredzot ir atstājuši diezgan pamatīgu iespaidu uz mani.

Stone Roses – Second Coming

My Bloody Valentine – Loveless

Ride – Going Blank Again

Finālā, pēc vairāku nedēļu mocībām es interjērā būšu redzams stāvot ar šo te rokās

This was quite extreme. Which in the sense of despair that I am living, about music future and beyond music, it was perfect to bring me to some outer place for a change.

If mainstream music, especially in UK, seems to be leaving the jangly guitars for electronic loops, heading back to the plastic era of the 80s, it’s with a sense of hope that I start seeing signs of more basic stuff, emerging from the underground, to fight back.

If this is a consequence of My Blood Valentine reunion, or is the other way round, My Bloody Valentine reunited because they smelled their music was back in fashion, I don’t mind.
Fact is that My Bloody Valentine are back and when asked to curate one of the ATP festivals they have found plenty of bands happy to fill the line-up with elements of this dissident world. A new rock Vs pop war about to break out? Maybe. I know which side I will stand for.

A Place To Bury Strangers are among those ATP bands.

Local gigs are great ways to add a bit of a thrill in the crap midweek nights of our vague and short presence on planet earth.
When a band comes all the way from New York to treat its fans in the back room of a Cambridge pub, the last thing I want to do is to have an excuse not to go.
I happily didn’t find any, in fact I rode my scooter to (god save) the Portland Arms.

It’s late when A Place To Bury Strangers finish to set up their instruments and start playing. A couple of support bands, a couple of pints and a chat with friends is a much more pleasant way to let the time pass than twittering on a 3G phone. Being literally 3 minutes away from my bed, with no trains to catch, no replacement buses, no extra costs makes things easy.

A Place to Bury Strangers came to my attention recently as a combination of two coincident events.
First, I stumbled upon the cover of their latest CD, Exploding Head, at Rough Trade. At a first glance that undefined, abstract “black and white something” hit my curiosity and I pulled up the shop hearphones to give it a listen. I haven’t bought the CD there but decided to check their live dates, I always prefer to live check bands!

Second, I discovered that throughout their UK tour (apart from this date!) they were supported by the almighty Japandroids, probably my best surprise of the year.

A band so brave to come on stage after a live set by the Vancouver duo must be an interesting one to watch. No question.

APTBS (shortened) are from Brooklyn. Easy. A classic of present times.
Oliver Ackermann leads the band. He takes guitar and vocal duties but it’s definitely the axe he is in love with.

Shoegaze is defined by an uncompromising sound and APTBS music doesn’t do no concession. Distortion, reverb and feedback erupt from Oliver’s guitar generating multiple layers that add up an incredible number of decibels. The result is the audience floating in the room, sustained by a wall of guitar noise.

A Place to Bury Strangers have been defined “the loudest band in New York City” and I wouldn’t argue with that. Louder than this police would come to free the venue, switch the power off and arrest the owner and the musicians.
Earplugs are on sale as a band gadget. They advise you, no excuses.

Jono MOFO (odd name, I know, let’s trust Wiki) is the guy on bass. Physically he reminds me of Jimi Goodwin of the Doves. His style, however, is what I could imagine Peter Hook may have done in the place of New Order if Joy Division instead of had ended in 1980 would have in 1990. Raucous and persistent, obstinate at moments, nevertheless he is the one keeping a sort of melodic line while the guitar blasts.

Seeing his face, in the rare moments the fog generated by the smoke machines at his feet clears, he looks annoyed by the vicinity of my lenses, literally few inches from his instrument. Sorry man, hope you like the shots, though.
Is this the reason why he persists on is machine and saturates the room in smoke? Don’t know, the sensation of floating on a cloud, sustained by the noise is apparent, though. The best description of shoegaze I can think of.

Jay Space sits on drums and provides the solid foundations of the music despite it is built on a cloud and he is hidden in the cloud.
If the bass and the scarce vocal interventions are responsible for the melody, to match the noise, the precise drumming is responsible to keep the pieces within a sense of rhythm. Without it the entire construction would crumble. Tonight it sounds as solid as rock.

The gig starts in complete darkness with just a spotlight on the back who sends multiple rays. They become tiny circles on every surface they met. I am now worried about my chances of covering this gig, if it is not going to change there are no chance to have a single negative frame impressed.
The only signs of lights are the reflections on the guitar body and the Peroni (!?) bottles.

The music starts gloomy too. It needs a couple of songs to fill the room. Simultaneously the spotlight become stronger and shapes the figures through the smoke. Things start making sense. I start taking photos.

My ears, despite the plugs, are overwhelmed by the sonicwave. My eyes try to catch something out of those impossible conditions. I like it, though. Photographically I am stimulated by any challenging situation. After few hundreds bands shot over the years, I am bored to take pictures of teenage kids standing in front of a mic pole.
Such dramatic conditions are difficult but the challenge becomes the driving force. The contest that there is not a concert which will prevent me getting some shots. I am competitive I know, so competitive I compete against myself!

Being allowed to keep shooting for the length of the gig, with no security stopping me is a rapture. The reason why I am still preferring music on these stages then posh auditorium and halls.

Back to the music, not because things become easier. In the last 20 minutes while they are playing the most inflexible stuff of the set, I see bassist Jono MOFO kneeling down, again. This time he is not manipulating those bloody smoke machines, worse! He switches on a small strobe light at his feet. It will scatter the stage for the rest of the performance, relentlessly, creating that sort of slow motion effect strobe are intended for.

Beyond the fact that I can now count out the possibility of being even remotely epileptic, as a friend pointed out, the dramatic light effect combined with the uncompromising music the three are playing, makes this concert the closer thing to what I would define a radical music experience (excludes John Zorn grindcore projects).

Oliver Ackermann throws himself on his guitar, mistreats it, pulls the strings beyond the break-point, they go, he insists. With all the pedals on and all the volumes set at 11/10. The output is awesome, the soundtrack of the end of a city.
The ruins left are nothing else than… a place to bury strangers. Dicto.

Thankfully I count no casualties. We are all alive, happy and kicking, there is more to come. Another scratched guitar, white body, appears from the wreckage for more noise, more feedback, more scratches, more abuse.

