Sold at the Sign of a Gun

Travelog or Photoblog or Time-Travel (Part 2)

2011-05-08T11:12:00.000-04:00

Nara is a strange city, one in which a loose assemblage of structures pointing towards the modern era have been overlaid upon sprawling wilderness with little regard to coherent city-planning. Most elements of industry appeared half-finished, including the train station, a somewhat disconcerting fact as you pull in. As you walk to higher elevations, making your way to the aptly named Primeval Forest, you'll encounter many of the city's somewhat sacred deer. Be on your guard, because they will eat your map without provocation.

Stone lions (occasionally dragons) adorn the pathways and entrances of many temples across Japan. Often carved in this style, chest puffed out and head raised to the sky, they're clearly intended to be noble guardians of wherever they are, a slight contrast to the Western gargoyles who always struck me as representing demonic invaders that had been beaten into subservience. (Note: I have no understanding of the history of gargoyles.)

Pigeons are a blight upon every metropolis.

Travelog or Photoblog or Time-Travel (Part One)

2011-01-26T11:30:00.008-05:00

Mix for 1/26/11 - Transient Transients' Transience

This was taken en route to the main campus at Kansai Gaidai, a wonderfully circuitous alley full of oddly trimmed bushes, Shinto temples, and signs warning of vampiric sexual predators. Walking to class, I often found myself being stalked by a gaggle of these uniformed munchkins who would either chant a bizarre videogame-themed mantra or yell "tsukebe", which is sort of like "dirty whore". Callin' it like they see it, I guess.

Atop Kyoto-Eki (presumably the largest train station in Japan) sits a glass dome spotted with various sight-seeing devices proclaiming "360 Degree Panoramic View!". There was an old man who wanted to know if I had come to Kyoto specifically to see this view, being that it was a full san-byaku-roku-juu degrees. I told him "of course". It's easy to lie in foreign languages.

Reflected imagery is one of my favorite photographic themes, perhaps a continuation of my fascination with other forms of duplication, reiteration, and recurrence. Strangely at odds with my musical interests, obsessed with linearity, improvisation and asynchrony; a division in my left brain. Yoyogi-kouen was one of my favorite places to relax while in Tokyo, one of the few outposts of natural beauty scattered throughout the dense metropolis, but one often populated with family picnics, sax-playing hobos, and greasers engaged in a wild dance-off set to Joan Jett tunes.

Curses

2010-12-19T00:28:00.005-05:00

Mix for 12/19/10 - Subtly Unsuitable / Suitably Unsubtle

For the past few days, I've been trying to stave off an impending yuletide malaise; early to bed, early to rise, run a couple miles against a bitter wind. It's a terrible time of the year, though I'm thankful for the lack of snow as of yet (knock on wooden legs, if you got 'em). If it weren't for the promise of Yorkshire Pudding, I'd happily choose hibernation over humanity for the next few months.

Teaching put-put-putters to a halt as families abscond to their Swiss chalet, leaving me to review reams of unfinished Brand New Curriculum, doing my best to hunt down misguided semi-colons, consistently dumbfounded by the quantity of arcane fart jokes and sexual innuendo woven into the text. Apparently all the perverts and miscreants that neglected priesthood and positions with the TSA chose careers in the Educational Textbook industry.

Which indirectly brings me to the theme of today's mix! Imagine that. I recently picked up Authenticity, the latest album by The Foreign Exchange, upon fervent (impersonal) recommendation by Gavin Castleton. It's an excellent record, full of great melodies and those warm synth textures that I grow to appreciate more and more each day. But as it's quite explicitly a "break-up" album, I was struggling with how to fit it into any of the typical abstract thematic structures that I usually mold my mixes by. So I said fuck it, imaginary break-up mix it is.

Sad thing is, while I was working on it, one of my good friends had the unfortunate luck of having his girlfriend of 9 years break up with him. Ouch.

Music is just that powerful.

Count Countenance

2010-11-30T23:15:00.005-05:00

/ / /

I had something of a doppelganger in college. He was a few inches shorter, couldn't quite grow a beard like I could, but damn we looked alike. And not only did we look alike, but in a lot of ways, we simply were alike.

As a teacher, depending on position I suppose, you start to see recurring faces. And these faces come attached to patterns of behavior, predetermined identities governed by a crook in the nose. Phrenology and Physiognomy aren't exactly the scientific fields I expect anyone to depend on, let alone myself, but it's almost discouraging when these archetypes seem to be less a product of their environment and more a biological construct representative of human evolution.

So when you're watching old movies and you see these classical beauties (name a whoever, it doesn't matter) you realize they don't exist anymore. And it's not just that standards have adjusted, it's that those specific physical qualities have faded away, leaving the present to cope with a glut of strange men like myself.

How Gizzard a Day Get?

2010-11-09T20:32:00.005-05:00

Mix for 11/14/10 - Triumphant Beards

Every so often I catch myself speaking with some vague accent or other unusual verbal tics, often acquired from the people around me. Visiting relatives in Colorado, they accused me of having some slight Canadian slur distorting the pronunciation of my vowels, leaving me concerned about my appreciation for plaid-print. When I teach I tend to slow my speech to a crawl while raising the pitch of my voice, resulting in some awful stoner-vibes wafting from the beaches of Point Break. Students are often unprepared for the grand reveal of my actual lusty baritone, as I shout at them about how "Vanessa was riding her bicycle at 30mph for 13 minutes...." Those word problems can get intense. Or: I get pretty worked up when I read them.

