Daniel O’Sullivan
Phew
Zola Jesus
Gravetemple
chris†††
Robert Hood
Ka5sh
Drew McDowall
Félicia Atkinson
Richard Dawson
Yasunao Tone
Circle
Puce Mary
White Suns
Cornelius
LCC
Ectopia
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Daniel O’Sullivan HC SVNT DRACONES
‘VELD is a new solo album of luminous pop incantations, electroacoustic music and shimmering drones from composer and multi-instrumentalist Daniel O’Sullivan. Whether solo or in his varied collaborative projects, O’Sullivan’s work is remarkable in the way it infuses familiar everyday experience with traces of the uncanny, the secret and the magickal. VELD distils these tangled realities into a wonderfully rich and complex record — one of O’Sullivan’s most immediate and moving pop albums to date, yet one that’s strikingly dense and allusive, alive with enticing sonic diversions, hypnotic mantras and eerie biomechanical rhythms. VELD was written and recorded between 2010 and 2016 while O’Sullivan was living on Tower Gardens Road, during the same phase that also nurtured other collaborative projects including Grumbling Fur (with Alexander Tucker) and Laniakea (with Zu’s Massimo Pupillo). This was also the space where O’Sullivan assembled and arranged Ulver’s 12th studio album ATGCLVLSSCAP and the last two Æthenor LP’s (O’Sullivan’s “automatic composition” group with Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) and Steve Noble).’ — O Genesis Recordings
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Phew CQ Tokyo
‘Like many British teens in the late 1970s, when Hiromi Moritani heard the Sex Pistols, she started her own punk band. But even by the standards of punk and post-punk, Japan’s Aunt Sally stood apart: dirge-y psychedelic rock, piano waltzes, spiky outbursts, a whistling take of “Heart and Soul.” And when Moritani struck off on her own in 1980 as Phew, she bushwhacked her own path. She had Yellow Magic Orchestra member Ryuichi Sakamoto produce her experimental first single. And for her debut album, she tapped a German dream team: producer Conny Plank and Can’s rhythm section of Holger Czuaky and Jaki Leibezeit, who cast a pulsing, harrowing sound. In the almost four decades since, she’s continued to carve out her own peculiar niche in rock, often working with legends who abet her vision, including Anton Fier, Otomo Yoshihide and members of DAF and Einstürzende Neubauten. … The furious “CQ Tokyo” returns her to her early punk roots, barking against a deliriously fast cha-cha beat, as if Yoko Ono snuck into Suicide’s practice space and stole one of Martin Rev’s rejiggered drum machines back in 1974. Menacing snarls of electronics roar alongside her increasingly fraught yells, the drums lurching faster and faster until they lash like a whip.’ — Andy Beta
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Zola Jesus Exhumed
‘Classic Zola Jesus is back. It’s clear from the first few seconds of her new song “Exhumed,” with its brisk orchestration, thickly blanketing bass, and ticking industrial beetle-scuttles. Nika Rosa Danilova’s last album Taiga tidied up the fierce immediacy of her early music into more polished textures, but there’s a more elemental and raw sense to “Exhumed,” the first taste of her sixth album Okovi. Danilova moved back to the Wisconsin forests where she grew up to record the project, and nature’s primal instincts are scattered all over it.’ — The Fader
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Gravetemple Domino/Athatolhatatlan Felelmek
‘“The aim is to break boundaries and to find new horizons via the challenging of our own concepts of existence via the channels of musical trance. To me, it is like a contemporary way of Shamanism,” explains vocalist and black metal luminary Attila Csihar when asked about the motivation behind Impassable Fears, Gravetemple’s first release in eight years and the trio’s second proper full-length. But while most bands will funnel ideas of transcendental experiences and meditation into a discourse of zen-like, hallowed states of eudaemonia, drone-meister Stephen O’Malley, experimentalist Oren Ambarchi, and Csihar turn their gazes inwards, towards Lovecraftian horrors. Similar to what anthropologist Carlo Severi notes about the Kuna people, the basis of Gravetemple’s modern day shamanism becomes a vivid representation of human suffering exposed through a crushingly oppressive sonic language. They strive to make the anguish of human existence and the inevitable fear of death tangible, only to voyage beyond it.’ — Antonio Poscic
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chris††† ytp death
‘chris†††’s social justice whatever begins there, with a barrage of paratactic surges, lost cities of culture juxtaposed next to each other without any logical connectors. It doesn’t work in a linear or plot-driven way, but rather with a strong, vomitlike, and whirly centrifugal pull, yanking that which appears discrepant: the memes, the videos, the cartoon dialogues, the commercials, the vaporwave, the hullabaloo. The album acts as a repository for internet culture and as a portent of how the internet distracts us from mobilizing, stunned online in our minds, frozen from the outside world, yet there, never not unable to be political, but just simply and overwhelmingly inactive about it. Because, for many, the internet comes before the world around us, as real as the reality behind reality & interchangeable like-life.’ — HYDROYOGA
