The most beautiful version of the most beautiful song.

This was a strip I pitched to the recently defunct DFC. This was an attempt to create a new kind of British kids comic, and they courted a number of small press creators, alongside more established artists. It was an attempt to do something fresh and different and some nice stuff was produced. It’s a shame it didn’t find enough of an audience.

Able & Baker: Monkeys in Space was conceived as an anarchic kids comic strip in the best tradition of Leo Baxendale and Lew Stringer. I wanted greedy, lazy protagonists and more aliens and robots than you could shake a stick at. I basically wanted to do the kind of strip I would like to have read as a kid, free of the cloying sentimentality and wholesomeness that adults think kids want to read. I had big plans for the duo (and their faithful/psycho robot Schneider), but sadly it wasn’t meant to be.

Still, there’s a lot of potential with them, so should the right opportunity raise it’s ugly head…

These movies are coming out in the not-too-distant future. Can’t speak to whether or not the women in them are feminist music geeks, but the trailers suggest some geekery going on, and thus peaked my interest. Also, my friend Marlene posted them on Facebook.

So, first up we have (500) Days of Summer.

Directed by Marc Webb

Okay, so the positives first.

1. I like the leads. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is amazing in Mysterious Skin. Zooey Deschanel is charming and I’ve liked her in Elf, The Good Girl, and Almost Famous.

(Note: Ugh, something tells me I’ll have to get into Almost Famous on here at some point. To be brief, I kinda can’t stand that movie anymore, but still own my VHS copy from my late teens when I loved it. Fanboyness has ruined a lot of this movie’s appeal for me, as has growing tired of Cameron Crowe’s sentimentalism as I age. But people love this movie, so let’s get in a fight later.)

Okay, back to (500) Days of Summer.

2. Zooey sings in the trailer. Have you listened to She and Him? I really enjoy her and M. Ward together. If you need an album to make breakfast to, might I recommend Volume One? Deschanel’s got a warm, grainy voice. I gave Elf and Yes Man (a family choice at the multiplex during the holidays — please don’t judge) a pass for similar reasons. She even has a band in Yes Man, and wears cute coats.

3. Summer doesn’t believe in love. Like some people don’t believe in God or, to borrow from Tom, Santa. Hmm.

4. I guess Tom gets lame and Summer has enough and that’s where the plot thickens. I like it when ladies have had enough. Ah, that reminds me. I’ll probably also need to write up something on High Fidelity.

But I’ve also got some cons.

1. As happy as I want to be about Summer invading Tom’s male geek domain in the elevator by a) interrupting his loud, melancholic reverie, b) showing musical savviness by saying she loves The Smiths and then c) singing the chorus to “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”, I can’t help but read this as a way to objectify Summer somehow. Maybe it has something to do with her sashaying out of the elevator and the camera cutting to Tom, slack-jawed and enamored, saying “Holy . . .”

1A. I’m sure some will bristle at the inclusion of The Smiths, or at least one of their more popular tunes, in a non-indie indie picture (Fox Searchlight, ya’ll). Perhaps they’ll get all territorial or offer up a more obscure song that could’ve been used. Personally, I don’t care. For one, Fox Searchlight has to appeal to a broad audience. For another, that particular song might mean a great deal to someone involved in the picture. For another, I just don’t care that much about The Smiths. Nothing personal. They just don’t do it for me. I tried liking them for four years (two years in high school, two years in college) and it didn’t click. However, I do love Schneider TM’s cover of said song.

2. Tom’s wonderment of Summer, combined with seeing her everywhere and claiming to want her back after the break-up kinda creeps me out. It doesn’t read as romantic so much as obsessive and predatory. But maybe that’s just the trailer.

3. This movie reads a little too closely as a template for romantic comedies co-starring the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (rarely is she the lead). Sad sack guy falls hard for madcap gal and is forever transformed by her, even though she really gets no character development (unless you think quirky dancing or being a fan of The Shins is development). Here’s hoping Summer gets some interiority.

4. Does this couple seem a little too white, middle-class, and straight to you? As I mentioned elsewhere, I think there’s room for progressive heterosexual romance in media, but there’s something a little too normative about this particular configuration. Again, maybe it’s just the preview.

On that tack, I like that Paper Heart is about an interracial couple. Better yet, the actors, Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi, might have some actual romantic history, thus blurring the line between documentary and feature.