As I write, I have a habit of letting my thoughts race ahead of my typing, which results in frequently forgotten particles, participles, and other mundane parts of speech. If my attention starts to lag, I'll begin to hear my internal voice echoing inside my head and I struggle to identify if it's actually a copy of my voice or something appropriated. Sometimes it possesses a subtle lisp, the same subtle lisp that once prevented me from ever saying "synthesizer" out loud when I was growing up. But I have no lisp today, and I haven't for years and years and years.

And it's this constantly shifting quality of voice that results in so much misunderstanding, as it seems to take some months or millennia of knowing me to determine whether I just told I joke. Many jokes have met many stern gazes and never did they find the happiness they deserved. So I find myself often speaking in grand hyperbole, loudly describing terrible absurdities thinking surely it's clear — I am joking now.

Instead I get asked if I need a hug.

Of course I need a hug.

Carl Weathers Was the Worst Mercenary

2010-11-04T15:41:00.005-04:00

Mix for 11/04/10 - Thematic Distraction

A friend said to me, "None of us are doing anything we're good at," a statement only slightly different than the more traditional idea that it's hard to find a job that you enjoy. But it's a fact of our lives (my friend's, my own, and those of our mutual friends) that very little of our work experience is rooted in anything that we're especially competent with or trained in, even if we're finding some margin of success. Part of this stems from how we're all largely "artists" of one form or another, a character description that has little practical application, yet it's strange to think how we've become so cut off from our primary skills.

Of course it's entirely my own fault for being a bit of a nitwit without an ounce of entrepreneurial instinct. My brief attempts at freelance show how little I enjoy the act of selling, whether an idea, object, or my identity. My current job asked that I revise my biographical blurb so that it's more appealing to the clientele, but I find myself completely incapable of abiding by their suggestions because the thought of third-person self-aggrandizement triggers acid reflux.

And so it was, when I went to pick up some photographs of mine that had been kept at my old high school, the woman at the counter asked me if this was my job (referring to the photos) and I could only shake my head and laugh. It's been almost five years since I've taken a picture, which is unbelievably discouraging. Two years ago, when I posted the image of the Daibutsu, I had no idea that I wasn't even a photographer anymore.

I Remember One Sentence

2010-10-31T21:39:00.005-04:00

Years pass with an unexpected quickness; though at this point I suppose that quickness should be expected. But if an hour of tedium can expand and overwhelm, why does everything condense in retrospect?

Does time slow for those with a gift of recollection?

My dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's some 10 or so years ago. It may have been longer, but my parents being who they are chose to wait to tell us children until his tremors were apparent. Today he's a shambling shell of the brilliant businessman he was, speech slurred unintelligibly and mind caught frequently absent, and I wonder if this condition is even more torturous than it seems. Some relation of his (an uncle or great-uncle or something more obscure) has turned 100 years old, approximately one quarter-century older than any of my grandparents ever survived, all succumbing to one form of cancer or another before achieving that indignity of centenarian repose. An awful thought occurred to me that my poor old man might find himself cursed with an exceptional lifespan to accompany this dreadful disease, as improbable as that may be.

/ / /

Memory, memory, memory.

Sometimes I'm terribly nostalgic, but only in this strange unmanageable way, where I'm not necessarily yearning for a time past, but still hit by waves of wistful confusion.

I have regrets, though I try to deny that as much as possible.

/ / /

A friend linked me to this interview on the decline of creativity. Though the interview is both dense and dry (bear with it if you can), it provides some statistical support to what any teacher is sure to suspect. Most enlightening is how it breaks down the many facets of creativity as defined by the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking. My own day to day teaching experience is rife with students that lack the remotest capability for vertical or lateral thought, a quality that impacts all aspects of academia, not simply those traditionally creative domains.

/ / /

And since I'm talking about creativity, let's talk about these new mix[tapes]:

The White Noise Companion - 58'11''

Calcium Fortified - 31'08''

The first mix, The White Noise Companion, is meant to be an accompaniment to a reading of Don Delillo's novel, White Noise. It's hard to express how an hour of music is supposed to guide you through a 300 page novel, but in one way or another each song incorporates one or more of the following qualities:

Abstract noise (feedback or irregular, non-musical sound)
Reference to civilized malaise or degradation
Suggestion of murderous intrigue or intent
Reflection upon regret

The second is designed as an attempt at making a mix that avoids conceptual restrictions and does its best to present songs that are easily palatable and poppy, yet offering that depth of emotion and musicality that can sustain frequent listens.

Enjoy!

Daibutsu

2008-11-05T19:18:00.007-05:00

/ / /

Over the course of many months, I spent almost 50 hours retouching the above photograph. It's one of about 80 Polaroids I took during my time in Japan, all of which have been painfully neglected, stuffed inside a small and disheveled cardboard box. Each day they fade and accumulate scratches, and soon I'll forget what they were ever supposed to represent.

Sometimes a Senryū...

2008-09-03T19:02:00.008-04:00

Counting on one hand
All that I own,
Still the taxman calls.

/ / /

A dream of flight
ends
in a pool of urine.

All My Religiosity

2008-01-10T16:04:00.000-05:00

In an act of unexpected confluence, I've been set upon by three works, each a separate appendage from that holy trinity of Art & Entertainment (cinema, literature, music), each having much to do with the Christian faith.

My spider-sense is tingling.

