A personal association of games with photography and film has been with me since the gift of a Nintendo 64 as a child. Super Mario 64 was the first 3D game I had ever played, quite a jump from my previous experience with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Atari. Super Mario 64’s immersive landscape and tricky moments — such as those requiring wall jumps and other maneuvers to progress and avoid or defeat enemies — required manual use of the build-in camera controls. These controls were embodied in the Lakitu, the camera-man who follows Mario/the player, through the game. While Super Mario Bros. 3’s curtains and hanging landscape elements evoked a theater stage play, the crucial presence of Lakitu in Super Mario 64 seemed to transform the game into a movie.
Some of my most beloved Nintendo 64 games required extensive manual camera fiddling or waiting for the camera to sort itself out. Playing them again years later, I wonder how I ever got through these games without endless frustration. Donkey Kong 64 and Castlevania 64 have notoriously bad camera controls and break a sense of immersion in the world, while a game like The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time has excellent handling, allowing easy maneuvers that encourage exploration.
I had previously enjoyed static screenshots of video games through Nintendo Power and browsing through strategy guides. I had tinkered with N64 launch game Pilotwings 64’s basic camera function in the game’s hangglider stages, but taking my own photos in-game went to the next level with with Pokemon Snap in 1999. While the main story was relatively easy to beat, earning higher scores through taking better photos could prove challenging. Pokemon Snap stations installed at Blockbuster Video allowed players to print off stickers of their favorite shots from this game and shots taken in the gallery mode of Pokemon Stadium (2000).
I have since played many games where photography was not necessarily the object of the game, but an embedded element. In The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, the Pictograph Box stores one photo at a time and can be used to advance the story and complete a couple of sidequests, or for the player to fool around with. While not initially allowing the player to take snapshots in its first iteration, the pause screen that zoomed in on the character and froze all surrounding action in Super Smash Bros. could be timed to produce amusing and artful scenes. Later, when lifted from my Nintendo-only-loyalty, I played a demo of survival-horror PlayStation 2 game Fatal Frame (2002), where the camera serves as your weapon against ghosts.
Getting into the practice of photography alongside a life of playing video games, it was only a matter of time before I would not only use in-game camera functions or take screenshots with an emulator, but photograph the screen itself as an experiment to frame the screen-within-a-screen-within-”real life”.
I later took up visiting abandoned locations in the virtual world of Second Life with a digital avatar that’s more like a virtual dress-up doll to me; it’s simple to shift body shape, attributes, clothing, expression, and pose with a few clicks. Second Life allows for a wide variety of camera tools, including transforming the lighting to set the tone. The Second Life marketplace features a range of pose stands, camera heads-up displays (HUDs) to assist in rotation and fixation, lighting, animations, and more.
We’ve reached an era where many game environments offer snapshot mechanisms, software is developed to “revolutionize screenshot capture”, the work of video game photographers (also known as screenshotters) is legitimized as art in Frieze and Vice pieces, and anyone with an emulator can easily take and edit screenshots of their own. As the description for NVIDIA Ansel reads:
Game photography is undeniably a new art form – screenshots can be posed and framed, and those with a great eye will select the best scenes and most beautiful vistas, just as a real world photographer would. The very best screenshots from famous game photographers like Duncan Harris, James Pollock, Leonardo Sang and Joshua Taylor are shown in exhibitions, printed and framed, and admired by millions of gamers online.
In this movement of video game photography, the subjects are most frequently contemporary games, not retro games. Retro games have proven a rich subject in game modification patches and hacks viewed in an artistic context, through cinematic productions created within games (machinima), and through online recreational viewing and creation in the form of let’s plays and speedruns. I believe the time has come to re-enter these retro game worlds with an eye for photography.
Noticing the relative lack of older games being explored photographically, I have begun to do this work on my own, experimenting with camera versus screenshot, editing or leaving the image as it is, and using cheat codes for invisibility and to achieve other in-game effects that alter the impact of the image. I want to capture terrain from games that seem very much like ‘places’ in my memory as well as to forge new paths.
Arguments against a screenshot, or photograph, of a dazzling landscape or a portrait in a pre-made video game world being considered art fall flat when there is wide-spread acceptance of nature or street photographs that depict our own pre-made world. That which is not ‘natural’ need not mean ‘inauthentic’.
Is it art?
