Author: DC (Page 1099 of 1133)

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Lower Lost Weight, Perfect Skin
‘Lower make intense music. Seek Warmer Climes, the Copenhagen quartet’s debut album, sparkles with the harmonic dissonance and high-strung urgency of their underground music forebears. But Lower ­– Adrian Toubro (vocals), Simon Formann (guitar), Kristian Emdal (bass) and Anton Rothstein (drums) – also channel the romance and drama of great singer-songwriters, from late-period Scott Walker to Bryan Ferry. The result is a hugely ambitious and affecting rock album that enters deeply personal and unusual sonic and topical spaces.’ –– Matador

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Harassor Winter’s Triumph
‘Harassor are a rare gem glinting up malevolently from one of Los Angeles’ countless dark corners. The band was formed back in 2002, and after more than a decade of dues-paying and hell-raising, they’ve finally started attracting attention for their savage extreme metal hybrid. 2011 saw their inclusion on Southern Lord’s well-received Power of the Riff compilation, and two full-lengths later, Dais came calling to secure the rights for the trio’s fourth LP. The venerable experimental/noise label and the regressive-minded metal band seem like an odd coupling, but both parties seem chuffed with the arrangement and the result of their pairing speaks for itself. Into Unknown Depths is a delightfully dynamic approach to extreme metal’s usual grim-faced presentation. No two songs sound alike, but each one sounds deadly.’ — Kim Kelly

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Evian Christ Fuck Idol
‘Evian Christ’s metamorphosis from primary school teacher to Kanye West collaborator has been swift and stunning. The 24-year-old, who first came to prominence with 2011’s druggy Kings And Them mixtape, received an email last year requesting his services as a collaborator on West’s Yeezus LP. His new EP Waterfall is his first release since. Stand out track “Fuck Idol” matches squalling synths with deliciously grinding percussion. Reminiscent in places of Pan Sonic’s blocky brutality, Burial’s sudden atmosphere shifts and Vatican Shadow’s abrasive beauty, Waterfall is as brightly promising as it is stark and cold.’ — Resident Advisor

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Atki2 Knock Knock
‘Atki2 has long been performing his unique strain of dancehall, bashment, dubstep, and jungle, yet this is the first time he has released this style on its historical format of choice, 7-inch vinyl. Having co-promoted the Ruffneck Diskotek club night (a strong factor in Bristol‘s development as one of the globe’s most exciting hubs for dubstep and bass music) for nearly a decade with Dub Boy and other local cohorts, he is deservedly a much-loved and respected member of Bristol’s music scene. See his many releases on the city’s top labels such as Punch Drunk, Idle Hands, and Immerse, as well as further afield imprints like Shadetek and Actress’ Werk Discs, for whom he first recorded way back in 2005. With long-term partner Hanuman, Atki2 also helms Steakhouse Records, and the duo have been releasing bass-soaked music under the name Monkeysteak for several years.’ — frijsfo beats

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Cindytalk Guts of London
‘I mean, I think it is probably impossible to be any kind of… – what is the word I am looking for… intuitive sort of musician, a musician who improvises, without accepting that silence is every bit as important to the sound that you are making, if not in most cases more important. This is strange for certain people, myself included, who make a barrage of noise, but then, when you do create space and silence, it is much more noticeable. It’s a question about light and dark, and playing with both, of being aware of that. You can’t have one without the other. So yes, absolutely. I also think it is to some extent the Holy Grail to most musicians, a quest. When you are younger and fumbling around to find what you are looking for, I suspect one of the things we are all looking for is silence. I know that the older I’ve got – beginning life as a punk etc – that is certainly what I’ve been looking for, stillness, space, silence. Of the recent three albums I have released on Editions Mego, the most recent one is the stillest, the quietest, almost the most at peace with itself. The first two are much more fidgety, nervous, abstract, noisy, and frenetic and I have been looking for that space. I am constantly looking for a place where you can settle down inside, where something you are having to fumble about for, is there, not so much to have control over it, but to be at peace with it.’ — Cindytalk