The Son came first, out of order of course, in the form of David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas. Critically acclaimed by friend and foe alike (peers and non-peers), it bore a heavy burden to impress me, though I was in a state of spastic (American usage) excitement to read some modern fiction. Thoughts on the novel taken from a missive to a friend:

He writes well, so any comparison from the Higher-Up should only be interpreted as "meaning well",
though there were a number of times where I squirmed at his outrageous ornamentation,
embarrassed via recognition of my own excess. (<- Damn'd by my own hand)
Often his conceits seem trite, the syntactical games of the "Orison" segments ("nikes" for shoes, "sony" for computer-things, "ford" for car, etc...);
the Joycean degradation of language for the post-apocalyptic apex;
epistles for the European Romantics;
but I'm leaning away from my cynical self and assuming that it all ties into the greater conceit of eternal recurrence.
Plus, corpocracy just made me think of Idiocracy.

I failed to mention my irritation with the use of a Jesus-figure, unaware that that very same would tie in so well with this blog entry; the gods are on my side.

/ / /

Next came Father in the guise of Gavin Castleton's Hospital Hymns EP. I've had a burnin' yearnin' to hear this album for some time, having missed my chance to acquire the physical copy and deigning it not worth my while to purchase it through itunes (fuck yo' 192kbps bullshit!). Thankfully, the new Integer's Only store opened up and he's selling it for 4$ at 256kbps. I can dig it if that's the best I can get from the man himself.

Billed as modern arrangements of classic hymns (I can't attest to his adherence, having never been to church), the music on this "disc" shares a lot of similarities to other work he's done, drawing equally from R&B/soul (Stevie Wonder in particular); the glacial glitchin' of Vespertine-era Bjork, or rather, her producers (Matmos?); as well as the actual hymns themselves (I presume). Though his voice has developed considerably since his early days in G.M., he still holds a great amount of fragility in his voice that always adds a sense of emotional resonance and sincerity to his songs that I don't often hear elsewhere in modern pop. Lyrically, he conflates matters a bit, drawing from his own experiences working menial labor in a hospital but writing/singing from the perspective of an aggressively spiritual elderly man. For a record that is musically personal and innately spiritual (similar to A Love Supreme though they're not comparable by any other means), it's counter-productive to distance yourself, the creator, from your own work by speaking through a fictional voice. That doesn't detract from the music, however, except on a speculative plane, so Hospital Hymns gets all my gems and mineral deposits.

/ / /

Lastly, there was the Holy Ghost. What better a vessel than PT Anderson's There Will Be Blood? Before I begin, I'll briefly run through my thoughts on previous PTA sermons:

Sydney/Hard Eight: Haven't seen this. Haven't heard anything about it either.
Boogie Nights: Haven't seen this, but hear John C. Reilly knows how to "stick it".
Magnolia: Frog rain was some bullshit.
Punch-Drunk Love: Mostly made me uncomfortable. Also: I hate Adam Sandler.

That was just so I don't get confused with some kind of PTA-Fellator.

There Will Be Blood is a monster of a film. Like, it roars. Similarly to how I felt about No Country for Old Men, I'm struggling with how I might begin to detail it's finer qualities.

- Acting is superb across the board, from the child that plays H.W. Plainview to dude-from-The Mummy in role of Daniel Plainview's "brother". The only small deduction goes to Paul Dano, not for performing poorly, but because there are times where his youth and eccentric presence evokes the modern era more so than the turn of the 20th century. But that's a small price to pay when the other choice would be to have not casted Paul Dano. Also, time is treated somewhat abstractly anyway; example: Paul Dano never ages.

- The cinematography is beautiful, but perhaps much more traditionally so than one might expect. Nothing overtly flashy, just precise composition and minimal extended tracking shots. Expert use of lighting and set design.

- I wasn't too keen on the score, which had received a lot of press, presumably from the Radiohead connection. The dissonant horror-strings were too common place, both in the sense that they occurred often and in that they weren't especially interesting. There were two pieces that played for great dramatic effect, one during the derrick explosion and the other during the long shot over Bandy's ranch. These used a lot more percussive elements that seemed better suited to the mood, though I suppose I wouldn't have enjoyed them as much had they been the dominant mode either. Still, wasn't impressed.

- Daniel Day-Lewis' character is immensely fascinating, his manner of speech, his stilted walk, his honesty that transforms into brutal irrationality, all are but a few of the things that compose one of the most human cinematic characters I've seen. A mega role.

- And though I've put it last, the story is certainly not least. Empathizing with/understanding the father/son relationship between Daniel and H.W. is vital to your appreciation of this film. If you're just waiting for Plainview to slap Eli Sunday some more, you're not going to like this movie. The title is almost literal, in that though there are violent acts spread throughout the film, you never see any blood until the very end. This movie is all about the emotional weight contained within a man isolated by money, mistrust, and a malignant self-hatred. Be careful, this shit could destroy you.

/ / /

I assume this sort of righteous (in the Gleaming the Cube vernacular) aggregation of seemingly-related experiences is common to all of us (humanity), something to do with our personal Web of Influences (is that a pun?) combined with overwhelming egoism that causes most to feel like the sun.

Would anybody like to share their own?

Why They Came

2007-12-27T23:38:00.000-05:00

I don't get many visitors, a notorious deterrent to consistent updating. And of the ones I do get, even less have come to stay and read.

But fear not, my imagined reader, this is not about to become some boo-hoo-where-are-you-I-quit shit, this is some "how the fuck did these people get here?" shit, brought to you by sitemeter.

1. "nemesis black stone"; Kilkenny, Ireland — I picture a leprechaun, concerned by rumors of an Irish kryptonite. Rest well leprechaun, your concerns are unfounded.