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Robert Hood Pattern 8
‘Paradygm Shift, the new album from Robert Hood, is a return to minimalism, but not as we might recognise it. The techno of 1994’s Minimal Nation, his career- and genre-defining album, drew strength from simple combinations of drums, chords and hi-hats. Sinewy sounds were held together with smears of bassline funk (“Ride,” “Station Rider E”) rubbery harmonics (“Rhythm Of Vision”) or dial-tuned acid (“Museum”). Paradygm Shift aspires to the “simple, repetitive programming,” as Hood puts it, of his mid-’90s music, but the base materials are larger. If you imagine Minimal Nation’s tracks as rooms in a house, as the Detroit-born, Alabama-based artist once did, then his latest album might resemble a monument of overwhelming scale. The changes on Paradygm Shift don’t seem radical, but they’re consequential. The loops—melodic leads, especially—are more prone to change. This is most apparent on the sliding organs of “Pneuma,” or the braided arps of “Pattern 8.” In these congested patterns, Paradygm Shift tends to lose sight of its focal points. Tracks like “Solid Thought” and “Pattern 8” are caked with accents, effects and counterpoints. The rhythms, carrying this extra weight, can seem as laboured as a run through mud.’ — Resident Advisor
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Ka5sh I Don’t Need It
‘Ka5sh grew up in Fayetteville, North Carolina, a “super country” military town dominated by Fort Bragg. “I’m still the exact same as I was like younger, but now it’s cool,” they say. “It’s cool to be into bands and shit, and like cartoons, and just be weird and read. But back in [Fayetteville], no, that was not cool. You got called an Oreo.” The most exciting thing to do after dark was wander the aisles of the local Walmart, a cosmic injustice Ka5sh tried to correct by creating immersive performances for their early, Death Grips-inspired musical project, Weirdo. “I wanted to create an experience whenever you saw us live,” they say. “It was completely unappreciated, because I was in North Carolina, and no one got what we were doing. We would get kicked out of venues and stuff because we were just so wild and weird.” Weirdo never caught on, a disappointment Ka5sh understands in retrospect. “It wasn’t me,” they say. “It was just me trying to create a version of me that’s acceptable to everyone, and that’s digestible for rap.”’ — bandcamp daily
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Drew McDowall Recognition
‘Unnatural Channel is Drew McDowall’s follow up to his debut solo album Collapse released in 2015. Like Collapse, Unnatural Channel wallows in modular synths and abstract atmospheres but this time McDowall errs towards a more rhythmic sound melding elements of industrial and techno into his processed experimental work. In interviews Drew McDowall has spoken of his sleepless nights and I feel that may be the most obvious part of the Unnatural Channel referenced in the title. Unnatural Channel taps into the sense of disintegration first found on his debut but while it continues the themes Unnatural Channel evolves into a space distinct to Collapse. In relocating to New York Drew McDowall relinquished his place in the Coil line-up, a role that saw him contribute to Coil’s Equinox work and the acclaimed volumes of Musick To Play In The Dark, as well as the Coil related projects Black Light District and of course Time Machines, which resulted from Drew McDowall’s initial time-shifting experiments with tones and frequencies. It was a move made to secure his sanity but it seems his sleepless nights in New York have been productive musically finding himself within a conducive atmosphere of adventurous electronic musicians pushing industrial and electronic music into new and uncharted areas. Unnatural Channel does that too, taking Drew McDowall and his listeners into new territory, and especially within the mutated, morphed and processed rhythms he directs here.’ — Compulsion Online
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Felicia Atkinson Visnaga
‘On Hand in Hand, Felicia Atkinson is fascinated by information, in all its heterogeneity. It’s a fascination that has pervaded her recent work and, despite the range that colours this fascination, the information she brings into focus is primarily influenced by exemplary literature. On last year’s collaboration with Jefre-Cantu Ledesma, Comme Un Sel Narcisse, track names were curtailed to a single letter with the full tracklisting spelling out a quotation from Susan Sontag’s On Photography who was, in turn, quoting Charles Baudelaire. On A Readymade Ceremony the year before – the record that seems to have begun the cycle Atkinson is currently in – she blended textual offcuts from her own writings, those of Rene Char and Georges Bataille and various discoveries found in an Italian art magazine. In a way that is truly faithful to the meaning of the term, Atkinson’s work is a collage – a labyrinthine dislocation of source material drawn from what she sets out to read and what she happens to read, and one that seeks significance through contrast and serendipity.’ — Tim Wilson, The Quietus
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Richard Dawson Ogre