*
p.s. Hey. Today the multi-talented and -disciplined artist and d.l. Marilyn Roxie presents this beautiful post. If you’re into the art and intricacies of video games like I, for instance, am, it’s a fascinating and high-producing thing, but even if games are a frontier, I promise you’ll come away inspired, so enjoy it from whatever perspective and, in any case, please comment today in Marilyn’s direction so they’ll know their kind work has been rewarded. Thank you! And thank you ever so much, Marilyn! ** Jonathan, Hi, bud. There are some unusually good buches this year. A boon year, it would seem, as you will see. Glad the gig hit home. Yeah, such a great label, easily one of America’s tip top. Oh, man, awesome about the thing you made. I can’t wait to get it in my head. Everyone, Jonathan aka the amazing artist Jonathan Mayhew has made a Soundcloud-housed work enticingly called ‘5 poems read by machines’, and you can and really should give it a heavy listen. Click this then scroll down a little ways and do just that. Sweet! They did record the New Museum event, and all of us signed papers allowing them to broadcast it, so I guess it’ll get out here at some point. I’ll ask them. Have an extreme goodie and very safe travels. Love, me. ** Tomk, Hey! Yesterday got entirely eaten by the other but I’ve got your story queued up to read pretty for much a minute or so after I launch this post. Excited! ** MyNeighbourJohnTurturro, Hi, man. Always really good to see you. Yeah, I noticed that there was a fair amount of guitar in those tracks. I must have put it together on a weird day, ha ha. I go back and forth re: Stereolab on my favorite, but it’s always between those two and, ultimately, I think I have to agree with you that ‘Transient Random Noise Bursts with Announcements’ was their absolute peak for me. Life’s pretty good, thanks. Oh, thank you a lot about LCTG. That’s great to hear. We wold love to show it in Scotland. All we need to know is venues there that might be into screening it, and we or ‘our people’ will contact them to submit the thing. Any ideas? You were here, wow. And in the Marais on whose edge I live. Paris is a place to fall in love with, for sure. I am. Mm, I’ll have to ask Gisele if anything’s playing here in June. I will. But if you come back, let me know so we can get coffeed together yes? ** Dóra Grőber, Hi! Cool about all the hanging with good friends. I hope the meet up yesterday was swell, and I’m sure it was. Yesterday I mostly rehearsed Gisele’s and my piece ‘Jerk’, which went well, and then, ugh … I don’t remember if I’ve mentioned that the apartment where I live went up for sale about a month ago, but that was stressful news because I rent, and a sale could mean I would have to move out, which sucks because I love this place. Anyway, I was informed yesterday that it has been sold, and I’ll find out today what that means. Probably I’ll have to move out. Remote chance that whoever bought the apartment did so as an investment and I can stay, but, even in that case, everyone’s buying apartments here to turn them into Air BnB rentals, so I’m probably doomed. Anyway, I’m kind of nervous and depressed today about that. Otherwise, okay. And your day? I’m really glad to hear you’re writing! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi, David. I’ll go spend some minutes with Dolores Gray shortly, thank you! ** B.R.Y., Hi, man. Love your avatar, by the way. Yeah, it was nice to relive Drag City while making that post. Pretty seminal, yeah, on the fronts you mention and even more. No, I don’t know that record you linked to. I’ll go submit to it today, thank you! I’ll find out when/if the Violations footage is going public, and I’ll let you know. You take care too! ** Tosh Berman, That Kevin Drumm album is very good in general. That might be my favorite track but, if you like it, I think you’ll like the totality. Yeah, the stuff in the post is probably my faves from the label, I think. ** Jeff Jackson, Hi, Jeff. Thanks, man. Drag City is a wealth. Okay, another plus re: ‘Arrival’. Zac and I only talked about it briefly, and he’s away right now, but I’ll query him when he gets back. He and I almost always agree on things, but not always, so … Yeah, I saw ‘Evolution’ at its premiere here last year. I like Lucile. She’s cool, and I respect her. Honestly, while I think there are some interesting things about ‘Evolution’ — it looks great, for example — I think it’s way too self-consciously mysterious and trying too hard to seem meaningfully withholding, but I think it’s ultimately kind of an empty exercise in style and atmospherics, I have to say. Worth checking out, though. And people, especially in the States, seem to be getting into empty European style exercise films like ‘The Neon Demon’ these days, so … Haven’t seen ‘Childhood of a Leader’. Gisele thought it was so-so apart from the soundtrack. Oh, a guest post! Wonderful, thank you ever so much, my friend! ** Jamie, Hi Jamie! Wow, your description of the agent meeting really takes me back. Yeah, that sounds almost exactly like the meetings I had with agents and editors at the publishing houses back when I was first submitting novels. It’s very formulaic, isn’t it? And, ha ha, that question about other books that yours resembles, Jesus. Yeah, I got that too. When an author is new, agents and publishers always to say, ‘Like (‘BlahBlah’) and (‘BlahBlah’), Jamie McMorrow’s novel is … ‘. I hate that. I never answered those questions either. And it took years before every promo for my books didn’t say, ‘Like William Burroughs and Jean Genet, Dennis Cooper … ‘ Ugh. Well, hm, wait