2. "dirty projectors rise above"; various — I get a lot of people from this search, but they're rarely inclined to read the review they're brought to, leading me to believe these people are assholes.

3. "sad beauty.png"; various — Who googles pictures of sad beautiful women and still isn't satisfied by the results some 30 pages in? Has this image satiated their desires?

4. "signs of mammon"; various — A great sum of folk worried their wealthy neighbor may be greed incarnate has greatly inflated my stats. Little do they know my nom de plume is a benign reference to [redacted].

I expected this list to be...longer. But of the 190+ visitors since August, these strings represent approximately 90% of why they came. Hopefully having blogged about them, I will have exorcised them for good.

Some Days (You Just Feel Like a Sex Offender)

2007-11-28T16:41:00.000-05:00

I had been growing a fierce beard for the past month, as can be roughly discerned in the image you see to the left. (The profile one.)

This was because my facial hair is an indomitable force that I thought I had best represent in my photograph sent to Meanwhile, lest a clean-shaven or Miami Vice-stubble version of myself render me to too obviously pretentious when viewed in relation to my accompanying piece of short fiction.

Burly Wild Men are never pretentious.

Today I went in to teach and was immediately stopped upon entering the school. The principal, who I'd yet to meet in the month and half working there, asked if I needed assistance. I replied with a simple "no". The question was rhetorical. Who was I? I filled him in on the pertinent details of my non-paedophile existence, referencing the various faculty that I'm familiar with, including the Vice-Principal who I had met.

I was told that I needed to check in and get my badge.

My badge?

Yeah, my badge. My "Blatantly-Suspicious-Can't-Be-Trusted-Pervert" Visitor Badge.

Technically, this isn't a problem, as I fully understand the fears that run rampant in modern society. I'm also secure in my not being being one of these things that parents should be afraid of. But I'm also not really a visitor, am I? I'm a consistently-appearing educator of kids with special needs.

Alas, I am now sans-beard.

I miss you beard.

See you next month.

This Man is Not Dead

2007-10-24T15:18:00.001-04:00

Next week my birthday arrives. I've always enjoyed my birthday, not so much for the obvious reasons (presents, parties, cake), though they certainly factored into the equation back when I was, you know, a cake-fiend — but because of the actual day: November 1^st. Putting aside its status as All Saint's Day/Dia de los Muertos^1/2 (both being neat things that I take no part in), the day has always felt mystical, and that's a good thing in my book.

I think it's all those ones. In elementary school I imagined how cool it would be in 2011 when I would finally get a chance to write 11/1/11 on an essay. (Apparently I had been convinced of undiagnosed mental retardation by my older brothers and assumed I'd still be writing lame essays about why eating the entirety of my candy-cache in a week was bad for my teeth.) I'm not sure if I took it any further than imagining the act of writing my extraordinarily homogeneous birth date, but four years from now I fully anticipate something awesome to happen when I pay my cable bill on my birthday.

Anyway, being that it's my birthday, I get to add a single digit to my age. Seemed to me that by 23 I would've been feeling like an "adult" — meaning I've got a week to take my maturity game to the next level. Yet, knowing what I know about myself and all the world around me, I secretly suspect there's no higher rank to attain. (Sorry, superego, can't guilt-trip anymore. Asshole.)

Except Good Parent, the absolute greatest achievement of mankind; Good Parents, be proud. Every Good Parent in existence deserves a Nobel prize, MacArthur grant, and Sainthood. My parents are some damn Good Parents, and when I get to hang out with my nephew I get the distinct impression that my oldest brother is a Good Parent-in-training, excusing his past as a Shitty Older Brother.

I don't intend on being a Good Parent any time soon (thank you, Biomedical God of Contraception), but some day. And when I die, I hope that my Good Parenting inspires a Good Paragraph (or two) about how I was the most awesomest Good Parent that ever did read a bedtime story.

All the ladies say I read well.

Things I Consumed Recently (and How They Compare to a Slim-Jim)

2007-10-12T22:20:00.000-04:00

The Darjeeling Limited

Duration of experience longer than expected or desired
Unpleasant aftertaste
Lingering sensation of emptiness

In Rainbows

Cheap
Variety of flavors
Texturally enticing

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

Bit of a stretch? Hmm, yes, well, I'm quite limber.

Darjeeling isn't a bad movie—visually stimulating, less-witty-than-usual-but-still-pretty-good dialogue, interesting (if superficial) characters.

"Slim-Jim" attributes are derived from plot concerning vacuous, rich eccentrics attempting to regain the humanity that they may have lost after the death of their father. Depending on the viewer's empathy, this absence of intangible goodness ("soul") may or may not effect you.

It got me down.

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

In Rainbows is good.

That's the reserved reaction of someone who had never listened to an entire Radiohead album before Tuesday (Kid A).

I think that considering the quantity of Radiohead diehards, and the various stages of Radiohead's development that they could have entered at, In Rainbows should satisfy all but the dourest of loose-tongued curmudgeons.

If the title means anything, I'd say that it refers to the album's spectrum of "Radiohead", ranging from the British jangle-rock of The Bends ("Faust Arp") to the ambient glitch-rock of Kid A/Amnesiac ("15 Step"). But it's not an entirely regressive or retrospective act, hence the rainbow reference, which depends on a 7th, entirely new, element to be complete.

My harshest complaint is that I'm not sure the world needs anymore Thom Yorke piano ballads. But that's not really a complaint, more a statement of satiation.