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Ernest Gibson Everywhere You Roam
‘Looking to genres like exotica, folk, and maybe even touches of doo-wop, Ernest Gibson is an artist who is deeply entrenched in musty old tricks and spells of time gone by, but uses that platform as a way of twisting and re-imagining the sounds of the past, assembling them into a completely new form. Something nearly unrecognized by the elements that went into it. Think of the way that Daughn Gibson stretches, samples, and loops his music to give it a time-worn vibe or perhaps the way that Dirty Beaches recreates older styles with thick, heavy layers of lo-fi modernism and you’ll be getting a vague idea of what Ernest Gibson is up to on his album. It’s sort of a cratedigger’s wet dream. A lot of the time Island Records feels like, perhaps in another life, it could easily be packed away in a box with other lost gems down in a dank basement somewhere, waiting for the day when that box falls down on some adventurous listener’s head.’ — Portals Music

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Wolves in the Throne Room Celestite Mirror
‘Long tracks and slow builds have been near-constants for Wolves in the Throne Room, the Pacific Northwest band that helped push United States Black Metal to wider recognition. As you listen to “Celestite Mirror”, the debut track from their forthcoming fifth album, Celestite, you might keep expecting for the hammer to drop, for the black metal to rush in. But don’t hold your breath: Celestite follows in the grand black metal tradition of trading blast beats and suffocating guitars for pensive synths and slow motion. For “Celestite Mirror”, Wolves in the Throne Room build from an eerie drift of synth glow and gentle bass-drum booms into a Vangelis-sized organ roar. Ahead of the halfway mark, they back into a Manuel Gottsching-like series of flickers and clicks, dispersing the darkness they once conjured.’ — Grayson Haver Currin

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Diane Cluck Sara
‘After a seven-year hiatus, Boneset is the seventh album from modern folk artist Diane Cluck. Cluck’s uniquely clipped, glottal vocals and harp-like acoustic guitar embed in rich textures from cellist Isabel Castellvi and drummer Anders Griffen. Recorded to analog tape at Brooklyn’s Trout Recording, Boneset is comprised of songs written years ago, not so long ago, just recently, laid out in near-chronological order. Dark to light to dark, the album overends as a kind of mobius strip, songs seeded with birds, death, wealth, poverty, boldness and heart. “Diane Cluck is a virtuosic talent with an emotionality that feels at once ancient and alien. Her mastery of her voice as an ecstatic instrument is so compelling.” — Antony Hegarty (Antony and the Johnsons)’ — Important Records

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Communions Summer’s Oath
‘Communions is the Copenhagen-based rock band of brothers Martin and Mads Rehof, Jacob van Deurs Formann and Frederik Lind Köppen. They share a rehearsal space with Iceage and Lower at local DIY space and venue Mayhem, and recorded their debut EP, Cobblestones, between that epicenter of the city’s punk/industrial scene and Köppen’s bedroom. Communions are a band stuck between fun fun in the sun sun and their native Copenhagen’s desolate punk movement. Perhaps that’s why their music feels nuzzled by the comforting angst of pop-punk while still fraught with the yells of someone left behind in an abandoned asylum.’ — collaged

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Lone 2 is 8
‘Lone has stated that his two main role models are Boards of Canada and Madlib and Reality Testing sounds like a collaboration between those two. Madlib’s part comes into play in Lone’s expert beat making. The two singles released before the album’s drop, “2 is 8” and the 2012 house highlight “Airglow Fires”, combine ‘90s golden era hip-hop with slippery electronics. “2 is 8” is built around chiming brass and a languid synth that lazily slides around the song. The brass, when mixed with a sample of children screaming “YAY!”, make “2 is 8” sound like the soundtrack to the coolest episode of Sesame Street ever. “Airglow Fires” is a delightfully warm song that starts at a brisk, yet calming pace, before squelched keyboards come in and push the song to evolve into a dancer arena.’ — Pop Matters