The hour long set finishes few songs later. It is interesting to see how everyone looks amazed and jubilant, but at the same time no one even dare to ask for an encore. That was perfect as it was.
The band leaves the stage in the same darkness they started, the fans walk out stopping at the rich (of 7″, 10″, 12″ vinyls) merchandise desk.
Everything feels saturated, the air, the room, the ears, the eyes. Everything apart from my stomach which hasn’t seen any food in the last 10 hours.

A quick bye to friends, the scooter waits for me in the cold, 3 minutes I am home, the cat waits at the door. Food for both. Food for thought.
I need more of these nights. They are uplifting. Stimulating. Inspirational.

If you don’t know A Place To Bury Strangers and are intrigued by the noisescapes they can produce, check their official sites to catch them live [website] [myspace] and [facebook]

If you can adventure yourself into the world of [spotify] there is both albums available to listen. Don’t forget to pump up the volume beyond your ear tolerance.

Photo tip

It may be because they simulate a cinematic, motion effect. Strobe lights are enemies of photographers. You can’t predict the results when these strong white bulbs flash intermittently at such a speed no one can control.

Try this, set your camera in one of the automatic modes and see yourself how the exposure meter goes crazy. The chance of catching the right exposed image is only a question of luck.

Solution is the same as usual, take control. Shoot in manual mode, try few combinations of shutter times/apertures that give you confidence that the exposure is approximately correct and hope that some of the shots happens when the light is fully on. Concentrate on the composition, that is still something you can control.

Strobe lights are usually mounted on the ceiling or on the side of stage venues. Tonight the small strobe was at the band’s feet.
I tried to give some film shots a try, curious to see what developes in the darkroom, and it’s nice to see that the light is so quick you get the effect of a double exposure within the time of a single one!

I also gave my mobile camera a go. It lacks the optical quality of a SLR but has the advantage that you can see what comes out, control it and even post it online in real time.
It should be my attraction to photographic challenges, but using a limited device to obtain something that has a visual value is something I love.

On the phone camera I learnt that the strobe flashes so quickly to freeze the shutter movement. Some pictures are half black, half exposed, some have a strip of a brighter light in the frame.

It’s unpredictable but with some luck, some of the results are startling.

Second part of this tip is easy, don’t stop trying to achieve something unusual. It is when conditions are out of the ordinary that surprises arrive. You never know. In photography, any photography, there are no limits but your mind.

The only rule that I always suggest to everyone asking for my secret is to get as close as it is allowed. Once there, do one step more. That is the spot, where no one else is, but you… and the disappointed musicians, but they will understand, not!

για σήμερα 2 κλιπ, αφού και τα 2 είναι στο soundtrack του lost in translation.

Baby when I saw you turning at the end of the street
I knew a time was gone and it took me like ages
Just to understand that I was afraid to be a simple guy
I tried my best to smile but deep inside my heart
I felt it was shouting like a crowd dancing
I guess I couldn’t live without the things that made my life what it is
Can’t you hear me calling oh yeah
Everybody’s dancing oh yeah
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young
I can’t lie on my bed without thinking I was wrong
But when this feeling calls this world becomes another
Nighttime won’t hold me in your arms again
I got a very good friend who says he can’t believe the love I give
Is not enough to end your fears
I guess I couldn’t live without the things that made my life what it is
Can’t you hear me calling oh yeah
Everybody’s dancing oh yeah
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young
Oh rainfalls and hard times coming they won’t leave me tonight
I wish I knew what I was doing
Just do let this spirit survive
Can’t you hear me calling oh yeah
I guess I couldn’t live without the things that made my life what it is
Can’t you hear me calling oh yeah
Everybody’s dancing oh yeah
Tonight everything is over
I feel too young

Close my eyes
Feel me now
I don’t know maybe you could not love me now
You will know, with her feet down to the ground
Over there, and I want true love to grow
You can’t hide, oh no, from the way I feel

Close my eyes
Feel me now
I don’t know, maybe you could not hurt me now
Here alone, when I feel down too
Over there, when I await true love for you
You can hide, oh now, the way I do
You can see, oh now, oh the way I do

Well Iowa city, I have about three Radioloveless shows left before I leave the KRUI airways for good. Two shows will consist of my favorite tracks to hear, thus the title of my post. If you listen to the show, I’m sure you’ve heard most of them. Either way, the next two shows will be filled with my favorites. The last show will be my Christmas show, which is always a fun show to do.

I’ll be moving back east next year, after living and DJing in Iowa city for the past 6. I love it here, and I love KRUI even more. Listen in at 89.7 fm or online here. Here’s the show

1. R.E.M.’s Fables of Reconstruction (1985), Driver 8
2. Sebadoh, Bakesale (1994, oh and the naked baby on the cover is Lou Barlow), Skull
(It’s my favorite track from Sebadoh along with lots of other kids my age, thank you Lou for bringing this into my life.)

3. Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, Pig Lib (2003), Vanessa from Queens
(Steve defines cool, even if I can’t figure out what he’s singing about)
4. Teenage Fanclub, Bandwagonesque (1991), Star Sign
(This just sounds like the 90s to me, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy and little.)
5. The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground, Pale Blue Eyes
(Uhm, who doesn’t like this song?)
6. Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (2002), I Am Trying To Break Your Heart
This is my favorite Wilco album, I keep coming back.
7. Wire, Pink Flag (1977), 1 2 X U
8. Yo La Tengo, President Yo La Tengo (1989), Barnaby Hardly Working
9. Catherine Wheel, Ferment (1992), Black Metallic
10. Black Tambourine, Complete Recordings, Pack You Up
This track is so short and cool, it just makes me want to go out and be their groupie if they were still around.
11. The Dandy Warhols, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (1999), Sleep
I can’t help it, I love this album.
12. Big Star, #1 Record (1972), Thirteen
Rolling stone said it was “one of the most beautiful songs about Adolescence.”
13. The Breeders, Pod (1990), When I was a Painter
14. Pavement, Crooked Rain Crooked Rain (1994), Silence Kit (awesome request for Sutcliffe Catering Song but was having issues with my CD.)
15. Built to Spill, Perfect From Now On (1997), I would Hurt a Fly
16. Cat Power, What would the Community Think (1996), Bathysphere
17. The Church, Starfish (1988), Under the Milky Way
18. Cocteau Twins, Head Over Heels (1983), When Mama was a Moth

19. My Bloody Valentine, Loveless (1991), When you Sleep
Pitchfork quoted Loveless as the best album of the 90’s, I might have to agree.
20. The Clash, The Clash (1977), Janie Jones
21. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat (2002), Combat Rock
22. Depeche Mode, Violator (1990), Blue Dress
23. The Cure, Seventeen Seconds (1980), A Forest
24. Archers of Loaf, White Trash Heroes (1998), Dead Red Eyes
25. Guided By Voices, Alien Lanes (1995), My Valuable Hunting Knife
26. Meat Puppets, Meat Puppets II (1984), New Gods

A Sunny Day in Glasgow and Why the Wires rocked the Wildfire this past weekend

PREVIEW: VISIT A Sunny Day in Glasgow’s Website

Ithaca’s Wildfire Lounge lends itself to open-mic folk music nights. Two enormous Persian rugs in place of a stage create an intimate setting for both audience and performer. However, Why the Wires and A Sunny Day in Glasgow both proved their skills in adaptation, introducing a thick atmosphere of sound to an otherwise serene venue.