Numerical Value: 14/22 Macho Mans

Barophicks / Other Fears

2007-09-27T21:23:00.000-04:00

I have thought often on such Subjects as the Nature of all Fears & Pleasures, & of Pains both Physickal & Mental. And scouring Archaic Texts for a constant source, a River without Division as such that were it a Rod it would not Divine, from which I could create a Tool of harm against both Gods & Daemons, of which I do not doubt you both belong. You might ask your Self a Question for every Minute of every Hour of each remaining undying Day to be had, & you would never think or imagine the Answer to My Prayer. And Tears of unbounded Distress will flow through the aggregate Crags of your Visage, & those Crags, those Valleys, will fill as the World once did, to drown the Sin carried in all your Flesh when I have wrought this Havoc I design. There will be no Noah to rescue two of every Molecule within your Blood to wait this Crying out. For what is True Fear but to know your End? And what is the Knowledge of your End but the End in itself? Such will be our Understanding when we meet again.

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

I haven't been sleeping well. At night I lie restlessly, the incessant itch of thought manifesting on the surface of my recently shaved head as an incessant itch of itch.

My eyes burn from the strain of scouring the fabled internets for more destinations to launch my hapless credentials and hope they land in the lap[top] of someone willing to give me a job. (So if you meet me, understand that I don't have conjunctivitis—honest.)

The scouring has not worked. "Susan" called to ask if I'd like to join the sales team over at "Probable Mafia-Front for Affordable Money-Laundering". Monster has inundated my "business" e-mail with offers for a bigger dick, but no way to fill my wallet so I can afford that Monster-cock I always dreamed of. (Oh, Monstercock, I'll have you yet!)

I am afraid.

New Music: Dirty Projectors, "Rise Above" (9/11/07)

2007-09-21T00:04:00.000-04:00

Band: Dirty Projectors
Album: Rise Above
Rel. Date: 9/11/07
Available on CD and LP from Dead Oceans

Rise Above, the new album from Omnivoracious Dave Longstreth and his band, Dirty Projectors, has a creative genesis that seemingly obscures the more important qualities of the record; however, just like with The Getty Address and its tale of a fictionalized Don Henley journeying through time to serenade Pocahontas (I kid, but honestly), it doesn't benefit the listener to approach Rise Above with conceptual artifice lingering in the back of their mind. Because while what it is (an imaginative reinterpretation of Black Flag's Damaged, meaning not covers, but something else) is arguably what it is, it is more importantly an album of original music written by Mr. Longstreth and executed with the help of a number of fine musicians.

"What I See" opens the album with the refrain "I wanna live, I wanna live, I was dead" sung over a huge groove, ably introducing their organic power, developed/evolved from continuous exploration as a live unit constrained to a traditional "rock band" format. The rhythm builds, the guitars squirm between the beats, and then it evaporates into amorphous cooing for a brief interlude before jumping right back into the main groove. The song has almost concluded before acceding to a verse proper and only after a second dispersal of the kinetic forces in favor of pastoral woodwinds, all atmosphere and no Earth. This structure of drastic dynamic shifts (on "Room 13", hearkening back to Robert Fripp's Zeus-thrown power chords ripping through the haze of Jamie Muir's miscellany at the start of Lark's Tongue in Aspic or, more recently, any song by ex-Tzadik avant-metal outfit Kayo Dot), plays a large role in the latest mode of Longstreth's songwriting and never does it feel out of place or used simply to attack the listener (but it can, and will, attack).

In the past, when I've tried to sneak the Dirty Projectors into the auditory diet of those around me, I found that people either asked me to "turn that weird shit off" or they've silently sat and waited until a conclusion, then asked me that I "never play that weird shit again". A real fuckin' dichotomy, you know? Now, with Rise Above released for public consumption, I find subjects can invariably tolerate the first half (a marked improvement), asking a polite question here or there concerning this or that (thoroughly enjoying "Thirsty and Miserable"), but as soon as "Police Story" comes on, they've had enough.

Appreciation for Longstreth's vocal iniquities has always been the ledge that one's ability to cope with his music rested upon. Some may find themselves conditioned to enjoy his overwrought melisma and Gothic harmonies since his last release, but when confronted with aggressive intervalic shifts and a harsh, brittle timbre, their will shall be tested. Which is perhaps its purpose, that if you can let yourself go and grok his run through the squalor, empathize with his expression even if you doubt his authenticity as a "fuck the police" rebel-type, you will be rewarded for your struggle with the best end-of-album sequence since Return to Cookie Mountain (although I still think "Wash the Day" is shit).

From the o-o-o-o-o-o choral arrangements of "Gimme Gimme Gimme" to the unacknowledged suite of "Spray Paint (The Walls)" and "Room 13", adorned with mourning string arrangements pulling every last bit of emotion from Longstreth's fragile upper register, as well as some of the finest bombast the band can muster, he would've already earned the dinosaur sticker for his notebook. Yet, in true dessert fashion, he saved the best for last, buttering me up for an A+, instructing me to "rise above" lest I become like the "jealous cowards" that just "try to control". Some may find it a trite conclusion, but those are the same fuckbags that can't stand happy endings.

Though it's undeniable that the idiosyncrasies which often define and shape his music still abound, Rise Above ultimately proves to be the album that best demonstrates Longstreth's (and his Dirty Projectors) unique songwriting talents (talents that can often come across as idiosyncracies), an irony when viewed from its conceptual heritage. Rise Above, overgrown with unchecked cross-pollination and tense, [near-]danceable polyrhythms, is an example of how you don't need to stick to a template to make good, honest, pop music. It just helps to focus your vision every once in a while.