Directed by Nicholas Jasenovec

Lots of pros:
1. Charlyne Yi co-wrote the screenplay.
2. Yi is multiracial and also kind of frumpy by Hollywood’s insane beauty standards. I like that the movie stars a “regular-looking” woman of color. One that co-wrote the script? Even better!
3. Dude, Yi is a musician and helped score the movie. Maybe she’ll play some songs!
4. Yi is 12 years older than Cera. Blah-dow.
5. “Charlyne Yi” the character doesn’t believe in love. While of course this gets tested, I like that she’s skeptical and unsentimental about it, and am curious as to how her feelings will develop.
6. Why hello, Bill Haverchuck. Yes, I see you, Ken Miller.
7. I want to be friends with the girl who says that love is buying someone hot wings at Applebee’s. She’s wise.

I may be jumping the gun by conceptualizing Paper Heart as a romantic comedy with, about, and for music geeks, but something tells me that it is and that this will be, if not a good movie, at least an interesting one.

My big ick with both of these movies is that they seem pretty cute. I’m pretty cute-averse, as a rule. I always have been. But maybe these movies won’t cross the line. We’ll see.

Wiederentdeckt:

Schneider TM

1. Bones In The Sand 2. Kalmukia – The Discovery, Wiring, Invasion 3. Effect Of Discovery, Test, Alarm, Catastrophy 4. Aftermath: The Mutation

La première plage de l’album fera beaucoup de tort au disque, non qu’il s’agisse d’un mauvais morceau, mais bien parce qu’il va entraîner les auditeurs sur une fausse piste. Avec cette ouverture wagnérienne, on pense se trouver en un territoire dominé par Sunn O))), Earth ou, et ce n’est sans doute pas innocent, par KTL, collaboration entre Stephen O’Malley et Peter Rehberg, le patron du label Mego, qui publie ce disque. Une déferlante de guitare électrique, lourdingue et grésillante, noyée dans une réverbération caverneuse ; un drone de stoner rock tout ce qu’il y a de plus typique, jusqu’à ce qu’on prenne conscience des détails masqués par ce leurre : les traitements électroniques subtils oscillant à l’arrière-plan, et le violoncelle d’Hildur Gudnadottir se frayant peu à peu un chemin à travers le brouillard.

Angel est le nom choisi par Ilpo Vaisanen (Pan_Sonic) et Dirk Dresselhaus (alias Schneider TM) pour leurs collaborations. Entamé dès 1999, sous forme de duo, le projet s’est aujourd’hui stabilisé en trio avec l’arrivée de la multi-instrumentiste Hildur Gudnadottir (alias Lost In Hildurness). Tout en en conservant la noirceur originale, sa présence allait transformer le projet, de drone post industriel, vers des horizons plus lyriques. Loin d’un hybride électronique/néo-classique, leur combinaison de manipulations digitales et d’un instrument aussi marqué que le violoncelle, se confond en textures, et en climats, à la fois abrasifs et flamboyants. Le présent album, « Kalmukia », est basé sur une courte fiction écrite par Ilpo Vaisanen, qui démarre comme le Stalker de Tarkovski, pour finir comme une version cronenbergienne de Resident Evil. Il suit une progression qui va de l’incandescence du départ, de la fièvre de l’expédition, aux sombres éclairs de la débâcle. La catastrophe annoncée est inévitable, l’effroi est de mise devant l’ampleur des mutations, l’invasion se révèle impossible à juguler, et la sérénité est la seule réponse face à une extinction certaine. Scénario-prétexte sur mesure, la musique suit la progression épique, entamant une plongée sans retour dans la mélancolie, échappant brièvement à l’asphyxie pour un final lumineux, presque radieux.

thinking about getting a dwarf keffir lime tree.

Reading the “Shannon Ebner” article in ANPQ vol. 2 no.2 2008

p.19

BF: And I wanted to ask you about Entropic, you are referring to entropic explosives, right? How did you create that work, structurally?

SE: No, I am not referring to explosives in that image. That image’s title is OPIC which is a play on the words optic or scopic as in scopophillia. That image was my attempt to take an overused word out of circulation and to renvent it through the act of photographing. My interest in that word in particular had a lot to do with Robert Smithson and an essay about Ruscha’s work by Yves Alain Bois, in which he talks about words having a temperature and that when they get too “hot”, too overused, that they subject themselves to an entropic process, an absolute breakdown.

__

Maybe from:

Bois, Yve-Alain. Thermometers Last Forever. Ed Ruscha: Romance with Liquids. Exhibition catalogue. Gagosian Gallery, Rizzoli. New York, 1993.

__

The Smiths’ ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ vs Schneider TM’s ‘Light3000′

The Smiths

Schneider TM

Both of these are amazing, but IMO the reworking narrowly pips the original. 

The scores so far: O 1-1 TR

Oggi è stato il classico giorno in cui i minuti sono stati contati e la giornata sarebbe dovuta essere di 26 ore. Il ritmo si è impossessato di me.