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Sudden Infant Wölfli’s Nightmare
‘Industrial minimal blues noise from Switzerland’s most notorious wild man, produced by Roli Mosimann (Swans). The Cramps meets early Einsturzende Neubauten! Wölfli’s Nightmare is a major shift for Sudden Infant, as Joke Lanz is joined here for the first time by a bass player and a drummer, transforming this long-running and often underrated industrial noise project into a more avant-garde leaning mixture of experimental jazz exuberance and politically-minded vocals. It’s all very raw, sticking true to the industrial genre and punk ethics; the new formula seems to stick together well and gives birth to something which goes beyond Sudden Infant’s past while sticking true to the project’s vision and attitude.’ — collaged

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Philipp Quehenberger Uff Uff
‘Viennese-by-choice, Philipp Quehenberger counts amongst the most innovative and multifaceted figures in the Austrian electro-landscape. The ethos of this “musician coming from somewhere in the grey zone between hardcore, techno, and free jazz” (quote Quehenberger) has always been marked by insatiable experimentation, deliberate breaks in style, and a good dose of eccentricity. And anyway, what’s the point of definite form and content if it only really gets interesting when the turbulent raucous noise hits the dance floor? Or to say it in the words of the artist: “I always wanted to be pop. But under my conditions.”’ — donaufestival.au

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copeland Faith OG X
‘The clues start with the bewildering album cover, which features a strikingly abrasive, ice-cold stare from copeland, an image whose cultural implications find continuity in the music: “l’oreal” acts as both an affirmation of worth and a foil to the beauty corporation and its slogan (“Because you’re worth it”); “Fit 1” turns the objectifying Brit slang on its head; while “advice to young girls” suggests that an authoritative voice commanding empowerment is, by copeland’s own admission, a joke, even as it could be taken by listeners as a call-to-arms. With her tactics ranging from wincing sine-wave-damaged depth charges (“Faith OG X”) to the purposefully cliché (“DILIGENCE”), there’s no assurance that the listener is making a “correct interpretation” of its content (and my own here is clearly just one of many possible). But that she manages to evoke such contemplation on an album that’s only 30 minutes long, where half the songs don’t even contain vocals, is itself an incredible achievement.’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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White Lung Face Down
‘I’m someone who always needs to keep moving forward and challenging myself to do something more. If you’re not going forward, you’re just standing still, and who wants to do that for too long? When White Lung started, my goal was simple: “I don’t want to be in my boyfriend’s band anymore—I want my own band that I actually like, and I want to play with Anne-Marie because she’s the fucking coolest drummer I’ve ever met in my life.” To think about where it’s at now, it’s like, “Oh god, I’m a band person now! How did this happen? Like, fuck. I chose to live like a clown for the rest of my life.”‘ — Mish Way, White Lung