and see. Hard to tell how much they’re interested in biting from what you said. I’m glad you got through it with your optimism in tact. Fingers crossed until further notice. The ‘Jerk’ rehearsals were easy. Jonathan still remembers the piece and can do it like magic. No, we’re not changing it at all. Other than that, as I said to Dora, I found out the apartment where I’m living has been sold and that I might have to move out, and I’m pretty stressed about that. I’ll find out the verdict today. I’m also doing the interview and maybe going to a film premiere tonight. Fingers crossed on my own behalf. Dude, tell me how it goes with animators! I’m very excited to hear! Love back, mega, Dennis. ** Steevee, I forgot you’re a vegetarian. High five across the waves. Wow, I look forward to reading you on ‘Roma’. I haven’t seen that film in ages. I think that was chronologically the last Fellini film I liked a lot. ** Damien Ark, Hey, Damien! Really happy that my picks coincided with your awesome tastes! ** New Juche, Hi! Lucky you to have seen Dirty Three live. I haven’t. I’m not a huge Cave fan, or not of his stuff from the recent long time. The Bad Seeds put on some awesome shows back in the day. The day being the ’80s. Have a great day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Drag City is definitely one of the USA’s preeminently good and smart labels. Seasonal mix, nice. I’ll get over there. Everyone, _Black_Acrylic … well, here he is to tell you: ‘Earlier this week I put up a kind-of seasonal mix on Soundcloud titled Wintertide that features former Gig fave Carla dal Forno amongst various other acid/krautrock/techno picks.’ Get in the mood with his help, yes? Well, I’m no expert on these things, but doesn’t Andrew just have to put the two episodes on a hard drive? I mean, that’s not a time consuming task. ** Armando, Hi. Even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day. ** Misanthrope, Hi. Vigilance is the byword, for sure. I’ve come around over the past couple of years to being on Bieber’s side on most things. Fuck that arm inserting asshole. My Thanksgiving did not exist. Not a trace. That does sound like lactose intolerance. What about cheese, though? Maybe not. I hope you get to sleep like crazy today. ** Okay. Be within the reach of Marilyn’s post today as thoughtfully as you can. Thank you. See you tomorrow.
__________ Derek BaileyParis [Pt. 2] ‘Aida, consisting of two live recordings from 1980, captures Derek Bailey on the cusp between his early-career thorny and more drastic explorations of the outer limits of guitar playing and the subtler, softer (though no less idiosyncratic) approaches he would often employ later on. Throughout his career, Bailey has championed what he calls “non-idiomatic improvisation,” an attempt to improvise without reference to any pre-existing musical styles. While perhaps impossible to achieve 100 percent, he has certainly made it difficult to describe his work with the normal allusions and comparisons to that of others. The first track on Aida, “Paris,” is a gorgeous and relatively smooth excursion in Bailey’s sound-world. One imagines that if England had a tradition of koto accompaniment for Noh plays, it might sound something like this. Not that there is an overt Asian influence, but the sparseness and careful choice of notes gives one a slight sense of both Eastern asceticism and luxury within that asceticism.’— Brian Olewnick
_____________ William BasinskiA Red Score in Tile [Part 1] ‘While certain passages foster an immersive, surface beauty, this is not ambience. The composerly patience of Basinski’s work is often trumpeted but his is an approach infused with subversive tension. Shorn of the metaphysical baggage attached to later releases, A Red Score In Tile must instead be addressed on its own, elementally harsh terms. It poses much more difficult and uncomfortable questions about the transient nature of the present than Basinski’s later work. These tapes sound tired, old rather than decaying. The entropic nature of the sound is less pronounced, yielding to an aura of fretful infirmity, worry for the future. The cruelty of time is an ever present theme and here it informs his approach to sound in the most unsettling of ways. In another notable work, 2003’s Melancholia, a genuflection towards Arcadian serenity is stalled by repetition. There is little inclination toward pastoralism for the younger composer, rather an eerily dissociative drift towards unconsciousness.’— Daniel Baker
_____________ Bonnie ‘Prince’ BillyNew Tibet ‘Oldham’s music is deeply attuned to the past and to the people we imagine inhabited it, yet his actorly approach separates him from the mainstream Americana crowd, who tend to favor a more autobiographical approach, or at least some sense of direct confessionalism. Oldham’s songs are only obliquely about himself, and they rarely reveal much about the man singing them. “As boys, we fucked each other,” he sings at the beginning of “New Tibet”. “As men, we lie and smile.” In other hands, such a line might deliver a shock to interrupt the lull of the music, but Oldham never breaks character. That f-bomb becomes part of the lull, and is not so much sung as ruefully breathed. The song possesses all the ruminative gravity of “I See a Darkness” and in tone and character could be interpreted as a sequel.’