Opening for the Philadelphia-based dream pop band, Why the Wires set the mood for the evening with a noisy punk-waltz set. Blending accordion, violin, and saxophone with a traditional band set-up, the Ithaca locals displayed a startling amount of cohesion for a quintet. Lead guitarist Dave Nutt plays with a style akin to Stephen Malkmus and Thurston Moore’s punk-rock lovechild. Raw energy surged through the speakers with every one of his primal screams. Throughout the set, Why the Wires mastered the humble, emotional connection with the audience without being overly dramatic in their performance. Satisfied and stimulated, I was ready for more as the band thanked the audience and, instead of exiting the stage, simply shuffled back into the crowd.

After a brief setup and sound check, A Sunny Day in Glasgow took the carpet stage. As a brief aside, the band chose its name after studying in Glasgow, United Kingdom, where a sunny day was a rare experience. Building anticipation, the band opened with a removed, hypnotic trance. Audience members unfamiliar with A Sunny Day’s ambient sound looked at each other with perplexed glances. As the intro came to a peak, the band made a quick change of instruments and launched into shoegaze bliss. Easily layering the female vocal duo with lush, overdriven guitars, the dream pop band extends open arms to listeners and makes their sound very accessible for unfamiliar ears.

The band mixes dream pop with shoegaze as members interact with each other. Though not as sonically assaulting as My Bloody Valentine, A Sunny Day in Glasgow manages the same shoegaze dynamic in their live performance. Duos form as members signal to one another and watch carefully for changes, building a tight, unified sound. A Sunny Day in Glasgow left all egos at the door Sunday night, exhibiting utmost modesty. By mid-set, the mix was dialed in and the band had formed a strong relationship with the audience. Audience members began to dance and the Wildfire Lounge came alive. Vocalist Annie Fredrickson was even cracking puns between songs.

I love when a show is so good that it makes you forget everything else that is going on in your life. A Sunny Day in Glasgow effortlessly cemented me in the moment and played an absolutely fantastic set of dreamy, ambient pop. Transfixed with excitement as the band graciously thanked the audience, I ran up soon afterwards to chat with guitarist Ben Daniels. Inspired by the impeccable performance, I asked Daniels what was going through his head on stage. He grinned and exclaimed with enthusiasm and modesty, “I’m just trying to get through the song!”

– Story By Chris Parker
– Photos By Isabel Alcantara

1991

Come In Alone – My Bloody Valentine

1992

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Reverence

…and vanish in a swirling glitter upon a gilttering swirl of music, with her high delicate head and her bold painted mouth and soft chin, her eyes blankly right and left looking, cool, predatory and discreet.

William Faulkner, Sanctuary, 1931

Velvet – The Big Pink

2ooo-now

The title of the post today is from a track brought to you by Generation X in the late 70’s on their self-titled album. I decided to play some old punk early in the show and peppered later on due to an exhibit I just saw at the MoMA called “Looking at Music: Side 2″. Here’s an article about it if you want to check it out: Bob Gruen’s Journey to MoMA.

Listen in tonight on KRUI 89.7 fm from 8 to 10 pm. You can listen in online here.

Here’s some of the set:

1. Generation X, Generation X (1978), Ready Steady Go
2. Frumpies, Frumpie One-Piece (God I love this title), Duvet Ta
This is a CD collection which assembled all of the band’s previous singles, created around 1996.

3. Half Japanese, Half Japanese Greatest Hits (1995), Put Some Sugar On It
4. The Clash, The Clash (1977), Garageland
5. Dead Boys, We Have Come for Your Children (1978), I Don’t Wanna Be No Catholic Boy
6. Radio Birdman, The Essential Radio Birdman (1974-1978), Do the Pop
7. Patti Smith, Horses (2005, album originally came out in 1975), Redondo Beach
8. Thurston Moore, Psychic Hearts (1995), Patti Smith Math Scratch
9. Belly, Star (1993), Angel
10. Slant 6, Soda Pop * Rip Off (1994 on Dischord Records), Blue Angel
11. Film School, Film School (2006), Eleven-Eleven
12. The Dandy Warhols, Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia (2000), The Gospel
(I’m sorry but this album is POP brilliance, I don’t care what you say.)
13. The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Tepid Peppermint Wonderland: A Retrospective, If Love Is The Drug
This was a compilation put out by these guys in 2004 spanning their entire career except for the album Strung Out in Heaven.
14. Built To Spill, Time Trap Sampler (1994-2006), The Plan
15. Aveo, Battery (2004), Haley
16. Chapterhouse, Sunburst-EP (1990), Rain
17. Slowdive, Morningrise-EP (1991), Losing Today
18. Stella Luna, Stargazer-EP (2002), Stargazer
19. New Order, Power Corruption & Lies (1983), Age of Consent
20. My Bloody Valentine, Tremolo-EP (1991), Honey Power

21. Fleeting Joys, Despondent Transponder (2006), Go and Come Back
22. Pinback, Some Voices-EP (2002), June
23. PJ Harvey & John Parish, A Woman A Man Walked By (2009), Black Hearted Love
24. Unwound, New Plastic Ideas (1993), Hexenzsense
25. Guided By Voices, Isolation Drills (2001), The Enemy
26. Morrissey, Bona Drag (compilation album released in 1990), The Last of the Famous International Playboys
Morrissey recently walked off a stage in Liverpool Echo Arena after being hit in the head with a drink. So this track goes out to you Morrissey, I want to know what dumb ass would throw a drink at you? You can read more about it here.