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p.s. Hey. ** Nicki, Hi. Oh, well, it’s a positive rush, well, apart from the p.s. impact, so its positivity is imperfect, I guess. I didn’t have time yet to dip into Thramsay and get an initial, more fleshed out, personalized definition of it under my belt, as it were, but today’s easy-ish, so soon I’ll actually know what you’re talking about in a mildly back room way, hopefully. But awesome, natch, if the post fueled your writing. I mean, higher compliments don’t come in better nutshells or something. Ha ha, that’s interesting: semi-colon as image. I wonder if that’s why, or one reason why, I’m stand-offish about them, me being such a delicate flower and all that. Very cool about that book you’re planning. Fascinating and needed, as you well know. In Japan, ‘women-as-consumers/producers of gratuitously violent porn’ is a long-standing tradition, as is w-a-c/p of gay porn and ambiguously pedophiliac ‘gay’ porn too. Anyway, you being inspired, major! Thank you! ** David Ehrenstein, It’s amazing, or maybe, how many of the slaves I come across want contracts that they can’t get out of it. It’s a very common wish, and even more in the past year or so than previously. Slave profiles as litmus tests of broad societal anxiety trends or something? Almost everything is inside the computer now. Seems like nature (plants, trees, ocean, etc.) is the last hold-out. ** Bill, Hi, B. No, but I knew or at least suspected that you would suggest it could have been shorter. I think that, in that case, it needed the blather. The blathering was an unfurling mechanism. The blathering aspect was its key and inadvertent charm or something? ** Sypha, See, yeah, I’ve never played with one of those book reader things. I guess I imagined they were kind of dead like picture frames, but then again I never really imagined them fully. Huh. Geese are nice. ** Damien Ark, Hi, Damien. Yeah, the uncomfortable funny and disturbed at the same effect of them is part of what excites me about them. It’s an interesting combination, or at least when it’s real, or I guess I mean when it seems real since I’m virtually positive that most of those slaves are just fantasizing aloud. More interesting than the usual faked up, predictable horror movie funny/disturbing thing. Those ads you made are really nice, nicely done. ** Kier, Hi, K. Ugh, dislikable co-workers. I have one at the moment. Is that true about pigs? Interesting. Oh, actually, yeah, I think there have been killers who deliberately used pigs to cover their tracks. But I guess since I know that they must not have been so successful. You have that little poetry book? Cool. No, they said they’d send me one, and then they didn’t, and when I wrote and said, hey, where’s my copy, they said they were sold out and no copies remained. I’ll find one on eBay or something someday. I saw a picture of it. It looked pretty, I think. I loved the VK! ** Steevee, The self-described Republican slave was vortextual complex. I’ve seen the name Kratom, but I have no idea what it is. I don’t think it’s available in France maybe. What did your doctor suggest? ** Keaton, Yeah, I suppose it presupposes, but, yeah, so do I, you know, you know me. There are an incalculable number of how-to’s. It’s so fucking cool that way. Interesting that that gets on your nerves. Tropes are always bad. ‘The Bastards’ was okay. I like her work. It’s not her best by any stretch. It’s just nice to be in the presence of her doing her thing, basically. It was on the upside of okay and better. Happy … oh, it became July yesterday. I spaced out. Pay rent. (Note to self). ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. I have wireless at home only when I use the Personal Hotspot function on my cellphone, and since the landline internet here is wildly imperfect, I sometimes do, but I don’t want to get into habit of doing that for some reason. I don’t know the reason. Weird. Frozen mochi: intense, nice. ‘Double Dream’ is a great Ashbery, yeah. I don’t know if I could pick a fave book by him. I literally love every one of them. Even the so-called ‘minor’ ones like ‘Shadow Train’. ** Rewritedept, Hi. It didn’t rain at all yesterday. It looked like it was going to. The not fulfilling my expectation was nice. My yesterday was good. Zac got back from a trip to elsewhere, and we hung out, checked out the location for next week’s film shoot: the interior of a World War II bunker which will be played in our film by an old, empty storage room in the subterranean parking garage of a big artists squat here in Paris. That, plus some work, was my day. I was in a monsoon in Vegas once. It was quite awesome. Hope your Tuesday rules too. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T!  So cool about your impending Kiddiepunk haiku book. Excited! Thank you in advance for the slave haikus, yum, maestro. ** Right. There’s a gig composed of some musical stuff I’ve been into ‘of late’. Share and share alike, as they say, whatever that means. See you tomorrow.