‘Richard Dawson has said that he really believes in Peasant, his first new album since 2014’s breakout Nothing Important. And you should think so – given that, from its structure and instrumentation down to its most basic themes, it is a bold and almost complete break with the style that allowed him to cross over from the weirdo underground to his current position as the country’s best-loved exponent of avant-folk. Confessional tales of underage drinking sessions gone awry are replaced by a kaleidoscope of character pieces displaced to the pre-medieval Northern English kingdom of Bryneich, while the barebones sound palette of ribcage-busting vocal and spidery electric guitar seen on his previous opus have been replaced by a multi-layered, kitchen-sink ensemble aesthetic. Yet perhaps the most notable move Dawson has made in Peasant is the ambition of its central theme: how community can be reclaimed as a meaningful force in society.’ — Danny Riley
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Yasunao Tone AI Deviation (live)
‘I have had an idea if I apply the neural network to create my sound work for long time. When I had a performance at Centre Pompidou with Peter Rehberg and other friends I tried to talk about the idea with a French guy from IRCAM. But, he couldn’t understand my idea, which by using neural network the sound I create would never have any repetitions. That was 2002 and I had to wait until 2015 when I had a grant from New York State Council on the Arts through Issue Project Room, then its director Lawrence Kumpf applied for my new work. The grant finally made possible for making my cherished idea, the neural network piece, reality. I had talked about the idea with Prof. Tony Myatt at Surrey University, UK and he developed the software for the piece with a team included Dr. Paul Modler. At the lab in the University a series of my performances of my MP3 Deviation were captured and used to train Kohonen Neural Networks to develop artificial intelligences that simulate my performances. Hence a birth of new piece AI Deviations.’ — Yasunao Tone
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Circle Terminal
‘A Swedish journalist recently declared Circle the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world after witnessing a particularly intense performance. Listening to Terminal, it’s difficult to find any reasonable grounds to disagree. To demonstrate their unfathomable ways, a few years ago they ‘leased’ the name Circle to an extreme Metal band whilst issuing an AOR-inspired record (not one of the more essential releases in the band’s catalogue which by now extends to a gazillion – well, 52 – releases) under the assumed name Falcon. The six-piece sport spandex and other vintage hard rock paraphernalia on stage whilst mightily wailing vocalist/keyboardist Mika Rättö (also familiar from psych-folk-rockers Kuusumun Profeetta) indulges his enthusiasm for the most ludicrous foot-on-monitor cock-rock poses imaginable. Much-acclaimed live sets push theatrics to an exhilaratingly baffling level where the performance might culminate in a mid-song intra-band arm wrestling match where the loser wounds up decapitated with a bass guitar.’ — The Line of Best Fit
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Puce Mary live at Tower Transmissions V
‘Compared to other extreme or underground musics, industrial music and noise have a much more distinct and literal relationship to art. Punk, techno, metal: these kinds of underground musics have evolved much more as folk musics with constraints that limit their freedoms as art while remaining within those genres. These constraints are immensely powerful, just as they have been in other, more traditional folk musics. Historical context, social and economic circumstance, have all aligned to create that musical vocabulary, and to abandon it is to abandon the large majority of what is powerful about playing that music in the first place. While there is a vernacular to specific noise or industrial musics – the most obvious maybe being the violent/sexual ‘extreme limits of the human condition’ of power electronics but obviously other tropes as well – this vernacular lies on a much more grey, intentionally crafted spectrum. It’s a continuum that has alway been shared with art, performance art, musical composition and experimental work that has, frankly, been the domain of the academy since the 60s or 70s.’ — Puce Mary
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White Suns A Year Without Summer
‘What guitarist/singer Barry, drummer Dana Matthiessen, and guitarist Rick Visser—who all chip in with electronics—establish is an ignominious sub-industrial alchemy. It’s a doomed space where doubt reigns, where it becomes difficult to separate instrumental components. White Suns’ initial embraces of scum rock and scuzz punk gave way, over time, to a heavier, more chaotic crunch, as the band moved from cassette imprints to labels (Load, ugEXPLODE, the Flesner) for its LP and CD releases. It’s the band’s earnestness—its self-reflexive sincerity—that’s remained steadfast throughout. Psychic Drift adds a fresh wrinkle to the catalog, limiting proceedings to just four extended meditations and swapping out guitars for tangles of synths, samples, and field recordings. The results feel overwhelmingly claustrophobic at moments and misleadingly thin at others; any time a song seems poised to peter out, a dark surge is almost inevitably en route. This vertiginous feeling fits the album’s loose lyrical theme: a modern societal apocalypse, nearly normalized. While Barry has shuttled between spoken word and screaming before, he leans harder on the former here—even as the surrounding sludge threatens to drown him out.’ — Raymond Cummings