‘Possum Walk’ writer/director Jeremy Sumrall grew up in New Waverly, Tex., about an hour north of Houston, on Possum Walk Road. He decided the name would work well for the small-town setting of a horror movie, then expanded it to be the name of the movie itself.  

Sumrall has written a number of scripts over the years in several styles (slasher, supernatural, occult, etc.), but could never finish anything before going back to the old adage ‘write about what you know.’

“I don’t really know a whole lot,” Sumrall explains. “But a couple of years ago my niece had a pregnancy scare, and naturally, since she’s in a small town, people immediately began looking down on her. She was an unmarried, small-town, 19 year old who grew up believing you do things a certain way: grow up, get married, then start having kids. That’s not the generation a lot of us live in anymore, but in small towns it’s still prevalent.”

His niece’s situation got Sumrall thinking about the general lack of privacy in small-town life — in order to have any secrets you have to be really sneaky about it – and provided the basic idea for his first motion picture, ‘Possum Walk.’

Sumrall set the movie in a small religious town and made the protagonist a girl who grows up believing in the straight-and-narrow life, living her own accordingly, but winding up pregnant anyway. 

The girl has a Southern Baptist preacher father with a ‘do as I say, not as I do’ approach. He rules over Possum Walk with an iron fist and tries to control his daughter’s life as well. At the same time these two battle their respective demons, a murderer decides to make Possum Walk his hunting ground, sexually abusing and killing its young women.

Maggie Conwell (as 'Faith Carpenter')

The paths of daughter, father, and killer eventually collide, leading to lots of messy carnage and allowing ‘Possum Walk’ to simultaneously explore the internal horror of the human mind and the external horror of, well….having a maniacal killer on the loose!

“One thing that’s always bothered me about the horror genre,” explains Sumrall, “is that people tend to look at it as being just one step above porn. And it pisses me off. There are brilliant writers and directors at work in the genre, but they get written off because the outside world sees what they’re doing as just mindless violence and sex. And yeah, we all use sex and violence in our stories, but if you go even a layer below the surface, there’s often some really good stories there to sink your teeth into. So that’s one of the things I tried to do with this one; make it a human story. If you peeled the layers back and took away all the boobs and the blood, there’s still a very dark dramatic tale here about personal redemption and living life in the moment instead of for what’s to come.”

Sumrall confesses to always having been kind of anti-message in selecting his own entertainment and is aware he might’ve run contrary to his own preferences. “There’s enough fucked up shit in this world without having to get beaten over the head with a message when I’m trying to be entertained,” he says. “Leave your fucking message out of my entertainment. And yet I wrote a script that has a message.”

‘Possum Walk’s unintentional compass seeped in through his own rebelling against small-town religious judgement. Sumrall doesn’t think religion should control anything: “It’s the fundamentalism I don’t like, whether Christian, Muslim, or the green alien that comes down from Mars. It’s not always a good thing to have blind faith, and not always a bad thing to question everything around you and find your own truth. It wasn’t until I’d finished the first draft of the script that I realized I’d written a movie saying ‘Look at yourself before you start judging anybody else.’ But there’s still lots of boobs and blood, so everything’s fine!”

Sumrall’s interest in horror began with the old slasher movies of the 80s: Friday the 13^th, Nightmare On Elm Street, Halloween, Terror Train, My Bloody Valentine. His first script was very much an old-school slasher flick, with a supernatural twist. He still hopes to finish it, but hasn’t touched it in 5 or 6 years.

‘Possum Walk’ was supposed to be mindless boobs and blood itself. But Sumrall felt compelled to change it up as he’d just finished shooting his role as the Beast in ‘Sweatshop,’ a movie he describes as over the top blood and boobs, completely ridiculous amounts of gore, and lots of fun.

The Beast ('Sweatshop')

“Possum Walk got darker and darker and darker as it went along, and a lot more serious.”

The more dramatic parts were actually the harder ones to film, Sumrall says. “There’s a moment where two girls were finally confessing their love for one another, and then they die. That’s not even a spoiler…a lot of people die in this movie! And if they’d just lived in the moment and said ‘fuck what anybody else thinks, let’s just do our own thing and be happy about it,’ maybe they wouldn’t have ended up being killed.”

“But that day, when we had the moment with those two girls, I literally had to walk away from set for 15 minutes because I was crying. I wrote it with a lot of heart. But even more came out when we were doing the scene. So much so that a just had to leave.”

His next script (‘Iso’) promises to go even further down the dark, dramatic path, centering on the existence of a girl who lives 10 years trapped in her apartment convinced there’s an entity outside bent on doing her in unless she come out and meets it on her own terms. Hitchcock meets Clive Barker, is how Sumrall describes it. A third script Sumrall describes as Evil Dead 2 meets Mad Max–comedic and politically incorrect—is also in the works.

And his aspirations aren’t limited to horror. Sumrall says he has both a romantic comedy and a family comedy kicking around in his head, though realistically he’s not sure if or when he’ll get to them.

Sumrall is a reformed drummer who works in his family’s machine shop as his day job. But he somehow not only decided he could make a movie, but succeeded in doing so. He describes the journey as “pretty fucked up.” He burned out on music, feeling like his wheels were spinning and becoming increasingly frustrated with its collaborative nature, and started horror memorabilia company Necrobilia so he could meet other fans of the genre.

While still involved with his band, he started taking script-writing classes and saw Necrobilia as a way to increase his immersion in a culture he had long admired. One day he met Stacy Davidson (‘Domain of the Damned,’ ‘Sweatshop’) and thought it was really cool there was actually someone in the Houston-area making movies. Professors had told him if he was serious about the business he’d have to move to one of the coasts, or Toronto. Sumrall called bullshit, citing Robert Rodriguez as at least one exception, but nonetheless shuffled the whole screenwriter notion toward the back of his to-do list for a time.

Welcome

Then he had the meeting with Davidson. “His movie was waaay better than I ever would have imagined,” says Sumrall. I expected to see something somebody had gone out into their backyard with a little $200 Hi-8 camera and made as a little cheesy indie movie. But instead it was very professionally done and very slick looking.”

Sumrall kept the Davidson connection alive at Texas Frightmare Weekend, the first event at which Necrobilia was going to be a vendor, attending a pre-party Davidson had organized and meeting several other film-makers from the Houston area, a network he had no idea even existed.

Beyond Davidson, Sumrall met Mel House (‘Walking Distance’), various effects artists, sound guys, and local composers through his newly discovered network. All of them were working on each other’s films. Newly invigorated, Sumrall recalls very badly wanting to just get access one of their sets to learn whatever he could.