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The Soft Pink Truth Black Metal
‘The Why Do the Heathen Rage? LP, the first in ten years from Matmos member Drew Daniel’s The Soft Pink Truth project, is set to see a release later this month via Thrill Jockey. But before the record drops, Daniel has let loose a wild new video for LP cut “Black Metal.” An electronic cover of Venom’s classic metal song of the same title, The Soft Pink Truth’s hyperactive “Black Metal” is accompanied by a strange sequence of images, with the song’s vocal contributor, Bryan Edward Collins, donning a cape and covered in face paint as he runs through the track’s lyrical phrases, while Daniel himself and House of Revlon voguer David Serrotte also make frequent appearances amongst the fiery backgrounds and Satanic animations which mark much of the clip.’ — xlr8r

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Madalyn Merkey Mend
‘Madalyn Merkey describing the scene of Scent’s encoding to The Wire: “On one side of the screen is the darkened, unseen process; on the other side is the light of the generative substance. It’s impossible to observe the inner workings from the outside.” What does she say to her machines, alone in the Art Institute? What sounds, what words, are sequestered in those boxes?’ — Tiny Mix Tapes

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Opéra Mort Anaïs ou Satan
‘Luke Younger’s Alter label is one of the UK’s best kept secrets, and has long been a source for some of the most unexpected belters. Dédales was edited down from a series of improvised live recordings, and as such is imbued with a kinetic energy and creativity that’s often left for dead on most po-faced experimental full-lengths. ‘Les Spirales Messmer’ is our first taste of the record, and exhibits Opera Mort’s soupy, unsettling explorations perfectly with wobbly basses, cooing synths and percussion that chatters more than grandad’s dentures after a sneaky rub of whizz.’ — collaged

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Alex G Sandy/Take
‘For the better part of the past three years, the Philadelphia-based singer-songwriter Alex Giannascoli (known professionally as Alex G) has chunked out a series of small, scrappy bedroom-to-Bandcamp missives. June 17, Giannascoli will finally emerge with DSU, his first proper LP. Giannascoli’s been ambling down this woozy, pitch-shifted lane for a number of releases now (which you can download for free over at his Bandcamp).’ — collaged

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Sculpture Hackle Scam Populator
‘The self-described opto-musical agglomerate was born in 2008 after a chance encounter between British musician Dan Hayhurst and New Zealand animator Reuben Sutherland. By combining practices, the pair’s first test splattered a psychedelic palette that pushed them to explore sensorial intricacies emerging from chance operations. Raw materials for Sculpture’s music include a mix of analog and digital practices. In Hayhurst and Sutherland’s hands, tape manipulation, samples, found sounds, aleatoric and algorithmic programming and live improvisation become more complementary than you might imagine. Sculpture draws from experimentalism to promote new potentials for pop and electronic music in an age where many of our sci-fi fantasies have become mundane occurrences. “I’m aiming to make a coherent, adventurous electronic pop record with its own voice and identity,” Hayhurst explains. “I don’t think experimental music has to be dark, difficult or joyless. I try to make something playful, and maybe a little absurd.”’ — Mexican Summer

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Torturing Nurse vs. Animal Machine
‘Torturing Nurse emphatically tear to shreds the idea that Shanghai is a city incapable of pushing artistic boundaries. The harsh noise group’s performances have featured brutal walls of static, screeching distortion and spine-chilling screams. Although guitars and microphones are occasionally used, instruments at past shows have included umbrellas, computer chipboards and meat cleavers. The group has garnered international acclaim in the noise community, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore reportedly names them among his favourite artists. ‘I don’t care if he’s a fan,’ says Junky with trademark defiance. ‘I don’t like him or his band, they’re too rock ‘n’ roll.” — Time Out Shanghai

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Black Bananas Physical Emotions
‘Jennifer Herrema, half of ’90s trash punk icons Royal Trux, has unveiled the first track from her second Black Bananas album – and it’s a curveball. Departing from the hair metal inversions of her previous troupe RTX (virtually the same band as Black Bananas), ‘Physical Emotions’ sees Herrema channelling retro Parliament-Funkadelic flavours through the lens of Zapp, Dam-Funk and Daft Punk, all in her distinctively fuzzy and freewheeling fashion.’ — FACT Magazine