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Cornelius 『いつか / どこか』
‘Is Mellow Waves Fantasma-level good? Nope. Few albums are. But it is a welcome return nonetheless. All through the 1980s, Japan’s avant-garde took jazz fusion and proggy approaches to pop composition and redeemed those genre’s typically grandiloquent tendencies with a rare and winning restraint. Cornelius is a natural extension of this multi-disciplinary yet signature practice, and his densely thicketed shibuya-kei holds up neatly against the temporary contextualizations of trend. Fantasma, like The Avalanche’s Since I Left You three years later, married eclecticism and bliss-out propulsion in ambitious and indelible ways. Neither album has a misstep and both feature an endless series of delightful sound-trinkets nestled in a fetching, fortified advent calendar. The only downside is the massive sugar crash that can follow. But their judicious deployment of stirring emotion calls us back.’ — WILLCOMA
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LCC Aj
‘Bastet is the Portuguese duo LCC’s 2nd album of dissonant electronic tang and pranging percussions rent in acres of stark negative space. In terms of rhythm and tone, we can detect a tighter, nuanced approach manifest in the marbled detail and gripping sensitivity of Bastet, which lives up to the enigma of its ancient Egyptian namesake – a goddess of music and female power who coerced humans to entertain her and keep her animalistic urges at bay. Constructed from recordings made at the esteemed EMS in Stockholm, the Inter Arts Centre of Malmö, and their own studio in Gijón, the results form an organismic interrelation of ideas that resonates with, say, the work of Pharmakon as much as Andy Stott at his brutal and stripped best.’ — Boomkat
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Ectopia Bermondsey Lagoon
‘Ectopia are Adam Christensen, Jack Brennan and Viki Steiri. Previous works have included sound-tracking Jack Smith’s experimental film Normal Love (1963) and Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928). For the first release on the Wysing Polyphonic label three-piece Ectopia have created a suite of seven new works in which intricate cello and screeching and spoken word vocals are carried along on a wave of dark electronica, taking the listener on a journey into sad acid house, scratched DVDs, lipstick clogged with rolling tobacco and hangovers with absent lovers.’ — Boomkat
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p.s. Hey. ** Mieze, Mieze! Hey, Mieze! I’m so glad that my blog got so lucky. Lots of love to you. ** H, Hi. Well, totally okay of course that you didn’t go the event. I wasn’t expecting that you would. My pleasure about the Bataille post. Have a great weekend. ** David Ehrenstein, Thank you, sir, yes. ‘Guilty’ is wonderful, I agree, yes. Another book about Warhol?! Jesus. I’ve heard of Richard Natale. Maybe he’s an FB friend or something. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. I haven’t read all of your windfall of pieces yet, but the ones I’ve read so far have been enlightening. I think I read your ‘Detroit’ text on FB. I haven’t seen the film, and I doubt I will, but I’m generally always very suspicious of the ‘torture fetish’ accusation when it’s made towards books, films, and the like. Everybody, One last goodie from Steve Erickson before the week entirely ends. Here he is: ‘I saw Kathryn Bigelow’s DETROIT last night and was really pissed off by it. This exact same text was posted on Facebook, where some people here may have read it, but I also gave it a more permanent home on my blog.’ I think it’s pretty worth checking back with your old reviews re: that book possibility. You can always fiddle with them. Rights-wise, I know there was no problem whatsoever getting the rights to all the pieces I wrote for lots of different places re: ‘Smothered in Hugs’.** Dóra Grőber, Hi! I’m very glad the book intrigued you. Titles are really tough, but then a possible perfect one will just pop into one’s head magically. Well, if it matters, I would say borrowing a Burroughs quote as your title is not a problem whatsoever, but that’s spoken by someone whose first novel swiped the title of a whole Joy Division album. No, I haven’t heard anything about that event I Skyped/read for yet. It doesn’t seem that anyone I know bothered to go, or else they did and are being discrete or something. Everything else is good, no real complaints on my end. I hope the period between now and Monday is both peaceful and incredibly exciting for you. Was it? ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh. I picked ‘Blue of Noon’ off the shelf the other day and reread some chunks, which inspired the post. It’s pretty fucking great. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Do you know why he didn’t actually start that secret society? I’m curious. ** Brendan, Brendan! B-man! Howdy, pal! I’m so happy that the post inspired that reverie. Man, how are you? What’s going on? Catch me up maybe? Bear hugs. ** _Black_Acrylic, It’s better now. Excellent about the inspiring meeting with Donna. Yes, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to double down on your self-suggestion to write more. A Y’n’Y business model? Like Y’n’Y as a … company or … ? Fascinating. Good, you sound good, my friend. Have a lovely weekend. ** Nicholas, A big hello back to you, big N! Thanks for lending ‘God Jr.’ to your friend. Yeah, I mean, I’m happy to try to answer her questions if she wants. New places to live can be nicely altering or something once you get through the utter hell of physically relocating. Or that’s been my experience. Well, thank you for the kind words, man. The new Blondie is good? I’m always really wary of records by bands who start making records again after a long break when they’re in their relative dotage, but … I’ll peek. Erik Visser! Wow, I was thinking about him the other day and wondering what in the world he’s up to these days. How is he? If you communicate with him again, please give him very warm hugs and respect from me. ** MANCY, Hi! Yeah, it was a sad day when I fully realized what gelatin was made of. Very sad. The vegan ones are … okay, but they’re never imaginative. Or bouncy, squeezy enough. But oh well. Cool, a guest-post! Thank you so, so much! I’ll go find your email, and I’ll get back to you soon. Wow, thank you very, very much. Excellent Saturday and even better Sunday to you! ** Misanthrope, Hi. That’s not sad, that’s what it is. Only so many hours in the day and all of that. I liked candy corn as a kid. I used to sprinkle them on ice cream. Not now. Although I do want to try those Halloween-only candy corn Oreos just out of curiosity. One tiny bite. If I see Jedward fisting each other or something, I’ll IM you very fast. Your friend and I could be distantly related. My dad once told me that 80 or something percent of Americans named Cooper are related by blood, albeit very, very thin blood in most cases. ** Jeff J, Hi, Jeff. I would say that gummi post did its number on you exactly as I had dreamt it would do to someone, anyone. I am a fan of Dieter Roth, yes indeed. I think I’m a fan generally. I like his overall practice and at least most of what his practice produced. Maybe I’ll do a galerie re: him or something. I haven’t done an Arte Povera post, no. I’m not generally much of a fan of those guys: Pistoletto, Kounellis, Merz, Boetti, et. al. Their work just doesn’t speak interestingly to me. I do, of course, like some of the artists who inspired that work or who are proto-Arte Povera like Manzoni and Fontana. Including Beuys in Arte Povera is really stretching it and fishing. I think Arte Povera has been defined such that the vast majority are Italian artists. Anyway, I can’t help you with AP ‘cos I’m not very into it at all. ** S., Hi. What does ‘being Catholic’ mean? I’ve heard people say that, and I know they’re not saying they’re Catholic believers or whatever. It’s about some quality or something that they call ‘Catholic’? Do hurt oranges hurt crocodiles, or is it a way to pet them safely? U2 a neat band? You mean their clothes and bathing habits? ** Right. I have a concert for you this weekend. I hope you will attend. Thank you. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
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Fantastic Mr Coop!
Oh man, that fake snow day! The Nakaya quotes are just so gorgeous!
I find fake / artificial snow really difficult to deal with as a concept – I’m never sure whether what’s being talked about is something that has mostly the chemical makeup of naturally-forming snow but was produced artificially (the stuff on ski slopes) or something else entirely, made for the purpose of looking like, as opposed to feeling like, snow.
I have kind of a beef with artificial snow on slopes mostly because if never feels right, and I can’t quite figure out why we’ve not yet gotten to the point where artificial snow is similar enough to the real deal that you can ski on it and no tell the difference. Although of course you can tell the difference between dozens of ‘real’ snows, so this makes sense. Amazing how complex snow-forming is and how hard it is to replicate.
That bit about snow-packing and how location-specific packing has to be was so interesting! Are there better things in life than being the first on the top of the slopes in the early morning as the sun is just rising over the ridge in the misty distance, bringing out your little thermos and having a cup of nice, steamy dark coffee and then setting off onto the just-packed blue-and-white chiaroscuro perfection before you, trailing the packing-machines, with that perfect shhhhhh-crooooncch-croooonch at every bend? I think not.
You find my current life poetic? Aw, dude. That’s sweet. I think I’m to blame, making is sound much more interesting that it really is haha. Oops.
People do seems to romanticize tech generally though, it’s interesting, and kinda fucked-up. Why does no-one think plumbers or electricians have the most fascinating job, what with all those interesting pipes and wires to arrange in such a perfect way? Why is structural engineering not on any list of cool jobs to go get degree in, and software ‘engineering’ is?
It is such a weird world in here, my friend – obfuscating terrible decisions and general high-grade bullshit with walls of code is a real thing that is happening more and more and at too high a speed for any regulatory system to keep pace with. The general ‘ooohh, code… sexy and impossible to understand for us mere mortals’ attitude should be fought ruthlessly but of course it’s in too many people’s interest to keep the hype up.