— Stephen M. Deusner
____________ Bill CallahanThank Dub ‘Whatever the word dub means to you, chances are Bill Callahan’s version won’t match it. Have Fun With God is dub in the root sense of a double: essentially, it’s a cubist remix of his 2013 album Dream River, fracturing the surface of each song the more strikingly to communicate the emotion at its core. Thank Dub inhabits an eerie parallel universe to Dream River’s opening track The Sing, itself a song about a man trapped within a lonely parallel universe of hotel bars and sleeping strangers. Lyrics are elided, the guitar slides around icily, while the ghost of a mandolin blows in on a breeze. Where Javelin Unlanding is playful, sweet even, its remix, Expanding Dub, is more choppy and enervated, with hints of Ry Cooder in its spaciousness. In the shift from Summer Painter to Summer Dub, Callahan whips up a guitar-and-cymbal storm so crashingly fraught, you believe the song’s narrator actually is a sorcerer with weather at his command. As a standalone album, Have Fun With God doesn’t totally compel – but as a companion to its source material, it’s fascinating.’— Maddy Costa
____________ Dirty ThreeYou Greet Her Ghost ‘A genre rife with hollow oversaturation, instrumental rock runs the risk of sounding either stunningly frank or wantonly pretentious. On Toward The Low Sun, Aussie post-rockers Dirty Three have yet again achieved a beautiful post-rock sound both ingenuously carefree and wisely tempered, an impressive feat this far into their careers. Painting with their usual diverse palette of folk harmonies and jazz grooves, the Melbourne trio continue to show that they’re not afraid to add a little noise to their canvas. Jim White, Mick Turner, and Warren Ellis play with a focused spontaneity akin to Do Make Say Think, as on tumultuous opener “Furnace Skies”, an aptly-titled prog-rock storm similar to what defined the group in their earlier days. However, as Toward The Low Sun evolves, these clouds constantly part, making room for welcome warmth.’— David Dilillo
____________ Kevin DrummOrgan ‘Minimalism has come to mean so many different things that it’s nearly meaningless; what do Charlemagne Palestine’s keyboard-battering sound clouds and Philip Glass’s densely layered, remorselessly rhythmic operas really have in common besides a name? On Comedy, Kevin Drumm resurrects the genre’s seminal impulse by extracting rich musical ore from limited veins of sound. The CD splits into three parts. “Organ” and “Organ Returns (Slight Difference)” open and close the disc with 15-minute blasts of foundation-crumbling noise obtained by shifting between two unequally distorted organ chords. Their effect is paradoxically meditative, like being lulled into a trance by the roar of an unmuffled internal combustion engine. In between lie four investigations of electronically generated sine waves that would warm the heart of any Pan Sonic fan. Whether they’re composed of piercing tones, like “Second,” or serene pulses, like “Just Like a Parvenu,” each mesmerizing piece teems with microscopically variant details.’ –– Bill Meyer
____________ Flying Saucer Attack Respect ‘Flying Saucer Attack was at the forefront of Bristol, England’s fertile mid-‘90s scene that included Massive Attack, Portishead and Amp. FSA mainman Dave Pearce indulged his love of krautrock, traditional British folk music and a post-shoegaze ambient aesthetic to forge records of uncommon beauty and passion. Nowhere near as fuzzed-out and lo-fi as its four predecessors (Pearce, who’d been wrestling with depression, claimed it marked his “second phase”), New Lands was still unmistakably FSA, from pulsing waves of treated and feedback guitar to massive, cresting dynamics to Pearce’s hushed vocals. New Lands is also fantastically vertiginous in the best, most My Bloody Valentine-esque sense.’— Magnet
_____________ GhostCaledonia ‘Masaki Batoh, vocalist and spiritual leader of Japan’s enigmatic collective Ghost, has a stated aversion to such mundane activities as recording and touring, with his interest in music almost entirely limited to the moment of creation itself. As a consequence, the increasingly infrequent arrival of a new Ghost album has begun to feel like a monumental event. Such is certainly the case for In Stormy Nights, the group’s first collection of new material since its majestic 2004 prog-epic Hypnotic Underworld. Throughout their mystery-steeped, two decade-plus career, the members of Ghost have steadfastly refused to acknowledge divisions between their seemingly incompatible styles of psych-folk, Krautrock, free jazz, and a limitless variety of indigenous Japanese and world musics. On their latest tablet from the mount, Batoh and a core sextet that includes veteran psych guitarist Michio Kurihara, multi-instrumentalist Kazuo Ogino, and percussionist Junzo Tateiwa have again decided to move their sound outward in all directions at once. In Stormy Night progresses with a solemn yet utterly savage authority, with its turbulent mixture of organic stoner-folk, cumbrous experimentation and near-martial rhythms sounding like an invocation to counteract the government-led turmoil of its times.’— Matthew Murphy
_____________ David GrubbsOrnamental Hermit ‘There is something endearingly cheeky about the way Drag City describes David Grubbs’ releases for the label as his pop albums. Little on Grubbs’ latest release will likely register as pop music, at least for any listeners who might reasonably expect that description to mean hooks, choruses, or hummable melodies. At the same time, Grubbs’ overall body of work is so expansive and unwieldy — bridging as it does various streams of avant-rock, multi-media art, and academia– that it would be a challenge to find any particular box to squeeze him into. On his first solo album since 2008’s An Optimist Notes the Dusk, there are guitars, some song-based material, vocals, and recognizable lyrics, so perhaps pop music is as good a description as any, eccentric and deconstructed though it may be.’