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

For this recording, Dirty Projectors are:

Dave Longstreth
Nat Baldwin
Brian McOmber
Amber Coffman
Susanna Waiche
Charlie Looker

The Truth For Sure

2007-09-04T15:43:00.000-04:00

Hyperbole for sure, Sir Swift’s face told.
For truth is never so strong or so bold,
But something on which one can rest a hat;
A thing as plain as night to a bat.

⁄ ⁄ ⁄

After my last entry, I took a trip up and to the left to commune with my band and record the semi-extant songs we performed at our previous gig. We had rusted like the garage we recorded in, but to some critical minds that makes everything charming. Sessions were paused to gorge ourselves on authentic diner treats, grilled blueberry muffins and the such, as well as nostalgic rounds of Mario Kart. A late night viewing of Stop Making Sense left an unmistakable impression on all our improvisations; regrettably, there were no lamps to seduce.

How long have we been playing together? The initial attempt at a band was, I think, May 2004. Had I figured out how to play any instruments yet? Not to any real degree. We made a fucking racket and it was raw.

Then we added two more players for a sum of three guitars, two drummers, keys and a bassist. We made a fucking racket and it was intergalactic.

With each rehearsal/recording session we move closer to more traditional structures. Our line-up is never assured for a gig or rehearsal, but still, quite traditional.

Download Arc O - Urn-Burial

This was the third song we approached. Song One, "Hunting the Tiger", was soon discovered to be forgotten. The loss of "Hunting the Tiger" was a hearty blow to our morale. Song Two, "Beefheart", may have been the victim of our dismay; seven takes, all devoid of aggression. "Urn-Burial", aka "Sir Thomas Browne", aka "Egyptian", was our reawakening.

Eric's opening solo has stayed essentially the same since he first played it to us, and it remains one of his better eastern-blues inspirations. If you listen closely, you can hear someone humming something akin to a "Dream Brother" homage. The rest of the song attempts to merge our stereotypical psychedelic interests with the light-hearted instincts of current indie-rock. With practice we hope to fine-tune the tempo shifts, develop the last third into a more complete section, and finally find an appropriate way to end it. An end is a good thing.

Download Arc O - Nashe

An ode to taking a good shit, and as such, it's all about catharsis. Structurally, Nashe is almost identical to Urn-Burial: opening "guitar solo", albeit quite brief; second guitar enters, followed by rhythm section; A-part abruptly dissolves into guitar-duel breakdown (albeit more abrupt); rhythm section reenters; cathartic B-part (here, merely an extension of the A-part). This is regrettable, although perhaps irrelevant to the average listener. We enjoy the tune for its use of simple elements (namely power chords) to create a song that still sounds like us, but it's in dire need of some direction.

Download Arc O - The New Jazz (For Don B.)

We're not trying to be ironic with the title here, just referential.

The original incarnation of this was more appropriately "Alien Videogame Blues", but, with the absence of Boss Rogan, we lack that vintage Alien Blues sound. Guest guitarist Sampson can sound like a parody of the 70's fusion shit we aspire to, but considering all he was told was to solo in Bb minor, he performed admirably. The bassline to the second half was cribbed from the brilliant mind of Hugh Hopper, much credit to The Soft Machine. Like the rest, this song demands much work. Hopefully we'll get the chance to do as such.

Technicolor Memories: Le Samourai (1967)

2007-08-14T15:18:00.000-04:00

Title Shot (60's Typography FTW)

Le Samourai (dir. Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) is, if nothing else, exquisite meditation.

Since time immemorial, a valve of my heart has been exclusively reserved to pump at full capacity only while watching film noir, a fact first acknowledged when my high school film studies professor thrust Double Indemnity deep into my eye sockets, followed by The Big Sleep, The Killers, and Orson Welles' mischievously manipulated Touch of Evil (the 1975 cut). (He was a good guy, that professor, rode a mean hog, wore leather jackets, jeans, and aviators—when he wanted you to watch something, you fuckin' watched it.) The genre cut into my flesh like it was a knife, cutting until I bled, and when I bled, that blood was cold ("Jill, this blood, this looks like cold blood...").

So what I'm saying is: I'm a reptile, the responsibility for which falls squarely at the feet of [Dr. Octagon] (or Capcom?); and that I enjoy noir is no surprise—it's embedded in my cold, cold blood.

The first time I watched Le Samourai, I was in complete disbelief. Where had this film been all my life? It had taken me 6 years since Double Indemnity to watch this? How could that be? Well, I suppose it's availability may have been marginal up until its resurrection as a member of the Criterion family, but the point is, including that as an excuse, it was still inexcusable that I had never even heard of it. Why hadn't this been thrust into my eye sockets? (Or the more apropos location of my belly?)

Not that I have a VHS Deck in my abdomen; I envision a dubious transaction on the streets of Chinatown where the local bootlegger hands it off to me in a forceful fashion as I walk past, dropping my cash at his feet.

Because my life is noir as fuck.

Noir as fuck

Le Samourai is transcendent, style sublimating into substance; the sharp existentialism of assassin du jour, Jef (played to perfection by Alain Delon), puts all other cinematic killers to shame. Outdoor shots are thick with rainy-Sunday atmospherics accompanied by a melancholic electric-organ theme that hypnotizes; interiors often labyrinthine (note the first scene inside the Police Department), confusing the senses with unexpected doorways, extras as subterfuge, and post-bop jazz. Actual acts of violence are few and far between; the story is about accepting the consequences for those actions that you willfully performed, few as they may be. And as you sit, entranced by the 24fps sequence of events that unfolds, you will come to understand as Jef understands: life is not something to be taken lightly, but it can be taken quickly.