I have hope that the next generation will not be so easily wowed or freaked-out and show some real critical ‘tude: ‘Hang on a fucking minute there mate, what is this script even doing, and why? Looks well buggy to me. Show me your inputs and heuristics.’ Until then, it’s always a good idea to ask anyone (mostly, any company) who throws big fancy techy words around to ask them what problem they’re solving, how they figured out that what they do would help solve it, and how they’re measuring the actual impact they’re having. And watch them stare at you like a dog watching a card trick… (no offense to dogs obviously).
On that note, let me remind you that we’ll be very close to your locale on Thursday!! Around mid-day+ I reckon. Is your number still the same? So excited!
“Torture Porn” accusations are often apt. And that’s certainly the case with Kathy Bigelow. I’m not planning to see “Detroit”
I totally understood where you’re coming from and respect it, but I find this a bit ironic considering you posted a comment on my negative review of ZERO DARK THIRTY for Gay City News saying I misunderstood the film and it didn’t really condone torture.
What would the Marquis De Sade think?
He would probably masturbate to DETROIT, as one review by a black critic suggested white supremacists might do.
De Sade pretty much masturbated to everything…
I have a very high tolerance for violence. I am not at all squeamish or prudish about it. I spent the early 2000s writing positive reviews of most of the landmark New French Extremity films and violent Asian films like SYMPATHY FOR MR. VENGEANCE and AUDITION. My rave review of CITY OF GHOSTS, which was part of my link dump on Thursday, opens by mentioning that the film includes a scene in which a man watches a video of ISIS executing his father. If I object to the depiction of torture in DETROIT, it’s not coming from a casual objection to violence. Bigelow could have made the same point in a far more effective manner by showing 10 minutes of black men being tortured and killed. She is obviously trying to show how awful racism and police brutality are, but showing an entire hour of black men being tortured and killed comes closer to Eli Roth than THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS or ’70s Costa-Gavras, which seem to be her models. When I came home from seeing the film Thursday night and started googling reviews, I was astonished to find that the only reviews which shared my perspective seem to come from African-American critics. In fact, I’ve still only read one positive review by a black critic. But yesterday, Nick Pinkerton and Richard Brody chimed in with eloquent pans – Brody’s headline is “The Immoral Artistry of DETROIT.” This film really is totally fucked up, in ways that deeply exploit African-Americans’ pain.
On a much brighter note, I love your Gig Days, and you’re my most reliable source of music recommendations! I’ve already spent my music budget for the week and will have to wait till next weekend to start downloading some of this stuff. For once, I already own one album you selected: Richard Dawson’s PEASANT. I will spend much of the day listening to your selections. (I’m actually listening to the Cars’ CANDY-O, of all things, right now.)
Dennis, I figured you would have been the person to ask about that secret society!!! I suppose I should look into it a bit more, one of these days. Interestingly enough, recently an online friend of mine joined the Japanese branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis.
Hey, I named my first novel after a New Order song.
Going to see “The Dark Tower” this afternoon with my dad and two of my brothers (both my dad and my youngest brother have read the book series that “inspired” it, whereas I and my other brother going have not). I have not been to the theaters since seeing the Star Wars “Rogue One” film earlier this year.
OTO is not so secret anymore. I’ve been a Minerval (preliminary member) for years, but decided not to go further. Anyone can attend the Gnostic Mass throughout the world, their main ritual, and I highly recommend it. I think any d.l. in his right (or wrong) mind would love it.
Robert Hood is my favorite so far, but I’ve never heard anything like Ectopia. I also like the drone artists – Gravetemple, White Suns – and the leftfield hip-hop of Ka5h. Thank you for providing download links; finally, I noticed them and have been using them.
Before I saw this Gig Day, there were 2 albums I planned to download soon based on Pitchfork & Tiny MixTapes reviews (and YouTube listens, in the first case): the neo-Brit-folk band Offa Rex and the Iranian electronic dance producer Sote. I still want to get these, but I will have to spread all this out over several weeks.
Hey Dennis, hope you’re having a good weekend! Cool blog posts this week, especially the Bataille (a book of his I’ve never read) and The Giselle Vienne day–what an amazing body of work you guys have been doing. That Crowd piece sounds really cool–someone in LA needs to bring it here. I was at La Cabana on Rose in Venice last night with a couple of former students–did you used to go there? Oh, I don’t suppose my book has arrived yet? If not, I’ll check to see when they sent it, i’m sure it takes longer to get over to Paris!xo
Quite a range in this gig, Dennis. I think LCC and Ectopia are my favorites; and that Tone performance is great fun!