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King Buzzo Boris (acoustic, live)
‘Buzz Osborne, the legendary grunge progenitor who has helmed the MELVINS for thirty plus years, will release his debut solo full-length album, “This Machine Kills Artists”, on June 3 via Ipecac Recordings. “I have no interest in sounding like a crappy version of James Taylor or a half-assed version of Woody Guthrie,” said the grunge progenitor of the 17-song offering, continuing, “which is what happens when almost every rock and roller straps on an acoustic guitar. No thanks… ‘This Machine Kills Artists’ is a different kind of animal.” Rolling Stone gave listeners early access to music from Osborne’s acoustic release, premiering the song “Dark Brown Teeth”. The magazine described the track as “doomy, ill-angled” and with the “Beefheartian edge his band is renowned for.”‘ — blabbermouth.net

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Guided by Voices Table At Fool’s Tooth
‘The nice thing about the continued prolificacy of the current GBV line-up is that, with every new album, we get more and more distance between this band and the nostalgia that we associate with reformed acts. We don’t even really need to call this the “classic” line-up anymore, and not just because March has stepped in. This is a current, working band, history and great past records be damned. And this, their sixth full-length in four years, celebrates that more clearly than any of its five predecessors. It’s a nicely polished continuation of the scrappier Motivational Jumpsuit, but it rarely loses its bite in polishing its grin.’ — Pop Matters

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Innode Rotor
‘If one day the machines develop artificial intelligence and decide to take up music, their attempts to simulate dubstep might sound something like Gridshifter. There’s a strange sense of organic rhythm being deconstructed and then recombined under the force of implacable machinery. Gridshifter has brains amongst its electronic brawn. The album plays on opposing shifts of established sequences of tone and texture, resulting in a sense of dislocation that, whilst unpredictable, is masterfully controlled by Radian’s Stefan Németh and bolstered by Steven Hess of Locrian and Elektro Guzzi’s Bernhard Breuer. As the album’s title suggests, electronic pulsations and buzzing static bristle across all 10 tracks, like electricity coursing through a generator (a grid, perhaps).’ — Dusted

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Karen Gwyer Missisissipippi
‘The spiraling sonic helices of Karen Gwyer, fusing classic house and avant-techno sensibility with East African wedding songs and psychedelia, have recently snared considerable critical praise. The U.S.-born producer was trained in cello, viola, and violin growing up, but after re-situating herself in London, adopted electronic production as a more personally apropos expressive practice. Moving through organic cyclical rhythms and ‘disorientating psycho-physical disequilibria’, Gwyer’s debut album, Needs Continuum, is a uniquely dark, brooding and slow-burning masterpiece – a result of personal experiences and lifelong musical progressions, a defining record of a transitional period rendered physical.’ — collaged

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Kim Doo Soo Mountain
‘Kim Doo Soo is the deepest and most introspective of Korea’s acid folk singers. Many are the legends that cling to his songs — political oppression, alcoholism, suicide, a ten-year period of mountain seclusion. Despite having been active since the mid-’80s and having released four acclaimed albums in Korea, most Western listeners only became aware of him through his tracks on the recent Damon & Naomi compilation, International Sad Hits. On 10 Days Butterfly, his fifth album, he mines productive veins of profound melancholy, animistic nature, and unfathomable, hermetic affection. The whole is couched in a veil of the most gorgeous, still melodicism, Kim’s vocals and guitar shaded with subtle accordion, violin, piano, organ and harmonica. A reflective and unearthly beautiful masterpiece.’ — cafeoto.co.uk