— Matthew Murphy
____________ The High LlamasJackie ‘Now that Sean O’Hagan and his baroque indie pop cohort are thirteen albums deep, it’s a couple spins shy of disorienting to revisit the Crowded House-isms of their 1992 breakthrough, Santa Barbara. The High Llamas we’ve known since then essentially re-booted with their 1995 follow-up, Gideon Gaye, and, autumnal and reflective as their music can be, they haven’t done much looking back since. On the surface, Here Come the Rattling Trees is easier than a Sunday morning, but O’Hagan arranged a unique set of guidelines for himself en route to its creation. Specifically, he decided that before he could release anything new, the material would first have to come to life in theatre. Here Come the Rattling Trees is not a stand-alone album, but ‘music from the original stage production’, which was performed in 2014 at both the Tristan Bates Theatre in Covent Garden and the Montpelier Theatre pub in O’Hagan’s stomping ground, Peckham. Briskly brushed drums, cobblestone-stepping guitar strokes, and pastel keyboard and vibraphone accents fill in the story of Peckham-based publicist Amy, who learns about the history and character of the district through interactions with five of its citizens.’— Ian King
____________ Bert JanschKatie Cruel ‘In an inebriated interview with Rick McGrath in 1970, Bert Jansch, a 26-year-old guitarist busy with British folk compatriots Pentangle, reclaimed folk dogma: “We never talk about music, never. You talk about everything else, but never music. The only time we ever talk about music is to say, ‘Let’s have a rehearsal’ and that’s it. We get together and play.” Recorded some 40 years after his first two brilliant albums on England’s Transatlantic Records, The Black Swan isn’t exactly a comeback. Jansch has been working all along, releasing nearly a dozen albums since 1990. For this generation, however, it is Jansch’s popular come-out: From Devendra Banhart to Ben Chasny, many principles of the indie roots resurgence have credited his complex playing and artless vocals as touchstones. That it’s his Drag City debut and his first new material to see proper U.S. release since 2002’s Edge of a Dream only increases its marquee billing and possible importance.’— Grayson Currin
____________ Magik MarkersCrebs ‘After four years away from action (save for Pete Nolan’s fabulously underrated Spectre Folk side project), Magik Markers return with Surrender To The Fantasy, a sprawling distillation of folk noise and unhinged verse over the course of nine disparate songs. Neu! fuzz-groove? Sunkissed anti-folk? Truxian curled lip, bummer vibes? Settle in, fellow traveller. The first blush of many past encounters (over the course of 40-some singles, cassettes, and burns) with Magik Markers has been one of sheer onslaught, a cathartic dive into the depths of Elisa Ambrogio’s quest towards the real — which always seemed to aim for confrontation vs. establishing any sort of connection. At worst, their basement rumblings seemed unfocused, or worse, uncaring, a hastily assembled, end-of-semester MFA project. With Surrender, the obfuscation and intimidation gives way to beauty, and confrontation transforms into liberation, bringing forth the most focused, coherent work of their existence.’— Jerry Dannemiller
______________ Joanna NewsomSapokanikan ‘Joanna Newsom’s Divers is an album about a profound love, but it hardly features any love songs. The singer/songwriter recently explained to Uncut that her marriage in 2013 had invited death into her life, “because there is someone you can’t bear to lose,” she said. “When it registers as true, it’s like a little shade of grief comes in when love is its most real version. Then it contains death inside of it, and then that death contains love inside of it.” There is only one domestic vignette on the record, towards the end of “Leaving the City”, where Newsom and her love go running on a beautiful day. Immediately, though, her high dims: “The spirit bends beneath knowing it must end.” 2010’s Have One on Me traced the death of a relationship as Newsom tried and failed to defeat a proud man’s human nature. On Divers, she attempts to defeat time to stave off death.’— Laura Snapes
_____________ Nurse With WoundCold ‘This album really isn’t for all tastes, and those coming to the world of Nurse With Wound from the more popular world of industrial music (á la Ministry or Nine Inch Nails) will find it puzzling at best. Fans of soundscape will find this far more entertaining, with drones punctuated by random staccato busts of percussion, origins uncertain, bleeps, and bloops thrown in for good effect, and the occasional hooting and hollering.’— Sean Carruthers
______________ Jim O RourkeInsignificance ‘While generally less envelope-pushing then his more difficult-to-find work, O’Rourke’s string of Drag City releases have always served as an opportunity to try on an assortment of masks. Bad Timing was the John Fahey tribute; Eureka the ode to the lost days of grand Bacharachian orchestration; Halfway to a Threeway a short but pleasant acoustic interlude; and now– judging from the opening moments of Insignificance– we’d reached Jim O’Rourke’s rock n’ roll phase. The lyrics on Insignifigance initially seemed to be those of a man overestimating his own importance, even as the album title suggests otherwise. Pleas to the public to “get off my case” may work for Thom Yorke, but Jim O’Rourke, talented as he might be, hardly carries the kind of cache for distressed-woe-is-me-rockstar-anthems. Maybe labeling the package Insignificance is intended as a signifier that O’Rourke is in on this joke. Maybe the title is intended to suggest that we’ve been taking the music, the lyrics, and the bold statements a bit too seriously. But, self-aware or not, lyrics like these come across as more than a bit self-indulgent, which makes the music, at times, that much more difficult to embrace.’