Just got back from The Untamed. Very nice, with a truly disturbing tentacular creature.
Bill
Hello! Oh I really wanted to go to the event as much as I love your reading which always has been calming me down. Your voice too. (Although I’m already “naturally” calm in a complicated way, I suppose. ) All movers I could hire with my budget declined the job due to that deep Brooklyn location and my book collection, so I’m moving things on my own. So that’s why I couldn’t go. I really wanted to report back about your reading. Definitely next time! And hope you can revisit nyc soon. Apologies for this incomplete comment at the moment as well. I hope you have a great week!
Hi!
Haha, it does matter, thank you! It makes me feel good because the final title did come to me but it’s still directly a part of the quote. Not the whole thing but. So the title of my book is now officially ‘Bitter Skin’. And I’m super, super excited because I just sent it out to five publishers!! It feels absolutely surreal.
Well, I hope you hear some feedback soon. Silence is weird and frustrating at times like this.
My weekend was basically swallowed by my book enthusiasm but I’m not at all sorry.
How was yours? What happened? I hope everything’s lovely there!
hey dennis !! i love these gig days and i always come out of them with a good handful of new things to listen to. i especially liked the Richard Dawson song & music video. i’m definitely gonna check out his new album. i’m super fascinated with medieval type stuff
and i was very interested in the Yasunao Tone piece as well. i think it’s cool how we keep teaching computers how to do things. more and more i keep imagining that maybe the true end goal to all this internet stuff is awakening and saying something to the next earthly AI species that will either co-exist with or replace us down the line. maybe the biggest and most important audience online isn’t human, and all our internet content is feeding a bigger better kind of brain. which is okay by me, maybe the robots will do a better job at things than humans have. your blog will give them a really cool eclectic education in human art.
the other day elon musk was sounding all these alarms in washington about the dangers of AI potentially threatening humanity — basically saying that things are moving so fast in that field that the government should be involved in setting up check and balances so things don’t get out of control. i wouldn’t be surprised if there’s probably already some kind of secret functional AI brain that exists in a lab somewhere in the world.
what did you read for the NYC show?
also, what part of Paris do u live in now? the other day i downloaded the latest google earth app for my phone and was virtually walking around the places where some of my international internet friends live
thanks for checking out the musical blog post i made yesterday !! i was in sort of a blog making mood. some of those ‘hey i bet dennis would be into this’ albums ideas have gone back years, it was interesting to remember the timeline of when i first listened to them. the other day i realized i’ve been commenting here for probably around 6 years, which is really cool, i’m happy and thankful for the opportunity.
in general i’m doing well, i’m at the point where i’m writing as much as i can b/c i know the summer is winding down my free time is gonna diminish a bit. i’m savoring the late nights. i really like staying up all night and sleeping in the day, that’s definitely my natural setting and i naturally revert back to it as soon as i don’t have work. my favorite time is midnight to sunrise, that’s usually when i feel at my best and my happiest.
i hope u had a good weekend and everything is going well !! take care, ttyl
I finished the rough draft of my Argento essay: 2,900 words! Talking to Kevin Killian about his interest in Argento has been useful, although I haven’t read THE ARGENTO SERIES. And seeing a beautiful print of SUSPIRIA last night on a huge screen was amazing, even if it was the R-rated cut.
I’m seeing one more Alan Clarke film tonight: TO ENCOURAGE THE OTHERS.
I’m a longtime Robert Hood fan. Not just a genius techno producer, you know the guy’s also an ordained pastor? His Floorplan alias uses gospel samples interwoven with the minimal techno: Never Grow Old (Re-Plant)
I met up with Alex and Alexandra earlier this evening to go see The Midwife, and none of us thought very much of it. But we did also discuss Yuck ‘n Yum matters too, and we plan to see Donna next week about launching YNY as some kind of business venture. Not meaning as a profit based thing necessarily, but we could use the Fleet Collective premises as a base and promote the work of artists around the world. The funding’s out there, I’m sure of it. And besides for a long time we’ve promoted ourselves with Apprentice-style imagery – see the 2011 AGK promo for instance.
I am very interested in this concert, but I need time to really listen. It’s been very social around here, which doesn’t happen really often – that’s a lie. Just doesn’t allow me much personal music time. I will say that Trev dug it while I slept with my ridiculous feline.
As a warning or whatever, I gave the new Blondie props for a few reasons. I’d listened to a bunch of rock and roll with Dusty – Stones and the like. It was sorta designed to piss my asshole father off before she rightly dismissed him. Then there was Patti Smith, and that pissed everyone off. But, not my mom. Dad was really angry; even though he played fucking Carmena Burana every single Sunday. Nigga Please.