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Young Widows King Sol
‘The fourth album from Louisville, Kentucky, noise-rock trio Young Widows is a suffocating aural submission hold that refuses to let up on your carotid artery. Easy Pain is all tension and menace, laden with reverb, distortion and migraine-inducing beats that deliver inspired reinventions of everything fans of metal-gaze (“Doomed Moon,” “Gift Of Failure”), noise rock (“Bird Feeder” sounds like Coliseum, ZZ Top and Sonic Youth in a three-way knife fight) and post-punk (“Kerosene Girl” is what Interpol might’ve sounded like after ingesting near-lethal doses of tequila and trucker’s speed) hold dear.’ — Alternative Press

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Xiu Xiu New Life Immigration
‘Angel Guts: Red Classroom, named after a 1979 Japanese erotic movie, is a hell of a comeback: with longtime foil Angela Seo back on board, Stewart is now joined by percussionist Shayna Dunkelman and Swans drummer Thor Harris in what sounds like one of the most Xiu Xiu records to date. Employing only analogue synths and drum boxes, the album falls back in love with rawness and cacophony, going full circle with the sharp-edged sound of their debut Knife Play. The crime and poverty of the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles is the album’s narrative backdrop; some of the songs are even named after shops and businesses found in the district. Angel Guts: Red Classroom is the typical blend of passion, pain and awkwardness which makes Xiu Xiu what they are. Fearless, demanding, relentlessly subversive.’ — Drowned in Sound