— David M. Pecoraro
_______________ PavementBaptiss Blacktick ‘Prior to Pavement signing with Matador and releasing Slanted and Enchanted the band recorded three EPs: Slay Tracks (1933-1969), released on the bands own Treble Kicker label in 1989, Demolition Plot J-7, and Perfect Sound Forever, both released in 1990 through Drag City. With the success of S&E on Matador Records, Drag City compiled the bands first three EPs along with the Summer Babe single, My Radio from the Chemical Imbalance compilation, and My First Time, originally a flexidisc in the fanzine Ablaze!, releasing it under the title Westing (By Musket and Sextant). Preserving the integrity of the original EPs, Westing features all the songs in the same order with the first two EPs on Side A and the remaining recordings on the flip side.’— Len Comaratta
____________ Pita3 (Get Out) ‘The second album from laptop noise pioneer and Mego co-curator Peter Rehberg saw the producer in a very weird place indeed. After the worldwide success of his debut record ‘Seven Tons for Free’, which won the ARS Electronica Prize for innovation in new music he spent the years after its 1996 release touring the world, laptop in hand and splitting the ears of innocent bystanders everywhere. It became harder than ever then for Rehberg to find the time to sit down in a studio and make music, so ‘Get Out’ was mostly pieced together on the road, in friends’ houses, on the train, on the plane, in airports or in hotel rooms. The focus then is rather different than the debut album and sees our protagonist take us on an occasionally torturous, occasionally beautiful and always intriguing journey through deftly manipulated electronic sound. For many noise artists ‘Get Out’ would become the blueprint for their musical development – Rehberg’s collision of harmony, structure and improvised crushing power electronics left the experimental world heaving and gasping in its wake, and since its release in 1999 hasn’t dated even a little. I guess it’s true to say that genuinely experimental music rarely dates, but the seismic impact that ‘Get Out’ had on electronic music can still be felt now.’— Boomkat
____________ Stephen PrinaThe Achiever ‘Produced by David Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke, Stephen Prina’s solo debut falls somewhere between the experimental sound of latter-day Gastr del Sol efforts and classic West Coast pop. Featuring collaborations with diverse figures ranging from writers Dennis Cooper and Lynne Tillman to the Sea & Cake’s John McEntire and Sam Prekop, Push Comes to Love is both smart and breezy, although it’s occasionally a little too self-conscious for its own good.’— Jason Ankeny
______________ The Red Krayola Stil de Grain Brun ‘The Red Krayola were one of the greatest psychedelic bands of the 1960s and probably of all times. They played extremely wild and cacophonous music that was decades ahead of its time. They predated Germany’s expressionistic rock (Faust) and the American new wave (Pere Ubu). Their “freak outs” were closer to John Coltrane’s free-jazz and to Jackson Pollock’s abstract paintings than to rock and roll. Their leader, Mayo Thompson, is a composer who ranks among the greatest living musicians (classical, jazz, rock). His revolutionary compositional style had few stable coordinates. His pieces float not because they are ethereal but because melody and rhythm are left “loose”. They are organisms that rely on supporting skeletons that are falling apart as they move. Thompson placed his art firmly in the iconoclastic tradition that Frank Zappa had just founded, and simply increased the amount and the speed of noise. Parable Of Arable Land (1967) is one of the milestones of rock music, a carousel of savage harmonic inventions/sabotages. God Bless (1968) was even closer (in spirit if not in sound) to the likes of Edgar Varese and John Cage. It is not a coincidence that Thompson was rediscovered by the new wave ten years later: his Soldier Talk (1979) could have well been the album of the Pere Ubu (the band he eventually joined). As of 1997, none of the major encyclopedias and histories of rock music published in Anglosaxon countries mentioned them.’— Scaruffi
______________ Royal TruxSickazz Dog ‘In many ways Veterans of Disorder is the Trux more streamlined version of seminal albums like the Clash’s London Calling or the Beatles’ White Album because with each song the band hits on a different aspect of its sound. “The Exception” and “Lunch Money” raga as well as the Clash at their best. Meanwhile, “Sickazz Dog” is the Trux getting their “Revolution 9” on, replacing collage experimentation with strange instrumental passages that run right in to each other. “Sickazz Dog” can be interesting and some parts sound similar to Piper At the Gates of Dawn-era Pink Floyd but it mostly feels like experimentation merely for the sake of experimentation instead of in service of making a good song as interesting and weird as possible. This type of thing would work better on a longer album but since Veterans of Disorder is a lean ten songs; the Trux would’ve been better served to work out a genuine song here instead.’