When Davidson finished pre-production on ‘Sweatshop’ and was ready to start filming, he and Sumrall got together and Davidson happened to mention he was still looking for someone to play the killer. Sumrall jokingly responded that he had always liked the idea of playing a killer “so why not use me?” The two laughed it off.

But a couple of weeks later Davidson gave him an open invitation down to the set, followed by an e-mail asking if he’d been at all serious regarding wanting to play the slasher in a horror movie. “I thought about it for all of 2 seconds and answered yes,” says Sumrall, who, still stuck in life-long slasher-fan mode, didn’t dare really believe it was going to happen. “I was basically shitting water for 2 days.”

Sumrall eventually regained enough regularity to go down to the set on a day none of the killer’s parts were shooting and get a feel for the mechanics of movie making. He was instantly impressed. “They literally had just this single 13-in. monitor and an HD camera he was running himself. So if you were just a bystander you’d think it was a bunch of goofy fucking kids making their little backyard movie. But if you watched it in the monitor it already looked like a professional product. It was ridiculous how cool it was. So I knew I was onto something special.”

His own parts followed, and from that point on, Sumrall was on set almost every weekend for ‘Sweatshop,’ whether he had a scene or not, learning as much as he could, seeing how things were done. He describes the experience as invaluable, particularly regarding the importance of patience: “17 hours on set could sometimes yield just 5 minutes of screen time.”

After ‘Sweatshop’ Sumrall got a call from Josh Vargas for a cameo in the movie he was shooting at the time (‘Sway’). Seeing another opportunity to gain experience, Sumrall was on-set from 5p to 5a, soaking in as much as he could and making himself as available as possible in exchange for 2 seconds of camera time.

Along the way he started to get asked, only half seriously, when he was going to direct his movie. He responded that he always saw himself as more a writer than a director. “The photo shoots I’d sometimes do for Necrobilia were enough to make me want to pull what little hair I have left out of my head, so I certainly couldn’t see myself directing a whole movie.”

A pivotal moment on the ‘Sway’ set followed. Vargas had reached the end of his rope. Sumrall tries to remember the exact words: “It was something like, ‘I’m fucking done with this movie. I need to film something else.’” Sumrall let Vargas know he was thinking about writing something and had been asked when he was going to direct, and Vargas said he’d film whatever Sumrall was working on for free.

One week later Sumrall had completed ‘Possum Walk’s first draft. Vargas didn’t end up working on the film, deciding he had to finish ‘Sway’ instead. But around the same time, Robert Luke (‘Man In The Garage’) joined ‘Possum Walk’ as a producer.

Sumrall and Luke had met and hit it off on the set of ‘Walking Distance,’ and when it became clear Vargas wasn’t going to be available, Luke said he’d film it. According to Sumrall he did a “fucking amazing job.”

Jeremy Sumrall, Robert Luke

With a team in place, ‘Possum Walk’ began to take shape. But sleepless nights lay ahead, and not just because of a rigorous shooting schedule. Sumrall recalls tossing and turning to the point his wife asked him what was wrong. He had initially hired friends and acquaintances as much of the cast and crew, but had come to find that many of them were treating the whole process as a lark. His wife gave him some hard advice, but advice he needed to hear: fire everyone and rebuild it from the ground up.

Sumrall now sees it as the movie’s turning point. “I got rid of a lot of dead weight,” he says. “There were a lot of people who weren’t actually actors, but were friends of friends or whatever who thought it might be fun. And I naively thought at the beginning that I wouldn’t be able to hire any professionals, because we were working with no budget. I mean we had a few dollars to pay for things here and there, but in the grand scheme of things we were a gnat on Hollywood’s balls. We’re not talking about Michael Bay money!”

Once actors were hired, forward momentum returned. Not to suggest things actually ever got easy. “When you’re working with no budget and everybody’s living paycheck-to-paycheck at their day jobs and then putting in 18-19 hour days on the weekends….it’s really fucking difficult. Tempers flare. People snap. You’re in the middle of Texas in the middle of summer.” In the end, however, Sumrall says the common purpose of making a great movie they could all be proud of would take over and carry everyone through.

Sumrall also points out that his cast made the directing process itself easier than it could have been, being self-motivated enough to free him from having to direct their each and every move and allowing him to keep focused on the big picture instead.

‘Possum Walk’s cast includes Maggie Conwell (Faith Carpenter, the main character), Parrish Randall (her father, Brother William Carpenter), Tyler Tackett (male lead, Joe Don Sims), Victoria Lane, Keli Wolfe, Kristen Hall, and Andrew Sensenig. Sumrall describes the entire ensemble as professional, dedicated, and serious actors. “I didn’t have to ask them when we got to set if they knew what we were doing. They just knew. They all had taken notes on their scripts, had certain lines highlighted, and had their lines memorized, which the one thing I was sure wasn’t going to happen.”

Sumrall recalls a conversation with Lane before he had wiped the slate in which she was telling him how prepared she was going to be before heading out from L.A. Sumrall told her it sounded like she was going to be the most prepared person on set. She sounded surprised and Sumrall explained that the rest of the cast was just reading their lines right before they had to film them. She quickly joined the chorus letting him know that better could be had.

Girls of Possum Walk: Danielle Jones, Jessica Jecker, Maggie Conwell, Keli Wolfe

More often than not, however, the actors either got it the way Sumrall heard it in his head, or came up with an even better interpretation of their own. “I wasn’t going to knit-pick on certain words if the intent was the same,” Sumrall explains. “If the intent got changed, that’s when I’d get involved. But I never really had to crack anybody over the head about anything like that!”

Challenges included sometimes not knowing where they were going to be shooting until 5 minutes before the shot. Sumrall and Co. had secured a tiny church on the outskirts of Groesbeck, Tex. The only restriction the church placed on the project was no shooting on Sunday.

Not so fast. “Two days before the shoot,” Sumrall explains, “I got a phone call from [executive producer] Burt [Bailey] saying the church’s septic system had just exploded and sprayed piss and shit all over the church.” A new location needed to be found on next to no notice. Randall knew folks in the area and started making calls and knocking on doors, finding a replacement church just 12 hours before shooting.