Rain, Rain, Go Away...

The collaboration between Melville and Delon produced two of the greatest crime-dramas in history (Le Cercle Rouge being the other. They also worked together on Un Flic, but I've yet to see it. So maybe they went 3/3. I'd believe it.). Melville's direction is refined, so enthusiastically intellectual, philosophical even, that it seems at odds with a genre that some might instinctively consider hyper-masculine (see: Heat). But that's just some gender-bias bullshit. Of course it took a careful, nuanced director with vision to craft a film like this and not have it devolve into some shitty tale of revenge (which in some respects it may resemble). When Jef is betrayed by the woman he's betrayed his woman with, he knows what he has to do. But do we?

The Beautiful Caty Rosier

Melville uses his actors to meditate on what may or may not be an actual quote from Bushido code, but whether the quote is real or imagined is irrelevant—Le Samourai makes it real through a process of semiotic transmutation. And we, the viewer, meditate on whether or not we need to watch this damn movie again.

I vote yes.

Takin' down the set

Soliloquy I / Science Leaves My Self-Importance in Ruins

2007-08-11T22:11:00.000-04:00

Rapidly divergent thoughts converge always at a point of least expectance; and in that way, when you’re not expecting to think at all, you might dredge up an axiom: that your thoughts are of the same stream, a single river, come from some cloud-hidden valley in that unknown cardinal direction which points to the heavens. Therein resides a lake whose pure water is analogous to the gods, by its depth you might measure their ambition. On its surface forms a fine mist and from that mist the fontanus, simulacra of divinity made to stimulate the Earth by rain of dithyrambs, paeans, and odes. Diluted by descent from so high, these sacrosanct globules of thought travel through the infinite tributaries of man, his capillary labyrinths of consciousness; and then, when discarded as silt, whether that of the theologian or philologist, they’ll share the same soggy delta—before being poured into the maw of that eternal glutton, the Thought-Æther Ocean, its true source.

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It's been a few days since I started this blog and after making two extremely dissimilar posts to begin things, I began to feel guilty that I should have opened with some greeting and/or statement of intent. But now it's too late for that, so I hope any potential readers are capable of accepting that the content of this blog will be as it will be. You wouldn't challenge the Ocean to a duel would you? Muhfuckahs get drowned-dead.

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Thinking about thought (as I'm prone to do when doing little else), I was reminded of a video my friend Wythe linked to over at the Culture Project. In it, Professor Dan Dennett does his damnedest to remind us that, much like ants, there's a whole fuckton of human beings out there, and as a consequence of that fact we can't all be special, especially not in the way our minds work. The video is perhaps too brief to wholeheartedly dig into that vulgar proposition, but the good Doktor is an engaging and amiable fellow (lowering our guard with his jolly beard and bald pate) who, through the use of optical illusions, proves that since we all get fooled we are all not special.

His thèse dramatique is not something that humanity can easily be convinced of, as Doc Dennett observes through many dinner conversations, but even if you find yourself scoffing at the information presented I recommend watching it through to the end just so that you can test yourself at the "What's Wrong with the Picture?" Game. The website that hosts this video also has some other talks of his, including one on the dangers of memes, and a bevy of other excellent scientific resources. Always good for a wandering through the mist.

The discussed speech can be found here: "Can we know our own minds?"

I also like this one: "Apes that write, start fires, and play Pac-Man"

I'd befriend a bonobo.

Musica in tensione: Ebu Gogo (8/9/07, Matunuck Beach)

2007-08-10T12:16:00.000-04:00

Seeing as how I seem to spend the majority of my largely illusory (and thus more disposable) income on what has quickly become obsolescent, the compakt disk, and any remaining phantom funds to obtain secondhand instruments (such as doodads, gizmos, and whizzing whirring whatthefucksitdos) for the express purpose of composing and performing music, it's frustratingly rare that I actually get out and enjoy music like it's supposed to be enjoyed. This disparity between live and Memorex could have something to do with the stultifying effect of being me, dancing. You (or I) might think that I would be relieved then, that it's rare for me feel that pulse, that rhythm, the beat, the need to get up and physically act on what the sound is telling me to do, but no—I fucking love that feeling, I think we all do (assuming you and I, and the other yous that are not you, that we each have a soul). That's why this lacking in my life, a lack of the most pure expression of what is a vital part of my life, is frustrating, exacerbated by the unbearably lame self-consciousness responsible.

And so it is that I've decided to fill that chasm, bring disparity closer to a parity, and by the power invested in me by the almighty bullet-shaped signifier, chronicle my adventures in enjoyment of the good rock show as many an internetist has chronicled before, except with a far greater percentage of neologisms and legomenons (the hapax kind).

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The sun rose on Thursday to reveal itself as actually being a Saturday (well, no it was still Thursday, but we, the marginally employed/gainfully self-employed can treat any damn day we please as a Saturday), a day to be spent with a group of friends and falafel pockets in the streets of Providence and then head south, with those very same friends, to catch a free show on the beautiful beach of Matunuck, headlined by the well-goggled, but less googled, purveyors of semi-sinister chase themes, Ebu Gogo. The show was generously put together by a group of youths appearing more youthful than they probably should and generously attended by youthier youths courtesy of the ever-popular all-ages denomination. Wearing their usual attire of abused irony, the kids know how to enjoy a good thing, and a good thing it was.