Sei abituato a correre e allora corri anche se potresti camminare quando ormai è sera.

E’ fatica da spiegare, e magari capita anche a voi, ma oggi è successo che dietro ogni momento della giornata era come se ci fosse un colonna sonora che mi seguiva.
E siccome la canzone è molto bella in preda ad un atto di generosità ve la voglio far conoscere. Il testo è stupendo. 

Se vi va, fatevi un giro e ditemi.

“The light 3000″ – Schneider TM

I received an email today from the venerable Ken Garner, he of the mighty Peel Sessions tome, today, with this interesting fact from one of his contributors, Hugh Brune:

June Tabor’s No Man’s Land is of course Green Fields of France under its original name, making the song one of the very few to make the F50 in two different versions (Shipbuilding and Song to the Siren spring to mind immediately – any others?), and surely the only song to appear in two different versions with entirely different names.

Well, I love a challenge, so I put my thinking cap on. I posted the Men They Couldn’t Hang version last year, so I was aware of the Tabor connection. The complete (as far as I know) list of songs to make the FF in two different versions is:

• Shipbuilding (Elvis Costello & Robert Wyatt);
• Song To The Siren (Tim Buckley & This Mortal Coil);
• O Superman (Laurie Anderson & X Booty ft. Laurie Anderson); and
• Big Eyed Beans From Venus (Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band & Magic Band [sans Beefheart-SIG]).
• Babylon’s Burning (Ruts & Zion Train) [thanks to Steve W for pointing this one out...see comments below-SIG].
  

This naturally excludes different recordings by the same band (for example, as I have already noted, Pulp charted with the session recording of Common People in 1994, and again with the studio version in 1995). Then there is the other feat, two songs which are the same bar the titles. Apart from the one Hugh mentions, there is one more which forms the basis of today’s post.
The Smiths were at the peak of their popularity when they released The Queen Is Dead in 1986. No less than five tracks (not including The Boy With The Thorn In His Side, which had already featured in the 1985 chart) turned up in the Festive Fifty for that year. Morrissey apparently insisted on no more than two takes for the vocal of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out (FF 1986 #1 and All-Time FF 2000 #9), and this gives his rendition a subdued, fragile quality that suits the song’s tender yearning and sweeping melody.

It was not released as a single until the band were no more, in 1992. Morrissey subsequently put out a live version (like Paul McCartney, not above adding songs by his former band to his repertoire) in 2005 which was a sizeable chart hit in the UK.
Dirk Dresselhaus operates a solo project known as Schneider TM. Dirk was a former rhythm-section member for German indie rock bands, and The Light 3000 (FF 2000 #8) is an electronic version of the Smiths’ song, released on the 2000 EP Binokular in collaboration with KPT.michi.gan. The use of a vocoder for the vocal adds further distance to the lyrics, thereby suggesting the incident related as a kind of past memory.

Wire magazine voted this one of the best cover versions ever made. Dirk has various tracks (including this one) available for download at his website.

Ultimo atto del Kaleidoskope|03 Festival al Duel:Beat di Agnano.

Dopo le prime due serate, dedicate nell’ordine ad artisti italiani e francesi, stasera, nelle sale del Duel:Beat, lo spazio sarà interamente dedicato alla Germania.

Sarà una serata molto lunga e intensa.

Nella sala 2, grazie alla collaborazione del Goethe-Institut di Napoli, sarà possibile lasciarsi affascinare dalla proiezione di cortometraggi e film tedeschi. Dalle 21 e 30 in poi, la settima arte lascerà spazio ai suoni di The Brandy Alexander Project e dei napoletani Katap.

Ma, senza nulla togliere alle band di cui sopra, è nella sala 1 che si concentrerà maggiormente l’attenzione del pubblico. Infatti, toccherà a Schneider Tm aprire con qualità “le danze” nella main room. Alle 22.55 toccherà ad Apparat, il quale delizierà le orecchie dei presenti con una esibizione live che sicuramente ci/vi lascerà senza fiato. Ciliegina sulla torta, alle 01.30, sarà la volta dei Tarik1, che faranno muovere i vostri sederini come mai avete fatto nella vostra vita. Il tutto condito dai visual del vj Mutech.

Volete un consiglio? Non perdetevi questa serata. Ci sarà da divertirsi…

Robsounds, “QF736″ (Original mix) [Audio Invaders]

Schneider TM, “Frogtoise” [Mute]

Dennis Ferrer feat. Tyrone Ellis, “Underground Is My Home” (Instrumental Version) [Defected]