Burton Bailey hard at FX work

Sumrall couldn’t get a look at the inside, but based on the outside and the fact that 50 people were arriving in the morning to make a movie went ahead and approved it. They put up signs guiding the new arrivals to the location. The next morning, five minutes before Sumrall himself was ready to head to the set, Randall calls again and says, “I screwed up. I took you to the wrong church last night.”

The correct church was right around the corner from the wrong one, but still 40-50 horror movie extras had to be diverted from inadvertently showing up at the wrong house of worship. The crew shot from daybreak until 7 pm, when choir members started showing up for their own practice.

Returning to the here and now, when asked what would constitute success for ‘Possum Walk’ Sumrall instantly responds with “absolute world domination” before dialing it back a bit. “We’ve accomplished our first goal: to make the movie. Now it’s all about getting the word out. In this day and age it’s pretty easy to self-distribute your movie, with services that print on-demand. But it takes a lot longer for you to get your money selling one piece at a time. So we’d ideally like to go with a distribution deal.”

Sumrall doesn’t pretend to know who he’d go with, or who might even be interested, but plans to work the convention circuit in 2010 to find out. Sumrall says he and the rest of the production team are willing to release the movie themselves, but he’d rather find an already established distributor.            

“I’m hoping that the hopefully pending success of ‘Sweatshop,’ which is now out with screeners getting sent to critics and getting really, really good reviews, will help springboard ‘Possum Walk’ into something maybe a little bit bigger than any of us had anticipated,” Sumrall explains. “Indie film is a hotbed right now, especially Texas indie film. Guys like Mel House are starting to put out some really good pictures that aren’t just rehashes of other movies that have come before. They’re pretty damn original and pretty fucked up and done as professionally as possible with very little money.”

Sumrall says it would be great if ‘Possum Walk’ could be lumped into the same group. movement. “I’m sure that never in a million years did Tobe Hooper expect ‘Texas Chainsaw Massacre’ to blow up the way it did, or Eduardo Sanchez never thought ‘Blair Witch Project’ was going to be as big as it was, and I know that Oren Peli had no idea ‘Paranormal Activity’ would be as huge as it is.”

“You just never know,” concludes Sumrall. “I’d be stupid to say I want to make $40 million off this movie. Ultimately, the idea of success for me would be having people see it, having people respond to it, and through that being able to keep making movies.”

Maggie Conwell as 'Faith Carpenter'

Keli Wolfe as 'Gracie Richmond'

Zunächst einmal: Die 3D-Homefassung ist nicht zu ertragen – von Falschfarben bis Unschärfe wird man vllig wahnsinnig und möchte zum irren Bergarbeiter mutieren, um die Produzenten zu erniedrigen! Der Gorefaktor geht in Ordnung, ist allerdings etwas seltsam dosiert, da er in seiner teilweisen Explizitheit nicht so recht zum Soapdrama passen möchte. Eigentlich bleibt am Ende nur eine Dreiecks-Geschichte voller Eifersucht und unerfüllter Sehnsüchte. Plus Spitzhacke.

New York city. Home of the hip and crazy. And also home to the awesome School Of Seven Bells, who released their wonderfully inventive album “Alpinisms” late last year through the super-cool folk at Full Time Hobby (also home to The Leisure Society, White Denim, Tunng, etc).

Yeah, we wish we lived there, but we don’t, so sunny old London will have to do. Anyhow, SSB are led by Benjamin Curtis, formerly of Secret Machines, joined by twin sisters Alejandra and Claudia Deheza. If you haven’t had a listen to the record yet then you should really blag, steal or indeed BUY it (you can get it from the Full Time Hobby site directly HERE). The last track on the record is a dreamy, euphoric stunner, one of those that makes it feel like spring is breaking again, like the soundtrack to the climatic cinematic moment just before the credits roll. It’s called “My Cabal” and here it is along with a gorgeous alternative version of “Half Asleep”…

School of Seven Bells – My Cabal

School of Seven Bells – Half Asleep (Alternative version)

(There’s also an amazing early demo version of “White Elephant Coat” on the Blouse blog here that we highly recommend you check out too)

Great news then that they’re coming back over here for an ICA show on December 4th and for the My Bloody Valentine curated “Nightmare Before Christmas” ATP on December 6th too! Woop, another reason to go to Butlins this December!

I’ve been a bit scattered the past several days with this whole time change thing. Seriously.

I grew up in one of two small areas in the US that didn’t kowtow to The Man on the issue of Daylight Savings Time. Aside from some time in Southeast Asia, I was into my twenties before I ever moved a clock forward or set one back. I let time do its thing.

Then, I was suddenly a forced participant in this national game of Hokey Pokey with a chronological twist.

Now, after weeks of adjusting to making the morning commute in the dark, I have to reorient to the dawning sun on the horizon, manhandling my still sleeping retinas as I speed along.

It also adds an added level of complexity to an item that has been a staple in every phone conversation with my mom ever since I left home.

“What time is it there?”

“What time is it there?

(it’s not as though she has to calculate Pi)

“Well, the time changed last night.”

(her tone indicates that it is entirely possible that she holds hobgoblins in the night responsible)

“It’s Sunday.”

Mom is not amused. I rehash how time zones work and the unchanging fact that, so long as both of us live where we do, it will always be an hour later there, no matter what hobgoblins might do with the clocks.

But, to quote a line from the movie Some Kind Of Wonderful, directed by the late John Hughes, “It’s just time, it’s not like it means anything.”

There were hundreds of songs with time in the title when I searched the hard drive. Here is a quartet…

Alan Parsons Project – Time
from The Turn Of A Friendly Card

They might have had progressive leanings, but one-time Abbey Road Studios engineer Alan Parsons’ collective also produced some masterful singles. The ultra-wistful Time is an autumn song to me.

My Bloody Valentine – We Have All The Time In The World
from Peace Together

Peace Together was a compilation from ‘93, a charity record for some organization promoting peace in Northern Ireland. My first trip to the UK coincided with the Good Friday Peace Accord which happened four years later.

As a kid in the States in the late ’70s/early ’80s, the troubles in Ireland were inscrutible. All I really understood was that a lot of folks were suffering, mostly ordinary people who merely wanted to live their lives. To watch the news, it seemed like an intractable war.

Three decades later, it seems as though that conflict has been mostly resolved. The relative calm in Northern Ireland now might be the lone thing that gives me hope the major conflicts in the world today might also reach some, if not perfect, at least benign resolution.