Now let me be concise in describing the venue: shit was fucking intimate. Can you understand how that emphasis resounds? If not, I'll explicate: I'm not talking cramped hovel that smells like piss and skunk-stench; where the stage is not a stage, just a slightly elevated extension of the floor that ultimately makes the band more cramped than the audience; where you can't actually hear the music above the din of people who just came to do "something" (except listen).

No, this wasn't like that at all. Probably because it wasn't a real venue at all, it was nature. Make like Mr. Rogers and imagine it if you would: you're standing on soft grass, grass that you could sit on too if you like, it's clean, no needles hiding among the blades. The band is set up on that very same grass, and you can get as close as you like, as long as you're not making anyone uncomfortable and/or physically ruining the performance, but maybe that's ok too, shit is intimate, just don't be an asshole. And everyone there is there because they came for music, reacting to the music in personal forms of exultation. And the beach behind you, it too is just there for the music, waves crashing quietly in the background; Neptune doesn't want to interrupt. Maybe this is the way to experience live music.

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If you're unfamiliar with the sound of Ebu Gogo, get familiar. An extension of the cultishly-adored-by-those-that-know, Grüvis Malt, self-proclaimed innovators of Futurock currently on indefinite hiatus, Ebu Gogo has whittled themselves down to a lean, mean, instrumental machine, a Bass/Keys/Trap Kit combo engaged in the production of soundtracks to motion pictures of their own imagination. On their first album, Chase Scenes 1-14, they run through the fourteen breathless non sequitur in under 40 minutes, slowing only to add menace on "Never Ending Hole" and parts of "Mostly Evil, Totally Dead", a song so treacherous they added outtakes at the end so that we can feel drummer Brendan Bell's pain as he misses one of the many time changes ("Red Light Fever").

You can draw connections to a lot of the bands if you want, especially those they themselves acknowledge (I would choose the ones making linear structured mayhem), but you don't need to. They say This Heat, I prefer Massacre (if you replaced Fred Frith's avant-garde noise infatuations with good ol' NES-nostalgia; Ninja Gaiden's got'm cut in two).

For all the goodness of Chase Scenes, however, I never really listened it. The recording quality is admittedly low-budget, not in a teenager-with-a-four-track kind of way, but in a way that you know they're professionals that just wanted to get something out quickly. But meaningless qualms with the audio quality ("It's not warm enough") shouldn't really stop me or anyone else from listening to something, the biggest deterrent is that you just can't grasp how fun this music is until you see and hear it in person. That's what it's all about. No matter how immensely technical the music gets, and how utterly impossible it is to dance while completely disoriented, it is always about simple, retahded fun. After all, the core of The Goonies isn't a story about how much fun it is to follow a convoluted treasure map while being chased by incompetent criminals, it's the tale of misshapen mongoloid Sloth and his undying love for a chunky chunkster named Chunk—a love born from the bond of a shared Baby Ruth.

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The sun now sinks as the Gogo finishes setting up. The preceding band, some talented young musicians dutifully attempting to integrate cello into what would otherwise be a two-man Don Caballero Jr., quietly try to gather up their own gear just as Gogo break into "Cuckoo for Bird Flu", the opening track off Chase Scenes and a seriously jarring attack on one's ability to refrain from having a seizure. As a testament to that fact, two clusters of South Kingston's finest mullet-coifed teens immediately developed into equally odd strains of spasmodic line-skanking.

Quickly the set becomes something of a blur. Standing front and center, behind a metalhead who knew what it meant to thrash, I try my damnedest to head-bang in time with the madness, but the always shifting nature of an Ebu Gogo song means I stumble on a few unexpected downbeats. "Spaghetti Chest Burn", with its epic Rocky IV power-synths, causes one kid to get down on one knee, fist raised, a display of allegiance to his new favorite band or signal that he's just had an aneurysm. The aforementioned "Mostly Evil" is played to perfection, and scattered throughout they perform some new songs off their forthcoming second album, including one that has me grinning ear to ear from Gavin's (the keyboardist) use of the pitch-wheel, giving it that early 90's West Coast/Dre vibe on top of the stuttering rhythmic interplay of Justin and Brendan. Fuck Girl Talk mash-ups, these cats do it live with fucking Ziggy Stardust powers.

As darkness surrounds us, the supervisory police inform organizers it was time to wrap it up. Brendan announces that they can play two out of three songs left, so we have to choose between "a heavy and a slow one" or "a heavy and our dance song". Amid cries for "heavy and heavy", it's decided that first would come the dance and then the heavy, as heavy is a given—the proper request would have been "heavy and a heavy-heavy".

"Dance Song" turns out to be heavily-syncopated dub-rebel anthem "Dikembe Bumbwembwe" (definitely one of my favorites off Chase Scenes [because I like to dance?]). Proving to not be anymore danceable than the rest of their material, it still keeps everyone having fun. And then the finale, another new song, tentatively titled "Take off all your clothes...or no, wait, put your clothes on the floor...no, no, but it's something like that." No one takes off his or her clothes (I wouldn't take it to heart, guys, blame mosquitoes and/or malaria).

And like that it was over. Everybody has to scuttle away lest our cars get locked in by the police, the band included, but I imagine everyone's left feeling like they've just huffed a tank of nitrous.

That's a good thing, when it doesn't involve dentistry.

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Ebu Gogo is:
Brendan Bell - Trap Kit Jr.
Justin Abene - Bass
Gavin Castleton - Keyboards

Photograph by: David McDonald
Ebu Gogo Poster by: Brendan Bell