— Eric Goldberg
_____________ Laetitia SadierOne Million Year Trip ‘For almost 20 years, Laetitia Sadier has been fronting the dazzlingly retro-futuristic Stereolab, and she’s also made room to indulge in a playful dream-pop side project, Monade. But The Trip, her first album under her own name, still feels like a coming-out party. Following Stereolab’s recently announced hiatus (the band’s upcoming Not Music was culled from the sessions for 2008’s Chemical Chords) and the disbanding of Monade, Sadier is finally on her own. She didn’t waste the opportunity: The Trip is breathtaking, a rich collection of torch songs and subtle, meandering melodies that clear away the distracting frenzy and Byzantine flourishes of her past groups to expose the humane beauty of her voice.’— Rebecca Raber
_____________ Silver JewsI Remember Me ‘The Silver Jews have just released Bright Flight, the follow-up to 1998’s great American Water. Berman moved to Nashville to record Bright Flight, and the influence is apparent throughout the entire album. He’s absorbed the local country and alt-country scene, and integrated it with his own wry, lo-fi aesthetic to kick out ten new tracks of intelligent backwoods swagger. Stephen Malkmus doesn’t appear on the album so the sense of comradery that gave American Water so much life isn’t here, and consequently, Bright Flight sounds like more of a personal statement, mixing the cathartic grandeur of “Tonight’s the Night” with the striking imagery of early modernist poetry. Berman is a writer, first and foremost, who happens to write music, but doesn’t enjoy touring to promote it. As a result, the Jews don’t go out of their way to impress anyone. It’s this easy-going amiability combined with their frontman’s erudition that makes them so affecting.’— Nathan Rooney
_____________ StereolabThe Long Hair Of Death ‘Rarely is a band as aptly named as Stereolab. Like a bunch of mad scientists mixing together their favorite musical ingredients, Stereolab has been producing avant-pop with such remarkable consistency and frequency that it raises the question of whether its members have lives outside the studio. Inevitably, any band as acclaimed and prolific as Stereolab is bound to attract its share of occasionally justified criticism: Some deride the band’s wholesale and unabashed appropriation of Neu!’s chugging riffs and the liberally borrowed exotica of lounge icons Juan Garcia Esquivel and Burt Bacharach. But Stereolab puts all these elements together in songs novel enough to serve as their own defense. More frustrating is the group’s tendency to release dozens of singles and collectibles in as many different hard-to-find forms as possible. After all, Stereolab has only been around since 1991, yet Aluminum Tunes is its third “Switched On” rarities collection, and a 25-track double-album at that. Surely the fact that Stereolab even deigns to compile its audio arcana shows that the band cares about fans who can’t otherwise find much of its music. The downside is that these albums inspire a frenzied rush to buy up the original issue of everything the band even breathes on, but the obvious upside is that, hey, there’s more Stereolab to go around. Aluminum Tunes brings together the whole of the 1995 Amorphous Body Study Centre installation piece, a handful of tour seven-inches, and a couple of remixes, as well as songs from the Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Mars Audiac Quintet, and Dots And Loops sessions.’— Joshua Klein
_____________ Sun ArawBelomancie ‘The back cover of Belomancie reads “COMPOSED, PERFORMED, & PRODUCED BY CAMERON STALLONES.” A few years ago, that information would’ve been redundant, as Sun Araw began in the late 00’s clearly as Stallones solo project. But lately it’s been an expanding universe, incorporating various musicians into both studio and concert settings; he’s even referred to it as the Sun Araw Band. This ensemble has morphed so much that some iterations took on new names—Turban Chopsticks, Duppy Gun, The Celebrate Music Synthesizer Group—suggesting Stallones is increasingly interested in subsuming his personality into a larger collective. So, suddenly, it’s surprising that he would make a Sun Araw record by himself.‘ –– Marc Masters
_____________ Scott WalkerTilt ‘Combining elements of industrial music (most prominently on “The Cockfighter”) with minimalist and avant-garde forms, Walker’s reverb drenched, other worldly voice takes centre stage-much as it did on his early records-but instead of being backed by lush orchestral arrangements, it hovers precariously over carefully constructed blocks of sound that somehow manage to turn their repetitive nature into a highly positive aspect of the album’s nine compositions. Songs that, though generally dark and brooding in nature, assume a dream-like quality that captivates listeners and binds them into a transient state. Moods rise and fall with the most subtle changes in instrumentation, as out of discord and despair, hope arises like a phoenix before plummeting back down into the depths once more. The compositions feel fragile, human, as though the slightest touch could knock them off balance at any moment, but listeners await a disaster that never comes with bated breath. Walker has created something as vicarious as it is beautiful, and it simply must be experienced by any serious music lover.’