Culture Club – Time (Clock Of The Heart)
from Kissing To Be Clever

I have no qualms in declaring an affection for Culture Club. Boy George had a fantastic voice and they had more than a few brilliantly frothy pop songs – Do You Really Want To Hurt Me, Church Of The Poison Mind, Victims.

They also had some godawful stuff.

Time (Clock Of The Heart) is one of the former and sounds timeless. When it shuffles up on the iPod, Paloma reacts like I do to bacon.

Matthew Ryan – Time And Time Only
from East Autumn Grin

I used to smoke cigarettes with Ryan many years ago. Good times.

It’s been a long time – six, seven years – since I heard one of his albums, but I thought his first few releases were pretty compelling collections. The dire Time And Time Only makes Springsteen’s Nebraska sound positively giddy.

This weekend was just what I needed, I think.

Friday bought some relatively short-lived euphoria relating to it being my last ever day at the “real” job. I hope to never have to work in such a place again, except on a temporary or (very) part time basis. I got some vodka and some itunes vouchers as my leaving gifts. Thankyouverymuch.

On Friday I attended a Halloween party dressed as Abbath from Immortal, before heading over to Wales to see Chris. Getting away from Leeds was just what the doctor ordered. Chris was working but I still got to see him a fair bit, I also did some good chatting with Dave and he told me some good tales about Space Ritual and My Bloody Valentine. I spent my Saturday night re-designing some databases in the corner of the studio, whilst some guitar solos were recorded for the upcoming Witchsorrow EP. They sounded pretty ruddy good from where I was sat.

We paid a visit to the “house on top of the hill”, which is about a five minute walk from the studio. Quite remarkable seeing as the only other thing that is five minutes walk from the studio is grass, and maybe the odd sheep. The house is basically a shell at present, but it is heading towards brilliance, you can already tell. We badly want to live in it, but it’s dependent on so many things- mainly the price! My fingers and toes are crossed though, and I have even been dreaming of it… oh dear.

Immediate stress was encountered upon my return to the city, thanks to late running trains and rude Frenchmen. A Nandos with Alice largely rectified this, and now I am in bed with two cats at my feet, ready to start my first REAL day as a lady of leisure.

Why?

The Cure - Why Can't I Be You?

Buzzcocks - Why Can't I Touch It?

R. Ashcroft - Why Not Nothing?

MBV - Don't Ask Why

En los últimos tiempos, venimos observando un aumento considerable de películas que se estrenan en tres dimensiones, y se podría afirmar que el cine 3D es la nueva moda imperante en el mundo del celuloide.

A pesar de lo que pueda parecer, la tecnología 3D es muy antigua. El 10 de junio de 1915 se proyectaban en el Teatro Astor de Nueva York las primeras imágenes con sensación de profundidad. Se trataba de tres compilaciones sobre imágenes rurales de Estados Unidos y algunos planos de películas de la época. El proceso utilizado, desarrollado por el pionero del cine Edwin S. Porter y W.E. Waddell, consistía en el uso de dos lentes (rojo y verde), con el que creaban una imagen individual a través de dos proyecciones fotografiadas a una distancia de dos pulgadas y media. Sin embargo, el experimento estuvo destinado al fracaso, porque las imagenes se difuminaban bastante.

Gafas 3D

Con el avance de la tecnología, llegó el primer largometraje en 3D, sonoro y en color, que fue Robinzon Cruzo (1947), filme soviético de Aleksandr Andriyevsky para la Soyuzdetfilm, protagonizado por Pavel Kadochnikov como Crusoe y Y. Lyubimov en el rol de Viernes. La película, de 74 minutos, utilizó un proceso denominado Stereokino, obra de S.P. Ivanov, y requirió el uso de una pantalla de metal corrugado con muescas, diseñadas para reflejar las dos imágenes en forma separada hacia el ojo derecho e izquierdo. Mientras, en Hollywood, después de casi cuatro décadas de investigación, la Warner Bros. estrenó House of wax (Museo de Cera-1953), que fue el primer largometraje en 3D con sonido estereofónico. La primera proyección de la película tuvo lugar en el Paramount Theater, New York, y se utilizaron 25 altavoces (hecho que provocó cierta cacofonía, con sonidos rebotando en todas las direcciones). Curiosamente, el director, André de Toth, pudo notar ese problema con el sonido, pero jamás llegó a ver el efecto 3D, puesto que tenía un solo ojo.

Recientemente, con películas como Coraline, My Bloody Valentine,  o la próxima Toy Story 3, el cine en tres dimensiones vuelve a estar de moda. Está claro que la tercera dimensión no garantiza mejores historias, o producciones más cuidadas, aunque el espectáculo visual está garantizado. Eso sí, dejo al juicio de los lectores si merece la pena pagar unos 2€ más de media por entrada para disfrutar de esta tecnología, imposible sin tener que soportar durante toda la proyección las, asimismo, incómodas gafas de visión estereoscópica.

Aún así, parece que el futuro a corto plazo del cine pasa por las tres dimensiones. Un ejemplo claro es Avatar, la primera película de James Cameron desde Titanic, que se apoya en buena parte en esta tecnología. Hollywood es muy sensible a todo tipo de modas, así que no sabemos cuánto va a durar esta tendencia. Eso sí, podemos asegurar que la espectacular tecnología 3D actual unida a un guión perfecto y a una realización impecable puede dejarnos joyas como UP.

UP es la primera apuesta por las tres dimensiones de Disney-Pixar

Enlaces de interés:

-El cine se renueva con películas en 3D

-3D, ¿el futuro del cine?

Von Slashern erwarte ich von Anfang an nicht viel: eine dünne Story, die nur dem Zweck dient, die Morde zu umrahmen; ein paar gute Special Effects, die ruhig schön blutig ausfallen dürfen, und ein paar nackte Tatsachen, um das Ganze abzurunden. Und My Bloody Valentine 3D bietet einem genau das, und an einigen stellen sogar etwas mehr.

Die Story ist leicht wiederzugeben: Der Bergmann Harry Warden tötet in einer Nacht 22 Jugendliche, die in einem Bergwerk eine Party feierten. Der Junge Tom überlebt dies nur knapp und flüchtet danach aus der Stadt; der Killer wurde umgebracht, und alles scheint in Ordnung. Doch als Tom zehn Jahre später wiederkehrt, geht das Morden von Neuem los, und es scheint, als sei auch Harry zurückgekehrt.