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p.s. Hey. Thank you to everybody who has answered Chris Goode’s questions and/or otherwise participated in his DC’s theater project. If you haven’t yet or missed the weekend post and don’t know what I’m talking about, click on the photo of Chris pretending to chop my head off in the blog’s upper right hand corner, read about the project, and learn how you can participate. Thanks very much! ** L@rstonovich, Larsty! Hey, buddy! I do wonder how you are! Are you psychic or something? Congrats on turning 41. Not bad! You saw GbV live, you lucky motherfucker! Pollard’s no-fun attitude towards touring in Europe is no-fun. Don’t give up. No doubt your self-styled-poo poo would be others’ highlight reel. Man, sweet to see you. Thanks for talking to Chris and crew. Much love back to say the least. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T. So awesome to read about your ‘Hey Mathew’ experiences. I’m going to go read your ‘HM’ text again pronto, cool! Everyone, mighty scribe/d.l. Thomas Moronic contributed text to Chris Goode’s theater work ‘Hey Mathew’ that you probably read about here over the weekend, and … here I’ll let Thomas finish my sentence thusly: ‘… which Kevin Killian and Dodie Bellamy very kindly and cooly published in their Mirage zine a little while afterwards, is up online. I just re-read it for the first time in years and yeah, it all came back. Yeah, so my Hey Mathew contribution is here.’ Please click over there and read it for all kinds of reasons. ** Sypha, Hi, James. Thank you a lot for talking/answering to Chris and the gang. ** Keaton, What I just said to Sypha applies to you too, man. Thanks! ** Tosh Berman, Thank you, Tosh! ** David Ehrenstein, Morning, Mr. E. Interesting. Things are certainly very different. I suppose ultimately that I’m only interested that time and politics and capitalism and evolving societal acceptance and whatever else has revealed that the so-called community of self-identifying gay guys is full of subdivisions, undergrounds, a mainstream or two, etc. It doesn’t seem good or bad to me. I guess it only contributes to my feeling that definitions of people based on notions of collective identity for which they happen to qualify based on their sharing a given genetic trait results in a prefatory understanding at best. ** HyeMin Kim, Hi. Thanks for addressing Chris’s questions. Consider me a cheerleader re: you finishing the topology. ** Chris Goode, Hey! That was and is intense, ha ha. In a fascinating way. Really strange, really helpful, really clarifying and reinventing and stuff. Oh, sorry about the images. Shit. Blogger’s image-sizing function is really faulty, and it can and does do something unpleasant to the images I upload here a lot of the time. I’m sorry. Oh, gosh, thanks about ‘Gone’. I have, like, no objectivity re: it and only a very strange, moody entrance back into it. Yeah, the community thing here, extremely interesting. Sometimes I think I understand it and have it ingrained in my response and building of this place, and sometimes it seems way beyond me or something. Strange. Of course I’m completely and severely interested to ponder, daydream, and know — as much as the reality-meets-blog configuration allows — about what’s happening in your respective community. Oh, I should know later today when I’ll be freed-up from film stuff and able/excited to Skype with you guys in the next few days. I can let you know tomorrow (here) or by email if that’s better? Thank you so unspeakably much, Chris, and same goes to all you guys there w/ Chris reading this, if you are. So incredible! ** Matthew, Hi. You’re moving to LA! When, where? Is there a why? You’re coming to Paris too? I think I’ll be around and free to meet to some degree until Friday, and then Zac and the crew and I head off to Bretagne to shoot a scene for our film. So, yeah, hopefully we can meet up. You want to write to me with your details? dcooperweb@gmail.com. Would and hopefully will be great to see you! ** Kyler, Thanks a lot for the words for Chris and his gang! ** Bill, Hi, B. So the cave is a relative concept. I hoped so. My room here at the Recollets is my cave, but it literally is a cave given the mess of stuff I’ve acquired over the years and piled randomly everywhere in this cramped unit. Paris weather has been real schizoid. It was mostly quite hot the last two days, and now it’s raining like a celestial firing squad. The enigmatic Omar … wait, Omar Berrada? Or who? ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul. Yeah, it’s in the clear, whoo-hoo. Your book, not the France football team. I guess I hope they will be at least vaguely. Thanks so much for participation in Chris’s project! ** Scunnard, Hi, J. You’re in CA, so sweet. My heart is kind of crumpled up in a good way. Maybe crumpled wasn’t the right word. And you did the Winchester House! You’re writing about it! Dude, I so want to read that so please nail it down and then nail it to some spot where I can. Thanks a bunch for being a collaborator with Chris. ** Kier, Hi, K! Thank you so much for being there for Chris’s project! It is exciting, right? Chris’s project. I’m kind of totally blown away. I’d like to see your arboretum photos if you want to put them somewhere lookable. LA has an arboretum. I grew up a short bike-ride away from it. It’s not, like, amazing, but it was cool to have it as a getaway when I was a kid and teen. That old TV show ‘Fantasy Island’ was filmed there and a bunch of the early Tarzan movies. You guys have a lot of Jesus holidays up there. Weird. Maybe France has them too, though. I hope you have a great time with your old friend today. My weekend was kind of semi-off. I mean, I worked on the film stuff, but I didn’t run around town doing so like I will be doing again starting today. I worked on my novel some, which is good. It was excellent enough. Happy Monday, my pal! ** Steevee, Hi, Steve. Thank you very much for speaking to Chris and his collective! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben! Hooray about the ABBA availability. Early period, late period? I’m a mostly later/last period ABBA guy myself. Thank you very, very much for involving yourself in Chris’s project! ** Misanthrope, Hi, G. I suppose that everyone under my age probably only knows Roy Rogers as the title of that franchise. Which is interesting, weird. There’s a metro stop one stop away from mine on the 5 line called Jacques Bonsergent. To me, that name is just the name of the stop, but I guess he was some flesh-and-blood big deal guy that French grandmas probably known about like the backs of their hands. You’ve got LPS for the summer! That’s some sweet shit right there. Speaking of shit … shit, memory awakening moment, i.e. I’m going to send you his Japanese money bills in the next day or two. I don’t think I have your street address, though. Can you email it to me? ** Gary gray, Hi, Gary! That’s so cool! You talked to each of the guys individually. What an amazing way to respond. Nice, man, and thank you a whole lot. What’s good with me is a fair amount of good, man, thank you for asking. Oh, yeah if you remember what you wanted to tell me, I’m all eyes a.k.a. ears. ** Okay. You get a gig of new stuff that I’m listening to and into of late today, so, yeah, there you go. Take some tips, if you like. See you tomorrow.