Blondie really proved to me that I had freedom. Dusty said, “Take the headphones off.” Then, she took me to see them at Masonic Temple. I freaked to it, and so did she. It changed my Tween years, until the punk I have described a bunch of times.
You know my sentimentality. If I hear and see a woman I’ve admired since those early years, it just rules. Deborah Harry is 72, and she’s doing it amazingly. My taste for sure. Maybe not yours, but Pollinator got my goat.
More intelligent words will exist.
Good to all.
Nje
Njr if that matters
Hmm, I perform torture porn on my dick every day.
Dennis, I’ve not heard of the Oreo candy corn. Kind of interesting. LPS would probably like those.
I told my friend you and he might be related because of your dad’s 80% estimate, and he agreed, especially since he’s black and “Cooper isn’t exactly a West African name.” His words. He thought the concept was not only possible but also funny. As did I.
Which led us to a discussion about his current boyfriend, who is white and a rather rabid liberal Democrat: the poor guy found out that his ancestors were slave owners and it’s bugged him no end.
I’ve never looked that far back in my family tree. 1. I’m lazy. 2. I don’t really care about ancestry too much. 3. The little looking I’ve done seems to suggest that most of the early Wineses were in New York and most likely not slave owners. But I did find our discussion interesting.
I had a really good time. He’s a great guy. He now speaks 7 languages -including French- fluently. We ate at a small Spanish restaurant on H Street that I think you would’ve liked a lot. I lost track of time and ended up leaving DC around 8:30 p.m. It was great to catch up with him. We’re gonna meet again sooner rather than later.
He’s pretty keen on all things gay, but he was completely unaware of your work. I gave him a brief primer, though he did once say, “My God, why would I want to read something like that?” Of course, I said, “Because it’s great writing, and it’s about so much more than its actual content.” He got that.
He’s currently reading “nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word” by Randall Kennedy. He was telling me about it and suggested I read it. Very interesting book, from what he told me. I might pick it up later on this year. You know how I like word origins and why they mean what they mean, especially as that meaning morphs over time.
Hey Dennis – Hope you had a nice weekend. I’ve been enjoying this gig – the Puce Mary, Gravetemple, and White Suns jumped out and nice to see Cornelius is back with something new.
Not sure what to make of Circle, but I see they’re on the cover of The Wire issue that I haven’t read yet so that seems like a good place to explore. Have you heard the entire Richard Dawson album – and if so, do you like it? I tried to get into his last one but seemed to slide off its surface, apart from a song or two.
Speaking of music, my friend Jeremy just put the album I helped him record (with many others) on Bandcamp. The 11 songs cover a variety of styles – Sonic Youth type rock, gothic folk, noisy electronic ballads, garage punk, etc. Anyone interested can listen and download for free: https://juliancalendar.bandcamp.com/album/parallel-collage
I’d love it if you did a post on Dieter Roth.
The Arte Povera book I was looking at from 1969 does seem to stretch the definition quite a bit — the subtitle is ‘Conceptual, Actual, or Impossible Art’ — and in addition to the Italians (who I didn’t know) it lists Bruce Nauman, Walter di Maria, Eva Hesse, Robert Smithson, Joseph Beuys, Robert Morris, etc. Weird.
uhhh I would think Saturday catholic do whatever Friday night but go to mass in the morning? I think it has a connotation of being overly religious or idolatrous. lol I have no idea just putting Florida things together like Puerto Rican prostitutes on a NASA shuttle. I live at the beach we just have sharks. I have spotted a cryptoid a “fur” a sort of come to life mink. saw a large one in the mountains years ago. lol so much music missed. the new Danzig is neat going down to die hit her remix and Depeche Mode’s latest reach out touch old dudes or something. watching a 90s thing never watch tv so loud. columbine oh to be 16 again
Bonjour, mon ami.
How are you? How was your weekend? I’m sure you’ll have answered both these questions by now. I was at a wedding at the weekend, which was nice and weird, hanging out with lots of folks that I used to party with about 20 years ago. It was at a really nice manor-house in the middle of nowhere and my favourite bit was when Hannah and I went for a walk and met a horse. Hannah loves horses.
As we’re still wifi-free at home I thought I’d get the headphones on on my train ride this morning and slowly enjoy this post, but guess what – the wifi on this train doesn’t let me watch videos! I am cursed by wifi. I’ll add this to the ever-growing list of DC Posts That I’ll Enjoy Fully When I Finally Get Wifi.
I hope everything’s sweet with you and you have an insanely fine Monday.
Intermittent but powerful love,
Jamie
P.s. When you did the Abbbas Kiarostami day was it on the old blog or the new one? I thought it was after you relaunched, but my Googling is turning up nothing. We watched The Wind Will Carry Us last night and I’m intrigued.
Xx