Ja, die Story bietet natürlich nicht viel, aber es reicht, um den Film nach vorne zu treiben. Langweilig wird es eigentlich nie. Allerdings ist das Ende ein bisschen zu offensichtlich, vor allem weil viele Szenen mehr als deutlich darauf hinweisen. Die Story dient aber auch mehr oder weniger nur als Lückenfüller zwischen den Morden, und die sind in diesem Streifen sehr explizit ausgefallen. Ich hatte ja erst meine Zweifel, der Film hat schließlich ein R-Rating und lief ungeschnitten mit einer FSK-Freigabe in den deutschen Kinos. Aber trotzdem sind die Szenen sehr oft sehr saftig und immer mehr oder weniger einfallsreich. Gut getrickst sind sie auch, bis auf zwei ziemlich lächerliche CGI-3D-Effekte, die man sich besser hätte sparen sollen.

Da ich gerade davon rede: die 3D-Effekte. Leider habe ich den Film nicht in einem Kino bestaunen dürfen, wo die Szenen definitiv effektiver gewesen wären, sondern musste auf die DVD zurückgreifen, die noch auf das Grün/Rot-Verfahren setzen muss. Das tut dem Sehspaß leider einen großen Abbruch, und vom 3D bleibt nur noch die Tiefe übrig. Erwartet also nicht, dass euch zu Hause die Spitzhacke um die Ohren fliegt. Wird sie nicht. Leider. Allerdings kann ich dafür keine Punkte abziehen, denn der Film ist ganz klar für eine andere Technik entwickelt und gedreht worden. Wenn ihr also die Chance habt, ihn im Kino zu erleben, solltet ihr diese nutzen.

Fazit: Nun ist der Film natürlich ein Remake, und ich muss zugeben, dass ich das Original nie gesehen habe. Deswegen habe ich keine Vergleichsmöglichkeiten, und kann nicht abwägen, inwiefern er sich an das Original hält. Dieser Film gefiel mir allerdings ausgesprochen gut. Er hat zwar kaum Handlung und Logik, macht dafür aber einfach nur Spaß und ist spannend.

7,5/10

i am not going to write poems anymore

maybe i am ‘ bad’ at it

wait, no

i am pretty good at it

i ‘ think’

i am gonna stop for awhile

i should focus of on on ‘other stuff’

like ’surfing’ and or ‘ white-collar crime’

both seem ‘ hard’ but  they could be a ‘meaningful’  experience to me

i am a ‘retard’

i am a ‘retard’

i should die pretty soon

because i am a ‘retard’

life should be fun and filled with ’stuff to do’

but it is not

life is bleak

life is ok

not sure what is more important ‘money’ or ‘ interpersonal relationships’

not sure

i am ‘weird’ like david bowie

Loveless

My Bloody Valentine

[Creation/1991]

What is to be expected from a record that’s been worked in nineteen different recording studios, with a time lapse of two years? A good deal. My Bloody Valentine is an intricate four-piece band that’s led by a patient, perfectionist by the name of Kevin Shields. To spill a little more about them, they were one of the first groups to punch in the shoegazing genre, a type of alternative rock that bleeds excessively distorted guitars and melodically uses vocals as another instrument, lowering the emphasis on lyricism. MBV is known for their valiantly loud live performances, that’s overly ruled by the distorted feedback guitars and an eerie feeling of separation between the band and the audience.

The musical texture is layered ponderously, Kevin Shields held the tight responsibility to the record’s production, lyricism and guitar. The final sound delivers utter sedation. Behind his rhythmic guitar strumming, Shields pairs next to Bilinda Butcher for the subdued vocals. Throughout most of the LP, Butcher’s glassy voice glistens next to Shield’s heavy distortion. The genre doesn’t flex real hard on the wordplay, so while the lyrics are dreamy and vague, they flow consistently with the sound. The drumming on the record is all sampled, besides on the “Only Shallow” and “Touched.” This was because of the physical problems the band’s drummer,  Colm Ó Cíosóig was facing at the time. As Shields once described, “[i]t’s exactly what Colm would have done, it just took longer to do.” As for the bassist, Debbie Googe, she didn’t have a part in the album, “At the beginning I used to go down [to the studio] most days but after a while I began to feel pretty superfluous so I went down less.” It was nothing against the bassist, (hence still receiving credit in the record sleeve) but Shield’s held a concept that was too intricate to explain towards the bass lines of the record. 

The record shifts through a series of hazy moods that could do a variety of things to the listener. Some will love, some will despise immediately. With given time, My Bloody Valentine’s true essence shines throughout several tracks. “Only Shallow” jump starts the album with a swinging guitar and steady-paced drumming. Butcher whispers her words as Shield’s guitar chimes persistently. In “Loomer,” the guitar shifts a few notches up on it’s distortion while holding a humble tone behind the spacey lyricism. “Touched” comes off as an interlude track, driving the record’s extensive concept on emotions, love, developing experiences. The record begins to find its definite pattern, as “To Here Know When” slides in as the following track. This song strikes magnificent lyricism, a patient track with a clean insight towards the shoegazing genre. The following song, “When You Sleep” can easily soar as one of the record’s best tracks. It’s important to follow Shield’s distorted guitar shifts that glide all the way through the song with tenacity. The same can be mentioned for “I Only Said,” which continues the flow of the album. “Sometimes” is one of the highest points of the record, a song that holds strongly to the timely rhythm shifting behind the guitars. Shields and Butler share the vocals for this track, setting off a misty sound that coincides together both acoustic/grunge strumming. “Blown A Wish” portrays the use of the vocals as being a reliable instrument towards music, sampled voices are meshed together to form a unique ocean-like sound. While the drumming isn’t sorely missed throughout the record, tracks such as “What You Want” doesn’t sound awful drum-wise, but could’ve easily shed much more colorfully with a live drumming. The record’s closing track, “Soon” was well placed. It’s a song conveying MBV’s dependent sound; the beat is dance-oriented, showcasing Shield’s multiple slide guitars skate through the track. The sampled drums lively pound swiftly behind the fleeting lyrics. 

The final end product turned out to be a tender, moving and brushing revolutionary for the punk/pop/fusion genres. Through a couple of listens, Loveless emerges through aspects such as genuine Dream pop, space rock, psychedelia and the young symptoms of grunge. Though working on his own clock, Shields prevails as a quiet genius with this record. New sounds and feelings are found with each listen. 

Rating: 8.8/10