— James Paton
_____________ WandStolen Footsteps ‘1000 Days is a heartening record, a record that sees a young band picking up steam, playing with their influences more deftly than on their prior LPs, and bringing a thoughtful approach to old and well-traveled sounds. There’s enough interesting moments on 1000 Days to hold onto these songs, go back to them, and explore within them. That’s more than many of their cohorts within the cluttered and long-trendy field of psychedelic garage—there are hundreds of disposable tape-label bands with little to say out there, and it’s wearying to search through all that crud for the occasional gem, which does exist—have to offer.’— Jes Skolnik
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p.s. Hey. I guess it’s Thanksgiving in the land where I was born, so, if you’re there, do enjoy fulfilling its duties or avoiding them as the case may be, and, if you’re elsewhere like me, hey as usual. ** Dóra Grőber, Hi, Dóra! Yes, patience. I’m pretty good at that, relatively speaking, once I get over the initial ugh, which I’m starting to be. Precisely re: the acceptance and acknowledgement and representing of trans as an identity finally, so, yeah, fingers very crossed that interesting occasions will arise for your entry into acting, and do let me know what happens and what happens before anything happens even. If you’e a cake slut (like me), you will enjoy the buche beauty pageant post for sure. No, there’s no exhibition of them, just announcements and photos online and then trips around the city to shops and hotel restaurants and so on to see what they look like in person. It’s a treasure hunt. They’re usually made in limited editions of, like, 100 or less, and they’re often quite expensive, so it’s not like you can stock up an on a bunch of them. For instance, I saw a photo of one, and I thought, Ooh, that’s the one I want, but then I looked at the price: 280 Euros! So, definitely not. I hope you had fun with your friend yesterday. I mostly worked, and I went to SACD, which is this organization that handles the royalties for writers in France who work in theater and film and stuff, because there was some kind of glitch in my case, and now everything’s cool, and I’ll be getting a bunch of royalties for my work with Gisele Vienne that have been clogged up for a long time, so that’s obviously good! Have a lovely, lovely day! What happened? ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Hm, I wonder what the Bresson article is. It’s locked, at least for me. Does Skolimowski not live in LA anymore? Right, I forgot that he’s in ‘Mars Attacks!’ I love that film. ‘Barrier’ is great, yeah, and ‘Le Depart’ too. Thank you for your wisdom! I didn’t know there’s a new Mike Mills film. And I didn’t realize that Annette Bening is still acting. Huh. ** Jamie, Happy day, sir! My day was productive. I guess that’s the best word for it. Lacking exciting headlines, but not bad. Your meeting is today, isn’t it? Am I remembering right? If so, incredible great luck with that, and let me know how it went or how it felt if you don’t know how it went for sure yet. Fingers crossed onto a brutalist sculpture over here. I think ‘Deep End’ is a really good place to start with Skolimowski. I think you’ll like it. It’s very of its time and partly really good because of that. I’ll be rehearsing ‘Jerk’ pretty much all day, so that should be … well, maybe not fun but memorable or something. I hope the sun sets today on a happy you! Big love, Dennis. ** Tomk, Hey! Your story is up on Entropy! That’s so exciting, man! I can’t wait to read it, and I’ll do that either today or as soon as I’m finished with the ‘Jerk’ rehearsals that will eat mot of my today. Huge congrats, and I hope that’s the first of many, many contexts falling like dominoes before your awesome work. Everyone, D.l. Tomk aka the extraordinary and super original writer Thomas Kendall has a new story called ‘The Last Assignment’ just up on the great Entropy site, and getting to see Thomas’s work is a rare pleasure, so whatever else you do today, make the time to click this and read or at least bookmark his piece because it’s utterly guaranteed to be killer and a thing that you will be weaker without. ** Steevee, Hi. Those Skolimowskis plus ‘The Shout’ are probably my faves of his too. Okay, the language rewriting the brain thing is clearly enough to get me to watch ‘Arrival’ at the soonest opportunity. Thank you, sir, and I hope you enjoy your turkey or whatever the big table today holds. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Amazing news indeed. That is one cheap flight, wow. Cool. Man, you should definitely go if it’s even remotely possible. It’ll be fun, and I think I can say from traveling with Zac’s and my film that there’s something really … I don’t know … legitimizing about being there to see your work shown in that kind of context and in being treated as its representative, its artist. Anyway, great, all except for being forced back into a collaboration with Andrew’s procrastinations or whatever his problem is. I hope he ponies up quickly and smoothly. ** H, Hi. I don’t think I’m good at taking care of plants. I never have them, and, if memory serves, I think when I had plants, they seemed to meet untimely deaths despite my best efforts to preserve them. No Thanksgiving here, no. Just another day. Which is perfectly fine with me. Have a good one. ** Right. Maybe you would like to escape or accompany your Thanksgiving, if that applies, or your normal day, if not, by attending this gig I made featuring select artists from the roster of the great American record label Drag City. Sound good? See you tomorrow.
* POSTPONED: May 27 – 31: Paris @ Théâtre du Châtelet: THIS IS HOW YOU WILL DISAPPEAR * POSTPONED: October (dates TBA): New York @ Brooklyn Academy of Music: CROWD
Now available in North America 
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